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[frostshotgg]

There's a general meta of "Assassin/Mage goes mid" such as Xerath, Annie, Talon, Zed, and "Support + Ranged Attacker (Called ADC) bot" such as Soraka + Graves, Sona + Corki, Janna + Ezreal, and later on "Tank/Bruiser goes top/jungle" such as Jarvan IV, Xin Zhao, Irelia, Zac. For the last, some exclusively go top or jungle like Irelia is always top and Zac mostly jungles. If you aren't familiar with jungling, it's a mostly higher summoner level thing where 1 person, instead of going to a lane normally, kills the monsters in the jungle between lanes and then tries to run up and catch an enemy off guard if they're playing stupidly in lane.

That's actually good you noticed that, you'd be surprised at how many people are completely oblivious to stuff like that. The green light indicates whether that ally's R ability (usually called an ultimate and learned at levels 6, 11, and 16. There are a few characters for whom it isn't an ultimate ability) is off of cooldown and ready to go.

Yes, you should be killing minions, pretty much always. The only time you shouldn't is when you're playing a support character, then your goal is to force feed the gold down your carry's throat. Keep in mind, however, that you only should be scoring the last hit for the gold, not nuking them down from full health, at least early on. You want to keep the minions waves as close to the center or on your side of the map as possible, because you don't want to overextend.

[Seriyu]

Oh, when I said creeps, I actually meant jungle creeps, my bad. I just now edited that in.

EDIT: I also just noticed you mentioned jungling in your post so yeah. Thanks!

[frostshotgg]

Well, dedicated junglers aren't something you won't see for a long time, and even then there are some oddities about camp killing.

First, learn what the various camps are, it's important to know. There are 3 small camps and 2 buffs on each side, then a dragon in the alcove on the river near bot, and Baron Nashor in the mirror alcove at top. The small camps are wolves, wraiths, and (small) golems. They respawn on a 50 second timer and have fairly low rewards. If there is a jungler, the wolves camp is pretty much exclusively his, along with golems although most junglers just ignore golems. Finally, the wraiths are very easy to kill with a little AoE and don't do much damage, so mid lane frequently poaches them. However, it's a huge dick move to your jungler if he's behind, so I'd just generally advise against it. Next are the buff camps, which consist of 1 large melee monster and 2 small ranged lizards. The lizards do almost no damage, but the large monsters really hurt. They are the big golem and the lizard. The golem gives a blue buff which grants 20% cdr (Half of the cdr cap) as well as huge amounts of mana regen. The lizard gives an autoattack bonus which slows and does true damage. Finally, dragon and baron are generally team efforts which give gold to everybody in the team, and in the case of baron, a very large buff. Buff camps spawn 5 minutes after they're cleared (which includes the small lizards. Make sure to kill them unless you're stealing from the enemy's jungle), dragon 6 minutes, and baron 7 minutes.

Generally early on, if you're laning, just leave the jungle camps alone. They do damage and you don't have creeps to tank it for you.  Later on, once you have plenty of hp to spare or lifesteal or heals, feel free to take a camp if you aren't doing anything better with your time or are passing the camp on your way to somewhere else.

[Seriyu]

Okay, so a jungle camp isn't really something you just "do" unless it's on the way, good, that pretty much solves it for me. Thanks!

[Chaoswizkid]

Okay, finished my first bot game, started out terrible but I think I pulled it together a bit better by the end of it, but naturally I have some questions again.

1. I noticed people claiming lanes, I knew they do this, but is there any rhyme or reason to this or is it more "I think I'm better then all of you so I'll take mid and throw a fit if you don't let me"?

Someone already explained what the usually roles/lanes are, but I felt that I should explain the logic behind the meta-game so you know why things are the way they are. Prepare for walls of text.

First off, experience is shared between champions when an enemy minion is killed nearby. Therefore, having just one champion in a lane is preferable because they will level up faster. However, you've got a choice of 5 champions and three lanes, so you're going to have a 2-2-1 setup. However, a 2-2-1 setup doesn't take advantage of the jungle creeps. Sure, you can step out of your lane for a moment and grab them, but you won't always have that opportunity. Another thing of note is that jungle creep kills do not grant experience to surrounding allies, only for the killer, and the experience, given that the creep camps take time to repopulate, isn't very good. Therefore, you can get a 2-1-1-1 setup, but going for three solo lanes and two junglers isn't optimal.

From there, some logic goes into deciding who goes where and why. There's two solo lanes, a jungler and a duo lane. There are two very important locations on the map: Dragon and Baron Nashor. Control of those two locations are absolutely vital, but because Baron Nashor is so difficult to kill, even with a team, it's usually only a concern for late in the game. Therefore, control of Dragon, which is toward the bottom of the map, is essential. That means that the duo-lane should probably go in either mid or bot lane so that there will be more people around the area of Dragon to either take it or stop the enemy from taking it by fighting them off or stealing it.

Another point of consideration is the relative lengths of the lanes. Mid lane has the shortest distance to the tower from the middle of the lane, while top and bottom are both pretty distant. That means that mid lane is ideal for champions who are very "squishy" or who can be killed very quickly due to health. Attack Damage Carries (ADC), Ability Power Carries (usually only referred to as AP champs) and Supports are the types of squishy champions. Previously (Season 1 I believe), it was decided that ADC champions would go mid. Supports would go bot with either a bruiser-type champion (Tanky AD) or the AP champion. However, synergy between a support and an AP or a support and a bruiser is not ideal. Another point is that ADC champs are not very mobile: they rarely have abilities that quicken their movements and they lack hard crowd control abilities (CC, "hard" referring to stuns, roots, taunts, fear and suppression. "Soft" CC refers to slows, charms and silence) to stop enemies. Even with the relative safety of mid lane, ADC champions were still quite vulnerable, and actually leaving their lane to support control of Dragon was dangerous due to just how vulnerable they were. AP champions, by contrast, often have hard CC abilities as well as abilities that support their movement. Because ADC champions are so squishy, they need the extra help and so the meta shifted such that AP champions went mid and ADC champions went bottom with a support.

AP champions could also theoretically go top, and sometimes they did, but due to their high mobility and high burst damage, their position in mid is ideal as they can leave their lane to gank enemies or to exert control over map objectives, like Dragon. Therefore, the question is "What to do about Top lane?" The answer is basically "Put whatever that can survive and benefits the team up there". You'll often see bruisers up there, but you may also see Swain or Kennen. Usually the best fit for top lane is a champion that has considerable health, health-gaining or health-stealing abilities, or good chances for an escape given that the lane is so long. Essentially, the champion needs to survive in case things suddenly take a turn for the worst. Since top lane doesn't have to care about map control until after lanes become somewhat meaningless beyond tower control and minion pushing and team fights become more frequent, mobility isn't a big consideration, so someone slow but bulky is often chosen.

The last consideration, then, is jungle. Jungling before level 15 is often very painful, because jungling is heavily reliant on masteries and runes. 15 isn't that special of a summoner level, it's just a bit more reasonable than any previous levels. The ideal level is of course 30. The jungle role basically takes the same logic as top lane: you need someone that can survive in the jungle, as opposed to lanes all of that damage is directed to the jungler. This means lots of health and/or armor and/or health-stealing or health regeneration. A bonus is having a champion who also has movement abilities. For that reason, you may find a very squishy champion, such as Shaco, ideal in the jungle as he can offset damage to himself with his trap boxes and has an invisible flash ability, useful for ganking lanes or surprising the enemy jungler.

What you end up with is the standard solo top, solo mid, duo bot and jungler. Many attempts to break that meta-game match-up have been made, but they require trust and teamwork. For example, while 1v2 would grant the experience advantage to the solo champion, two champions are very dangerous and can "zone" the single enemy champion, which means that they get in that champion's face and make them back off from the range of gaining experience, effectively turning the situation into a massive disadvantage. For this reason, sometimes the ADC and Support duo will go top, forgoing control of Dragon but effectively shutting down one champion of the enemy team. It's an obvious trade-off, because a solo-laner will have to take bottom lane and will be in the same position, so it's usually done with the intention of picking three champions specifically for it: an ADC and a Support that can effectively shut down an enemy at top and a solo laner to go bot that can survive a 2v1 situation. Also seen is sending assassins, such as Talon, to mid, as they often have the same benefits as AP champions but often effectively shut AP champions down. Alternatively, you might see bruisers or other tanky champions like Nunu being send to mid, as they can survive the punishment of the enemy caster and force them from the lane. You may also see a team sending their support to mid with the intention of keeping safe and healed up while their AP champion and their ADC go bot in what is referred to as a "kill lane": massive damage early that can zone and/or shut down the enemy lane. Or, for the same reason, you might simply see a team forgo a support and field two AP champions with the same intent. However, in every case, the team needs to be on the same page and all understand what is good and what isn't good against a match-up, so it is rarely attempted and often doesn't work out.


The tl;dr (although this is missing a lot of important reasoning stated above):

• Bottom lane is for Supports and ADC for survivability and more control at Dragon.
• Middle lane is for AP or Assassin champions for survivability and potential burst damage to steal Dragon.
• Top lane is for tanky champions, such as bruisers, or for champions who can escape in case things go wrong and the lane is so long.
• Jungle is for higher level summoners who can get the necessary runes and masteries, fielding champions who can weather the damage taken from jungle creeps.
• This setup is considered standard, although with knowledge and teamwork, it is possible to take advantage of the system, but it is very risky to do so.

Hope that helps!

[Skyrunner]

Makes sense. I often feel like I'm doing a total 1v1 while in top(other than being careful of the jungler). Whoever gets the first two kills snowballs to victory of that lane.

Incidentally. How would you go about fending off blue invades? I have no idea how to do that... maybe invade their jungle from the get-go? @_@

My current thoughts are (1) preemptively invade their own jungle, waiting in mid bush until like 1:40 when the minions clash, then all 5 run to the blue golem and get fb/blue then run away (2) have support ward instead of facechecking (the Explorer ward should be nice here) and if they're there and don't leave, pull out and go get their blue. Am I correct?

Counterjungling is also a worry for Sejuani, whom I play, but it's pretty hard to practice.

[Seriyu]

many word

That's very interesting and helps a lot, although I dnno how much I parsed on my first readthrough. I'll definitely be coming back to this on and off to get this all digested, thank you very much!

Some more minor questions before I jump back into LoL again...

1. I've noticed that people refer to farming lanes, IE letting the creeps into your lane just barely so you can get last hits and keep enemy heroes from getting last hits, is this something I should be doing now, while I'm unranked, or will it come into play later in the game, ala dedicated junglers?

2. I'm considering running a bot match or two for each hero I can get my hands on to get the idea of how abilities work, etc, is this considered too much bot playing, or is it really an issue? Bot matches have always kinda confused me in terms of actually doing them, because a ton of people seem to be of the opinion that too many will just ruin how you play, because bots are.... well bots, and as such predictable. I would think a bot match a hero would be fine but again I'd like to make sure.

Thanks in advance everyone, this has been a huge help.

[IronyOwl]

I wouldn't be too worried about "ruining" yourself with bot games. They're just not necessary past a certain point; some people get the notion that someone should play bot games until they're "good," the issues being that:

1. As mentioned, bots aren't people, so there's some things you can't learn/will learn wrong
2. Matchmaking exists for a reason. If you're worse than bots, you'll be paired with and against people who are also worse than bots

So yeah, if you want to experiment, feel free. Just don't feel like you have to or that there's some arbitrary amount of botting necessary. Well, I'd recommend bot games until you get the very basics down, but I mean the very basics.


In unrelated news, just had a hilarious game. Four-man premade gave me choice of mid or top, chose top mid. Enemy team had someone autolocking, so I was up against both an Ahri and Ezreal mid. You would think this would make them good at or interested in poking me away from Q-farming, but nope. :3

Also their Cho came and we killed both of them, which was the first time someone on the enemy team said "gg." Somewhat understandable given the circumstances; I know I was laughing maniacally by that point.

So the game pretty much carried on like that, and I very quickly got fed enough to simply execute their squishies at will. That poor Ezreal.

[Frumple]

Could probably give the thread a search for "bot match" (or just bots, I guess) to see some opinions on that. There's been both sides. Intermediate seems to honestly be better in most ways than a lot of human players, though. For what that's worth. You could do worse than playing those intermittently for practice. Beginner's nice enough if you just want to roll over something (barring some incredibly bad team mates, anyway).

As for me... I just don't really play PvP at all, generally. My nascent guilt strings tug badly enough when I subject 2-4 random people to my loading time, ha, nevermind 2X+1 that many. Plus I just don't really like playing against humans in AoS style maps, ha. Make exceptions for in-house or pre-arranged stuff, but I generally just don't do solo queue PvP.

ARAM keeps tempting me, though. ARAM's nice in general. Pretty much any of the non-rift maps are more fun t'me, really.

[Chaoswizkid]

Makes sense. I often feel like I'm doing a total 1v1 while in top(other than being careful of the jungler). Whoever gets the first two kills snowballs to victory of that lane.

Incidentally. How would you go about fending off blue invades? I have no idea how to do that... maybe invade their jungle from the get-go? @_@

My current thoughts are (1) preemptively invade their own jungle, waiting in mid bush until like 1:40 when the minions clash, then all 5 run to the blue golem and get fb/blue then run away (2) have support ward instead of facechecking (the Explorer ward should be nice here) and if they're there and don't leave, pull out and go get their blue. Am I correct?

Counterjungling is also a worry for Sejuani, whom I play, but it's pretty hard to practice.

You mean if the enemy goes 5-in on your blue? Depending on what side you're on, you'll want your top and mid to stay in the brushes near your blue (as blue team) or your mid and duo-bot to stay in the brushes (purple) to serve as mobile wards. As soon as they spot the enemy, ping the hell out of them and GTFO and head towards the other side of the jungle. Anyone who can linger VERY SAFELY should do so, staying in brush to avoid being seen and seeing what they do. If they commit for your blue, then regroup with the rest of your team and take their blue as an even trade. If they don't commit, or only their jungle or a couple of them commit, turn around and punish them.

In either case, it should be noted that anyone not with you around blue should be stationed in brushes along your side of the river to make sure that they don't invade for your red or set up a gank on the jungler. Before minions spawn, everything is about vision of the enemy possibly coming to screw up jungle. The response for that is to also do just what they're doing, and do so as quickly as possible because they already have the initiative if you aren't invading first.

Bonus points if you can actually assassinate foolish members of the enemy that try to go to their lanes after an invade. Typically, though, people won't invade unless they know their level 1 team composition is better than the enemy's. If you know better than them, punish them hard for their mistake. Otherwise, play it safe and mirror their actions so there's no real advantage or disadvantage.

many word

That's very interesting and helps a lot, although I dnno how much I parsed on my first readthrough. I'll definitely be coming back to this on and off to get this all digested, thank you very much!

Some more minor questions before I jump back into LoL again...

1. I've noticed that people refer to farming lanes, IE letting the creeps into your lane just barely so you can get last hits and keep enemy heroes from getting last hits, is this something I should be doing now, while I'm unranked, or will it come into play later in the game, ala dedicated junglers?

2. I'm considering running a bot match or two for each hero I can get my hands on to get the idea of how abilities work, etc, is this considered too much bot playing, or is it really an issue? Bot matches have always kinda confused me in terms of actually doing them, because a ton of people seem to be of the opinion that too many will just ruin how you play, because bots are.... well bots, and as such predictable. I would think a bot match a hero would be fine but again I'd like to make sure.

Thanks in advance everyone, this has been a huge help.

No problem!

1. I'm kind of confused with what you mean. You should always try and last hit (and only last hit unless you intentionally want to push) as much as you can, and you should always try to zone the enemy from getting last hits or experience, as long as you can manage either of those. "Farming lanes" are typically when a champion has zoned out their enemy and they are free to do what they want. Players can stall a lane by ONLY last hitting and allowing creep waves to maintain a mostly neutral position. If you stall the minions at the middle of the lane or toward your tower, you are in a pretty safe spot. If you stall them toward the enemy tower, you're in a dangerous position. If you stall the minions under a tower, then whoever owns the tower has to try to last hit the minions and kill them before the tower does. If you've pushed the lane and you're facing an enemy champion that sucks at last hitting, like some AP champions (LeBlanc in particular, I've found), even though they are safe under their tower they can't get minion kills. Otherwise they might be able to safely get all the gold they want. It comes down to experience with the strengths and weaknesses of each champion, and you'll pick that up eventually.

Typically, though, you only see lane stalling and last-hits-only at higher levels of play.

2. Nah, don't worry about it. As long as you go into the bot game understanding that they're just bots, you should be fine. Get a feel for a champion, but don't rely completely on what you learn from a bot game. You don't want to think you can burst down an enemy as a caster because you've done it before against a bot and end up being completely wrecked.

The better option would be to play ARAMs. They're pretty casual, you get an idea for the champ you're playing, and you can understand their strengths and weaknesses in teamfights. Obviously you miss out on what their strengths and weaknesses in the laning phase, but ARAMs are most useful for quickly learning about the many different champions in the game.

[frostshotgg]

For the record, it's rare to see someone jungle before level 20, because at level 20 you get access to the highest level of runes, in particular armor yellows. Jungling many characters would be out of hand impossible without armor yellows to make you take much less damage. The rest of the runes are minor optimization, but for some reason the armor stat on yellow runes is absolutely absurdly high, and as such are a huge advantage.

[webadict]

For the record, it's rare to see someone jungle before level 20, because at level 20 you get access to the highest level of runes, in particular armor yellows. Jungling many characters would be out of hand impossible without armor yellows to make you take much less damage. The rest of the runes are minor optimization, but for some reason the armor stat on yellow runes is absolutely absurdly high, and as such are a huge advantage.

Difficult. Not impossible. The biggest difference is that you'd probably choose a different kind of jungler. Fiddlesticks and Warwick are both good early level jungler choices. Or getting a really good leash, if different.

[Seriyu]

Okay, just got done with a huge set of runs with WebAdict, Jack Bread (left halfway through or so, I meant to honor you for friendliness but forgot sorry guy!), and Skyrunner came in shortly afterwords to fill the gap. Ended up going through with one bot match per free character, ended up playing as Garen during the normal match at end of the day, and greatly enjoying him. Despite getting paired up with a darius and a sivir in top lane, which I am told is a very bad thing. I would believe them! Still these things happen and we ended up winning so whatevs. I learned a lot, thanks to ya'll who jumped in! I'll prolly be doing normal matches until the next freeplay hero roster rolls around come monday I think it is. I'm more then happy to do solo bot matches so don't feel compelled if you find them dull as sin as a side note.

Now....

 

Makes sense. I often feel like I'm doing a total 1v1 while in top(other than being careful of the jungler). Whoever gets the first two kills snowballs to victory of that lane.

Incidentally. How would you go about fending off blue invades? I have no idea how to do that... maybe invade their jungle from the get-go? @_@

My current thoughts are (1) preemptively invade their own jungle, waiting in mid bush until like 1:40 when the minions clash, then all 5 run to the blue golem and get fb/blue then run away (2) have support ward instead of facechecking (the Explorer ward should be nice here) and if they're there and don't leave, pull out and go get their blue. Am I correct?

Counterjungling is also a worry for Sejuani, whom I play, but it's pretty hard to practice.

You mean if the enemy goes 5-in on your blue? Depending on what side you're on, you'll want your top and mid to stay in the brushes near your blue (as blue team) or your mid and duo-bot to stay in the brushes (purple) to serve as mobile wards. As soon as they spot the enemy, ping the hell out of them and GTFO and head towards the other side of the jungle. Anyone who can linger VERY SAFELY should do so, staying in brush to avoid being seen and seeing what they do. If they commit for your blue, then regroup with the rest of your team and take their blue as an even trade. If they don't commit, or only their jungle or a couple of them commit, turn around and punish them.

In either case, it should be noted that anyone not with you around blue should be stationed in brushes along your side of the river to make sure that they don't invade for your red or set up a gank on the jungler. Before minions spawn, everything is about vision of the enemy possibly coming to screw up jungle. The response for that is to also do just what they're doing, and do so as quickly as possible because they already have the initiative if you aren't invading first.

Bonus points if you can actually assassinate foolish members of the enemy that try to go to their lanes after an invade. Typically, though, people won't invade unless they know their level 1 team composition is better than the enemy's. If you know better than them, punish them hard for their mistake. Otherwise, play it safe and mirror their actions so there's no real advantage or disadvantage.

more word

I see, so the farming lane thing isn't something that's a natural part of the game, it happens as a result of someone getting zoned the hell out of even being in the lane. Gotcha! And the bot issue I ended up deciding for myself, but thank you on that too!

[Sharp]

Another thing of note is that jungle creep kills do not grant experience to surrounding allies, only for the killer, and the experience, given that the creep camps take time to repopulate, isn't very good.

Just a point that jungle creeps can provide experience to allies if allies are helping to kill the jungle creep at the point of jungle creep dying, in high level play you can occasionally see the starting red or blue buff experience being shared with another champ on the team to help get that champ to lvl 2 more quickly before the opponent, reaching lvl 2 before your opponent can allow some champs to bully enemies out of lane very early to snowball their way to victory.

Also Nunu and Shaco can both jungle at summoner level 1 but you need experience to play them well so it will only be smurfs who play it but it can be very effective. If you do go Nunu then go AP Nunu and get some spellvamp, Nunu can tank lots of damage if he can consume nearby enemy minions.

Also I feel that bot matches are only really useful for getting to know the very basics, you should jump into normal matches vs humans to learn more, it doesn't matter if you lose lots of games but you will experience much better quality opponents which will provide you with knowledge on how to play more effectively and learn interesting tactics first-hand.

And yes 5-man invades are hard to counter in lower ranks because it's easy to organise an attack invasion then it is to organise a defence especially as an attack might not come so defending for an attack which never arrives can hurt your team in early experience in lanes. Sometimes the best defence is a good offence.

[Chaoswizkid]

Another thing of note is that jungle creep kills do not grant experience to surrounding allies, only for the killer, and the experience, given that the creep camps take time to repopulate, isn't very good.

Just a point that jungle creeps can provide experience to allies if allies are helping to kill the jungle creep at the point of jungle creep dying, in high level play you can occasionally see the starting red or blue buff experience being shared with another champ on the team to help get that champ to lvl 2 more quickly before the opponent, reaching lvl 2 before your opponent can allow some champs to bully enemies out of lane very early to snowball their way to victory.

Actually, no. It was patched out because teammates were accidentally stealing experience (or intentionally to be jerks) when they were helping their junglers. What you see at high levels of play is not the result of shared experience, but rather the jungler handing off the little creeps associated with the big buffs to one of the champs to give them a slight experience advantage.