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The Summoner's Guidebook: The perfect LoL gank
We've talked a lot about teamfighting lately, but that's not the only kind of engagement in League of Legends. In truth, a large number of kills in most non-professional games occur long before teams ever group up to take an objective. Even in a teamfight-focused gametype like Dominion, smaller skirmishes are frequent. The most successful skirmishes are those where one team outnumbers the other. In cases where the numbers advantage is only apparent after it's already too late, it's called a gank. Ganking is a critical part of LoL. You can put an enemy team out of commission long before the midgame starts by having many successful ganks. While it's common in Summoner's Rift to have the jungler be the ganking linchpin of a team, ganking is not confined to junglers. Roaming supports and mages are also quite effective, and in a gametype like Dominion, anyone who can approach undetected and deliver burst damage or CC can make an effective ganker. This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, we'll talk about setting up for ganks and some ways to make them pay off more effectively.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Balancing League of Legends' offense and defense items
Last week, we talked specifically about building League of Legends' attack damage champions and the multiplicative effects the various bonuses have on these heroes. Building attack items is fairly cut and dried. The good attack damage items (IE, BT, PD, LW) are common to most pure AD builds, and there's not a lot of reason to heavily deviate from building them. Defense is another story, however. In Dominion, defense is more heavily itemized than in Summoner's Rift simply because irregular engagements happen constantly. On Summoners' Rift, there is more structure to specific engagements, and a single champion getting spotted out of place either results in an epic bait or a brutal gank. In those situations, defense doesn't help much. However, it's important to itemize defense in any game mode, and in Dominion, it is outright critical. Building only damage items will cause your champion to get melted by enemy attacks very early on, while building defense allows you to play more aggressively and capitalize on damage opportunities with less risk. Building defense is also important for bruisers who must close the gap to melee range, which inevitably means taking more damage than normal. Want to know all about the best time to start building tank? Read on!
The Summoner's Guidebook: Items and runes for League of Legends' attack damage champions
Attack damage is a universal thing for most League of Legends champions to build. Even characters that do not normally build AD are commonly played as AD in "joke builds." AD champions also have some of the widest variety of items available. There are a fair number of caster and tank items and a handful of hybrid items, but items that bolster physical attacks are everywhere. This can cause some confusion in what to build, and today we're going to talk about what gives you the most bang for your buck. This article will focus heavily on offense rather than defense for AD champions. We'll cover defense in a later week.
The Summoner's Guidebook: The game without a meta
It should be no shocker that the Crystal Scar is my favorite League of Legends map. Dominion is a more frantic and dynamic gametype, and it rewards tactical, free-thinking play more than the Classic game mode. The Classic maps reward technical skill and strategic thinking, but they aren't my preferred battlefield. I know a lot of you dear readers feel the same way. Dominion is weird because it doesn't have a real, established metagame. Although cries of "4 top, 1 bottom" can be heard in virtually every match, they rarely hold up for more than a few minutes, and the four top players can be seen running backdoors, ganking bottom, or solo jungle roaming as the game progresses. This is my first attempt at a Dominion overview, but the honest truth is that even the hardcore analyst-types like yours truly struggle to define exactly what wins Dominion games. There's a lot of room for discussion on this one, so let's get started.
