Hello, and welcome to my guide on how to become a better player. This guide is in response to what I think the LoL community has been lacking, and what I generally think people are doing wrong.

What this guide aims to do is identify problems you may be having, and show you the solutions or give you tips and general guidelines to understand and fix problems you could be having. This is the first part

AD- Attack Damage
AP- Ability Power
AS- Attack speed
AA- Auto attack
CDR- Cooldown reduction
MR- Magic resist
Arpen- Armor penetration
Spec- Specialization. Changing your build to deal with the opposition.
Mia- Missing in action
/lvl- (stat)per level

Your build is often tailored directly to your playstyle, and it's not often that you're going to meet someone with the same build as you.

A good balance in a build is when it not only looks at massing a certain stat, but also looks for survivability, utility, versatility and synergy. Most builds get close, but sometimes a build misses the mark.

#1: Inflexibility. Most people who play LoL either don't see the need to spec or change their build in any way, because most people view themselves as a carry, and don't see any value in changing their build. This is our number one problem because most people don't realize to do change it until very, very late.

#2: The glass cannon. The glass cannon is possibly the biggest killer of people in LoL, because people often don't realize that good defensive stats are worth investing in, and that their job is only to carry, carry, carry; regardless of how many times they die. The intense focus on a high kill count in LoL is a large problem.

#3: No Arpen! People are so intensely focused on hitting big, and getting crit after crit, that they don't realize that 90% of games aren't god games, where people don't stack armor(in ignorance of the first rule), and so they just stack 3 Phantom Dancers without any regard to the enemy's items. Madmack put it the best way for me:



#4: Stacking Items: Stacking items can be a very big problem, and it's a bad thing to do for 3 reasons:

• It focuses on buffing only one or two stats, which leads to an easily counter-able build.
• Most of the time, the item has a unique passive. Whether or not it's the stat you want, it's a wasted stat. That makes the build inefficient. That's literally throwing away money.
• It makes it inflexible, because you're pouring a ton of money into a few choice stats. What happens when you get those stats specced against?

#5: Not thinking about what your champ needs: Let's take Urgot for an example here. Urgot has a switch, an Armor/Mr buff, and a shield. He has great early game damage. He has no escape options, and is very slow. He's also notorious for being unable to carry late game. So what's the #1 wrong thing people do on him? They build him squishy, and try to carry. You know what happens? They pull off fail ult after fail ult, and and get eaten alive after the first 20 or so minutes. What does Urgot need? Early damage, then tankyness, simply put. You need to think: A squishy character that often puts himself in danger with his ult, and has no escape options, and can only AA from close range, is not a good candidate for a carry type build. It misses the mark on him. As a result, your general performance will suffer. Think about your character's kit; What are his/her strengths? What are his/her weaknesses? What items should I build, in attention to both of these pieces of information?

EXPERIMENT! Whenever I want to learn a character, first off, I think about the above rules^^ and try to make a balanced, flexible build, revolving around 3 core items. Take my most
recently learned character, Gragas: I know that Rod of Ages, rylai's crystal sceptor, and (for me at least, on any offtank/tank) Mercury's Treads are all core items; what I need is a good amount of AP, and the single biggest bundle you can get for AP is Rabadon's, since I need items that will allow me to take a beating, as well. So I choose two items that give a huge chunk of resistances(that synergixze with eachother, in terms of regen, which in turn synergize with his Drunken Rage), with more health, a tiny bit of cdr, and plenty of cdr. Randuin's Omen and Force of Nature are my two choices. Randuin's Omen has great synergy with his Body Slam. And seeing as they provide both Armor and MR, the only thing I may have to change is my build order by switching around Randuin's Omen and Force of Nature.

So to Summarize:

• We get this because it gives you plenty of early game health and AP, and the single best bundle for AP and health you can get once it is fully stacked. It is also very easy to build, and helps with our laning presence as well.
• Move speed, HP regen buff that is synergistic with his Drunken Rage, MR... Immensely helpful.
  
• Health, AP, and a slow that is procced on 3 of your 4 spells in an aoe effect. Core on Gragas. This lets you dish out loads of cc.
• Yet another easy to build item that has a fantastic passive and active that are synergistic with barrell roll's cripple(there, I said it) effect and Body Slam. Also synergistic with Force of Nature.
• Simply the best deal for AP in the game, and will vastly increase your damage potential. Gragas can afford to build only 3 AP items A) because of this item and B) because of his amazing AP ratios.
• These and a low cd on your Body Slam will make you tremendously hard to pin down, and they allow you to soak up a decent amount of CC and damage as well.

Think through your builds; make sure it's not just CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT CRIT NEEDS MOAR CRIT. There should be an intelligent approach to your crafting, and there should be a duplicitous edge to how you make your build. Strengths, and weaknesses.

Always use whatever resources you can to improve your game; try out a build you have in mind in bots, to get a feel for your character's playstyle, and get your build in order. Ask for feedback on your builds, and use sited like Mobafire to learn what kind of builds work on which characters.

Mentality is a large part of the game, as corny as that sounds. But it really is; as long as you keep a positive outlook, stay focused, and provide support, you have a vastly increased chance of winning. I've seriously had people start crying that karth was fed once someone gave him one kill...

#1- Viewing things in an overly negative fashion: Negativity brings down the team in an extreme way. NOTHING good can come of it. As soon as you start giving up hope, or lamenting or grieving, or WHATEVER, your team immediately feels the effects. They view the game as hopeless, lost, and that defeat is inevitable as soon as some negative ***whipe won't shut his trap

#2- Berating teammates: Putting your team down is a huge sin. The person you're yelling at obviously knows they're doing bad, and they don't need some random person saying on /all "TEEMO FED GG". It's just a passive aggressive, ****ish way to put someone down, and it helps ZERO. ABSOLUTELY NEVER. Excessive beraters are excessive losers.

#3- Constantly whining: If you're whining right out of the gate that you may have to solo vs Nidalee, you're going to lose. You're giving them power over you. You're letting them get to you. Not only is your whining annoying and distracting to your team, it's not gonna fix anything. Unless you ask kindly, "hey I need a gank/lane switch please", you're just digging yourself deeper by pitching a fit.

#4- Fighting over trivial things: Whoever did or didn't call mia isn't important. If a Twitch showed up behind you after 3 minutes of not being at bot, you should have taken serious note of that. You can't fight all game over things; it's distracting, dissolves teamwork, leads to insults and putting people down at every mistake, and generally ****s up the game.

#5- Not taking responsibility: Learn to admit you ****ed up. If you're constantly placing blame on other people, A) you aren't learning, and B) you're being a ****. Placing the blame on the rest of your team all the time, or saying that a particular character is total bs, doesn't teach you anything about how to deal with them or how to better your game. It's a vicious cycle. Unless their team is Urgot, Fiddlesticks, Malzahar, Warwick, and Amumu, shut your mouth.

Be positive! Never harp on someone for feeding, or give up, or fight over trivial ****, or complain about how OP dat champ is. Provide compliments, make your team feel good about doing well, or getting an early kill. It may sound stupid, but at an unconscious level, it does provide a tiny ego boost, and will provide them with more incentive to kick ***. Don't argue with trolls. IGNORE THEM. Don't fight over unimportant things all game. I breeds distrust, anger and spite among your team. If you see people fighting over stuff, just ask them to calm down and focus. It's really hard for most people to let go of something, but don't take sides, no matter how wrong one person or the other may be. Just calmly try and ease the tension. You'll be a credit to the team, just by being supportive and kind. It WILL increase your chances of winning.