Reign of Gaming

Pro level games are very educational, and if you haven’t watched any I’d encourage you to just to see how effective playing works. Even better, the LCS is on regularly, so you can see strategies and ideas evolve. Even if you only catch one game, as long as it’s not one of the few where a team tries something radically different (fewer than 10%, I’d say), you’ll get a gist for how to play.

While it’s very useful, I’d like to caution you against using LCS play to badger other players or to make it the only guide to how you play.

First off, you are not in the LCS, and you never will be. Second off, casual play and solo queue have different rules and situations—you are not communicating or playing as tightly, nor picking and playing off of hours and hours of strategizing and analysis.

So, if you’re an arranged team at high-level play, fine. Watch the videos intensely.

For the rest of us, I’d like to suggest which things you should and shouldn’t take.

Things to take from LCS

How to teamfight: my last three articles had some advice on how to do teamfights. You can see a lot of those principles in action from watching LCS games, especially teams that do teamfights well. I recommend watching Gambit.

Item legitimacy: every season the teams figure out what the best items are. Locket on Jungler, Spirit Stone, Blade of the Ruined King, Bulwark. Some items are never purchased.

Items are pretty simple—there are always items, sometimes items, and never items. After a few games, you’ll know what those items are.  

Combos: one of the great things about watching a lot of teams that take hours every week experimenting and thinking of champion compositions is that you get to see how those combos shake out. Ziggs and Jarv ults? Cool! The old Shyvana/Orianna combo from last season? Indeed.

I don’t literally mean AOE move combos, I also mean how well champions work with other champions on their team. We have learned much of Thresh recently, for instance.

Things to take with Caution

Champion picks: there is a reason that Elementz did two different lists, one for pro and arranged play and one for solo queue and casual play. The frames of playing are very different.

There are some champions that are great in solo queue that aren’t great in arranged play, and vice-versa. Some champions require much more teamwork to play with and against.

If you disagree with this, think of one issue: don’t you hate it when someone sees a champion being played in LCS and then thinks “oh that champion wins easily” and then doesn’t know how to play or what to do with that champion? Or, perhaps worse, when someone says “no one plays that champion at LCS” even though you are very good with that champion and have a high win rate with him?

Don’t be that guy.

Item builds: this doesn't apply as strongly as above, but how to build a champion isn’t something you should rip straight off from LCS.

First, you should understand why people are building champ the way they build them. If you are playing as Zed, yeah, Blade of the Ruined King is a great item on him. He needs to kill everyone and he’ll need that item vs. tanks.

But guess what! Maybe in your game no one is tanking, or no one is stacking that much health, or you get fed really hard. In an LCS game, a Zed knows he’s gonna have fatties to deal with. In your game, you may not. It may be better just to get a Bloodthirster or Last Whisper first.

I saw a Zed rush Blade of the Ruined King really hard when he was losing to a Shen and a bunch of squishies. He should have chilled out and stopped after he got Cutlass, but he just rushed it. Well, he didn’t start doing any better.

Another thing to consider in casual play is that teams often don’t know how to teamfight. If you are a jungler or a top, you should consider getting a damage item and not going straight tank so that you can clean up and destroy the whole team. A Lizard Elder, Triforce, Black Cleaver, Rod of Ages, Rylai’s, Liandry’s…something that will help you get turrets and enemy champions down. Conversely, you may need to prioritize defense when playing as mid carry.

“Counters”: which champions counter which is something people have a hard time understanding. First, certain sites built on crowd wisdom have people thinking incorrect things and making shallow, single-point arguments about which champion to pick vs. which.

Furthermore, when teams in the LCS play, they try to pick both to complement their own team while countering the entire team. When you pick a champion, you want to pick someone that fits both of those purposes, and while the LCS is good for showing some team compositions and ideas, it does not explain how a lane matchup works.  An LCS lane matchup can be built on stalling, map pressure, or under the assumption that the jungler will gank (or not, if it’s built on easy stalling and stalemating.) These factors just won’t matter as much, and chances are your team won't even realize what they are.

Best,

Old Man Eyebrows 

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Old Man Eyebrows here, back with some more fundamentals on team organization, or stuff that every player ought to know.

There’s laning, which has been covered in many ways, and then teamfighting, and then there’s the everything in between.

The everything in between part is hard for a lot of players to understand, especially when so many other players do not. What you need to do is herd them. This is a bit easier if you’re playing support or jungle. This article isn’t about how to get your team to not be retards, though, but rather how not to be retarded yourself.

There comes a point in most lw and average players’ games where someone in the game doesn’t know what the hell they should be doing. At this point, they go into “passive farm mode”, where they wander around the map farming. Jungle camps are especially popular as they are much safer, and people want to farm without being yelled at by their teammates.

The irony is they could just ward, as a single minion wave pays that off. What’s worse is that any player that goes into this mode must be forcibly reminded that there’s a game to win, and your team must be prepared to win teamfights and take turrets to win. So, you go, and no one comes, and then you think “fine, I’ll farm too then.” No no no.

Sometimes, though, there are teams that are always doing stuff together, and it matters more than any other factor in the game at all besides how well they get along. The team that is doing stuff together almost always beats the team where everyone is doing his own thing, without coordination.

The point of the game is to take objectives. It is not to get kills. Getting kills is often a requirement for taking objectives, but not always. It will always be a requirement of the game, but how many, who, and where are all optional. Taking objectives is always required to win the game, and the nature of it doesn’t change.

Recap

I ended the last article with the following:

“Positioning follows two important principles.

• AD Carries and some champions almost always follow the same rule of positioning.

• For all other roles and for other champions, it depends.

All AD carries follow similar principles. Other roles, it depends on the champion. Some champions almost always do the same thing. Some champions have options depending on build or can and must adapt to who the other nine players picked.”

Now I’m going to use the terminology from the last article and then apply it to roles and basic champion types. While I can’t review every single champion, these guidelines should cover most of them.

 “FOCUS THE AD CARRY.”

If I see that in caps or if I see it a second or third time by the same person on my team, I mute that person. They do not know how to teamfight, and what’s more if you try to explain it to them they just get mad.

For all of you who know that it’s not the AD carry’s job to “focus the other AD carry” and that teamfights don’t really work like that, this one’s for you. If anyone you know doesn’t get what they’re supposed to do in a teamfight, refer them to this article and it’s second part.

What teams are supposed to do in a teamfight

If a team is organized and people know what they are doing, what they end up doing is pretty consistent. Even if there are errors or variations in team comps, the rules of engagement are defined. Of course, every team comp or strategy, every 5v5 will vary slightly, and for some champions even there will be different rules. An example is Kha’Zix. Kha’Zix has a Manamune build that is very pokey, where he focuses on W spam. This is usually for top Kha’Zix. Mid Kha’Zix can go Manamune too, but can also go Last Whisper / Blood Thirster and other damage items without having to get Tear, just focusing on going all-in and eliminating one or two of the enemy team quickly.

So realize that positioning can vary depending on build and role. If you went Locket and Warmog’s first on Xin Zhao, you should probably be initiating. If you went glass cannon (and I don’t know why you would), you’ll need to be more careful about your timing.

We have all had games where we suddenly run into someone on the other team that we haven’t encountered in 10-15 minutes, and we get slaughtered, and we think “good gravy that guy is fed”, and likely complain about it or so say in chat, and possibly even get angry towards our teammates and the design of a champion.

Akali is one of these champions. You think, if she goes in, I’ll stun and get out, it’s fine. But perhaps you didn’t pay attention or notice she’s got 200 AP already. Dashslashdashslash, double kill, triple kill, again.

Even bad players can rack up kills with Akali. You’ve got to be prepared.

Where you'll see him/her: in a solo lane, usually mid. Flavors are “you picked a champion that Akali stomps” and “I always play Akali when I can so I can get kills because that’s how you win” (more on this gem later). Oh, is that every pick? It seems so much more clear with her…is it just me or does she seem to get instalocked more quickly than other champions?

Worst Case Scenario: as stated earlier, instantly wrecking one to three people on your team. Akalis that get even moderately fed can do this without much effort, then even if they die it doesn’t matter, because they took out the most important target. Even if it’s one for one it can be okay if the player is more important or valuable than the Akali player is.

Annoyance rating: 8

Solo Queue Rating: 7

High-Level rating: 4

Things that are generally good vs. this champion: oracles, pink wards, Randuin’s Omen, Locket of the Iron Solari, Hexdrinker, Aegis of the Legion/Runic Bulwark, Health, shields, death-fire grasp, exhaust, vision-granting abilities, hard cc, gap-closers and blink effects, high mobility, silencing, AOE and non-direct-targeting effects.