f13.net

I'm going to start playing this after years of hearing about it from nearly everyone, what's a noob friendly character to play with? any starting tips? never played dota or any other game of this type.

5 heroes you should learn to play (http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/5-champs-you-should-know-how-to-play-aka-who-do-i-buy-next-70445) (might be a bit confusing)

The only thing I feel like suggesting is have fun and relax. MOBA games can be rage inducing.

The free champions available to everybody change every week. This week's free champions can be found here (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=839244).

Out of those, Miss Fortune and Sivir would be good champions to learn the game with. Once you have some IP from playing games, you can take a look at the list Moses provided and try one of those champions. Ashe and Annie are both really solid, straight-forward picks, and they both cost a small amount of IP so it wouldn't take you long to earn.

I'd recommend doing the tutorial which even has some nice option bits that teach you about neutral buffs etc., and then doing a few co-op vs. Ai games until you have a hang of things.

Vlad is a good start pick, but hes very expensive.

I'd disagree with this, Vlad seems terrible for a first time player.  You need to really know what your lane oppenent can do, when you can dive, when the best time to pool would be etc...

Custom games will teach you how to play custom games.  Try not to get in the habit of playing custom games to learn the game.  Try to play a champ from every role archtype (glance over the link mosesandstick linked).  Play the coop versus AI if you want to practice.  Ignore obnoxious teammates.  Do not learn from teammates who do not help you out and seem to only try to swoop in at the last minute to get the kill - this is douche-baggery.

Ok, now that I said not to play custom games, play 4 games in custom to try to get an idea of what type of char you like (all of the below have lower difficult/skill requirements):

Miss Fortune - AS/AD Carry - learn the joy of blistering auto-attack damage and AE spell damage
Note: if you play Sivir in a custom game it will give you the idea that you can auto-attack your way to victory - this is bullshit, good sivir players are good because they know exactly when to use their abilities.  I suck with Sivir.  Sivir pretty much blows if you don't play her well.
Brand - AP Carry  - learn to set champs on fire, then Q to stun, then blow shit up
Maokai - Tanky AP + CC - learn the effective use of cc, learn the joy of the molotav sapling
Irelia - Tanky AD - learn the the joy of being a high-mobility badass.  You will be fragile early on.  Rush the Triforce.

One of these playstyles one or two will probably appeal to you more than another.  Play champs that can fill that role to figure out if you like the game.

If you like the game, play many games trying out different builds.  The recommended items are generally not terrible, but mostly you'll want to get familiar with the items and the champs abilities (and how you like to play that champ) and adjust the build.

Save your IP till lvl 20 to buy runes.  They make a big difference.

One other thing, play with more experienced and listen to their advice. Probably the easiest way to get better. I don't really play enough to suggest learning with me, but some of the other f13 guys might be willing to help you with the basics.

Rule #1 - Don't Die
Rule #2 - If you're going to die, make it count.

Always towerdive. ALWAYS. Also, 20 failed chases that end with you dying from being ganged up by the other team are totally worth it for that one time where you chase champion X across the entire map and kill him just before he reaches safety.  :awesome_for_real:

Just because it might not be obvious to a new player....that is a sarcastic post and terrible advice.   :ye_gods: 

Unless you're Poppy.

I'd say, always towerdive if you can survive.  :grin:

Recommendations:
Ashe
Annie
Ryze

At least do yourself the favor and pick up Ashe plus either Annie or Ryze. Once you have two of those champs down pat you can expand out in whatever way you please, the intermediate list is just to give you somewhere to start if your having trouble and frankly that is so many champs that you have to believe that is all guesswork. I also haven't played in a long time so no idea about the last four champs to be released.

Intermediate:
Alistar
Brand
Cho'Gath
Gangplank
Irelia
Jarvan
Jax
Kennen
Morgana
Pantheon
Renekton
Singed
Sion
Swain
Taric
Tristana
Trundle
Udyr
Xin Zhao

Start there and from there branch out into roles you want to pick up, playstyles you like, champs you think look cool, champs that owned your face off, whatever is free etc. For most people during the early stages a particular champ will just click for whatever magic reason and it will just feel good to play a champ that feels good to play. Go with that and once you find one it is easier to find similar champs to try.

I think I would disagree with some of those, especially from the point of view that some are simple enough to play - but hard to contribute anything useful to the team with.

Udyr for one, should definitely not be on that list. You need to know how to start at neutral creep (or play with a premade that won't yell at you for laning), have a decent set of runes and masteries, as well as be aware of how to build him and for what purpose.

I think also, GP, Jax, Renekton, Swain and Trundle are all a bit higher up on the learning curve, especially in regard to the aforementioned reason.

Apart form that Xin, Morgana, Brand, Jarvan should all be easymode for competent players.

Disagree. You forget just how bad the game is at newb levels. He doesn't need to jungle optimally he just needs to not fall behind or die to golem and nobody will notice. Map awareness barely exists at that level. Also how hard is it for a new player to watch one 5min youtube tutorial on jungle order? There is no counter jungle or level one five man fights in the bottom elo.

The intermediate list is quite simple, anything with a hard cc is pretty much intermediate. It lets you do something useful without too much work.

re: Renekton & Swain, they have hard cc, Swain is more advanced but less so than Mordkaiser, Malz or Garen who require extremely specialized knowledge of that specific champ which you shouldn't bother getting when you aren't even playing the game for real yet because everyone is such a fucking noob that you play with and against.

GP is an odd beast but when I was a noob he was a popular choice and he served noobs well. I've also seen several people I introduced to the game gravitate to him so I listed him. I think personally its having a global ult + being unable to not farm that makes him a good choice for new players.

Jax you could argue is garbage without dodge runes, I'd listen to that, maybe he shouldn't be listed since I didn't put Trynd on the list because he needs runes.

Trundle is not complicated. He's certainly less complicated than WW or Olaf who require lots of matchup knowledge to not get gib'd.

Again though that is a list of twenty champs that tries to offer almost every playstyle and role possible, its pure opinion at that point.

You could take the junglers off there and take Jax off (wait for dodge runes which are loads of ip) and I think that would be legit. You could take Swain off but I rate him as more simple than other push champs (Malz, Garen, Mord, Sivir etc). You can argue that noobs shouldn't play push champs and shouldn't play junglers but why not? Someone should jungle even in noob games.

It's pretty easy to jungle poorly when you're just starting out. You don't have runes or masteries, which can have a pretty huge impact on your character at level one for something like jungling. Trundle for example would probably be unable to kill golem at level 1 without any runes or masteries, unless you have someone leash (which again shouldn't be expected from new players). You could start on wolves etc., but you'd probably fall behind.

You also place one of your team-mates in a 2v1 situation, which probably sucks for new players as well.

Don't play junglers until you're more familiar with the game, basically.

Toy around with Annie/Ashe and whatever champions are free that week, and that'll take you pretty far.

Trundle can easily jungle starting at wolves sans runes; stonewall has a nice video of it. I frequently go with the scrub route in pubs where I don't trust my team to protect me from a gank or we're seriously out matched for level one fights.

I decided I would give this game another shot. Accepted some friends requests from 2009. Only made it one day back then before I remembered why I hated DotA so much. The reason I hated it is because I am absolutely, astoundingly, bafflingly terrible. But matchmaking and compstomps mean that doesn't stop me from having fun any more.

I have a free Rammus for some reason (for being in closed beta I think?) and nobody plays tanks at low levels so I've been learning him but I also kind of want to get decent at a support character. In DotA the only character I could use and be mediocre with (as opposed to flat-out terrible) was enchantress. Any suggestions?

You could try Nidalee or Karma though neither is really the same idea as Enchantress but I really don't feel good about recommending either of those  champs, Nid is one of if not the most micro intensive champ in LoL and being good with Nida doesn't translate much into other champs since she is so unique and Karma was just bad and pure support in noob games is usually a waste.

The other option would be Janna who may be the most similar in terms of being able to control the fights pacing but does not have a castable heal. However she is a support that will serve you very well if you get good with that champ when/if you make it to non feedfest games at higher ratings.

Sona, Tarric, or Janna would be good support picks for a new player. Soraka is pretty easy to grasp as well, but her gameplay is pretty boring (straight healer). You'll find that the other 3 have heals, but they mostly support their teams in other ways.

Keep in mind that there is a co-op vs AI mode now, so you have as much time as you want to practice without having to worry about pvp.

Shen.

Shen is good for practicing map awareness, but he's a pretty hard tank to start with I think. He doesn't have a strong initiation skill like Amummu or Malphite and carelessly spamming his abilities leaves you without the energy you need to protect your carries.

That said, energy champions are a bit more forgiving than mana champions. Both Amumu and Malphite risk running out of mana very quickly early game until they pick up some items (or golem buff). Out of the tanks, Shen is probably one of more forgiving ones to start with.

I'd certainly think a new player would have an easier time with Renekton than Sion or Jax, for example. No mana is one less thing to worry about. Garen is probably the most new-player friendly tank you can start with.

I'm actually really enjoying tanking with Rammus. I tried Shen once and he didn't seem to compare at all; his W didn't keep me alive nearly as well as Rammus', his taunt doesn't last as long and is harder to drag people back with, his escape mechanism just isn't as good, and he has no AoE. I don't really see what he has going for him aside from his ult, but Rammus' ult is plenty awesome anyway. What am I missing?

Shen is very strong in lane, his taunt can hit multiple people and his taunt is also a very good escape.  But largely, it's how good his ult is.  You can push a completely different lane the entire game but still be "in" every team fight if it starts.

Plus he's a flippin' ninja.

Really though, as someone who went through the newbie phase of this game fairly recently I feel that not having to manage a mana bar is an advantage that cannot be overstated, particularly for someone who will be playing random pickup games rather than with a pre-made group.

You can also use your dash to move through small walls (iirc), and it's got a shorter CD than rammus's ball. It makes his gameplay a bit more mobile, where as rammus ball is a better chase/escape move, but can be disrupted pretty easily. Mostly though, yeah, his ult is just that good.

I would recommend extremely heavily against playing as Soraka, Sona or Taric as a rule for anyone playing solo at any level but especially for newbies. You literally cannot win a game with those champs for your team. Janna can and will win games despite your idiot teammates. Her ult is a fight reset and her skillset is basically the best for helping a teammate or three get away.

Tarric, Sona, and Soraka are all pretty newbie-friendly. Tarric can set up lots of easy kills for your team, since the other players are unlikely to be paying enough attention and will open themselves up for your stun followed by some hurt. Sona is just a really good mix of offense/defense, and it's pretty hard to play her poorly. Soraka can make up for a ton of mistakes that your team-mates will make, especially early game. Unlike Karma, these are the support champions that will play pretty well for new players even if their team-mates are also very new.

I think Sona is a good choice as well. She does a lot of damage early on and doesn't require any targetting. I think she's a good way to get used to supports.

Thats the problem often though, at a low ELO with new/bad players you are setting up a kill for someone that likely won't even take advantage of it.  Play a carry and just get the kill instead of setting it up for someone who may or may not even notice what you are doing.  :oh_i_see:

ashe is a good starter champ super cheap and good at all levels of play. Heck she was I think the most picked AD carry in the dreamhack tourney which shows how well balanced she really is. And for 450 IP you buy here fast even at very low levels. Annie is another strong pick if you like spell casters more.

Here's a champion quiz (http://trotsware.net/cgi-bin/quiz.cgi) I found to help me pick a character.  And here's a helpful post (http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/5-champs-you-should-know-how-to-play-aka-who-do-i-buy-next-70445) putting champions in various categories.

That second link is good shit. I'd read all that make some choices and then post your thoughts here to verify its still true and good.

I started playing league on Monday and I have to say I'm getting fairly hooked. I have sort of settled on Morgana as my best character and she's a ton of fun, mostly because I always feel pretty invulnerable with her(unless I do something stupid)

I'm not entirely sure how the random matchmaking systems work, am I up against other beginners? Thus far my best game was 8 kills/0 deaths/10assist I know that's probably not good at all but dammit I felt like a god.

8/0/10 is an amazing game, obviously!

You won't be matched with total scrubs for long if you keep that up :)

No, that's downright ballin', at any skill level.

It was a good match, what's weird it my first 15 games or so were all starting at the bottom of the map. First game I started on top I got my ass handed to me, I was like "But the blue guys are my friends!"

We should get the new guys in some premades before they quit in frustration and disgust with the "community".   :why_so_serious:

God solo queue is so brutal.

Being pre 30 is pretty brutal in general.   I was queueing up in off hours yesterday and I guess not enough people were on.   I kept getting queued with random levels ranging from 30 to 6 leading to a string of truly absurd defeats.

My summoner name is Hlem, hit me up if you want a semi-competent lane-partner.  :awesome_for_real:

Just unlocked Master Yi tonight. Holy shit, that's like easy mode compared to some of the other champs I've taken.

And yet, there are people who are terrible with him.

So, so many people. Yi is one of my favorite things to see in the enemy lineup once the game starts loading.

I'm not saying I'm good with him, I'm probably quite bad since I know just about fuckall about the game. I'm still trying to get the hang of the proper items to buy. But fuck, I went from getting dickstomped constantly to pegging both bots and real players with Yi. The only other character I've had nearly the same success with is Gragas who was fun in a whole different manner.

Friends don't let friends play vs bots.

Yeah, you might think: oh, I'm no good! But I waited to start playing pvp till summoner 7, and I wish I had been doing it from 1. Because you know, you may not know what you're doing at 1, but neither does everybody else.

I use custom games for trying out new champions though.

If I have limited time and just want my 2x bonus, a bot game is a good way to get it pretty assuredly. Then again, you can get "that" team occasionally.

I wasn't saying Yi is bad - he's fine. But people play him like he's an unstoppable assassin meant to chaaaaaaarge anything he sees when his real strength is his mobility and consistent damage output, making him a great roamer for split pushing and cleaning up team fights.

At least, I think that's what's going on. I'm kind of a noob myself.

Same, I use custom games for trying different jungle routes and learning the skill set for a new champion.  But for new players it's so much better to just jump into matchmaking and fight through it imo.

Yi is definitely best if you can find one guy by himself or for cleaning up a fight after a few casualties. Rushing in first with Yi typically means a dead Yi who did nothing.

If you guys run a regular team and have room for one more, I'm getting more and more frustrated w/ solo queue. Just hit 21 and splurged on tier 3 runes. woo!

I feel like I play a decent Janna and Morgana. I'm confident as jungle amumu. I also have been getting better with Cho lately as well. Look me up if you ever need someone to fill out a premade. Summoner name is Bandit11.

Cool, I'm almost always on from 11:00pm EST till 1 or 2am. I'll add ya.

Yeah, I'd love to get some premade games in (tastycap). I've been playing supports/junglers (Alistar, Nunu, Cho, RIP soraka support), but I should get some more carry experience (although I can faceroll Annie).

It always ends up, playing in normal, that 3 or 4 people lock in carries in the first few seconds, and then I take the support/jungle/tank.

I would be up for playing some games with adults. Getting real tired of the only "premade" groups of people I end up running with being a bunch of kids born in the 90s who think that saying "nigger" every 5th word is the best thing ever or go afk 2 minutes into a game because their dad "is being a douche".

I pretty much am only good at supports (Morgana and Taric are my best 2) though I try to learn a bit about how other champs work and can play a few others o.k.

Play around the same timeframe as Slayerik mentioned he plays.

After having played less than 10 matches in Heroes of Newerth, I can safely say this community is full of choir boys. HoN's community made me want to stab someone just so I could throw up on their corpse.

So I heard, but as has been said before, /ignore early, /ignore often, makes even solo quequed games much more enjoyable.

Yeah, from what I remember of DotA people would bitch incessantly *every* game, usually at me. Only having to listen to bitching every other game is nice!

I'm usually playing with RL friends in the evenings but anyone can feel free to add me if they want to queue with someone who's not 30 (I'm level 22) and not a douche (well, not a total one); I'm on a lot. Same name as on here.

HoN also has voice chat enabled by default  :awesome_for_real:

I just found out you can now ignore players from the  ingame score screen with a single mouseclick

I had a friend add from Ezrast yesterday when I got home, and we teamed up for a few games. This was the first time I've ever joined as a team, or talked with someone before hand about what we ought to run together. Easily the most fun I've had playing LoL. We ran Janna + Vayne pretty successfully, with his friend diablq (sp?) splashing in for some of the later games.

For those other new players who have never ran as a group before, do it. It's so much better.

For the vets, please add/bother me for a game whenever you have room.

*edit*

Whoops, double post.

We honestly are getting to the point again where we can do 5 on 5's :) I'll try to get everyone added and maybe we'll do that one night a week.

Once you start queuing for pre-made 5 mans, the level of play goes up very quick. You will only get matched against another 5 man. Honestly, if you are just looking to have fun and mess around it is probably best to queue 4 or less. If you want to test your skills and (kinda) try-hard, hop in our nightly 5 man.

I'm mostly gone, school started again this week and the little bit of free time I do have right now is going to Deus Ex I'm sure.  :oh_i_see:

Yi is an odd duck he is really nasty damage dealer but he is also squishy as all hell. Yi seems to be a champ either you just roll over people and get tons of kills or you get sat on early and you wind up 1/20/2.

Plus side is late game even if sat on he is great at backdooring turrets due to his speed boost.

So, I'm looking for a champ who is
-a good jungler (rare at low levels)
-able to carry (will mostly be solo queuing)
-not tanky (I have Rammus for that, and bruisers are all too common)

I'm also not very good with Fiddlesticks, although I love having one on the team. Trundle is the one bruiser I actually like so far, but I don't know if he can carry late game.

Buy Trundle, since I like him? Suck it up and get good with Fiddlesticks? Wait to try Nocturne on his free week?

Sounds like you want Ireila to me. Most jungles are tankish tho, in one way or the other. Mostly through lifesteal. Their tank is their attack.

Jax does it through his dodge/stun.
Lee Sin does it through his ee,ww combo from what I can tell.

I'd say go with Ireila, but she can be a royal pain in the ass to master and get right. Also don't bother with her unless you are level 30 and have runes. Her pay off is great, and she is a fucking pain to get away from.

Akali or Gangplank are your best bet if you're looking for characters that are not tanky but can jungle and carry. Almost all of the good junglers are bruisers (like Irelia) with a few tanks mixed in.

Tryndamere would also fit the bill, since everyone builds him as a 6-second glass cannon and he can completely steamroll games.

Is an AD carry really the best way to make up for crappy team mates?   I consistently get way more CS and way less deaths than other people in my games but I can never turn that into anything useful.    My bad team mates always start dying right away and the game seems to be over 10 minutes in.   I can completely dominate my lane but that just means the enemy team quickly targets me in a team fight.   It almost feels like the best way is to go for extremely risky ganks early on that would be considered flat out stupid in normal play.

You can win without a tank and you can win without utility, but you can't win without damage. When I get fed as Vayne it's frankly pretty terrifying, but only if, as you say, the other two lanes don't feed the opposing carries just as hard. I feel like as a jungler I'd better be able to support the lanes that need it while still getting the farm necessary to be useful later.

You may be right about the stupidly risky plays. I consistently die more than most of my team, even in games where I do really well and end up with 2/3 of the kills. I think I'm just suicidal, though.

I'll piggyback on this thread: how is Teemo these days, as a noob character? I played a few dozen matches in the beta and felt pretty good using him, but I've forgotten everything I learned.

There's something about Teemo that makes people who play him be extra douchey. Teemo free weeks make me miserable.

He's good though, and a variety of builds work on him (by which I mostly mean AD vs AS - I am skeptical of AP/hybrid builds). It takes a while to learn where to place mushrooms but there's nothing to difficult about him; mostly just open with Q, autoattack, and hit W if you get in trouble.

Teemos are pretty easy to play but the big trick is knowing where and how to use his shrooms. A good teemo helps give his team amazing awareness of the map and allows you to setup very favorable ganks. Damage wise build him well and he does fine and if nothing else he drives the opponents nuts trying to run him down.

AP/AD/AS hybrid teemo works best in my opinion, but 40% of teemo is getting the right build 60% is actually knowing how to play. Teemo is weird, since he was great during simpler times of master yi and tryndamere ruling the solo que and not so great as everyone and everything else powered ahead of him. He's not even guaranteed to kill melee oriented champs anymore, with most melee champs can easily kill teemo without auto attacks and are linebacker beefcakes when it comes to health (again bad for teemo...). Teemo has one equalizer that few people realize, which is map awareness, and it goes further than just putting shrooms in your bush and possible gank routes. Thats what most teemos do besides the ones who never played teemo, that and build nashars. Like a tower hugging heimer, that teemo is about as helpful to the team as a single super minion pushing mid.

Really good teemos perfect the art of turning the enemy jungle and there own into HELL ON EARTH. Shutting out an entire team from the jungle and forcing them to buy oracles is the greatest accomplishment a teemo can ever hope for. Its better than a pentakill and few things in league of legends is better than scoring a pentakill. Bonus points for having there entire team go on a manhunt looking for you. You know why nid is so annoying? Well besides having a badass version of a sight ward, one of the most annoying nuke skill shots in the game that takes advantage of what players are trained to do (the more you run the more damage a nid spear does when it hits), and being able to lane forever because of her self heal (which has been nerfed 4 times...) she can also escape a 3 MAN GANK, which even in the hyper passive pro games means, only 2 or worse 1 player guarding a tower. And trust me by the time a team is baring down on a tower they can easily destroy 2 towers and probably the inhibitor in the amount of time it takes 3 players to double back. Thats probably the most infuriating thing about Nid, which makes her solo top the worst thing to ever happen to league since...the very first introduction of Nid, and will probably net her a permanent ban in every tournment in LoL till they introduce seal deck player or remove flash.  And guess what TEEMO can do a lesser or greater form of that depending on the situation.

Dear everyone, especially new people. DO NOT FEED MORDEKAISER.

If you do let him get up on kills, DON'T FOCUS HIM IN TEAM FIGHTS.

And DO NOT CHASE INTO 3 OF THEM SOLO TO KILL THE TEEMO AND GIVE MORDEKAISER FREE KILLS.

 :mob:

God I hate solo-queue.

I played a lot of DoTA so I avoided stuff like this by default.   Amusingly they always yell at you for it early on.   It was like my lane partners couldn't see their own health bars and wanted to blame me for not jumping in with them.   You still see it a bit at 20 sadly though.

I'm not sure why people say not to bother with runes until level 30. I mean, it's taking a LONG ass time to level in this game.

There is nothing wrong with level 1 runes. Just don't buy level 2 runes.

Ryze is my go-to for pub stomping. Sadly I am not very good with any other heroes. Him though. He's easy to play. And good. And all his spells are direct targeted so you don't have to worry about trying to line up a skillshot or cone cast while moving backwards and in the heat of battle.

Ryze just melts people when fed. From my experience playing against him, once he blows his load and you are still alive you probably got em.

I can attest to that on Bhodis behalf.  :grin:

I'd say there is nothing wrong with buying level 1 runes, if you know exactly which runes you are getting, and only stick to a single set. Otherwise you just blow all your IP on runes that are pretty much useless by the time you hit 30. IP that you could have used to get lvl 3 runes. A single set of red flat  health/damage, yellow armor and flat blue mana runes couldn't hurt tho. Maybe pass on the Quints altogether tho. Don't scatter shot when buying runes, buy in sets.

Ryze is also super easy to buy for, you just buy everything that has +Mana on it and you are good to go since he gets AP from mana.

I am apparently very very bad at tanking on a cellular level. I've tried both Sion and Alistair and kind of blew at both of them. Of course, the Alistair game also had a Leona, a Garen, a Lee Sin and a Kennen, so there was no support to speak of.

I have always found Alistar tough to tank with, strangely (as he is naturally one of the best). It's probably the long cooldowns.

Sion....to me he's not much of a tank. When he's built tank his shield is not great, and all he has is that single target stun for initiation.



Try Shen. His shield makes him a great supporter, ganker, and gets you out of binds. AoE taunt can be quite fun as well.

 I personally love playing Singed (though he is initiator/offtank), Cho'Gath (His knockup takes real skill to pull off well), and Udyr (he's offtank DPS/ DPS soak)


Who have you tried and liked? Maybe we can come up with similar champs that might fit your style.

Try Amumu. He is the king of initiation and farms well. The key piece of tanking well is making sure your team is ready for you to initiate. Check health and mana levels, make sure they are close enough to take advantage of the enemy team focusing, and verify all necessary ults are ready. It's also good to make sure the terrain is good for your team; AOE teams want tightly confined fights, very squishy teams generally want room to move and run.

I should probably also mention I'm really not a good player yet either.  :why_so_serious:

I'm really burning through the current free rotation and seeing what I like. So far I've bought Kayle, Ryze, Ashe and Yi and like all of them. I also got Tristana on the free Facebook promo and like her a lot as wel. I think I tried Shen once but didn't understand shit about the taunting thing until later. Janna was fun for support and I liked Kassadin too. Since I'm only level 7, I have plenty of time to learn some of these as well as just learn how to play. I tend to get sucked into being focused to death really easily.

One of the hardest things about the game is learning the back and forth 'dance' in lane. You get better at the dance when you get familiar with each champs strengths and weaknesses. If you have time at work, just browse the champ list here - http://leaguecraft.com/champions/   - and get a slight idea of the champs out there

Also, teach yourself to constantly check the map. I know it's hard. I know you wanna get all that money. Just do it anyway. It will save your ass and make you a better player.

Maybe even print this page: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/5-champs-you-should-know-how-to-play-aka-who-do-i-buy-next-70445

Then you can reference for your games, just to know who might nuke your face off or initiate you into a grey screen of doom.

Ya most of this game is learning what all the champions can do, and how to react to it. At low levels, I would say screw team compostion, stick with one main, and get really good with them.

Mord super easy pub stomp
Tryndemere
LEARN TO JUNGLE will save you a lot of laning phase bs
Save up 6300, buy new champion a few weeks after release. Just got yorwik and boy he is easy

This is pretty awful advice for a new player. :p

Tryndamere snowballs faster than just about any other champion, but he's hard to play well. Even the champion spotlight video by Riot for Trynd showed a lot of play mistakes and a relatively high death count. Melee glass cannons are bad ideas for new players.

Jungling is hard, and it's even harder without runes or full masteries. You also don't learn important techniques like zoning, last-hitting, or how far is too far to push a lane if you aren't laning. Overall you'll get less exposure to the different champions abilities as well, as laning is the easiest part of the game to observe them during.

Not every 6300 champ is awesome. Yorick was complete garbage when he came out. Skarner, Wukong, and Leona (the other 3 champions that launched around Yorick) are all pretty mediocre. You should definitely not blow a huge chunk of IP on a new champion that might not be good, or you might not like the gameplay style of. You should spend IP on cheap champions and take advantage of the free rotation.

Two questions.

1)  Is there a good noob jungler without runes / just tier 1 runes (if so, which runes? those tier 3's are mighty pricey for the % gains over tier 1)?  By good I mean fast / efficient jungling.  Trundle looks fun but I don't know if he fits the bill.  The junglers in my solo queue level 20's games are usually 3+ levels behind everyone else which can't be good jungling.

2)  Is there a secret technique to last hitting as a melee champion without getting stomped?  If I'm melee I get crushed when I try to last hit anything because my lane partner is a pacifist and I end up living under my tower with philo stone + heart of gold.  If I try to zone anybody out as melee it backfires.  I have no idea how anybody can play someone like Nasus.  Then I see a Poppy able to farm like crazy and demolish me and wonder why my fingers don't produce those results.

I'd like to get good with a noob melee AD champ or assassin but I have been scarred so much by solo queue fights with people sprinting off the map at the first whiff of damage or wandering off into the jungle after an initiation I end up playing like a giant chicken no matter what melee champ I play.  I've watched my replays and I see times I could have lived if I had just fought and killed the person attacking me instead of running in terror.

Nunu. Don't try to jungle before SL8, because without the increased XP masteries, you won't get your first level off the blue buff/double golem. But other than that, he's really easy, he can gank a little, but especially given that you'll never get counterjungled, and that low-level players rarely ward, you'll be able to eat up both jungles with ease and blood boil will keep you moving at a good clip.

But, nunu is really jungle ez mode. You can stay out there forever if you like.

I respectfully disagree with this point Rokal. Jungling teaches you about many other aspects of gameplay, buffs, timing, lane control and is probably the easiest way to learn if a lane is being pushed too far (because you just ganked them). I think it's the easiest way to learn about the other aspects of the game, pretty much every game will have 4 laners but there's only one jungler.

The pool of junglers that work well even without runes/masteries is pretty small. Basically it's champions like Warwick, Nunu, and Fiddlesticks that have a good way to heal themselves. Other champions like Trundle will work as junglers even without runes/masteries, but you'd have to take a more cautious and less-efficient jungle route. As Trundle without runes/masteries, you'd probably want to start at wraiths level 1(smite big wraith), then move to wolves, golems, and return to base to buy/heal before going back into the jungle. As Trundle with runes/masteries, you can clear the entire jungle before heading back to base.

Jungling is definitely the role that runes/masteries matter the most for.



Most nasus players do solo top when you get to lvl 30, which means you only have one opponent to worry about zoning you. As melee in a duo lane, your team-mate makes a pretty big impact. If you find that you have a very passive team-mate vs. aggressive opponents, you'll only want to try last-hitting minions that aren't far from your own. Caster minions are probably out of the question if you're getting pushed hard, but you should be able to swing in to last hit the melee minions in front. If you are only last hitting and your opponents are playing very aggressive, they'll probably push you to your tower. At that point, they risk being ganked by your jungler if you have one. You'll have the most problems at early levels as melee vs aggressive ranged, and health potions make a pretty big impact for the first few levels. If you notice you are going to be paired with another melee for bottom lane, you might want to consider breaking from your normal item build to buy a few health pots and a cloth armor. Regrowth pendant is also a good lvl 1 purchase if you think you'll have an aggressive lane, and you can build that into philo stone for gold/5.

Another good suggestion vs. aggressive opponents is to try to bait them into using their abilities and then dodging them. Most opponents only have 1 harass move (especially at early levels), so if you dodge that you have a couple seconds to last hit without worry. I find the easiest way to do this is to be near minions that are also tempting targets (some opponents will try to last hit minions and harass you with one attack if they can, some just try to hit as many minions as possible), and then move out when I think the ability is coming. Just as a quick example: if you are laning vs a Garen that is playing aggressive, get close enough that he'll want to spin, and then run when he hits his spin. Chances are he won't hit you if you watched your range carefully and were expecting it, and after his spin ends you can either punish him or last hit minions. The exception to this is champions like teemo that don't need to aim an attack and mostly just auto-attack, but fortunately those champions are usually pretty fragile so it'll be easy to punish them for over-extending.


I think the lesson of lane control is more easily learned when you get ganked for over-extending, not when your jungler ganks your lane. I'd assume as a jungler playing at early summoner levels, you'd probably run into a lot of players on your team that don't know about over-extending, which means you won't have good opportunities for ganks. You can learn about buffs mid to late game without much risk. Junglers spend something like 80% of early game not interacting with any other champions. I think it's much easier to learn about other champions when you're exposed to them for a longer period of time.

Also, it's worth noting, that jungling at low SL totally seems to be a "win more" type of move. If you have four teammates who are reasonably competent and can benefit from you jungling, it's going to be great.

But if your team is dysfunctional, then jungling will only make that worse. And you'll get blamed.

Don't use that as a reason to not to learn jungling. But jungling, unless you're really good at coordinating ganks, is generally not a way to carry your team.

2v1 can be really rough on people who don't know how to handle it, but that's true of anything in the game. And strong picks like Udyr and Fiddles are definitely capable of swinging a game in their favor at low summoner levels (Udyr may have been nerfed since I've seen him though?).

One tip is that since people don't like to leave their lanes early, if the opposing team doesn't have a jungler you can take their camps with fairly low risk. If you don't have help at blue it may be better to start at enemy wraiths, then do wolves/wraiths/golems and end at enemy wolves before going B. Depending on if your champ has the mana for all that, of course. Doing enemy golems is dangerous because running there can put you in LoS of the enemy minions unless you can blink over the wall from behind somehow (e.g. Trynd or Lee Sin).

I'd only consider jungling at around level 30 when you have a set of jungle runes. To be honest I think the easiest way to learn *anything* from LoL is to play with one of the more experienced guys.

Junglers always receive a disproportionate amount of blame, but I think jungler vs. no jungler is the easiest way to make a difference as long as the guy who's 1v2 plays smart/conservative.

Jungling pre 20 kind of sucks.   You should do it some but it's not something you can stick too.   You have to learn all the heroes and the pool you can actually jungle with is extremely small.    You also pretty much have to invent a sustainable path by yourself because the guides are all written for level 30.

Who is your jungler and what does he do? (http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/who-is-your-jungler-and-what-does-he-do-114118)

Can't really go wrong with that jungling guide

-Garen - no mana ,very strong start.
-Annie .  q,tibbers,w,e,q,q,w. enemy team is dead .repeat next team fight.
-singed - tanky as  fck.
-amumu - all aoes ,gap closer with stun
-cait - strong start.long range. great escape
-morde - no mana. lane king.


and above all - smart casting will improve your game by at least 100% .guaranteed :)

I keep meaning to take the plunge and turn on smart casting. I'm just sad that I'll have to suck for a week or two while I get used to it.

I use smart casting on a per-character and spell basis.

Its highly recommended for high latency players.

So you have to configure your bindings at the start of each match? That sounds tedious. I'm hoping Dota2 has per character binds so that LoL will add it as well.

yeah its kinda pain, but right now I found that q,w,e on smartcast works for most champs (all I played so far in fact). While R is better left alone (breaks rumbles ult for example)

Someone mind explaining smart casting? I'm at around level 22 now, and I guess I still use manual casting.

Shift+Spell (QWER) is smart cast by default.

I use it now for skill-shot stuff like Morgana's Q. Helps a lot.

Usually when you cast a spell you get an arrow indicator or an AOE indicator, and then you click to cast. Smartcasting skips the first bit, you just cast the spell straight away at the cursor.

So I've been comp stomping with Malphite. He's ok, but I long for the coolness that is Pantheon.

I love Pantheon, but I tend to suck with him in practice.  :oh_i_see:

I am now going to play my first pvp game since the beta days. It's going to be epic.

Edit: I went 9-5-8, but the team lost.

Oh god, I had to panic pick Corki because some douchebag took Malphite. It was a blessing in disguise however, as I proceeded to kill everything in sight. I think I played him in beta as well, because it all felt very easy.

I'm tired of the fickleness that is free to play chars, so I used all my IP to buy Sion. I think he was pretty nice. I was kind of restricted in my choices as I'm going to buy the Digital Collector's Pack one of these days.

Pretty good tank guide in picture format. It's fucking huge, should save it to your computer.

Goddamn you all I knew I shouldn't have come in here.  The pub games made me cry but it was still a fun little game and now I want to play again.  I miss my mummy amumu.

I bought Teemo, he's the best. Adorable little mushroom satellite farmer.

I think I like the EasterBunny Teemo better than the astronaut one.

Bit the bullet and got Nasus to get better at melee last hits.  I still miss plenty of last hits and Q's but if I have an autoattack lane partner I have to hold back not to grab all the last hits.  My best Q farm was to have +141 at 20 minutes.  In a super aggressive lane or if I'm solo top then I'll level up spirit fire before wither to push / harass.  His passive life steal certainly helps.

I'm also much better now at baiting and dodging moves.  With all the free Ezreals I have had plenty of practice.


This is great.

That tank guide is roughly good, but it's not correct in places. Good starting point for a conversation though.

If I'm playing with a Nasus, we try and let him solo top so he can farm Q all game long. A fed nasus can really be a nightmare end game.

I bought Garen because he was on sale. What a funny character. Totally lacking cc but godlike in creep farming. My first game with him was a total failure because I tried to play him like Sion, but on the second I realized the power of using the spinny thing to slaughter a whole wave of creeps.

Garens spin thing does half damage vs creeps just to warn you.

Yeah, I've noticed it's not as killy, but all the same I'm now usually the one with most creep kills.

Man, I remember what Garen was like when I was first playing. If you think he's awesome now...

I have to stop playing at night. All the manchildren crawl out of their holes and make playing a living hell.

I also keep R as a regular cast. I want me q,w,e to be very responsive, but sometimes you need to take your time lining up an ult, and having the targeting indicator helps.

I swear, if I could channel all the puss bitch angst in this game and it's "community" into money, I'd be able to buy entire fucking planets. It's AMAZING how much people will WHINE THEIR TITS OFF at me for sucking.

Yeah, it's pretty nuts. I made a new account just to fuck around with at work and people lose their damn mind over just about anything. It was a brand new account.

Next time someone bitches, tell them to use their main account like a real man and leave the new guys alone. :) Or just say fuck you smurf and ignore them.

I generally tell them that I know I suck, I'm trying to learn the game and please fuck off. Then put them on ignore.

In just /ignore.

I just had a game where I noticed 5 minutes in that I had already ignored 3 players from my team before the game even started. Probably in an earlier game, maybe weeks ago.

Two names sounded familiar, VagXXFuker and penusjuice. But I can't find them in the roll call thread.  :awesome_for_real:

You don't even have to type to ignore any more!  Hit tab, little icon all the way to the right is the ignore button.

Yeah... that was where I noticed I had them ignored in an earlier game.  :grin:

So apparently I don't COMPLETELY suck. I had a game with Kayle tonight, ended up with 12/6/4 or something like that. Was just owning face with Trinity Force and the E/Q combo. Of course, it might have been that the opponents weren't very good and I had decent teammates, but still it was refreshing.

Nice :)

Don't use smart casting on zilean.... FYI

And that is the single best feature they have introduced in recent patches, hands down. My games tends to be very quite lately.

I thought you liked running around with a bomb on your own head!

Picked up gangplank yesterday. God its ridiculously OP. I dont know how I sucked with him when I just started playing LoL. but then again I sucked with everything but garen. Mega speed, mega damage, immune to CC, global ult (one of the few left now). Its like YOHO-HO-HO landlubber bitches!

I played Gangplank at lunch today in a 3v3 and owned much face. He really is crazy good. That was after I had gotten owned by him mid-lane in a 5v5 while I was solo laning with Caitlyn. I liked Caitlyn, she does decent damage but fuck me, Gangplank can just seriously lay down some smack if you let him get close. So does his little heal/CC (the W) thing remove slows as well?

Removes all CC. It's like a free cleanse.

That's what it was then. I'd keep hitting him with Caitlyn's net, and it didn't seem to matter one bit.

Try not using her net so much to harass, so much as to terrain juke or get away.

My newb adventures have taken me to Nasus today. I got the K-9 skin so my skill was great, but he's not quite the early game bruiser Garen is. In the late game he seems to become infinitely more useful, because of his slow and aoe effects.

Next up shall be Brand. I had some spare RP and he was on a half price sale.

Brand: so fun, as long as you can hit your EQ.

Soraka: Is the point of AP Soraka just that you farm so hard, so so hard, that in late game, you might actually have a chance of doing some damage? I can't see split pushing with her, because of no escapes.

I think early lane control is very popular now meta wise. I'd guess Soraka is good at keeping her lane safe.

Her early game harass is pretty mean if you max starfall first, and with the recent changes to her cooldowns/AP ratios she can easily heal 2/3rds of a squishies life in one go with max AP. Toss a lichbane on her and she actually hits pretty hard while keeping her team up at the same time.

I bought Morgana after seeing Totalbisuit play her, and she's pretty fun to play. I really haven't figured out her ult though, but I am getting the knack of her skillshot.

I'm alternating between her and Janna. Janna is definitely easier to win on, and getting of clutch shields and knockups is definitely satisfying. I would love to be good at playing a ganky-style hero, but for now I'll just settle on support-botting teams to victory.

I like to think morgana is my main and I'll say this: don't ever expect to be high on kills. She can harass like a motherfucker, get assists out the wazoo and generally be damn good support but you won't be going around ganking all that much.

Ok, well that's all right then. I have my mid-farm down pretty tight, I just wasn't sure if I was supposed to turn into some sort of late-game monster, or just keep pushing.

Another thought, are there some heroes that I am only going to see on free weeks, or does the game open up more at higher levels? I see a lot of the older and cheaper heroes, even when they are off free rotation (Rammus, Tryndamere, Mordekaiser, Ashe, Gangplank, Yi, Kat etc), but there are plenty of heroes I never see. I have never seen a Cassiopeia, Gragus, Irelia, Urgot, Vayne or Twisted Fate in any game as far as I can recall.

You'll see them before 30, but not till you're a little higher up as people start to purchase heroes.

Yeah, morgana is also a crazy pusher. It's not uncommon for me to go mid and push two towers on my own with her.

Morg is actually a pretty good ganker, you have two CC skills and a skill that lets you avoid CC.

Morg is pretty hard to play well though. There is a pretty high skill ceiling on landing bindings (especially on the right person) and putting black shield on the right person at the right time. I've played games with Morg where I got a clutch shield on someone just as Ashe arrow flew onto the screen and got a clutch flash into binding to secure a kill. You really need to hit those things to be effective with Morg though.

As far as ult is concerned, get good at using hourglass. Also CDR with Morg is extremely helpful.

Keys to Morgana's ult:

1) When it is running, you can still use your other 3 skills (so if you can get a W+Q combo on them at the same time it is awesomesauce).
2) Try to move around and keep as many people with the little purple umbilical in range as possible for when the stun+dmg at the end fires.
3) Use it when you are in range of more than one enemy champ, if you can land it to full BOOM on all 5 and your team is not full of morons who focus Mordekaiser it usually leads to your team getting 3+ kills.
4) Don't be afraid to die in team fights while using your ult, just try to stay alive long enough to have it pop to get the stun off.

5) Build Zhonya's Hourglass and don't be afraid to just flash into the other team and ult :awesome_for_real:

You know what I said about Katarina free week being a nightmare?

Doubly so for Talon. I think people don't realize how useless he is without farm. At least Kat will occasionally pull off a "nobody's paying attention to me while I spin around" kill.

Everytime I use zhonya's it somehow doesn't work right. It ends up cancelling both zhonyas and the ult. I am probably doing it wrong :p

Hourglass doesn't work with channeled ults like Nunu's, it immediately cancels the ult. But it works with Morg. Make sure to time it as late as you can without dying so you are invincible until the stun goes off and have as much time as possible to chase before you activate it.

I should rephrase, morg ganks well but don't expect a lot of kills, just a ton of assists. It's very hard to get last hit on champs with her but in the end that's not what matters.

Also, if you are flashing into the other team to ult, make sure you have your spell shield on yourself first.

You can't activate your ult OR hourglass if any knockup or stun CC lands on you.

Played Singed last night, but I didn't like him much. Having no damage on 2 of his abilities made me feel inadequate. We still won and I got a bunch of assists (and deaths) but only 1 kill. Whatever he's there for, I don't think it's something I enjoy.

Singed is very much a tanky type.

Singed is off-tank initiator. Your abilities are also great for chasing/running (pool o goo is the shit). Get people to chase you. Position yourself so that when there team is retrreating they are going to be following you through miasma.

Quick build guide if you want to try him again:

Run teleport/ghost

I run a 0/7/23   - Strength of spirit in defense (important), and obvious shit in support

Magic pen marks, armor or health/lvl seals, cooldown reduction/lvl glyphs, movement speed quints

Start - Regrowth pendant and 1 health pot. Try for solo top.

First back, buy Boots and as much of a catalyst as you can. I sometimes skip boots if I am 6 just get get cata. Your ult/ghost/goo should keep you alive fine.

Rush Rod of Ages, get merc treads. Next up, Force of Nature. From there I go rylai's usually, or Banshees. This can vary. If i get early kills I buy a Mejai (not recommended)


Remember, singed escapes with very little health. Get people to chase and poison them. You have to live on the edge to be a good singed. With FoN and your ult, your regen is retarded. I push lanes very hard mid game, and use my escapes to get away after half the team comes up to gank. Teleport and push.

Singed is awesome against stupid teams who chase Singed - aka most teams.

Having to type "stop" "don't chase" while watching your team proceed to chase him through towers because he "will die in one more hit" then watching them get obliterated is one of the biggest face palm moments of the game.

Incidentally, nothing funnier than rooting singed in place so he can't run anywhere.

They should make the Kenyan Marathon Singed skin.

Thanks for posting the thread on last hitting - I haven't played in forever but decided to try again after reading it and watching the videos.

Previously, I had kinda ignored the "farming of minions" aspect and focused on the PvP portion.. which was obviously a mistake, I died a lot to say the least.

I started playing Sivir the last couple of nights and focused on last hitting/farming in the early game - and so far, at my level (6, woo), I can easily out level and out gold everyone else. Last night I was level 18 while the opposition was still level 12! That was somewhat extreme, but it was never very hard to stay 2+ levels ahead of most everyone.

Now I just gotta figure out the right items to buy for Sivir, so I use that gold appropriately. So far I have focused on health boosts, mana regen, and attack speed.

Manamune would seem pretty sweet on her. She has some mana issues that I think I used to get a Chalice for her off the bat.

Stark's fervor for AS and Lifesteal, maybe Aegis as well if you wanna be super aura bitch.

Black Cleaver for straight up DPS.

IIRC, Sivir loves getting a bloodthirster late. She farms so well that it really pumps up your sustain and damage output.

Tips for Sivir... Blade goes through walls and can finish a low champ that is recalling at a tower. Take teleport so you can push like a maniac. You aren't a solo killing beast. Try to stick to team fighting and blade a great runner killer. Watch your richochet mana usage.

Everyone should watch this series of videos.

Things you may not know about LoL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd9QXNugB90&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SP8A129D65A72A6FD1)

Riven might be the most OP champ I have ever played.

And she just got a round of hotfix buffs too.

Orianna: wow, there is a lot going on there.

OMG where?! I love her but her first week she was clearly UP :(.   They need to at least fix the wind slash.

Base Stats
Attack Speed per level increased to 3.5 from 2.9
Base Armor increased to 15 from 12
Broken Wings bonus attack damage ratio increased to 0.7 from 0.6.
Ki Shout cast time decreased to 0.25 from 0.5
Valor
Shield increased to 60/90/120/150/180 from 40/70/100/130/160.
Cooldown decreased to 10/9/8/7/6 from 11/10/9/8/7.
Wind Slash
Cast time decreased to 0.25 from 0.5
Missile speed increased by 10% to 2200 from 2000.

Meh she needs more but I'm glad they improved the wind slash.   If they let her dash go through walls she might become pretty viable.   She's really popular so hopefully RIOT will keep working on her till she's tier 2 at least.

I don't think that's something they could hot fix. I'm hoping we see some further tweaks in a real patch (like Q always following your cursor) even if those tweaks aren't 'buffs' necessarily.

I'm really loving Annie so far.  First pvp game went well. 


Some of the deaths at the end were me just diving in a game that was already done because the middle and top were just getting owned by that Ryze (and their own stupidity).  I was bottom lane solo against a retarded Yi and a pretty ineffective Ashe (however, she was better than any of my teammates).  I got a nice "i h8 u annie ><" after I flattened her for like the fifth time.

Still, it was a lot of fun.  Wish I had a better  gap closer with Annie at times, but it's probably a good thing that I'm not able to dive.  I did get better at using Tibbers  to halt someone / head off gankers.  :awesome_for_real:

One of the biggest things to remember when trying Orianna; The metal lady is not the Champion. The Ball is your Champion. The Ball is Everything.

She's all about your positioning and preparation for team fights. Protection lasts for 4 seconds, so you can protect someone running in to start a fight to be able to use it again just as the damage levels become critical. When laning, use Command: Attack to throw the ball out in front of you and leave it on the ground. This means the next Attack will start from where the ball is lying rather than from you making it much harder to dodge, especially when people are bad and stand on the ball (a guaranteed hit). Also remember that the ball gives vision. Throw it into bushes ahead of your team or over walls to check for presence before walking into it. At level 1 I like to keep a ball floating in the side grass (on side lanes) just to deny juking/positioning. If you like money and not working hard to earn it, know who does the most killing on your team and use Protect on them while following behind. Since it gives Armour/MR to that person you are assisting on all kills they make while carrying the ball. If you feel guilty about this, give them the occasional speed boost with Dissonance.

A useful trick is to remember to use Alt+ keys. Just as Shift+ key is an automatic smart-cast, Alt+ key is an automatic self-cast. Hitting Alt+E will automatically cast Protect on yourself, drawing the ball back to your position. This works for other Champs too. Morg would hit Alt+E to quickly throw Shield on herself. Kayle can use Alt+R and Alt+W to Bubble or Heal herself. Saves time and any potential missclicks.

Nicely done. Annie is an awesome AP carry, and from what I have seen in mid she has an awesome combo of hitting level 6, stun tibbers opponent's face, flashing on them - incinerate, and finish with disintegrate/ignite (so look forward to level 12 if you aren't yet). Most older players have had their face raped by this before, but I'm sure you can get it down and obliterate people for a while.

The toughest part is knowing when to use da bear. And for me, I had issues with counting spells and stuff. She is a bad ass, and gets banned sometimes in draft.

Once you have flash, you should basically never not run it. I kinda wish they would remove it.

Lately, I have been on some teams where Vayne has really carried the game. She is a beast.

She is pretty brutal. Probably my least favorite ranged AD carry to lane mid against with Morgana because of her escape/chase down ability.

You can't just lock her in a pool and run away? Vayne is more or less my main but I don't really think her early laning is all that. Her damage spirals totally out of control mid-late game, but before that happens it's really hard to get trades to work out in her favor since she's so squishy. At very low levels Tumble is on a pretty long cooldown so if she gets aggressive with it you can just start hitting her and there's nothing much she can do except disengage with Condemn (the pushback). She can use Tumble to dodge skillshots, but if she's doing that then she's not using it for spacing, which a big deal since she can't harass at all outside of her 550 autoattack range.

Vayne has no hope of defeating most other ranged ADs in a solo lane unless her positioning is just godly. Don't have much experience against Morgana specifically.

I really love Vayne (she was my first 6300 ip champ too) but I just can't enjoy her compared to Cait, Trist, Kog'Maw.   Her range is too short and she gets caught out because of it sometimes.  No tumble through walls is harsh too.  Tumble stealth is nice but I have trouble using it effectively.

Is it normal to have a "pounce" ability that goes through walls? I know Jax's leap doesn't.

Yup. Jax's does as well; I use it to jump to my baron/dragon ward all the time when running away.

Does it only work on friendlies? Tried a few times on enemies and it didn't seem to work, but maybe I was just positioned weird.

Yep it works on friendlies just like Kat's Shunpo.   Caitlyn's net will even send her over walls.

Most movement abilities go through walls, including Trynd's spin, Gragas belly bump, Lee's dash thing, etc.

Gragas waddling straight through walls always looks so weird to me. Can't do it with Tumble, of course, noooo...

Speaking of Vayne, I find that 40% of the time I kick ass with her and 60% of the time I flame out. She seems like the AD ranged carry most likely to get behind and never catch up, due to her lack of utility, poor range and general squish factor. It is extremely satisfying when you do well with her though.

The thing with Jax and Lee is they need a target within range to go through walls. I tend to always run them with wards after 6, especially if I'm running them jungle.

From blue you can basically instantly be at the mid side brush. Flash over the wall, pop ward over wall, juke to the ward.

Are you implying you don't run wards with most heroes after level 6?  :oh_i_see:

No, I just tend to insure I SAVE a ward on those champs, and try to always insure I have at least one ward in reserve for GTFO situations. Having a ward handy with Lee and Jax gives you that much more mobility.

I know  :grin:

So here I will show my n00bness. What the fuck is a ward, what does is do and how do I get one? That's an item, right?

Wards are an item you buy from the consumables tab. They give you a bit of vision around where they've been placed and last for 3 minutes.

It's a consumable item that provides vision around it.

Two types, sight ward (green ward) and vision ward (pink ward).

Sight ward cost 75 gold, and only provide sigh, vision wards cost 120, and can also see invisable units, including other wards, teemo mushrooms, eve, twitch, shaco, ect;

My Favorite video about warding (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJZn68X-EaQ)

Watching pro streams, basically every time they come back early/mid game they buy a sight ward (and a couple health pots). They use them to protect their lane so that they can farm minions so that they can farm champs.

I was watching Hotshotgg, that bought probably 10-15 wards total in 5 minutes around baron time. They was a Janna with Oracle clearing them out, so he needed to replace them.

What am I supposed to be doing with Cait?  I think had a her solidly built in a bot game (trying to learn her before giving her a shot), but her damage was really underwhelming.  I was most effective at the start using her Q to harass, but her damage throughout was a bit underwhelming.

Underwhelming? Cait is one of the highest dps in game.zerk boots, IE, phantom dancer, black cleaver, bloodthirster - standard ad carry build.

Early game is all about  Q , her innate (7th shot crit) and ult. By end game her Q damage drops off and is basically a loss of dps , but her autoattacks are insane. plus traps are really good - ward like things to secure your bushes, quick cc you can drop mid fight or to setup gank. i start usually with zeal, bf sword and zerk boots. arp+mp/5 runes.

Yep, it's all about them crits. Hit some minions and harass with your range, save the 7th charged shot for a fight/gank ect;

In case you didn't know, she has the longest starting autoattack range in the game.

Ahh, I wasn't really playing off the 7 shot mechanic.  I'll have to give her a go in a few pvp rounds and see how I do.  Still very noobish as you can see  :awesome_for_real:

I had much success with stacking Armor Penetration. All ArPen runes (Marks,Quints. Started with boots, pots, rushed brutalizer, then BF sword, then Bloodthirster.

Once I have finished the brutalizer, I sit at roughly 50 ArPen, with reduces most champions armor to 0 if they don't buy armor items. If they stack armor, I buy a last whisper. If all goes well I just stack AD. There have been times where I oneshotted Ashe with my ultimate from almost max health. Hillarious.

(Have I not written that before somewhere else ?)

Also, Cait's game is lane control. Traps traps traps and your super long attack range. Force them into one side of lane, by putting out 3 traps, and then just frustrate them away from doing anything. When they step on a trap, Q them, then reset the trap.

I'm still not great with Cait. Her toolset is better early (although rocket jump + flash = total lols), but she doesn't have the attack steroid that a lot of ADs come with. So you kind of need to do well with her to get her late game going.

I haven't even looked at Armor Penetration yet, but I think I will try adding a bit to Jax next time to see if that helps with the tougher targets. Once you have good +Damage, a 20% increase in damage due to a 25 point decrease in Armor would be awesome.

A huge chunk of Jax's damage is magical; a void staff really helps with him late game.

Funny, I keep forgetting to look at the typical damage output I do - I know Sivir does practically 50/50 magic/physical, but I totally forgot to check on Jax. Thanks for the tip.

I really wish there was some sort of interface during the game showing much of what kind of damage I just did. I think it would be a handy learning tool. I also want one for what kind of damage did I just take, without having to die to find out. At this point I generally know who fucked me u[, but when I was learning it wasn't always obvious that in the big fight it was Karthus' aura owning me, not the Yi chewing on my leg.

One during champ selection would be nice too for rune selection.

I'd love to be able to have rune pages per champ instead of a flat 10 pages. Same with masteries. I almost with Dota2 would add runes/masteries so that I could set them by default using per character config files. Then maybe I could have nice things in LoL.

Don't forget customizeable recommended items that are easy to setup and use in the client as well. 

And champ-specific keyboard mappings?

Those things would make me happy in my pants. Finding out that masteries are set locally really fucked me up. I was thinking they were tied to my account so my work and home computers could share the same masteries. Not so much.

Fuck yes. This please. Now that I've moved to using smart cast I hate having to rebind my keys each match.

Thanks for the tips, everyone.  Worked out quite well first time I played her live.


My Annie is getting a little ridiculous at this level.  I think it's just time to learn some different type of champs.  My last hitting was terrible due to a really bad Ashe sitting in my lane for half of it.


That Jax was on my ass the entire last half of the game.  I had a funny moment where he jumped me when I was low health and ghost/heal on CD;  I just fired off a stun, kited him around for a bit, and then got our cho'gal to pop him up so I could combo him down.  FELT GOOD.

Tried brand again tonight after switching to smart casting a few weeks back. What a difference. It was so much easier to combo abilities in a short amount of time without having to click between each.

If you haven't tried it out yet, give it a shot.

I love some of the beginner item builds.

Looks like you are tearing it up Ras. Glad to see you are into the game, if you play late evenings EST (like after 11) and want to join us sometime hit me up. Might be fun to see the difference in skill ranges. Make sure you have flash first :)

Double Heart of Gold on Sivir Oo

I usually play around 9:30 MST to around midnight.   So I'm on fairly late.  It'll be a while before I have flash, since I'm still only level 6.   But yah, I'm having a lot of fun.  I don't think I've been called a fag yet either.  I have gotten a few people to rage quit, which was fun.

Thinking of trying to learn a either a jungler or a melee champ.  Not too psyched about the other free champs this week, so is there someone cheap I should pick up?

Looking at Fiddle, Garen, Jax.  Gangplank looks fun but he's a bit pricy with IP.    Amumu might be a bit too tanky, and I don't quite get tanks yet.  I tried one round as Rammus and was just fucking awful.

Also, would playing a support mostly be a waste at this level?  I mean, it doesn't do much good if you're being paired with people that tower dive before the creeps even spawn.  Soraka or Morg look OK to me.

Xin Zhao is free this week, and he is fun as hell since all you have to do is mash buttons and yell HEEEYA-SHA-ZO-KA-HEEYA!

Just looked at his abilities.  Yah, he looks like he's easy as hell to play.  Face roll.  Usually grabbed pretty quick in the games I'm playing.

AP Soraka is awesome at any level right now.

You might look into jungle fiddle. IIRC, he can jungle without runes and is an amazing ganker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V44mC42BIBI&feature=fvst

Might have to start with a Doran's ring for an extra 100 HP. Not really sure. I'll go test now in a bot game...

I'd probably wait until level 8 at the minimum so you can run 0/0/8 for the increased XP.

Soraka or Morg are good picks for playing around with support, because you can solo mid and carry it up if you need to (starfall pushing is hilarious), but you can also support in a lane if you like.

Also, before you buy too many champs with IP, if you feel like spending money, you should consider the digital collector's guide. It's got a really nice set of champs, even if the IP prices have come down recently.

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Collector's_Edition

Lot of very viable champs there.

I just hit level 20, all runed up, and was just barely surviving blue buff. I doubt a low-level fiddle can take it without a leash. Let me go check.

Just checked...you need a leash. Heal didn't even work :)

Yeah, they nerfed Fiddle's jungle pretty hard. It's probably doable with the right rune page, but you would need a full set of tier 3 runes.

I've tried alot of rune pages with Fiddle, and never got his jungle to work. I've tried stright up M Pen, CDR, a combo of the two, AP runes. And I can never kill Blue. Kind of annoying. Not sure how you are supposed to build him to jungle, but well, I haven't really looked hard either. Rammus and Jax are my goto jungles.

I imagine with a leash and a few hits jungle fiddle wouldn't be that hard...once you get blue just drain the world!

AP Quints, FLat armor seals, MPen marks, flat CDR glyphs. 9/0/21. Smite/Flash. You have to have the armor seals or you'll never survive. Most jungle rune pages use flat armor seals, especially for folks with any sort of life steal. I think Jax is the only character I don't use flat armor seals on to jungle, for obvious reasons.

I can't think of a jungler where you're not carrying armor or dodge seals.

Also a strong leash can make a huge difference, when I play with friends the aim is usually for the jungler to be at full hp after the level up.

Also, for the record, a leash is where someone else hits the monster first, causing it to aggro on them. Then you damage it as it tries to path to that champ. Usually solo mid character does it for you and proceeds to mid lane after. Usually have it down to about half life by the time it turns on you. It's bad ass.

Yeah me neither. Heck with Amumu and Malphite I run a full flat armor page. Nunu is the only character I think I would jungle with using different seals; either scaling AP or MR.

That's a nice thing about my nostromo, I have started making profiles on it to map for different characters. I love my nostromo.



About jungling, if you are running full armor I say you are doing it wrong. Are you starting with Cloth Armor and 5 health pots too? If you kill stuff faster it's as good as having armor, or better. It dies quicker, you get xp quicker, and they hit you less.

Armor in your reds/quints? Run Armor Penetration/AD/AS instead (or a mix, depending on champ). Much better bang for the buck.

I originally made the page for Malph since he uses his ground slam to jungle and gets the armor turned into damage. I've since adopted the page for a couple other tanks. I won't deny something else for marks would be more efficient in many( if not most! ) cases, but it works well enough and I'm tapped out on rune pages. I pretty much never have to buy an armor item now to tank if I don't want to which lets me focus on MR and AP to be more of threat. I should probably sit down and do the math to figure out what would be best there.

Generally I think ArP Quints and AD marks were most efficient (glyphs are kinda secondary). But a lot of people already have ArP Marks, so AD quints are fine. My favourite junglers are/were AS based, so I have AS quints that I use (XZ, Noc).

Is there a good case for scaling runes vs flat runes? I get the impression that the rune boni are rapidly dwarfed by item boni by level 8 or so, and so the best value is to get the biggest bonus you can at level 1, and use that to your advantage. Anything I'm missing?

Have to do it on a case by case basis. Some level out at around level 7, others at 13.

http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/rune-tips-what-secondary-and-primary-means-and-more-24255

A lot of runes you do want flat, because they matter more early: for example, AP stacking so you can dominate your lane, armor so you can survive the jungle, etc, etc.

If your problem is mid to late game though, you want the scale. So mana regen (clarity?) will often use the scaling ones, and magic resist is totally a late game one.

Precisely. Only runes which come to my mind as "late game" are CDR runes. Because for everything else the difference they make is negligible compared to items you acquire.

Huh, I like the flat ones better: I feel like I'd rather have the cooldown edge early on, when it can mean a lot more pressure, than a slightly better CDR at the end of the game. Also, by end game, you can easily cover for CDR problems with an item.

I use scaling CDR runes. At max level I get something like 15% CDR. On the characters I use them on (Alistar, Sona, Morgana) I typically don't have the mana to spam early anyway and the lower CD's are more helpful for team fights than laning. Those are the only scaling runes I use though.

Too much tanky DPS everywhere.  I'm getting torn up pretty bad as Cait in the last few games I've played.   Playing blind pick.. so you don't know until the game starts if you're completely fucked.

edit: Should point out that I'm finally facing people that aren't faceroll terrible.  I need to start building my items a little better I think as well.

You need a support! Tanky dps doesnt work so well when you've got a Janna helping to stop their every movement.

So can someone give me a quick rundown on what 'smartcast' does and why I should be using it? Just got back into playing after like 4+ months off. Maybe better key controls will make it easier to tolerate the horrible, horrible people?

It casts the spell wherever your cursor is aimed, so it saves on having to click a target. I think that's the rationale.

The more I play Morgana the more I like her; she can be a real bully in any lane, and she is very durable. As I get the hang of her skillshot I find her eminently more enjoyable to play. Even managed to win a 3 v 1 today, so pleased.

She's totally getting nerfed. It's sad.

?

No real evidence, just that being the #1 champ on Elementz's Tier List is pretty much always followed by the nerf bat.

I love morg but any kind of nerf would be pretty harsh. Already her CD's are super long and her damage is definitely not the strongest.

Morg is a beast.

Singed is a beast.

Lee Sin is a beast.

I expect some 'adjustments' soon.

They adjusted Singed to be more of a beast. Maybe they will do the same for Morgana?  :grin:

But seriously, Morgana is at a good place. There are other champs that need a nerfin' more than she does. And champs that need a buffin' too.

Morg's a victim of the meta.

Singed either has too much dps or too much tank, I'm not sure which.

Getting really annoyed lately by no-resource champs, such as Garen or Katarina. So hard to win that laning war of attrition when you can't force them out due to low mana. Had a Garen/Rumble lane a bit back that was absolute torture to lane against.

Singed has dps?!? Build some MR and he has no dps at all. His slow and fling are mean  cc  though


They are early game champs. Garen imho is a strongest early laner. Just hug tower, they will fizzle out by mid-late game, you will farm everything back if you dont feed em early

Katarina is a tough early farmer if you are aggressive like me. I tend to have to recall back at least once or twice before level 6 because I've stuck my dick out too far and make it back to my turret with like 10% health or less. But that's a me thing.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Gangplank is due up for a nerfing. He is crazy OP.

Versatile too. I wish I had the runes to start jungling him, it seems like a lot of fun.

But seeing him played in the New York IEM's as a 0CS support? Crazy.


Also, anybody have any idea how to build Akali  if I'm sub 30 and don't have the IP for new runes at the minute? Should I throw a Long Sword into the build to early activate her passive? Or just go straight for boots/hextech?

IMO Akali is a really tough character to play "properly" before you are 30 and have all the top runes you need.  You should have both passives active at level 1.

I'd probably go with Doran's blade for the health and to activate her spellvamp passive. Maybe run teleport so you can easily heal up if you end up in a brutal lane.

Is there a range limit on spellvamp? One thing I have never quite understood about Morgana is how her passive works.

No range.  Her passive is just like an item that gives spell vamp based on level which means that of activated abilities that deal damage, you get 15/25/35% back based on her level. But: aoe spells like Tormented Soil only give back 33% of that number.

Well, after one week:

Good with:
Annie

Not bad with:
Caitlyn
Cho'gath

Pretty bad with:
Xin
Jax

I'm not doing well with last hitting with anyone other than Annie.  Face to face fighting is still a bit of a problem with for me.  With Cho'gal I pretty much don't engage at all until mid game.   I'm having a hard time playing melee other than Cho'gal and have a hard time countering them.  This week Xin has been a constant nightmare for me.  That jump in and stupid spear thing are rape city.

If I can avoid getting behind early, my Cho and Cait can be pretty mean.  Cho'gath in particular, once he hits the mid game can be pretty brutal.  Last game I had a 8/2/11 and they were pretty much not even trying to engage me unless they had 3.  This Vlad kept trying to face check me and was just getting melted/eaten.  This was a 4 v 5 and I actually had the bright idea to get  Baron.  The Annie didn't want to, but didn't realize I could tank.  They got all of our towers down except my lane.  :grin:  At the end, we got an Ace and rolled over the base in very little time.

My Annie play had been pretty good.  So I was mostly playing Cho and Cait this weekend.  It was a bit rough at times, because there seemed to be a lot of surly smurfs.  Got called a fag for the first time. 

Overall, it's been pretty fun.  Thinking of getting a champion pack.  Maybe this one.  (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Champions_Bundle)

I play Jax most of the time and Xin is hard to counter if he's doing good. Last night I was behind the money curve (my lane-mate last hitted better than I did!), so it was rough getting powerful enough to stand toe-to-toe against Xin.

Well, I'm 21 now, so if I save up enough for 7 greater marks of strengths, have brute force, and then start with the amp tome instead of boots, I should be good for that. So 1400 IP. Not too bad.

I think I'm at my best with Nasus and Kog'Maw. It's funny because they're total opposites as far as playstyle goes.

Bad with Xin? Really? He's such easy-mode.

I think it's an issue of knowing when to attack/engage.  I had a few games were I facerolled to victory and a few where I felt like a complete clueless noob.

Why do people think when I'm playing Cho'gath that it's a good idea to initiate a fight at top against 2 dps or just blindly charge into the bushes? I pop someone up like once in 15 seconds.. whoopidty shit.  So many dumb melees seem hell bent on pushing team fights during a phase where I'm perenially almost OOM.   Plus now I've got to deal with them feeding the carries.

Am I missing something or are they just being dumb?

Just dumb. Many junglers don't check the mana or health on the lane they are attacking.

Ok, Gangplank has been a complete blast and was a fairly easy character to learn.  Still need to get better with his ulti, because damn is it ever useful.


preemptive edit: Yes, I still suck at last hitting.  I had a malphite (who was AWEFUL) and a semi-terrible Annie in my lane.  Annie kept wanting to facecheck me and was using Tibbers to farm creeps exclusively.

I may be way off here, but a lot of people go with a crit heavy build, because you can crit with parley (and it fuckin' hurts). Great for finishing and harassing. But, like I said, it's been a while since I paid attention to what GPs do besides ult :)

Yep, Parley procs on hit and crits ect; Why he is one of the only champs Tiamat "works on" as much as Tiamat can anyhow. It's all about them crits with GP, he has a high base damage as is, so his crits tend to hurt ALOT

Yeah I have same problem when playing cho.  Lane mates just retarded. I play fairly agressive and usually manage to bring them quite low and push them to their tower, in the process running OOM (cho's innate is garbage ). My lanemates promptly tower dive in the midst of enemy minion wave and the bitch why didnt I help ! Of course they didnt look at my almost empty mana bar and fact that if they waited 1 more wave I would be lvl 6 and have feast to secure the kill, but nooo!

Well, I did have an executioner's calling and trinity force, which provide 30% right there.  After that it's usually a Last Whisper (could go black cleaver) and then build something else.  I was going for a blood thirster, because I ran out of ideas and it was turning into a slaughter.  

I could go for a phantom dancer instead, that would add another 30% crit, but would that be overkill?

Parley just really hurts, even early on.  I start with brawler's gloves and a couple hp pots.  Seems to allow me to harass enough to get one person into an early recall, while sustaining very little damage myself.

edit: Ohh wow, Tiamat looks like it'd be hilarious in team fights.
edit2:  Seeing a lot of viable item builds for this guy.  Didn't think of infinity edge.  That'd work too.

None of that. Infinity Edge over Bloodthirster, Last Whisper or Blackclever. IE is a must for GP.

Thing with Executioners calling you need to keep in mind, it's a completely situational item, and is outclassed by any other item when it comes to bang for your buck and getting crit %

However, it will murder the shit out of lifesteal champs and Mundo. Pop it's active on them and watch them melt.

Common tactic with GP is to buy brawlers gloves at the start, and upgrade it into Averance Blade, sell it down the line once you are close to getting IE/have bought IE

IE before Trinity?  Building Trinity is nice due to on hit effects you get along the way.

Yes. IE before trinity. The damage difference is astounding. It's what gets your parley to over 1000. Who cares if they are slowed if they're dead.

Also, while harassing the every living shit out of the enemy is wonderful, if you see an opening to last hit a minion with parley, do it. It will get you into that IE VERY fast.

So...I picked up Lux at Slay's suggestion (because the chars I do play well either don't mesh or get banned in draft mode :( ) , think I am going to like her. Went 2/8/21 in my first normal game against a team with Shaco, Eve, Akali, Singed, and Ezreal. Laned with a deathwish Jax against Akali/Eve and only died once before 20 mins or so.

Need to get better at landing her snare (even more narrow hit window than Morgana's) and need to learn the range on the ult and use it a lot more.

Her shield is pretty damn sweet when you land it on the whole team :)

She's a cool character. She can be support...She can snowball with Mejai's if you get a couple early kills, though not rape train like Annie. Her ult is very cool.

EDIT: My vocabulary is cool.

I really strongly suggest against mejai.  Its bad habit. It only works if your team already roflstomping (and if so you dont need it)

I disagree. You can be having a good game without your team having one. I only would try it after like a 2-0-1 start. It allows Lux to carry, without it I don;t think it is possible for her to.

It can be a neutralizer to playing with bads, as long as you are doing well yourself and continue to. Many champs I don't like it on, though. I wouldn't recommend it on Singed, but I am good enough with him that I have carried due to that item. (yes, Mejai on Singed)

Some people hate mejai's, but if you are smart and know how to not die it can be a great bang for your buck item. With Lux's ult/snare/root, you should be able to escape ganks while landing assists and finishes.

I wouldn't recommend it off the bat with any character.

I'm with Dark. The only time Mejai's works is in situations where you don't need it. I find a nice rule of thumb for Lux's ultimate is that the range is about from one corner of your screen to the other if you're on 1920x1080.

Fine, never buy it!

Looks like it might be worthwhile to try it on Xerath: long range and passive that give armor for AP  (Xerath is new champ coming next).  Assuming that 140 AP is a decent amount of armor.

Mejai's
RoA
Rabadons

could be sick

I know its only a few months old, but is this post still relevant?  I've mostly just been playing everything that is currently free mostly to get a feel for the mechanics and such.  Now that I'm starting to figure out how things fit together I'm thinking I should probably commit at least a little to learning a hero or two more in depth.

Shen is pretty meh right now, you could probably find a better tank option.  For a tank you'd want to learn someone that's good solo top like Singed, Jarvin, Garen, Galio etc...

But the other 4 are all very relevant still and mostly always have been.

Ashe - Ranged AD Carry, Annie - AP Carry, Janna - Support, WW - Jungle

Assuming you're not dumping RP into the game already: I think you should find some champs you like (and are cheap to IP buy), and when you find one or two you like, just buy them up. Mixing up trying new stuff out with getting good at a few base ones is a good way to be.

But, take a look at here: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Champions  (sort by IP) As long as you're not learning all the same type of champion, that's good.


ps: friendly reminder that Tristana and Alistar are free.

Tried playing cass tonight since I mostly have caster runes atm. Really cool character but I can't say I like playing her, just way too squishy.

You can play her fairly tanky on Dom.  The way her fang thing works lets her do fairly good damage even with lower AP.

Thanks for this link.  Correct in that I'm not sinking RP in to the game yet, but I'm not totally opposed to doing so within a relatively short time frame.  I don't think its worth it yet mainly because I don't know enough about what I like to play to spend money on characters, but I do want to become proficient with a solid enough variety that when I get matched with a team I can be useful regardless of what everyone else chooses.  At the low levels that I've been playing at it seems like people don't play tanks as much, does that stay common?

Generally yes (same goes for supports). Everybody likes to kill stuff. The game works much better when you play with people you know.

Well should you learn those champs? yeah would be neat. But there are imho better options

AP - Annie (agree there), Brand
AD - Gangplank, Tryndamere, Yi
Ranged AD - Caitlyn,Vayne
Tanks - Rammus, Amumu, Cho
Tanky DPS - Garen, Sion

At some point you will learn the itemization, masteries and rune setups for each role and then you can play basically any champ once you know where he fits.

In any case you cant go wrong by playing free rotation champs- play various roles till you stumble on a champ you like  and just keep playing him till you become really good

Judging from what I have seen levelling up from 8-15 recently, the heroes which people have the most difficulty with are Tryndamere, Gangplank, Yi, and Xin Zhao, who are all tanky melee DPS. I would give Veigar, Ryze and Orianna nods as ranged heroes, since they can all put out some scary burst DPS when played well.

Annie, Morgana and Brand are the best mid-lane heroes I see, and they can be nicely tanky as far as AP classes go in the late game.

Anivia can be pretty awesome too, if you aren't me playing her! Actually, I think I am ready for SR with her now. Get ready for some losses boys!

 :ye_gods:

It is but you can mostly ignore the jungling and support sections.  At low levels no one really runs either.  From what I know (which isn't much), jungling isn't totally viable without runes that you'll have at higher levels and most folks don't support their jungle very well.   Most junglers I've seen at this level end up being quite a few levels down on the laners and end up being somewhat ineffective overall.  Warwick is a solid champ for a beginner, jungle or not.  Most people I've seen do pretty decent with him.

I'm starting to a see a bit more support, but not much.  I've seen a Janna and a Kayle here and there.  But it might be of more use to play a different role just to see how a support can help.   You see more tanky support than pure support.

Dark_MadMax's list is pretty similar to what I'd recommend based on my limited experience. I might add Xin Zhao to list (AD?).  He seems pretty easy to play for most people.

If you want to learn how to play a ranged AD, you can get Tristana for free by liking League of Legends on facebook still I think.

If you want to get a free tank, you can get Alistar by doing the same thing for youtube.

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1272395

Speaking of Trist...

What am I supposed to do solo mid versus Cait? I usually do okay as Trist, but wow, that was just embarrassing. The Cait was better than most, but I just found myself constantly zoned by her AA range and traps, and this was even with dodging most of her Q's. Just try to keep the lane from pushing all the way to my tower, and wait it out? Or just ask for a switch?


Also, rocket jump not jumping over her traps :(

Wait it out and try to out farm her, under you tower if necessary. Plus she opens her self up to ganks if she pushes you to far.

Purchased Ashe with IP this evening, had a lot of fun playing her.  Next up I think something a bit more tanky.

 :oh_i_see:

God I fucking hate ashe - near-infinite snare.

It is a slow, not a snare :p

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-preview-xerath

Morgana gets -0.1AP on Black Shield and 'slightly lower' spell vamp (my guess is 15/20/25).
Lee Sin picks up a few nerfs (lower Q ratio, lower range on safeguard), and Singed gets  lower poison trail duration.

Please colllect your prize at the window.

I find it amusing they think anyone would play Morg as a full support.   Happy to see Singed get nerfed a lil at least.

Nooooooooo....

Ouch. My poor Singed. Sometimes I hate being right.

Some people are that dumb, I've picked Morg in games and called mid only to have people argue "No, Morg is support so you're bot with X."

Happily in every case of that I took mid anyways and carried the team.  :awesome_for_real:

I've got enough points for Amumu now, think I should buy him?  I want something tanky, and he looks a bit quirky, which I like.

Amumu has almost always been a very solid pick because he can jungle, and because his ult is AMAZING.  If you enjoy playing him you can never go wrong with Amumu but you need to learn to jungle him.

(This is of course all assuming you are asking from a "Is he top tier" type standpoint.  If you just screw around to have fun play whatever you want!)

Thanks for the info.

I can see why people ban Fiddle now.  Guy was ganking the shit out of me.  Plus combined with Akali, he was able to zone me pretty hard in bot.   Very smurfy too, guy talked like he'd be playing the game forever.  We still won the game, which was somewhat amazing considering we didn't push a lane to their base before they were whacking on one of our inhibs.  But, I think we played the team fights better for the most part, and were a lot more tanky than they were.  Also, we got Baron when he was up and they didn't at all.

Ohh, and now that I'm level 11 and getting matched with 12s?  Fuck flash.  That shit needs to be gone.  

At what point do people start playing draft?  I've been OK with blind mode up to this point.  Might start getting odd once I'm playing a majority of people not playing just the free champs.

I got smurfed by an Akali today, they were putting out simply sickening amounts of burst damage.

I messed around with Draft a bit, but frankly I found waiting for some semi-afk bellend to make unhelpful ban picks to be less fun than advertised, so I reverted to blind pick.

I've been avoiding draft because ohgodwhatwillIdoiftheybanVayneandTrundle. Planning on using it to get acquainted with the system after I'm familiar with a few more champs and preparing to get into ranked.

I guess draft is good when you have the flexibility and skill to build effective counter comps, as it is I am still going to try and pick from the same 3-4 champs and the same single set of runes and masteries, so Draft doesn't really offer me anything.

Started playing this a couple of weeks ago.  Mostly trying out the free champs in bot matches to get my sea legs.  Have some real matches under my belt now and I've had the most success with Zilean.  Obviously depends on what kind of clown you get paired with but at these sub-10 matches his bombs get a surprising number kills from people leaving fights a wee bit too late.  Not sure how good Zilean is overall but zipping around the map and saving/slowing people has been a blast.

I want to see about a solid melee damager but I'm horrible at it.  Early game I have a hard time putting pressure on ranged champs.  Later on judging just what I can do and when to go all-in on a kill have ended up really poorly.  Yi, Nocturne, and Xin Zhao have all been embarrassing but I was passable with Wu Kong.  Any suggestions?  Kassadin looked like he might fit as he looks super mobile but I'm gun-shy about dropping the 3k+ on him.

Xin Zhao is really good for pubstomping once you get the hang of him. Lots of free kills. If you're going to find a melee dps to get good with, not a bad choice.
Nocturne's fun as well, and is an excellent jungler/roamer.

Kassadin's a lot more finesse: you need to be really good with your micro and paying attention to resources to do well with him.

Zilean is awesome. And bomb/rewind/bomb will totally catch people for a while. But you need to play with people who will understand what he's doing to really reach his potential.

Try Tryndamere. He can be a beast, and his ult should at least let you get a kill or two :)

"Good char for a noob" thread has turned into "Throw out random champions you like to play" thread.  :uhrr:

Dude, it's page 10 on an f13 thread. You're lucky we aren't talking about Diablo 3 or something by now.

So the witch doctor seems like the D2 necro but I'm torn.

Well he's currently #1 on the game's most well-known Tier List for draft mode competitive play -- i.e. he is considered the single best hero in the game by at least one knowledgeable source -- so I'm guessing you shouldn't worry.

Please tell me you aren't talking about Elements.

Zilean is a one-trick pony.

Have to see what next week gives in terms of free champs I guess.  I don't mind playing a hard champ as long as it's fun and there is a good chance it's going to be competitive if/when I get good at it.  I picked up Morgana the day before they said they're going to nerf her and the only other unlocks I have are the two free ones.  Trist, who I'm okay with, and Alistar, who I'm not.  I'll probably drop points for Zilean and that still lets me nab a 3k champ if something tickles my fancy. 

Given that spread I feel like I should grab someone that zips in, rips someone's face off, then zips out.  Most of those types of chars are gold dependant no?  Last hitting with melee seems really  :uhrr:.  Maybe that's my problem with them.

Garen or Jax are good melee dpsers to learn with. Spin to win and all that. And Jax can actually last hit as melee a little freer than you'd expect, because people learn pretty quickly that if they try to harass you, you're just going to jump on them.

That and his w makes up for mistakes while last hitting. If you goto last hit and happen to not kill the creep, hit w and it will reset the attack timer and you get another hit on it right away. That is also a key technique to his burst. DO NOT hit w THEN jump on someone, always always always jump, hit, then w for a second bigger hit.

Sure. What, is he dead to you or something?

Elementz tier list is hilariously awful. He gets his ass kicked in one game by a tier 4 character and suddenly they are tier 1.

Being bored with WoW and needing something to play in addition to WoT I started up again.  I'm playing Amumu regularly once more but I'm still clueless on what these roles mean.  The few wikis I've found haven't exactly clarified what a pusher, tank, etc are either.  I'm sure I'm horrible but I thought tanks pull creep & tower aggro so the deeps youre in the lane with can wipe 'em out.

Well, I called it 'well-known', not 'awesomely best ever'. If there are other, superior lists or discussions going on elsewhere, I would be happy to hear about them.

Tanks are mostly about being able to take a lot of damage.  By itself, that's not too useful, but they generally do something else, too.  Most commonly they're supposed to initiate, which means they jump in first, usually with some kind of stun or something (like Amumu's Bandage Toss) which singles out a target for your team to kill.  Since the tank is the first one in for these situations, they generally need more health to survive.  There are some non-initiating tanks (tanky DPS is not uncommon), but for a pure tank character (like Amumu) they're generally supposed to initiate and absorb damage.

While you can pull creep and tower aggro as a tank, that's usually what your creeps are there for.  Even as a tank, you don't want to be taking any damage that you could direct towards someone less important, and that "someone less important" is generally your allied creeps.  If your teammate is low and you can pull some hits off of him, then go for it, but the AI is generally simple enough that if someone's in trouble from creeps/towers, they can get themselves out of trouble easier than you can.

Pushing is mostly about towers and creeps, I believe.  Pushers "push back" the enemy lines by being efficient at killing creeps and towers.  This category is a bit fuzzy since a lot of champions can do this fairly well (especially AD champs).

Ah.  Well then I'm laneing with some incredibly poor players than.  More than once I've bandage-toss stunned then ultimated some people.. only to see that my lane partner has run off as I get creamed. 

Might just be because I'm only level 8/9. Last game I just focused the creeps to let them push the towers and let the guy run around shooting things on his own after he ditched me twice to the fiddlesticks/ pirate chick combo and we won in the end.

Regardless of whether or not that tier list sucks I can say I see Zilean played constantly in tournaments and top pro games.   He even gets banned quite often.   He's definitely not a shitty hero.


I'd also like to know of a "good" tier list.

Its just that tier-lists in this game are a little silly, given how wildly out of whack character balance is. Any discussion is further compounded by the fact that, two people can run the same hero, but given different rune-sets and mastery selections that same character will play very differently.

Tier 1 : Champs I like to play and are good with.
Tier 2 : Champs I'd like to try
Tier 3 to Infinity : All Other Champs

Elementz's list are a good start. It's inherently biased (one person's viewpoint) but at least he tries to justify things. I think it definitely suffers from being a reactionary tier list as opposed to a forward thinking one, but that makes it more reliable.

Yeah, the whole point of tier lists is for games with wacky balance. And true, you can get into pick vs counter pick stuff, but look at the top of Elementz solo queue:

Morgana, Karthus, Lee Sin, Brand, Akali, Kassadin,, Caitlyn, Kennen, Nocturne, Garen, Fiddlesticks, Annie

Given the goal of the solo queue tier list, (champions who you can carry a win with without world-class skills) that seems pretty on the money. Can you carry as Twitch? Sure. But you've got to put a lot more work into it.

I'm thinking of buying a fighter type next. (I have Ashe and Amumu so far).  I am thinking Garen, but I am not sure if people will expect him to go with a tanky build more often?   

Generally when I see a Garen I expect them to act like a complete tard.

Master Yi is extremely cheap IP-wise...When you say fighter type do you mean melee?

I like Tryndamere...he is a solid champ. Lee Sin is a beast about to get slightly nerfed.

Uh. This is the thing. Out of that list, the only ones you can reliably claim to be good in every solo-queue are Annie, Brand and Kennen. Nocturne maaaaybe (is he snowballs out of control and the other team has no brains).

I'm hearing (but have yet to see) that Trynd is currently a very solid solo top champion.  Hope to test that this week sometime...

He's got good sustain. His problems are still the same as ever though.

Yeah, I mostly just mean melee and less tanky.  I played Master Yi some yesterday since he is free, and he was a little too much of a glass cannon for what I'm thinking of.  I'm open to suggestion/being told I'm wrong about that though.

Have you tried an of the assassin style chars like Talon, Lee Sin, Akali?  Lee Sin is the most melee of them probably and is certainly not a glass cannon.  All three of them are very good right now and it's so much fun to just ignore an enemy team as you fly to their squishy carry in back and just explode them.

Trynd is and isn't a glass cannon, his ult makes him invincible for 6 seconds or so but outside of that you can get stunned and blown up pretty easy if you get focused at all.  He's actualy one of my favorite characters but I tend to only play him solo queue instead of submitting my team to me playing him.   :oh_i_see:

Garen is fine.  Like K9 said, he tends to have a lot morons playing him. Most of them are also complete dicks about their stupidity.  Anyone seeing you playing Garen is just going to expect you to spin around like a tard and tower dive.  Then call everyone on your team a fag after you die.  You can help change this perception.  :awesome_for_real:

Trynd is solid, and cheap as well.  If he's fed, he turns into a goddamned nightmare.  Most Trynd players are some of the worst behaved you'll ever see.  At the end of the game they can really push an advantage.

Also cheap: Warwick, Nasus, Jax.  I haven't played Warwick or Nasus.  Warwick can, from what I've seen, really wreck someone's day if he can close on them. Jax is a bit of a different beast, but his Q makes him a great skirmisher.  Just, in my experience, need to play him a bit more cautiously early on.

Little more expensive: Gankplank (only actives are ranged, however), Blitz (I thought he was 6300, but site is showing 3150), Xin Zhao.

Blitz, Anivia and Corki went from 6.3k --> 3.15k ip.

WW seems to have a fairly thin line between being deadly and nothing more than an occasional suicidal suppress-bot.

I don't have tons of experience playing tanky DPS myself, although I think you have to be more of a bully in lanes than ranged heroes. Playing as a support nothing depresses me more than having a Trynd or Garen who trys to get first blood, or a gank and gets whooped down to 10% health, then just sits behind the minion wave for a couple of minutes letting their HP tick up. You cannot be passive as a melee and expect to do well. The advantage I see is that most melee have a lot more lee-way in bullying enemy champions and getting out alive.

I see Nasus cleaning up in quite a few games, I get the impression that his skillcap isn't so high. He is a bit of a carry though, and needs a passable early-game feed to dominate later in the game.

Nasus requires some solo time up top to do really well. If you don't have a jungler, this might not be a good pick. If he gets to farm up his SS - look out late game.

Nasus is one of my favorite champs, great early sustain, deadly late game if you get that Q farmed up. I'd check out Hyfes guide on any LoL site.  Thing I like most about him is most people don't expect you to be able to take off 1/3 or more of their life with a really short cooldown ability.

My biggest issue with Nasus (who I am also a big fan of) is that currently he almost has to solo to get his levels and Q farm.  But he loses lane to a LOT of champions 1v1 if the two players are of equal skill level.

Nasus is the best. A crit siphon strike is just broken. I've seen hits for over 1500 damage with that thing.

He's cheap. I'll have to give him a shot.  A problem with low level games, however, is that you're more than likely going to have a lane partner.

Sometimes you'll have support, and most of the time they'll be just trying for ganks or cs.   :oh_i_see:

He's fine with a lane partner, just make sure you get last hits with your Q as much as humanly possible. If you are getting zoned out and can't feed your Q, switch gears to maxing your AOE so you can hold your lane and get a ton of gold. I've pulled off an AP Nasus in that situation a couple times and it worked really well. It's not as good as criting for 1500, but you'll still be useful.

Anytime anyone on the other team chooses Nasus I choose Cass and counter-lane them. They have to switch lanes or they can't farm Q at all, at least until they buy a lot of magic resist.

I also play a fair amount of Nasus, I have a set of runes with MR and one with Armor depending on who I think I will be laning against. In general if you can make it to level 6 in good shape you're ok.

Farming with AOE is kind of a waste, Nasus without farmed Q is not particularly valuable.

I agree he's not fabulous if he can't farm his Q, but using his AOE lets you get way more gold than most other melee champs would be able to against a Cass. I feel like Nasus can still bring a lot to the table in teamfights through his slow and armor debuff even when he can't bring damage, which is a fallback position other melee carries don't have. His AOE also makes it nearly impossible to push down his tower without killing him. I just really like how fault tolerant he is.

The solo queue list is for heroes that you can carry with by being better than the other team.   Janna isn't even tier 1 on that list for obvious reasons.   In some respects it's probably only a list you use when you are first or second pick.

Ohh god, this next free week of champs is going to be hell.

edt: Altough, I do admit there are a few here I'd be trying.

What? What? No stealth champions. Only Vayne and Kassadin as assassins, and not too much derp potential. It's going to be awesome!

I'm actually really excited to be playing Nidalee, Riven, Kog`Maw, Yorick. They're all on my "try out/maybe buy when they go on sale" list.

That said, it's been literally 17 weeks since Irelia has showed up. Booooo.

Kassadin looks fun

Kassadin is probably one of the most enjoyable characters in the game to play if you get fed.  You just riftwalk in, kill the person of your choice, riftwalk out and skip away until you feel like doing it again.

Could have sworn Irelia was free like 3 weeks ago.

Nope. :( June 14th.

No Yorick this week.   Weird, says Riven on the site.  Link points to Yorick.

I'll probably try out Kog'Maw, Vayne, Fiddle, Garen, and perhaps Morg.  I think she'll be snagged pretty early as she's pretty strong at this level of competition.   I was having all sorts of problems with her on Gangplank, but I think that's because she could land that root when I came into range.  Citrus helps, but it still hurts like a bitch.  (Didn't help that center fed her pretty hard).

For some reason, I just think with these choices, this week is going to be really smurfy for those of us low level folks.  Luckily, I'm nearly level 12 so I'll be able to flash away from Fiddle in a few games.   Fucking Fiddle.

As a general rule (and one I find myself overlooking at times), don't commit to a team fight unless you have eyes on the fiddle. If you don't, assume he is in position to get all crowstorm on your team's face. Ask yourself - 'if I were a cocksucking fiddlesticks, where would I be waiting?'

I had a game last night playing as Maokai (?) where I chose my masteries wrong. Went for physical damage instead of AP, so I had a real slow buildup to anything. We won the game purely on the guy playing Nassus. He was a bragging fucker, but they just could NOT seem to kill him. Not sure why. Meanwhile, there were a few times where I popped my ult and jumped into Fiddlesticks, only to see him just hammer the shit out of me. I played him once, but don't remember his powers enough to know what the hell he was doing to me (obviously I was in melee range). So what the fuck was he doing to me?

The only time I like to see fiddlesticks is when he is on my team and Thrawn is playing him.

Probably first feared you, and then held his arms out and drained you (channeling spell). The shit hurts, especially on a fed fiddle.

I played two rounds as Nasus last night and actually did pretty good the first game (first time out with him), getting several kills and dying only a few times.
But the second game, phew that stunk. Up against Kennen and one other, who were doing a really good job keeping me from farming - ended up with 2 kills and 7 deaths and a few assists. Since you need to farm for your Q as Nasus, keeping me from doing that really hurts my damage abilities later in the game. They had a Fiddle which would jump into a team fight and basically toast us all. Since they were *always* running around in a team towards the end of the game, it was pretty hard to counter (and I couldn't take Fiddle on my own unless I got real lucky).

Did you have a jungler? I've solo top laned (as nasus) vs 2 before and I was pushed back but still managed to farm up Q pretty well plus had a lin sin who came up for a gank at the right time to help. I agree vs ranged he has some short comings, best thing might be to build up spirit fire and try to zone them out.

No jungler, had a lane partner but he might as well not have been there. I did get spirit fire going to keep them away but the ninja has that long-range throwing star and (now I remember) Singed with his counter Trail just made it hard on all of us. :P

That's what it was, lifesteal. I forgot he had that.

Ugh. So Nidalee and Kogmaw both kind of require camera being unlocked to do their stuff. So how do you people who do this manage it? Are you holding down space a lot? Are you using the edges to scroll? Clicking on the map a lot? It just feels like a whole nother thing to juggle.

Edges to scroll. I have no idea how anyone plays locked given how far you can zoom out.

The only time I really need space is when I lose my champion in a big fight (and I think that's just me being special). Usually keeping your champ centered is just wasting half your screen.

I ended up getting Tyrn and he is pretty much just what I was looking for, thanks for the input all.  Next up, a mage!  Both Morgana and Fiddlesticks are free this week and I had fun with both of them.

I used to press space while getting use to it, but just stopped. It's pretty easy to click around and just scroll around using the mouse.  Like ezrast, I tend to lose myself in team fights, but that's just me sucking at team fights.

One problem I have with the scrolling is that there is no way to adjust the camera scrolling independent of the mouse scroll speed. My mouse sensitivity is pretty high so I can move the cursor around, but it makes the camera move at ludicrous speed.

But I have gotten used to the unlocked camera more and more. Especially in Dominion.

There is also a bug that comes up occasionally with dual-monitors where the mouse is not totally captive in LoL and if you go off the side of the screen into the other monitor space your cursor moves and if you click it tabs you out (happens to me about 1/3 the time since Dominion went live).

I scroll a bit, but I also use the minimap a lot.

Not having my side scrolls is the only reason I don't play LoL across all my monitors instead of just on one.  :cry:

Working my way through this week's free champs and christ is Kassadin fragile early game.  Even with a couple of HP pots I usually need to bail before I can buy anything useful.  Have to return to him later on as once he gets rolling it's pretty sweet.

Kog'Maw seems pretty hilarious once he's decked out with attack speed and proc items.

Going to play some more Fiddle next few days.  I really want to like him and I hear he's a good fuck-with-you champ but I haven't quite made him work yet.

Tried Shen on a Dominion game last night. He's uhhh pretty good. We lost the game, but I ended up with a 7/6/4 - which for me is a goddamn accomplishment, not dying more than I killed that is. But we lost, so it really wasn't that great. For some reason, my record on W/L record on Dominion is horrible, but my W/L on SR is decent.

I tried Fiddle, Vayne and Morgana last night.  Fiddle was hilarius.  I had no idea what I was doing with him.  I couldn't lane worth crap (probably should have just jungled) and my gank attempts were pretty bad.  I had probably my worst PVP game ever with him.

Vayne was a bit easier.  Plays a bit like Cait.  Ridiculous closer, but incredibly fragile.  I see this as a character I could get decent with.

Morgana was a mixed bag.  I didn't do great with her, but I didn't do horrible either.  They stuck me in bottom, because Ashe wouldn't get out of mid.  The GP with me was goddamned terrible and were were going against a smurf duo of Garen and Xin (serioulsy, they had matching names).   I got some kills on both of them, but not before the retarded pirate fed them.  I'm not sure how she's supposed to kill people outside of using her ulti.  The root does pretty damn good damage, what do you follow up with?

If anything, this changing of chracters has shown me that I need to have everything outside of my ulti on smart cast.  I'd put the ulti on.. but I'm afraid that'd make for some really awful GP ults in the future.

Wait, you had laning problems with Gangplank and Morgana? Goddamn, that Plank player must have been TERRIBAD.

Morg doesn't really kill so much as facilitates kills.

"Gangplank, they're in the bushes don't go over there."

* Gankplank runs off to the bushes and dies horribly *

 :facepalm:

I did fine.  I maybe died once to the that combo.  All they did was sit in the bushes, so I really couldn't push the lane.  The Gangplank was useless.  I was pretty much just zoned out and had to bait them out and gank them with the ulti, which worked well enough.

Ideally, top and bottom should have switched or bruiser should have come down in my spot.  Most favorably the Jax, who was tanky as hell all game. He would have put a massive hurtlock on those guys.  

We still did pretty good, considering our Urgot disco'd at level 8 and it was 4/5 a majority of the game. 

Other than snaring and pooling people already low on health she's not.

Awesome, I was on the right track then.  :awesome_for_real:

The Ashe was funny, "Put down a trap a next time. It'll help both of us."  This was while we were both running for our lives.  She didn't make it.

"I think you have me confused with someone else. "

My trouble with Fiddle was that his auto-attack damage seemed awful.  Once you get his AP up it doesn't matter but early on you really have to make the most of his life-drain if you want to get any sort of serious harassment going.  When I tried that I felt like I had to take huge risks or just let them push to tower and fight with it for last hits. 

I'm leary of jungling at all because I'm under level 20 so a) I have no runes yet and b) it forces someone else into a 2v1 lane most of the time.

This.

Kills on Morgana are very dependent on her ultimate. In principle running her ult until it stuns the person, then dropping the pool and re-snaring them (+on use items if you have them) is the highest burst option, but even then it isn't going to bring anyone tanky from 100%-0. On the flip side, you are very hard to gank yourself, and you are good at wearing people down.

Though to flip it around just a bit, her kills on dominion can get pretty sick when you consider your tower as the person you're assisting. Rooting enemies and ult'stunning them next to your tower racks up kills like nobodies business.  Plus, the little line when they're channeling on your tower? Perfect aiming guide for a surprise Q-root

I find that against mediocre lane opponents, it's pretty easy to get a lvl 6 kill by ulting, snare, soil, ignite. (repeat if they flash). If you've worn them down, but they're not getting close, you can do the opposite: snare / flash/ ult/ soil.

Against people who aren't good at last hitting, it doesn't really matter: you should be able to dominate them in CS. She's hard enough to gank that you can just push to their tower (even their second tower, as long as you're warding) and watch them lose CS left and right.

Also, if you are pushing them back/out of lane, you are going to have some awesome ganking opportunities top/bottom. Any snare landing in a gank will force a flash.

She's one hell of a defender in Dominion. I died like 2 or 3 times trying to take a Morg who wouldn't engage me until I tried to take the tower, then she'd slow me until the turret finished the job. I was playing Shen. Luckily I realized I had no chance to get her out of there without some serious focus fire and went to take another tower.

Wow there is a lot of what I would consider dubious advice to downright misinformation in this thread.

Since it seems like we have a contingent of people who are working on finding champions they will enjoy here is my personal rundown on why you should or should not bother with the champs that are free this week.

Fiddlesticks:
Why you should -- because he can jungle without runes and rape people who don't ward and aren't disciplined enough to find fiddle before they engage in a team fight next to that bush... Also he can lane against almost anyone who can't break his lifedrain channel.

Why not? -- he is really really squishy which means mistakes = death, you must know all the abilities that can break your drain.

Kassadin:
Why you should -- because assassin champs can carry games almost by themselves, thrive in games with lots of dying going on and prey on bad map awareness. Kass' escapes mean he will forgive you for your mistakes.

Why not? -- he is insanely weak pre-6 but you still need to get farm. If your jungle doesn't exist or will not gank well you may have a hard time getting the power needed to one shot kids. Also you need the jungle to give you every blue from the 2nd spawn on and you can't solo it for shit. YOU MUST SOLO LANE THIS CHAMPION if going 1v1 intimidates you still or your games are so unorganized you can't really count on getting a lane to yourself Kass is a poor choice.

Malphite:
Why you should -- his ult is a super fast, effective engagement tool. If you find games at your level basically come down to which team has the better ad carry since teams can't prioritize targets for shit and the ad carry just stands in the back and kills everyone Malph can be your solution with his hard to stop damage on the carry and his attack speed debuff.

Why not? -- Malph is pretty garbage. He needs farm but can't get it against most opponents. He needs a solo lane but is a weak solo laner. In a duo lane unless you run two mana based heavy harass champs and take Clarity your lane will be garbage.

Morgana:
Why you should -- because she has been consistently amazing since the dawn of LoL. Her kit will always be good. She can get her farm in any lane setup and isn't the worst duo laner in games with no jungle and no thought put into team comp.

Why not? -- people ban her in ranked and draft quite often. Her skill shot is very slow. Her gameplay could be considered quite passive until she farms up AP + Hourglass at which point she can initiate fights.

Nidalee:
Why you should -- In a game where you are being forced to duo she at least has a heal a big poke and traps can be fun to keep them out of brush.

Why not? -- Nidalee probably requires more practice to learn how to effectively use her cougar skills to cs than anyone in the cast. She requires a very high level of micro and also you need to know where you can jump through walls and where you can't. After all that practice you are left with a fairly mediocre champion that really only shines in coordinated games where split pushing is a useful strategy.

Shen:
Why you should -- You can save your idiot teammate's life from anywhere on the map.

Why not? -- Your better off carrying the game not saving your idiot teammate's life. Also nobody has unlocked a good build for Shen he's basically weak across the board.

Garen:
Why you should -- He's simple, his kit is ridiculous, his item builds are fairly simple his playstyle is fairly simple. You can ks shit with your ult. He can duo lane with the right partners and really devastate squishy enemies in a duo.

Why not? -- Garen seems to make people turn into retards. Top men are trying to figure out why. Teemo is a borderline hard counter to Garen.

Kog Maw:
Why you should -- Huge damage. Long range pokes.

Why not? -- Because Kog Maw can't survive anything and your teammates aren't good enough to protect you and peel for you. You wont do that much more damage than many other AD carries and you will die ten times easier.

Vayne:
Why you should -- Tumble is fun, her runes are fairly cheap (she uses lots of attack speed), she can escape with tumble, her ult and her knockback. Also in your scrub elo nobody is going to get oracles or pink ward a lane to stop you. WIN!

Why not? -- Because she is a shorter ranged AD carry, which means if you are at the point where AD carries go bot against another AD carry means you are at a disadvantage that takes good play to overcome. She also asks more of her lane partner than someone like Ashe or Cait which can be a bad thing if your lane partner is likely to be a sack of shit.

Riven:
Why you should -- No mana. New car smell. Pretty good damage.

Why not? -- Because Riven isn't that great, her stun is very short duration and therefore she doesn't add much of anything to a duo lane. She probably (I don't know for sure) can't jungle for shit without runes and her solo top game requires some metagaming and knowledge of matchups that you probably don't have. Its still really early on Riven, if you just started playing its probably best to play champs that have established guides that the majority of the game agrees work, Riven is not at that point yet.

tl;dr aka final recommendations:

DO TRY:
Kassadin, Morgana and Fiddlesticks. Also worthwhile are Garen and Vayne.

DO NOT TRY:
Kog'Maw, Shen or Nidalee.

If anyone found this useful enough that they'd like a similar post next free week pm me or post here otherwise I probably wont fucking bother. Also if anyone disagrees I'll cut you and then explain how I'm right and you are wrong.

Hoax forgot to mention (I'm assuming) that he is reffering only to Summoner's Rift, not Dominion play since so many people here are talking a lot about it.  :awesome_for_real:

Yes. If you want to play TT or Dom figure shit out yourself. That said Kass is probably S-Tier or AAA-Tier on Dominion and decent on TT so I maintain that of all the free week champions you absolutely must try Kass, doubly so because he has some of the cooler skins in League and nice particle effects.

I agree with most of Hoax's list but I disagree pretty strongly that Kog'Maw is not worth trying. Against new/poor players you pretty much have a click-and-win button in your W, since said players rarely compensate for the range boost. More importantly, I think learning to use your R effectively is going to teach a myriad of transferable skills -- the most obvious being 'how to predict enemy movement and hit skill shots', but also mana management and effective-vs.-pointless harassing.

Also he just has the most ridiculous auto-attacking output, and it is hilarious to chew through enemies once you get your bloodrazor/W maxed. He's a great hero to learn proper positioning on, not because he is good at it but because the rewards for standing in the right place in a teamfight are so remarkably satisfying.

I'll add that Kassadin is very much a counter pick to mages. Getting matched against a physical character in blind pick makes you way more likely to get stomped in lane phase.

Also: oracle's in lane to counter Vayne? Is that... a thing? That happens?

The first char I ever played was Zelian. and this was pre bot games, so I was kinda thrown into the fire.

Why not just try whoever you want to try?

If you need a list like this you probably aren't very good, might as well have some fun, learn, and play whoever you find appealing.

Pretty much. Even if you end up sucking with a free week character, you've learned about that character's abilities, strengths, and weaknesses if you ever face them in a game. No reason not to try free week characters, basically.

I bought the physical package with like twenty chars which was probably a mistake playing morgana for twenty levels.

Agreed. Amumu is supposedly not all that great but I have fun with him.  Meanwhile Aklai is supposed to be fantastic and I don't enjoy playing her at all.

Mainly, because if you are just coming to the game and there are like 75 champions, its pretty intimidating.

Amumu is probably the best initiating tank in the game. He gets banned in pretty much every game I play, which is sad, because I love playing him. He jungles like a boss and his damage scales off AP so you don't have to stack armor to be  threat like Malphite.

I've never once seen anyone complain about having an Amumu on their team :)

Only three true tanks in the game. Amumu is the unofficial 4th. And arguably the best.

So many bad Kassadins tonight. Every game I went into, Kog on my side was picked right away.  Ended up playing Cho twice and Garen once because all anyone was playing were the available carries.  Come to think of it, most of the Kogs were awful as well.  I think I saw an AP Kog and another Kog that thought he could face check a 2 on 1.  Repeatedly.  Guy must have died like 20 times.

I liked Garen.  Waiting for cooldowns was a bit annoying at times, but he can bully like a boss. 13/6/12 my first game with him.  Should have had more kills.. but ulti on CD.  :awesome_for_real:

Must just be my low-level ass then.  I've had people grouse at me for picking him instead of Alistair.

Faced off against a BRUTAL Vayne last night.  Granted, it didn't help that she was the only one with Flash due to being over level 12, but yowza.

If you haven't noticed, people in this game will bitch about ANYTHING as they proceed to wander around the map getting killed or not helping you when you get killed.

Yeah you can push  make people hug tower and feel like bitches early game. Too bad Garen is mostly non factor mid to end :(

YEAH, Garen is horrible mid game... as he spins and silences and eats people.

Since I was getting a lot of kills and our Alistair couldn't tank worth dick (and liked to wander around the forest on his own); I built atmogs (that's atma's impaler + warmogs, right?) to go along with a trinity force (first), merc treads, and was working toward I think a FoN (probably not the best idea).  I was doing good damage and taking a fair beating.  The Jax on their team was a bit difficult to handle, but anyone else on their team I was just blowing up.  Decisive Strike was knocking 33-50% health of the squishies and Judgment was tearing it up in team fights. 

I felt a bit limited at the end, but I was still a force in the game and they had to focus me or watch their team get torn up.  I think I did pretty good for my team being pretty bad. Our Annie, while beastly, was a bit dumb.  She was initiating really bad team fights with Tibbers. Racking up kills but dying a whole lot.  With better application of my shield I could have done better, but I'm so new to Garen, I honestly forgot it was there some of the time.  :awesome_for_real:

I think I could end up playing him about as well as I play my pirate.  Definitely fun to not have to be passive in lane. I was really taking it to a Kassidin/MF combo. 

Just played a great game of SR as Morgana, on a team with Garen (who laned bot with me to start), Vayne, Ashe, and Kass. How can you NOT succeed/farm/rack up assists with Morgana? Holy shit, she is AWESOME. Ended up with 5/9/16 - I expect to die more than I killed especially with a support role. I don't use her E shield enough at times in big team fights. The team we were against had a Fiddle, Gangplank, Vayne, Kog'Maw and the worst Teemo I've seen. He kept running too close to me, so I'd soil him and even when he had Fiddle laning with him against me and Garen, either I would kill him or Garen would. We ended up losing no turrets and just raping faces left and right. Something like 57-34 K/D ratio.

Get used to hitting opt-e (ctrl? alt? I have no idea what these things are on windows keyboards) on Morgana. Being able to instant self-shield yourself is crucial.

You can set your Self/Smart cast to E, and then when you don't have anyone targetted it will self cast.

"true tank" = taunt?  Shen, Rammus, Galio?

In all honestly imho true tank = beefy character with peel(=cc) and initiate. Leona, Malphite,Cho , Amumu,Alistair, Singed   all fit perfectly .  Taunt is not the end of it. On the other hand no matter how tanky you build morde its not a friggin tank - as it does not have CC, initiate  or heck anything to make other team pay attention to him

Garen scales well into late game depending on how you build him. Most people make the mistake of building him with a lot of tanky items, but a hybrid build works best.

Good point.. I had an Alkai the other day boast that he'd been 15/3/6 in his previous match but still lost so we'd better not suck like his last team.  He proceeded to go 4/8/0 to an Alistair/ Pirate Bitch/ combo and was mouthing off in TC quite a lot before we surrendered.

Ways to know that someone is going to be bad:

1. They claim they did great in their last game
2. They bitch because you failed to ban such-and-such character
3. They bitch as soon as one of the first people on your team chooses a completely reasonable character
4. They choose a character because they are "OP" rather than because they are good with them

Everyone person I've ever had say "Don't worry, I do great as X and I always win mid." has fed their lane and lost us the game.

I had a guy go AP Janna mid in a recent ranked game. He did pretty well against a bad brand! But 95% of the time this is true. I am SOOOOO tired or 5th picks running our 2nd AP carry.

Because the #1 mistake people are making, if they care at all about winning and playing with and against better opponents asap is trying out every single champion. It takes more games then most people are willing to admit to "get" a champ let alone start playing decently with it. Considering this is f13 there is no way posters here have the time to play 20 games with every champ as it comes out.

Your best bet is to find a role you enjoy most and slowly master all the champs in that role and for variety try to pick up a champ or two that can play other lanes for when you start playing ranked. Trying to be good at over 3-5 champions is such a waste of time when you are playing with people who aren't even worried about cs yet, don't ward, don't ever take CV, don't go for dragon let alone baron, don't control map/neutrals/buffs, there is rarely a jungler on each team etc. etc.

Once you are playing the game at a higher level you will be able to learn champions faster because you will understand the game in more depth. That's my theory at least.

If not that, there are 83 champions and you only get one week to try ten of them, there isn't enough time or ip to try and buy all of them so I think its useful for someone to tell newbs, hey, try these first they are more likely to be valuable teaching tools, kick ass, be worth your time and ip etc.

There are a decent amount of stories about 2k+ elo players from season one who were unremarkable until they found a champ that they were great with and just played that champ in 95% of their games to get to high elo. Once there they branched out but there are a couple of people who fuck themselves in almost every ranked game because they want to pick the perfect champion for team comp or matchup reasons instead of picking their best champ.

As a new (not good) player my thought process goes something like this:

a) There are a TON of champs so there are going to be many that aren't good.
b) I don't have the tools or time needed yet to cull the field down myself.
c) The community as well as the game itself pretty much dictate champs should fit into specific roles.

Therefore I should try the 'top' champs from several roles and pick a couple for each that I want to learn.  I can have fun either way so I might as well take the long view to prevent wasting my time mastering someone that's totally outclassed once you reach a certain level of play.  So listening to people bitch and moan, or rave, about various champions can be pretty instructive.

Also I'm not playing really dumb looking champs no matter how good they might be.  I want to look cool damnit!

Fresh champs!
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/new-free-champion-rotation-preseason-week-4

I was chanting Udyr, Udyr, Udyr as it came up, but no luck. But Sona is on my "buy as soon as she goes on sale" list, and Yorick and Ez should be fun to mess around with.

Leona...way too much micro the last time I tried her.

Oh Leona is not that bad - just load up her stun and shield, throw your sword at someone, and laugh.

And when they run away in a straight line, smack them with Solar Flare and laugh some more.

So as much as I like Morgana, JESUS Sona can really change a whole game. Maybe I'm used to bards/support classes but my second game with her was 6/4/30

Leona, like Karma, is completely dependent on your team. You have good initiation tools and two stuns, but if your team doesn't take advantage of your openings, you won't accomplish anything. This is opposed to other tanks that can dish out better damage (like...every single other tank in the game). Good for organized teams, bad for solo queue.

New champion looks fun.

The Leona on my team today was fucking terrible.  She didn't tank shit and missed every single one of her skill shots and ultis.  Was dead nearly the entire game.  I ended up having to build my Jax tanky because she just couldn't get the job done at all.

Played Jax fairly well for once, but I die a goddamn ton when I play melee DPS.  I think the deaths this game were a case of being focused down really hard due to the Warwick and Leona on my team being useless.  I did really well 1 v 1 and 1 v 2 all game.  Still don't know the character well, so I think have a lot of room to improve.

If I was to tell people 10 champs to play until they are no longer nubs (have level 30, get all the good runes, are playing ranked and are over 1200, hit good cs numbers, know where to ward, understand most champion abilities etc) I would include Jax on that list.

Reality is that you wish you had dodge runes but Jax is one of those champs that goes top lane, farms farms farms (how soon you can win the game is ENTIRELY dependent on your cs) has literally one item build and it works so well. Once you have gunblade you are decent and it gets hard for them to fight you while you push top. Once you have gunblade and rageblade its basically "gg" for anyone to try to take you 1v1 unless they are equally farmed AND using one of the other dueling gods of LoL. Once you have both blades and appropriate tank / support items? Its over. If you farmed effectively and are ahead on cs in the game you will be able to kill 1-3 people even if they 5v1 you.

Which means Jax is a champ that encourages you to learn to farm. Then put your stupid teammates on your back and just win every teamfight. Cat herd them into getting dragons, baron and neutral buffs and push nexus.

If you honestly feel you are better than your teammates in every game and the reason you think that is because you out cs your opponents in lane and out cs other carries on both teams...  Play supercarries and you will be able to win 70% or more of your games despite leavers, afk'ers, ragers, shitheads, trolls, bad comps, feeders and all that bs.

I've continued playing him and it's been a pretty positive experience.  In close games you can carry your team, facilitate easy and fast Baron kills, and farm pretty brainlessly once you've got your ultimate.  And if you're winning? It's all downhill.  

Early, you're not that bad, but it depends if who you're playing is awful or not.  If they're bad you can get fed pretty easy, because the leap, dodge, counter hit, and your ulti makes you pretty effective.  It's even funny when they think they're safe sitting under their tower and you just leap, two shot them, and get away easily.

And yah, with him I've found it's incredibly easy to control the neutral buffs and take them for yourself or give away as needed.  I've started cutting down on the dumb ass deaths too, although I seem to have at least one dumb tower dive / trade death per game.  

I'd be interested to see that list, Hoax.   I appreciate the tips for improving my overall play.

edit:

I've got to ask, and this is probably the wrong thread, but what the fuck is up with Teemo players? They're all headcases that think they are super awesome.  They make such a big deal out of every kill or whenever someone steps on a fucking mushroom.  You shit explosives.  Good job.  Now stop feeding their fucking carries, you twit.

I tried Ezreal again today in a game of SR, since he was free. The first time I tried him, I didn't care much for him. After this game... I still don't care for him. He's supposed to be a carry, right? Which means he sucks early game but is hell on wheels in the late game? My experience was the exact opposite. Early game, I did pretty good, driving back the Yorick/Yi combo in top lane with the help of a Heim that just sort of wandered between mid and top. But by like level 12, I was just getting facerolled. It didn't help that the Yi on the other team seemed to be just tearing through motherfuckers left and right on our team. I might have built him wrong or just not farmed enough but he just seemed like fodder late game.

Then I played a game of Dominion with Katarina and absolutely owned. 10/3/4 and our team won and I mean won HANDILY. The other team just seemed to suck so hard. I think they had 2 people on their team who had 0 captures and 1 neutralize.

Dominion seems really volatile, I think a lot of people use it just for trying out champions to get a feel for what they can do before trying them in SR, so sometimes 1/2 a team will have never played their champion before, and not really be playing with the purpose of winning, etc.  Meanwhile, some people use the character they are best with and are trying do win full on.  Its still fun for a quick match here and there, but its a bit odd.

 On the topic of characters, none of the free to play ones this week really speak to me.  I might pick up Sona but thats about it.  I'm not a "total newb" anymore, but my friend and I who have been playing together are still pretty new all told, and we've been having success laning as Alistar/Annie.  His only problem with Annie is that people ask him to mid a lot, and he isn't confident at all in his ability to play solo.

Sona is a BEAST when paired with a damage dealer, especially late in the game in big team fights. She's one I want to buy at some point just to have.

I've been thinking of picking up support, mostly play tank or tanky dps (rammus, nasus, renk). My problem is I can be a tad aggressive, though I've tempered that in favor of farming creeps.

Janna is pretty fun as well.

I tried Sona last night in Dominion and it was pretty fun. My team wasn't very good at "grouping" with me, but when they did we were able to knock some teeth out.

Hmm maybe I am wrong but there is counter to every "super carry". In fact all carries are relatively easy shut down by tanky dps and assassins. I dont really think one single champ can win vs 70% of comps. I mean exhaust alone shuts down most ofl ad carries easily.

Out of this week's champs, Sona is the closest I've come to purchasing.  She seems decent but a bit passive for me and super reliant on your teammates.  I'm hoping Janna comes up soon or I might just buy Soraka to try as she's cheap and seems like decent support.  Not sure why I want a support champ next given that I solo queue but whatever.

They dropped Karthus down in price.  He looks pretty sweet.

So, I feel real dirty when I say this, but...

I've been playing Tryndamere lately, and I think I like it.  :oh_i_see:

Sona is great. The only thing about Sona (and all supports really) is that it sucks when you do an awesome job and your team just can't take advantage.

What sucks is when you spend the entire match being bitched at for picking sona in the first place, being told how much you suck. Then, after not dying a single time and helping your team to victory, not a single thank you.

See, this is old hat to anyone who players healers in an MMO.

Edit:  By the way, I'm still trying to figure out what to get next.  I still don't have anything that is magey at all, Morgana and Fiddle were both pretty fun from last week, but I can't decide if I want one of them for sure.  I'm also thinking that something like Jax would be a lot of fun, seems like an interesting middle ground between something like Alistar and something like Tyrndamere (both of which I already have). 

Jax and Morgana are both awesome as well. Rasix and I just lost a game with him as Jax and me as Sona, and we were doing well. Unfortunately, the team got screwed by a level 5 Ezreal who couldn't kill anything and a level 26 Katarina who did less damage than my Sona. The burst damage Jax gets up to with Sona buffing him was ugly. I haven't gotten bitched at for picking Sona. Morgana is probably a more popular magey type because she can hold a lane on her own.

I spent all my ill-gotten IP on Renekton, and all he does is bitch about Nasus all game, even when there's no Nasus on either team. Dude has issues.

Nasus cannot escape him forever!

Vayne is a beast.  The last two SRs I played with her I was 24-5 and 20-2 respectively, well timed tumbles mean you are hard to gank and with attack and movement speed items combined with her passive and you can pretty much finish off anyone who is in a bad position against you.

I picked up Xerath since he was on sale. Kinda fun to play, but boy is he a wet napkin health-wise. Fun to plant a Locus at a tower in Dominion and bomb the crap out of everyone from like 2 miles away.

The list is going to need a complete rework since the gunblade overhaul will change SR especially noob SR games tremendously. Champs that don't require gunblade and can supercarry your horrible teammates:

-Ezreal
-Irelia (best choice in a post Kat/Akali/Jax world)
-Gragas
-Kassadin
-Tristana (best ranged ad to hardcarry games with)
-Udyr

Special Mentions (they can carry entire teams but I would advise against a total noob playing them):
-Leblanc
-Twitch
-Shaco
-Vayne
-Trynd

Everyone else has problems. Vlad needs to be WAAAAY ahead to do enough damage to win. Cho and Singed need teammates to accidentally do some damage to someone to win the team fights. Vayne is really hard to use and weak early which is bad in low skill games where everyone is attacking each other with reckless abandon from level one on. Renekton takes a lot of game knowledge and will eventually lose a 45 minute or longer game. Garen takes a very dedicated amount of farm and can still struggle to supercarry. Nasus too weak before level 11 and +400 on Q. Tryndamere teaches bad habits and has to create some wins through split push. Yi requires team to start fight for him to mop up. Sivir even with 6-item is pretty squishy and her range is still too short. <insert ap burst mage here> can't kill an entire team easily enough if they know to only worry about him. Leblanc is too squishy and takes lots of micro to get right. Lee Sin does require some team support. Sion can't win if other team can break his shield because teammates are useless. Talon can kill people but can't win team fights alone. Ditto Panth. Supercarry out of the jungle is too hard and actually the best champ to do it with is Rammus which requires insane farm, that eliminates the likes of Fiddle, Noct and Olaf from the list. Swain needs a little cc to prevent himself from being hit by entire enemy team's burst. Poppy can't kill entire teams.

Anyways, I considered all the champs and that's my list. If I was playing a smurf and all I wanted to do was win every game to get to level 30 and get away from playing in the dregs of mechanical skill games I would play champions chosen from those six, most likely I'd just play 100% solotop Irelia if teams would let me.

Until the gunblade nerf I would play Jax pretty much 100% with the occasional Akali mixed in if we needed an AP solomid. Because Gunblade is OP as fuck.

Picked up Irelia since she was on sale.  Any tips for building/playing her?  

Tried Tristana and did pretty mediocre although my second game was a lot better. I was playing her similar to Cait, but with a better chase/escape.  Her W is great for team fights and I was able to push lanes and take down towers pretty well.


I find this shit pretty annoying.  But there's no way to avoid it, except if you're in mid.  Then you just have to worry about someone trying to gank you constantly.

I dunno, I kind of prefer it to the 'high skill games where everyone farms endlessly while making grumpy faces at each other across the creeps.'

Or I guess more accurately I would say that each have their charms.

Yes.  I'd like a happy medium.  Right now the games tend to be a giant 30 minute team fight once everyone has their ulti.  People are so antsy to initiate something; I've been ignited or exhausted just for running in someone's general direction.    :awesome_for_real:

Irelia is fun.  Trying to go Boots (ninja or merc depending on opposition) -> Trinity Force (sheen/phage, then zeal) -> tanky stuff.  I played two games and I liked her ability to take on the other team's carries.  It was funny melting a Lux with my ulti or using it a wipe out an entire minion wave.

Hmm what about Gangplank ,Nocturne, Morgana, Annie, Brand  .All very strong champs who can carry. And really irelia is squishy as hell - Talon is better imho

I don't know if he is good for newbs, but...Xerath seems interesting.

It seems like the Xeraths I've seen are either really good or really bad. 

Most disappointing rotation yet:

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/new-free-champion-rotation-preseason-week-5

I'm fooling around with Irelia, so I don't even really need to play Jarvan, and I *really* don't need another AP mage, thanks Xerath.

PS: It's time.

I'll probably play some Nasus.  Otherwise, not sure I'll try anyone else out.  I own most of these champs already.

I'll be taking this opportunity to try Cho'Gath

Oh for fuck's sake, I JUST bought Xerath.  :oh_i_see:

And great, that bastard Jarvan is free...what an OP piece of trash.

New champions always go free the week of the next release.

Morgana sets up her team, if you ult four and your team still attacks their hardest targets or your team runs away while you hourglass. You still lose. Annie/Brand/<insert ap burst mage here> can't win unfair fights. If you are carrying the whole team on your back and the other team notices you will die without getting to use a cooldown twice. Gragas and Kass are on the list while Brand, Cassio and Annie are not because they can stick around long enough to finish off fights much easier. Essentially if you are the best player on your team sometimes you need to initiate a fight, killing a high value target and baiting your team into fighting, then get out of danger, then come back in and finish off remaining threats while your team flails around doing stupid shit. Kass especially but both he and Gragas are built to fight like that. Other mages will bait most players into doing a billion damage, dying, then watching as their team manages to fuck it up somehow. Brand is the least like that but Brand also kind of sucks at team fighting compared to smaller scale engagements.

As for Nocturne, he can only carry out of the jungle and while I think jungle is perhaps the most important role when everyone is competent if every lane is a sloppy killfest the jungle doesn't mean as much because he's not in a position to generate the rare kill anymore. If you are doing ranked OTOH Warwick/Noct may be the most proven elo raising champs that exist, because the level of play has gone up at least that tiny tiny amount from when everyone was level 16 or whatever so having a simple "I'm ganking, plz do some damage for free kill" champ on the team can really make it easy for people to win games.

Gangplank, I'll concede, is a pretty decent idea. Ate some oranges and it was k. I personally have never liked him from a mechanics standpoint going back to the deny + crit days. But he def could deserve a place on such a list.

***


His kit is OP, that's always been obvious, numbers-wise these days however he is trash he just can't compete top lane anymore because he can only do damage or tank, he can't farm enough to do both without an opponent handing him gold. Try him you'll be shocked at how weak he feels.

I actually tried Jarvan last night and got OWNED. I didn't have clue one what I was doing with him until at least halfway through the game (when I figured out the drop a standard and get zapped to the standard for airborne attack thing) and even then, he didn't feel very powerful. I got focus fired a lot when I tried to initiate fights or at least just kill someone with like 1/4 health. Morgana just ate my lunch a few times. It didn't help that I was in a lane with Morg/Twitch and my lane partner was an Ashe who fed just as badly as I did.

Then I tried Xerath and got facerolled again. I don't think I ever comprehended his strengths or proper use of combos at all.

Once you learn to do the insta-stun combo, it gets much better. The name of the skills elude me atm.

Despite the advice, I'm having a much easier time carrying with Jax than Irelia.  I just decided not to build gunblade and still carried pretty hard despite a somewhat meh team (the Cass was good). I think I could still build gunblade and be OK; I need to build at least something early with lifesteal on it (made a wriggles).

I think with Irelia, it depends on me getting farm.  If I can get a lot of farm, then I get scary fast.  If not,  I'm in for a mediocre game until the later stages.   Had a crappy game where I had Graves in my line and that guy took all the CS with his Q.  Had another bad match where they stuck me in bot with Janna against an Annie/Ashe combo.  Went even worse.  Janna was getting last hits and the Ashe was really smurfy.

The slow from an early bilgewater cutlass is invaluable, especially if you do well enough to get it during your lane phase.

Played a Corki/Soraka combo (me as Soraka) last night and it was pretty awesome.  Effectively removing Corki's mana limitation in the early game helps him get pretty scary quick, and Soraka brings insane sustainability to her lane for obvious reasons.

Irelia's main strength is that she can make a beeline for a squishy and there isn't much the other team can do about it. She's one of the best in the game at that. (Poppy and Talon being the two others that spring to mind)

That's a bad Janna. That said, AP Janna (while terrible) is kinda fun.

Also, still hate Singed....REALLY hate Singed. Always seems to have tons of armor, even before buying an item that gives any armor or MR.

Dude always seems practically impossible to kill.  :uhrr:

I just pissed off a Nocturne so bad that all he could say was "fuck you" for the last 5 minutes of the game and this was only a 22 minute game.  My team was bad enough that it ended up being 2/12 with me picking up the only two kills.  Popped insanity potion, ran in, dropped goo, threw Vayne into goo + purple, killed Vayne, Nocture ultis onto me, I fling him, drop goo, sprint off because I'm almost dead, Nocture chases like a boss, dies in a cloud of purple poop, and I make it back to tower (shift + enter HAHAHAHAHAHA).  


I find that even if I have a bad early game with Singed, I can really wreck morons late as I get to my post RoA tank items.  Plus, I'm always, always annoying.  He's definitely going back into the rotation (Jax, Irelia, Singed).

BTW, nice choice of boots. Had your Xerath bought even one piece of armor against that team you were facing, you guys mighta had a shot :)

In games like that I like to try to spam BUY NINJA TABI or BUY ARMOR!! but it never really helps. It's less of an issue when you get to 30, but some people still just build whatever their guide tells them.

The Xerath was hideously bad.  He nearly died to Ashe before minions even spawned.. in mid. His path for retreat was toward wraiths instead of toward his tower.  :facepalm: He was missing his skill shot by miles.

Previous game I was facing another heavy AD team,  got thornmail, and proceeded to watch the Graves and Talon kick their own ass.

Wow that is a TERRIBAD team.

I'm amazed at how many people die or almost die before minions spawn in my game. 

 :ye_gods: Yeah its really difficult to account for how different of a game you are playing from what you will be playing in not too long judging from how stupid your teammates seem and how you seem, well, not worthlessly stupid.

Irelia (and Jax) need a lane to themselves or at least need the lion's share of the farm. Is nobody jungling in your games Rasix? If that's the case you might want to try just playing warwick, although maybe forcing a teammate to play 2v1 is going to hurt more than having a jungler helps. Its really hard to say when lanes are that fucked up.

Who gets the solo lane in your games and why?

I'm not speaking for Rasix here, but assuming he has a somewhat similar experience to me, which he does from what he is saying, the person who solos is the person either 1) runs to mid first or 2) decides they don't mind doing it because no one else wants to (which is what I usually do when I play Ashe or Vayne).   If anyone jungles, which is rare, its usually something along the lines of "HAY GUISE I HERD JUGNLING IS GOOD< IM JUNGLE OK!"

I'd say I only get a jungler maybe 10-25% of the time.   If we get one, I'm usually good with a solo top lane.  I don't die in 1 v 2s unless it's a combo that's really problematic and they just bust out everything to kill me.  Usually the increase in levels means I can hold my own, get some CS, and generally just let them push and perhaps get a tower assisted kill.  It's a lot better than a virtual 1 v 2 where your partner is a worthless feed bot or so passive they're just soaking up XP and making you feel like you should be protecting them.  I had a Trynd that just STARED at a Yi I flung right in front him.  He didn't even make a move and the tower hit the Yi twice.. still.. too risky I guess. I swear he was playing a support Trynd.

The set up at the level of play I'm at right now seems to be 2 top (melee AD usually), 1 mid (ranged usually calls or a Kassadin), 2 bot (whatever, sometimes a support is there). Everyone competing for CS. If someone jungles, there's a 50% chance you'll see them die to a minion within the first 5 minutes.  It's usually just a collection of bruisers and various carries.  No tanks, no support, no jungle.

The one time I got mid as Irelia, because my team didn't want it, I carried the hell out of the game.  I'd always want a solo lane, but it just doesn't seem to fit for how the game is played at this summoner level.  

edit: Hey... you called me stupid!  :why_so_serious:

edit: I should note that I mostly play blind pick still.  Should I move to draft at this summoner level?  That might force more sane team comps, but it also might lead to more dickery.

I dunno, my account is currently at around the same level and I haven't noticed people being that regularly awful -- but it could be I'm just used to it.

To be honest I kind of appreciate the wider variety of team compositions compared to ranked play, even if it means you're more likely to have half-lost the game before it even starts if the other team has a tank or a competent jungler or a support or whatnot.

Though it has definitely been a relief getting to the stage where most teams at least have a tank. The 5-carry team is boring in its own way.

I've played maybe 10-12 games this week and I've seen just seen a couple Cho'gaths and my Singed for tanks.  You typically see some more Alistars, being free at and all, but not this week.  

I only get in 2-3 games a night, so whatever trend I see at my level can also be attributed to just luck of the draw (skewed toward the free champs).  This week it's lots of Jarvans, Panths, Ashe, Jax, and of course the standards (Yi, Trynd, Kat, Ez).

In a way, however, you're right, I'm not looking forward to a more standardized team comp.  But, the complete lack of any sort of support play or jungle play makes the games feel  a little shallow.  It's missing something.

Does Ashe just attract either some of the most skilled players or some of the shittiest? Just had a game as Ryze laning top with an Ashe so terrible she managed 0/9/1 and we had to surrender at 20. My score was a terrible 2/9/1 and we had a Gangplank with 6/0/0. The rest of the team had no kills and no assists, just deaths. The Ashe and I were laned up against a Teemo and a skilled Singed - further cementing my hatred of Singed. I can't play him for shit, but a good player can own with him. At one point, I'm standing DIRECTLY under my tower, Singed is out of range above me and a giant fucking arrow from the other team's Ashe hits me and I'm dead in one shot. I have no fucking idea how it happened, because I think the Ashe was mid laning. It was a terrible game, made worse by the Ashe who had no fucking clue what to do with the character.

Ashe ult arrow stuns for longer the farther it travels, so winging one across the map is often a good idea. You'll probably miss but if you hit it's often a kill.

I think she said something like "FROM ACROSS THE MAP!" so yeah, it was likely a long, lucky motherfucking arrow. Surprised the shit out of me.

When you know the enemy is going to be cowering/pressured under their tower and your teammates want to dive, it's not too hard to figure out approximately where they'll be standing.

Noobler question:

When do you get to buy your final set of runes? 20?  I know some slots are still going to be locked, but the ones you buy at 20 are the ones you use at 30, right?

Yup.

Well its is actually fun to have teamfight before minion spawn (typically happens near blue) , but also if you get to "almost dead" before minions spawn you can always recall and heal up. That of course as long as you dont actually die :)

I'd recommend picking up some of the Halloween runes, they're practically as good as Tier 3 ones and a fraction of the price.

Yeah, I grabbed a Halloween AP Quint from that sale. Those things are definitely better than Tier 2.

Ooh, Nocturne *and* Nidalee sale. Sold.

Nocturne is tempting.  Pretty sure I'd be fucking terrible with him, however.

Naw Noct is pretty easy, not sure if he can jungle without runes but once you can jungle him its pretty easy to gank since people can barely handle a jungler walking to their lane let alone flying in from half the river away.

None of his skills require difficult micro or decision making and Q is a prettty fast skill shot. Knowing when and what to spellshield comes with experience but if you are interested in jungling (read: if players at your level can utilize a jungler instead of just feeding in a 2v1 lane so that having a jungler is a detriment) I think Noct is a good choice though Warwick might be a better starter jungle champ.

Is there a method to the rune-buying madness at all?  To this point I have totally ignored the whole thing but I'm about to roll over 20 and want to avoid dumb purchases.  Should I just make AP and AD general sets or are there some runes that get tonnes of mileage no matter what that I should get first?

Here you go (http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/rune-tips-what-secondary-and-primary-means-and-more-24255).

If you want a TLDR I can give you a summary.

No matter what, buy Armor pen and magic pen marks.

I love speed quints.

I personally got good mileage out of flat armor, dodge, and Hp/lvl seals.

Glyphs I used MR/lvl and cooldown ones (I think I used celerity cause they were cheaper and still good).

Yup armor pen and magic pen marks should be the first things purchased. You will want one or the other on just about any character I can think of. Other good ones are flat armor and scaling magic resists. If you don't have anything else being more durable is always handy.

Flat mana regen and mana regen per level seals are useful for a good number of champions.

I think an important note here is also whether you plan on buying rune pages: if you're not, then you should be aiming towards the two pages which cover the most.

For that, I'd say, in order of buying:

Red: ArPen/MPen
Quint: HP Quints. They're always useful.
Yellow: Armor.
Blue: MR/lvl or CDR (If I could only have one, I'd pick MR/lvl)

Note, that if you're just going with the basic two rune pages, you should pretty much stop here.

If you get more rune pages, I'd fill in with:
Quint: ArPen
Yellow: MReg/lvl
Blue: CDR

If you decide you're going to be all jungly, then instead:
Quint: ArPen
Blue: AS

There are some sweet quints available during the halloween event they have.
Just bought 3 24HP ones for 1k IP apiece  instead of the usual 26HP ones for 2k IP each.
There are some others avaliable too, like dodge and stuff. Can be found under Tier 2.

Is there a tough, survivable AP carry (preferably with some range) that would be not too difficult to play?  I'm not sure I'd like Kassadin and most Kassadin players are assholes.  Would Gragas fit the bill here?

It just feels dumb to pick my usual Gangplank/Jax/Irelia when we're already loaded up on AD and sometimes you see a team comp where Singed would be mostly wasted.  Plus, sometimes we're tanky enough and I just want to blow people up.

Since the family has gotten home (they were gone Sun-Fri), I've had a rotten run.  Big ass losing streak combined with having to leave a game last night when my son woke up in the middle of a pretty competitive game.

edit: 

So far I'm confident in my AD carry/bruiser play (GP, Irelia, Jax) and offtank/tank (Singed, Cho) play.  My ranged everything is pretty shakey (I can play Annie/Cait in a pinch) and I've yet to do anything with support/jungle, which aren't really part of the game at this level.

Gragas, definitely. Morgana as well. Cho is fun to play as a carry, though less bursty than a pure damage caster.

Hope he goes on sale or is free for a week soon.  At level 18, I'm a bit loathe to spend IP and he's still a bit expensive RP wise.

I've been playing Annie or Fiddle in those scenarios usually (team has lots of AD already).  Fiddle has pretty good survivability because of his drain spell, but if he gets CCed he can be bursted down kind of easily. 

Pretty much all AP focused characters are cooldown/combo dependent though, so there are always a bit more difficult to play in my opinion than a ranged AD carry like Ashe in my opinion.  Though I have a friend that thinks just the opposite and has a harder time playing AD characters, so I don't know if thats just me.

Ryze can get a bit tanky since the mana items he builds tend to have armor or health on them as well.

Morgana can be pretty durable, her normal item build + her shield and passive make her a good self-sustaning hero.

I am really starting to dislike characters like Ryze, who can be all sorts of tanky and damaging at the same time, without really building both.

I mean, it takes a lot of thinking out of the equation - if you want damage or tank or whatever, you should have to actually build it, not get it for free somehow.

If one more person describes Ryze as 'tanky' I fear my head might asplode.

Am I missing something? An item build that includes incidental health does not really qualify a champion as tanky, right? Kassadin can build a Rod of Ages and Rylai's, that doesn't make Kassadin a tanky AP caster.

An AP Cho is still 'tanky' because of his Feast stacks (and probably better than average armour/health growth, though I could be wrong); Gragas is tanky because he's a huge fat dude with a self-heal and a built-in escape. Morgana is tanky because she can be immune to CC and because she has to build that way to guarantee successful ult use.

Probably a difference in the use of the word Tanky.

Dude ends up getting a butt-ton of HP, and enough "incidental" AP to melt people without having to actually buy AP items necessarily. Kind of like how Jax can get really fat just buying attack items.

This is true, but I wouldn't classify Jax as a tank.  He melts away pretty fast even with his reasonable HP pool, HP alone doesn't make a tank, it helps, but mitigation and the ability to prevent damage matters too.  At least that is how I look at it.  Granted, I realize you aren't calling him a tank, but something closer to "kind of tanky."

I am in love with Talon lately, I just love his burst and his ability to farm like crazy. It is a bit difficult to convince people to let me play mid, but if I succeed I can shut down almost any other champion the enemy throws at me. I had one game where they switched mid 3 times against me.  :heart:

No, I definitely wouldn't call Jax a tank.

I have the same problem with Singed, who ends up being so tanky that he's nigh unkillable, while having enough AP to murder people - I'd prefer that the player have to actually make a choice.

Kind of like how the DH in the AL is completely retarded, because the managers there never have to think making a double switch (unless you're in the WS, then it's funny to watch them squirm because they have to consider whether to have the pitcher hit or double switch).

Yeah, "tankiness" can mean a lot of different things in this game. I probably should have said "survivable".

I don't think it's unfair to call anyone with Frozen Heart, Banshee's, and Rylai's "a bit tanky" though.

An unkillable Singed can only murder people if those people don't ever buy defensive items. Which is, of course, pretty common, but I can't really pin that one on Singed to be fair.

And my reaction to the Ryze thing was taking 'tanky' in the context of AP carries. I've just never seen a Ryze that could not be annihilated by even a little team focus -- and if I did it was because his team was protecting him well, not because of his huge HP?

Is the assumption that every Ryze builds Banshee's, Rylai's, and a Rod of Ages?

Ryze gains damage from mana (Rylai's is a funny item to build on him), allowing you to build items that give durability and mana; ROA, Frozen Heart and the Banshees Veil. He also gains a pretty good amount of spellvamp from his ultimate. Ryze is a lot harder to kill than other mages.

I thought Rylai's gave mana for some reason. Never mind that then.

Oh, I bought one of the big character packs and boy was it worth it.  I have a nice spread of characters.  It cost something in the range of 30 dollars, but buying the pack ends up saying you quite a lot compared to buying them all individually, like more than 50%.  In fact, even just the 5 or so characters that I "really" wanted from the pack would've cost me something similar in price alone, and then I got like 8 more on top of that that I am enjoying, and a few I don't really care about to be fair I suppose.  Also came with a few runes and Goth Annie skin, and a bonus of 1380 RP.  Really happy with that purchase.

I'm putting that in this thread because it might be a cost effective way for people to get a bunch of champions if they are new, without breaking the bank.

Yah, I bought one of the champ bundles.  It was a pretty good bundle as I mostly play Gangplank and Singed and they were included in the deal.  While, I haven't played a lot of the champs, it came with some support, junglers and others in case I want to expand what I play.  A lot of solid champs.  With perfect hindsight, it wasn't the best of deals, but I bought it early and had no idea what sort of groove I'd fall into.

I've spent a fair amount of time so far without spending any cash at all.  There are quite a few champs I want to try and the free rotation doesn't bring them up fast enough.  Looking at the rune IP prices I'm tempted to pick up one of the bundles and just stop buying champs so I can rune up in a reasonable time frame.  RP pricing isn't near as bad as I thought it would be.

So is Malazhar just crazy overpowered or was I playing against some bad players? Got a game at lunch and tried him out. I died more than I wanted, but could actually just stand toe to toe with a Wukong and spell him to death. His ult seemed crazy good. I didn't quite get the hang of the Q spell, but he could put out some sick damage.

His ult is retarded. He is quite a strong caster, IMO. He seems pretty reliant on that sucker, though. That's not too uncommon with AP carries anyway.

Malzahar suffers from the same problem as Jax; beaten by a single item. Once you start running into people who buy Quicksilver Sash his 'wow' factor drops off significantly. Despite that, he is still a very good pusher and scales well because of his percentage AOE pool.

OK, Galio is fun as hell.  Wasn't easy at first, but damn.   Own those damn team fights, and they had a bunch of AP that didn't bother building any magic pen other than boots.  Still could have been tankier, my HP pool at the end wasn't great.

edit: On further testing, hard to play well.  For me.  ><  In my defense, ran into the same smurf team twice in a row. Brutal.

How do people have bad games with Tryndamere? I just played him in 2 games at lunch (one SR, one Dominion) and did pretty goddamn good without much effort. I think I've only played him like once or twice before. The SR game I was partnered up with an Alistar against a Miss Fortune played by a paraplegic muppet and a decent Malazhar. I got fed HARD by the Fortune. I think I killed her 3 times before level 6 and got Mal once. By the end of the game, I was almost singlehandedly taking down turrets and just facerolling. Ended with like 15/8/6 or something. It was just stupid crazy easy to level and kill people. The game was over in 27 minutes and I mean OVER, nexus destroyed, all inhibitors down, all turrets down, done. I had a bit more trouble in the Dominion game, but still ended up top score on my team, with 15/11/6 or something. Most of my deaths were from my overconfidence and over aggressiveness.

I've seen players play Trynd and die all the time without ever getting kills. How do you do that?

People don't understand that you need to play differently based on what part of the game it is.  A hell of a lot of people just seem to think "end game" Tryn is how you are supposed to play him all the time, or at least when I see them that is how it looks like they are thinking.   And then of course they have a shit early game, and then they DON'T have that end game, or at least get there a lot later and with their team already far behind.

What's the item that deters Jax?

It seems that if he loses early, it snowballs a bit and he'll just keep losing. Trynd needs items.  A lot of people have the misconception that you're really, really strong early.  You're not.  That being said, if you play like a complete weenie, you're useless.  I played with one that was so passive he just built GP5 items because he couldn't/wouldn't farm for shit.  Another one was GO GO GO fight early on and was 0-6 in a heart beat and 3 levels down in lane.

Then, I played against one the other day that some idiots fed hard in a dual lane.  Guy was a goddamned nightmare afterwards.  Run in wreck someone, get focused, pop ult, spin out, heal, live.  LAME.  I had to build primarily not to get wrecked by this guy.  
He seems like he'd fit my style pretty well as I tend to play bruisers (GP, Irelia, Jax, Garen, Singed) better than ranged carries.   But, I don't want to be a Trynd player, as they're all childish assholes, :awesome_for_real: and I think he'd bring out my inner retard like Garen does.  Although, I suppose there's no time like free time to check him out.


 :oh_i_see:  :awesome_for_real:

I could use to be a bit more aggressive.  A more passive style really isn't helping when my entire team sucks balls.  However, I'm really not sure what I should do in this case.  I mean, what the fuck are you supposed to do when your jungler dies to minions, your mid lane dies and your bot lane gets double killed in the first minute or two of action? Wait for 20 minutes to be up or just.. practice last hitting?

Sword of the divine.

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Sword_of_the_Divine

Holy monkey shit, I don't think I've ever seen that item in-game. For 60% attack speed and a passive 100 magic damage bonus every 4th attack at less than 2000 gold? WTF? I might have to think about that for my Jungling Yi build.

Yeah I don't remember seeing it either, but I usually don't look at Attack Speed items that often. Do items unlock as you go up in level tiers?

Nope. People just never buy it, because the other AS items are generally much better.

Divine blade's acvtive renders his dodge useless for a few seconds.

I use that item regularly with Vayne.   It just synergizes so well with her w.  Its also pretty scary on Teemo.

Wouldn't a Wit's End probably be a bit better?  You get a nice survivability boost as well.  I'd rather spend the money on a Black Cleaver, Phantom Dancer, or if they're health stacking: bloodrazor.  

Sword of the Divine I think, active makes it so you can't be dodged.

Yeah, 8 seconds of no dodge and 30 armor penetration, on a 40 second cooldown.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/82533/Futurama_Fry_Looking_Squint.jpg)

Gragas sale now.  Woot.  Skarner too (semi intriguing).

Tried Graves tonight. He definitely feels a bit overpowered. I was laning against the WORST Warwick I've ever seen. He'd get caught up attacking minions in the lane and just ignore the fact that I was absolutely hammering his ass. He died twice before the first minion wave was done. The only guy on the other team that gave me trouble was a Brand that went middle lane and held it well 1v1 and 1v2 considering his other lanes were getting slaughtered.

Played one game as Sona last night for the first time and I was impressed, and went 2/0/8. She can poke, sustain, speed up, AOE stun, and can do just fine with gp/10 items. I see why she is such a high rated support.  Now I just gotta get the 'power chord' thing down.

your avatar is clearly not rocking hard enough

Tried Trynd and it felt weird.  I'm used to have a better initiator/gap closer/poke than he has (didn't really dig the spin).  Not sure I can play him, but it could be that I just had a bad game against a good team.  Lane partner was a useless Garen as well.

Farms like a beast though.  Auto attack + go get a drink.

He's good outta the jungle. His ganks are solid with a distance closer, and a long duration slow. With coordination, he can gank at low levels.  Rumor has it he can solo top, but still haven't seen it really happen.

Trynd mostly sucks early. I imagine it'd be even worse paired with Garen if your facing ranged.

Also, he's an old champ, so he doesn't get all the crazy tricks new characters get.

I had a really bad Trynd game last night. Got capped twice in bot lane paired up with a very passive Galio against a Miss Fortune and a good Xin Zhao. Fortune would plink me and Xin would come in and hammer the damage home. I fed them almost the entire game as I couldn't ever get much traction going. He can catch up if he takes an early game soaking like I did, but you really have to pile on the items with him or he can get hammered. The spin initiate is great for farming, and only so-so against anything but a solo squishy. I think he works terribly as an initiator, better as a cleanup guy.

Once you get his ult, initiating is a lot more viable.  I see a lot of Tryndamere's going for lots of early game kills, and sometimes they even get a few, but it seems to me that smarter way to play is just extremely passive in the early game, farm up kills, and then really start putting on pressure.  As near as I can tell there is almost not reason to leave your tower or go far from it in the early game.  Trying to force things to happen in the early game always most seems to end poorly in my experience, whereas playing passively almost always sets you up for a strong mid game.  In other words, you can't really win the game in the first 10 minutes, but you can sure as hell LOSE the game in the first ten minutes.  People just seem impatient.

Lane I was against was Talon + Janna combo.  The Talon was fairly bad, but the Janna was good.  I didn't really die early, but Garen did his Garen thing and charged in like a retard.   Dude fed them pretty hard, so late game we were way behind despite me being top CS by quite a large margin.   Other lanes were getting it worse, so, it just wasn't a good game in general.

Afterwards, I ate some oranges, and it was OK. AKA I hopped on GP and stomped the next game.  Had two of the people from the last game in it and they were getting rolled so bad that at the end they just started intentionally feeding because their team wouldn't surrender.

Here's a dumb noob question:  will you get a leaver mark on your account if you bow out of your own custom game against bots?  I want to try Gragas out and get accustomed to his skill shots before I inflict him upon the solo queue.

I am fairly sure that custom games are not tracked for your won/lost/left stats.

Yeah, custom games have no penalties whatsoever: doesn't even matter if there are people in it.

Good for practicing jungle routes.

This is good advice for Trynd, but more generally, if one side can lose the game in 10 minutes, then it follows that somebody has won it in tha same span of time, and strictly speaking there is no reason it could not be you.

Go mid, hope you get a favorable matchup (retard or just champ mismatch), proceed to carry very hard.  You'll be up in levels, up in CS, and probably have a few kills or assists.  I find it's a bit harder to seal the deal in middle, but it can happen if top or bot can push our their lanes and gank (I don't count yet on having a jungler).  After the turret is down, go run around being a goddamn menace.

Seems like 1/4 of my games are won or loss to someone getting pasted early and often by Caitlyn and turning her into an unstoppable monster.   You can replace Cait in that statement with any carry (AD especially it seems) .   You're going back to get your boots and Cait already has a BF sword and will autoattack into godliness.

edit:

/Offtopic  AP Sion seems pretty retarded.  Seems like there's one in every solo queue stream I watch.

Gragas is a lot of fun.  I can see myself playing him well.  Pretty easy to build too.  Still need to get better at remembering to use ignite, otherwise I'm just better off doing flash/tele.  Still, I finished with top CS by at least 50, finished positive (3/2/ton of assists),  and lost my lane badly to Cait  :why_so_serious:  (didn't die, just lost tower with no help)  I don't know if I can win against ranged AD in mid, but it'll probably get easier as I get better with my Q.

I can't tell of AD carries are just supposed to be THE damage dealers in the late game, or if people just don't build thornmail often enough in my newbie bracket. 

The role of an AD carry (vs. an AP carry) is to have high damage through auto-attacks, as opposed to high damage through ability use. There's no cooldown on an auto-attack (or I suppose, there is, but it's really really short) so an AD carry who gets to auto-attack all fight will put out a lot more damage than a comparable AP carry, the longer the fight goes. Attack speed and damage scales a lot better than ap and CDR.

So yes, basically, it's their job to do most of the damage late-game. If they get to their late-game items when everyone else is still struggling into the mid-game then it's going to be even more alarming, provided their team can keep them alive (or the other team sucks at focusing.)

Also I'm kind of skeptical of a thornmail on anyone who isn't already pretty tanky, but I am willing to hear opinions otherwise. Obviously, armour is nice, but the damage return seems like a waste of gold if you're going to die in four hits anyways.

Thornmail can be powerful but it's kind of hit and miss if it's not thought out beforehand. What tends to happen is that the enemy carry just vaporizes someone who doesn't have it and your team collapses, at which point it doesn't matter if their carry gets a bit worse for wear or even dead.  

Thornmail goes situationally on already tanky characters for me.  Usually if I'm playing Singed, tankplank (atmogs + mix of offensive/defensive), or another tanky DPS.  Sometimes it's a just a goddamn necessity to keep a fed as hell Cait/Trynd/Yi (haven't seen one of these in a while) in check.  Plus with Singed, it's just like pouring lemon juice on their paper cut of annoyance. 

So for people that like support, or want to learn one, I am damn impressed with Sona. She is good throughout the game, has a decent (if a bit short) AoE stun ult that is great, and even packs a wee bit of burst with Blue, power chord, ult. Her early phase poke can really zone out people that aren't expecting the damage, or can go strong healing instead keeping that AD carry happily farming. She seems easy to me, as I don't think I've had a bad game with her yet, even with loses.

Yeah, Sona is just awesome. If she travels with even a moderately coordinated team, they can rape face. Not a lot of people know to focus fire her down first and if the Sona is competent, she'll never get close enough for you to have a shot. You'll jump in, be pounding on something expecting that something to die and suddenly you'll be worm food and be like "HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?" The chords are a dead giveaway.

I had a game at lunch as Alistar laning top with a Vayne against a Sona/Warwick combo. Even with a Warwick that was too aggressive, they still managed to push us off and destroy our turret before we got to theirs. I think we'd probably have lost the game if the Warwick and Sona had not disconnected at exactly the same time (I think they must have been duoing from the same house). 5v3 made it an easy romp, even with a Fiddlesticks that seemed to be pretty damn good against our Vlad who was really not good at all.

In DOTA certain carries are the guys that deal out the vast majority of the damage late-game. In LOL it's not that pronounced, AD carries can do the most damage over a long fight but are also generally the easiest to shut down. AP guys do more front-loaded damage and tanky chars can stay alive, while AD carries have to be alive and in position for decent amounts of time to deal a lot of damage.

Actually "carrying" as a carry in LoL isn't all that common. Not like DOTA where late game some guys can just 1 v 5 a team.

Sona is my ranked game go to character, with a halfway decent team you can really carry them through proper support/items.

With a terrible team? You just sort of stand around holding your dick in your hand cause she can't do shit on her own.

Indeed, I always remember a game I played with Hoax where he unintentionaly was getting last blows and had tons of kills on Sona, completely fed.  It didn't matter at all because all he could do was support better than average.  :uhrr:

I agree with this.  Although I don't play rannked yet.  But whenever I play support in general it ends poorly because I end up supporting people who are terrible.

I have a lot of fun playing Janna as support, her toolset makes her pretty hard to kill and decent at saving sub-par teammates. With a good teammate she's a boss.

There is no worse feeling than playing support well on a sucky team. There just isn't anything you can do. Every other role if played well can at least somewhat carry.

I'm not a big fan of the 0 CS support game. I mean it's obviously effective but it also ensures that no matter how well support plays it can never do anything but support.

I've seen Sona solo the top lane against two players while I jungled with Yi. Good support players are worth their weight in gold.

Tanking with an incompetent team also sucks. There's no such thing as a carry Amumu.

So I don't think I like Olaf. I got mightily owned at lunch using him. Me and a Caitlyn started top lane against a Yi and Akali combo, who just kept gangbanging me early until I got a few items. Then later on, the other team's Amumu and Karthus would just fucking roll in with whoever else in tow and start destroying shit. I think Amumu was at like 4k hit points with 2 warmog's and a sunfire cape. I think Olaf just doesn't do enough burst damaging for me.

Am I just a terrible jungler? I've been trying a couple chars no and I constantly get people bitching about not getting any ganks as early as level 4.  I get lanes dying left and right then blaming me when they're 0/4 at the 5min mark.  Then, when they're fed team starts pushing into my jungle and ganking me I get blamed for that too!

So, Wukong is on sale Friday.  I'm assuming this might be a good purchase for someone that primarily plays top lane bruisers?

Who are you jungling as?

Most ganking junglers do gank at level 4 (and some of the heavy gankers, like Rammus, start at 2). Most routes which aren't involving counter jungling involve doing one partial clear and one full clear, which gets you almost always to level 4.

I mean, when I'm playing Warwick, who has little ganking potential pre 6, I pretty much just let my lanes know that I'll cover if they need it, but I'm just trying to get six as fast as possible.

As someone who is constantly annoyed by wukong, yes, he's worth it now.

Wukong has no sustain, but good damage, escapes and utility in team fights. He's definitely enjoyable.

Initially I was trying shyvana and while she's good at the actual jungle, I feel like her ganking potential is kind of bad since she needs to build up a good slowing weapon to be useful.

After that I've been going fiddle but again, by level 4 he just doesn't seem beefy enough to do much besides harass a opposing lane.

I like the Yi jungling, personally.  :drill:

Shyvana seems like she does good damage output and can be quite annoying, but then you get to the end of the game and see her kills aren't really that high. Not sure what is up with her.

I saw the Wukong sale and I'm tempted. I'm REALLY tempted to get the Pharoah Nasus skin which is also going on sale. I got Nassus with IP and bought his Galactic (read: Stargate) skin, but the Pharaoh one looks really cool.

I've played her a LOT since she was released since the character really appeals to me so I feel I've got a good handle on her. Shyvanna's problem is twofold, the first being lack of any c.c, no innate stuns, snares or roots make it very hard to get into melee without items. 

Her W is meant as a runspeed chasing mechanic but it doesn't last nearly long enough, while her passive allows it to last longer through melee attacks, it doesn't help when trying to chase someone.  You can either use W to intercept in which case you won't have it when they start to run, or you just run in without W and try and use it to catch up when they try and run away but then any snare on you means you aren't autoattacking and your W wears off fast.

Then her ultimate which seems really good on paper just doesn't seem to work in the field. The knockback on it just does not seem sufficient at all, it moves the enemy only a fraction and it's actually hard to position yourself to not knock them in a favorable position(back to their tower or into the bush) so even that means you're running around more than is necessary. You definitely cannot use her ult when chasing either for the same problems, you just end up helping them escape. 

The second problem is that her ult just makes her abilities aoe but her abilities on their own don't do very much damage at all, her autoattacks are where her dps is centered around.  So unless you build a full AP shy her ult is really lackluster

It might depend on who you're neutralling with, but it shouldn't really be your fault. At worst, most lanes should be able to just turtle up at their tower if they are losing the harass game. Then you sweep in and save them. But if they are 0/4 before you even get there, not much you can do apart from jumping that lane repeatedly in an attempt to equalize the situation.


I was really struggling with her for a while, having the same problems as you do. Then I just started buying Boots 3 and enough points in the Util mastery for the speed boost. And possibly speed Quints. Also consider buying a Bilgewater. Once you start hitting 500ms, it doesn't even matter if they Flash or Ghost.

The ultimate is a bit different for her as well. Typically for most heroes, if you get into a big fight you tend to just blow all your cooldowns, ultimate included. She has to actually think about when and how to activate it, since using it will commit you to a prolonged fight. You're mistaken about the abilities imho, but this is because they're actually quite hard to pull off well. If you land an aoe fire-breath cone, then cleavebite someone with the armour debuff (and their friends around them), that does a LOT of damage. The biggest problem I have with that though, is her dragon form being so god damned clumsy to move and aim properly. Its like a somehow worse version of a fully grown Cho'Gath.

I play jungle a lot.  Now I am by no means anywhere close to great at it but I've learned an important lesson, you will ALWAYS be blamed by lanes for anything that goes wrong.

Mid gives up FB, it's because you didn't gank.
Bot gives up 2 deaths, it's because you aren't counter jungling.
They get dragon, it's because you didn't take it the second it spawned.
Top gets outfarmed 150 - 10, it's because you didn't support him enough.

etc..etc..etc...

Keep in mind that the people you are ganking are also going to be mostly level 4, and that you are going to have help. Gankers don't single-handedly kill people, they provide opportunities for the people in lane to kill their opponent. In Fiddle's case, if you run in, fear, and drain someone (especially someone who doesn't have a stun) then once you factor in your teammate(s) autoattacking, etc. they are probably going to be pretty fucked up. Especially if the opponents have pushed the lane and so have no easy way to retreat.

It's still worth doing this even if all you are doing is forcing someone to flash, or making your opponents paranoid.

100% this.

Getting a lane to blow their summoners to escape your gank is huge.  Having a mid battle where their solo's flash is down and your solo's isn't makes it so much easier for your solo to kill them, and you should be ganking that lane again if at all possible while you know the escape is down.

Speaking of good deals on champs, I give you the Triple Threat Value Pack (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/triple-threat-value-pack-limited-time-only). Katarina, Miss Fortune and Xin Zhao for only 625 Riot Points. I already had Katarina, but for that price, I couldn't resist. Hell, Miss Fortune alone is 975 RP and I really like her as a ranged carry.

Yeah, I thought about it, but I figure the only reason I'd be buying that is so I could buy a lot of awesome MF skins.

Heh, yeah, I'm tempted by at least 2 or 3 of her skins, especially the Waterloo skin. She's also just a good carry, though I got owned a bit in a game of Dominion with her at lunch. I blame my teammates.  :grin:

I recently disovered Ryze. What an amazing AP he is! - you build  defense (banshees ,frozen heart) and it gives you damage! He has a nice burst and very tanky.

Wait till you add mana per level runes on ontop of that.

Tried Shyvana at lunch today, just using her in a lane with a decent player using Fizz as my early lane partner. Our team was down 4v5 from the get go, but it took them 40 minutes or more to beat us, and they were carried by a turret ninja Yi. Still, Shyvana is pretty goddamn strong. Early on, I was battering the fuck out of the Taric/Tristana combo that we laned against, and won most straight up 1v1 fights. Late in the game she does seem to suffer a little unless using exhaust for a slow (and when the exhaust cooldown is refreshing), but man, she can dish out some damage, especially with attack speed items.

Any advice for someone that's thinking about starting to  jungle?  I've got Shaco, Nocturne, GP, Nunu.  I'm most confident that I can do the route easily with Shaco.  With boxes you can start off and solo red/blue without any help.   I've seen (and tested) a route I like where you pile boxes at red, smite the blue wraith, and down red pretty easy.  Then you can either gank bot or continue your route.  Just not very experienced with Shaco in general, but I'm pretty sure I can play him AD solidly.

Shaco jungle is something I hate playing against, for whatever its worth.  He is a good ganker, and his jack in the boxes give good vision/map control.   I've been playing Jungle Yi a bit lately with some pretty good success as well, and he is cheap if you want to buy him.

I already have Yi (came in pack), just no experience playing him.

Nocturne is generally a fairly easy jungler. Make sure you pick up some armor seals, they're cheap and will help immensely.

Yi is a great jungler, especially good with attack speed weapons. What little I've played Shaco I didn't like him, but he is a goddamn nuisance to play against, especially if he's a good ganker.

So this has all gotten a lot easier post mastery change: bad leash? Who cares? You're going to clear your jungle fast.

Nunu is by far the easiest of those to jungle, and has the smoothest transition. That said, your ganks are going to rely on coordination to work, and in the end, you've get a kinda tanky snowball/buff bot. But he's a really easy jungler to learn with, and if you like counter-jungling and abusing the other jungler, just run around their jungle and make them cry. (Really: more than anybody, buying wards on Nunu to ward their buffs is guaranteed hilarity, especially against newbie junglers who don't pull their buffs into the bush.)


Nocturne, those nerfs are pretty significant, but he's maybe the most consistently terrifying jungler. He exerts a lot of pressure. People get scared. Your ganks are easy. Also, he benefits greatly from that regardless of whether you get fed or not, he's still useful after the transition.

Yi is I think, trickier than he seems. I mean, his jungling is fine. But if he's going to do well, he needs CC coordination (or the opponents to be playing badly), and he needs to get some ganks to keep up. As opposed to Nocturne, an underfed Yi is just laughable...and the jungle isn't rich enough right now to feed you.

AD Shaco is high skill cap. High fun if you're doing well. But I feel like to do well with him, you have to really get how to be a son of a gun, do all sorts of clever tower dives, and be dropping boxes everywhere useful.  His teamfighting is kind of shitty* too, so if you're not putting out a lot of presence early, you're sort of missing the point with him. Let's not talk about AP shaco, okay?

* S tier split pusher though.

GP: I haven't really jungled with him much, so I'm not sure. He had problems with speed of routes/needing runes, but that's presumably fixed post-mastery change. His jungling's a little less braindead than anybody else: managing parley to get max gold is kind of tricky. He's good at punishing overextenders, but his ganks don't have as much versatility as say Shaco or Noct, but he's GP, so he's got utility. I just prefer playing him solo top.

By the way, the new masteries pushed Jungle Rammus into a terror, especially if you've got money for armor quints.  He can now jungle fast, he's not sacrificing build, and he's got great, early ganks.

Did pretty good with my first game as Wukong.  Opponents were pretty bad though.  In my 2v1 lane (we had jungle Lee Sin), the AP Sion looked like he was playing while reading notes and the Nid was pretty terrible.  They only managed to get me once and Lee Sin never felt like he needed to gank my lane.  Finished 11/2/16 with the last death coming at the very end when I was tower diving 3 of them at Nexus.  

Good damage and great escapes.  His E -> Q combo hits pretty damn hard.  People aren't expecting it (I wasn't).  Kept fat fingering his damn ulti due to his initiator being an e.  So used to leading with a q.  That w is so fun to have.

Still, very positive experience and seems like a summoner I'll be able to play pretty well.  Of course, could have just been luck and playing a bunch of muppets.

edit: Dragon lady is hard as fuck to chase down. 

Assuming you're safe and can get it off, an autoattack --> Q --> E combo does a fair bit more damage with Wukong.

Tried out Noct's jungle path.  Really easy, easier than Shaco even, and you don't have to rely on boxes.  Shaco would make people rage more, but Nocturne seems like the most beginner friendly jungle option for me.   If only there were a way to ensure the other team had a jungler in blind pick.  :awesome_for_real:

Man, I've followed that up by playing him pretty mediocre to outright bad lately.  I think I need to put the monkey down or pull my head out of my ass, one of the two.  Went 8/10/x in one game and took endless shit from my team.. who were all vastly negative as well, except for our Brand.  Man, this fucking LeBlanc would not get off my ass (she was like 11/16/x).  I think I'm just not totally sure what I'm supposed to be doing with him.  Burn squishies (don't seem to have the burst for that)?  Hit and run?  Build tanky (damage goes to shit)?

Could be though, that lately I just don't seem to be playing great in general.  My ult timing and spatial awareness have been awful. 

Still winning though; 16 game swing from where I was a week or two ago.  Found Ryze to be pretty solid and easy to play. Damage seemed to taper off a bit toward the end of the game.  Just needed to get my RoA/AS out, I think.

I seem to be hitting the same patches at times. I was on like a 5 game losing streak where shit just was not working no matter what I did. I think part of it was that I'd just hit 20 and haven't had a chance to fill up on T3 runes yet. Playing Brand, I'd run up against a Brand of the same level and get owned 1v1 and I couldn't understand why until I realized the summoner was 3 levels above me and probably had more T3 runes than I did. That could make a HUGE difference apparently.

Yeah, so I fucking SUCK with Gragas. I mean yuckypoo shittastically awful. He has some serious damage potential late game if you play him right, but he's so farmable early, especially in my hands. I had a bad game last night with what was in essence a bad team of chattering fucktards. Our Katarina really wasn't that great but she kept nattering on and talking shit with the Twitch on the other side who was killing me repeatedly and relentlessly. Our Sion kept talking in some weird abbreviated fucktard English that I couldn't understand him at all. It would be like one or two coherent words followed by two-letter Mongoloid-isms like "feed team fk fggg" or some such Tourette's level mish mash. I kept asking him if English was a first language but never got an answer I could understand. I ended up with like 3/20 but at least I had 17 assists to show I wasn't totally worthless? Just an awful fucking game.

Then I played Annie. It was like fucking EASY MODE in comparison. She is such a beast.

Hehe, don't build Phantom Dancer on Gragas.

Gragas is all about the poke.  I'll write up some more on this later, but my son's making some noise right now.

edit:  You need to change something about the dying thing.  If someone died 25 times on my team, I'd be a little miffed.  Maybe even a bit bothered.  

For an item build:

Start:  Boots, 3 health pots.

First back:  2 Dorans rings.  Refill pots.  If Twitch/Eve(laugh) is in your lane/game.  PINK WARD.  Slap that fucker in the middle of the lane. Laugh at Twitch when you toss a barrel on his hidden ass. If they have a solid ganker as a jungler, ward your river bushes.

Start rushing your Rabadons.  Finish your boots as you do this.  Probably sorc.

Lich Bane.  Void Staff.  Bashee's Veil is pretty helpful for someone that will be doing a lot of poking.  I don't get RoA, and don't usually feel like it'd help me.  Perhaps another defensive item or a DFG. 


Skill priority:  R > Q > E > W.  Get one point in W at 2 and leave it there. 

More perhaps later. 

I never realized how good Zilean is in mid.  Been playing him bottom mostly or solo-top (when no one else on the team wants to deal with a 2v1 lane) and the games really depend on how well the carries do.  Getting pressed into mid a lot more and finding out can really zone people hard and push em around.  Haven't had a match-up there where I felt I was at a disadvantage.

Playing almost exclusively with support or tanks when it's needed but I still haven't found a killer I'm really good with.  I like the poke-style play more than the charge in and face-wreck.  Seems most of the carries are built to face check.  Tried Gragas.  Didn't go so well.  Is Lux competative?  Her kit looks sweet.

I always hear people bitch that Lux's cool downs are way too high.  Your first few Gragas games will be ultrabad.  But he is made for the poke-poke.  

My Wukong is getting respectable. Better than my Gangplank, which has seemed to slip a bit. I think I've gone 3 matches without fat fingering my ulti.  :awesome_for_real:

Thinking about getting Udyr or Trundle for another bruiser that can top lane (or jungle when I get courageous and feel like getting yelled at for an entire game).

Lux as a carry is underwhelming. Lux as support is decent, but lacks a heal. That being said, I have seen her played well and wreck some shit, but there are a lot more powerful solo mids than her.

I like Kennen quite a lot as a "killer."  His sustain is amazing if you take Doran's Shield first as well, and he his damage output gets scary in the mid and late game.  Great solo mid character.   One note that, he is super reliant (especially during laning) on his skill shot, which is fairly easy to land.

Lane trundle seems like it'd be pretty underwhelming, and Udyr is a constant headache for me.

Cho`gath fits the solo top bruiser or jungle pretty well. He wants AS runes for jungling, but that's not too crazy and who knows what he'll need after today.

Yah, I have Cho.  Used to play him a lot. Maybe I should start putting him back into rotation.  I just don't seem to kill as well, but you end up insanely tanky.   I could use my Singed runes with him pretty effectively and probably just switch out the quints.

I love Cho, he's my go to for tanks.  Even with mediocre last-hits and dicey Ruptures I can still do well with him.

People play Trundle?  I've literally never seen him in any of my games, ever.


Looked at Kennen, may give him a whirl.  I know from the other end that he can be a real bitch to lane against.  May also try Miss Fortune, who I picked up in that triple sale a couple weeks ago.

I've played against him once.  It was like my 2nd time jungling and he kicked my ass all over the place.  Otherwise, the only place I see him is in competitive play.  Seems to range from pretty effective to downright ignorable.  Seems like his kit is pretty useful.  You've got a spammable Q that has pretty good scaling, a steroid, a wall/slow, and good sustain.  Ulti is a little odd, but seems to make him a decent duelist or good for going after a carry.

Hate laning against Kennen.  He is a bitch.

edit:
Always kind of fun to play someone people don't see a lot.  I get a lot of strange reactions with Gragas even though you do seem him some.  "ARE U TANK, GRAG?"

So, thinking of picking up a couple more quints to change stuff up and to fit some more champs better.  Movement speed or health quints? Mostly going to go on solo top/solo mid characters.

flat health quints for those lanes especially.

Health quints could be used by both, I generally run MS quints for top. If you're patient, wait for the Christmas sales and see what pops up.

It'll mostly go on Ryze, Wukong, GP.  Gragas, I'll keep with flat AP.  

I got absolutely shit on by a Kassadin mid playing as Ryze yesterday.  Of course, I'm somewhat convinced that's a crap matchup for me until I get a BV out.  I start my combo, and he just silences and goes to town.  The flat AP quints I've got on him right now are nearly useless (bought for Gragas).

I'd definitely go with the MS. I only use health quints now against very strong early game champs.

Gragas is one of the few mage characters who can initiate fights and he's a great counter to squishier mid champs. For example against Leblanc you can push the lane against her safely and make her try to last hit under the tower, each barrel hurts her a lot and she can't really get close enough to do much to you. He has a 1.0 AP ratio on his Q and R, which is just insane.

His downside is that he is all burt and zero sustained damage, which means against tanky teams he falls off pretty badly.

Do people play normal mode draft or usually just blind pick if they're doing normals at 30?  Because yah, sometimes you can end up making a pick that's going to end up being completely useless later in the game (or the entire one, heh).

Both, I've watched 2000ish ELO streams where the person only plays blind pick normals.

OK, another decision to make.  Garen or Trynd?  Trynd seems to be a lot stronger as the game goes along and seems to be more valid in competitive play (not like that matters much for me), but Garen was easier to play and more intuitive for me than Tryn during free weeks.  Garen also seems not to carry as hard or at least has a more definite ceiling to what he can do.  Seems like you can bully a lane easier with Garen.

Garen seems easier than Trynd in a number of ways, but most importantly, easier to safely pick up CS on. So you know, if you like Garen, get garen.

Also, they're 1350 IP. You'll be able to fix this decision quickly.

I'm still trying to settle on a champion. I was doing ok with Ashe but hit L11 and found out how fragile she is endgame. Annie was a lot of fun in the first matches I played using her, then I got smashed again. I played around with Volibear to see if it was my playstyle as ranged that was sucking but found myself falling behind. Then of course I realised I was using ranged mastery and runes. I'm still not taken with him although I did get one win where I went 5/7/5 - but I might have to mess around with a few other Champions to really get a feel for it.

I think my biggest mistake was leveling using the vsUI games - great up to L10 but after that the weaknesses show.

I'm very tempted to create an alt account and replay against people.

I really need to settle on one char soon - my win/loss ratio is appalling and while I don't mind getting assists rather than kills, I'm falling behind on them too.

WTB a means to stop sucking

Stupid question time!   :awesome_for_real:

So I've spent the day playing bot matches trying to get a feel for things.  I tried out a few characters, and my preference is for ranged over melee.  My primary problem is that I suck at last hitting, so my primary source of money is killing enemy champs/towers.  I've been playing Ashe/Tristana/Miss Fortune, but I seem to play too aggressively, as I often over-extend myself, while not being able to take out my target.  I'm guessing that the problem lies with my playing a carry as if it were a pusher?  Is there a ranged character that would be better suited to my more aggressive playstyle, or am I on the right track, and I just need to switch up some items for something more tanky-ish?

I feel like I'm still paying for starting with a lot of AI games as well.  Should have known better but wanted to 'get comfortable with the mechanics' first.  Big mistake.

Tried to catch up on the mid/late game dynamics by playing support or support-ish champs (Zilean, Morgana, Janna, Sona) and just not dying during laning.  Once that breaks up, scope out the best dude on my team and roll with them as much as possible.  Use wards, which I don't remember seeing much of at ALL until level 20ish, and just watch the flow of the game.  Worked reasonably well for me but you can end up at the mercy of your team, which obviously isn't for everybody.

Can't help you with k/d ratios on carries though as I'm having the same issues myself.  Despite feeling incompetent half the time my win/loss is well over 50%, somehow.

You can play a mage like Ryze pretty aggressively if you build him with mana items that'll give you a good deal of durability as well.  Plus, he's got a noob stomp combo you can throw on unsuspecting people.  I don't last hit with him very well and I'm usually a bit underfarmed until mid game, but then I catch up quite well. Your ulti will help you clear creep waves and due to your passive it's up a lot, so you don't need to feel guilty about using it.  But, he's AP and you might be more accustomed to right clickers at this time. 

Trist's passive on her E can help you get some farm even if you're bad at getting last hits. 

I think a good think to do would be to get better at harassing.  Forcing them to back or blow a summoner is worth the effort.  You can get some free farm or up the chances that the next engage will end in a kill. 

But in the end, you'll just have to get better at last hitting.  I'm still pretty bad at it.  As you get more levels, it'll get harder to CS as the level of harass and jungle pressure will increase. Doesn't get easier, so it's a decent idea to practice now.  I'm probably the worst person to jump in here with advice, however, since I don't play ranged AD at all (not for a long time). 

I learned this lesson pretty hard once junglers started to become commonplace:  You don't push the lane just because you can.  Unless you have a good reason you want the creep line just beyond your tower.

I'm also not the best guy for this sort of advice.

Find out what role or two you're better at or have more fun playing and focus on that.  Play a couple champs that are good at that role. Don't try too hard to synergize with your team, don't try Cho'gath for the first time because they want a tank.  Playing just a couple champs at a time seems to up my success.  Once I start branching out too much, I don't play as well.  Don't play wierd champs.  Gragas is not for noobs.  Gangplank is great for noobs.  Avoid someone that's all skillshots.

Don't do bot games.  No more AI.  If you need to practice mechanics, make a custom game, add a single bot and then exit when you've accomplished what you want to. Playing a full game against AI is just pointless if you want to play people.

Nothing wrong with a smurf account if you want to try out a free champ v. a real person.  Just realize that if you find yourself owning, it's because they're terrible little nooblets.  But at least your mechanics will be tested in a live fire scenario.  

Also, watch some streams if you can.  Helps me a lot, even if they're way above what I aspire.  Just seeing some of the things they do and how aware they are of the game will help you start to see some of the same things.  

edit: 

Best single piece of advice:  Know when you're outclassed and play accordingly. A fight you can't win is a pretty dumb fight (most of the time).

Going to be harsh and say: no, no, and no. Your problems with last hitting and overextending aren't due to your champ or build, they're due to you not knowing how to last hit or when to be aggressive. Which is fine - these are core skills that you see high-level players screw up regularly. Basically it comes down to a) knowing when you can secure a kill, which only comes with time and experience, and b) having the discipline not to jump in unless you know you can secure the kill, which is something you can start working on now. Trist is probably a great champ to learn this on actually, since her kit comes with really high risk/reward - after you W in on someone one of you is almost guaranteed to die.

I think you've got to accept that the game can be swingy, and just focus down on like two or three champions. Morgana's my best, but sometimes I will still just muck it up for a few games.

Out of those characters, Annie is a really solid champion who can carry games (she's no supercarry, but still good enough) has a fairly low skillfloor. I find Ashe a lot trickier (although to be note, I'm sucky with ADs), just because what you offer isn't necessarily tons of damage, but a ton of utility.

So just find three characters who are reasonable and you like, and play the hell out of them. You'll eventually just zoom past the people who are playing a different five characters each free week.

Ranged AD carries, more than any other champion type, need items to do damage, which means you need to last hit to get money to get items.

More than anything this last part is the key, you just need to play a lot.  I have a friend who is frequently trying to find new builds, new champions, etc, to make up for something if he isn't playing well, and I've been gently steering him to "just play more."  Good decision making (probably one of the most under rated skills in any multiplayer game from the perspective of most players) only comes from just getting a lot of experience, and good decision making counts for a TON in this game.

Gragas actually is pretty imba. You can farm from distan using your barrels, body slam is awesome escape mechanism  ( you can go trough walls). My only problem with him is dealing damage (as once you barrel is gone you pretty much just wait for cd)

Yay, Udyr sale.

Still waiting for the following to go on sale at some point:

Rumble
Yorick
Trundle

Feels like I'm playing bruiser pokemon.  

I want to play Swain top lane at some point, but everyone wants me to mid with him and certain mid champs can abuse his range/lack of burst.  I'm sure some top laners will just completely poop all over me, but I think I'll do pretty decent in a lot of match ups.  I could always try convincing my team, but that usually doesn't go over very well.  :awesome_for_real:

edit:
Any suggestions for laning against the following champs:  Ryze (I know, I play him, still do bad), Kennen, Riven, Xerath, Volibear (lane).   I always seem to do exceptionally poor against them. With Volibear, it's not a huge sample size as I almost never see him.  Few times I've had him up top, I think it's been when I haven't been on GP.  Without the poke, he just tends to be like a bursty Singed with a really annoying passive.  Ryze just tends to have a ton of burst and harasses me out of lane.  Kennen, you just can't get out of lane and at 6 he can kill you if he feels like blowing a flash. Xerath just has unreal poke AND burst.  And Riven is fucking broken unless played by a retard.

Who are you playing against those characters with? Swain?

Combo of Swain, Ryze, GP, Gragas (rarely). Wukong used to be thrown into the mix there. Monkey is bad if your team is full of morons; GP is a lot safer in that regard.   I play blind, so I don't really get a chance to counter pick.  I haven't done a lot of draft mode.  The APs are mostly played mid because no one well let me do otherwise, and GP is usually top, unless my team is having issues or they realize that I'll pound someone like Morgana.

I bought Udyr and Karma on the sale and decided to try Udyr tonight. I didn't want to jungle with him yet, just laning. I got absolutely facerolled first game. I was a total feedbag. The Shaco/Ashe combo myself and Cass were up against bot lane were like level 15 by the time I was 10 and it just steamrolled into an early merciful surrender. 2/14/0. Just horrible. The second game I think I got a better handle on him, especially after checking a build on Mobafire. Bear to Tiger to Turtle is a helluva good initiator.

Bought Udyr too, but didn't get to try him out.  I wasn't going to get a lane to myself, so I didn't want to bother.  I don't see him a lot in games anymore, I guess everyone's just waiting on the rework of his passive (if it ever happens).

Instead I got to play Singed in a bot lane with a Yi.  I forgot how shitty the lane comps get once I get back to around even.  The Yi was totally crappy, luckily their entire team except the Vayne (which I held in check until tower went down) were awful and their Cait was on something or just trolling.

Why would they need to redo his passive? The AS buff on top of tiger stance seems pretty decent to me.

Used to add dodge as well.  They took it out due to them removing dodge entirely (soon).  Sure, it's still a good passive, but one might expect them to add something since they took something away.

I expect they won't. He was pretty OP.

Yeah, he's still a super jungler and laner without it. In fact, it probably saves him from more meaningful nerfs.

I've gotten more used to the new jungle, and it works. I just kind of miss counter-jungling (other than the still viable plan of warding their buffs).

Well, I don't really play either Swain, Gragas or GP beyond their freeweeks, but consider the following:

When going up nukers like Ryze, Xerath and Kennen, if you aren't confident of being able to come out on top in a straight-up fight, best suggestion would be to just turtle up and outlast them. Swains' particularly good at this if you build an early gem thingy (the one that forms part of Veil or RoA). It will give you great solo sustain, and along with a bit of MR (so say a Negatron cloak) or an Revolver you can just sit in a lane and farm farm farm. Ask for ganks, control the lane and try to not lose your tower in preparation for midgame.

Against Riven or Volibar on the other hand, as both are heavy burst melee you'll want to make sure you space yourself correctly if you are a caster (Gragas or Swain), and just concentrate on landing your spells if they try to push you. I know Swain has very good damage if you spec into the DPS tree and have some MPen runes. Using Ignite/Exhaust along with your two DOTs will usually flatten just about anybody. I typically only grab one point in the AOE snare, simply because maxing the other two early plus Ignite pretty much guarantees at least one kill in a fight.

I tend to favour ranged over melee in this matchup purely because of the ability to deal damage at a distance through correct spacing, but in LoL this relationship tends to get a bit muddled because so many heroes have free gap-closers, etc... As before, if worse comes to worst, just turtle, don't feed and farm as much as you can.

When versing Ryze and Xerath (to some extent), typically they will both try to wear you down by poking you with spells, before going in to try and finish. You've got a couple of options; you can try to and trade blows and come out even, so that if they decide to go all out and kill you, you can take them with you as well. Alternatively you can take the fight to them, but Swain is better at this than Gragas I think. Getting to level six with a gem and a revolver will put you in a very good position to dominate the matchup, though you may have to spend money on multiple hp pots against a good Ryze. Also, Xerath tends to be easier to collapse than Ryze, simply because if you can master the art of moving sideways and/or diagonally, the vast majority wont be able to do much to you.

Conversely, when playing against heavy burst characters like Kennen or Volibar, I usually find that having a heavy hp total and maybe a bit of resist early on is a good way to go. Kennen tends to function much in the same way as Akali does, in that if you can survive the initial burst you should be able to, at the very least, walk away (also, zigzag as to not eat Shurikens). With Swain, again, a combination of his ult, plus the two DOTs followed up with Ignite, all in rapid succession will mess just about anyone up. You may die, but your ult should keep you up long enough to get the kill as well, if not turn the tables. Against Volibar more specifically you'll need to anticipate the rush/ross, and keep in mind his passive which is on ~2 min cooldown early game. So wear him out until it triggers, after which you should be safe.

Hopefully this'll help, but feel free to ask more.

This is really a fantastic post. Really covers everything but last hitting. Do all of this and never stop improving your last hitting. Until you finish every game (except when support) way ahead of not just your lane opponent but everyone else in the game you have not done enough to master last hitting. Also learn how to make the lane do what you want it to do. Just getting max gold is nice but you also need to know how to shift the lane towards your tower, freeze it in place, when and how to push, when and how to take full wave aggro so it doesn't hit your tower etc.

I have seen many many smart sounding posts say that the most obvious difference between 1200 and 1700 elo is last hitting mechanics.

The last hitting mechanics for people at my level are hilarious.  They don't even try.  Last few times mid against an Annie/LeBlanc/Ryze, all they did was auto attack creeps.  Never turned it off, plink plink plink.  The Annie never last hit with her Q.  Seems like they didn't care about farm, they just wanted to push tower so they could go gank. Then I got a 1v2 v. a Teemo and Maokai as GP and they just auto attacked and pushed to tower.  Maokai wanted to go gank.  Sure he got kills, but in the end a fed GP v. a fed Maokai isn't going to go your way.  Only game I lost was the Annie one, and that's because my team was really awful (that was the AD Lux game I shared).

It's like they think losing by 30+ creeps in the first 10 minutes is worth a chance at a kill.  Then when they come back, I've bought and start destroying them. Plus, their lane is always pushed so either they can't kill me even if they're ahead, or they're easy fodder for my jungler (if I have one).

It's a lot easier to carry when you're winning the CS battle and controlling the position of your creeps better than they are.  Safe positions and tower hits on over eager morons will lead to kills and a possible snowball effect.

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Easiest, safest characters for me right now are Gankplank and Ryze.  Both are incredibly easy to build, have no skill shots (harder to DERP), and can adapt easily to most situations.  Gangplank you can build do handle just about anything.  DPS, tanky, bit of both.  Easy.  Just don't build AP other than a sheen/triforce.  And while Ryze has a more strict "correct" build, it's mostly a set of core items that can be built in any order after tear.  Worried about AD? Build a glacial shroud next.  Need to deal with incoming magic damage/cc? Start rushing a BV.  Want more sustain? Get 1200 gold and pick up a revolver.  Only things I stay away from that I see people doing: don't rush AAS (get it late), and don't build RoA.   His Q is your money maker, and it has shit AP scaling.

What do you prefer to a ROA? It provides the 2nd largest amount of mana of any item, a large amount of health, and the AP is the cherry on top, W and E have very good AP ratios.

I just don't find any room for it in what I usually build. End game build is going to be: boots (most likely sorc), frozen heart,  banshee's veil, wota (some don't build this, I do), and archangel's staff.  My core is usually boots, tear, glacial shroud, catalyst, and revolver.  Depending on matchup, I can opt to rush BV or Frozen Heart.   So, that would mean a really late RoA in most of my builds.  I think I've completed a 6th item once in my last 10 Ryze games.  I suppose I'd go RoA if I didn't go for a wota. But, I like lots of sustain, and if you trade in lane, you're going to be standing still to get off your full combos, so it's nice to have that extra vamp early.  

Last and 6th item I usually build is a void staff, especially if for some reason I didn't build sorc boots. If it's that late, it's very likely that even the worst scrubs have some MR.  At times you're almost going to be acting like a ranged AD and hitting whomever is close to you since you can put out such good sustained damage (obviously I go for the ranged AD or other AP first).  Your ability to chunk just about anyone is fantastic.

I suppose it bears some testing.  I think you'd need to complete it around the 25 minute mark and that might put off a BV or FH.  Suppose you could fit in in between the two, but it'd be about a 1000 gold more expensive than the wota and you lose the aura.  

I agree with the ROA not being core. I'm just not sure it's beaten by a void staff, especially with E giving a fair amount of MrP if it hits (24 per bounce). I think that one is really a situational call.

Good point.  Fully built it's going to put 79 damage on your W, 28 on your E (per bounce), and 50 on your Q.  Plus, you have another 600+ HP to fool around with.  I don't care for his E, it can be a bit unreliable.  

Man, they're never going to stick Yorick, Kennen or Rumble on sale, are they?  At least not until I break down and buy one full price...

Whatever, exiled morgana skin woooooooo.

Damn them, after I just spent most of my RP on another rune page for hybrids!

Well, it looks like buying Kennen is something I should probably put off.  Energy regen seals are 800 IP per.  :ye_gods:  Although, he is the most tempting of the champs I've listed since he's great at both solo mid and solo top.  :sad_panda:

and they aren't totally necessary. With Kennen, I ran a book with Magic Pen reds, health/lvl yellows, flat AP blues, and flat HP/AP quints. Worked just fine, bought a Doran's shield and had a nice chunk o health.

My generic AP page would probably even work. MPen reds, AR yellows, MR blues, and MS quints.  Could even replace the MS quints for a mix of flat health/AP quints, which I have.  It's mostly a page for blind picks, since you don't get to tailor to your matchup to your lane since that's often not even decided before you go in.  Hard to know what you'll even be facing.

Really debating getting the extra 7 pages.  I just don't have a ton of runes, since they're so costly.  However, there's just so many different permutations for champs.   :|

Off topic, but should I just start playing draft mode normals?  Blind pick is OK, but getting randomly counterpicked isn't that much fun.  I'm just concerned that people will start being even bigger dicks when you have to draft.  There's 2 roles that I don't even play (jungle, ad ranged), and I don't play a ton of different champs.  

Yeah the Energy Regen is really only must have if you are going to try to play Shen.

As long as you can do one of support/jungle, you should be fine if you state it ahead of time. I play ranked games and just tell people ahead of time that they don't want me carrying and that I am best at jungle/support. I haven't once had an issue.

Draft normal is better all around, except for setup time. Normal blind play level seems quite a bit below it.

Early impressions of Kennen are favorable.  The Q poke is great and the animation on his regular attack makes last hitting pretty easy.   Got stuck in a duo lane, which was hellish because my partner was super awful. Got to love a Volibear that can't get more than a CS a minute and just runs up to the enemy team, does nothing, gets chunked, and then runs away.  Guy was lvl 5 when everyone else was 8-10.

Kind of squishy, but he's got a solid kit. I'll keep playing him.  Maybe I can move to a 0/21/9 mastery build instead of a 9/0/21.  Utility is really nice, however. Move speed, exp, spell vamp, CDR.  Defense has some nice tricks too.  Hmm.

For this thread, I'm not sure he's incredibly newbie friendly, but not most difficult either.  No mana so missing your skill shots isn't going to force you out of lane.  Your W, E are easy to use.  You've a debuff/counter to track, but it's not too bad. Very flexible.  You could even build AD, but it'd be kind of wasting his decent (not great) AP scaling.  It'd be a bit like AD TF.

edit: and as I post this, M5 wins an IEM match with AD Kennen.  :awesome_for_real:

I've been playing Kennen lately too, mostly in Dominion. He has to be careful around people who are burstier than he is (which is everyone) but with careful use of the long-range poke, the stun, and the speed boost he can whittle down most opponents. Most importantly to me, he doesn't get punished too hard for missing his skillshots, so it's good practice - gives me hope that one day I can actually play mildly skillshot-reliant champs like Leblanc or Urgot.

Also he's a pretty decent Crystal Scar bottom lane. Great at defending points with shuriken harass and his pushing really ramps up later.

Will of the ancients is awesome on him for sustain.

Yah, thinking first two built items, outside of boots, is going to be wota->rylais.   Not sure about the start.  I see Dorans mentioned a lot, but in some circumstances might you want to go boot/3?  I like the early movement speed for getting out of early ganks and dodging heavy skill shot harass.  I guess it's situational.

Either I would consider perfectly acceptable.

Spell vamp is kind of a fucked up stat. When you look at who typically builds it it's almost always casters who don't have mana. Kennen, Rumble, Vlad, Morde, Akali - people who can spam abilities as soon as they are off CD. I see a problem right now in that spell vamp is pretty weak on a lot of characters but making it stronger would make it too good on mana-less casters.

I don't see any problem with different characters favoring different stats. Anyway mana often becomes a non-issue late game so for most casters it just means WotA isn't a first or second item.

Compare that to the build restrictions shared by mana-less casters, for whom a large range of AP items are almost completely non-viable because they all have mana. And the ones that don't have defensive stats, so they're not good early. That just leaves WotA, Deathcap, and Void Staff. The latter two scale better once you have some AP, so WotA would be pretty much the default first item even if it didn't give spell vamp.

Without spell vamp as a first item WOTA does the same thing as needlessly large rod for 500 more gold. (The aoe ability power is not terribly relevant in lane.) The only reason to build revolver/wota is that it gives you sustain, which is an important early-game thing to have. But most casters with mana can't make use of the sustain because they can't spam spells enough. (Also you forgot Rylais, which has HP, AP and utility)

Comparing spell vamp to mana is bad because mana-less casters literally have zero use for mana. All casters have use for spell vamp, the problem is that it's just not effective on most of them because were it strong enough to give reasonable sustain to mana-based casters it would be way too good on mana-less casters. (Probably the reason Riot never introduced the non-AOE hextech upgrade they mentioned like 8 months ago

I think I'm going to have to start playing draft pick.  I'm really getting sick of no jungler games. I know I don't jungle, but what are the odds that not 1 out of 5 will consistently.  At least draft will put some sort of meta pressure on the whole process.  :argh:

Just getting tired of wanting to queue dodge 75% of the time.

edit: well, no jungle v no jungle works.   :uhrr: Made a Malz rage quit by rushing QSS.

edit dos: 

First two draft games were funny.  Both times I was last pick.  First time, no one said a word until I got to my pick and then I asked what support they wanted.  Sona.  So, I pick Sona.  "NO WAIT, SORAKA."  The Cait I had with me was possibly a worse ranged AD than I am.  We had a Yi/Jarvan lane (their Vayne went top and fed hard).  Second time playing Sona and didn't do too bad.  We won but only because their jungle Karthus DC'd.  Our mid was pretty wretched. A Kat that went like 0/5 and did nothing. Jungle was bad too.  The Teemo up top was a monster.  Carried hard.

Then, next game they ask me what I'd like to play.  "Mid, top or support.  Please no rangedAD or jungle."  They're cool with it, but the one guy that isn't talking and they're asking him what he wants.  So, it gets to him and I with ranged AD and top left.  He locks Irelia.  YAY.  Thank god he carried, because I'm wretched at ranged AD.  Picked Cait, because she's the only one I'm comfortable with.  I go 0/3/18.  Everyone after the game is asking "gee, they KS you enough?". I had the worst CS, but I also had a Twitch lane, which means my head had to be on a goddamn swivel when our pink ward was down.  They downed our tower early, which didn't help.  I think they wanted Twitch roaming.  Good team though and we won pretty convincingly.

The positives were: winning and no one gave me shit over my play.  Negatives: not playing the champs I want to play.  Second game would have odd if I had gotten my pick.  They banned my two best champs.

Practice cs, practice cs, then practice cs some more. Honestly it doesn't even matter what champ you play if you can get a 30+ cs lead before 20min and once you start getting to 60+ leads things start getting really forgiving of other mistakes you make. So if your still in the games where people are missing all sorts of last hits, which is all of us posting here, worrying about all this other shit is really pointless but fun.

Ryze vs Lux mid during the laning phase: I had a rough time of it, and I'm wondering whether this was expected?

It seems like she's got a lot more range and poking ability with her combo. Is this just not being aggressive enough in wanting trades? (I'm pretty sure my QWEQ outdamages her stuff, although I'd often get stopped before I was in range.)

I just held on in lane, and eventually, you know, Ryze becomes RYZE and Lux becomes lux. But kind of dicey.

I think this is all the lane is, a GOOD Luxe will keep you at distance and poke at you.  You just need to farm well until you get to that point where you can just walk through her damage and trade with her doing twice what she did.  Which doesn't take long with Ryze throwing 100 damage Q's at level 1 already.

I might start with boots, bait out her skill shots and randomly poke with Q or E. Just keep her a little hurt, but don't commit to any trading until you've got a good amount of your core done. 

She'll probably outfarm you bad, but waiting her out will come out to a net gain for your team.   Letting her push your lane too bad might come out poorly for your side lanes (or good if you get some ganks).


I'd say a lot of my problems with the Cait game was just being unfamiliar with her auto attack.  Had not played her in months. Once I have some practice with the animation, last hitting becomes a lot easier.   

I wouldn't worry about winning my lane versus Lux as Ryze. She needs to win the lane not me because Ryze is ten times the power mid to late as Lux with equal farm. If you just play it real safe and focus on cs then your team has a stronger mid once the dragon fight comes because Lux just isn't that good. Also if you play very safe and patient her or her jungler will try to do something you can capitalize, or if your jungler comes to gank your follow up is very nasty. Another option is to get a ward on their blue and take a fight when she goes for it, it is much harder in the jungle near blue for her to avoid your damage.

Last hitting is a bit like playing one-string Guitar Hero.

While someone throws empty beer bottles at you.

Gotta play that string if you ever want to win though.  :uhrr:

Or just only jungle/support!

That's last hitting on very easy. On easy you get high cs while not leaving yourself open to ganks. On medium you don't leave yourself open to ganks, avoid, harass and give harass without missing out on cs. On hard you do all of that plus control where the  creeps actually meet in the lane depending on the champion matchup, your jungler position, game state, etc. On very hard you do all that while also actively preventing the enemy from getting cs via disruption with your skills, implied threat, simple vision blocking, actually intercepting their skills when appropriate etc.

Sad part is many smart humans that are unskilled players try to do more than very easy without mastering very easy. The players who master it one step at a time tend to actually go up in elo because dominating cs really is the simplest way to win more than you lose.

Here's a test, take the non support/jungle champ that you think you are best with. Go into a custom game by yourself and try to get to 100 cs as fast as possible. If this is so easy that its boring for you try doing that while doing ZERO damage to the enemy tower.

Example:
Riven, cloth/5pot, normal skill build normal masteries 100 cs at 12:20, tower hp remaining 980/1550. Got that just now.

That is not good last hitting. That's pretty terrible although I'm ok with the level of lane control considering its been awhile since I've played the game at all let alone done any custom game last hitting practice.

Hey, Hoax, what's your custom game last hitting practice strategy?

Also, yeah, a ranked game last night totally illustrated this. I was Sona supporting a Graves who was not terrible, but a) was way too quick to use abilities, and b) mediocre at last hits, and they had a Soraka/Vayne. Vayne had 53-20 CS at some point, and after one successful gank, a 14-minute infinity edge. And that was pretty much it.

Hah, I supported a Graves last night as Sona too. Dude couldn't last hit for anything (lowest CS on team, outside of support), and we had a pretty easy lane (Nasus/Blitz).  It was easy to just harass them all day long and unfortunately that's all he did along with his bad last hitting pushing the lane so we couldn't really get ganks.  Lee See blamed the pushing on me, the person that wasn't hitting creeps.  :awesome_for_real:

Sona's really fun when you can play super aggressive. I could only really be so bold because their Blitz never landed a hook that ended in a kill.