Alongside many multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBA), League of Legends (LoL) has become one of the top video games among competitive players.
However, League of Legends can be quite overwhelming for beginners, especially to those who have yet to play a single MOBA game. However, it should also go without saying that the game has an amazing learning curve that will help you discover its main mechanics.
Here is a comprehensive guide to the world of League of Legends to start playing with your friends and other players.
How multiplayer online battle arenas play out
To better understand how League of Legends work, you first need to learn how MOBAs play out. If you’ve played a tower defence game before, then you are a step closer to figuring out the gist of it all.
When playing MOBAs, there are two teams where 5 players are positioned in lanes to try to defeat all the turrets that eventually lead to the enemy base and destroy the summoner’s rift. This automatically wins the game for the team.
It sounds simple enough, but there is more to uncover for MOBAs. Firstly, three lanes occupy the whole map. Alongside the lanes are jungle camps where players can farm for experience and gold that are crucial to making the champion stronger.
Speaking of farm and experience, when the game starts, players’ champions will be accompanied by a few creep units and a single catapult. Creep waves are sent to each lane to defend their respective turrets. Once they fall in battle, a new creep wave respawns to continue this defence.
Usually, champions are given four skills where the first three are the typical damage-dealing spells or disables that stun, slow, or silence enemies. The final skill is called an ultimate and is regarded as the best skill for a specific champion.
Different roles of the game
Champions are the bread and butter of every MOBA game. The term might be different for other video games, but champions are characters players can select from a wide category. These categories are divided into 5 parts that suit a particular role in the game.
The roles played are specific to the strategy a particular team is employing. Nevertheless, teams will have to conform to the roles that are considered ‘conventional’. These are:
Middle lane
The middle lane is arguably the most important role in League of Legends because they are sole champions when farming. When defending the middle turret, the player only has to play against an opposing laner and gain all the farm and experience for themselves.
What middle laners need to learn is the ability to last hit enemy creeps. The last hitting applies to creeps that have extremely low health and the player can kill them with their own attacks. This adds bonus gold that scales quickly for your farm.
The biggest advantage of being a middle laner is gaining all the experience without sharing it with an ally. In most cases, mid laners have the highest experience curve throughout the early to middle parts of the game.
The best champions for the middle lane are those that have strong bursts and disables as they have the potential to deal so much damage to frailer early carry positions.
Safe laner
The safe lane is the longest lane for the more carry positions to farm because the creep wave gets closer to their turrets.
This means that enemy heroes won’t dive too close to secure a potential kill because of the turrets. Safe lanes also provide closer jungle camps to farm when they want to gain extra gold and experience that splits their responsibilities between creep farming and jungling.
Safe lanes have the best coverage for farms and are generally more reliable for softer champions at the early stages of the game due to the closer distance between the mid and the safe lane (depending on which side the team is). If strong harasses occur, a simple ping and the mid laner is there to dispatch the enemy heroes for a 3v2 advantage.
Off laner
Usually, a champion would want to be on the safe lane to generate farms and have an overall protective tower near them when creep waves align perfectly. However, some heroes do better against a harder lane because of their tankiness and overall mobility in the playstyle.
Sometimes, there are even off lanes that go solo and deal with 2 other enemy heroes because their skills are perfect for the situation. Off lanes are usually for the more skilled players who can navigate towards the hardships of diving when the opposing heroes are closer to the tower.
They are also early game stompers who can easily kill heroes because of more farms, better skills, and overall synergy with other champions because of their unique playstyle.
Support
Support positions are generally very simple in concept. They support the other more carry-centric champions so that they’ll have a better chance of surviving the whole game.
Jungler
A jungler is exactly what you would expect a jungler would do: go to camps and farm. By doing this, junglers don’t face threats of getting killed or at least have their health drained from champion skills because they are only facing camps.
The difficult part about jungling is maintaining health points at level 1 since you are expected to be weak against the stronger creeps. However, once you get your ultimate, you should fairly do fine since your skills will scale as time goes on.
Junglers can also carry the game if they can pick up the items to excel and stomp the enemy team just like a regular hard carry would.
Tips on how to play better
There are many ways you can play to get better at the game. These three tips below will provide you with the best knowledge in how to improve:
Play support more
One of the main functions of a support is warding which will help you learn the map’s areas and how to control team fights by giving the team proper vision.
Another benefit to supporting is timing your skills well. If you can land your skills properly and hit the right targets, your team will thank you for it.
Improve your map awareness
Just like supporting, you also need to look at your map from time to time to avoid unnecessary deaths from team ganks. If you are playing with rookie players, you’ll quickly realise your map is missing some words because newbies are less likely to put them.
Farm efficiently
If you farm well, you’ll be able to snowball the enemy champions and provide your team with better chances of winning. It’s going to make your life easier for the late game as well.
Farming can lead to better items. But when you naturally progress through the game, you’re going to have the items that you are eyeing. It’s not a matter of acquiring them but how fast you can buy them.
When you farm efficiently, this becomes easier and you will have better items than both your teammates and enemies making the game much more fun. With this, you can easily kill and fend for yourself during unwanted attacks.
So, practice those last hits and stay away from team fights to not risk dying and losing gold and experience.After practising a few times, you’re going to get better at it and your favourite champion. The best part about League of Legends is it’s easier than most MOBAs. All you have to do is learn the mechanics by heart and enjoy what the world of League of Legends has to offer!