Tips and tricks for league of legends; Simple tricks to help you survive and win lanes and ultimately increase your win rate which leads into getting into higher leagues!. Now some of these might seem self-explanatory, but as you know this is not always the case when fighting within the league. Now why should you at all care what I have to say? Well, I’ve played well over 800 games of LoL and I have an extensive background with RTS games in general, clocking in over 12000 games of master-league Starcraft 2 and CnC before that. SO without further ado, here are some nice tricks to help you or your friends to play better.

When solo-laning, be it either top or mid, always consider the skillset of your opponent and make an assessment on how the trades and skill sequences will unfold in lane. Get a sense of the state of the lane ( how much dmg they can dish out and how much dmg you can inflict in a trade scenario). For example: Let’s say I pick Ryze for midlane. I have two dmg spells with low cool down and a stun; rune prison. I see that my opponent Is Kassadain. So what do I know about kassadin? I know that he has a silence, some dmg output, but more importantly I know that he needs his full combo to do dmg to me. I also know he has melee range autoattacks. I can use this to my advantage to potentially poke at him with autoattacks since mine are ranged.

Now when it comes to trading in lane, you should avoid doing so. This might sound weird and even false, but trust me, you can never to the damage calculations to the accuracy you’d need to be sure that you come out ahead ( Itss just gamble at that point, gambling = bad in general), more to the point doing active trades will set you up for an easier gank, this goes both ways. At the very least you need to analyze if you could survive a gank after trading, and play accordingly. Now while you shouldn’t actively trade, you should obviously not take dmg without giving some in return, preferably with interest. The reason I emphasize not actively trading unless your opponent is doing so, or unless you know for a fact that you get free dmg, is that you can never know for a fact were the jungler is any point in time. This brings me into my next point.

Keep tabs on enemy champion movement, call MIA and let your team know if for instance the enemy jungler is on your lane/stalking you, this might be the difference in getting a dual kill on midlane or not, since the dominant midlaner might feel reluctant to engage since they might not know were the jungler is. You should always call MIA or use the smart ping for “enemy missing” as soon as you no longer have line of sight of your enemy. And for the love of god, don’t pretend like a laner not calling MIA is an excuse for you to die to that laners opponent due to a gank, if you’re obviously doing stupid risky moves. Everyone has a responsibility to keep an eye on the minimap. Compared to a game like SC2, keeping track of enemy movement is really not something that should be a skillset of the elite. Everyone has a responsibility to look at the minimap with about 3 second intervals. This goes a long way to avoid possible ganks etc.

If you’re faling behind in lane due to a gank or tradeless potshots from your opponent, then you need to take a more defensive stance, usually at the cost of a few last hits. When something like this happens, it can very easily turn into an insurmountable disadvantage, the priority is damage control. You’re going to lose last hits, accept it. Depending on your state, you might have to recall in order to replenish health and mana, but if you’re at the stage were you wouldn’t die to a flash combo (flash+ignite+1 or more ability) then I’d recommend that you stay in lane and try to claw together a last hit here and there and potentially wait for a gank. Even if you never get ganked, due to whatever reason, you still have the possibility, and this is important, since we’ve already established that you’re going to lose last hits, does it then make sense to give the opponent a kill on top of that? Well the answer is obvious. You always have the option to not die, usually at the expense of farm and xp, but still. And why it’s also smart to stay in lane after taking that initial dmg from a gank, is because you become a nice target for the jungler again. It will take away the roaming aspect from other lanes, potentially setting them up for ganks etc. Just remember these things: you always have the option to not die, and you should never die in lane unless you get ganked. The gameplay mechanical process just guarantees that only the jungler should be able to guarantee a kill. Now reality is always divergent from an ideal hypothetical scenario, but just use your best judgment. Play smart and play safe. Wait for those ganks, don’t try to actively make an opening, wait for it to present itself and the nab on to it.

Practice last hitting! Last hitting is everything! Last hitting and pushing down towers are second to nothing! Kills are great, but given the opportunity you should always take down a tower instead. Since that will just feed the butterfly effect of your victory by increasing the push on enemy lanes, which will potentially safe guard you when getting dragon/nahsor, will grant more vision of the map, make it so that you can cross mid without being spotted, not to mention that the 150 global gold to everyone also feeds this butterfly effect.
Speaking of 150 tower gold, this gold should ALWAYS be used toward funding wards. Wards are the quintessential item that will help you win the game. They server as a safeguard against ganks, to scout enemy movement, to potentially set up a snipe or avoiding enemies all together when on the run etc. I don’t understand were the notion that only the support should by wards comes from, but it is wholly wrong and false and needs to be addressed. EVERYONE buys wards to help increase map vision and control. Map vision is such an important utility to have! Yes, for the first few minutes the support might be able to buy the wards necessary to safeguard her botlane and maybe ever dragon and the entrance to enemy jungle, but that’s about it. I never again want to see a late game scenario when someone walks into an unwarded bush and just gets raped by the enemy team! Everyone buys wards once the laningphase ends. Everyone. The 150 gold from towers and 190 gold from dragon should always be put towards funding wards.

Counter picks don’t matter at lower ELO, don’t ***** about them, just play what you’re used to playing. A champ that you know how to play is always a better pick than a quote “counterpick” that you don’t know how to play. Just make sure the champ you pick is intended for the position you’ve gotten.
The ideal pick order for champions is as follows: First the jungler or support is picked becase counter picking them is meaningless. Then after that you should always attempt to pick solo lanes last.

Play safe, DON’T actively farm lanes ( use abilities to clear waves or just auto attack minions). For the first minutes or so you’re much better off simply last hitting, if you don’t really have the ad to catch the majority of your creeps ( they always survive with <5hp and get killed by another minions), then a trick you can utilize is having your support “ready” the hits for you. Bringing down them to the point where you’re able to successively take them. Now this is pretty difficult for the average player, and should mostly only be attempted with a premade teammate, since the risk for just farm stealing is pretty high if you’re not focused enough. Don’t push your lane well beyond the half waymark, even if you have wards in place, which may not always be enough to guarantee your safety. This goes especially for bot lane. Poke and harass is nice, but poking at the opponent when they are under their tower it just silly and risky. One slight misstep and you take a tower hit, the enemy Leona zenith blades you and Qs. You take another tower hit with increased dmg this time, auto attack from Leona, her eclipses erupts, auto attack from their carry and hocus pocus, your advantage has turned in to a potential lane loss.

Never attempt to take dragon alone, and NEVER take dragon if you don’t know whether or not the enemy has it warded. Now I realize that this doesn’t hold true all the time, but 80% of the time this is the approach you should have.
If you can, try to end the game without nashor buff. And for the love of spaghetti monster, don’t attempt baron if the enemy team has all five players alive. A good rule of thumb is to only attempt baron if they have 3 champs alive, and even then you need to assess the risk/reward. Would they potentially be able to snipe? Is their Shen spawning soon with ultimate, those kinds of things.

Butterfly effect, I mentioned earlier in this list. What is it? Wikipedia describes it as follows “In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.” For League games this means that everything you do or don’t do has an accumulative effect on the game. I think an example would explain it best: Let’s say you’re ADC on lane. You trade shot with their carry whilst farming, everything goes perfectly; trade for trade everything is even, but just before both recall you fail to get 1 last hit, a 40 gold siege minion. You both have the same farm minus the one you lost, and then when you turn to buy your BORK you notice that, ****, I’m 50 gold short. Now what do you do at this point? Do you wait for 50 gold and take time away from last hitting and XP gaining`? Or do you enter lane without BOTRK against an opponent that will have it or a BT? The failed last hit results in you having to wait for gold, which results in your opponent getting a money and what is infinitely more important in even lanes, XP advantage, they might even get a kill on your support or worst of all get the tower. All the while you’re idle waiting for the 50 gold to passively accumulate, but that’s what you have to do, because you can’t reenter the lane with such a dmg deficit in the equal matchup you have. This is why it’s no exaggeration when I say that LITERALLY EVERY LAST HIT MATTERS. Every minion you get is a step towards victory, everyone you miss is a step closer to defeat. Think about it. The consequences of an even in LoL are never confined to the even itself, it always carries over and shapes the course of the game.
I think I’ve noted a lot of things to get people started, one final nugget of wisdom I can give is DO NOT GET COCKY, you might get a lucky kill in lane, fine, cool what could be better. BUT NEVER assume you’re untouchable or immortal! You can die in lane still, one kill against your laneopponent does NOT guarantee a lane win. I swear I see this so often, people get a slight lead early on and then they which off their brains entirely -___-’’.

These have been 13 points that I, from my personal experience, feel could help people improve and reduce the loss rate and make wining more about skill and less about hoping for competent teammates. Now before someone gets all high and mighty, reddit punisher, I DO NOT PLAY PERFECTLY, no one does. The true warrior knows how weak he is. I don’t play perfectly, how could I? These are simply observations I’ve gather from a life time of RTS gaming not to mention commonsense and use of rationality and math. If you disagree with some of my statements, please let me know and we can discuss it like civilized people, any unsound comment or un-argumented dismissal of anything written here will be removed with extreme prejudice, so don’t even bother. I already get enough of that in the game, because let’s face It the bulk of the community are rotten scumbags, but that’s what you get when you cater to the lowest common denominator among gamers. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the subject and if there are any more useful tips (These are not even close to all that I have to offer) then let me know in the comment section. “For a better game, for a better community” - Axel “FrenzyAC”, “Agnosticcube” Teirfolk
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect