"Last Pick: League of Legends (How to Play) " by Daniel M

Hey you! Yeah the person reading this blog post. Have you run out of interesting games to play in your free time? Do you like playing a game where you can establish your dominance whether it’s through mechanical skill or through game knowledge? Do you like playing a game where you can invite up to nine of your friends and play together? Well I’m about to change your world! With this! 

League of Legends! League of Legends is a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) that has a huge casual fan-base and an extremely large competitive scene, so there’s something for both competitive and casual players.
To win, you must destroy the enemy’s nexus by destroying the towers and inhibitors that stand in your way. I will be teaching you how to play to the fullest extent of my ability so that you can fully enjoy the game (keep in mind that I am not the best at this game and these are only guidelines for new players).
1. Download the game
You can’t play the game if you haven’t downloaded it yet, so fire up your computer and go to Riot’s website called “ https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/ ” (depending on where you live the website name will change, but a quick search for “league of legends” on google will show the correct link at the top of the page). To the run this game, you need at least a 2 GHz single core processor, 1 GB of RAM (2GB for Windows Vista or newer), 8 GB of hard drive space, and a graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0c or above and shader version 2.0. Most computers and laptops can run this so you should be fine (I have a computer with an i5 processor so anything stronger than that should run the game).
2. Make an account and log in
After downloading League of Legends, open up the game and the login screen should appear. If you haven’t already made an account, click on the link in the bottom right corner of the client that says “Create an account”. The link will lead you to Riot’s website and they will guide you

from there on what steps you need to make an account. The summoner name is what everyone will see your account as and is key for others to add you to their friends list.
*DISCLAIMER*
Although League of Legends is a fun game at times, there are some people on the internet that take this game way too seriously to the point where they start cyberbullying. This is much more clear in the game’s ranked mode where you compete with the enemy team to become the best at League of Legends. THIS GAME IS NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED OR THIN-SKINNED. You can mute people when you’ve entered a game by pressing enter and typing “/mute” or “/muteall”. You have been warned.
3. Play some bot games
Now that you’ve downloaded and logged into your account, it’s time to play against some bots! OK, so playing against computers isn’t the most fun thing in the world but this guide is also for the new people who want to become decent at this game, so starting with bots is the best way to get better at this game. To play against bots, click the play button in the top left corner of the client, click the co-op vs. AI button right under the play button, choose the beginner difficulty, and click confirm (bottom center of the screen). After that, you can choose to invite your friends (you can add friends by clicking the person with the plus button in the top right corner of the client and type in their summoner name) then click confirm (bottom center). This will put you in queue for a game until Riot finds four (or less if you have friends) other people who want to play the same mode as you. Once a game is found, click accept (will appear when a game is found) to go into champion select. Call out a role in the chat in the bottom left corner of the client (top, mid, bot is short for bottom, jg is short for jungle, and sup is short for support). Not a lot of characters, also known as champions, will be available to you at first, but as you play, you will receive more and more champions. Once you have chosen your champion, lock it in (bottom center). Depending on what role you’re playing, certain runes and summoners spells should be taken, which will be covered later. Most of the summoner spells will be locked, but as you level up your account, you will gain access to more summoner spells. The game will start shortly after every player locks in their champion.
4. Game Knowledge
There is a lot of knowledge behind the game to make it easier to win each game. So much that this step will be organized differently than the others. Fortunately, you queued up for a bot game so it’s much easier to apply the knowledge that you’ll learn from me. Basic controls on how to play should’ve been covered by the client itself through its tutorial. This knowledge focuses more on what to do in each lane and when to apply it (although not all of this information is applicable to a AI match).
● Terms That Will Be Used

○ The Map: supports go into bot lane

• ○  Tower/Towers - These defend the laners from junglers and prevent the game from becoming too simple
  
• ○  Lane/lanes - What each player occupies throughout the game. Ex. “I am in top lane.” (see map to find top lane)
  
• ○  Last hit/last hitting - Hitting the minion/monster/champion last before its death
  

■ Last hitting will grant gold to spend at the shop

• ○  Leash/leashing - Help the jungler clear the first camp he will be doing. Don’t last hit the camp
  
• ○  Shop/Fountain - The place where you first spawn and buy items
  
• ○  Back/backing/recall - Going back to the shop/fountain
  

■ Backing will fully restore your health and mana once you reach the shop and will let you buy items

• ○  Push/pushing the lane/pushing power - Destroy the enemy minions to get your minions to the enemy tower faster
  
• ○  Cooldown Reduction - In a percentage form. Reduces the cooldown on all four abilities
  
• ○  True Damage: Damage that isn’t decreased by armor
  
• ○  Sieging - the ability to put pressure on a lane/tower
  
• ○  Full build - you have bought enough items to fill up your 6-slot inventory
  
• ○  CS- Creep Score. How many minions have you last hit?
  
• ○  Split pushing - having 1-2 people push one lane while the rest stay and push
  another lane
  
• ○  Ward/warding - an item that grants vision of a small part of the map
  
• ○  Large Monsters-Dragon, Rift Herald, Baron Nashor
  

■ Dragon - grants permanent buffs (except Elder dragon) based off of what type it is
● Cloud drakes makes you move faster

• ●  Mountain drakes lets you destroy structures/large monsters faster
  
• ●  Ocean drakes increase your health and mana regen
  
• ●  Infernal drakes increase the amount of damage you do
  
• ●  Elder dragons cause your auto attacks to burn and cause other
  dragon buffs to become 50% stronger
  

○ Spawns after 35 minutes when there are no dragons in the
pit near bot lane

• Rift Herald - Shortens 1 player’s recall to 3 seconds and gives the player
  an “Eye of the Herald” to place down to help push/siege their lane.
  
• Baron Nashor- Shortens the whole team’s recall to 3 seconds, gives a buff
  to the team that buffs their attack damage and ability power, and players
  empower nearby minions
  

○ Neutral Monsters - Crimson Raptor, Raptor, Greater Murk Wolf, Murk Wolf,
Ancient Krug, Krug, Lesser Krug, Gromp, Rift Scuttler, Blue Sentinel, and Red Brambleback

• Crimson Raptor and Raptor- 1 Crimson Raptor and 5 Raptors on each side of the map
  
• Greater Murk Wolf and Murk Wolf - 1 Greater Murk Wolf and 2 Murk Wolves on each side of the map
  
• Ancient Krug, Krug, and Lesser Krug- 1 Ancient Krug/3 Krugs/6 Lesser Krugs on each side of the map
  

● Ancient Krug splits when killed into 2 krugs

• Rift Scuttler- Grants vision in the middle of the river when killed (see
  Map)
  
• Blue Sentinel/Blue buff - 1 Blue Sentinel on both sides of the map
  

● Grants increased mana regen and 10% cooldown reduction when killed
■ Red Brambleback/Red buff - 1 Red Brambleback on both sides of the map ● Grants increased health regen and auto attacks cause a set amount of true damage per auto while also slowing the target when killed

• ●  First 5-15 seconds of the Game
  ○ Buy items off the recommended page in the shop, which is accessed by pressing
  “P.”
  ○ These items power up your character and you will be able to buy more as the
  game continues. For now, you should always buy the starting items.
  
• ●  Before minions spawn
  

○ Once you have bought your starting items, walk to the lane that you called in
champion select (Support goes to bot lane and jungle goes to the jungle. The map from earlier should help).

○ If you are the jungler, ask for some help from one of the people in lane to help you kill either the red buff or the blue buff
● First 10 Minutes of the Game

• ○  Last hit the enemy minions to gain an advantage over the opponent. Perfect this
  skill. If you are jungle or support, you don’t have to worry about last hitting as
  
  
  much.
  
• ○  Balance last hitting with damaging the enemy champion with your
  spells and with managing your mana, which is used to cast spells.
  

■ ■

If you have no mana (obligatory T1 reference -->), then you
can’t cast spells, thus giving a distinct advantage to the
enemy team.
If you have no mana, you can go back to the fountain (where
you first spawned) by pressing “B”, but make sure you are in
a safe space before going back because the enemy can interrupt the animation, which stops the backing animation.

• ●  Depending on how much gold you’ve collected from the minions or how well you’ve damaged the opponent (or how badly you’ve been damaged) determines when you should back.
  
• ●  You’ve got a lot of gold but your enemies are full hp? Clear all the minions until your minions hit the enemy’s tower and back. You have low hp and the enemies could potentially defeat you under the tower ? Back.
  
• ●  Destroying the enemy’s tower is key to freeing up pressure on the map. This puts more pressure on the enemy while giving you more options on what to do.
  
• ●  10 - 20 Minute mark (or after you destroyed the enemy’s tower in your lane/they destroyed your tower)
  
  • ○  You can go to other lanes to help destroy other enemy towers or to help defeat the enemy champion in that lane or you can get other objectives like the dragon, Rift Herald, or Baron Nashor.
    
  • ○  Make sure to keep killing the minions throughout the game to get more gold
    
• ●  20-30 Minute Mark
  

○ Past the 2nd tower in each lane, it gets harder to siege so
getting the dragons early, getting rift herald, and getting baron become more important for sieging

• ○  At this point you and your teammates should be grouped most of the time and usually teamfighting makes getting to the enemy’s nexus easier
  
• ○  If there’s an opportunity to get more gold from the minions, you have to make a choice between getting more gold or missing out on a teamfight
  
  • Get the wave if you're not the main one stopping the siege or if the wave is about to hit a tower
    
  • Go teamfight if the wave is super far away from a tower
    

• ●  30+ Minute Marker
  
  • ○  By this time, you should be near full build and need just a
    little more gold to get full build (although this is assuming that you have decent cs, about 200 cs or more for a new person)
    
  • ○  Staying grouped together is one of the main strategies to end the game at this point if you have a large lead or if you and your team are going even with the enemy team
    
  • ○  Other strategies include split pushing and abusing the lack of vision on the map
    
• ●  Warding and Paying Attention to the Map
  
  • ○  Remember the map I showed you earlier? Well you don’t
    get to see the whole thing at once without wards
    
    • The only part of the map you can see is what’s
      around you and what your teammates see
      
    • Wards will tell you what is happening in a certain
      area of the map without a teammate being there
      
    • Warding will protect you from enemies trying to
      flank and kill you as long as you PAY ATTENTION TO THE MAP (in the bottom right of the corner of the game)
      ● Roles
      
  • ○  Top is usually filled with tanks (defensive people who are
    hard to kill, usually slow champions who can barely catch up to their target) or bruisers (more mobile and have more damage than tanks, but less tanky)
    

■ Top laners usually take flash and teleport as summoner spells when available and either go into the resolve tree or a more offensive tree as their

main tree and the resolve/inspiration tree as their side tree for runes (Depending on the champion, the player can nearly take any keystone and make it work)

• ○  Mid is usually filled with mages (kill you from a distance, harder to land spells) or assassins (kill you closer up, easier to land spells)
  ■ Mid laners usually take flash and either ignite, barrier, heal, cleanse, or exhaust and usually either go into the sorcery or domination tree as their main tree and either the other one they didn’t take or something in the resolve/inspiration/precision tree as their side tree for runes
  
• ○  Bot is filled only with ranged carries who buy items with attack damage attached to them
  

■ Bot laners usually take flash and heal and usually go into the precision tree as their main tree and can take any other tree (resolve, inspiration, sorcery, domination) as a side tree for their runes
○ Supports are usually tanks that focus on protecting, healers, damage supports
■ Supports usually take flash and either exhaust or ignite and go either into the resolve/inspiration tree combo, the sorcery/resolve tree combo, or the sorcery/inspiration tree combo
○ Junglers are filled with all kinds of champions from tanks to assassins to even healers
■ Junglers either take flash and smite (to secure large monster buffs) or ghost and smite and can go into any tree
5. Repeat
That was a lot of information wasn’t it? Took me forever to type all that up. Anyways now that you know the basics, you need to expand upon this information. Keep playing more games and you’ll learn more about what you need to do in each game (who knows, you might even discard this information because it could be wrong). Now that you’ve been properly educated on the game, go out there and have fun!

A few references and pictures were used in the making of this blog post. Here are some links.
Intro and Title reference:
https://youtu.be/04c9NftU1M0?list=PLdTHqhwHiO5FslOf-WzanxucdMRpxNFUZ&t=6
League of Legends picture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends
The Map:
http://dicerz.co.uk/dicerzs-guides/a-step-by-step-newbies-guide-to-league-of-legends-in-2014201 5-part-2/
Tyler1 picture: https://www.redbubble.com/people/skycustoms/works/24348118-tyler1-selfie?p=poster
...Teemo is suffering...