Hello and welcome to my very first guide! I would greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me and try to update respectively improve it as best as i can. If i get any comments at all, i will probably do some other guides in the future (e.g. for my mains wich you can see at the top of this page).

I will try to make this guide as brief as possible, but there will probably be some walls of text, so just skip to another chapter if you feel you can't get anything out of youre current one :)

The tips you can find in here are first and foremost for low elo players who are focusing on doing normal solo queue, but i think can also yield some insights for ranked players.

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Before starting off i would like to thank jhoijhoi for this great guide to making a guide which helps me alot and also a big thank you to the whole mobafire community for all the great work your're doing :)

• 05.08.2012: reworked some chapterlayouts, fixed links and some spelling mistakes
  

This is a work in progress and will probably change either because of feeedback or my personal experiences.

Also: english is not my native language, so there might be some grievous grammatical errors, but hopefully not alot of spelling errors^^

I want to start with a little story from a game i played very recently which promted me to write this guide.

It was a normal solo queue game as Riven solo top.
By midgame i was 6/0/1, we were up by 10 in kills, my farm was second only to our mid and i completely dominated my lane with the help of our jungler. I had half of the map constantly warded and was the first to destroy a turret. A little while later we were 3 to zero in turrets and ready to push mid and the enemy team were spamming surrender votes.
Then i chased someone near dragon into the opposing jungle and got my first death of the game...foolishly of course. 10 seconds later my team engaged 4v5 and was nearly wiped out. Our AD Carry started to raise concerne but we still dominated, got a good amount of dragons, had both jungles under control and were still up in kills and turrets. 5 minutes later i was splitpushing top while my team poked the inner mid turret. I found a opportunity to teleport in and wanted to engage. In that moment my team pulled back and so i and 3 others got killed, the last one fell when he tried to defend our outer mid turret. After this one fight our mid and AD carry where spamming surrender votes and constantly trying to convince our team that we lost...later in the game the carry started to feed like crazy to end the game. But even after the two lost figths i (snowball Riven) was 3-4 Levels up on everybody else and top of the charts, so i told him that we still had a chance. But with a feeder and half the team not even considering the possibillity of victory we lost.

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In the game and right after it i was pretty mad at this AD carry and blamed him (not in chat, mind you) completely for our loss. But a little while after that i analized the game and came to the conclusion that my first two deaths pretty much lost the game, not just because they let to bad teamfights but because they demotivated my teammates.

All in all i think this game illustrates alot of what can go well and what wrong in a solo queue match, thats why i will keep referencing to it.

So lets start where every game takes off: the character selection screen. Hopefully you got some champions you are decent at, if not so or you want to try out a new champion please consider playing a few bot games with them to get to know the abilitys and choose a build order and of course get used to the attack animation for lasthitting.

But in the end: take what you are comfortable with!

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Of course there is the meta game (usualy 1 bruiser top, a ap mid, ad plus support bottom and jungler), but if you are bad and/or don't want to play a support, jungler or whatever else youre team needs to live up to the meta, do not do it! You will hurt youre team and you problably won't have alot of fun.

Otherwise just live up to the role youre champion can fullfill (e.g. don't try supporting with an all out carry) and try to win youre lane for starters ;)

This is just for some quick tips on what to buy in general.

• Always buy wards! Not from the start if youre not planning on supporting, but otherwise try to buy at least one ward every time you go back (more on this topic later).
  
  
• Don't underestimate health potions, i would suggest buing one or two everytime you go back in the early game, they can give you alot of sustain and help surviving those early ganks.
  
  
• In late game always have atleast one elixir fit for your'e champion on you and consider buying one even in early midgame if youre behind and don't have sufficient money for something real, it can give you quite an edge (some champions get alot more out of the elixirs then others).
  
  
• It is of course important to have a good idea what you want to build. But don't set it in stone, adjust it to the team compositions and the flow of the game. A few points to look out for: don't necessarily buy an aura item if somebody else is already building it and buy resistance gear- you should adjust the amount of magic resist and armor to your enemys.

This is probably the single most important thing in LoL to learn, and is even more importnt when solo queuing. Seriously: don't expect anyone to buy wards at all...until well after a dozen matches on level 30 i was pretty much always the only one warding, and even in recent matches i very rarely come across people other then hardcore supports who are warding. Also many people don't call out mia/ss, so it's even more important to always have one eye on the map^^

If you want to know everything that is to be known about this topic check out Panglots wardig helper :)

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Just a few simple tips from me: if you are supporting learn to use clairvoyance, it has alot of uses and is a great map control tool (more info in the next chapter). Did i mention you should always buy wards? Of course you need to learn when and where to put them, but for that you can go to panglots guide :) For a start focus on Baron/Dragon and the most important gank routes. Of course share any intelligence you get through your awareness with your team if it matters for them (like someone passing by a ward to gank an afk farmer^^)

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Not much to say about this topic without going too in-depth...you just need to learn it for yourself, and improve it when ever you can- it will simply win you games more then pretty much anything else.

My goal with this chapter is to encourage you to try out different summoner spells, experiment and really get to know what you can and can not do with certain combinations of spells.

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Try out this spell especially when you have a champion that can really turn the tide of a battle when he's popping up right under the enemy. Also look at the previous chapter! Good ward placement is important for this summoner spell to be most powerful.

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Heal can help with sustain if you are going up against an aggressive laner and of course is great for baiting tower dives^^ It falls off quite quickly over the course of a game. Nowadays pretty much standard for ad-carrys, also good for squishies in Top or Mid.

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Probably the most popular spell, but also consider ghost instead. With some champions this spell is an extremely powerful initiation tool (e.g. Galio). Has lots of different uses but a long cooldown. Consider Summoner's Insight for the cooldownreduction.

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Definitely get this if youre team is lacking one, a very flexible spell especially in the early to mid game. Helps escaping and securing ganks, win one on one fights and chase after enemys.

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Consider this spell in dominion if nobody else got it, it can help alot with tower dives and defends!

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A very flexible spell, some champions can gain more out of it (e.g. Hecarim, Shaco). It's a great alternative to flash, has a shorter cooldown and has even more uses, and of course it has a more sustained effect.

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Mandatory for some AP-Champs if you don't have manaregen on masteries or runes. Helps alot if your blue gets stolen. If you find yourself needing it even after getting propper runes, you should learn to spam your spells less!

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This is a very tricky one: you have to get used to the one minute cd, use it often but don't spam it then you might not have it for saving someone from a trap. It can give alot of map control, can help with stealing buffs, secure overextended lanes, prevent ganks, check bushes, give Dragon and Baron control and help protect the jungle and probably alot more. If you know about jungle routes and have already a good amount of map awareness defiinitely consider this spell if your are support or the support didn't get it.

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This spell i feel is only realy usable in ranked matches when you know your'e up against alot of cc. But also consider it with certain champions in a blind pick situation e.g. champions like akali who are shut down very hard with cc.

Now we come to the heart of any team game. And i think my if you look at my little story from the beginning you might know where i laked in that departement.

Good communication is especially important when youre playing with people you don't know. With a premade you would usualy be on voice chat and of course know there way of playing and communicating. Also there is the problem of different languages, so i would suggest: stick to english, use simple words and always be to the point and polite :)

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Definetely refrain from flaming, even if you think the flamed people won't understand what youre saying (e.g. you would flame me in russian^^), it's usualy quite easy to distinguish when someone is cursing/flaming even if you don't know anything about the language ;)
If you are mad at someone just say it out loud (not too...it might upset your neighbourds ;), but don't go for a confrontation it will just bring them and your whole team down and make it harder to win a game.
Flaming loses games!

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If you think someone is making a mistake and you know how to fix it, be extremely cautious to bring it up to them, some people will rage even at the most polite criticism. Even better would be if you try to lift them up when they make a mistake and praise them sincerely when they do something good.

Of course it's important to call mia/ss but also don't underestimate pings when you spotted something someone else might not have seen, but just ping once or twice and never spam, it really doesn't give a good impression.

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To recap here are some does and don'ts in a little list:

SPACEee Does be polite call ss/mia share intelligence make good jokes :P be uplifting

SPACEee

SPACEeee Don'ts never ever flame do not spam (pings aswell as chat) do not use your own language if somebody on your team can not understand it

To sum it all up:

Buy wards, do never ever flame, play whatever champion you feel comfortable with, be polite, play for your team and most of all: have fun!

- make it more visual
- make it easier to read
- correct any grammar/writing mistakes
- create an actual coherent summary
- general reworking