Greetings.

This guide is written solely to convince a friend to return to the game. He mentored me and imbued me with the basics of the game, and in return I will pass on whatever knowledge I have acquired since then.





I am known as (Not Viable), a Diana main that has achieved rank 1 Diana(for both mid and jungle) on the SEA Garena server. I have several accounts in high platinum / low diamond MMR and my main peaked at 60% WR Diamond 1 43LP (Rank #373 overall) (solo/duo) and Diamond 2 100LP (ranked flex).
From my achievements as a player I am fairly confident that I have a good understanding of the macro game, and the mistakes that I have made during my journey to get good. Diana is a macro champion anyway.

Macro is the decision making portion of League. When to back, when to give up cs / experience, tracking the enemy jungler, deciding if burning flash is worth it, League is a game that is heavily decision making based.

Most people make the mistake of learning micros, because they think that being able to outplay people is a large reason as to how people get good. This is not true, having insane mechanics will get you to climb, but you will not climb far. Scripters are most commonly found in high platinum / low diamond but never higher. Even perfect mechanics will not get you Challenger. (see: Kiting Zed, a Zed main with mechanics of a diamond player, stuck in bronze.)

There is a simple reason for this.

Let's say winning a game is decided on how many opportunities you capitalize on successfully, e.g getting a kill / taking a tower. Because micros are closely tied to getting kills, let's use kills as an example. Let's say your micros allow you to get 100% of every kill opportunity you get, however because your macros are bad, you are only capable of creating 5 of such opportunities. If you capitalize on all 5 opportunities, you net 5 kills.
However, lets now imagine that you are not a very good mechanical player, but instead a good macro player, able to create more opportunities. (knowing your opponents dmg and your own dmg to be able to realize that if you WILL be able to kill your opponent = macro ( a kill opportunity) ) Lets imagine that our mechanics are so bad that we only capitalize on 50% of every opportunity we get. However, if we create 10 opportunities, we can get 5 - 10 kills. If there is a 50% chance we get a kill with every kill opportunity we get, there is a chance that we manage to get a kill on all 10 opportunities. Missing skillshots / enemies helping out are factors that may prevent us from getting those kills, but the more opportunities we create, the higher our chances of netting kills.

A good macro player will not only know how to create good kill opportunities. (Faking a gank, ganking your own lane, hiding / ambushing / finding a low hp jungler / knowing where an enemy is hiding) A good macro player will also be capable of creating good objective opportunities, like sneaking a baron, or knowing a good time to take herald / dragon / a tower. Good ward spots, clever use of pink wards and holding your summoner spells are also part of macro.

There are an insane amount of macro aspects that can be focused on, from kill opportunities to how to play from behind / ahead, to realizing when are good times to take objectives, when are good times to split push and where are good places to ambush. When a player learns macros, he / she will eventually climb because micro / certain aspects of macros come with a lot of experience (CS-ing, skillshot dodging/hitting and knowing exact damage values)

Losing your lane is common. Everybody loses their lanes every so often, but not many people know how to win games when playing from behind. Laning is the entirety of the early game. Laning phase will more often than not, decide who will be carrying the game.Lets analyze a scenario.

If a Kassadin manages to get 2 kills during laning phase, he will leave the laning phase with a large gold lead, because he is a late game champion and requires items, this puts Kassadin in a position to carry.
If you were the opposing mid laner of the Kassadin, and say you were playing Talon. Talon, who is a snowball champion that needs kills / gold in order to stay relevant, will struggle to be useful to his team.

Whatever happened that got Kassadin the lead is irrelevant at this stage. Be it the Kassadin outplayed you, or you got killed by ganks, none of that matters. Your main focus right now is to allow yourself to be carried. Being a low damage assassin, analyze the state of the game and your current win condition. Lets paint a picture of the game.

Your team consists of a tank top laner (Ornn), a carry jungler (Kha Zix), a late game ADC ( Vayne) and a tank support (Braum).

Scenario 1: Your lanes are winning:
Your Ornn is even with the enemy top laner, your Kha Zix has a kill over the enemy jungler, and your Vayne has 2 kills. This is the easiest situation to be in. The enemy Kassadin's main focus is to shut down your vayne, so your main focus is to prevent that from happening. Hard shove your lane and follow the Kassadin if he roams down bot lane. Help your bot lane ward the bottom river and be ready to use your mobility to aid them. After laning phase, deal as much damage to the enemy threats to your ADC. Because your Ornn is doing decently well, and your Vayne is at an advantage over the enemy ADC, your Ornn should be able to soak up damage while Vayne does her work. Because you are playing from behind, try to deal as much damage to the enemies that are focusing Vayne. Help Vayne kill the Kassadin, and use your ultimate to deal damage to the back lines so that Kha Zix and Vayne can clean it up. Give kills if you can, and play objectively. After skirmises or team fights, secure objectives, ping dragons / barons / herald / towers and get as much out of each small victory as possible.

Scenario 2: Your lanes are even.
The game is slow, there are no kills / there are an even amount of kills in each lane. You are the only one that is far behind your enemy. In this situation, your goal is to prevent yourself from being further behind. Let your jungler gank other lanes if your opponent is too fed, as he can most likely still get a kill out of your gank. Give up CS and experience, ward gank spots and prevent dying as much as possible. When your opponent roams, and if you know you cannot match him, shove your lane hard and push. Be wary and watch the minimap for the possibility of people coming to defend their tower. Roam and gank your lanes if possible. If you are able to snag a few kills during your roam, you are back in the game. But it is fine to give up kills and let your team be ahead. If your team is now ahead thanks to your ganks, the game is the same as situation 1. (try to coordinate ganks with your jungler for a higher chance of securing a kill / tower)

Scenario 3: Your lanes are losing.
This is the hardest scenario, for obvious reasons. Your carry jungler (Kha Zix), who is also an assassin, is suffering the same fate as you are. Your Ornn is farm deprived and a kill behind, and your bottom lane has a combined score of 0 / 5. The game is still winnable, although it is fairly unlikely. In this situation, you can try to make yourself as fed as possible by taking your jungler's camps / your other lane's farm, to make yourself the carry of the game. This would put the rest of your team at an advantage, but if it looks as if your team cannot capitalize on a lead or advantage anyway, just take the resources. Either you do this, or you your team to do it. Give up farm and allow your team to try to scale. Your Vayne is a good late game carry, so it is a good idea to give her some gold.

For every second someone spends doing something useful, it is advantage gained, whether it is optimal way to spend the time or not. However, for every second someone spends doing something not useful at all. It is advantage you did not take. And if it is not taken by you, it is taken by your opponents.

Taking 20 seconds to go top lane to take a wave that is dying under tower is not idle time, however it is wasted time. The time you spend walking there to get a mere 3 minions (the wave died under tower) is not time well spent. Using time effectively can widen a lead you have with your opponent or close a gap that your opponent may have created. Making clever use of your time will allow you to get an advantage over your enemies in most games.

Lots of junglers clearing their own jungle, then wait in the bush for a good minute or two just for the opponent team to over extends, which usually doesn't happen. This jungle vacuum time is better used to counter jungle or warding the river for your team if your target does not over extend.

Another example is when someone is low on mana and is guarding a turret against two or three opponents. Assuming you have the ability to defend yourself, however, you don't have the ability to kill someone even with turret's help (unless the opponent decides to dive you instead of damaging your turret). Lots of players just stay anyway. This is another subtle idle time. Essentially you are spending your time standing near a turret, not doing anything useful. In this situation, you should either go back to base (and if the opponents decides to interrupt your teleport right under your turret, kill them), or better yet, get help from someone who can kill them if they decide to push the turret.

The ability to cause idle time on your opponent is also a commendable skill to learn. Zoning someone is an obvious example. But there are a lot more one can do to achieve this. Some of them involve good use of game mechanism, for instance, as nidalee, I often use spear to prevent someone from going back, thus delaying their shop time. A trap or two at choke points will usually scare someone away, saving my spear for better uses. Ezreal and Lux can use ultimates to steal buffs, dragon or sometimes even baron. Ashe's W can usually make the opponent jungler to give up dragon at half health. These are all good use of the game mechanism. Others involve the mind games. For example, when a team is at disadvantage, a ward purposely shown to opponents at baron is usually enough to buy a few minutes, allowing your vital spells to finish cooldown, or to wait for one of your team members to respawn. Purposely showing the enemy team that you know what they are planning on doing will set them off the objective and buys time for your team.

Because top lane is probably going to be my friend's most played lane, I will explain as much as I can about top lane, although it is probably my least played role. Some of the laning mechanics can be applied to other lanes, however lanes such as mid lane comprises of more skills such as counter jungling, ganking / hard shoving when the enemy roams, etc.

Using teleport

If you teleport in and end up dying it will cost you your lane. In the early game it can be a great tool to not fall too far behind but you must be cautious to use it too hastily. If you need to use it during laning pre 10 mins in the game, use it to get back to lane after buying items or after getting forced out of lane due to a bad matchup or enemy jungler pressure.

However, you don’t always want to be teleporting back to lane, on some champions (usually tanks) it might sometimes be better to save teleport during laning. Tanks will normally fall behind during laning and their teleports are really important for bot lane, (e.g. Maokai might save teleport vs Shen so that when Shen gets 6 he can match Shen’s ultimate with his teleport to bot).

Later on in the game, teleport usage becomes vastly more complex to use properly. Time and time again we see teleport flanks winning the game for a team, however it doesn’t all come down to just the top lane. Often you will see top laners get teleport flanks off and everyone is going to go insane over how good he played. Obviously he deserves a lot of credit for it, but there's many things that can go wrong, if the other 4 misposition or they can't get a good teleport ward, then everything will come down crumbling. It's up to the entirety of the team to set up the whole play. Getting your team to set up deep wards / having your team place an object for you to teleport to (and having it being well places) is essential to a teleport's success, especially since teleport now CANNOT BE CANCELLED ANYMORE.

Laning

As much as there is a strategic element to playing top lane, the essence of the role still boils down to trying to hit the other guy harder than he can hit you. It’s an incredibly difficult balance to strike, between going all-in, trading, and farming to make sure you don’t fall behind in lane.

In general, for any lane you want to punish when they go in for last hits. A lot of top lane champions at the moment are very cooldown dependent (especially tanks) so don't challenge with no cooldowns up. Very good top laners will know both their own cooldowns and the enemy’s, and they will punish you for wasting a cooldown for nothing / without impact.

One of the more technical aspects of lane trading is being able to control minion waves and understanding when you can and can’t trade. Be careful when trading into big minion waves as you are usually in a disadvantage at these times. Especially early on in the game, the damage from just a few minions can stack up quickly.

Knowledge of trading comes with knowledge of matchups, and that comes with experience. Regardless, if you are getting out traded often and the enemy is hard bullying you / if the jungler camps you (as long as you are at risk of dying), back off when the enemy laner threatens to trade with you. Learn to give up CS to stay alive. Losing 100 - 200 gold that you could otherwise have gotten by CS-ing is not as impactful as giving 300 gold to the enemy, while the enemy gets that 100 - 200 farm from CS-ing. As tempting as it is, it is better not to give the enemy a lead, and give yourself a small disadvantage. Every death is a mistake, and it is crucial to prevent yourself from dying as much as possible. The very best players in every region are usually the most consistent players, they only take trades they absolutely know they can win, and go for kills they are certain they will get. Risk free gameplay can be boring, but it is often the best way to play this game. See: Competitive play, where games can go 30 minutes without a single kill, and lanes only try to all in when their junglers are there to help them.


Alongside that, you have to understand the enemy jungler and the pressure in your lane. Especially during split pushing. The most important things to think about when split pushing are pretty much thinking of the enemy jungler's position, your/enemy wards, roam opportunities and in the end your team's line of pressure. Most of the time if you overextend at a wrong time you will just give up a lot of pressure because of the enemy jungler killing you, but that's easily fixable by checking out your team's line of pressure. Even if you overextend in the lane and you die, if your team is in a good position then your team will most likely get something else and the trade will be worth it (e.g. a tower / inhib).

Objectives

There are several ways to gain the upper hand against your enemies. Kill them, get ahead in CS, or control important objectives. The last method is most preferred because objectives usually provide global advantage to your team and allow you and your allies start to snowball (Firt turret gold is worth a kill and a half [450g]). Some of them, especially turrets, also provide you positional advantage what can be the decisive factor in the game outcome. While advantage you gain through enemy kill most time would be self beneficial and won’t affect most of your teammates( unless if you're a jungler) Thus if you have a choice between two variants: start a hunt for an enemy who is split from his team or ability to take a major objective (Dragon, Baron, Turret/ Inhib) choose the objective.

Objectives such as the mid lane tower are also extremely beneficial to take, since taking the first mid lane turret usually marks the end of laning phase, as the mid lane turret opens up the map for your team, allowing access into both sides of the enemy jungle. Taking a side lane turret usually results in a lane swap / more objective control over that respective side of the map (Bot turret opens bot jg and enforces dragon control) (Top turret opens top side jg and enforces herald control)


EARLY OBJECTIVES 1: SCUTTLE CRAB

Often times if your jungler is a non skirmising / non aggresive jungler and if he starts bottom side, your jungler will tend to try to take the top side scuttle crab, as it is a lot safer for a weaker jungler. However if the enemy jungler also has the same idea / if the enemy jungler knows this, the skirmising / aggresive enemy jungler will contest this scuttle. This will result in an early game fight. As much as possible, shove your lane hard if you see the enemy jungler contesting, and threatn to leave your lane. Even if you don't actually come to help your jungler, the threat of you walking towards them to help while your lane is shoved should be enough pressure to keep the enemy jungler away. If you are a strong dueling top laner like a Fiora, the effect is a lot stronger. Sometimes if your champion is much weaker than the enemy, you should continue to play your lane safe and ping your jungler away. Dying for the scuttle is never worth it.


EARLY OBJECTIVES 2: HERALD / DRAGON

HERALD:

Rift herald currently gives the person who takes the buff an enhanced baron recall, along with replacing your trinket with the herald item. When used, it summons rift herald to do a ton of damage to an objective, and if used properly, can push multiple towers and even end the game.

Good rift heralds are usually used when your team is ahead, since heralds can be killed easily and require heavy assistance in order to do more than just one tower dash. However since the first turret gold buff was implemented, herald becomes a much stronger objective to push mid tower and snowball your team. Getting mid tower is beneficial for so many reasons, as mentioned before, it opens up the map and ends laning phase ( most of the time) Herald is not often contested and can be done by one player as long as your health is high enough. Hitting the eye of the herald grants life for sustain. If you are extremely far ahead of your top laner, get herald when your laner backs / the enemy jungler is known to be bot lane. Make sure to hard shove your lane before doing herald to prevent your tower from taking significant damage or losing too many minions under your tower. Help your jungler take herald if the need arises, but more often than not herald is more efficient taken by one person, since most of the damage froms from popping the eye behind herald.

DRAGON:

Saving or using your teleport for an important dragon can snowball the game in your team's favor if done correctly. As of now, all of the dragons are incredibly useful except for the first ocean / first air drake. Prioritize mountain / fire dragons as they provide very powerful utility and scaling damage for your team (mountain drakes help you take objectives faster, meaning more damage to baron and dragon, along with all the structures like towers!) (fire drakes give a % increase in ALL damage for your team, which will scale exponentially as the game goes on) Saving your teleport for these 2 dragons is important, and you should walk back to lane if you die during laning phase while these 2 dragons are up. Teleporting to a dragon fight is usually a reactive play, however you can be the one to initiate the dragon fight if your team sets up well. If your jungler is bottom side, ping your teleport and teleport gank your bot lane (if there is a deep lane ward placed) and initiate a fight. If you end up getting a kill or two, especially if you killed the enemy jungler, take the dragon and go back to lane ASAP.

If your enemy is the one initiating a teleport fight and if your enemy pulls it off successfully while your teleport is down, take this time to hard push your top lane and try to take a tower, or take herald. Time being used efficiently leads to larger leads or smaller disadvantages.

LATE OBJECTIVES

BARON:

Having rift herald up and getting baron at 20 minutes after getting a pick / sneaking it usually results in a win or a gold lead of 5K+, which will lead to a very likely win. Most people disregard the fact that baron exists during 20 minutes because they think that baron is an incredibly difficult objective to get, because of baron's immense health pool, however, baron's health scales as the game goes on. The longer the game is, the tankier baron gets, and baron is actually pretty easy to get at 20 minutes. If your ADC is decently fed, 2 - 3 people can take baron in roughly 30 seconds. Taking an early baron requires your team to be decently ahead, but if your team falls behind, always consider the fact that the enemy team can be sneaking a baron.

Post 25 / 30 minutes in the game, baron becomes a huge threat. Staying top side of the map is usually common sense and most teams send one player with teleport to a side lane to create pressure and split push. Never split a side lane without teleport and lack of vision. After a team fight post 25 - 30 minutes, the winninig team usually attempts to take baron while the losing team tries to steal it. If a team fight is won and only 2 enemies are killed, sometimes it is better to fake a baron by clearing up wards in the pit, then waiting for the enemy to steal it and turn it around on them. Ambushing and killing more enemies ensures the baron and reduces any risk of a lucky steal / a team wipe by a good/fed player.

Climbing in league is 70 % skill and 30 % luck. Most, if not all games are winnable, however difficult. But some games are just out of your control, disconnects, afks and trolls are commonplace and are part of the solo / duo queue experience. However there are certain tips that can help reduce your losses and maintain a good win rate.

In general, it is a good idea to keep pinging. Giving as much information to your team as possible helps your team out a lot. Telling your team that an enemy has flashed / used a long cool down creates opportunities for your team to capitalize on their long cool downs. It is never beneficial to argue with a teammate, and more often than not it is better to mute a toxic player than to argue with him. (i know im toxic) Trying to tilt the enemy doesnt always work either, often times it only encourages them to try harder so that they will trash talk you afterwards.

Dodging is also a good tool to use. If you are sure that the game is lost before it has even begun, take the -3 lp instead of wasting 30 minutes and -15lp or more. Seeing a bad player in your team / seeing the difference in team compositions are good reasons to dodge. You can dodge up to 2 times without severe losses, and after 2 dodges you will get a long penalty queue time and -12lp per dodge. Dodge sparingly.

Stop playing if you get a loss streak or if you get to your series after many consecutive games played. Some days are better than others, and even if you don't feel tilted, losing several games in a row takes a toll on you mentally. I found that losing 2 - 3 games in a row and stopping increased my win rate immensely. I would just switch to another account / go into a different queue if I really wanted to play, but I would stop soloq for at least 2- 3 hours.

That concludes my guide. Best of luck on summoner's rift!