League Of Legends Catch All

Trying new champs for the first time in this game is pretty rough. Bad games with Zed vs. Kayle top lane and Syndra mid vs. TF... My big problem is I'm still so focused on trying to use their kits well that my positioning goes to hell and I end up in the middle of a teamfight when i really don't want to be. need to work on that.

So I decided to finally try LoL after avoiding it for years and it's completely gotten its hooks in to me. It's all I've been playing the past week and a half, and I know I'm only scratching the surface. And oh man, do I suck. There's no way I can trawl through this whole thread, but does anyone have their favorite resources for learning to not completely suck at this?

gravity wrote:

So I decided to finally try LoL after avoiding it for years and it's completely gotten its hooks in to me. It's all I've been playing the past week and a half, and I know I'm only scratching the surface. And oh man, do I suck. There's no way I can trawl through this whole thread, but does anyone have their favorite resources for learning to not completely suck at this?

Here's a handful of guides covering core concepts. Priority #1 is Learn to farm well. (get the last hit on the minions) Of course, your opponents in lane don't plan on making things easy for you, so you'll also need to get an idea of what all the different champs are capable of and how to generally stay out of harm's way.

Ultimately I feel like I improved the most from grouping up with people far better than me while on voice chat (and due to matchmaking, playing against people far better than me). I found myself far less frustrated by a death when someone could immediately tell me what the core mistake was (i.e. that guy is called Warwick and his ultimate is bullsh*t, so don't get close to him) rather than having to play through the whole game making wild guesses at what I needed to do better. To that end, refer to the NeoGAF thread for instructions on how to join a chat room in the client. Rather than join the neogaf room, join GWJ and spam friend invites to the folks you find in there. Oh, and just below the chat instructions are links to get two champions for free. Be sure to do that too.

Cath got it there. You'll die a lot, which is good, just try not to die for the same mistake. Also, play with people! If you're queuing alone you are only getting 20% of the potential fun.

As far as trying new champs, I've found Dominion matches to be a good place to try new champs. It's shorter and less serious than a 5v5 game, and it's constant battles. This gives you plenty of time to try new builds and all the abilities. It'll still take a bunch of Summoner's Rift games to learn the subtleties of laning with that particular champ, but at least you'll be comfortable enough with the kit during fights to concentrate on those smaller things.

I think starting with the simpler, "Recommended" champs also helps a lot. Solo Mid and Mobafire character guides help a lot. The Recommended champs tend to be simpler but give you an idea of roles.

If you have not already purchased 1 or both of the character bundles, I really suggest that. Many of the characters I play, I bought in those bundles they are 20 bucks a pop (less if you can find a DVD version say at Amazon). 40 bucks gets you a hell of a lot. Otherwise you are at the mercy of the free champ rotation to find your groove.

I think starting with the simpler, "Recommended" champs also helps a lot. Solo Mid and Mobafire character guides help a lot. The Recommended champs tend to be simpler but give you an idea of roles.

If you have not already purchased 1 or both of the character bundles, I really suggest that. Many of the characters I play, I bought in those bundles they are 20 bucks a pop (less if you can find a DVD version say at Amazon). 40 bucks gets you a hell of a lot. Otherwise you are at the mercy of the free champ rotation to find your groove.

KingGorilla wrote:

If you have not already purchased 1 or both of the character bundles, I really suggest that. Many of the characters I play, I bought in those bundles they are 20 bucks a pop (less if you can find a DVD version say at Amazon). 40 bucks gets you a hell of a lot.

The DVD versions have not been seen "in the wild" since around July 2011. There's 0 chance you will find one of those without the code already redeemed.

Stele wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

If you have not already purchased 1 or both of the character bundles, I really suggest that. Many of the characters I play, I bought in those bundles they are 20 bucks a pop (less if you can find a DVD version say at Amazon). 40 bucks gets you a hell of a lot.

The DVD versions have not been seen "in the wild" since around July 2011. There's 0 chance you will find one of those without the code already redeemed.

It was a nice deal, for sure. On the up side, they recently introduced a "starter pack" or something like that. Look for the cards in the usual places (Target, Best Buy, etc) and you should find them. I think it's $5 for 5 champions (Ashe, Garen, et co) plus an XP boost and maybe a skin or two?

Edit: might have been holidays only: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...

Yeah definitely seen those Starter Packs at Target.

gravity wrote:

does anyone have their favorite resources for learning to not completely suck at this?

Play with us. We have smurf accounts and will play on them with ya to get you into it...friend me up. see sig.

Thanks for all the help everyone! I'll go stop by Best Buy and try to find the starter pack card in the next few days. All the guides will be crazy helpful too. I haven't gotten the nerve to do more than play co-op against bots, so I'm still nervous to really match with people at this point. Maybe when I've gotten a better feel for the game.

gravity wrote:

Thanks for all the help everyone! I'll go stop by Best Buy and try to find the starter pack card in the next few days. All the guides will be crazy helpful too. I haven't gotten the nerve to do more than play co-op against bots, so I'm still nervous to really match with people at this point. Maybe when I've gotten a better feel for the game.

no, bots wont help once you can last hit halfway decent against them.

Play with people, thats what our smurf accounts are for...bringing in new players and decimating noobs with the help of more experienced players on smurf accounts!

Fuzzballx wrote:

no, bots wont help once you can last hit halfway decent against them.

Play with people, thats what our smurf accounts are for...bringing in new players and decimating noobs with the help of more experienced players on smurf accounts!

Awesome, thank you. Friend request sent. I go by gravitypulls on LoL right now, and I'll be spamming requests momentarily

gravity wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

no, bots wont help once you can last hit halfway decent against them.

Play with people, thats what our smurf accounts are for...bringing in new players and decimating noobs with the help of more experienced players on smurf accounts!

Awesome, thank you. Friend request sent. I go by gravitypulls on LoL right now, and I'll be spamming requests momentarily :)

I'll be on every night this week but tonight:)

Nah, bots are fine for getting comfortable with playing a champion you've never tried and for familiarizing yourself with what other champions can do to you. Those are probably the biggest barriers to someone new to the game. However, I would hope you have 10 wins against human players before you reach summoner lvl 15, and playing almost exclusively normal games by the time you reach 25. For now, focus on finding a champion whose abilities and play style make some kind of sense to you and just stick with them while you acclimate to all the other parts of the game.

I still use bots to test out items builds, and when I tweak Runes/Masteries.

KingGorilla wrote:

I still use bots to test out items builds, and when I tweak Runes/Masteries.

I use bots to figure out characters and learn combos. There are certain champs that really benefit from muscle memory and learning limits.

Like the Shen that taunted then flashed at me just means its not something he does often.

Or if you want to try to learn someone who can bypass terrain like a shen/sejuani/tryn bot games help. It cuts down on the fails when you are trying to run and save your life.

But there is no replacement for people because people make great plays and horrible mistakes, the use their summoner spells, they gank, they go after objectives and you need to learn map awareness.

Last night we learned that our troll comps STOMP other troll comps, yet lose to actual team comps. Crazy right?

Squee9 wrote:

Last night we learned that our troll comps STOMP other troll comps, yet lose to actual team comps. Crazy right?

From what I can see, and this is greatly generalizing, we have mediocre laning phases, great mid game team fights, great late game team fights except for the one where the game is on the line.

we did an Annie/Brand bot lane, karma mid, pant jungle, thresh top, I fed hard bottom and we(read:everyone else despite my only contribution being a tibbers every now and then) actually pushed the other troll team to the brink before our lack of ad finally caught up. And they were easily up 10 kills and a few towers before we did anything.

All I know is that I want to run a blitz thresh lane again. That was too much fun. Disregard the fact we were against AD soraka and support lee sin.

Late Sunday night I had run out of other games to play so I found myself loading up League of Legends and playing a round for the first time in about a year or so. My old main, Katarina, seems to have earned herself a new (awesome) ability and I kinda wanna get back into the swing of things.

(The same could be said about my activity on GWJ - I'm horrible at forums but I'm trying to figure them out. But I've been following the podcast for years.)

So - I'm not very good at this game, are there any groups that focus with bots? Or maybe I can be convinced to try against humans again if ya'll are willing to coach me along!

had a game which broke my heart the other night. We were rolling pretty convincingly when their Yi decided he was going to be Yi and started ignoring everything except tower pushing when we were otherwise occupied. He took down a couple of towers before we adjusted and I (as Malz, because my ult was his kryptonite) started staying back to keep lanes pushed and avoid ninja runs on the towers. We fought this off for 15-20 minutes and just couldn't get anything pushed down... not even really sure how it happened, but in the middle of playing Whack-a-Yi we ended up getting aced piecemeal and suddenly a 2 or 3 turret lead turned into us having no turrets or inhibitors and the game was essentially over. No question the most discouraging loss I've ever had.

Nights wrote:

All I know is that I want to run a blitz thresh lane again. That was too much fun. Disregard the fact we were against AD soraka and support lee sin.

Need Urgot and Thresh on bot with Blitz jungle.

Swap->Hook->Hook

Stupid iOS

TheTino wrote:

Late Sunday night I had run out of other games to play so I found myself loading up League of Legends and playing a round for the first time in about a year or so. My old main, Katarina, seems to have earned herself a new (awesome) ability and I kinda wanna get back into the swing of things.

(The same could be said about my activity on GWJ - I'm horrible at forums but I'm trying to figure them out. But I've been following the podcast for years.)

So - I'm not very good at this game, are there any groups that focus with bots? Or maybe I can be convinced to try against humans again if ya'll are willing to coach me along!

See my first post on this page. None of the regulars play bot games very often, but that's all gravity is brave enough to play at the moment, so I'll probably be joining him for at least one sometime tonight.

psoplayer wrote:
TheTino wrote:

Late Sunday night I had run out of other games to play so I found myself loading up League of Legends and playing a round for the first time in about a year or so. My old main, Katarina, seems to have earned herself a new (awesome) ability and I kinda wanna get back into the swing of things.

(The same could be said about my activity on GWJ - I'm horrible at forums but I'm trying to figure them out. But I've been following the podcast for years.)

So - I'm not very good at this game, are there any groups that focus with bots? Or maybe I can be convinced to try against humans again if ya'll are willing to coach me along!

See my first post on this page. None of the regulars play bot games very often, but that's all gravity is brave enough to play at the moment, so I'll probably be joining him for at least one sometime tonight.

I play bot games all the time!

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:
psoplayer wrote:
TheTino wrote:

Late Sunday night I had run out of other games to play so I found myself loading up League of Legends and playing a round for the first time in about a year or so. My old main, Katarina, seems to have earned herself a new (awesome) ability and I kinda wanna get back into the swing of things.

(The same could be said about my activity on GWJ - I'm horrible at forums but I'm trying to figure them out. But I've been following the podcast for years.)

So - I'm not very good at this game, are there any groups that focus with bots? Or maybe I can be convinced to try against humans again if ya'll are willing to coach me along!

See my first post on this page. None of the regulars play bot games very often, but that's all gravity is brave enough to play at the moment, so I'll probably be joining him for at least one sometime tonight.

I play bot games all the time!

Hey - I'll happily play player matches, when I started that's all that the game had.

I just never got good at it. Core concepts - sure, I got that. Game flow, got it. Basic strategy and how to play certain characters, okay.

Items & wards - TOTALLY LOST.

you can get away with lack of wards at lower levels because most players don't do it at all. items, on the other hand, a lot crazier in season 3. good luck with that.

I play almost exclusively coop games.

Sometimes when there's a goodjer 5v5 I'll join.

But I despise normal pvp games. If it's not the other team making fun of you it's your own team. The game population at large is toxic. Generally the coop players are nicer to each other. You still run across people screaming about Kill Stealing and other nonsense even in coop games, but it's much more rare.

I prefer avoiding the idiots as much as possible.

Also, I may have issues with losing. As a highly competitive person, playing a ladder game that tries to keep you near a 50% win rate is not fun for me. I'll take my 95% win rate against AI and know that I have a lot more fun that way.

ya know, Stele, I'm realizing I'm in the same boat - losing in this game is never fun, but often the way it goes down is like sand under my fingernails. The worst is when I try a champ I'm not that familiar with in a lane I don't normally play (top) and I just can't make anything happen and it kicks my grump-meter up significantly. I can't think of any other non-RTS multiplayer game I've ever played that has a dynamic quite like that.

Speaking of which... Zed vs. Tryndamere thoughts? Been trying to get used to Zed and in my second game with him top went up against Tryndamere. For the record, as a guy who usually plays squishy mids, I've come to hate seeing Trynd on the opposing team... so any time I see him I tend to be perhaps overconservative so I don't get caught and nuked down. This particular game it didn't go badly per se, but aside of one succesful early jungler gank he was pretty free to push the lane as his sustain rendered my pokes mostly ineffective. I ended the game 5/5 while he finished 6/9 (after a 2/7 start) but because of the farming freedom he ended the game with nearly 100 more CS than I had. Any thoughts on this matchup and on top lane in general?