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The Summoner's Guidebook: Cleaning up after your LoL messes
Two weeks ago, we covered initiation in the Summoner's Guidebook, and last week we covered zoning. Those two elements comprise the early and middle parts of a teamfight, but if you want to win in League of Legends, you need to finish strong. As a fight winds down, wounded players begin to disengage in order to lick their wounds. Some characters just want to pull out early to wait out cooldowns, while in other cases it's purely a matter of health. Sometimes a player will get zoned out of a fight so far that she cannot contribute meaningfully to the teamfight at large. At this point, tough decisions start to crop up. Do you split off and give chase, taking away a large chunk of health from your team to secure the kill? Or do you allow the enemy to get away, giving away potential gold and/or allowing the enemy team a chance to come back? This decision is a non-question for a lot of players, but we should really be thinking about it when we are fighting. There are a lot of questions we should be asking ourselves before we drop out of a fight to chase, but all too often our eyes get filled with the sight of blood and everything else vanishes. I know you can do a little better than that.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Controlling space in League of Legends
Zoning is a concept that's been covered quite a bit. The concept of space control is something central to most competitive video games, and Shurelia already made an excellent video on zoning that is very specific to League of Legends. While Shurelia's video is well worth the watch, there are some areas she didn't cover and a few things that could be explained in a little more depth. I would consider this more of an addendum to her excellent tutorial, and you should watch it before you continue on. Controlling space effectively is incredibly powerful in League. Skillful use of zoning can lead to lots of free damage, and even if your opponent is good at avoiding you, zoning can allow you to last-hit in lane or win a teamfight. If you've ever wanted to drive your opponent completely out of the lane, continue on. We've got a lot of ground to cover.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Teaming up to fight in League of Legends
Grouping up to fight enemies together is a concept that is old as history itself. Numerous treatises on group warfare have been written, ranging from small unit tactics to battle strategies involving hundreds of thousands or millions of combatants. A lot of the same principles of combat that are used in warfare are applicable to games and especially to team-based PvP games like League of Legends. It might not be readily apparent how ideas like the mission of a Marine rifle team might apply to a five-player team in LoL, but there are more similarities than you think. The tools are different -- for example, games use different means to suppress the enemy than real soldiers -- but the tactics are surprisingly similar. This week, we're going to cover the beginning of a fight. Starting a fight at an advantage is important element in victory, as the opening seconds of a battle matter the most. If you can leverage an advantage early on in a fight, you can snowball that advantage into a decisive win.
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of Legends' Season 3 imbalances -- good or bad?
If you've played League of Legends for a while, you were probably shocked at the launch of all the new Season 3 changes. They're absolutely crazy! When I first saw them, I couldn't make heads or tails of them. What's the new best item builds? What's the best path to making them? I seriously had no idea. Things have settled down a little, but items are still a little chaotic, and MLG is already hosting Season 3 qualifiers. This can't be right! I've covered before why tossing around the metagame is bad, but hosting tournaments that will affect entry into the Season 3 Championships with the game in this state is outrageous. I'm sure LoL will recover and things will get iterated on, but what are things going to be like in the meantime?
The Summoner's Guidebook: One lady fights for equality in the League of Legends
If you recall from a few months back, we covered gender equality in League of Legends. The general outcome of that column was that women are under-represented in the tank and melee fighter roles and are very over-represented in the support role. Furthermore, women are heavily objectified in LoL, and there's really no dispute over that. Some girls in the League stroll into combat with little more than underwear and a smile, and most of them wear some kind of overly sexualized outfit. However, one woman fights against the tide. She wears her conservative armor proudly and fights in a rather unladylike manner. She doesn't utter seductive remarks while she runs around the map in high heels. Everything about her is direct, practical, and in-your-face. She's Poppy, and she's my favorite character in League of Legends.
The Summoner's Guidebook: IPL's League of Legends a paragon of tournaments
I feel a bit tuckered out from League of Legends tournaments. I love the game, and I love the pro scene, but sometimes I'm just not in the mood to watch hours and hours of gameplay and then try to digest it all. As a columnist, I have to watch tournaments with a different eye than a normal spectator, which can be exhausting, so I wasn't really looking forward to IPL 5. My favorite team (Dignitas) wasn't playing, and all my tournament hype was spent watching the Season 2 finals. However, IPL did a lot to keep my interest. Normally, I'm not really into IGN's LoL coverage, as it's heavy on entertainment and presentation value and low on information. This time, not only were the matches interesting, but the format was excellent, the commentary was good, and the space between matches was filled with tons of informative content. I really couldn't have asked for a better LoL tournament to end the year. Every other tournament this year paled in comparison.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Roaming the jungle in League of Legends Dominion
Although players often consider jungling to be a role exclusive to League of Legends' Classic gametypes, proper exploitation of the jungle is vitally important to success in Dominion as well. At the lower levels of play, players often feed too much information to the enemy and allow their foes to move through jungle areas unmolested. Never do this! When you're ahead, the most important thing you can do in Dominion is secure your lead further by limiting the enemy's movements. The only way to do this is to control the jungle. If you're familiar with the idea of warding the enemy jungle to limit enemy movements on Summoner's Rift, controlling the jungle on Dominion will likely be familiar to you.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Why play League of Legends Dominion?
Lately, there's been a bit of doomsaying about League of Legends' point capture gametype. Red posts on the subject have mentioned that while the dedicated Dominion playerbase is slowly growing, the lower-level playerbase is shrinking. This is unfortunate because a lot of LoL players just don't seem to get Dominion. I don't actually understand this because Dominion is a less complex game than Summoner's Rift even though it maintains similar levels of strategic depth. Top players have been pushing for ranked since Season 2 started, but the devs have pushed aside their requests, saying "Dominion needs more time." RiotNome mentioned that one of the biggest problems Dominion currently faces is that there's not enough propagation of information. That means that if we want new Dominion players, we have to show them why Dominion is great and what the basics of the game mode are. It'll be no surprise to regular readers that it's my favorite gametype, so I'm ready to do my part. Why play Dominion? Because it's fast and fun.
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of Legends' revamped 3v3 mode
I really liked playing on the Twisted Treeline prior to the recent revamp. It felt like Summoner's Rift lite: a way to practice the key SR skills in a gametype that didn't require quite as much map awareness. Now, League of Legends' 3v3 mode has taken on a different face, and it doesn't feel much like SR -- or any other map, for that matter. I didn't want to comment right away on the new direction for TT. The game mode is new, and the metagame is in its infant stages. People are trying new strategies and builds, and while initially strong tactics have already been discovered, there's no telling whether those tactics will last into the start of Season 3. Any competitive game has points in time when different things are overpowered, and as people discover new counters, the true metagame will start to surface. This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, we'll look at my first experiences in TT and what I think of the new mode. It's starkly different from the old version, and the strategies are not obvious. Is it as broken as the detractors say, or is the meta still coming together?
The Summoner's Guidebook: Tiers don't belong in League of Legends
One of the things that really bother me is when players make tier lists of characters in League of Legends. Tier lists are an often subjective measurement of how good a character is when matched up against other characters, and players like to voice their opinions on who is strong and who is weak. Unfortunately, even tier lists that are fairly accurate are fundamentally flawed in any competitive game, and they're especially flawed in League. At their best, tier lists show characters who do well in many situations or who are very difficult to counter. At their worst, tier lists are flawed and show a lack of understanding on the part of the author. This doesn't mean that there aren't strong or weak champions, but a tier list doesn't even tell part of the story. It just gives an arbitrary rating that says very little about a character's true strengths or how to leverage them.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Good team composition for League of Legends Dominion
I would have loved to cover the IGN Pro League 5 this week, but at the time of this writing it is still ongoing. I'll do a brief overview of it next week, but its timing didn't mesh well with the timing of the Guidebook. I've been playing a lot of Dominion lately, and as many readers of the Summoner's Guidebook know, it's the gametype I focus my skills on. I try to build knowledge of League of Legends' other maps, including Summoner's Rift and the Proving Grounds/ARAM, but Dominion is definitely my focus right now (I haven't played much of the beta Twisted Treeline, so coverage of that will have to wait). One thing that really bothers me about Dominion, particularly as I creep into high level play, is that people still randomly pick champions without regard for a strategy. While I do think my overall skill has improved a lot, a major reason that I win 60-70% of my matches is because I look for where my team is deficient and pick a champion to cover that area. As you escalate into the intermediate levels of Dominion skill, a good arsenal of champions to fill roles can be a huge asset. This week, we'll look at some of the possible roles and compositions and some good champions to pick up to fill those roles.
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of selfishness
Even though League of Legends' new Honor Initiative has greatly improved the conduct of summoners as a whole, I've become very frustrated with "selfish" player behavior as of late. I've been playing a lot of ARAMs inbetween Dominion matches lately, and both game modes give rise to the same problems: impatient players who are too hungry for blood. Killing enemy champions is given a lot of incentive in LoL, and players often put themselves in awful situations that end up putting their whole team at risk of defeat just to get a single kill. This "blood in the eyes" phenomenon is pervasive across the entirety of League, but it is especially common in ARAM. This week, I'm going to look at this kind of selfish behavior and cover some ways you can focus on more team-friendly actions. No, this doesn't mean giving me all the kills. It just means playing for the benefit of everyone and not just for your own personal pride.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Aftermath of the LoL World Championships
Last weekend, we saw the League of Legends World Championships come to an end. While I thought the grand finals were a bit disappointing, the teams that made it to the final four put on an amazing show. I think few would say that any of the four teams in the semi-finals didn't deserve a place there, and I think equally few would question the validity of the Taipei Assassins' final victory. The World Championships were a Cinderella story, and the Taipei Assassins became the unlikely champions in a decisive victory against Korean favorite Azubu Frost. The characteristic heavy aggression of the top Asian teams has already trickled down to the lower levels of play, and a few less common faces have come to new popularity in ranked and normal games all throughout the League. In the aftermath of the World Championships, what did the tournament mean for the rest of us, the less fortunate who aren't at the top?
The Summoner's Guidebook: LoL's World Championship fiasco alienates fans
I'm a big fan of e-sports, but League of Legends is currently one of the worst e-sports to garner a major scene. This isn't because the game is bad, though some aspects of LoL's Classic gameplay are bad for e-sports. It is universally because most LoL tournaments are poorly run and organized. A badly run tournament can ruin everything, regardless of how good (or bad) the game being played is. I would expect more from Riot Games, which creates and publishes League of Legends and which has a vested interest in fostering competition for the game. However, the studio seems to have learned absolutely nothing from very successful e-sports tournaments such as the Evolution Fighting Championships, the GOMTV Star League, and OGN's The Champions. All of these tournaments have better seeding structure and better venues, which contribute to a better overall event. Why can't Riot learn from these very successful events?
The Summoner's Guidebook: Making League of Legends a better place
It's no surprised that League of Legends has a very caustic community. Players on messageboards all over the internet (including our comments section) can attest to the fact that LoL's community leaves a lot to be desired. Unfriendly players and offensive language are the norm, and these bad attitudes keep many summoners from logging in. Riot hasn't let the issue lie, though. The Tribunal was a good first step toward building a better community, and if reports are to be believed, it does a fairly good job. However, simply punishing players doesn't encourage good behavior. That's where the latest effort, the Honor system, comes into play. Honor allows players to give positive feedback to friendly or supportive players, either friend or foe. Gaining honor alerts a player of his or her good behavior, and Riot has hinted that it may be the basis of future rewards. Is it a good step in the right direction, or will it just encourage "honor trading?"
The Summoner's Guidebook: Part random, part mid, all LoL
One of the most popular alternative gametypes in League of Legends is All Random All Mid, or ARAM. ARAM is a simple concept; it involves a single lane on which all 10 players must fight, rather than the three lanes of Summoner's Rift or two paths of Dominion. Additionally, all champions selected are randomized; you're never sure whom you'll be playing in an ARAM match until champion select begins. ARAM began life on Summoner's Rift, hence its name. The single lane used for ARAM was the middle lane, and traveling into the jungle or other lanes meant immediate disqualification of one's team. It was fraught with the normal trappings of an alternative ruleset; the rules for ARAM were not enforced by the game, so players were expected to play within the community-created rules. It evolved into ARAB, played on the Crystal Scar, with two teams fighting over the bottom capture points. ARAB proved to have its own flaws, most notably that games went on for a bit longer than normal, but the passive gold and experience as well as the health relic helped to add interesting spice to the game mode. Finally, ARAM became a more or less supported gametype with the addition of the Proving Grounds. That addition streamlined ARAM gameplay while keeping some of the elements of the Crystal Scar version of the game such as health relics and Dominion items. Today, while there is no matchmaking for ARAM, it is extremely popular in custom matches.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Following the League of Legends metagame
One thing that pops up a lot in the comments of the Summoner's Guidebook is how you readers like to play outside the metagame. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with new builds or compositions, and with over a hundred different champions, League of Legends has a lot of room for experimentation. However, the established metagame is the way it is for a reason. People played the way they thought was best, and through collaboration, determined what strategies worked the best. Laning champions in their current "accepted" positions has evolved over the few years since LoL's release. Choosing to play a composition outside the metagame is always a gamble. You're trading stability and familiarity for a gimmick, and that can backfire. Playing in the established metagame is a statement that you want to let skill be the deciding factor in battle and that you can handle silly tricks like moving the duo lane or running a heavy kill lane on bottom. On the other hand, unorthodox positioning of champions can be an asset, since the initial unfamiliarity of whatever composition you've run can lead to mistakes on the enemy's part. As little mistakes can easily snowball on the Fields of Justice, playing a gimmick is all about making the most of those kinds of openings. This week, we'll talk about some common choices for unorthodox lanes and also how you can deal with them.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Breaking down the skills to win in League of Legends
Although seasoned League of Legends veterans might suggest otherwise, LoL is a hard game with a lot of complexity. Even though the Summoner's Rift metagame (and to some degree the Dominion metagame as well) is fairly solidified, expert players tend to take the numerous skills to win for granted. This week I'm going to go over a basic rundown of the things that help you win and separate you from the noobs who just play mindlessly. Even the players who exhibit poor skills in one area might perform well in another, and it's easy for us to assign blame due to any poor performance at all. This means we really need to focus on our weaknesses and get them up to speed. Experts will find this kind of thing a no-brainer, but there are plenty of players who have no idea about all the things they need to perform better. This week, we'll cover all the major skill areas and why they're important.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Don't get grabbed by Blitzcrank!
This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, I'll be talking about the matchup against Blitzcrank, League of Legends' own rock-em sock-em robot. We'll be looking mostly at his matchups in bottom lane on Summoner's Rift, but we'll also examine his gameplay in Dominion, where he is also very strong. Learning the matchup against Blitzcrank is extremely important in my opinion. He is a very popular champion, and this is due to his incredibly brutal gameplay. If you do not know how to deal with Blitzcrank, you will get owned by him. He's not a champion you can just "do your best" against. Failing to properly account for his strengths will result in deaths, and this makes him a very popular choice. If you're struggling at all against Blitz, you owe it to yourself to keep reading.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Our favorite League of Legends bottom lane teams
Although building a team composition in League of Legends is all about synergy, the bottom lane in Summoner's Rift is the most critical. In Dominion, players may split up as the needs demand, and the other characters in Summoner's Rift spend around 15 minutes of each game on their own against a lone enemy. The bottom lane has two characters that are essentially joined at the hip for most of the game. While the support will eventually roam free and the carry may engage in some solo pushing or farming, those two characters spend much of the game together. It makes sense then that these two characters should mesh well. Here's a list of my favorite teams. If you're stumped on whom to pick for carry or support, you should try some of these out.
