f13.net

Is it too late to start playing this game? I've never played any of the games people say this is similar too, so I have no idea how the game play works or if it would be right for me.

Would I just get face stomped if I tried to pick it up now?

I just started a month ago and got into it fine. One thing to note is the match making tries to match you to somebody of similar summoner rank so at lower levels you are playing against other people just as new as you for the most part. Also you can play the practice games to get used to character and buying gear without having to worry about people bitching at you and as an added plus you still get IP for it.

Even when the game was first release it was full of beta vets and DoTA vets and I didn't have too much problem with my sloth-like reflexes (Most FPS/RTS are too much for me).  Just got to take your lumps and have a thick skin for the assholes.

I recently made a new account to play a few games with a friend, the majority of players I saw were genuinely new players so I can't imagine there would be a problem picking this up now.

There is still the odd smurf/ringer in there but they were in the minority.

I played this game awhile ago in beta, but I never really stuck with me.

I tried it again the other day with a new account and I loved it.

I never really felt like I was out of my league; it being free to play attracts a variety of players.

I started playing a few days ago. Only played 3 normal matches. Mostly fucked around with practice against bots.

I keep getting put against people who obviously have been playing this for a long time and get destroyed. I also always have 1 or 2 "leet" assholes on my team.

Also....always end up playing 1-2 down because someone DCs or is AFK.

Oh well, it is free. And for the unemployed, free is good.

There's definitely a learning curve to it, especially if you didn't play much DotA.  It's possible that you were just getting placed against people who've only played ten or twenty games, because even that much experience can be a big difference in knowing how to react.  Also, remember that even a small discrepancy in skill early on can snowball into a huge gap in score because gold and XP accrue faster and faster for the team getting the kills.

And yeah, you always get assholes and leavers on your team.  One of the frustrating things about this game, since if you tried to get a team of 5 buddies together, it would throw you into general matchmaking, and attempt to match your average Elo with another team, so unless you can get five friends of the same level of skill, some of you are going to be badly outclassed.

Just had my first win. Think I may have the knack of Teemo down.

Other team only had one non super-noob. I dominated the game with 17 kills to 1 minion death.

I started pretty recently without DotA experience.  Just stick with it and ignore the trolls and you'll climb your way up.  I'm nearing 30 atm and I rarely get matched with leavers anymore.

I'd suggest staying out of practice games though.  Mostly practice is for people looking to play stacked teams against newbs, or people using awful player-made game modes.

You will be fine if you can handle being fucking godawful at the game for awhile as you figure it out. Some players just don't like that feeling and blame it on the game that they aren't instantly good at it.

That said I would advise you to take the learning curve very seriously for this game if you have zero dota background.

Each week almost always on Monday they rotate a set of 10 champions as free to play for that week. (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=228249) As a complete noob your best bet is to start off on a Monday and try to find one of those champions that you like. You shouldn't pick from all ten champions though, ask us here and we'll give you some pointers on which are easier to play and you should also take into consideration how much it costs to buy a given champion with ip (the in-game currency you earn by playing) the goal is to find a champ you enjoy that is free and by the end of the week buy that champ so you can keep using him/her and start to experiment with the new free ten.

Beyond using that obvious system you should also make a note when you run into a champion you have never played as that seems cool to you on some level. If its a low priced champ (450 or 1350 ip) it might be worth picking it up.

As for what game modes to play I would advise the following:
-For the first few champions you try during your first week play a practice game against bots first just so you know what the abilities look like, what key they are on and stuff like that.
-After that you should probably play the practice games that advertise for low levels only. While these are certainly short bus affairs you do want to learn more about the champ you are playing.
-Once you think you are decent with the champ (you aren't btw) go play a normal game or three. There is specific advice in several threads on what to do as a noob in this game (tip 1-10: not dying is job #1) but the match maker will also protect you by putting you against mostly terrible players as well.

Just keep in mind its a very deep game with item and skill builds as well as playstyle adjustments that have to be made on the fly depending on your farm, your team lineup, the enemy team lineup, their farm, etc. etc.

If you don't stress about being bad and focus on improving your play you should be able to start improving your skill and your elo in normal in short order. The thing to also remember is that at first you are being teamed up with the worst of the worst in terms of players, expect the dregs and be liberal with the ignore features.

If you plan on playing seriously (ranked) and not just for occasional casual games you may want to ask about champions as well.

Some champions are very fun to play and can do very well in casual games, but when you put them into more try-hard play they are so bad they drag your entire team down.

http://runeterra.com/blogs.php

Runeterra has some good guides on Laning and the current meta game if you want to read a bit on that.

Not true.  :heartbreak:

 :awesome_for_real:

Oh it is for sure true. As a general rule the higher level the play the less people just douche a game for kicks. Not that it doesn't happen but its much less likely.

Man, I'm level 30.  Low Elo 30 I'll grant, but still 30.  Of my last ten games, two didn't have any leavers, and one of those was a solo practice round against bots.  The last game I played had three leavers.

Re: champion choice, personally, I'd reccomend playing each champ at least once if you have time.  It can be very helpful to be able to put pictures to words, so you know what Veigar's Dark Matter looks like or what Ezreal can hit you with from where.

Eventually you will start playing every champ because you need to know visuals and passive effects and whatnot. That can come way way down the road though.

As for leavers, everything changed when ranked went in so I can't say for sure anymore but you should be able to avoid that bullshit by increasing your elo, alternatively there is always the 5-man queue.

Looking for some games with non idiots, look me up AScottEGR in game i'm 30 an all.

Started playing LOL mainly cuz it's far less stressful than SC2   :oh_i_see:    Anyways,  I suck badly, of course.  But I like speedy mobile hybrid type heros.  Vlad and singed are probably my two favorites so far.   Any suggesestions on what champions to try next?

When I first got started, I enjoyed playing Tristana. She's pretty straightforward. Once I got used to her and failed miserably at other characters, I started trying the stealth characters that were in the game at the time: Twitch and Eve.

Those are the two characters that got me addicted to the game. I don't play them anymore, but they were a blast when I was still learning the game. Being able to sneak up on people and just unload on them made me giggle like a schoolgirl. So, give them a try. Higher level games you won't see them as much because they're countered pretty easily with just a potion, but early on? You're a god in those low level games.

Kennen

In addition to the other suggestions I'd say Nidalee, she's incredibly mobile in kitty form.

and is generally a bad ass bitch.

Xen Zhao is also very mobile, in a way similar to Nidalee.

Kennan plays a bit like Singed.  The suggested build is AP-heavy, but I've had more luck building him as a hybrid.

If you're looking for map-wide mobility Twisted Fate and Pantheon have a lot of that.

All good suggestions. Here's the only things not yet mentioned ordered by how good of a fit I imagine each champ being. Just try them all as they come free and buy the ones you enjoy.

-Akali would be a perfect fit. She builds hybrid, she has stealth mechanics and she wtfassassinates people.

-Kat feels and plays very mobile with her shunpo.

-Shaco, hard to use these days now that he's balanced but quite mobile and I'd imagine still pubstomps hard. Just make sure you watch some guides.

-Rammus moves fast as hell w/ his powerball and for some reason almost all f13 people love playing him.

-Udyr plays somewhat like Vlad (hard to kill, can really put in work over drawn out team fights) and gives you a chance to learn to jungle.

-Kayle & Janna are mobile support champs that can do big damage if left unchecked but take a lot of skill to stay just out of enemy ability range.

-Shen is another very mobile tank like Rammus but mostly through his teleport to the fight ult though the taunt-dash gives him extra mobility as well.

-Tankplank variants which are the currently en-vogue builds might be worth looking at he actually plays rather fast with scurvy spam keeping him out of cc and its the only thing that resembles Singed I could think of in that he sticks around fights making a huge nuisance of himself.

-Miss Fortune moves around really fast with her passive and deals stupid damage from far away.

Neither Vlad nor Singed are really thought of as speedy hybrids, as I understand the term (Singed may be speedier than some, but I don't know of anyone who plays him as a hybrid, usually he's tank/ap).  I'm not trying to be an asshole, but what do you mean by "mobile hybrid"?  I'd think mobile refers to some kind of movement buff or dash/teleport move, and hybrid usually refers to an item or champ who's using both physical and magical damage (using items like Guinsoo's Rageblade, Nashor's Tooth, Hextech Gunblade, Lichbane, etc.).

You might look at Kassadin.  He's got some decent spells, plus his melee attack refills his mana and penetrates armor, so I can see him going hybrid (though I haven't seen him enough to know how effective it is).  His ult gives him some of the best short range mobility in the game.

In terms of pure mobility, nobody's yet mentioned Teemo, who has a very high move speed unless he gets hit.  He's usually built AP or AD though, not hybrid.

The only other champs I see as hybrids a lot which haven't been mentioned are Jax and Kog'Maw.  Jax is kind of gimp at the moment (in my opinion), but Kog'Maw seems fairly popular.

edit: fixed some phrasing, didn't notice Typhon had already suggested TF and Pantheon

I meant hybrid in more of a general sense of not being confined to one role, rather than specifically an AP/AD hybrid.  Sorry about mixing up the terminology there.  I don't like squishy nukers generally speaking, but I'm usually not too interested in pure tanks either.  I really like Vlad in particularly because his pool lends him so much versatility and mobility.  I build him with ghost and boots of swiftness to make him as mobile as possible as well, then I grab spirit visage and then rylais with him to help him survive longer as well.  Examples of characters I haven't liked much: Nasus (too immobile), Annie (fragile immobile dps).  Tristana I was kinda meh on as well, although in theory I should have liked her cuz of rocket jump.  I was really bad at her though which probably didn't help.  

Thanks for all the suggestions all.  So many too choose from, and now I've got a nice list of heroes to pick from in the free weeks to follow.

Ah, right, sorry.  Probably won't get much use out of my list, then.

If it's tank/dps hybrids you're looking for, I'd look at Mordekaiser.  Also, most of the other melee dps characters are at least a little tanky, since they have to be fairly buff to survive.  Jax is fairly beefy once he's got items, Garen has his health regen and armor bonus, Udyr, Pantheon and Tryndamere have self shields.  Melee champs without much tankiness generally either have other ways to survive (like stealth for Shaco, Akali, and Eve) or are Yi.
  
If you're looking for tank/support, your only real option is Taric, I think.  Maybe Kayle, but she's not very popular these days.

For support/dps, I dunno.  Janna or Zilean, maybe, if you want to lean towards support.  Ezreal or Anivia if you're looking for more DPS, I'd say.  Generally, they're pretty fragile, though.

EDIT: Okay, my other brain cell kicked in and I remembered the word "mobile" which makes Mordekaiser and Taric less desireable.  Pantheon would still be good, I think, Udyr and Trynd are okay, Jax is less good but I find him a ton of fun.

Given that definition, I'd actually have to go back to someone else's "Nidalee" suggestion.

Has burst speed
Can do range damage
Can do good melee damage
Can do farming (after level 6)
Can do light support

and also give a shout out to one of my favorites, Udyr.

Neither champion do you master in five minutes, need to play them a bit to get a feel for what to do and when.

I absolutely fucking love Shen.   Very interested in Kassadin, but scared to play such a fragile skill-based character.  God I love his ult though, way too much fun.

Play Kass on a free week first, he's a love him or hate him champ imo since he feels really slow pre 6 and it takes a fairly intimate knowledge of the champ to be any good with him but if you are there isn't really anyone else who can anti-carry as well as Kass.

Decided to reinstall this and haven't played since beta. Is there any way to practise by yourself?

Click Play, hit practice on the bottom left, select map type, create game, change pulldown to "easy" for the bots then add players and go.

Can you play alone? They disabled that and created a minimum human players at one point because the system was so full of 1-man practice games. Really though just join a practice game and remember how to play its not like it matters if you suck it up.

They scale the minimum requirements on practice games based on server load and instability.  I've seen it change from 6 to 2 to 4 to 1 in a single day before.

It usually works fine later in the week. Don't bother trying most mondays/tuesdays right after the new free champ rotation.

Noob tears incoming (these thoughts are after ~120 games):

Wow, I'm so terrible at this game.  It would be really nice if there were replays so you could try to improve your play through analysis.  As it is I just sort of queue, suck badly, don't really know how to improve, repeat.  And the worst thing is I feel quite badly for my teammates when I'm the weakest link.  I can handle sucking at 1v1 games just fine, or sucking at FPS's, but this is a much different story.  

I almost feel like alot of this is natural talent, similar to FPS games, especially playing with friends who haven't played much more than me but are much, much better.  I just constantly make poor snap-decisions that are instantly punished.  It's kind of funny, I switched to this from SC2 to have some fun, and while this game is much less mentally exhausting on a constant basis, it's far more punitive of making poor decisions in the heat of battle and always leaves me feeling worse after having a poor game.  In SC2 I almost always feel like the path of improvement is clear, while here it is entirely clouded to me.  I would like to get better, but I don't really see the way forward.

Heh, I was thinking the same thing, except about SC2.  At least in LoL I don't need to obsess about getting headshots a quarter second faster than the other guy, or keeping up 300 APM so that my Stalkers don't get torn apart.  Probably the most important skills in LoL are item knowledge (what to buy and when to buy it, which is largely a learnable skill outside the game) and positioning (where to stand in a fight, when to charge or retreat, where to charge or retreat to).  Positioning is what it sounds like you're having problems with, but I think it'll get better if you keep at it.  It just requires thinking of things a different way than something like an FPS or RTS, not complete rewiring of your nervous system.

I would like to see replays, too... generally I find it helpful to spend the respawn timer thinking about what I did that caused me to die, and how I'm going to avoid it next time.  Sometimes that means hanging back more until I get my next item (my default "oops, just died to something I shouldn't have" reaction), or buying a counter item, or saying "if this idiot wants to tower dive again, I'm not backing him up this time".  But as long as you can figure out the mistakes you're making, at least you're making progress.  The rest comes with practice, I think.

I don't know who you're playing as, but if you're constantly having catastrophic high pressure decisions cause your death, it sounds like melee (tanks especially suffer from "AHA FEEL THE WRATH OF MY MIGHwaitwheredidmyteamgo").  If you want to take a more cautious, methodical approach, ranged characters (especially ones with CC) make it a lot easier to get away from a fight gone bad and are generally great at skewing the risk/reward in your favor until you start getting a handle on when to exercise the better part of valor.

trias, I'd keep looking for a guy that fits you. Try to be aware of the map. If you are alone in a lane, and don't see bad guys on the map they are stalking you. RUN.

If being in the heat of combat isn't your forte, maybe look at running a support champ and hang back some. What guys do you like playing? Maybe some of the vets around here can give you general pointers....

I'm not good, but I think I have something of a clue about what I'm supposed to be doing so I'm going to toss this out here 1) to try to help, 2) to get feedback on anything that I might be doing wrong (or not doing and I really should be doing).  Sorry for the book.

I agree with Kail that a great deal of this game is knowing ahead of time what you'd like to do with the Champ you are playing in any particular game.  This is independent of your ability to twitch, anticipate or control the map.

Out of game

Fundamentals

1) know how you want to skill up your champ's talents
2) know what your "ideal" items that you want to buy, and what your gold "return points" are.
2.1) know your "offensive ideal" items.  Example: you're doing well, so you might rush a "big gun" weapon sooner.
2.2.) know your "defensive ideal" items.  Example: you're getting raped and they have a heavy mix of AP/AD so you switch your buying order and focus on a heavy MR/Armor item

Advanced/Teamplay

putting together champs that work well together.  Yeah, I'm pretty weak here, sorry.

In game

Fundamentals

1) Try really, really really hard not to die.  Because you know you aren't good, play very defensively early on.  Yes, it's boring.  Yes, you level/get gold more slowly.  Focus on harassing (need a ranged champ).  REALLY important to not die.  More important than feeling like, "wow, I'm a pussy".  (I'm project here, because playing defensively makes me feel like a pussy, so I'm just tossing that out there).
2) Practice combo's that make sense to your champ to build muscle memory.  I assume that you aren't mouse-clicking your abilities.  If you are, you need to not be mouse-clicking your abilities (QWER).
3) How long has it been since you glanced at the mini-map?  It should not have been too long ago.  What is the minimap telling you?  Missing champs = danger!  Mid/jungler coming your way may be an opportunity to gank.

Advanced/Teamplay

Another area where I'm weak.  Need someone else to chime in. 

My contribution:

3.1) are you/have you clicked on the minimap to see how the enemy is faring against your teammates?  In general this means - could mid use my help in ganking?
3.2) someone pinged the map!  Am I in range to assist?  What is the nature of the ping?  Am I playing with a ping-happy tool?

Post-laning phase:

When not in vent (with people I know), I generally try to figure out who is the strongest player and (after the laning phase) do my best to follow him/her around and play my champ's role.  If you play a tank that means initiating, so probably the easiest role to start to get good at playing is support.

Janna is a great champ to play to get better at the nuance of the game.
 
1) She has a single damaging ability that will teach you to (try to) anticipate - this is something that you'll need to work on, she'll be frustrating to play at first because of this.  It is also a great FU (harass) ability in the early game and a good "oh shit! need to run!" ability throughout the game because of it's knock-up.  It hits (comparatively) hard in the early game. 
2) She is very hard to pin down (has an inherent ghosty ability and speed boost). 
3) Her buff is appreciated by AD champs.  Your teammates will give you less shit because you are playing a support char.
4) Her ultimate is a fantastic "back off!" ability + team heal.  The better players will be trying very hard to lock you down and kill you.  You help your team by keeping them from doing that (also known as, "run around like a chicken while my team kills my pursuers").

Thanks for the replies!  

So on the plus side, I'm already good at looking at the minimap constantly.  This is a function of both playing Shen as my main and playing SC2 (and recently gangplank although I don't think he's very good TBH).  I usually don't get solo ganked in a lane and have gotten better about that.  And I usually don't feed early game, so that's good.  I am good at hotkeys (again SC2).  I generally perform skill combos just fine...its the matter of when you perform them, where you perform them, and who you perform them on that I'm totally clueless on.

I've played a good amount of characters, and I just don't think ranged dps is it for me.  I really don't enjoy playing trist/ashe at all, it's just not my style.

The problem arrives when it comes to mid-late game battles generally speaking.  I just fail in all sorts of ways with any given character.  With Shen in particular:  Sometimes I do the walk back and forth thing where I can't decide whether to attack or not, changing my mind like 4 times over the course of as many seconds, and then by that time either option becomes wrong and I just get ran down and die. I'll think "I can hold em off with a taunt at my tower" when I can't, but maybe that next time I could have and now I'm too scared to try.  I'll attack egg anivia thinking I can kill her before she pops...nope.  I won't notice my guy getting attacked because I'm looking at other characters trying to decide whether to use my ult.    I'll use my ultimate on somebody and we'll both just die or he had the situation well under control (although I will say using my ult is the thing I am by far best at with Shen).  I don't really know what I'm doing in any team fight.  I just use my dash on an enemy squishy and hope for the best.  Sometimes I dash in to taunt their squishy, and just go splat.  Or I play defensively and get yelled at for not being part of the fight.

Anyways, the errors boil down to:  Whether to help your teammates or not, to engage or not, and what to actually do when you are in a fight.  I.E. how do I use my pool as Vladimir?  Do I ult and then run in and snare their whole team (probably dying when I come out of pool but maybe helping my team out enough to make it worth it), or do I only use pool defensively?  I have no fucking idea, I just do things blindly and it usually results in my death without doing too much.  I am almost always the first to die in a team with practically any character unless I play like a giant pussy, and then my team hates me even more.

Cliff notes:  Shen and Vladimir are by far my favorite characters to play so far, but I die too much with them to be effective.  Straight up ranged DPS is really not my style.  Even when I played a mage in WoW, I played him as an in-your-face character with monster close range AE damage, and this made me happy.

I've already got Janna on my heroes to try list so I will check her out sometime soon.  I think I'm also going to try Rammus because he seems like he can actually do ok with the kamikaze style of play which I enjoy.  Or maybe Poppy?  Her ult seems quite forgiving.

Yeah, I'd maybe shelf Shen for a bit - people expect you to save their asses and he is an amazing character but he has a dimension of tank/savior that can be a lot to live up to.

You could look at Sivir, she is a nice support/pusher character. Don't make my mistake  hang in the middle of your peeps, harass with blade and ult when the shit goes off. Anyway, I think you just need to find the right guy. Once I found Singed I've never looked back and only occasionally care to play anyone else. True <3

Why not try an off tank instead?  Any of these are good: Garen, Sion, Xin Zhao, Olaf (ordered from least to most complex - to me).   I love Xin Zhao's mobility which would allow you to play on the fringes until the tank engages and then let you pounce.  Garen and Sion are more naturally 'tanky'.  Olaf is naturally tanky when his ult is available (although he is very durable at all times once you get a handle on how his abilities work together).

Build enough damage to kill, build enough defense to survive, with defense getting more focus.  After the tank engages, move in to control (Sion and Xin) and/or kill high-threat targets.

Garen+Bush = pentakill!

I've had some great fun lately using Nasus as a tank. I think he's MUCH more enriching than Shen for a newbie for a number of reasons:

1) His mini-game to last hit with siphoning strike will train you to last hit ALWAYS.
2) He can turn on a hard lane push when needed (though the trick is finding the balance between "This is a good time to hang back, farm and build up siphoning strike + gold + exp," and "OMG, Kill tower NOOOOW." Just know that you should be commited to one or the other, not dabbling at both.)
3) He's got the best slow in the game (and don't forget it slows attack speed.) You know how when Shen's 1 second taunt wears off, and Teemo runs off screaming into the jungle? Not anymore!
4) His ult requires a lot less micromanagement, and it provides a more tangible attack oriented benefit for your character (when you can't always count on Yi not to run all the way back to your well while Shen's ult is on him.)
5) You have the abilities to effortlessly hold a lane 1v2 - or even jungle very well.

The one thing I will say that is tricky is to find the perfect balance to keep your mana constant in your runes and masteries - and also through judicious use of your abilities. Shen may have spoiled you a bit in this regard. Chalice of Harmony can help pick up the slack.

I'm not sure if this has been said before or not, but the closest thing to replays in this game at the moment are the live and recorded streams.

Here are some of my favorite places to watch games:
Live - http://clgaming.net/index.php?page=livestream
Recordings - http://www.own3d.tv/user/clgame

Any random suggestions for a newb? I just started playing this over the weekend, dumped a few bucks in so I have:

Miss Fortune
Kayle
Poppy
Soraka
Pantheon
Sona
(+whoever is free that week)

Any general suggestions for not getting roflepwned? I can win sometimes, however at times I die and I have no idea what happened. Also, I have no sense of what items I should be getting besides the "suggested" ones.

Most of this thread will sort of help out...of those characters, I'd suggest starting with Kayle or Poppy honestly...not because they're the "best" or "top tier" of those choices, but moreso because they're the least squishy.  Sona got nerfed to hell and back, so she's mostly useless these days, and while Soraka is still good, she gets focused HARD in team fights, so you don't wanna be that guy just yet.  Pantheon CAN be really solid, but he needs to snowball (you need to consistently get kills and farm while not dying) and he's very squishy.  MF (Miss Fortune) is good, and a lot of fun, but is also pretty squishy and has gotten a bit harder to play since her "I win" button got nerfed a bit (her ult's cone is a lot harder to land properly now).

For items, honestly, the recommended aren't bad to start out.  They're mostly good for stock builds of the champions, and will at least allow you to be useful in the game without too much fiddling around.  And they'll start to give you an idea of what effect the different items have on your character, and from there it's just a natural step to trying out similar items that are along those lines to build how you feel works.  It takes some time to get that familiarity, so don'' stress overly much about it.

The hardest part of LoL, IMO, is positioning.  Making sure not only you're in positions for team fights (front and center for tanks, periphery for carries, etc etc) but position map-wise.  You want/need to always be aware of where your team is on the map, and when you can, where the enemy is. Being able to see an enemy champ leaving lane when they shouldn't really have to (they have full health/mana) is generally a BIG clue that someone is about to get ganked.  Being aware of it coming means it'll fail 99% of the time.  That's why wards and such are so important.  Having map control (taking the buffs, dragon, and knowing where all your opponents are) is the biggest advantage you can have.

I'm not pro by any means, but two things I would mention:

1 - At low levels, just about any champ is viable if you're good at him.  Just play around and try to get a feel for what kind of things you're good at / enjoy and what kind of things you'd rather avoid in a champ.

2 - Don't overlook tank items even as a DPS character.  Getting an early Rod of Ages or Rylai's Crystal Scepter on a caster, or a Phage on a physical DPS , can make a ton of difference in your survivability.  No, you won't be able to nuke as well as you would with pure damage items, but you can survive WAY easier with them.  Everyone on the enemy team is going to be gunning for kills, so if they see you standing next to a teammate with half your HP, they'll dogpile your teammate, leaving you free to DPS while your teammate can't do much of anything.

edit: To be clear, I mean one or two tank items and the rest DPS.  You probably don't want to be wearing four Warmogs on Tristana or anything like that.

If you were spending cash, I would have recommended buying one of the champion packs (one you can get from Amazon or your local Best Buy for 20 bucks, the collectors pack) which gives you 10 or so champs and 10 bucks in riot points.

Tristana is free if you do the facebook fan thing.

On items there are 2 things:
1) NEVER neglect to buy some kind of boots. You may not need to buy a fully pimped out set of boots early, but you definitely need brown boots in your early item buys.
2) Doran's Shield/Ring/Sword are all items which you basically cannot go wrong with as a starter item on most characters. They all have a nice chunk of health and a decent bonus to damage or health/mana regen. If it is a recommended first item, it is usually a good buy.

And there I was, thinking it was the other way around.  :ye_gods:

We have a few newb threads, feel free to hit me up for specific questions in-game. Just keep trying champs until one "clicks" then start to worry about the nuances. If you want to win, start by not dying, then start keeping one eye on the map, then start paying attention to getting things like the neutral buffs and dragon.

Welcome back!

Soraka is still pretty nerfed in the grand scheme of things (I'd MUCH rather have a support like lux, or taric), but is leagues better than Sona right now...poor Sona got hit by the nerf bat so hard I haven't seen her in a real game since she got beaten.

(sorry for the book, got carried away (again))

tl;dr: the summaries bold and links are good reference information

After you start to get a handle on the basics (not dying, awareness of lack of enemies on the mini map, last hitting), imo, your item builds (and associated leveling order) become the most important aspect.  Don't get me wrong, that "not dying" part is big as it includes learning every champ's "fuck you" ability(s) and how to avoid them - which will address the "I don't know why I'm dying" - a likely reason is that an enemy champ triggered some form of crowd control (stun, knock up, slow) in concert with their partner (or partners) triggering some high damage combo.

I'm bringing item builds up here because to do the item build part decently-well you need to spend some time learning the available items.  A good place to do this is in the item list (Riot's website, "Learning Center > Items (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/items)").  Look at the various items and try to figure out how a particular category (filters at the top of the list) would work well with a champ that you like to play - this part is best done while you aren't actually playing (or playing a solo custom game), as staring at the store window will piss off your teammates.  

Example - Kayle's E is very powerful.  If you want your Kayle to have some teeth (you should), you'll want something to accelerate her attack speed.  Unfortunately, E sucks mana because it doesn't last very long so you re-apply it fairly often, so you also need something to boost mana and/or mana regen.  Nashor's Tooth boosts attack speed, mana regen, gives ability power (which boost some of Kayle's abilities) and also has a large ability cool down reduction which is also very nice for Kayle.  Unfortunately Nashor's Tooth is on the expensive side.  Fortunately, Nashor's tooth is made up of more readily purchasable (and useful) sub-components.  The trick becomes prioritizing when you buy the various pieces, along with getting boots, and some sort of defense (dictated by which enemies you are facing, and how they are building).

Something that I do with Kayle when laning with another mana-using champ is to rush the Mana Manipulator (part of Soul Shroud - what can I say, I'm a whore for cool down reduction) because it's a mana regen aura.  Then build boots/Stinger (part of Nashor's Tooth).  Then take a check point and see if you finish Nashor's (not dying + wanting to bump it up a notch), Should Shroud (need more health), or go for a specific defensive item (armor, magic resist).  This is kind of an "aura build with teeth", rather than the "carry Kayle" build.  Until you get to the point where you are stomping people, you shouldn't try to build for carry (high dps) as a carry build can be squishier.  As Kael said, build defensively.  The biggest part of learning is playing, and not being dead = more time actually playing.  It also doesn't hurt to keep your team in mind when building - aura's help everyone on your team.  Usually Guinsoo's after that, then another defensive item (or swap those it if you are getting stomped).

Note that there are some omissions in the filter list (Dodge, Armor Penetration, Magic Penetration).  You'll need to work a bit harder to figure out which items provide those attributes.

Dodge (you'd only want to focus on this stat with Jax, as his stun depends upon him dodging): Ninja Tabi (boots), I think there is another item or two, but can't remember
Armor Penetration / Armor Reduction: Youmoo's Ghostblade (Brutalizer), Sword of the Devine (Active), Last Whisper(% based) / The Black Cleaver
Magic Penetration / Magic Resist Reduction: Sorc boots, Haunting Guise, Void Staff(% based) / Malady, Abyssal Scepter

The "reduction" items are theoretically better because they reduce armor/magic resistance for the entire team, not just you.

Here is another good thing to know - Champion Stats (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/learn/gameplay/champion-statistics).  Especially:

Attack speed is capped at 2.5x
Cooldown reduction is capped at 40%  (so, say Nashors Tooth + Soul Shroud has you capped on cooldown reduction)
Movement speed is reduced after 415 speed, significantly reduced after 490 speed (level 2 boots typically take you somewhere in the vicinity of 400, depending upon the champ, your masteries and your runes)

You can see AD, AP, Attack Speed, Run Speed, Armor and Magic Resistance in the lower left hand corner of your screen (to the right of you champ portrait).  You can get a more in-depth look at your champs current stats by clicking on your champ portrait and choosing the correct tab.

Edit: completed "reduction" items sentence

Really though you can use leaguecraft and mobafire for item and skill builds and some are terrible and some are good.  Realistically though learning match ups, identifying sound/visual cues for various skills and learning to use the map, read the game, herd cats, last hit and not feed will take you time and every time you think you've got it you will move up to another level of LoL where you are back to being a newb because you don't know ideal ward placements, jungler orders so you can counter jungle, the timers on creeps, how to determine when/how fast you can baron etc.

I admit that I am biased toward screwing around with item builds because I find it interesting.

My one suggestion would be if you solo queue try to pick a few champs to play that can fill multiple roles. One the hardest parts of solo queueing is getting a team that has some sort of logic to it. If you play flexible characters you can generally make up for the failings of your team comp. You can also more easily adapt when you find out one of your key teammates is fail. Nidalee, Kayle, Mundo, Udyr, Taric, and Kennen are champs that I have found to be very flexible.

What are Taric and Kennan's secondary roles, from the above line-up?  I don't have much experience with them, and my brain isn't supplying any logical answers.

Taric can be an ok tank (though it is really hard to get a decent sized HP pool on him and still keep enough mana regen/cooldown reduction to make his skills usable), he can actually do some pretty ridiculous damage with Shatter if you go with AP items (Soulstealer, Rod of Ages, and Deathfire Grasp are the items I occasionally use). Taric's real problem with any build is his slow gold earning.

Not so!

Taric can also be a monster melee dps.  Remember he gains mana for dmg caused, so if you go dmg, he doesn't need mana items as he'll regen really fast when he starts hitting things.

Fun build I go sometimes if we have a solid support already:

Starks->nashor's tooth->infinite edge->tanky item of some sort

Hits like a truck, regains mana unbelievably fast, and is really hard to kill due to his ult and stun.

Kennen can try to straight up carry or he can build more counter tanky and just wade into the fight for aoe stun setups.

What part of my post is "not so"? All your post did was add in a melee physical build (which I have not bothered with as I don't really like playing melee characters).

Taric can farm fairly well if he levels shatter first.

Kennen can go mage, tank, or straight carry. He does the first two better than the last but he does have a weak steroid from his W and his abilities have pretty good base damage even without much AP.

Was a typo, was meant to read "not only so!"...

You listed a couple other ways to play Taric, but left off the one I see most often as an alternate build for him, that's all.

So...at what point do I start to get teammates most consistently that are not brain-dead feeders? I'm no pro, but ffs I see some people do some moronic shit.

Also, I hate Ashe and her stupid auto-slow. :oh_i_see:

It will be a while, as for Ashe, if you are talking early game and you are playing carry vs carry and she levels her slow first....just take the fight and wreck her face because you will out damage her if she doesn't have volley usually.

If ashe is using her slow all the time early, you should be able to stomp her as it burns through her mana really really fast.

Mostly talking about later, at least mid game. I have not really figured out a way to get away from her if she's determined to get you.

Depending on your character...you don't.  :heartbreak:

Just don't get caught out alone where she can 1v1 and run you down.

Ok, so the champions I own now are:

Garen
Kayle
Lux
Miss Fortune
Pantheon
Poppy
Sona
Soraka
Tristana
Zilean

For some reason it seems like I like support in this game, especially when it helps to gank. Anyway...which of those were a bad choice and why? Which of those is generally more appreciated. I just picked up Lux today, and while her skills can be hard to land, she seems like she would be powerful in the right hands. Thoughts?

In my horrible opinion, and this is if played well

Garen = Very Good , Like seeing him on my team
Kayle = Good , always glad to have one
Lux = P. Good, makes me nervous though
Miss Fortune = Very Good, she rapes
Pantheon = Good, like having death from above on my team
Poppy = Decent, I don't hate her
Sona = P. Good, glad to see her supporting
Soraka = Okay, I just don't like her that much
Tristana = Good, Carry away lil one!
Zilean = Okay, I hope the player is good.

My 2 cents are mostly in line with Slays.

Garen - Still very good, if he gets too farmed you just can't kill him. "Lol, I built tank items and just ulted you for 600 damage."
Kayle - A solid support that can throw out some damage.  But usually only want her if she has a good target to ult. (Twitch or Kog for example).  If all you do is ult youself you're doing it wrong.
Lux - She's decent, has a good skill set, a ranged stun and can do fun stuff with ult.  But she is support, not a mage nuke/carry.
Miss Fortune - Been nerfed a lot but still a solid carry.  Not a big fan personaly just due to lack of good escapes if you get focused.
Pantheron - Super all star pub stomper currently.  Summoner spells that require you to DIE to use are not good.
Poppy - Can tower dive like a champ and put out some good AP damage.
Sona - Queen of the nefs recently but still a very good support that almost wins games on her own.
Soraka - Many people say she's terrible lately, I think she's still solid support especially if you use the silence well.  Sona is probably just straight better though and the later the game goes the less Soraka matters.
Tristana - Great carry, pretty much no bad points.  Take a solo always, farm like a champ, win.
Zilean - He's decent supprt, but you need to make sure you are ulting the correct person and nine times out of ten that is not yourself.

Again, just my opinions and mostly in line with Slays.  I hope Hoax posts, I look forward to lots of "FUCK Garen" and "Fuck him/her, I dodge them at champ select".

Garen -- He doesn't help gank, he doesn't support.  You will need to invest some time in learning him if you want him to perform and he's basically a selfish pubstomper at your level who hides in bushes, rapes dumb noobs and can become an unkillable beast who can steal all the kills with his ult.  If you want to pile up wins fast I would highly recommend watching/reading some guides on Garen and learning how to exploit the badness of opposing players who don't buy wards don't use clairvoyance and take squishy champs without being good enough to stay out of trouble.  Also kill some Teemos for me.  The one warning is, if Riot does decide to nerf all the tanky dps champs then Garen will probably get smacked down a bit.

Kayle -- She does what you say you want to do, in spades.  She's also quite easy to pick up (learn to self cast for her heal, you can bind it under options) but there isn't much to master and she's fairly boring to play.  There's only one build worth using in my opinion and it goes Dring > Rageblade > done.  I wouldn't enjoy playing Kayle solo queue but I think some f13'ers like to run Twitch so I would learn her so that you have a pocket Kayle for if you duo queue with someone playing a carry that likes being invuln'd (they all do).

Lux -- She does what you say you want to do, but unlike Kayle she's got a very high learning curve a much higher micro skill ceiling and she's much more interesting to build and fun to play.  She also will get blamed for loses and if she gets off the pace on xp/farm she will quickly do zero damage and have almost no impact in fights.  Your chance of frustration might be high with Lux but if she clicks with your playstyle I think you'll be a rare sight.

Miss Fortune -- A pure carry with no hard cc and no escape.  This is a team protect the carry's carry and I would not want to play that if I was playing with low skill players.  Stay away.

Pantheon -- Did you miss the 3 days where he was once again the undisputed best pubstomp champ in the game?  He got hotfixed.  He's still pretty epic for a pubstomping bads who think towers will protect them and other quaint noob notions.  I would recommend Garen over Panth but either one will net you a shitton of wins if your actually better than your teammates and opposition.  Panth will also turn you into a dick, but while Garen players are dicks but they are usually funny about it Panth players are just the fucking worst.  One more thing, so help me if I hear about you trying this awesome revive panth build you saw on leaguecraft I'll fucking reach through the internet and bitch slap you.

Poppy -- Fuck Poppy. I hate this champ's VA and I hate her creepy man pedo laugh.  Fucking Poppy just gives me the creeps.  As for the champ herself.  I can't see any reason for you to play her.  I'd go into it but really, what the fuck did you buy this nasty fugly champ for?  She's an assassin but who cares, the carries are playing so poorly at your level that its not hard to get to them and blow them up right?  You know there is a fucking female ninja who does Poppy's job in a less one dimensional and more interesting way right?  You know who else is an assassin and has a Cthulu skin?  Fucking Kass.  Fuck Poppy, she's trash in the lane and requires a babysitter and a bad opposing lane combo and once she has all of that she still doesn't turn into a carry when fed the way other assassin champs can.  Yes Q hits hard.  Grats on that, lets move on.  

Sona -- don't bother playing pure support when you are playing with bads.

Soraka -- don't bother playing pure support who is probably still not as good as Sona after all those nerfs when you are playing with bads.

Tristana -- Now we are talking, learn Trist not MF. Trist might be straight up better at this point and she's more learning friendly and can do cooler tricks.

Zilean -- Zil is trash.  Honestly I just do not think highly of this champ.  Specialists exist with him but frankly I dodge Zils he's too squishy and every time a Zil ults himself I fucking hit my roommate's cat.

recap time.

LEARN FOR SURE:  Trist (every LoL player should have a pocket Ashe or a pocket Trist so they can carry w/ a 5th pick in draft), Kayle (will take 8 games tops)

IF YOU CANT GET FREE WINS W/ THIS YOU PROBABLY ARENT AS GOOD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE:  Garen, Panth (if you want to be a fucking shithead)

TRY ME: Lux

STAY THE FUCK AWAY: Zil, Sona, Soraka, MF

I'M A UGLY CREEPER SHEMALE: Poppy

Huh, Panth got hotfix patched?  What did they do? Was he bugged or just op after a patch?

New game: Pick a champ besides Singed for me to play. No tanks or healers. I prefer to not be horrible at two different champs now :) Ready.... GO!

I seem to remember you played a decent Cho as well?

He said no tanks.

As to what to try, hmm.

You should find an annoying champ to play.

Yeah, I did but like Singed over him.

I say go something that requires map awareness.  On top of having a 2nd character that you don't suck with, it'll for sure improve your overall play as well cause you have to pay attention to the map so much more.  Like, pantheon, soraka, tf, ez, shen (I know you said no tank, but shen's fun).  Basically, any champ where you have an ability that can be used anywhere on the map. :D

I think you should probably learn to jungle since you are a very specialist type player.  That said I don't think most junglers really suit you.

My top5 try it you just might like it for Slay:
-Vlad, I think this is the pick. He's strong, he can carry, he's AP, his strongest effect is psychological damage on the enemy carry.
-Udyr, can be made unkillable plays like Singed but does not get to roll in majai stacks and carry a latelate game. Jungles like a boss.
-Kennen, I don't think you'll like him but his jump into a fight and blow everything up + setups + can carry + does tend to annoy people makes him my 5th pick.  But I'm putting him third because I hate these next two champs.
-Mordkaiser, I fucking hate this champ, I think he's the most poorly designed out of the entire lineup.  But, he's not a tank he's a carry eating push monster who will just reach a farm level where he can no longer be ignored or killed a pro mordkaiser just gets to that farm level faster and against more difficult matchups.
-Trynd, I hate to tell anyone to play Trynd since Trynd is ass and he makes people play stupid.  But so does Singed so I guess I have to throw him out here, if you can learn to not die AND get kills he will win pretty much any game that goes past the 30min mark.

others receiving consideration:
Jax, Mundo, Olaf, Amumu, Xin and Nidalee.

I actually did give Kennen a try over about 8 games, and got ok with him but he just didn't quite 'do it' for me.

Udyr might be the one. He's pissed me off enough times...and I would like to learn a jungler....

Vlad might be a good choice as well. Thanks for the input Hoax.

Olaf is fun to play if you like being able to give a big ole F!U! to CC champs, take a hit, and dish out some pain.  He's very good in the jungle.  He can harass in the laning phase (different build than jungle Olaf).

He has a Brolaf skin.  With this skin Olaf Brolaf says (among other things), "Dude, I'm kind of a BIG DEAL", "Chug! Chug!", "I'm Broseidan, lord of the Brocean", "You can't arrest me, my DAD owns a dealership!", "KA-BLOOOIE!!!/"KA-BOOM!!!" (when using Reckless Strikes (E) ) and "You got that, Bro?". 

He has TWO collars!  TWO!  And a beer hat, with two beers!  GRAGGY ICE!

Even if you are getting your ass kicked, you're still having fun!

BROMACIA!!!! (he says that as well)

Olaf seems a good Slay fit actually.

Don't mean to thread hijack, but do people bitch at you for playing Jungle Udyr like they do for playing Jungle Warwick?

Huh?  if you don't play Udyr or Warwick in the jungle you are wrong, it's not even really a topic to be argued.  It's just a fact.

No, what I meant is that sometimes I pick Warwick and I get some pissing and moaning about how Warwick sucks.

They are also wrong, I don't think anyone here would debate Warwick is anything less then a top tier character that is possibly the best jungler in the game and a fantastic ganker.  I've been playing WW a lot more in ranked lately and my rating is higher then it's ever been by about 100 points, get your ganks, control your buffs and CONTROL DRAGON  to win.

When do I get to play with good people? /cry

Buddy and I had our lane locked down in 2 games, one as (me/him) Taric/Veigar (lol stunlock), other as Kayle/Morgana...while people are getting fed in other lanes.

Also, I like Taric and will buy him if I can get the points fast-ish; just spent $10 on some stuff, and don't feel like spending more just to get Taric. Also, I think I built him wrong by buying the suggested items - my damage was shit. Probably didn't help that my team was light on the AD so his ult was less useful.

I seriously need folks to play with so I can 1) not get so fucking rolled due to people feeding or FUCKING PLAYING MINECRAFT, and 2) so I can suck less. I think I play alright, but not much I can do when my team is braindead.

Appreciate the comments. I like Poppy, and can normally win with her (probably luck), and her purchase price fit perfectly in the amount of RP I had at the time (had 5 points leftover afterwards). I find I really like Lux and Taric for the "lolz, lockdown" factor, Lux indeed has a very high ceiling with her skillshots. I was doing some pretty cool shit (but probably very simple in the grand scheme of things) with Tristana, like rocket jumping over trees and other such nonsense (note: I felt bad how easy she was to play).

Also, what is this revive Pantheon build you speak of? :grin:

EDIT: Almost forgot - Karthus is a cheap no-skill piece of shit that should die in a car fire.

Sometimes the best thing you can do if you have your lane locked down is switch lanes.

If you've denied and mindfucked and hopefully killed an opponent in the lane to the point where he's playing really scared at tower and your getting free farm switch if you have a teammate in the same situation as your hapless foe in the other lane.  The next time said teammate dies retardedly, tell him to take your spot and move across, don't forget to try to help mid get a little damage on his opponent but don't take his exp.

If you really do think your better, play Garen, Pantheon or Trist.  If you truly are much better you will carry games to wins.  Panth and Trist are especially good choices as they can take the 1v1 mid match up.  From there you can win the most important match in the game assuming its a classic carry duel and you can also help both lanes if they are struggling.  Having a Kayle, Taric or Lux will be nice but when you really just want to win a game you need to be able to break out your best champ and you need it to be one that can win the game on its own.


Every once in awhile I am reminded of how the matchmaking system really does create entirely separate worlds of game experience.

This is flat out crazytalk, ignore them, get every dragon, watch them win despite themselves.

I think that junglers can actually carry a bad team to victory despite their best efforts more than anyone else.  You make sure your team has map control, you start all the ganks (bads will typically just sit in their lane on autopilot) and dragon nets a huge global exp/gold boost to your team so even if they are dying if they aren't flat out feeding they will often pull ahead.  If you are really on point from the jungle you will quickly raise your rating.

Taric is really not about the damage (outside of shatter which is where his damage is really at) unless you build him specifically for it. The suggested items on him are all good when you do the support role overall. I usually build lately when I am full on support: Brown Boots + 2 heal pots -> Chalice -> Spirit Visage (this is a great item for Taric: Health, MR, cd reduction, and increased heal to self and it is cheap at 1235) -> Soul Shroud -> Finish Merc Treads (though sometimes I do this earlier depending on how the money for other parts goes/if I am getting stunned/slowed a lot). If I am at that point and having tons of money I will buy a turtleshell thing that gives extra gold and get a Randuin's Omen. Lately I have been changing from my usual build to adding in more AP items, but the recommended items with Spirit Visage instead of Frozen Heart (and a lot earlier) is really good in low level games.

His ult is not really about the increase in damage for team mates (though it helps) it is about increasing his survivability well beyond what someone with his comparatively small health pool is usually expected to survive. Pop it right before you initiate a team fight (if you are said initiator) and are going to get stunned and if you have clarity time its use to when you are almost out of mana from his ult. Also, learn to time shatter. Seriously, it is not about the armor aura (which is good, mind you) it is about the instant burst damage. Wade into a team fight with a couple enemy champs that are really low and BOOM you are a kill stealing bastard :D

Shatter is your friend. Make sure that is what you are leveling it over everything except his ult when you level. Then his heal. 1 point in the stun is fine for a long while.

Jungling tier lists are funny. I propose my own tier list:

Tier warwick: Warwick

Tier 1: Udyr, Rammus, Nunu, Gragas, Olaf, Malphite, Shen, Shaco

Tier 2: Yi, Xin Zhao, Amumu, Fiddlesticks, Mundo, Irelia, Trundle, Sion, Morde, Singed, Akali

Trash tier: pretty much everyone else

Thanks for the response, I fired up the game for the first time in awhile; threw on a new build and starting using flash instead of ignite. First game, I tossed a ward on dragon; and despite the inane bragging of the opposing team of their great "timing" I popped flash through a wall, killed the warwick while he was getting the dragon, and finished it off for my team... Then our team proceeded to lose spectacularly.

Next game we won despite being 4 v 5 for most of it due to a chain disconnecting guy.

The last guys who bitched about Warwick complained that Amumu was a better jungler, and that I would "heh, learn when you reach a higher ELO" (I'm level 23 and I play random non ranked matches...). The guy who said this proceeded to select Garen and bitched non stop the entire game.

But seriously, when can I has friends? I don't mind playing pocket support, especially when I get to sit back and watch people die while stunned, or pull people from the jaws of death with a timely heal/invuln/etc. :grin:

It seems to me that rammus isn't very good at jungling since a single ward on golem at the start completely fucks hims.

So...Tristana is a complete monster once she gets going. Lucky I don't normally need to figure it out, but how do you counter her? Stunlock or high armor?

I don't think there's any regular F13 team or anything like that.  Or, if there is, I don't know  who's on it.

Other than that, there's really not much to do groupwise before hitting level 30.  My brother's stuck at twentysomething, and we can't really play together without him getting tossed to the sharks by the matchmaker.

She is easy to harass early if you are a caster with a ranged targetable attack (Zilean's bomb being a prime example) because her range is really short early and pretty much any other ranged character or caster can hit her when she cannot hit them. Basically you need to be aware of where she is and where her rocket jump can land her either from her using it to escape or using it to preface her ult shooting you into a gank/tower. Keeping her from getting minion kills early by harassing her will help avoid the pain later.

True (afaik).

Nonetheless, I added you as a friend before i left to work. At least I think I did.

I found it helped me to simply add friends after you have a match with someone, and you felt you played well with them. From there I have met a couple groups of players that were on vent and quite cool. Message people after matches and see if they wanna duo Q. If you played decent, you might just get invited into their current group and VIOLA you are having fun.

Other than that, f13 peeps seem to be pretty miss on the hit or miss scale of activity. Me included.

I'm on, I'm just running usually with groups of friends irl. I should be more outgoing!

I play most nights, never seen another f13 on at the same time though

I don't play much right now with full time school + full time work.  But will be more available for the next month or so.  Its normaly easier to grab me on Steam or something then in game.  I may whine if everyone playing isn't on some voice chat though.  :uhrr:

But I may tug up your game level a bit more then you'd like if you're one of our newer players. :awesome_for_real: (I'm not uber awsome or anything, just have tons of games played). But on the flip side I may have an easy time carrying then too...

You want to add some people as you play with them from there you will find people on your level and can organically develop a play group.  Its not that enjoyable trying to force people who have been playing one version of the game to get on your level.

Its still really really early for you though if I'm understanding properly. Friend the best people who come across and duo queue with them while you work your way to 30 and l2p a bit more.  Focus on one of the champs I recommended, especially Trist and you'll get there pretty quick if you are above average.

So me and my friends have basically wrapped up playing this game until they delete Garen. I am sick of seeing him in every single match, for and against, and I am beyond sick of him tower diving me as soon as he hits level six. And that is only the timid Garens. Pro-Active Garens tower dive at level 4.

I know I sound like a whiny grump, and fair enough, but seriously fuck this character. I am not doing anything until they nerf one of the following:

His insane laning capacity via his passive health regen.

His lack of resource to manage which gives him he option of never returning from a lane.

His defensive moves which exist coeval with his retardedly damaging offensive move (SPIN TO WIN!!!).

This character is broken IMO. Honestly, why pick any tank over him other than flavour (or a lust for gimping yourself).

His regen is easy to counter with good harass.

We actually really love to fight garen. He doesn't have anything really notably threatening for teamfights and, like with Mundo, it's obnoxiously easy to kill his teammates around him.

by the by, I'm spending some time playing mal'zahar in spite of the fact that he is an underwhelming champ. What's the pro rune build / gear build / etc with him?

Garen is not really a tank, he (like a lot of the melee physical carries) has a lot of HP and his item buys in most builds tend to all add to his HP as well. For pure tank though, I would take Shen over him any day.

One of the things to counter Garen while laning is to have someone with a ranged stun and a ranged character in the lane against him. Stun him when he is in the WW and he cannot do the "follow you and chop you to bits" thing. Also, as stated by Strazos, his health regen is after 8 secs of no incoming dmg. Make sure your ranged player is plinking him often.

Garen does need a look at (as do all of the no mana/energy champs) from the resource usage disparity side.

So, who is still playing regularly? I've picked up the client again, not having played since the Beta. My account still has a bunch of people on the friends list (I'm Acid Burn btw, thanks Schild :awesome_for_real:), but I have no idea who most of them are.

Also, does anyone care to give a quick rundown of how the game is at the moment (I can earn points to buy champions, right? I don't have to use real money?), what the balance is like, any new champions to watch out for? Do Kassadin/Jax still destroy everything? Is Morgana still imba? Do people still stack Frozen Mallets?

I tend to play in cycles (quitting when the jackasses become too much to bear).  Seem to be on the upswing this week, after not touching it for a month or so.

You still earn points to buy champs, or you can buy them with real money.  You can't buy runes with real money (grr), but if you want to buy alternate skins you have to use real money for that (not the points earned from playing games).  There are a ton of skins, now, too, and a bunch of weird ones (though none of them have any in-game effect aside from looking/sounding different).  You can also get extra rune pages, now.

As for champs, seems fairly balanced at the moment to me, though I'm sure others have different opinions.  There are a few who are weak (new champs, like Cassiopiea and Caitlyn seem especially weak, their strategy seems to be to release them weak and then buff them) but I can't think of any who are really game breakingly strong.  Jax is kind of mediocre now, Kass was fairly mediocre but just got a pretty big peripheral buff from the Zhonya's Ring thing.

Probably the biggest recent change was that one of the major caster items, Zhonya's Ring, was split into two items.  Previously, it gave a 25% AP boost and had an invulnerability spell you could activate.  It's now been split into two items, one with the invulnerability and one with the AP buff (but now buffed to 30%).  Champs who used the invulnerability mode took this as a bit of a nerf (losing their AP bonus), while champs who didn't use the invulnerability took it as a buff (losing the invuln they didn't use and gaining more AP).  In general, though, it was a buff for casters.  I don't think anyone stacks Frozen Mallets, though having one is nice on a tank.

I play regularly again, Acid Burn. Loooooooool.

I'm still Lord Nikon, so, whatevs.

I'm on late EST as, you guessed it, Slayerik.

Mitthrawnuruodo - but I'm probably pretty scarce now that school started up again.

I think I'm one of the only guys playing on the EU servers.

I recently started playing ranked games and there is a HUGE difference in the playerbase between normal and ranked games.

Just played a game where our Panth was feeding heavily, we still almost won, no one yelled at Panth aside from pointing out he was feeding and playing badly. No one called anyone a noob. We lost graciously. We thanked each other for the good game at the end. It was crazy land. After playing up to level 30 in just normal games, I was convinced the entire community was nothing but spergy mouthr breathers.

It is, you just had a really odd ranked game I guess.  Ranked games as a whole are no better than normal in my experience.  :heartbreak:

That's the thing tho, that was just an example of many games. I've been playing nothing but ranked for a week, and I've literally only seen one guy, who was quiet the entire match on the enemy team, call anyone a noob. And that was at the end when they lost, he put in the typical "Noob team" comment. It's crazy.

I've played enough LoL lately to choke a horse.

I'm always up for an invite.

Are you playing mostly Ranked games, or just scrub-tier ones? I think I need to be level 30 to play with the big kids (which, incidentally, is somewhat stupid. Why can't I play Ranked at level 1?). We should get five and do arranged team games. That way ya'll can yell at me for missing Morgana's trap shots.

Besides that, does anyone have any good advice for playing Vlad. I like the hero, but apart from building him with a ton of hp and "lol you can't kill me" gameplay, I have as yet to see a single decent build with him. Also, whats Poppy like? I'm intrigued, but I don't want to buy outright without playing her first.

The reason they force people to be 30 was because the 20-29s were far more likely to leave and ruin games.

Er, how'd they figure THAT worked? 1-19 is all sugar and spice and everything nice, but past that it's the Thunderdome?

It sucks that you (as a HON, DotA vet) are hindered by the restrictions, but they stop true noobs from kicking themselves in the balls. 

I usually play him straight caster. Mana crystal, Sorc Boots, Mejas, "the HAT", Rylas, Lichbane.

Sorc Bots, Mejas and Hat being what I would call my core build.

You should have plenty of HP through the passive, I prefer this to building him like a tank.

Mana Crystal?

I was at work.  :awesome_for_real: Amplifying tome.

I think I DID buy the Mana Crystal once  thing on him once, got called a noob, crushed them like the cattle they are nonetheless.  :grin:

edit: Minor correction, I do not like Dorans items too much, at least on the level of play I am stuck with.

So I'm saving up all my pennies to buy one of the 3k heroes. I would like to have some kind of ranged nuker/support type (I've bought Poppy for when I want to break kneecaps), and I think I've narrowed it down to either Lux or Le Blanc. Could someone give me a few quick points on one or the other or both?

The other option is Malzahazawhatsit SAND MAGIC guy, but I haven't been able to find any good info on him (and I've only seen one person play him, and he was terrible), even though I do like the sound of what he does.

In my experience, they're both fairly average characters in terms of effectiveness, but LeBlanc is a lot more fun for me.  Her ult makes her very combo-oriented and requires her to plan out which spells she's going to cast ahead of time.  Lux is more based on skillshots, but her actual abilities have always seemed a bit weak to me.

If you're worried about power, both characters, as far as I know, are kind of regarded as "Like X but worse" type champions, with Lux being compared unfavorably to Morgana and LeBlanc being measured against Kassadin a lot.

I've heard lots of good things about Lux, but never played her. Plus she has the laser...

I have seen very good Luxs and Le Blancs... Malzahar was buffed recently and I have been seeing more of him lately.

I think think of them as all on the same tier, dangerous in the right hands.  I have seen some very dominant LBs and Malz, they can carry....Lux is more support that if she KSes enough can carry.

Cass is viewed as being sub-par, but I think that is not correct except in regard to her ult.  Focus on the poisons to do the bulk of your damage, and just use twin fang to finish off runners.  Build her a bit beefier (rod of ages, rylais) and go merc treads instead of sorc boots.   You won't burst folks down, but you will grind down large numbers of folks simultaneously.

But honestly Le Blanc is the same way - unless you are crazy overfed a single full combo isn't bursting anyone except the most fragile into the ground, you'll need to expect to have help or have a running battle.  Fortunately both Cass and Le Blanc have tools to help them with a running battle.  I think Cass just does more damage than Le Blanc, while Le Blanc has more versatility

One upside to Le Blanc though is that a good Le Blanc will beat a lot of good mids 1 on 1.

Lux's strength, IMO, is that she can, with some smart map control steal buffs from the other team REALLY easily.  If you can get/keep wards around the other side's red/blue and dragon, she can lazer from mid anywhere on the map to steal those buffs.  It's absurdly frustrating when done well.

She's also really hard to pin down to kill.  Between her shield, her immobilize, and AoE slow, she's good at keeping distance while still dishing out decent dmg...but as been mentioned, she's not really a carry per se.

As Thrawn mentioned, LeBlanc is absurdly hard to mid against when played well.

Cass isn't underpowered at all...just her ult sucks.  Her poisons do REALLY good dmg even early on if you can keep up a good harass (better than Karthus IMO) and they buffed her ratio a lot on her E (the direct attack) so it scales much better into late game.  I love getting lich bane on her.  Pumps up her burst dmg pretty well.

Thanks for the advice guys, you're much more useful than the LoL forums. I picked up Le Blanc, and so far the results have been very good. The utility she has is, impressive, to say the least.

I 100% disagree. I think she is one of the worst champions in the game right now. In team fights, you apply a poison to someone, and by the time it's ticked once, they are already dead from other damage, or you are dead. I understand that I'm not that good with her, but her moves are just bad. Maybe good Casses are seen at high elos, where people could play a chair and win, but where I am I have yet to see her in a game not played by me.

You aren't going to see cassi in high level organized matches. Her problems are twofold: there's other heroes who can do her ap role and do more damage with putting themselves at less risk, AND in addition to that, they're able to do that in less than half the clicks and intense micromanagement of abilities, with abilities which are much harder to miss with.

The point of her poison in team fights isn't to do the dmg, that's what her fang spell is for...the poison just lets you spam it with zero cooldown.

Towards end game when big team fights are happening, I've had it do upwards of 800 per hit, with zero cooldown, that's a lotta burst.  Add on to that, there's often team fights where one champ "gets away" with very low HP but gets back to heal in time to defend a tower...with your poison ticking on them, the chances of them making it away drop significantly.

No, you won't see her in high elo because of what Samprimary points out, that there are other heroes that do her job as well or better than she does...but in pub stomp games, she's still a lotta fun.  They need to tweak her ult to make her a solid high elo champ, other than that, she's pretty good IMO.

Played a few games with Galio on the new champ rotation. Holy sweet jesus on a pogo stick, how is this guy not played more often?! He nukes, he chases, he tanks, he aoes, he tower dives, my god what the hell.

I have recently picked up this game again, and despite it not really managing to intrigue me all that much the first time around, this time I am pretty darn addicted. Mainly playing as Master Yi, who seems to be a bit slow vs other champions at the start, but really, REALLY shines off in the higher levels, where I've been able to go head-to-head with pretty much any of the other champions I've met, and in some cases been able to take down three champions in a row, one by one, since all his cooldowns are reset if he kills a champion while one of the buffs are up (highlander?).

My in-game name is "Xoduz", for anyone that cares.

Don't play Yi exclusive.  :ye_gods:

I HATE those players. :drill:

I hate anyone that plays ANYONE exclusive.  :mob:

Whew, good thing I've learned a couple champs :)

Alistar, all day, everday.  :oh_i_see:

To expand this is only due to the fact of people that wait until 5th pick to take someone that does not fit with the team at all.  :P

Such as we have Fortune, Tristana, Corki, TF, so the obvious good fifth pick would be a tanky jungler preferably with a disable.  But instead we get at 5 seconds left "Sorry, I only play Ashe.  Also I'm taking mid."  :awesome_for_real:

Yea but see, that goes both ways. You get this all the time in DotA - idiots firstpick dps then whinge that people don't pick initiators to soak for them. Then why didn't YOU pick a tank?

Slightly off topic but I almost wish I would of recorded the Vlad Hoax and I played with last night.  The kind of player who would dive a tower against 3 people by himself over and over and then rage how its his teams fault for not following him.

I don't know whether I'll play Yi exclusively, but for now I'll stick with him so I can actually learn how to play the game and not have to struggle to figure out abilities, strengths and weaknesses of random champions every game.

I just rolled with Caitlyn. It was ridiculous. Like 250 creep kills. My book is +17 damage, +10% attack speed. I had an infinity edge and bloodrazor and boots at 28 minutes.

So, uhm, protip: Don't let Caitlyn creep. It was dumb.

(went 10/4/3, 6 buildings knocked over, game ended at 35:00 or so).

So damn true.  I generally pick last (because I'm stupid like that, I guess) and 9/10 games I get stuck as the tank.  I figure I deserve one or two games to play the champions I enjoy, especially in unranked matches.

On Monday, I was in a game with, if I recall correctly, Katarina, Akali, Gangplank, and Udyr.  I sat there for like, ten seconds like "how the hell do I balance out THIS" before picking Veigar, and everyone started whining about not having a tank... ended up switching to Shen because nobody else would budge.

In unrelated news, I'm really looking forward to this new bot match mode they're foreshadowing.  If they can make them challenging enough, it might be almost as much fun as a real match with 90% reduced QQ.  Something I might even be able to play with other people here, without pulling anyone's rating down!

I guess I'm lucky that I recently fell in love with playing as Rammus. :awesome_for_real:

I suppose it's a nice break from playing as Evelynn or Kassadin.

I still think it's not as bad as when somebody picks tanks, and you think you've finally got the chance to try another hero out and then they switch with 10 seconds left.

Ok, perhaps a stupid question, but it's been annoying me for ages...

Is there a way to save mastery pages, like you can with rune pages? Having to switch masteries every time I want to play another character is...annoying.

Nope, but don't worry, I'm sure they will release 6 more new champions yet this month.

Basic usability is for chumps. Clicking through the shop is by design.

I am both validated and annoyed at the recent popularity of Rammus. Validated, because I've been playing him as a main for the last 9 months or more. Annoyed because he's currently the victim of the "this guy keeps getting banned - NERF HIM" phenomenon.

Of course, the recent changes really don't address what makes him so powerful. 15% speed reduction here or there I can live with. I just hope they don't do something like make the duration of powerball or DBC depend on the level of the ability. He's a fun champ to play, but he has some serious shortcomings that would be magnified out of proportion by any significant changes to his abilities. Rammus' real strength IMO is his ability to quickly relocate and engage on multiple lanes/areas of conflict, esp. while jungling. I'm not sure most players understand or know how to deal with this.

But to illustrate my point, and touch on the subject of Yi (usually either the best or worst of players from my experience,) I had one in a game last night that solo pushed a lane to within sight of our second tower, while the rest of the players were in a team fight on the other side of the map. I caught up with him teleporting back out in the open by the ruined first tower. He lost about 3/4 of his life between tremors, dbc, thornmail and (of course,) taunt. He ran off like crazy, like Yi always does, and got popped by a Sion or Taric stun (I forget who it was,) when my team was able to intercept him, and then died. Then he has the nerve to call my taunt op - like that's the only reason he died.

What percentage of life did your Rammus loose in that encounter?  Did Yi run because he saw other champs closing in, or because you were spanking him?

Yi is less a hero and more an adorable summoner phase, akin to adolescence.

For the duration of my taunt I lost about 10% of my life (I had a near optimal build for countering physical attacks,) and Yi ran immediately after the taunt. He ran because he got caught when he was expecting to push with impunity and get away clean because he was Yi (remember he was in the middle of a b when I caught him.) He actually ran right into my team because he never saw them comiing. He might have been aware that 1 or 2 had disengaged in the other lane - but I doubt it. More likely he just panicked because he got caught.

I run into the same thing with Olafs from time to time. The fact that there actually is a character in the game that can counter their preferred strategy and in the right circumstances beat them in a 1 on 1 seems to leave them completely at a loss for options.

Those Olafs I have no sympathy for.  Anyone who builds Olaf like he was Warwick is ignoring all of the awesome that is Olaf.

I have sympathy for the Yi's because they have essentially two things going for them; damage and speed.  Your Rammus nullified both of those strengths.  To add injury to insult your also kicked his teeth in with Tremors (which was probably half the damage you did) - all during a time when he had zero control of his champ.  To paraphrase Sam and throw away the brevity: Yi is great if you are playing against bots.  When you start playing against people who build counter to AS+AD, not so much.  (I assume that he wasn't an AP Yi, since he solo pushed a tower).  Yi doesn't have much build flexibility.  If he's not going all-in on his chosen build, he is very underwhelming.

Rammus, on the other hand, has a variety of tank items to choose from to counter the opposing team based upon team composition and game evolution (for instance, if Yi is the only threat on the other team, and he is going AD+AS, you buy a cheap Thornmail and shut him down early).  In addition to all that, your ult still does good damage.  Rammus has a full kit of abilities that work well together to get his shit done. 

If the "balance" point is based off of (the many) champs don't have a full kit, Rammus is OP.  I think the "balance" point should be a champ with a full kit (such as Rammus).  Rather than nerfing complete champs, I think the better solution is to work on those under-performing champs to give them better kits.

Rammus is a filthy little jew bag, and anyone who doesn't agree likes playing him ;)

This chat inspired me to go back and give Rammus a try; I really hadn't played him much since I first started and I was terrible with him. He's  really a brilliant tank; being able to hit 1000 move speed is pretty much the best thing ever. He's also a mean jungler which is my current passion. Thanks for the inspiration.

Oh, I completely agree with the 'tool kit' argument. Rammus is very well equiped for a variety of situations. If you are failing as a rammus (and it's not just because of your team,) then you only have yourself or your lack of game knowledge to blame.

Yi really is a 1 trick pony. And easy to counter too. He can work well if played right though, because there is usually at least 1 person on any pickup team that didn't get the memo on how to counter Yi. Sometimes that's all you need.

Teach me Olaf.

Yes. Please. I need a reason to buy Brolaf.  :awesome_for_real:

Creating a Olaf thread under champions - WARNING! I do not have the time to put into that schild put into Ms Fortune

I would like to take this opportunity to say fuck Mundo, and fuck people who play him in Ranked. Thank you.

MUNDOOOOOOOOOOO

Still one of my favorite champs to play...

The problem is, he's also REALLY easy to counter.  Ignite counters him pretty well...if he's a smart Mundo and builds a QSS, get an executioner's calling somewhere on the team too. He gets significantly less hard to deal with after that.

If mundo manages to get fed, you're fucked. Even with executioner and ignite, mundo will fuck you up.

Mundo suffers the problem of being an inherently ignorable hero with better picks always available.

He's great when you are dealing with ELO levels that don't readily understand that you can effectively ignore mundo and kill his team around him, but with any sort of team that knows their shit, he's about as useless as tryndamere.

Too bad that I sometimes get paired up with idiots who attack the first one to run into their sights, leaving everyone attacking Mundo.
Life sucks, so does the matchmaking system.