Advice needed.

D3M4L1S·9/20/2016, 5:15:47 AM·2 votes·383 views

Hi there pretty new to the game I have 3 rune pages and 3 mains Soraka, WW, and MF. My laning is alright, but I don't know that many champs. I can sometimes be thrown off and the game is just getting harder the more I play. But to my dilema, where to focus my purchases.

I am currently trying to complete the builds on the three mains, but I have no tank and the players don't like it when I ask to use annie up top. So what do I do? I wanted to start tank training but that is a whole other set of runes to buy and atm I am a little short on funds. Do I start to focus on a tank or try and complete my three primary builds?

Any advice would be welcome.

P.S: I just bought Garen, and am regretting it, and yes I know ww can do the tank position but I think I would need a completely different rune selection for that role.

25 Comments

Roit Gums9/20/2016, 5:20:13 AM1 votes

The tank for beginners is Garen, i dont know why you are regretting it, he is so easy and deals alot of damage you will like it, just buy the tier 2 runes with 1 ip each they are too cheap, once you save ip buy Darius to win almost every single ltop lane matchup he destroys the enemy laner

Elite4Runner9/20/2016, 5:31:59 AM1 votes

Oh I hope you didn't really pay for Garen

If you like/subscribe to League of Legends social media pages (YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) you will get codes for Trist, Alistar, and Garen for free. (I don't remember which comes with which). You also get a skin for each.

I would pick up Alistar if you're having trouble with Garen as a tank.

Yrzen9/20/2016, 6:12:32 AM1 votes

Ever since Riot lowered the price of tier 2 runes to 1 IP each, getting runes isn't that big of a deal anymore. You aren't missing out on a huge amount of stats between tier 2 and tier 3, so don't worry about getting tier 3 runes right away; get any tier 2 runes you feel like. Considering how small your champion pool is, most of your IP should go towards champions you like.

As for what tier 3 runes to actually get when the time comes, Many people just use two general rune pages for AP and AD champions: Armor Seals, Magic Resist Glyphs, Magic Penetration/Armor Penetration (or just AD) Marks and AD/AP Quints. You'll probably want more specialization eventually, but don't feel rushed to do so. Every so often, rune pages have a 2 for the price of one sale thingy. I recommend waiting for those.

As for champions to recommend to a beginner, Annie is of course pretty great for learning to last hit. Kalista was meant to teach new players how to click-move with her passive, but she's rather pricy, and her passive gave her too much mobility, so they had to nerf her to keep her high skill cap in check. As such, while she could teach you to click-move, she's probably not very beginner-friendly. If you're looking for a tank, Garen is generally considered easy to use, since he generally just wins against most melee top-laners, though I can see why you wouldn't like playing him, (I certainly don't) because of how easy it is to kite him when he has to deal with anything ranged. Volibear is free this week, and my friend tells me that Voli is his favorite because "you can be braindead and still win with him."

As for worrying about having a tank ASAP, don't sweat it. You have WW, and that's tankier than anything I own even though I've been playing for years. (My tankiest champion is Vladimir, followed by Jayce and Janna) If you need to go top, I recommend taking Annie. She's probably better than Warwick in top lane, (Warwick in lane is like a worse Garen) and it's not really something your teammates should be complaining about, especially if you're a new player. The meta means basically nothing if you're still leveling to 30, and even after that, it isn't a big deal outside of ranked. The most you need to worry about is that a jungler with smite is better than two people in top lane.

One last thing: League of Legends analyzed "champion friendship compatibility", showing what champions have a correlating play rate. Anyway, these are what correlations your three mains have with other champions, ordered from greatest to least.

Miss Fortune:

Lux
Jinx
Tristana
Caitlyn
Ashe

Soraka:

Janna
Nami
Sona 4, Lulu
Morgana

Warwick:

Xin Zhao
Master Yi
Garen
Nasus
Malphite.

Other players that play MF, Soraka and WW tend to also play these champions, so you might like them.

Elite4Runner9/20/2016, 6:13:09 AM1 votes

As for advice on how to play as a tank, ...

Tanks are typically bad at farming. Most have poor wave clear, with exception. You should practice last hitting. You need to be aware of how much damage a single ability/attack does. You can learn this from your AD, and by hovering your cursor over your abilities. (Sorry if you know this, but I'm assuming you are very new). Once you have a good idea of your damage, you need to learn when attacking or using an ability will kill a minion and grant you gold. The goal is to learn how to see this based on the health bar above the minion. However, to learn this, if you left-click a minion there will be a stat window for that unit appear in the top left corner. You want to keep an eye on that to see when their current health is less than your damage. Pretty simple, but this is a core skill for any role, yet it tends to be difficult for tanks, and is often what they end up doing most of laneing phase. In other words try not to focus too much on killing the opponent.

That DOES NOT mean ignore your opponent. The goal is to farm, AND deny your enemy their farm. You will need to learn common match ups and learn who typically bullies who. If you get bullied, play more passive, and don't be surprised if you end up farming under tower (that is another skill you'll want to practice). If you are able to bully them, you will want to keep them far enough away from your minions that their minions will get the last hit, and they get no gold.

This means you will need to trade and zone. Trading is NOT the same as going all in. The goal is to force them off farm and EXP, or even out of lane. Some Bruiser and Juggernauts will then go for the kill, and if you can take it wit out losing too much gold/Exp, go for it, but for the most part you just want to farm. When trading, try not to take too much minion damage. They can hurt more than champions early game. Be aware of the size of your enemies wave and don't trade in the middle of them. Also, auto attacks will automatically cause minions in range to swap aggro to you. Most abilities do not do this.

Another very important thing for you to do is to learn your matchup's abilities and cooldowns. You can do this by going to the LOL Wikipedia page

leagueoflegends.wikia.com

(Excellent resource. Bookmark it)

Simply learning by playing against them, Or best of all, play those champions yourself. Be aware of what champions are in free rotation and play a few matches, even if it is just bot matches. Knowing when abilities will be on cool down means you know that your enemy will be less effective at trading, and you can take advantage of that.

There are many, many other things I can recommend, but I'll stop there for now. If you have specific questions I'll try to help with those as well.

Elite4Runner9/20/2016, 6:39:20 AM1 votes

No problem. This game has a massive learning curve, and the fact that Riot changes things nearly every week doesn't make it any easier, but that is actually part of what I like about it. I made the mistake of exclusively playing bot games for the longest time. My friends only wanted to play bots and they weren't really all that good either. There is a lot to learn from them, but PVP will force you to learn quickly. I know a lot about mechanics and how to play ideally after almost 3 years of playing and watching YouTube and pro play, but having just started to get into PVP this season, I'm still learning.

Elite4Runner9/20/2016, 7:25:53 AM1 votes

Yeah, I'd stick to normals, ARAM, or just the weekend rotation game modes for a while, but, I have played enough that, while I may not be great in PVP, I can hold my own. I mostly wanted to see where I'd get placed, then I can worry about improving.

Ranked isn't random, it's draft picked.

Each team alternates up to 6 bans total. Then one team (I believe blue picks first) gets to pick one champion. Then red picks 2 Blue picks 2 Red picks 2 Blue picks 2 Red picks 1

Both sides can see who is picked and no champion can be picked if banned or already picked. This means you can pick/ban to deny your opponent champions that would be strong in their team composition. And of course you use this to build your own team. It is all about strategy, and as I mentioned in my example before, it can actually win or lose the match before the game even starts.

DemainaNyx9/20/2016, 7:40:12 AM1 votes

Sorta curious why you need a tank role unless you yourself want to learn it. Unless you are playing blindpick (don't know about coop/ai), you should be able to queue up for bot/sup and get one of those roles all the time (the only time I go to other lanes with bot/sup queue is when asked to swap in champ select). Queuing for jungle might offer different results, but still, normally I haven't been forced to play another roles that I didn't choose unless I agreed to it.

This is just me, but I currently have 3 rune pages and they are very generic.
AD page with Attack Speed Quints, AD Marks, MR Glyphs, and Armor Seals. AP page with AP Quints, Magic Pen Marks, MR Glyphs, and Armor Seals. Tank page with Armor Quints, AD Marks, MR Glyphs, and Health/Armor Seals.

None of these pages are highly specific. My AD pages, for example, is not that great on Jhin cause the attack speed does nothing for him. However, it's still possible to play him to a certain degree with this page and it's a good page for most other ADCs and even decent on some top laners. My AP page can be taken as a support or as a midlaner even though it isn't ideal. My Tank page can work support, top, or jungle depending on who I'm playing.

So, with those pages alone, I at least have something for every role. Is it highly specialize to the champs I play? Not really, but it is decent on a wide range of champions. If you plan on playing nothing but MF (or Soraka or Warwick) until you reach Challenger, then make a page specifically that caters to her playstyle. Otherwise, if you plan on varying your champions, a generic page is fine.

Learning to last hit is going to be the hardest thing for playing a tank. As an ADC, normally you start with a dorans blade, but tanks can start with anything from corrupting potion, dorans shield, dorans blade, etc. The biggest thing to learn is how much damage your basic attacks do, but this really applies to any role though. Going into a bot match or a custom and practice CSing will help a lot. One way to get really good at it is to go into a custom and try to CS as Soraka or Karthus. Their projectile is slow, you need to attack a little bit before the minion is at the right health to get the kill. When you go back to any other champion, you'll be able to cs a lot easier.

My top lane tank picks when I'm asked to go top are Nasus and Illaoi. Since I don't know matchups well, Nasus is rewarded for playing passively and getting CS with Q or for being aggressive and pushing the laner out. Most people mindlessly push the wave hoping to get it to tower to negate your Q stacking, but in all honesty if they freeze it near mid and poke when he comes in for cs, they'd do a lot better against him. Illaoi is a pretty safe pick in my mind. Her ult is easily countered by walking out of it or ults that prevent death, but other than that, her tentacles offer sustain and decent wave clear. Both of these champs though are kited quite easily so getting onto a target is their biggest probably. Kayle, for instance, is a great counter to both of them cause she can eat some of the burst to draw you into the fight and then just ult while DPSing you down. Knowing where your character fails is the biggest thing you can learn cause then you can sorta guess matchups even without looking up who generally counters who.

Elite4Runner9/20/2016, 7:53:12 AM1 votes

Good plan. You actually can't cue up for ranked with less than 16 owned champions (free rotation does not count). Which makes sense, if you happen to be last to pick, 6 banned champions, and 9 picked. That would leave you with only 2 to chose from if all of your champions happen to be picked or banned (which is unlikely).

As one of the other commenters mentioned, you should save up your IP for champions. If you ever have time to binge play matches, and a bit of RP to spare, grab a IP boost by days, not by victory. I'd also suggest grabbing the cheaper champions. They are typically older, easier, less complicated to play, and either have been more recently updqted, or are scheduled to be updated. This will also help you to get a better understanding of what roles you prefer.

D3M4L1S9/20/2016, 7:56:16 AM1 votes

Now you guys are just messing with me, lol. Let me work on my last hit before I worry about my CS, like I knew what that meant, lol. Thanks for all the help, I allways tell them when I adc I'm bad, but that's only because support on Soraka is a little easy for me.

That's the thing, I played her got a bunch of wins, and now the game is a hell of a lot harder. I know that it's only blind and I shouldn't let it get to me, but I kinda screwed myself I guess.

I guess that is why I am wanting to learn tank so bad, just so I can fill whatever role is needed. I can adc, just bad at it and thanks for the help on the adc tips. I know that I need two of every role now at least before I try draft, in case I get shut down in the banning process on one of my roles.

Thanks so much for answering that question, the one I didn't ask. So my new plan is fill out my primaries, then learn tank. And then learn one of each role and I should be able to try draft pick.

DemainaNyx9/20/2016, 10:54:37 AM1 votes

Honestly, if you can queue up for normal draft pick, it can be a good place to learn. It's not ranked so you don't need to worry about that aspect yet, and since it's a draft pick, you get to see the enemy champions so you can adjust your pick.

Ashe, for example, requires good positioning cause she doesn't have any mobility (abilities that quickly move your characters position) outside of flash. If you see that the enemy team has a dive comp (any champion with a gap closing ability like Malph ult, Lucian dash, Xin Zhao dash, Leblanc dashes, Alistar combo, etc), then picking Ashe may not be such a good idea. Obviously you can still pick her, but it might be a hard game for you.

Additionally, you can adjust to fit your team. Say it's the same dive comp I mentioned above, but your team choose Yasuo top, Yi jungle, Victor mid, and Soraka support. Well, your team doesn't have any time of engage or disengage really outside of a few abilities (Yasuo knock up, Victor gravity field, Soraka equinox if lucky), so Ashe may be a decent choice cause you can stun someone and let your team blow them up and use your Volley to slow those approaching to maybe save your teammates who get dove. You and Victor would also offer some poke to get people low which might open up an opportunity for Yasuo or Yi to go in and kill. An alternative to that is Victor is great wave clear, so you, Victor, and Soraka could stand and defend mid while Yasuo and Yi splitpush.

Obviously that's probably more than you want to be thinking about right now. If you'd like, feel free to add me and maybe I can try to teach you stuff in game instead of talking about generic concepts. I'm almost a year into this game and it took me a while to work out some of the concepts that aren't really talked about. I mean, you play an ADC and I wonder if you've learned stutter stepping, trading in lane, wave management, playing with unlocked camera, and itemizing against your opponents since none of these things are really taught in the tutorial for the game (unless they changed it).