League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Speaker]

Besides basking in the glow of the summary screen (21/1/5 deserves some basking, in my opinion), what does the summary teach us to improve our play.
In other words, what should I be noticing if I want to get better?

First of all, kudos to Maleficant on an excellent game!

Notice that Kayle and Pantheon on the opposing team have very low creep kill numbers? That's why Pantheon has just one item plus his boots, after 33 minutes. You should always get at least 75 creep kills. As you get better at last hitting and get some more games under your belt, 100 should be the overall minimum. I find myself a bit "starved" if I don't get at least 110 or 120 CS (creep score) nowadays, and I'm not too far above average really. You can also see useful information in the graph, where you can display anything from gold earned to damage dealt, damage received, and so on.

[Pandajuice]

Besides basking in the glow of the summary screen (21/1/5 deserves some basking, in my opinion), what does the summary teach us to improve our play.

In other words, what should I be noticing if I want to get better?

That's a great question, and honestly I don't really know the answer. I suppose the most useful information is minion kills as usually those people who slack off on last hitting minions usually have a more difficult time buying items and therefore scaling well into the late game (unless they've been fed, which is the exception). Look at Andreja and yult from my screenshow above; their minion kills are so low, you can see the correlation between that and the lack of good items they had, which allowed me to kill them very quickly. So if you're consistently getting low amounts of minions, that could be something to focus on and improve upon.

Edit: What Speaker said.

I've found some good sites that offer in-depth guides to specific champs, so it's always worth reading pointers from more experienced players to get a leg-up on a new champion, or improve your game with one you've used a lot.
Check out http://leaguecraft.com/strategies/guides and pick whatever champ you want to bone up on, find the guide with the highest rating, and research. Believe me, it helps a lot and allowed me to have that awesome game with Singed when it was only my second game with him because I had researched his skills and optimum items beforehand.

[TheSoloWhiteMage]

[ATTACH]1447[/ATTACH]

another 4v5 victory.
I literally had to keep myself from running around screaming after this match, i LOVE when stuff like this happens! The fact that the enemy team liked to cluster together in groups of 3 or even 4 made the stun bears all the more delicious
i hope the picture isnt too small.

[MookieNJ]

Now that many of the "new" players have reached level 20 and beyond, our typical opponents have become much more competitive. At higher levels of play, the game evolves past picking the 5 champions we really feel like playing to making sure we choose 5 champions that give us a good chance to win. There's still a lot of flexibility and a ton of champions are viable, but the team as a whole needs to pick smart. Typically, a good team composition looks something like:

Tank
Tank / Support / Beefy Melee DPS
Ranged DPS
Caster
Melee DPS / Caster / Support

Looking at this setup, the three constants are a tank, a ranged dps, and a caster. Beyond that, you've got two slots you can fill with a multitude of different champions in different roles. You're probably not going to want to double up on the ranged dps unless your other 3 champions synergize really well with it. Beware of putting two support characters on a team, you may find it too difficult to do enough damage (although with a ton of well timed heals maybe you won't have to?). Also I've found it advantageous in the group of 5 to have at least 2 if not 3 melee characters, or those squishy ranged dps and casters will be easy for the other team to target.

Does picking any 5 characters that fit these roles guarantee success? Hell no! Three more very important things to consider:

Crowd Control (or cc for short) -- stuns, snares, taunts, slows, silences ... these are huge game changing abilities. You want as many of these in your team as you can get, and then some more.

Jungler -- almost every higher ranked game features a player jungling on each team. What does this get you? Two solo lanes instead of one. Now you have two players gaining double experience and double gold. Three, if you count the jungler. A fast jungler like Warwick can easily keep up with the solo lanes, while slower junglers should do no worse than the double lanes.

Who can jungle? Off the top of my head, Warwick, Shaco, Rammus, Olaf, Udyr, Akali, Pantheon, Taric, Amumu, Shen, Xin, Fiddlesticks, Yi, Malphite, Nunu ... you're usually starting out with cloth armor, 5 health potions, and defensive masteries / runes.

Fight Initiation -- So you want to fight the other team, you're face to face ... how are we getting this thing started? Definitely something the team should consider before locking in all of their choices. Some of the more potent initiators are Sona, Galio, and Amumu for their AOE ults. Since these are also 3 of the top characters in the game, it wouldn't be bad to make sure you have at least one of them on your team anyways . Beyond that, you're looking for something, anything, that can effectively get a fight started ... whether it's Gragas launching his ultimate to knock one player into your team, Warwick ulting someone and everyone running in, or Ashe using her crystal arrow to stun/slow a small group, you need something to get the fight started, or the other team will do it for you, to their advantage rather than yours.

In the end, at a higher level of gameplay, it becomes much more important to pick a winning combination. I understand that this takes a little fun out of the game because you're not picking simply what you want to play this time around. With all of the flexibility in team selection, as long as everyone is willing to play tanks / supports / non-carries at least some of the time, then everyone will also get to pick the carry that they want to play as well ... I'm sure we all don't want to be try-hards and care only about winning, but losing isn't much fun either!

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Now that many of the "new" players have reached level 20 and beyond, our typical opponents have become much more competitive. At higher levels of play, the game evolves past picking the 5 champions we really feel like playing to making sure we choose 5 champions that give us a good chance to win. There's still a lot of flexibility and a ton of champions are viable, but the team as a whole needs to pick smart.

Typically, a good team composition looks something like:

Tank
Tank / Support / Beefy Melee DPS
Ranged DPS
Caster
Melee DPS / Caster / Support

Looking at this setup, the three constants are a tank, a ranged dps, and a caster.[/quote]

I just tipped over level 15 this past weekend, so I've got some time yet. But putting together a plan....

By level 20, I need to have at least one Tank/Ranged/Caster archytype that I'm comfortable with AND that teammates will be happy to see in the line up.

By level 25, I need to have at least two of each, so that I've got the flexability to switch to the superior match for the other champions in the lineup.

By level 30... I guess I'll need enough flexibility to be useful in ranked play even if I pick 10th?

So reviewing the list that I could almost walk down the tier list.

• Galio
  
• Morgana
  
• Amumu
  
• Ashe
  
• Sona
  
• Garen
  
• Warwick
  
• Kog'Maw
  
• Janna
  
• Anivia
  
• Annie
  
• Taric
  
• Shen
  

Are there any here that should clearly be pulled, on the grounds that they don't have the right flexibility?

[Speaker]

I actually prefer to think of the Tier list this way:

Tank Tier list:
T1 Galio, Amumu, Shen
T2 Udyr
T3 Rammus, Singed
T4 Malphite, Blitzcrank
Hard to Place Alistair, Urgot, Cho'Gath

Carry Tier list:
T1 Ashe, Kog'Maw
T2 MF, Trist, Twitch, Ez
T3 Corki, Yi
T4 GP
Hard to place Jax, Teemo, Tyrndamere

Caster Tier list:
T1 Anivia, Annie
T2 Kennen, Vlad
T3 Veigar, Karthus
T4 Fiddle
Hard to place Swain, Ryze, Mal'Zahar

Support Tier list:
T1 Morgana, Sona, Janna, Taric
T2
T3 Heimer, Zil, Kayle
T4 Sivir, Soraka
Hard to place

Off-tank Tier list:
T1 Garen
T2 Xin Zhao, Olaf, Sion
T3 Nasus, Nunu, Gragas, Mord
T4
Hard to Place Mundo

Assassin Tier list:
T1 Warwick
T2 Kassadin, TF, Shaco, Pantheon
T3 Poppy, Akali
T4 Nidalee
Hard to place Katarina, Eve

All the Tier 1 and 2 characters are fine to play anytime. If they are Tier 3, you better be pretty damn good with them. If they are Tier 4 or "Hard to Place," don't bother. Of course, I don't agree with all the placements. I think Miss Fortune and Twitch are the top two ranged carries, for example, but generally the list is very good.

[Atlas]

I actually prefer to think of the Tier list this way....


All the Tier 1 and 2 characters are fine to play anytime. If they are Tier 3, you better be pretty damn good with them. If they are Tier 4 or "Hard to Place," don't bother. Of course, I don't agree with all the placements. I think Miss Fortune and Twitch are the top two ranged carries, for example, but generally the list is very good.

Speaker has done well capturing the essence of the problem that mookie explained two posts above. The game has more depth than doing somehting as simple as taking the 5 the champions that get the most kills per game ... think of League of Legends like basketball you need...

a star = carry

center = tank

scorerers/defenders = support

and then a mix of others

u would not want a team of 5 centers, right? or a football team of all linemen?

[TheArchduke]

One of my favourite champions is Janna, thanks to her quickness and widespread (imo) abilities.

Sona is a Tank, why is he in the same tier?

About runes, I read that until lvl 20 I should not bother with them and save IPs? I actually supported the game with 10$ as I think it is decent and I now have a huge number of IPs saved up (2000 and I am only lvl 7..) So do not buy anything?

[Pandajuice]

Sona is not a tank. Sona is support just like Janna is. You can tell because Sona only has one offensive ability (Q), but is really focused around her auras and buffs, while she also has a mass CC stun. Her entire make-up is to the benefit of other players which makes her support. If you play Sona like a tank or carry, you will die a lot.

As for runes, there seem to be two schools of thought. One is to just wait and save your IP until level 20, then splash out on all the level 3 runes you can fit on your page. The other though is to buy level 1 runes now, then trade them in (while paying the difference) for level 3 runes at 20.

Either way, you're buying level 3 runes at level 20, so you really should save your IP for that purpose. I've read that a full set will cost you anywhere from 11-14k IP, so you should save to that amount, then go ahead and buy champs with whatever excess you may have.

[Atlas]

About runes, I read that until lvl 20 I should not bother with them and save IPs? I actually supported the game with 10$ as I think it is decent and I now have a huge number of IPs saved up (2000 and I am only lvl 7..) So do not buy anything?

see below From page 15

BOTTOM LINE- Buy tier 1 runes, until level 20, that is when you can buy tier 3, at level 20 start buy tier 3

I have totally changed my mind about this, You should buy runes, but only tier 1. If you look at the example above you will see that the Tier 1 ruin is about 60% as effective as the Tier 3 but at 1/14th the cost.

I recommend

7 magic penetration or armor penetration reds (both are 30) so 210 Ip for a ful set
7 magic resist blues 15 ip so 105 IP for full set
7 armor yellows 15 IP so 105 for a full set
health quints 165 each 495 for a full set

Total cost = 915 ip for 60% for the effectiveness of the 14000 I cite above

So you see that Tier 1 Runes are THE MOST COST EFFECTIVE RUNES IN THE GAME - buy them, eventually you will want full sets of tier 3 runes, but in the mean time 915 Ip is really only like winning 7 games. 14000 is ALOT of wins