You don't win by having a positive KDR. You don't win by getting Aces *though it helps.* You don't win by making the fiddle on the other team nerd rage out and feed you a wall of text about how calling him "Feedlestix" marks you as an immature and socially underdeveloped cretin, or alternatively, t3h ghey.

You win by breaking the god **** nexus.

That big crystal thing in the back of the enemy base. "But Condon, we know that. We just like killing the bad guys before we go in."

You are bad and you should feel bad. You may realize this already, but generally speaking, people are ****ing ******ed. That's you, me, and that Janna who wants to solo mid. They get all hard for kills and so worried about being ganked that they forget the fundamental ****ing point of the game. If you have an advantage in numbers, push. If you see them all across the map, push. If you can take down a tower and mince away with a blink/stealth/blue pill before they can conceivably react, PUSH.

If you're one of those herp-a-derp little ******bags who blue pills after a team fight, even if you won, because you're "Out of mana" or at "Half health", or, as was pointed out to me "I need to go buy items" I sincerely hope you get deep****ed by a rabid badger. If you killed everyone but the Ashe, that ho is going to sit at her inner turret and whimper as you stomp up the field. She will not run through your whole team and all your creep just to kill you. She will turn and burn as soon as you mongoloids walk up and start beating the tar out of the tower. If she does not, you will kill her and THEN go nurse your wounds, you prima donna ****.

If you have an inhibitor down, and you don't score a tower kill before it comes back up, your parents have failed and you should apologize to society as a whole for the inevitable drain you will be to it. You OWN the map while they nurse the big gash in their defence. Keep pressure on all the lanes, by all means jungle, but you had better be trying to push your advantage before they regain control of the map and catch you with your thumbs up your ***es trying to farm that third bloodthirster.

I will say this once more, slowly.

You need to push to win.

If I catch any of you ****ers sitting in a bush giggling to yourself waiting for someone to wander through, watching the enemy team pushing towers across the map or knowing full well that they are down two heroes, I swear to god I will come to your house and put my foot in your ***. I wear steel toes mother****ers.

Plain and simple, one death does not equal another. Lets play pretend for a moment. You are the carry, let's say you're Ashe. You're merrily shooting off volley and auto attacking for 900. Super, wicked. You are credit to team. Whatever. Now, there's a teamfight. Not a full blown *everybody everybody* teamfight, but a skirmish. They have, lets say, a Hiemer that is going to slink away and survive with 10 health. Well ****, that sucks. You yourself happen to be at full, but your allies have all taken a beating and are mincing away like a beaten stepchild. What do you do?

If you answered: "I run the **** after that little ******* and get the kill! Blood for the blood god!" I commend the idea, and encourage the gusto in some playstyles, but **** you. You will, most likely, die. Even if you get the kill, you are feeding each and every one of the enemy heroes gold. The kill gold, plus the assist gold, plus the time you *the most important ****ing member of the ****ing team* lose that you could be farming does NOT justify the couple hundred ****ing gold you get from icing that little *******. On top of that, you leave your now DPS light team out in the cold, playing hard D and not getting any gold themselves.

That's not to say you shouldn't try for it if you have an escape mechanism, or if you sincerely think you can get away with it, but god****it, if you know it's suicide don't go in.

The same goes for ganking. If you have two extra ******bags in your lane coming in for a kill, it is best to run and not give them the gold spread, than to stay and kill one. They get more gold for the kill than you do. They also shut down a whole lane in terms of farming and experience, while the people they left behind get fat off of your other team mates, where you waste all the exp and gold that goes to your tower in the lane you're now a smear in.

That doesn't mean you cant try to pull gypsy **** and get kills while you are low. That's fine, take risks, it's the only way to pull of ridiculous **** and learn the limits of your hero, but no more suicide. Please.

You need a fat guy. You need someone who can wander face first into a bush, and actually ****ing survive long enough for the rest of you to pile in and do some damage. You need a guy who can wander into the middle of a contested lane, and scare the **** out of your enemies, maybe even pulling/knocking/stunning/fearing them into the grasp of your team mates while he is at it. If you don't have this, you will fold like cheap plastic chairs and most likely be afraid to wander in the roaming phase.

EG: Alistar, Rammus, the MFing Cho'Gath, Singed

You need someone to initiate. Someone with said pull/grab/toss/flip/headlock to run in first and disable or otherwise ruin the day of the enemy carry/caster/evil genius. This can be your tank, in some cases. Sometimes it is separate. You may even be able to get away without on if you have really good map control and gankers to pick off enemy heroes, but I suggest you carry one around with you.

EG: Malphite, Fiddle, Blitzcrank, Amumu

You need a carry. Slow down now Timmy, you don't need five of the ****ers. A carry is, for those of you who are new to this whole scene, a character that is unstoppable late game with the right gear. That means they scale well with items, and it usually infers, you guess it, they suck early game. Thus, you need to "Carry" them through early game, and they can "Carry" you late game. These are characters that you see get triple kills end game, who do 700 damage auto attacks and generally **** up the enemy team's day. These also tend to be super squishy or lacking in escape mechanisms, so make sure your tank knows to master blaster the **** out of them. (That is, the big guy protects the little dangerous guy, you culturally challenged wankers)

EG: Jax, Yi, Ashe, Tristana, Sivir

You need some god **** CC. CC = Crowd Control. We're talking things that make the enemy hero sit down and shut up. Stuns, silence, slow, movement effects, knock-up, knock-around, pull, throw. If you walk into a teamfight and Kat is sitting there spinning out being a skank, you need someone to throw a stun on her *** to shut her up. Same goes for Nunu. Hell, if you can spot fiddle charging up his ult and land a grab on him with blitz, you can turn his triple kill into a face full of lightning fist. Go ahead and try playing a game without any CC. See how it feels. See how much you want some lube after. As a rule, I like to have at least two ways to stop channeling on any given team, four is better, five gives me a ******. The more the merrier, if you're coordinated with it. Landing three different stuns on the same carry at the same time however, is kind of a waste. But I digress: Get stuns. Get blinds, and ****ing silences, and all that good ****.

EG: Sion, Teemo, Alistar, Blitzcrank, Teemo

You can also have (But can, in rare cases, get away without) a nuker. Just a tweaky little mage character who's only purpose in life is to throw out an AoE something and then donkey-**** the enemy team's most wanted. We're talking a billion kajillion damage in ten seconds, and then out for the count for the rest of the team fight. You want that enemy carry to be stunned, knocked up, and nuked so fast that the only think going through their head is their balls.

EG: Ryze, Viegar, Shaco

Other roles to consider:

Map control: Characters with wards/vision abilities that let you track the enemy team without spending gold or putting yourself in danger. Knowledge is power. TF, Teemo, and Shaco all fit here.

Defensive support: Characters who can pull your *** out of the fire if you get your **** pushed in. This generally involves putting a shield/second life/heal on the carry as they are getting CCd and nuked as stated above. Kayle, Soraka, and Zilean all fit here.

Cleanup: Characters that can move quickly in order to catch escaping enemies, and coral them back to the fight, or even just nuke heroes that may otherwise get away. This can be through speed, traps, or map-wide abilities. Karthus, Singed, and Warwick all fit here.

There are other types, and you really have to find which best suits you, but god help you if you're missing the pillars of a good team up there.

You know what really pisses me off? People who stand their *** still to talk ****. The ONLY time I condone **** talking while alive is when you're hiding in the bush trying to set up a gank, and want to call the guy you're going to jump's Mother some colourful things. This can be highly effective in getting him to type an angry response instead of, oh, I don't know, surviving. If you are starting a verbal war, great. Fine. It's a game. Smack talk is required, but don't ****ing stand there and type when you could be playing the god **** game.

If I ever catch one of you ****ers hating on one of your own team members instead of playing the game, I will personally make it my mission to hate you with such intensity that you suffer explosive diarrhea from sheer malice.

You may smack talk all you like while dead, and direct it at the other team members. If you see one of your team mates doing poorly, say they gave up first blood and a second early death, the solution is not to yell at them. They probably already feel rather ****ty/defensive about it, maybe it wasn't even their fault. The best way of it is offer them a lane change if you feel you can do better, or keep your gorram gob shut. They can't farm and catch up if they are busy trying to explain to you that they do not, in fact, have various sexual illnesses that may or may not have been contracted from farm animals.

I'm not saying to coddle the little pukes. Hell, it may just be that you have a ****ty team mate, but all that *****ing about it is going to do is waste you valuable "Not sucking" time. Pretend they don't exist during team fights, don't rely on them for help or ganking. If they pull away from the rut and hold their own, super. If not, you're not risking anything by expecting great things of them.

You may even, you know, try to help. Don't rag on their build unless its super wrong or anything *I'm talking like, two IEs wrong,* but toss in some constructive advice. Maybe they don't know that you can use Jax's new leap on friendlies. Maybe they don't notice that players are missing, or they thought tiamat was a good choice. Don't freak out, just something simple like "Hey, I know you probably know whats up and all, but you may want to try X against this team composition." Or "Everyone should probably stack a little MR, banshees all around."

You know what really grinds my gears? "OMG why did Ryze kill me so fast?!?!?"

If you have played ten games in the week, and have not tried all the free heroes at least once, you are a bad person. I mean, sure, read a guide, play a practise game, prepare before you hit MM, but FFS try them!

There is no quicker and easier way of learning the ins and outs of a character than to play it. If you're having a lot of trouble with one in specific, try playing it in MM games. A good friend of mine put it rather well:

"There is no quicker way to break the fear of a character than playing it and getting absolutely rolled with it."

So you're scared ****less of Ryze. Play Ryze. Realize that after he blows his load hes got a few seconds of auto attacking before he can do anything again. Realize that in crowds of creep he is much less effective. Realize that the only reason he was rolling you before was because you kept meeting him in the river alone.

You think Nunu's ult is OP? Play fscking Nunu. Try lining up a good ult in a teamfight and watch in terror as a big brass fist comes flying at you so fast you'll be combing teeth out of your fur for a week.

I promise you, even the TF or Twitch or whatever the **** else you people are whining about this week won't be as scary after you go 0-10 with him.

So you're good with map awareness. Super. You notice when middle is missing, or when someone is taking too long to come back from the fountain. You expect that the other lanes notice this, or that your partner doesn't have a finger so far up his nose that he can feel his brain. You are wrong and you should feel bad. Call mias, even if they aren't your lane. Call out when you think they are doing dragon. Don't just ping and expect people to know what you mean. Some people may take it as "Lets do dragon" and blindly run in to be greeted by an angry Trist and her little dog Warwick.

Call missing. Call late. Call when you think they're in the bushes but you aren't sure. Don't be shy. If you're wrong, or if they show up a second later, just type "Re" or "My mistake" or "I do apologize, but I seem to have misplaced my senses. It appears Trist is indeed here after all" if she happened to roll you and you've got time to type while dead.

Talk. Set up ganks. Coordinate ults, and kill orders. Let your team mates know that, despite being a good fiddle, that tristana is ****ing your **** up by ulting you out of range every time you pop crowstorm, and you'd super appreciate if they gave her the ol italian necktie while you were charging up.

Be polite, be concise *you're still typing while playing here, but it's okay because its constructive and you're being brief* and most importantly be intelligible. Some people may use different short hand, some people may be ESL.

Something like "Focus Ashe, then Soraka. Stun Cho" is short, sweet, and to the point. Look at how much better that team fight is going to go. Whether they know to focus ashe or not, it's nice to know exactly which way things are going to go. It's comforting, and when people are sure of themselves and relaxed going into a brawl, it's much less likely that they will start to panic and throw their stun/nuke on whatever comes closest.

You know what's cheap? Rice. Some hookers. Your mother in both respects. You know what's tactically advantageous? Kicking your ***.

"OMG U use gold card! CHEAP!" **** you. Of course he's using gold card. Of course hes using flash+grab, of course hes ****ing doing everything he can to win. If you just throw your hands up and scream "Hax" every time you get your *** beat, you will fail, because you will continue to think that dying in that manner is not your fault.

Reality check: It is. It is entirely your fault. You don't get to call something broken and get moral victory points. In business, if someone is a sneaky **** and buys your company out from under you, you take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.

You don't call hax and go work at Wendy's. If you are playing hockey, and you get railed in the five hole because you can't keep your legs together, you **** dirty ***** you, you don't scream cheap at the enemy team and wait for the ref to nerf the forward. You ****ing close your god **** legs and you ****ing cope. If you honestly can not figure out any way to defeat a certain tactic *Five dudes sitting in a bush waiting for your dumb ***, shaco setting trap nests, teemo laying mushrooms all over the map* then you are a in the wrong god **** game. Go play something more your speed, like candyland, candy***.

If you're having a super ton of trouble with a certain tactic, see number V. Try it yourself. How are other people ****ing you with it? Do that. Read the forums. Ask. Don't just make a bug report and **** off.

Guides are not 100% effective. They will have item/skill builds which are not the best path for a given game. Sometimes you really need to forsake those boots of mobility for some merc treads. Sometimes you really need to grab an EC on support Janna. Sometimes you really ****ing need to get some beef on your AP Shaco. It happens. I'm not saying following a guide isn't a good idea most of the time, but you A) have to tweak it to suit your own playstyle, and B) have to be able to recognize when alterations will be useful.

Say your normal build for a tank stacks 75% reduction for phys and magic attacks. You come up against a team that is entirely AP based. All magic damage. Do you still by that thornmail? **** no you don't. You get yourself more MR, and HP, and maybe even a quicksilver sash. You adapt.

The same goes for "Omg wicked builds" you see on peoples profiles. Just because slappy there won 200 games with Blitz built a certain way doesn't mean it will work for you. Maybe he rolls in a premade that work very well together, and uses that build to fill a minor niche. Maybe he's just a redname and sets all his losses to wins. Who knows. Chances are, if you try it yourself, and think "This is dumb" before you even finish the game, it's probably not for you.

If you suck with a hero, but really like it, play practise games. Get a friend or two, scrim. Hell, find random practise games, play against bots a time or two to learn the limits of the skills. If you are honestly playing a character for the first time in an MM game, I hate you and wish you to die.

Not because you may feed. Hell, you might do alright, but you won't have the time or the breathing room to learn some of the more finesse oriented skills required to play the character. You won't learn how to properly flash grab, because you're too busy trying not to die and embarass yourself. Give yourself time. I don't care how pro you think you are, if you don't know the proper AoE range of dark matter without having to measure it out, you shouldn't be playing ****ing Viegar. End of story.

*Unless you have a ****ing kill.

This is pretty simple. If you do not have a kill before you have enough money to drop on a majai's, or a sword of the occult, or a leviathan *If ever the last two become useful. Yes I've seen the new patch, I still have my doubts* then you do not buy it. It's that simple. Yes, after five stacks it is basically free X, but if you can't get that, you're wasting a lot of money, very early. That's the killer. You could use it to get fatter, and get actual kills. Kills net you gold. Gold you can use to buy that 18 ****ing AP you're missing.

If you MUST get one, get it later, when you have a better foothold in your build. The only reason to get this before an anchor item is if you think you can get early stacks. Late game getting stacks is easy. Teamfights, ganks, whatever. Lots of kills and assists going around, but lane phase you're usually limited in your kill opporotunities. You have to understand that paying almost a grand for a stacking item that will just be giving you the base stats for the next ten minutes is a poor choice. You're paying for the stacks whether you have them or not.

Don't buy it, unless you know you can get them. Don't be optomistic. Everyone has **** games, and there is no surer way to ensure you continue to have a death streak than to spend your hard earned gold on nothing.

That's all for now. /rage. Happy hunting fleshlings. If you'd like anything added, give me what you got.