Quick Questions

[Gustaran]

I am still looking for a good video (tutorial) on farming, since my cs numbers are fairly low compared to what I see in Sullla's videos. Not just the usual "last hit and zone"-stuff, but more about creep micromanagement, i.e. when to hit a creep to lower its health as opposed to killing it.

[SleepingMoogle]

This might be a bit of a long post for the quick questions, but it doesn't really merit a thread of its own. So apologies in advance.

Basically, now that I have played LoL for a while, I'm hoping to find a champion or two to really settle down on and learn to playing. The problem is that, while I have tried a number of champions fairly regularly, most of them don't quite 'feel' right when playing them, or their weakness is something that I have too much problems compensating for. Performance tends to be quite bad as a result, which makes me feel I'm letting down the team.

Right now the only champion that I feel I can play adequately is support Soraka. I don't mind playing her at all, even as my main champion, but I would like to expand my horizons sometime, and be an asset for the team in other roles rather than the weak link. And at this point I could probably use some help with that. Over the weeks I purchased a few champions that I thought would be good to play, but most have turned out rather disappointing. So instead of wasting more IP, perhaps you would be able to guide me towards one or two suitable ones instead.

Having started with Ryze, I think I know him pretty well, but I'm having major problems with last-hitting creeps, and as he starts off rather squishy, most of the time I'm in the middle lane I end up getting zoned out and falling behind even further. The problem is most likely the delay in Ryze's attack, coupled with the ~200-250 ping for playing from Europe. I seem to be doing a lot better with Tristana in that regard since her auto-attack is pretty much immediate, whereas Ryze's attacks come only after a throwing animation, and some travel time for the bolt. It is quite hard to find the sweet spot while avoiding harassment from the opposing team's champion, especially in the earlier levels, and most attacks either fail to kill the minion (which is then taken out by my team's minions), or the minion is killed before the attack connects. In addition, Ryze doesn't really have tools to reliably take out groups of creeps; Spell flux is too random, and his ultimate has too long a cooldown in the early game for AoE purposes.

So ideally, I'd be looking for ranged AP and AD carries with fairly fast attacks and some form of AoE to handle creep waves at early levels. Ashe and Trist could be a good start for AD champions, but as Terror and Dantski respectively play them quite regularly, I am kind of looking for another option as well.

I don't have the summoner level or runes yet to seriously consider a jungler, and attempts at melee champions so far have been an embarrassment. So for now I'd rather focus on ranged characters and become at least proficient at these roles before expanding further.

Any tips, suggestions and criticism is very much welcome. Thanks in advance!

[Krill]

Caitlyn maybe?

[Tyrmith]

Miss Fortune is fairly easy to learn, farms extremely easily, and she harasses well from a distance, but she's a 6K IP champ, so may be out of your price range. Krill is right with Caitlyn, but she's 6k IP as well.

Simularly Malzahar is essentially easy mode farm, and as long as you can get close to just one of their minions can farm the whole wave even if you are otherwise completely zoned, but again, he's 6k IP.

LeBlanc (AP champ) isn't exactly easy to farm with, but your harass is extremely strong, and people will be forced to play much more safely, allowing you to farm, and is 3k IP.

Zilian played as AP might work too, and he's only 1350. He's Time Warp makes it a lot harder for people to catch up with you and your bomb is powerful for holding onto a lane.

[v8mark]

I'll post some more comprehensive thoughts tonight, but my first thought is that Annie might fit the bill -- she's relatively cheap, and you can farm all day with her Q.

[Gustaran]

So ideally, I'd be looking for ranged AP and AD carries with fairly fast attacks and some form of AoE to handle creep waves at early levels. Ashe and Trist could be a good start for AD champions, but as Terror and Dantski respectively play them quite regularly, I am kind of looking for another option as well.

IMHO, you might want to look at

Annie - Easy farming with q, no mana problems because of mana refund
Brand - Can farm with AOE
Kennen - No mana, can use q early on to flast hit minions, has built in escape with e
Malzahar - Easy farm with malefic visions
Morgana - Can farm with pool, built in spellvamp for sustain
Nidalee - Don't know how easy the farming is, but she can heal herself -> you rarely die 1v1
Sion - Charge shield and kill minion wave
Vladimir - Not as good as he used to be, but nice sustain and easy last hit with q

[Krill]

Vlad's expensive (6K IP last i checked) and he actually doesn't farm that great until level 7 or so. Annie is good though.

[Tyrmith]

Vladimir - Not as good as he used to be, but nice sustain and easy last hit with q

Vlad is pretty weak early game, imo he really only gets strong at the point where the laneing phase is almost over (level 9-11). If you shut him down early when his q has a long cd then he can be pretty weak.

Morgana might be a good choice. Her pool gives easy farm, her spellvamp keeps you healed, and her shield is really useful and versitile, particularly as you get good at predicting who will be targeted so you can prevent stuns/etc with your shield. Additionally she's not 6k IP.

[SleepingMoogle]

Thanks for the suggestions so far everyone. And price may not be that much of an issue.. I'm getting slightly annoyed with having just two rune pages, so I have been considering buying some riot points for the bundle and support the company in the process. Perhaps a little extra for a champion and maybe a skin or two would be a good idea.

[Krill]

I think 35 USD worth of RP is enough to get the extra rune pages and the Collectors edition Bundle (which I'm about to pull the trigger on as well FWIW).