After talking with Wacky, I decided in the interest of passing on my wealth of LoL experience, I would start a LoL 101 thread wherein I and others cover things LoL related; similar to my Strategeries thread (except in that one, I am looking more to do specific events that happened in game that I can break down for educational purposes).

Anyway, the purpose of this thread is to discuss the basic building blocks of a successful LoL team. Before I start, however, I want to briefly cover my credentials so you don't think "what, this noob just hit 30 and he's trying to tell me how to play?!". I started playing LoL about a week or two after it went public. Between time off and 2 account suspensions, I've been playing pretty much for two years. I have 5 active accounts (Rufferto, Rufferto II, Rufferto III, Celphato, and Woofwoofpuppy), with over 1400 wins on my main account. Because I play a TON of normal blind pick games and love to experiment, my win-lose is like 1400 wins, 1420 losses. I also own all but Fiora and Darius. Between all my accounts, I easily have 3000 games played and, since I own pretty much all the champs, I've played tons of games with all of them.

Why does this matter? Well, basically I've played every role on a ton of champs and have tons and tons of experience. So, without further ego stroking, here we go![hr:11bz9hcy][/hr:11bz9hcy]
First post: Roles.

AD Carry: Your job is to farm minions. No really, farm minions. Last hit, harass when appropriate, aid in fights near your lane, help with dragon, oh and did I mention last hit? AD Carry is the late game powerhouse who, literally, carries the team to victory. If you don't last hit minions or focus on farming your ass off, you will never afford your build in time and will not be as strong as the enemy AD Carry. This means a loss. People often complain when I go to farm a lane instead of running with them to try to gank, or help dps dragon, etc. It's simple. In any given situation a judgement call must be made: "Can 4 members of my team handle this objective without me?" If the answer is yes, you MUST go farm. Farm trumps all for the AD Carry, until your build is strong enough you are able to 3-4 shot their squishies (like the AP Mid). Until you are that strong, you best be farming!

AP Mid: One of the two mano e mano roles. Your job in life is to wreck face on their AP Mid. As with Bruiser/Solo Top and AD Carry, last hitting is extremely important. What I like to do is combo my abilities to harass their mid and get a minion kill or two. For example, as Lux, I'll position myself to hit a weak minion with my Q and the enemy champ. Or, I'll snare the enemy champ with the Q, then position the E so that it nicks the enemy champ and hits as many minions as I can, then you just have to last hit them. I also prefer to ward my own river bushes instead of letting the jungle do it because I know when they are expiring and don't have to inconvenience the jungler to come ward for me. If you do not ward BOTH sides of the river, you are wrong. Some people have said "Ward just one side and stick to that side". This is a mistake, as you have effectively cut your lane in half, giving you far less room to maneuver. Positioning in mid is extremely important, because if you get caught out of position, it could cost you very badly. A secondary role for the AP mid is to assist jungler with ganks. When you have bested their AP Mid and sent him home, or your minions have pushed themselves all the way to the enemy turret, take a trip down or up the river and help a gank out. AP Mid champs that outshine the others have CC. Morgana, Lux, Brand, Ryze, even Gragas make exceptional mid champs because they have some form of snare or knockback (add Gragas' range and distance closer, and he's a boss).

Tank: Obviously enough, soak damage. Initiate a fight, draw as much aggro as possible and PROTECT YOUR CARRIES. I see time and time and time again a tank chasing a low health enemy leaving his team behind to get caught and murdered. Don't ever chase as a tank. Killing people or running down escapees is not your job. Your job is to protect the people that made them hurty in the first place. When I tank, I am CONSTANTLY switching targets, dumping as much damage, CC, and debuffs on the enemy team as I can. If they focus me down and I die, it's usually just fine because as the world turns grey, I hear "an enemy has been slain" "an enemy has been slain" "an enemy has been slain", etc. I don't build stack items on any tank except Galio, because I expect to die as a tank if it means my team gets a lot of kills or an ace. Sacrifice is the name of the game of the tank. If you happen to jungle tank (Skarner, Lee Sin, etc), then ganks are an integral part of early and mid game. Even if it's just a positional gank (as in, come into the lane, do some damage to the dude, but not balls-to-the-walls-trying-for-a-kill), it causes the enemy team to either buy wards, costing them some scratch, or be super skittish and easy to zone. When you have the abilities, time your ganks with AP Mid or Solo Top so that it's a 3-4 man gank. Also, be able to tank turrets so your team can dive and get kills. Often on Skarner, I will ult someone, drag them into my team, and once that kill is secured, I'll pop my shield and just go into the turret, drawing turret aggro so the enemy team has to either jump on me (enabling our dps to dump on one of them), or drop back (enabling our dps to down the turret).

Solo Top: Solo Top is the other mano e mano lane. It's you against the other team's bruiser usually. The goal here, just like AP Mid, is to out-farm, out-position, and out-harass the other teams bruiser. I often have my jungler ward my river bush on top on his way to steal enemy golems, gank top, or grab our blue. It's part of the usual route of most junglers and 1 ward is half the price of 2 for mid bushes. When the laning phase is over, Solo Top, aka Bruisers, have one job: Get the enemy AD Carry out of the fight. If you can gap close and kill their AD Carry, you have probably won the fight and potentially the game for your team. Mobility, Armor/MR, and Health are a must have on a bruiser because the AD Carry, AP Mid (burst), and Tank know you are coming for their AD Carry, so Solo Tops generally get CC focused pretty damn fast. If you can out-position their defensive line and get to the AD Carry, most of them are squishy with weak escape mechanics and will tend to tuck tail and haul ass. Even if you don't kill them, you've done your job. Turn back to the fight and lay down the law. If the AD Carry comes back, chase them off again. Renekton is a god in this role because of his gap closer, stun, ridiculous "tanky dps" builds. Jax is another pain in the ass.

Support: Support is a fairly easy one. Rune GP5, Mastery GP5, keep your AD Carry healthy, wealthy, and gay! Depending on the support you are going with, harassing the enemy teams AD Carry is a must as well. Remember to help your AD Carry focus on farming minions by warding EVERYWHERE and keeping your eyes peeled on the minimap. You are his eyes and ears so he can just lock in on last hitting minions. If you don't warn him of danger or harass their AD Carry, your guy could and will fall behind, and this is bad for your team. I'll edit and add more to this section, but Tansen just invited me to a game! XD[hr:30g6ctqu][/hr:30g6ctqu]

Second Post: Team Fights.

Team fights are when your team decides it would be beneficial to engage the enemy. Team fights should ONLY happen when you have some kind of advantage, whether it's under a friendly turret, the enemy is trying to baron, they are down a man, or you have just dominated them in kills and farm and have much more complete builds. A lot of the games I've lost have been not because I failed in my particular role, but because teamfights happened when my team was at a disadvantage. This is basically the cardinal rule of LoL. Don't fight if you aren't guaranteed of a win. Fair play or equal footing is good on the playground or ball field, but there's no place for chivalry in LoL. One of the creeds I've adopted when playing with RL friends is that there are no hero's in LoL. A hero is another word for suiciding feeder. Don't be "that guy".

Also, don't chase low health people if a full health guy is wailing on you. I see this in almost EVERY game. Your team gets the advantage in a team fight, you get a kill or two, and a guy is low health and takes off. It's like a pack of dogs after a cat, all the while the rest of the hurt guys team is pouring on the dps. Which brings up another great point. If the enemy team makes this mistake, don't just run away too. Pour on the dps. 1 of 2 things will happen: either your friend that is booking it will get caught and die (in which case, during the merry chase, someone on the enemy team was getting corn-dogged with damage), or the chasing enemies will realize they are taking damage and not really gaining an advantage, which means they will stop chasing and turn to address the new threat. You just saved your friends life.

I had this happen in a game just the other day where the enemy team was doing dragon. We saw it, went to go steal it, and I was caught alone on the south side of dragon, while my team was coming from north of dragon. 3 enemy team members started chasing me and I initially started south, away from the enemy and my own team. When it was apparent I was not going to live, I used my escape mechanism (I was Cait at the time) to close the distance with the enemy champs and, in essence, ran through them. In so doing, I brought them to my team who was rolling in like a truck, and with the enemy team's focus completely on me, my team was able to initiate a fight properly. I went down, but we ended up acing the enemy team and I think lost only one other person from our team. Don't be afraid to die if it's unavoidable. My friend Critic, who is a damn good player, always tells me "Don't panic. If they kill you, they kill you, but we'll punish them for it", which is a great creed. If you are going to get dove, lay down whatever CC you can on the turrets target and make them hurt for diving.

DON'T PANIC. Even in a Charlie Foxtrot teamfight, remember your role and do it the best you can, even if you have no chance of living through the exchange. Do your job and have faith that your teammates will do theirs.

My eyes.... they bleed!!!! So many words!

I read an interesting post somewhere about the idea of risk and benefit and how it essentially encompasses everything in this game and why it is played the way it is. It's not just played as it is with a laning phase, mid game, and late game because that's what the game designers thought was good. It was done this way because of the balance of risk and benefit. It's beneficial for everyone to farm early on in the game to get enough gold to get some items to do damage or soak damage. Junglers and ganks are there to try and disrupt your enemies' intentions of doing this. Objectives are sought later or team fights are looked for because it is beneficial for the more powerful team to be able to push and win the game.

Here's the article for those who are interested:
realelohell.wordpress.com/2011/1 ... itigation/

There's a great deal of good articles on there that I suggest all of you to read.

Nice! Good link Asaph!

highest elo reached?

[quote="[BBF"] Blueshadow]
highest elo reached?
[/quote]

1300something last season. I don't put much stock in solo queue elo because, let's face it, solo queue is luck of the draw. Full of trolls, ragers, and plain numpties, you can't really get a good gauge of experience based on elo alone. My elo this season sits at like 1180 or some such, because A) I don't play much solo queue ranked anymore (too damn frustrating), and B) LoL, at it's core, is a teamgame and you can't really measure success by someone's "solo score". Some games I've had to suck it up and play tank or support or solo top, all of which are damn near impossible to hard carry a team of dooftards. That said, I make mistakes all the time, but I also spend hours a day watching my own replays, others' replays, watching pro tournaments, live streams, and jotting down notes.

I'm one of those sick bastards that believes if you are going to do something, you need to do it 100% to the best of your ability, so I research LoL stuff. I even wrote a spreadsheet back in the day to maximize attack speed, damage, crit, CDR, etc using the least amount of runes or items. Yes, I'm one of those min/max nerds that cares about the 0.005 damage.

This is why I run Executioner's Calling on AD Carry sometimes (if they have a Voli or something), or why I can easily go 20/3 on AP Corki.

moved this to the appropriate forum.


OFFICERS/ADMINS: please start using our sub forums for the right reasons. We have a tips/strategy forum. Make sure to use it accordingly or it can be removed. Thank you.

[quote="[BBF"]havOk]
moved this to the appropriate forum.


OFFICERS/ADMINS: please start using our sub forums for the right reasons. We have a tips/strategy forum. Make sure to use it accordingly or it can be removed. Thank you.
[/quote]

Hav0k recruits can't see the Tips and Strats its only for full members.

This will be moved once he is a full member.

Support: I wanted to take a minute to talk a little bit about support and the importance of protecting the carry. The supports primary job is to harass the other enemy AD Carry or their support (thereby keeping their support off your own AD Carry). Hiding behind your carry is not how you support. That's a recipe for disaster. Silences, stuns, slows, etc. all should be used to harass and box out the enemies. Asaph linked a great video about last hitting and harassing and I think it's a good video for supports too. If you see a friendly minion at low health, it's fairly obvious the enemy carry is going to try to shoot it, so get into position to harass him when he comes up.[hr:yuvc635p][/hr:yuvc635p]
Boots: Boots are must have, however, not always a necessity for a first item. Know who you are going against. The pro's do boots/pots because they move as one right off the bat and if someone doesn't have boots they are going to get left behind. I much prefer, as AD Carry to go with Doran's Blade (if I have a healer), or boots/pots (if I don't). As AP Mid, I often start meki/pots because I generally rush Tear of the Goddess (I'm an ability spammer). People give me crap about having "no damage" at level 1, but I don't focus on trying to get a kill at level 1. When I have damage, it's felt, and the sustain of not having to return to base or sit at the turret because I'm out of mana is huge.[hr:yuvc635p][/hr:yuvc635p]
Engaging: I've said this in another thread about engaging. Wacky's team focuses around the AD Carry (me), which is how the pro's do it. As such, you will never see us engage a 4v5 while the AD Carry (me) is off farming. That's a huge mistake and I see it game after game after game, then, when the enemy team rick-rolls us, someone inevitably bitches or tries to "pro-tip" me about "staying with the team". When the time is right, the carry joins up with the team and the game ends because you just decimate them. If you can't defend a turret with your Tank, Support, AP Mid, and Solo Top all together under the turret, you don't really deserve to win. Proper AD Carry's aren't really built for knocking down towers, and the confined space of a turret fight is anathema to the AD Carry's function. We need space to maneuver and an enemy team that is not bunched (unless you are Corki, but AD Corki's ratio's on his AoEs are pretty bad - except E). As such, teams need to A) Protect the Carry, B) Give the carry time to get farmed/fed, C) Initiate when they have a decisive advantage.