Reign of Gaming

Sightstone: Worth It?

Question of the day: Is it ever worth it to not buy Sightstone?  From what we saw at IEM Katowice, professional support players tend to build a sightstone between the 10-15 minute mark depending on performance -- if they choose to build one at all.  Despite being explicitly designed for supports, players like Gambit Edward have disavowed always buying the item, choosing instead to take items and wards for increased survivability and item versatility.  In today's article, we'll be investigating the viability of Sightstone and discover if there are ever cases where we don't want to buy the item.

Using the PBE value of health on Giant's belt (380HP for 1000g) as a baseline, Sightstone has a gold value of 437 gold for wards. This means that you will need to use at least 6 wards before the item becomes gold efficient. Using a "generous" number of wards in a solo queue environment, say two wards every 3 minutes, it would take about 9 minutes for Sightstone to pay for itself in a best case scenario.

Why is Warmog's Armor so strong?

You build Warmog's.  Pros build Warmog's.  Heck, even your mom needs Warmog's once in a while.  It's the next big fad, and everybody plus their dog is buying into it.  Stacking health items such as Warmog's Armor has been extremely popular in Season 3, but it's a bit of a mystery as to why, given that the price decrease from attack damage was much greater than the decrease in the cost of health.  Today's post will examine the trend behind rushing health items such as Warmog's Armor on bruisers versus traditional builds.

Item fads come and go, but nerfs will always stay the same

Let's quickly review what has been popular in the last few months.  Prior to December, stacking Guardian Angels was all the rage in competitive play, and the popularity quickly spilled into solo queue games.  As a direct result, Guardian Angel took a very heavy nerfbat to the face during the Season 3 patch.  At the same time, resistances became more difficult to itemize for and attack damage became much cheaper.  As a direct result, we saw a huge popularity in stacking resistance shred items, in particular The Black Cleaver.  In response to the extreme BC-stacking trends and the subsequent rise to the AD caster class, players began to stack health in order to ensure they would not be instagibbed by a single combo of spells.  And what better way to stack health than to build Warmog's Armor?  As we are about to see, Warmog's has become much more effective in keeping tanks tanky with unintended results for the rest of the game.

Written with statistical assistance by Mdaz from Leaguepedia

Tomorrow, the Season 3 North American qualifiers start and 16 of North America's best teams will duke it up for a chance to qualify as one of the top 8 teams.  The top 5 finishers in this qualifier will win a Season 3 salary of $175,000 for each team, exposure for opportunity to pick up new sponsors, and the chance for glory and fame.  Today, I'll be bringing you a comprehensive preview of each of the contending teams, along with an introduction of their players, recent team performance, and expected picks during the tournament.

The first round of the tournament will be played in a Korean dual tournament format in four groups.  The top two finishers in each group will advance and the winner of the first bracket match (quarterfinals) afterwards will automatically qualify for Season 3.  The fifth qualifying spot will go to run-off winner of the quarterfinals losers.  While most of the top 8 teams are expected to move on to the group stage, watch out for an upset: each of the teams playing tomorrow represent the best of the best, so don't be surprised if the third or even the fourth team from each group knocks out a favorite to advance.

Is the Elo system rating accurate?

Given an absence of inspiration and interesting topics to talk about, I thought that for today's article it would be nice to revisit every whiner's favorite topic: Elo Hell!  No matter what skill rating you're at, you will find that you are still in what players call 'Elo Hell' due to dependence on your team's collective effort to win, rather than being able to singlehandedly influence the outcome of a game.  Today's post will look at Elo Hell as a statistical whole, rather than looking at an individual's contribution to winning.  We'll be investigating what it takes to fall into Elo Hell, the chances of winning a given game, and why you should stop whining about feeders and trolls.

How does the Elo rating system actually work?

We've heard a lot of talk about the Elo and what it suggests, but I'm sure many of you readers are uninformed as to how it actually works.  The Elo system originated as a simplistic method to compare the relative skill between different chess players, and is used today in dozens of games.  While there are more complex ways to compute the chances of winning a given game, the Elo system is prized because it is both simple and accurate.  Assuming that Riot's Elo system accurately reflects upon the Elo system used in chess, the chance that your team will win is:

 Percentage of winning a given game = 1 ÷ [1 + 10^(ΔElo/400)]

...And your chances of winning a game given your true skill rating are as follows:

We had a request from the readers a few weeks ago for a few articles on team gameplay, so I'm pleased to bring this article on team compoisions to you today, by guest author WTFHaxorz.  I hope you enjoy it!

-VVinrar

A game of League of Legends is often won or lost at champion select.

This is a bold statement indeed, as champion select is a comparatively short piece of game-time. But the many professional teams who have conceded, after a crushing defeat, “We simply got out picked” stands as impressive supporting evidence.

The important thing to identify here is that 'out picking' a top LoL team is more complicated than simply grabbing five lane counters against them. Any professional player knows his or her lane matchups like it's their job (because it is), and goes into serious games with a fairly accurate expectation of which lanes will win, lose, or free-farm without jungle intervention. Instead, top level teams pick against each other in terms of an overall strategy complemented by their team's strengths and hopefully exploiting their opponent's weaknesses. The five champions each team chooses to execute their strategy is a little something we like to call team comp.

In this article we're going to touch on a few of the basic concepts behind team composition, general rules and concepts which serve as the foundation for this surprisingly unstudied field of LoL strategy.

Due to popular demand and a few questions from our readers, VVinrar and Gustaf are now doing an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on reddit's /r/leagueoflegends.

Do you want to learn more about blogging, about a certain champion's build, advice on life (Gustaf has lots!), questions about a post we've done, or want some math done for you? Ask away on reddit, and we'll *try* to answer both comprensively and concisely! We will also be answering questions in our chatroom "A DIFFerent View" on the NA server.

--Gentleman Gustaf & VVinrar

The reddit thread for questions can be found at http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/15j098/we_are_vvinrar_and_gentleman_gustaf_the/

Dear Reign of Gamers, 

Exactly one year ago today, A DIFFerent View began its existence on CLG Elementz's blog site 'Reign of Gaming.'  In the 366 days (leap year) since then, we have grown from a blog visited by a few thousand people per day to Team Curse's premier blogging and news site, servicing over half a million readers per month.

In celebration of our one year anniversary, we at A DIFFerent View & Reign of Gaming want to highlight the best of our work over the past year.  Inside this post, you will find a short biography of each A DIFFerent View blogger, as well as their personal headers, a highlight of their best work, and a personal message from each blogger. We hope you enjoy today's special presentation: the best of A DIFFerent View!

Thanks for a great year,
A DIFFerent View

John Gaudiosi from Forbes recently sat down with Reign of Gaming's very own Cato Chung, better known as VVinrar to his fans. A DIFFerent View is celebrating its first anniversary of covering League of Legends from a theory crafting perspective. The blogging site, which was acquired by Curse Inc. in April 2012, has utilized Reddit to instantly connect with the huge global eSports fan base. In this exclusive interview, VVinrar talks about the opportunities eSports has opened up for bloggers and discusses the challenges that remain in pushing pro gaming to the next level.

How did you get involved in eSports coverage?

I originally started blogging in January 2011 as a guest editor on Reign of Gaming. Prior to this, I maintained a community resource involving numerical analysis of in-game item efficiency. I used this background as an introduction to blogging on game theory alongside Dhanish ‘DiffTheEnder’ Semar at CLG. After the work of “A Different View” started to gain mainstream attention via reddit /r/leagueoflegends and by Riot’s Facebook page, I began to take eSports journalism more seriously as a job. In recent months, I have partially transitioned to theoretical analysis and competitive League of Legends analysis working as a Reign of Gaming content manager at Curse, Inc.

Read VVinrar's full interview at http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/12/23/curse-reign-of-gaming-editor-cato-chung-explains-how-reddit-has-helped-league-of-legends-bloggers/, featuring other questions such as:

• What role has Curse played in connecting eSports fans with bloggers?
• How do you work with Curse?
• What are your thoughts on what Curse has done with its League of Legends teams in Los Angeles and Berlin?
• How have you seen your site grow in traffic since launching?
• What opportunities does eSports open following competitive League of Legends play online?

My name is VVinrar hashinshin and today I'm going to explain why bruisers are the single most underpowered class in all of League of Legends.  If you surf around Reign of Gaming, Lolpro, or General Discussion, you will find many different discussions on Black Cleaver.  Keeping all of these arguments in mind, what I have been finding is that The Black Cleaver is not an actual item for AD casters, but rather an item with a perfect build path for too many physical damage classes that is proving toxic to the game.  In the current point in time, the only way that The Black Cleaver can actually be countered is with more Black Cleavers.

The Effect of Season 3 Penetration Rune Changes on AD Carries

Before we start today's blog, I'd like to give a shoutout to Forneas for redesigning my blog's images yet again with the new header image you see above as well as a fun new reddit icon; you can find more of his work at http://ziptofaf.deviantart.com/.  But more importantly, today we are bringing to you new calculations on the effect of attack damage runes versus armor penetration on the latest Season 3 patch.  The most recent patch marks a change in how magic and armor penetration is calculated: flat penetration is now calculated after percent penetration has been factored in instead of the other way around, and flat penetration runes has been nerfed to reflect this change as seen below.

In today's calculations, we're going to use a few basic assumptions about damage calculations.  All basic attacks will be performed by a Graves (so we are using his base damage and AD scaling) that has invested fully into the offensive mastery tree, the relevant masteries being Deadliness (12 AD @ level 18), Weapon Expertise (8% armor penetration), Havoc (2% more damage dealt), Brute Force (+3 AD), and Sunder (5 armor penetration).  Since this post is meant for AD carries in general instead of just Graves, we will be ignoring damage from skills (Q and R).  Additionally, we are assuming that the target dummy does not have any armor or damage modifiers that are commonly found in the defensive tree.  Damage calculated is using normal autoattacks (no critical hits) without any attack/defense modifiers. Runes used for the simulation assume either 15 attack damage or 19.5 armor penetration.

The early game: level 1

During Season 2, there was a small armor range (30 to 60ish armor) where armor penetration was actually stronger than attack damage runes at around 75 damage.  With the changes to the new penetration system, there is no point where armor penetration is superior to bonus attack damage during the early game; however, the difference isn't dramatic enough that you will be outclassed against another AD carry if you own different runes: assuming a generic starting armor value of 30 (at level 1, the range of champion armors can range from about 20 for supports to 35 for bruisers), a champion like Graves should see a difference of about 3 damage per autoattack landed on an enemy champion, or about 5% more damage dealt overall.  Expand the spoiler below to see the difference in damage done at different armor levels.

Reading the graph is easy! (I hope).  The damage for Graves without runes (but with masteries is calculated).  The red and blue lines you see are the additional damage you get from runes (either AD or arpen) per basic autoattack, or damage with runes minus damage dealt without runes.  The vertical purple line is the average armor of enemies at that level without extra armor items.

Verdict: Attack damage wins against armor penetration at the beginning of the game.

Solo Queue and You

As Gentleman Gustaf eloquently put it yesterday, it's not worth it to do math-filled articles if we are uncertain that our calculations will be relevant a month down the road.  Instead, I want to take a break this week and go back to one of the favorite subjects of our readers: solo queue.  This isn't a post about Elo hell per se as much as they are friendly solo queue tips to augment your skills without actually getting better.  Before you apply skill, there are a multitude of factors that may impact the outcome of the game, from team morale to the reaction time of players to team compositions.  The goal of today's article is to give a series of tips that will improve the external factors of the game so you can win more without playing more effectively.

Minimize conversation

Attitude and team morale is one of the most important hidden factors in any League of Legends game.  If a teammate is angry at you they will be less willing to go all-out on a teamfight and risk adding a death to their account stats than if they are confident that you will do your part in a fight.  And what is the easiest way to piss off someone?  Simple.  All you have to do is insult them in chat.

Now, you don't exactly want to annoy your teammates.  Instead, you want to do the opposite: avoid talking in chat, even if it is friendly banter or helpful instruction.  Even if your teammate is flaming you, don't respond to them at all.  Talking back to a troll is an easy way to elicit even more flaming, while avoidance (or the ignore button) is the simplest way to tell your ally to 'deal with it.'  Responding will create more toxic behavior not only from yourself and the troll but your allies as well; arguing destroys team morale and makes it even more likely that you will lose a game.  Even innocuous words such as "lol" may be taken the wrong way by your allies if read at the wrong time; instead, consider using pings to communicate in-game commands and minimizing the amount of text communication you use.  The less you talk, the lesser your chance of negatively changing your teammates' attitude.

Simply put, this means that you have to ignore the troll and ignore being a troll to keep morale high.

All About Season 3 Item Efficiency

With the release of dozens of new Season 3 items and the reworks of many current items, the mathcrafters here at Reign of Gaming have had no choice but to work out the math for everything League-related.  We've already seen posts from writers like Old Man Eyebrows and Gentleman Gustaf analyzing the new item starts and items like Runaan's Hurricane, but today I thought we'd look at items in League of Legends on a macrogame scale.  As many of you may or may not know, I was primarily known for my Item Efficiency Spreadsheet that was featured on the reddit /r/leagueoflegends sidebar for nearly a year.  Today's A DIFFerent View/#VVinning article focuses on updating this spreadsheet in preparation for the new Season 3 items as well as to explain how the term 'item efficiency' works within the game.

Click here to see the VVinrar's Season 3 Item Efficiency Spreadsheet

What is item efficiency?

Item efficiency seeks to calculate how efficient each item in the game is based on the most efficient basic (or if unavailable, most efficient intermediate) item possible. For example, to find the cost per statistic of AP items, we use Needlessly Large Rod (20g/AP) as a base item because it is the most efficient pure AP item in the game ahead of Amplifying Tome (21.75g/AP) and Blasting Wand (21.5g/AP).  Since Needlessly Large Rod has the best Gold:AP ratio, it is used as the base efficiency comparison for all items that give Ability Power.

In application, to calculate the gold efficiency for a certain item, say a Mejai's Soulstealer with 0 stacks, we take the cost of the item, 1235 gold, and subtract the value of all statistics conferred by the item (20 AP * 20g/AP).  In this example, an empty Mejai's has a gold efficiency of -835; in effect, if you are freshly buying a Mejai's, you are only getting 400g of stats for 1235g, or a net loss of -835 gold.

Generally, items with negative item efficiency have side effects that you are paying for which means that you are effectively paying the negative gold efficiency for the listed effect.  Items with positive X item efficiency mean that you are actually saving X gold for the unlisted statistics and any effects that are listed for the item are effectively free when you buy the item.

While we strive to make item efficiency as simplistic as possible, there are several drawbacks to this methodology.  There are some statistics that are difficult to quantify due to lack of base and intermediate items such as penetration and regeneration.  These statistics are referred to as secondary statistics because they are often stats that do not directly increase the power of your champion.

Odds and Ends: Blackfire Torch Follow-Up, Season 3 Items, and ELOBUFF Giveaway!

Given the continued refusal of Riot to give the community solid numbers that can be mathed out, we'll be returning to a slightly old subject today in the recent Blackfire Torch change, my thoughts about Season 3, and a chance for you to win a 3-month subscription to ELOBUFF!

The new Blackfire Torch

You know that post I made two weeks ago about how Blackfire Torch was underpowered?  Yeah, toss all that math out.  The new changes to the item simply push it over the top.  I don't want to go back in depth with this item in successive posts, but here's the short of it: Buying Blackfire Torch will give you 3015g of stats for a 2950g cost BEFORE the health burn passive is factored in.  Add in the passive, and you're sitting on an overpowered item.  Take the graph below; given the constraints of zero default penetration versus a 2000 HP, 42 MR target, you're killing champions 50% faster with the new Blackfire Torch compared to the version we had last patch.  While I usually try to avoid tagging something as blatantly overpowered, the item's buffs have made it comparatively stronger than any other item in the game.

Why you should be hyped for Season 3

With the constant delays in the end of Season 2, Morello and Xypherous have been teasing us with many of the upcoming changes in League for Season 3.  As we anticipate the end of the season, I've created today a list of the major changes we should be looking forward to and the implications to the state of the game when they occur.

1. Damage/penetration formulas and items are being reworked. 

Riot hasn't released most of the information related to the penetration rework, but we have learned two important pieces of information in the past few days.  Firstly, penetration will be calculated with percentage penetration followed by flat reduction in the new season instead of the current formula, where flat penetration is calculated before percentage.  This will mean that flat penetration will be much more effective in the mid to end game; right now, flat penetration is only truly effective in the early game.  

Using an example target with 125 armor, 25 armor penetration, and 40% armor penetration, next season's formula will reduce your opponent's effective armor from 60 to 50.  More information on penetration will come soon as Riot releases their full changes to penetration -- they are planning to look at every source of penetration damage, and we can't accurately give you new math on the changes until those come out.

Does Singed Benefit From Blackfire Torch?

You asked, we listened.  Last week, I put up a poll asking what readers wanted to see more of on the Reign of Gaming frontpage.  Beyond the most requested option of more frequent tier list updates, much of our core audience voted for more of our traditional "A DIFFerent View" mathcrafting, as well as more articles on ranked team gameplay.  It's a subject that I have gradually strayed away from especially with RoG's transition to the current blogging team a few months ago, so I'm excited to get back into doing math.  Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more "mathy" posts, and (hopefully) some guest articles on ranked 5's gameplay.  

Today's article is an effort to step in the mathcrafting direction; with the release of the new Twisted Treeline map have come nearly a dozen items designed specifically for the new map.  One of the most hyped new items, Blackfire Torch, is designed specifically with AP casters in mind and has been speculated by much of the League community to be overpowered on some champions including but not limited to Singed, the Mad Chemist. 

Overpowered champions and player perception of power

With only a dozen days left in Season 2 and everybody scrambling to hit their next ranked tier, we should keep one thing in mind: soon, nothing will matter.  Not your Elo, not your champion statistics, not your e-peen.  In Season 3 we should see player understanding of the current metagame turned on its head because of all of the expected changes to the game: the Twisted Treeline remake, another jungle remake, item changes, and another mastery remake.  It's not that the current metagame is not optimal, it's just that we should see (hopefully) see dramatic changes in how the game is played when Riot shakes the game up.  But one thing is certain at least in my mind: no matter what changes are made to the game, the same items and champions that are problematic in the game right now will continue to be imbalanced in the future.

You will cry in Season 3: High Elo players will snowball in your games

If you think you're getting "feeders and trolls" in your games right now, that will be nothing compared to a month from now.  Right now in ranked games, you have many more people tryharding for rating, which results in more tension, more anger, and more feeding.  When Season 3 comes out, ranked will be even more 'imbalanced' for at least a month because of all of the underrated (or overrated) players making it into your game.  This shouldn't come as a huge surprise to some people: the exact same thing happened in both Season 1 and Season 2.  There will be a huge influx of newbies in your games and you'll either have to deal with them, or break down in tears while playing.  In Season 1, the problems were the level 20 players (who averaged a win rate of ~12% instead of expected 50%); in Season 2, it was the higher Elo players rampaging through unskilled players.  Don't expect to see anything different when the new season starts: expect to see many more games that snowball in the coming month.

Every once in a while, we have players who submit a guest post for our consideration.  If we like article, we give them a space on the Reign of Gaming frontpage.  Today's post is a discussion on how to build an effective 5 man team and comes from Drewqt, a player that is experienced in amateur tournament play.  I hope you enjoy today's guest post.   --VVinrar

Hi, I'm Drewqt. I'm a 30 year old partner at a real estate development firm and the support for QT Gaming. I've put together several teams in League of Legends and just finished organizing a team for a local LAN tournament. I'm a huge fan of team play in League and I'd love to see more players playing ranked 5s as it's really the way that League should be experienced. That said, there are a lot of pitfalls when putting together a team and I'd like to share my experience with building effective teams.

Elo doesn't matter, except when it does:

This was the hardest part for me to learn when it came to putting together teams: Elo can help you eliminate people but it can't help you decide on players. Elo is decent at weeding out subpar players if they have a lot of ranked games played. If a player has 400 ranked games and hasn't cracked 1400 then you know what his ceiling probably is. What Elo is not reliable for is determining how good a player is for your ranked 5s team. I've tried out hundreds of players and I learned that Elo did not equate to quality of player. These players are ones that I've termed “Solo queue heroes”.

Item Efficiency: What's Up with the New PBE items?

Last night, we saw a lot of changes show up on the Public Beta Environment.  Beyond the standard dozen champion buffs and nerfs, we saw the introduction of a new Twisted Treeline map and many items to go along with it.  We at Reign of Gaming try to be the first to pounce on any new developments in League, so today's post is all about the new items!

• The latest PBE patch notes can be found here.
• Twisted Treeline Remake on PBE
• Elise, the Spider Queen Revealed
• Harrowing 2012 - New Champion, New Skins, Lore Changes, and Ward Skins

Deathfire Grasp

After seeing the reworked Deathfire Grasp wreak havoc during the World Championships, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise to many people that the item is now being nerfed this patch.  Instead of doing 25% current health (+4% per 100 AP), the item has now been nerfed to 15% (+5% per 100 ability power).

The nerf to DFG now makes it so you need 1000 Ability Power in order to achieve a damage breakeven with both the current iteration of the item and the pre-rework damage of 30% (+3.5%/100 AP).  It's a pretty significant nerf to casters in the early game, but it isn't quite so devastating when casters have 6 items.  With 600 AP, the nerfed version of DFG now does 45% of a target's current health instead of 49% in the item's current state.

The New Twisted Treeline Items

Elixir Substitutes

Ichor of Illumination (Elixir of Brilliance)

Elixir of Brilliance (250g) on Summoner's Rift gives 20-40 Ability Power and 10% Cooldown Reduction for 4 minutes.  In comparison, Ichor of Illumination appears to be a scaled up version of the item: for twice the cost, you receive a slightly lower AP/CDR bonus compared to having 2 Elixirs, but this is returned via mana regeneration.  All things considered, the TT equivalent of blue elixir doesn't seem like a huge change; it's just a scaled up version to fit the quick gameplay Riot has designed for the rework.

Ichor of Rage (Combination of Elixir of Fortitude & Elixir of Agility)

When you buy both Elixir of Fortitude and Elixir of Agility on Summoner's Rift for a total price of 500 gold, or the same amount as Ichor of Rage, you receive the following stats for 4 minutes:

• 140-235 Health
• 10 Attack Damage
• 12-22% Attack Speed
• 8% Critical Strike Chance

In stark contrast with Ichor of Illumination, the Ichor of Rage gives gigantic benefits to Tanky DPS and bruiser champions.  For the same price of buying both the red and green elixirs on SR, you have a much beefier AD/AS bonus and better pushing power in return for the loss of 2 bars of health and critical chance.

Opinion: Riot has stated that they are trying to increase the pace of Twisted Treeline, but dramatically buffing tanky DPS via this elixir seems to be the wrong way of doing this.  You're basically getting ~3000 gold of stats for 500 gold.  In a map where matches can be won in 15 minutes, having an item as strong as Ichor of Rage seems overpowered.  I expect nerfs to this.

For those of you who missed the final World Elite-Counter Logic Gaming EU match last night and the exciting semi-finals, we saw the last two Western powerhouse teams, CLG.EU and M5 being knocked out by Azubu Frost and Taipei Assassins, respectively.  Today's blog is not a factual look into items or into builds, but a (biased) examination of the two teams remaining in the Season 2 World Championships.  Not many people are surprised that we are seeing Azubu Frost in the grand finals, but the addition of Taipei Assassins instead of the heavily-favored Moscow 5 brings an element of change into our final matchup.

While many spectators have long favored Frost in the matchup, Taipei Assassins have had an unexpectedly strong showing over the course of the Season 2 championships.  It is this strength combined with a few other things listed below which lead me to favor the underdog TPA team over the Korean powerhouse.  Coming into the finals, I see 4 distinct advantages for Taipei Assassins over Azubu Frost that lead me to predict a Season 2 win for them on October 13th.

1. The world has only seen 5 games from Taipei.

Azubu Frost is coming into the finals as a powerhouse.  The world has been following Frost and its sister team Azubu Blaze for months, and other teams have dozens of AZF replays against top Korean teams to watch and study.  On the other hand, most public TPA games were stomps against weak Southeast Asian teams in the Garena league, and the games against stronger teams have not been played recently.

Frost has used all of their cards already.  They have already played 8 games this tournament, with half of those games using team-tailored strategies to take out specific opponents.  If they had any planned cheese or unorthodox team compositions, they have already used them.  On the other hand, we have seen nothing but brilliant standard play from Taipei Assassins.  Given how long the team has had to plan their strategies, there is still a possibility that they will pull out cheese strategies to take a game or two off their opponents.

5 Tips To Improve Your Solo Queue Performance

With three weeks left in the season, I'm sure many of you are still reaching for that 1500 solo queue rating for War Hero Janna. Past lists of gameplay tips seem to have been popular among you readers, so I've made another list today to help boost your solo queue skills to new heights.  Hopefully after reading this, you may be inspired to change your solo/duo queue mindset and raise your Season 2 ranked rating, whether it be to silver, gold, platinum, diamond, or even just another bronze tier.  Today, I have five tips for you that may help you get that extra Elo that you've been reaching for all season.

5. Counterpick, and don't pick counterable champions.

Play what is best for the team, not the champion that you want to play.  If you are picking a lane that has not already been selected by the enemy, pick something that is difficult to counter (these champions are often Tier 1 or 2 on tier lists).  If you are picking into a lane that has already been chosen by the enemy team, try to choose a champion that goes even with or has a natural advantage against your opponent.  Beyond that point, you should try to pick a champion that both counters the enemy lane and the enemy team composition in general.  It is often not enough in low Elos to beat your opponents in lane; you also need to dominate teamfights in order to win.

And remember, no single champion is unbeatable or overpowered.  Almost every champion can be countered in lane, and if not, they can be countered by a team composition.  You need to have at least a couple of champions that you are good at in each role so you are not forced into playing against a poor lane or game composition.  Good picks should be strong throughout the game.

Some recommended champions for each role are:

Top: Shen, Malphite, Riven
Jungle: Skarner, Shyvana, Lee Sin
Mid: Morgana, Ahri, Cassiopeia
AD Carry: Ezreal, Graves, Corki
Support: Alistar, Taric, Sona