Good character for a total newb

[Rasix]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Rasix]

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.

[HaemishM]

Why would they need to redo his passive? The AS buff on top of tiger stance seems pretty decent to me.

[Rasix]

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.

[Slayerik]

I expect they won't. He was pretty OP.

[statisticalfool]

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).

[Megrim]

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.  

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.

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.

[Hoax]

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).

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.

[Rasix]

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.

edit:

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.

[Mosesandstick]

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.

[Rasix]

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.  

[Mosesandstick]

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.

[Rasix]

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...

[statisticalfool]

Whatever, exiled morgana skin woooooooo.

[HaemishM]

Damn them, after I just spent most of my RP on another rune page for hybrids!

[Rasix]

Well, it looks like buying Kennen is something I should probably put off.  Energy regen seals are 800 IP per.    Although, he is the most tempting of the champs I've listed since he's great at both solo mid and solo top.  

[Slayerik]

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.

[Rasix]

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.  

[Hoax]

Yeah the Energy Regen is really only must have if you are going to try to play Shen.

[Slayerik]

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.  

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.

[Rasix]

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. 

[ezrast]

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.

[Slayerik]

Will of the ancients is awesome on him for sustain.

[Rasix]

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.

[Slayerik]

Either I would consider perfectly acceptable.

[Margalis]

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.

[ezrast]

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.

[Margalis]

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

[Rasix]

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.  

Just getting tired of wanting to queue dodge 75% of the time.

edit: well, no jungle v no jungle works.   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.

[Hoax]

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.

[statisticalfool]

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.

[Thrawn]

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.

[Rasix]

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 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).

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.

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.   

[Hoax]

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.