How to play League of Legends

League of Legends (also referred to as league) has been a game that I have played for well over 8 years, and though I find it easy this is mainly because I had a friend teach me the game, who had a friend teach him the game…and so on. This trend has been the case for so long that none of us actually remember the tutorial for this game and how lacking it is until I started teaching another one of my friends how to play and saw it myself. The tutorial only shows the controls of the game and nothing else. Because of the lack of a proper tutorial, I have decided to write a quick entry guide into League covering the basics needed that are not in the base tutorial. Remember though, this is a very basic guide that only covers the bare essentials of the game, nothing more and nothing less.

The Basics

League of Legends is a 5v5 team-based game. In this game, you, along with your allies and enemies, play as a champion and must try to destroy the enemy base. To do this you must, first, destroy all the towers (sometimes referred to as turrets) in at least one lane in order to get into their base.

Though it is not technically necessary to kill the enemies in order to win the game, it is helpful as killing enemies drop gold, which you can then spend for better items which will allow you to kill things better allowing you to steamroll through their base.

Another way to collect gold is through minions. These guys spawn regularly from both your base and the enemy base. If you get the very last hit on the enemy minion, killing it, you get gold. THIS IS A MUST KNOW IN LEAGUE (unless you are the jungler or support, but more on that later).

Note: Do not walk into tower range without minions as if you do, the tower will target you and deal lots of damage. Also, do not hurt the enemy champions under towers as that will make the tower target you (attacking minions or the tower is fine though)

Summoner Spells and Runes

Before the game begins you can select 2 summoner spells and runes, the runes should be pre-picked for you for the first few levels and you can ignore it, but summoner spells, you get to select 2 before the game starts. These are really powerful spells that have no cost but have a massive cooldown (averaging around 200 seconds). Starting off however it is recommended to just go heal and ghost for the first few levels unless you are jungler(will be explained later what this is) in which you should go smite and ghost.

Note: When you can, equip flash. This is by far the best summoner spell out of them all, no questioning, just trust me on this, there is a reason why everyone uses it.

The Champions

As stated above, you select a champion to play as along with your team. There are currently 140 champions in the game as for writing this post, however, a new one is almost ready to be released.  

There are many types of champions in the game such as

·         Tanks

o   The champions that absorb lots of damage for the team

·         The Bruisers

o   Champions that are a bit tanky and still do a fair amount of damage

·         Poke Mages

o   Champions that use long range spells to deal damage from far away

·         Burst Mages

o   Champions that deal a lot of damage at once from a medium range away

·         Assassins

o   Champions that deal lots of damage at once and have a good escape

·         Marksmen

o   Champions that deal consistent damage with basic attacks

·         Healers

o   Champions that heal their allies

Each champion has 3 abilities and an ultimate. You can level up your abilities to a maximum of 5 levels each and for your ultimate only 3. When you level up you can put points into your abilities to make them better.

Note: You can only level up your ultimate once when you hit level 6, another time after hitting level 11 and finally once you reach level 16.

Note 2: It is highly recommended to put one level in each ability first, then focus on levelling one ability to level 5 as fast as possible.  

Items and Builds

In this game, you can get a maximum of 6 items. However, due to the absurd number of items and champions, I can’t write an extensive guide on what items to get and when to get it. Instead, I am just going to say: follow the suggested build that riot has given you or search up a character specific guide on the internet as there are many websites that focus on these builds you can use.

The Map

As shown in the map, it is split up into 4 different parts being

·         Top (just referred to as top)

o   The lane at the top section of the map. This section often holds tanks or bruisers. The person playing here is known as the top laner or just top.

·         Jungle (referred to as jg)

o   The section between lanes. This section usually holds champions that are either assassins, tanks or bruisers. The person playing here is known as the jungler or just jg

·         Middle (referred to as mid)

o   The center of the map. This section usually holds assassins and both types of mages. The person playing here is known as the mid laner or just mid.

·         Bottom (referred to as Bot)

o   The very bottom of the map. This section usually holds 2 members of the team being known as the attack damage carry (or adc for short) and the support (or sup for short)

§  The adc roll is specifically for marksmen and has not changed for over 6 years

§  The support roll is there to assist the adc in surviving and getting kills, because of this the suggested rolls for support are: burst mages, poke mages, tanks and healers.

Conclusion

I know this was a difficult read, but it is a helpful tool to get into league quicker. You will now be able to play your league games at a slightly better than other beginners who are buying Thormail on Ashe still.