League of Legends (Old)

[xRECKONERx]

Also, we're talking about a champion to play to learn the basest mechanics of the game: positioning, kiting, orbwalking, the basic dynamics of a lane, etc

[notscience]

Are we talking more of forcing you to learn these aspects (ie, kog forces you to learn positioning, ashe kiting, etc) or those that it's really easy to do them on (like it's easy to position cait as you have the longest AA range

[BROseidon]

It's better to start out with champs that are more forgiving, so you get a chance to actually figure shit out.

[Brandi]

Someone mains support = everyone is more likely to get the role they want since it's a less popular role.

Someone who mains suppport != a half-assed and terribad support that isn't angry about being forced to play support.

Contrary to popular belief, though, support is a much more popular role than it was back in S3.

Yeah this is true. It's definitely more popular than before. But there are still, like you suggested, those people who hate supporting who end up getting "stuck" with it and end up losing the game for their team.


Also, Cabd, if you want to play support, as suggested, play mid. But perhaps, play mid champions that can also support.
Such as:
Annie
Morgana
Lulu

None of these are super popular mids right now (except maybe Lulu), but they can still be very strong when built for damage and you will learn the mechanics of those respective champs and will be able to translate that to skills in the bottom lane as a support.

Really though, the best way to learn this game is to just play. The road to 30 is long enough of a climb that simply trying out any champion that looks fun/cool on the free rotation every so often will be good enough regardless of what your preferred role is. You will likely get to play every role at least once when leveling up, and if you go in by picking champs that you yourself think will be fun, you're more likely to discern what type of playstyle or champions you personally prefer. Who knows, maybe by the time you hit 30, you will no longer want to main support. Just play whatever, you're still new. If you have the mindset of "x said y champion is bad so I shouldn't play them, ummmmmm" you might miss out on an opportunity to find a champ you really love. If you start out learning a hard champion, you might eventually become good with that hard champ. If you start out learning a "bad" champion, that champion might eventually become good. Riot has a tendency to buff/nerf different things regularly and how good or bad a champion is at the moment can vary greatly over time.

[xRECKONERx]

It's better to start out with champs that are more forgiving, so you get a chance to actually figure shit out.

^

[BROseidon]

Okay, have computer, gonna post something a lot more in-depth. This is for Cabd and ETL, mostly:

Spoiler: Because this is really fucking long and not necessary to read if you aren't interested in this conversation

Basically, LoL has a massive, massive learning curve. When I came into the game, I came in with a very strong DotA background (mained support in open leagues with reasonable success, was generally pretty good at the game), so the fundamentals of LoL were fairly straightforward. I understood the UI in full because it's very similar to the DotA UI, and my background in RTS games had made learning DotA in the first place easier.

Anyways, something happened my sophomore year of college that made me think about both LoL and game design a lot differently. Basically, a buddy of mine was taking a digital games class with 4 other students, and for their project for the class, they all made level one accounts and started leveling to 30. However, while 4/5 people had 0 LoL experience, and I think 3 of them had relatively little gaming experience at all. my was gypsylord, who'd had his job lined up at Riot at the time (fun fact: I'm the guy gypsy referred to in this post.)

Basically, he got a shitton of crazy insights about how new players approach LoL, because the game is crazy, crazy complicated. One of the girls in the group had only played like Harvest Moon, and the shit she would do when she was learning how to play was the sort of shit you would go "why the fuck would you even do that." Like, understanding how to use the minimap UI to go to places wasn't something she immediately got because she'd never played a game with a minimap before. The amount that she had to learn when she first started the game was incredibly ridiculous.

I was able to learn what every champ did nearly in full just leveling 1-30, because I started playing back when there were like 50 fewer champs. I got to gold S1 without having played most champs, and only being sort of unsure of what Morde did (I got the ghost and the aoe-dmg defensive buff thing, but I didn't get the difference b/w his two nukes). Nowadays, I don't think you can learn what champs do in full just by looking at them. Zed and Yasuo in particular are super complex in how they function, and Rengar's passive doesn't telegraph super-well as a non-ability to new players.

The first thing you need to learn in learning LoL really is the basics of the UI. Get comfortable with hotkeys, and move things around in a way that makes sense to you. Get used to not clicking on anything ever. Learn shit like using P for shop instead of double-clicking the shop. Buttons for items and B for back, not clicking on them (gypsylord used to click on pots until I yelled at him enough times to stop it). Learn how the minimap paths you so you can move the way you want to around the map. Learn what the map looks like, where the brushes are, etc. These are things that exist across all champs, and will either take not very long at all (if you're like me and had a DotA background), or may take you a shitton of time to learn (if you don't have a big video game background).

The next thing is to start learning is just what all the champs do, and this is a very ongoing thing. There are two ways to learn what something does: playing it, and playing against it. Obviously playing something lets you learn it faster, but playing against something will still show you what it does. Just take notes of what different champions do. What their abilities are like. As you see it more, you'll get used to it. This is a process; I'm still learning what the capabilities of a lot of champs are, and there are times when I'm surprised by how much damage something does, or how tanky something is. At the same time, I probably understand a few champs as well as, if not better than, some of the pros from how much I've played them. You can never really know what a champ is fully capable of, especially given how much that changes with balance patches, etc.

The next thing to focus on are the mechanical fundamentals. In order, these are csing, positioning, skill shot placement. This is the order in which you should focus on them.

CSing: Knowing how to last hit is fundamental, as that is your main source of gold on anything that's not a jungler and support. The way to practice this on it's own is to just make a custom game and try to not miss any minions while not using abilities. In real games, there are times when you want to use abilities to CS, and you'll learn that with time as well (and the decision-making aspect of that I'll get to in a bit). Different champs are easier/harder to CS with, so if you can CS with autos with Karthus or Soraka, you can probably do it with just about any champ. This is very, very important to get down well.

Positioning: Where you stand. This applies in the laning phase, as you want to position in such a way to protect yourself from ganks (other people coming to your lane to kill you) and their harass. This comes into play when you're roaming (leaving lane to go gank/take an objective) because it's how you don't get caught out. This applies in team fights because it either keeps you alive (if you're a carry/support) or determines how effective you are (if you're a tank/bruiser). This requires you to know what the enemy champs do, as a lot of positioning is determined by what the enemy team is capable of (i.e., if the enemy team has a Zac/Vi/J4, as an ADC I need to stand back more b/c they can all get on me from very absurd ranges and CC me).

Skill shots: Your ability to land skill shots. This involves knowing how to predict movements, and just gets better with time. Also, if you come from a fighting game background, you're really good at this by default (my diamond 1 buddy who plays competitive smash was basically a god at this).

After mechanics comes strategy, which is getting more advanced. It comes from watching better players play, and is probably not worth talking about until you get a handle on the other stuff.

[Oversoul]

Don't do it Cabd
Don't do it

It is soul sucking

[Iecerint]

Your soul is safe with me.

[Saki]

I realize full well this has moved beyond me, but i'd like to point out the whole "If I decide I like it I'm willing to put the equivalent of a real console game price towards RP" statement in my OP. I'll be saving the IP for the rune pages probably. (yes i know not to worry about runes till i can buy the really good ones way higher levels)

that's 7 skins for your favorite champions

If you do decide to invest, I'd highly recommend the seven rune page bundle.
Nine is a good number of rune pages to have. I'd say you need at least four, if you're going to buy them with IP.

other things:
IP should be going into runes if you want ranked.
It's hard to consistently win in ranked without runes.
If you don't want to dive into ranked ASAP, feel free to buy champions/summoner name changes/whatever suits your fancy with your IP.

Note that the prerequisites for draft mode/ranked is level 30 and 14 champions. (Free Rotation champions don't count, you can't pick them if you don't own them in ranked).

Levels 1-30 is like 300ish full SR games. Investing in XP boosts cuts that number down to half.
Dominion gives more IP/XP than SR for time played.
Farming Intermediate Bots on TT is more reliable (for the win/time on each game). It's what the people farming level 30 accounts do. (they sell l30 accounts. a "blank" level 30 account costs around $35, last time I checked)


Also, a friend of mine who plays another AOS told me this: "When you first play, play an assassin. Something that's so glass cannon making 1 mistake is going to get you killed, but can basically kill anything in the game 1v1 with relative ease. This way, you learn how to kill and how to not be killed."
"Playing a ranged damage dealer or even a ranged support is bad. You're going to be way too squishy, and you're going to die more often than you'll be doing damage. Even worse is playing a tank. You're going to get used to being tanky and not dying when you fuck up. That's going to become a malicious habit as you're going to get to think that fucking up is OK. If you start with a ranged squishy, you're going to feel horribly useless. If you start with a tank, you're going to be a punching bag forever. Play an assassin. Do a crap ton of damage and survive only by the merits of your fingers."
*cough* Korean Spartan video game training *cough*

I feel that this advice applies somewhat to League.

[PJ.]

If you are gonna spend money on RP, you should probably buy one of the big champ bundles.

[Siveure DtTrikyp]

Biannually they do 2 for 1 rune pages so I think you should probably wait on those if it's IP.

Also tier 1 runes are okay. They're only half as good as tier 3 runes but they're cheaaap.

[Cabd]

I got dragged into team builder wheeeeeeee.

[animorpherv1]

Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY TIER 1 OR 2 RUNES. They become useless the instant you hit level 20.

[Cabd]

I got dragged into team builder wheeeeeeee.

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends. ... 0/51185801

Won, with thanks to maestro's alt carrying~

[Iecerint]

I'd say it was a pretty solid all-around rout.

[Maestro]

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends. ... 0/51185801

CABD I DIDN'T REALIZE YOU STOLE A PENTAKILL FROM ME UGH, BRO, CMON, ETC.
but yeah twas too much fun - don't let this guy tell you he's anything but an upcoming staaaaar

And yes, Corki played well too, just some bad judgement calls

psure he (???) and the enemy Ryze were the only other smurfs in-game: Ryze was comboing too well and getting too pissed early game when he saw I wasn't shut down by 250 stacks. Corki knew what a leash was but Cabd says he outplayed him botlane and I'm more than inclined to believe him based on what I saw...

[Iecerint]

Censer probably isn't a great pick-up on Morgana, though. Her Black Shield has a really long cooldown, it is only applied to 1 player per cast, and you may need to use it on a person who can't use the attack speed boost very well.

The item is very stat-inefficient if you're not playing a champion on a team where you can have give the censer buff to enough players usefully enough of the time. As such, the item is best suited to champions who either have a low-cooldown shield that synergizes with the attack speed buff in some special way (e.g., Janna, Sona, Lulu), or who can easily apply the attack speed effect to multiple members of their team at once (e.g., Sona, Alistar, Karma).

One item that's really fun on Morgana is Zhonya's Hourglass. You can flash (or just walk I guess, since I don't think you have flash yet) into the enemy team, press R, and then use the Zhonya's ability when they all move toward you to try to kill you. Then you stun everyone and your team cleans up.

[Maestro]

Wait, no... it must've been 2 doubs near the end there. Meh, don't remember. Cabd, you had 3rd most Gold in-game, more than everyone on the enemy team, and you and I had more Gold than 4/5 of their team combined. As Iece said, 'twas a rout, not a carry.

PEDIT: lolyup I instantly went "wut" at the Censer but it's not an

AWFUL

pick, just a non-ideal one. He knows all about Zhonya's, though. He was building that next, apparently.

[Maestro]

Question: as often as this DOESN'T normally happen in competitive / non-smurf play, how late would you guys say is the absolute latest you'd stay in-lane if you have absolutely no reason to back but and increasingly large pile of Gold with which to buy shit?

Based on the champion Gold graph, I had 3.9k sometime around 11 minutes, which was my first back for IG and Swifts.

Should I have stayed longer if I could keep having fun stomping lane or should I have backed earlier?

[Cabd]

is "free kitty" somebody's smurf or something? Random friend request soooo

[Brandi]

It's me =P My friendlist on my main is always full T_T

[Iecerint]

I typically back after I get a kill and have pushed the wave to their tower, or after I am harassed to tower and need to back to avoid feeding.

[hiplop]

Question: as often as this DOESN'T normally happen in competitive / non-smurf play, how late would you guys say is the absolute latest you'd stay in-lane if you have absolutely no reason to back but and increasingly large pile of Gold with which to buy shit?

Based on the champion Gold graph, I had 3.9k sometime around 11 minutes, which was my first back for IG and Swifts.

Should I have stayed longer if I could keep having fun stomping lane or should I have backed earlier?

usually if I'm stomping I'll go back when it seems the tides are becoming even. Then I come back and stomp with better items than opponent and win again.

Basically it depends on how well your opponent is catching up. If he keeps having to go back and buy health pots, you prob dont need to back

[Maestro]

well yeah, I was facing the duo lane of Zed/Lux and neither could do anything to me after the first gank from Yi that ended with them both dead. nothing was getting even I just hadn't seen them in-lane for a minute or two and was getting bored with so much Gold...

[Maestro]

nothing was getting even

because Q stacks = slow-scaling infinite damage just from being in-lane