This guide contains selected information for pure League of Legends Beginners that have maybe completed the tutorial, played a couple of bot or normal games but still don't really have an idea of what this game is all about. The information in this guide was put together by professional coaches from the Arcane Coaching Team.

League of Legends has five game modes with an extra game mode that changes every couple of weeks. Despite of this, the game only has two maps, Howling Abyss and Summoner's Rift which is the main map for all game modes besides ARAM. In this guide we will mostly touch on Summoner's Rift but there will be some aspects of ARAM that we will touch on as well.

Summoner's Rift looks like this and you can also find it on the bottom right of your screen when you play any game mode besides ARAM or Nexus Blitz, which is a rotational event.

As you can see from the image of the map there are three lanes called Top Lane, Mid Lane and Bottom Lane. In between these three lanes there are neutral monsters that spawn in the same place every time and in every competitive game there will be a player in your team and the enemy team assigned to clear these monsters called the Jungler. We will go over what each role does in the next chapter but for now we just need to form an idea about the map and this is how it would look like in a well organized game:

The areas highlighted represent each team's ''safe'' side where if the enemy would go to, they would risk being attacked by towers or your teammates. The area highlighted in red represents red team's side at the start of the game and the one highlighted in blue represents blue team's side at the start of the game. Besides these two you can see that there is an area highlighted in yellow alongside the center of the map, that represents the ''neutral zone'' where everyone can step in at the start of the game. The neutral zone is usually where fights take place when teams are fighting over objectives (large monsters) such as the Dragons, Rift Herald or Baron Nashor but fights can take place over Scuttle Crabs as well since they provide vision over a period of time upon killing.

Now that we have become more familiar with the League of Legends Map, it's monsters are lanes let's go and have a look over the Roles that are assigned to players before the game.

As we discussed earlier, the map has three lanes, Top, Mid, and Bot and the roles use the same name as the lanes so the player being assigned to the Top Lane is called the Top Laner, in Mid we have the Mid Laner but on the Bottom Lane we will have two players, the AD Carry and the Support. We also know that the fifth player will be assigned to play in the jungle and his name is the Jungler.

Each role has a different playstyle and champions that can be played on it. When choosing what role you should go for it is important to consider the playstyle and champions of that role.

TOP Lane this role is mostly just a 1v1 role where people mostly play fighters and tanks but any kind of champion can be played here due to the volatile nature of the role. Usually your goal while playing Top Lane is to gather as many resources as possible and become a beefy champion that is hard to deal with for the enemy team.

Jungle is the most demanding and rewarding role in the game. This role comes with great power and great responsibility and will take a lot of time to master. Your goal as a Jungler is to find the perfect balance between farming neutral camps, helping your team and taking out large monsters.

MID Lane is the role with the most access to the map at all times, just like TOP Lane this is mostly a 1v1 lane that is decided by the skill of the player. A good MID Laner would out skill his opponent and then transition his lane advantage into helping his team by roaming the map. Usually in Mid Lane people play Assassins and Mages.

ADC or AD Carry is meant to be a high DPS (Damage per Second) role with low mobility and low health based on positioning and mechanical skill. This role requires a lot of patience and people usually play Marksmen on this role, this being the reason people call it the AD Carry role but in recent seasons people started playing Mages on Bot Lane as well.

Support is assigned to help the ADC in lane but after the lane phase supports usually roam around and help the entire team together with the Jungler. The main priority of a support is to be there when people need him and also to provide vision on the map for their team. Some Support Champions are more aggressive in lane while others are better in later stages of the match and they provide a lot of crowd control for their team or have champion enhancing abilities that help the carries deal more damage or become tankier.


When choosing a role to play I would recommend either going through every role and see what playstyle fits you the best or you can pick a champion that you find cool and interesting and go on a role where that champion is being played.

When starting to play League of Legends it might be quite overwhelming seeing that there are over 150 Champions in the game, considering that most champion have 4 abilities plus a passive ability. In this video we will not go over each and every champion in the game and break down their abilities since that would be too much information for a beginner. We recommend you just to play the game and in time you will learn the champions and their abilities due to muscle memory but if you want to put in more effort and learn them faster you can use the collection tab in the client and click on the champion you would like to learn about.

Since there are many champions in the game it will be hard to chose one to play especially if you are at the beginning and just want to learn the game so we recommend picking the one you think looks the best for you. If you still can't decide what champion could be the best for you we selected a few champions in each champion class and gave a brief explanation for the class the champions fit in so it is easier for you to start your League of Legends journey.

TANKS

Fighters are champions that deal sustained damage over long periods of time, they are also good at taking objectives such as large monsters and turrets. This class of champions is made for people that want to carry by outsmarting the enemy team and making split push decisions.
For beginners we recommend these fighters:

ASSASSINS

Assassins are some of the most skilled champions in the game due to the high risk and high reward nature of the champions. Assassins usually have the goal to kill the enemy backline and making picks around the map to help their team secure objectives and create a numbers advantage in teamfights. Assassins are usually played in Mid Lane and Jungle

MAGES

There are many kinds of Mages in League of Legends but mostly they are ranged champions that deal magic damage with their abilities. Usually when playing a Mage Champion you would want to stay back and deal as much damage as possible without taking much damage. We recommend the following champions.

MARKSMEN

Marksmen, just like Mages are backline champions but unlike Mages they deal Sustained Physical Damage. When playing a Marksmen your goal is to deal as much damage as possible while avoiding taking damage since Marksmen champions do not build much health items and they focus on buying damage. If you are a beginner you should try one of these marksmen first.

SUPPORTS

Supports are usually the champions that people play when beginning their League of Legends journey. There are 3 types of supports - Poke Supports , Enchanters and Tank Supports.
Poke Supports usually deal a lot of damage from range while having some crowd control.

Enchanter Supports are usually ranged champions that shield, heal and give buffs to their teammates.

Tank Supports are beefy champions that do not deal as much damage as traditional tanks but have much more crowd control abilities than traditional tanks.

Now that you chose your role and champion, have maybe played a couple of games, you most likely lost a lot and maybe got stomped in a lot of those games.
In case that happens you do not have to worry much about it. As a beginner you do not need to worry much about how much you win or lose, you should think more about what you learn from game to game.

Just like any other activity, getting good at League takes time and dedication, the more of these two you allocate towards the game the more you will learn.

This guide only targets beginners so the information is really basic and won't help you improve much in your ranked experience due to the small amount of game concepts presented. If you wish to improve more at the game and understand more concepts, we will make more guides in the future about more advanced aspects of the game so stay tuned for that!

League of Legends might look a little bit overwhelming to beginners due to the amounts of champions, spells and other aspects of the game. We, the Arcane Coaching Team hope that this guide helped summarizing some of the more basic aspects of this game so it doesn't look like a complete mess in the eyes of a true beginner.

If you like the game and feel like you would like to know more about it from us make sure to check out our Website where we offer Coaching Sessions and Courses(coming soon) made by coaches from the top 1% of ranked players.