League of Legends (Old)

[Shanba]

Shanba's bare bones laning guide!

Last hitting and wave control: Why do I always last hit (and steal all your creeps in the process ^_^)? Because auto attacking pushes the lane. Is that a bad thing? Well, no not in general. There's some subtlety here - like as renekton, you need to push the lane to heal, and thus it's ok to push it harder and at least try and deny them last hitting gold. But when you're, say, ashe, then you should probably always be just last hitting as long as there is an enemy champion in lane (it makes sense to push and deny them a wave of creep gold/exp when they go heal and you dont need to). The thing is, the more pushed up your lane is, the further from your tower you are. That means you're more vulnerable to ganks. So especially when they have a jungler, you need to not be pushing the lane. And when you have a jungler and you're constantly pushed up to their tower, then your jungler can't gank that lane. WHat's more, if you have a distinct advantage, and you want to keep them under pressure, then you need space between the creeps and their tower to deny the enemy champion - otherwise they can simply last hit the creeps at tower and your advantage is fairly meaningless.

Last hitting also means you'll get more gold overall, as it's perfectly possible to last hit every single creep in a wave if you're good enough. This is your economy. Your last hitting skill determines how much gold you'll have which determines how much you can fuck things up later in the game. Get good at last hitting and you can just steamroll things.

However, at the level we're playing at, pretty much everyone is auto attacking the creeps. That means that you'll be constantly pushed up to tower, and at tower it's much harder to last hit - sometimes impossible, if the creeps and tower are hitting the same mob. So you need to be able to last hit at tower as well. As a general rule of thumb, two tower hits and an autoattack kill a melee creep - therefore, don't attack the melee creeps until they've eaten two tower hits or it will be impossible to actually get the gold from them (I complained at jd for messing up one of my last hits today when he came mid as karthus because he hit it before the tower and thus made it so the tower shot killed it.) For ranged creeps, it's one tower hit and two auto attacks. So you need to have softened them before the tower hits them. As such, when a wave is approaching the tower, you should try and get the one hit on each ranged creep and then just finish each creep off when the tower drops them low. (In practice, this is harder than it sounds, as your own creeps will also be attacking them and will push them past critical thresholds - and certain heroes auto attack damage actually isn't high enough for this to work and need to hit the melee creep once first. But in principle, that's how it's done.)

The better solution is to finish the creeps before they hit the tower. If you're playing a hero with aoe, this is the time to use it - to clear the creeps just before they push your tower and start to deny you the gold. At an advanced level, you can use this to hold the lane in one place. When the enemy side pushes, this means they have more minions than your side. So nuke the creeps down until there's four ranged creeps and three melee creeps. Their lane wont push hard and you can control the push with a nuke from time to time, and you can just hold the lane right outside your tower. This is the ideal situation. (For gangplank, this is easy as fuck since he can pull the lane with his raise morale).

Harrassing and trading:

As most heroes, you'll want to be doing some harassment on the enemy champion. In principle you probably know what this is - you use your spells to hurt them or whatever. There are, however, a few concepts to understand first.

The first and most obvious is the tower. Every new player to LoL learns extremely quickly that towers are evil monsters and not to be messed with. They also learn pretty fast that you don't shoot the enemy champion when he's under the tower. The game has a very useful "YOU HAVE BEEN SLAIN" noise to reinforce this idea.

The next idea, which is far more subtle, is creep aggro. The minions in lane have a similar behaviour to tower - if you attack the enemy champion whilst standing next to the minions, then you'll take minion aggro. THis is a bad idea. Minions might seem lulzy, but they actually do a fair amount of damage at low levels, and if you take creep damage in order to harass then chances are you'll lose the lane fairly quickly. When harassing, use the brush to drop creep aggro, or harass from a position where the creeps don't aggro at all. Their aggro radius is fairly small, so this shouldn't be too hard. But no more standing in the middle of the creep wave and spamming q (incidentally, this also pushes the lane (which we've already discussed is bad) as your creeps are attacking their creeps but their creeps are attacking you) unless you're mordekaiser cause then hitting the creeps with your aoe spells as well as the champ charges your shield and actually makes you stronger in that situation.

Then there's the difference between harassment and trading. Say you had a theoretical karthus vs garen lane. Karthus can sit there and spam his little ground acne all day long and there's nothing garen can do about it short of running up to karthus and trying to hit him. This is harassment. It's safe, it's one sided, and all it costs is mana. If you can harass a champion, then shortly you'll be able to push him out of lane. In general, you can harass any champion you have a longer range than - though note, there are other considerations.

Then there's trading. Instead of karthus vs garen, let's say we had karthus vs urgot. Now karthus is dropping his little welts and urgot is shooting his grenade into spike thing - karthus is taking damage from urgot to deal damage to him. This is trading. In general, there will be one champion who will win trades in lane and one champion who'll tend to lose them. Ashe, for example, is a bad trader - if she tries to trade with urgot or teemo or sivir or basically anyone she'll take more damage than them and over time be forced to back. However, she can abuse the range and slow on her volley along with early boots to harass instead of trading. Urgot, on the other hand, is a good trader. Any time he can land his grenade he'll be able to drop a ton of damage on the enemy champion whilst taking little himself. Vlad is another good trader (at least, as soon as his q actually does any damage - 70 damage and 16 heal means he actually loses trades to, say, annie (base damage 90) until he starts leveling up.)

The final means of doing damage is burst. Someone like leblanc can harass, but she's not really thinking about wearing an enemy champion down. SHe's looking at finding an opportunity to unload her combo and hopefully take the other guy straight out or at least force them to back. Xin Zhao is similar - with no real harass tools and a gap closer, he's forced to commit whenever he wants to go in (as running away means taking damage from the most likely ranged enemy champion), which means he's looking at doing a ton of damage every time he goes in. Most champions have a certain amount of burst. You should never stay in lane if you're in range of dying to an enemy champion's burst, and if you have harassment tools as a burst champion you should look at trying to wear them down to the stage where you can jump on them and kill them. How much burst a champion can do is often fairly hazy, though you can kinda get a feel for it after a while.

It should be noted that many heroes (particularly ranged ones) harass and trade using their autoattacks.

Items:

In lane, the winner of the lane is determined as much by the items each champion buys as by the matchup and players involved. There are several decision points for items - at the start of the game, and at each time you go back/are forced back. In general, you are deciding between items that will help you win the lane and items that will help you more in the midgame. I'm going to give a run down of common laning items and why they're good for winning the lane.

Boots: Boots allow champions with shorter range to trade with champions with longer range. If you find yourself taking damage and unable to reply because the enemy champion keeps running away, consider getting your boots. The best thing about boots is they remain good all game long. In the midgame, being able to run away after a failed teamfight or chase after a succesful one means a huge amount in terms of the gold swing created by the avoided deaths/gained kills. You should always be getting boots fairly early - the only question is when. Boots+health pots remains a fairly popular opening, particularly on ashe - the boots allow your volley-slow-kiting to work better.

Health Potion: Health potions are godly, godly things. Consider this - a health potion costs you 35 gold. IN return it gives you 200 health. If you can last hit 2 extra creeps as a result of buying a health potion, then it was worthwhile. Health potions are frequently the difference between being forced back and being able to stay in lane and farm more. If you're losing a lane to harassment/unfavorable trades, buy more health potions. If you want to avoid being in danger of being bursted down, keep yourself topped up with health potions. On Nasus, I always buy a number of health potions the first time I am forced back to base. Doing so is 99% of the time worthwhile.

Doran's Shield: The shield gives you health, armour and health regen. All of these are excellent laning stats. Health regen and armour allow you to come out ahead from trading and survive harassment, and health allows you to survive being bursted down. Melee heroes will often start with a doran's shield as they will be taking damage, and the mitigation helps them survive against ranged heroes who would otherwise eat them for breakfast. Doran's shield, like all Doran's items, is a significantly strong item in terms of cost efficiency. It gives half a cloth armor, two thirds of a red crystal and half a regrowth pendant for a fraction of the cost of those stats would normally be. Doran's shield is the least useful of the doran's items to stack.

Doran's ring: Doran's ring gives ap, mana regen and health. As a caster, consider buying this when going to lane. The ap allows you to hit a bit harder, and the mana regen allows you to hit more often. If you anticipate being able to boss a lane, doran's ring will help you boss it harder. In my view, doran's ring is somewhat outclassed by meki pendant and health pots - the extra spells from the higher mana regen and the spare gold that you can spend on health potions helps you win the lane. Still, stacking doran's rings is a somewhat viable way to turn an advantage into a bigger advantage by using the gold on the high cost efficiency of ring's stats.

Doran's blade: The item that suffered most from the doran's cost increase, I feel. Doran's blade gives health, attack damage and lifesteal. If you intend to be aggressive in lane, doran's blade is still the premier item - the attack damage gives your attacks more bite, and the lifesteal allows you to regen life by autoattacking creeps. Stacking doran's blades is a way to counter some AD champions midgame weakness - if buying it gets you enough gold to cover the cost differential lost by selling the blade from buying it, then it's still a worthwhile purchase.

Cloth Armor: Worth a mention for how popular this was for a while, simply because a cloth armor and five health potions (normally the stereotypical jungler build) is a beastly way to remain in lane forever. Undermined by the heart of gold nerf.

Null-Magic Mantle: Useful if you're being harassed out of lane by a caster, particularly if you intend to build merc treads later. Not much more to say than that.

Catalyst the Protector: This is a beastly item. This is basically the best laning item in the game for certain champions, and what's more, it builds into banshee's veil (also rod of ages) later in the game, so isn't deadweight inventory space. Catalyst's brokenly goodness comes from the passive - every time you level up, you get 300 health and 250 mana. This allows you to win trades easily - even beating out potions - by how useful the healing is. A person with five health potions is beaten by you leveling up three times - and that's not even counting the mana regen, which allows you to spam more spell anyway. Building a fast catalyst is basically the only reason to buy a sapphire crystal as a starting item, which is otherwise outclassed by doran's shield.

Vamp sceptre: gives you lifesteal which is staying power. Pretty eh though imo.

Meki Pendant: The mana regen is a nice alternative to doran's ring. If you find yourself running out of mana or health too fast with a doran's ring opening, try a meki pendant plus health pots opening instead. It also has the possibility of being built into better items, unlike doran's ring.

Elixir of fortitude: You're behind in lane. You've died twice and the other player has a large gold advantage. What do you do? Consider an elixir of fortitude (or maybe even an elixir of brilliance). Elixirs give more stats per gold than even doran's ring - at the cost of wearing off after a certain amount of time. In the period your elixir is up, you have to make something happen. It's essentially a desperation move - a temporary equaliser - and if you can force the enemy hero back or better yet get a kill then you can maybe start to turn a losing lane around. What's more, careful use of an elixir allows you to have a pseudo-summoner heal (by using the elixir, you gain immediately the max health boost as general health boost). However, should you fail to make something happen, the purchase of the elixir will put you further behind.

Wards: If you're being ganked, put down wards. Most gankers will sit in the brush at the river entrance to your lane. Dropping a ward there will spot them early, and allow you to sit back in lane. A pink ward in the middle of your lane can help if trying to lane against a stealther like eve. A ward is never a bad idea - getting to know where the enemy is can be a game changing advantage.

Winning the lane:

So that's laning. But how do you win? Different champions have different goals when entering a lane. Some champions are going to lane knowing they're strong in lane, hoping to get kills to snowball off their mediocre late game. Others are willing to simply trade evenly on farm, knowing that the farm is making them scarier than the enemy hero. What exactly your goal should be depends heavily on the matchup. A good rule of thumb is that a strong laner needs to win the lane in terms of cs and kills in order to be successful late game, whereas a weak laner just wants to survive until they get their fun stuff.

A champion becomes relatively stronger and weaker as time goes on - when nidalee gets her rageblade she become particularly scary. When Urgot hits level 2 and has both grenade and shoot he becomes scary. When vlad has high enough level that he can spam his q. And so on.

The mechanics of trading damage also depend on the matchup. In particular, where you should position yourself in lane depends on who you are and who you're laning against. Heroes with skillshots will typically require you to stand behind your creeps to avoid the skillshots. Heroes with scary burst require different positioning. Mordekaiser requires you to stand away from the creeps so he can't both charge his shield and harass you. These require experience and knowledge of each champion to predict.

GOOD LUCK

[VasudeVa]

http://www.own3d.tv/live/17484/National ... of_Legends

National ESL stream currently going on, Phreak and some dude whose name I forget commentating. OGB just got absolutely destroyed, Peculiar Gaming are 2 for 2 in their group and pretty much guaranteed to go through now.

CLG was horribly outplayed by Euro Meta plus they horribly underestimated how important dragon was. They were literally down by 4-5 dragons in both games. That's 1k team gold each. The first loss was very humiliating, they didn't even get a kill.

The second loss was better but not as much. They couldn't counter a fed Irelia due to lack of dragons, plus Elementz played a really really really bad Roam Alistar.

--

I'm not a fan of roaming in general. You fail your first two ganks, you are pretty much dead weight. Roaming was good when people didn't know wtf to do. Now people just stop crossing the river and every roamer/jungler gank from then on is 200% more difficult. At least junglers get gold/xp/buffs even if they fail their ganks. Roamers without their ganks give Solo Bot lane +50 CS + Solo exp: Something that a good bot lane should be getting anyway(once one of them goes to gank).

BTW, everyone seen the patch preview? New Alistar sounds awesome. Now there's a well deserved buff. New GP is necessary since Denyplank is an uncounterable SOB incredibly annoying to solo top against. New Fiddles give some love to Fiddles who desperately needed it. I really like where they are going with these. XZ Buffs is an okay powershift that turns him from unstoppable at 1v1 but team fight early death to very good at 1v1, with good teamfight capabilities.

I wonder how they'll go live as opposed to on paper though. (Sucks that I'm like, 5 patches behind or something. We're still at the Nocturne release patch. So frustrating. D:)

[Knight of Cydonia]

Euro meta is actually horrifically effective if played right. Tank jungle, AD carry and support bot, your offtank/beefy DPS solo top, and AP carry mid.
I mean, in the time I played on the EU servers, it was rare to see it done well, but it's interesting how the EU meta seems to have evolved to counter the US meta, which is basically composed of "whatever is currently Tier 1 according to Elementz smooshed together with whatever people are currently pubstomping with"

New Alistar looks somewhat less effective as a towerpusher, which is a shame, but it is a buff to his overall game so I can't complain too much.

[bv310]

VV, milk Noctunre for all he is worth. Nobody will know how to counter him for a good few weeks.

[VasudeVa]

VV, milk Noctunre for all he is worth. Nobody will know how to counter him for a good few weeks.

He's not on sale yet, but he's there in the champ list. Mocking me. I wanna stomp with him soo bad. (I have a bad feeling he'll be priced 9600 though.)

That said, how

do

you counter him anyway?

[Knight of Cydonia]

Ward as you should be anyway, don't overextend, have Banshee's Veil or QSS to remove the blackout. After his Dusk Blades, he relies on lifesteal from his auto to survive, so exhaust him and he goes down like Gabe Newell at the deep end after an all-you-can-eat.

[bv310]

Play passive, when your screen goes dark, run under your turret, pack Exhaust (which you usually should anyway), and save CC for him in teamfights if he tries to jump in after the fact. If I'm counter-picking him, I like using Blitzcrank or Kassadin. Silencing him means he can't cast his shield or his fear, and Blitz' pull/knockup combo basically shuts him down completely. Nasus is funny too, if you farm your Q up enough, since he can't gank, and you can turn around and mash his face once you land Wither on him.

[Nuwen]

Jungle noc is also incredibly easy to disrupt and lacks blue starter viability. A single ward between enemy golems and wraiths shuts down ganks in two lanes and leaves him susceptible to any number of counter-jungling heroes. He's usually free first blood for the 75g cost of a ward and teleport CD.

[bv310]

That is very true. He's extremely squishy. He can, in fact, take blue at level 1 with ArPen reds, Armor Yellows, ASpd Blues, and ASpd Quints. He does it pretty quickly too.

[IH]

Shanba your guide is a little off. Only right click Auto attacks draw creep aggro. Abilities do not.

Also some abilities will not reveal you from the brush, like skill shots.

[Otolia]

LoL players are baddies.

PS : HoN rocks babies !

[bv310]

Meh, I like my games to have actual interesting mechanics/champions, rather than "OMG WE COPIED DOTA COMPLETELY". Plus LoL is free. You should come play with us, you just might realize that we're better

[TheButtonmen]

LoL players are baddies.

PS : HoN rocks babies !

HoN costs money, is just a Dota clone and if we are comparing which is a more serious/competitive game for E-Peen purposes then I play Starcraft so clearly my E-peen is bigger.

Also welcome to the thread and if you ever feeling like playing some casual 5v5s or 3v3s on LoL hit up scumchat, it's a good time.

[Chronopie]

ign: Chronopie

I play a mean Poppy on TT. (and an average Tristana on SR)

[AGar]

I was unaware LoL was free.

This... this could be terrible for my free time/WoW time.

Edit:

and if we are comparing which is a more serious/competitive game for E-Peen purposes then I play Starcraft so clearly my E-peen is bigger.

I played Brood War. My E-peen is bigger-er.

[IH]

ign: Chronopie

I play a mean Poppy on TT. (and an average Tristana on SR)

AP poppy is the funniest thing in the world. rush a Sheen then grab a deathfires, and proceed to oneshot people (Ult>Deathfires>Charge>Q=MELLLLLLLT, because your ult amplifies the deathfires damage.) I've been playing hybrid tanky poppy though, and it's working very well. Last night I went 14-4-12 and just kinda rolled through them.

[bv310]

Join us AGar, you know you want to.

[pickemgenius]

Join us AGar, you know you want to.

[Chronopie]

ign: Chronopie

I play a mean Poppy on TT. (and an average Tristana on SR)

AP poppy is the funniest thing in the world. rush a Sheen then grab a deathfires, and proceed to oneshot people (Ult>Deathfires>Charge>Q=MELLLLLLLT, because your ult amplifies the deathfires damage.) I've been playing hybrid tanky poppy though, and it's working very well. Last night I went 14-4-12 and just kinda rolled through them.

ikr XD

You can easily get 400+ AP.

30% + 3.5 * 4 = 44.5%

44.5% * 1.4...

61%!!!

and Q becomes an absolute beast with a Lich Bane. (AD + 100 + 0.6 AP [+1 AP] + 8% (cap 375))

--

Although I find myself building a Triforce more often. :/

--

Join us AGar, you know you want to.

[bv310]

New Nasus skin + Rumble = I'm broke, but I have shiny new things.

[IH]

ign: Chronopie

I play a mean Poppy on TT. (and an average Tristana on SR)

AP poppy is the funniest thing in the world. rush a Sheen then grab a deathfires, and proceed to oneshot people (Ult>Deathfires>Charge>Q=MELLLLLLLT, because your ult amplifies the deathfires damage.) I've been playing hybrid tanky poppy though, and it's working very well. Last night I went 14-4-12 and just kinda rolled through them.

ikr XD

You can easily get 400+ AP.

30% + 3.5 * 4 = 44.5%

44.5% * 1.4...

61%!!!

and Q becomes an absolute beast with a Lich Bane. (AD + 100 + 0.6 AP [+1 AP] + 8% (cap 375))

--

Although I find myself building a Triforce more often. :/

--

[/quote]
Yeah, AP poppy is only really viable if
A.They have one player that's carrying them
or
B.You have an extremely competent team that knows they can win 5v4

Generally only stuff you see in an arranged ranked fives. AD/hybrid/tank poppy is more for stomping solo queues. Like the other day I was in a ranked solo queue, I ulted someone (a morde) who had a huge killing spree from feeding on my team mates, and was fed, and I decided he needed to die. I dove in 1v5, and had a sona ult blown on me (unnaffected), a vlad ult (also unnafected), and all of their CC. The Morde ran from his team into the jungle (TONS OF WALLS, A MISTAKE), died, and I got away at full health 754 gold richer.
EDIT-Taric the gem nigga, no longer looks like a nigga = (

[Chronopie]

Just got absolutely destroyed by a Trynd on TT.

It was painful.

I went 1/2/1 Poppy

My Teamates were 1/7/1 and

0/6/0

(Trynd and

Malz

[Top])

the enemy team had a 13/1/1 Trynd [Top], and a Noc and someone else, 1/0/1 and 1/1/1 between them.

-Edit: I was the one to score the Trynd kill, got 1k out of it. He chased me under my tower, I stunned him, ran around the tower until his Rage wore off, charged him again.-



A pic showing both my Humilating score, and my Tristana the Tower Destroyer-ness.

And my w/l is about 400/412

[AGar]

SKYPE IS DEAD!

Vent Info:

Server: Chicago3.NationVoice.com
Port: 3794
PW: mafiascum

[Mastermind of Sin]

Ok seriously? Vent > Skype at least, but if you're gonna start switching programs, use the best one out there.

Go to axon.dolby.com, make an account, and you're done. You can add buddies to your list and invite them to voice chats. It's incredibly easy and by far the best sound quality of any VOIP program out there. Just do it.

[IH]

KARTHAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS