Hello, and welcome to my guide about League of Legends. This guide isn't here to teach you how to build champions. It's more about how to play the game in general. I'll cover plenty of things here. Some of these things being:

Map awareness
Laneing
Counter Jungling and Jungling
Support
Catching Up
Smart Playing

So sit back, grab some popcorn and get to reading.

This is by far the MOST important thing about league of legends and the least used thing in the game.

Not everybody calls MIAs. Not everybody pings. It's your job to know when a gank is going to happen and how to be prepared.

Mini-Map Awareness

Map Awareness is basically knowing what's going on around the map at all times. This isn't a hard task to do, but it is very overlooked. There's this thing called a mini-map and its at the bottom right(or left) of your screen. You don't need to put 100% attention to it at all times, but glance at it every minute or so during the lane phase. If you're past 1/2 of the lane and you glance at your map and one champion is missing..back up until you see them again.

Wards

sight ward

Sight wards and Vision wards are the best items in this game. They let you know what's going on in places that you normally cant see, yet, they are some of the most under used items in the game.

Buy wards and place them outside of your lane. Place them at dragon, and place them at baron after 30 or so minutes. Don't leave ward placement up to junglers. If you get a kill, instead of focusing straight on your build, help the team out and place wards with any extra gold you may have (aka if you cant finish a recipe, get wards).

This is the optimal ward placement for both summoners rift and twisted treeline:
The Red Square is the Lizard Buff, and the Blue Square is the Golem Buff.
The Black Circles are where wards should be placed.

Summoners Rift:


Twisted Treeline:


Simply placing wards in these locations can get you and your team extra kills, free gold and possibly turn a loss into a win.

As you may notice, the river is always heavily warded. This is because 95% of ganks come from the river and nobody sees them coming because wards aren't placed. With a ward down in the river, say at dragon, and mid goes mia. Your teams mid will see that the opponent is gone and will check the map. If they see them with a ward, you've got a 10 second increased time to get back, or even go into the river and fight against the champion coming to gank you.

Wards change games. End of story.

The most important part of League of legends - Laneing.

Top Lane:

This is usually the solo lane if your team has a jungler - meaning play SAFE. NEVER extend past 1/2 the lane unless you have river warded and there is only one champion against you. If it is a 2v1 lane, keep your opponents on your turret as long as possible. Farm the minions with the turrets help and harass the champions every now and again. You're safe as long as your on your turret.

Also, if you're solo lane, you should be roughly two levels higher than your opponents levels. If you're not and your getting denied, ask for a lane switch with your team.

Mid Lane:

You're the "captain" of the team. It's most important for you to be paying attention to all lanes, and for you to call mias with your lane. Since you're two levels ahead of the rest of the team and your opponent is two levels ahead, you both have an advantage in a gank. When your opponent disappears for more than 20 seconds call a mia. If you see them head up, ping up towards the top lane or ping down towards the bottom lane if they're heading down. Check your mini-map for mias often..about once every minute or so. You're the most targetable for a gank since it would be a 2v1 surprise.

Bottom Lane:

Most junglers start at the Blue Golem. This is your chance to get an early first blood but you MUST be careful. Let mid know if you're going to attempt for it so that they can go around and help you too. Get into the bushes behind blue (near mid turret) and wait. After minions spawn and you see the golem icon appear, head south east into golem and see if the jungler is there. If they are, exhaust and the three of you should get a kill or atleast waste a flash of theirs. Then head to your lane and start to farm. Put a ward at dragon around 10 minutes and keep it up, Warwick can get dragon at about 9 minutes, Nunu at about 12 and i've gotten it with nasus at 15. If you see a jungler attempting to solo dragon, go behind your turret and around that way he doesn't get a heads up warning from his team. Warding your red can be beneficial too. If a jungler is low, and just finished getting red buff in your jungle, they don't have much of an escape route to follow if you and your team see him there.

This takes me into my next topic of Jungling.

The Jungle.
It gives your team two solo lanes instead of one.
That means your team has two above-par leveled champions rather than one.

It's beneficial, but dangerous.

In this section, I will explain how to safely jungle and how to counter jungle.

Jungling

Summoners expect you to start at blue(as shown above) so you have two options.
1. Don't start at blue
-this is the safer option, but it also results in some junglers not being able to jungle for as long since they don't have the CDR or the mana regen of golem.

2. Start at blue
-More dangerous but beneficial. Have your team scout for you at blue. This means one ally(bot lane) stands at the river entrance and your mid stands at the other entrance. Grab blue, and then continue your jungle and your ally's will return to their lane. Also, With early smite getting more and more common, I warn you now. Do Not Smite until you can kill the creep with it. Read the Counter Jungling section to learn why.

Ward Your Jungle

Here we go again with the wards. Make sure you place one on each river side, that way you know if an opponent is going to enter your jungle. Dragon and the middle of north river (check map above) are the best places to ward, for those are the most common entrances into the jungle.

Get Wriggles Lantern. It's a free ward every three minutes. How is that not worth it? Later if you need to(after laneing phase) sell it and buy a bloodraser or a different item for your build. When i'm jungling, I keep a wriggles ward at Dragon at all times, that way I know if I'm getting jumped soon or if there's an incoming for bottom. "But you said top lane gets ganked more!?" This is true, but a dragon is worth more than a top lane gank. Purchase wards for top lane and keep wriggles on dragon to know if they are taking dragon. with wriggles there, you can smite over the wall and steal it from right under their noses.

COUNTER JUNGLING

The Best thing you can do is stop a jungler. This shuts down their early game and puts them behind for the rest of the game. Doing this is relatively simple. Try an early three man gank at your opponents blue it's very easy to kill them once they've started blue, because they are getting hit by the creeps and possibly three members of your team(for positioning, see above).

Ward Both Jungles

By warding the jungles, you can see where the opponents jungler is. This can lead to easy kills at either buffs. Top lane should ward The top two creeps and the bottom lane should ward the bottom two creeps as well as dragon. Once again, I can not stress enough how important wards are in this game.

Counter-Smiting

Early smite has become more and more popular in league of legends. Take this to your advantage. Instead of buying health potions and armor, if your champion can handle it get boots, a health pot and a ward. Place the ward at your opponents blue before they get there. they wont see it and you'll have sight. When your opponent gets their jungle creep low enough, smite it from the other side of the wall and you'll have a free blue or red buff. Also, if they are low enough, you'll have an opportunity for a first blood as well!

The danger in doing this
-You give your position away early if they see your ward, leading you to more than likely death.
-You can smite too early, giving them the buff and losing your position and smite.
-While somebody comes to leash the golem, you can be spotted and you've wasted 75G on a useless ward.

Supports are a key to a good team comp in LoL. Some examples of supports are:



Some( ) are more useful than others( ) but any support is good on a team.

"But a support? Why? I just want to kill people"
Supports are necessary to the team because as being a support, you keep your team alive and able to fight longer.

Just because you're a support, doesn't mean you cant kill anyway, it just means you're not meant to.

For example, Janna's Howling Gale hurts quite a bit and Nidalee's Javelin toss scares me :/.

You being a support allows your team to keep fighting for longer, and keep pushing faster.

I've been denied all of the first 10 minutes and I'm three levels below everybody else! I'm just gonna rage.


WRONG.


There are many ways to catch up in a game of League of Legends. Under the consumables menu there are three magical potions that cost 250G each..
Elixir of Fortitude (Health and Attack Damage)
Elixir of Brilliance (Ability Power and 10% CDR)
Elixir of Agility (Attack Speed and Crit Chance)

If you're playing AD buy a fortitude and an agility elixir and grab a ward. Go to a lane that has a big feed, type in chat that you need it and go for it. Pop your elixirs and put the ward behind you so you know what's coming at you from both sides so that you can plan an appropriate escape route if needed. Keep doing this and you'll be back up to level in no time. Plus, the gold from the minions will easily make up for you 575G you spent on your temporary items.

Most importantly, DO NOT OVER EXTEND. Which takes me into the next section...Smart Playing.

In the game(that you just lost), you need to play as smart as possible. The most common error in league of legends is over extending

Overextending

Overextending is being too far past your "safe zone". The so called Safe Zone(or sz as I will refer to it as) changes throughout the whole game. Each game has 3 Phases, Lane, Gank, and Push. During the Lane Phase, your SZ is halfway up your lane while a champion is MIA(including junglers!), or pushing a turret when nobody is MIA and there are no junglers. During the Ganking Phase, you SZ is with your team. Always stick together. If you're caught alone, you're more than likely about to die. During Very late game (35-50 minutes) there is no SZ. Everything and anything you do determines the outcome of the game. If you're caught alone and you die with a 70 sec respawn timer, and your team loses a 4v5 teamfight trying to save you, that's GG. So stick with your team and act as one after the Laneing phase is over.

Buffs/Creeps

Dragon

The dragon is a great way to get ahead in LoL. Whichever team controls dragon has a constant +190 Gold every 6 minutes, and that can be a game changer. When you are going for dragon..

If you're soloing:
DO NOT attempt to do this unless you know where EVERY one of the opponents champions are. If there are three in the top lane and two mia, have a team mate help you out or set wards at the entrances of the jungle so you know what is coming. The second you see an opponent champion, leave. Even if dragon is at 15% health, get out before you get ganked.

If you're with a team:
Pay attention to the mini map. If you see the opposing team on your mini-map (because of your wards of course) get ready to stop dragon and start a teamfight. An ace + dragon is easily 1600 gold spread through the team. If you're not interrupted, then take dragon, place a ward in the middle of the river, and leave.

Blue and Red

Jungle creeps don't take much to bring down, so don't be afraid to solo these through out the game. If you see an enemy champion and they attack you straight away, leave. There's often more than one person there and you'l end dying and losing the buff rather than just losing the buff.

Baron

Baron is situational. You shouldn't try baron unless you either:

A. Have at least 1 inhibitor destroyed.
B. Killed 3/5 opposing team members.

either way, when you take baron you should ALL WAYS have the entrances warded. This way you know when(and if) the team is going to come for you, and whether or not to take the buff or to leave it and try again later.


Finally there's one more thing:
Oracle's. This item is KEY in a real match. It allows you to see wards that are hidden on the map, as well as cloaked champions(i.e. Akali, Eve, or Twitch).

If you're laning against any of these champions(minus early on, during your first bank you will want to buy a vision ward. It's more useful early on because you have a higher chance of dying when you're weaker, so instead of having to spend 400G, you can trade off with your ally spending 150G.

Thank you for reading my guide, and I hope that it helps you in your future League of Legends games. If there's one thing that you should have absolutly taken from this guide, it's to ALWAYS WARD. Wards can and do change games. Thank you once again for reading, Comment and Vote!