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Why are LoL players focused on the (IMO) wrong objectives?

Av3nger77·8/14/2015, 10:30:57 AM·1 votes·1,969 views

Hello Riot and LoL community :). This is my first discussion and is going to be a wall-of-text, so be warned ;).

First off, I love League of Legends, and started only a couple months ago. I am still considered a noobie by most people in the game and haven't reached level 30 yet. So saying, I have been gaming and doing many forms of PC entertainment for 12 years. From racing, to strategy, to RPG, to MMO, to you name it. When I started LoL, I was instantly hooked by it. I enjoyed the gameplay and how the overall flow of the game worked. But a nagging thought crossed my mind after I started focusing on using ONE champ to specialise him.

Before I pose my thought, I would like to give a backstory if I may.

After reaching level 7 or so, I found a character who I enjoyed playing and immediately became addicted to using him. Yes, it is the demon-chipmunk himself, the spawn of darkness, the soulless cuteness that is named Teemo. Almost immediately after picking him in Normal matches, I got the following list of messages:

"OMG why you pick Teemo, he noob champ" "Such a noob" "Go away noob" "I report" "Noob champ alert" etc etc, you probably know how it goes in these circumstances.

So, I decided to research Teemo to find out why he was A) Disliked and B) considered a noob champ. I mainly studied B)

However, before I got there I found out something important. LoL players mostly focus on killing the enemy champion, and not destroying the towers. they focus on getting a good summoner KDA, rather than being a good TEAM player (I highlight the word TEAM, seeing as a good TEAM player doesn't necessarily have to be fed, or very good at ganking, but he should be good at his role within the team). And seeing as LoL is a team based game, I thought that this is very skewed thinking. I asked why, and they said things like this "If I kill champ and get fed, I get items and instakill towers", and after they lose, they say "Report team, they noob and fed". Why is everyone so obsessed with killing champions, being a offense champion, and getting double kills when they lose their towers and have no idea how to properly defend? Worst of all, I get judged for defending towers and not going it teamfights 24/7 or not pursuing a half enemy over getting rid of a threatening minion wave at the doorstep.

knowing this, I discovered people believe Teemo is a noob for 2 reasons. the first is that he isn't a Teamfight champ, but a defend and map control champion who is great at defense (which most people don't appreciate). Secondly, his skills aren't in fancy foot work and instakills, but in longer term, defence strategy and retreat for allies. I must note that using Teemo as a carry is plain silly, he is squishy, so use him like he is meant to be used, and don't hate him for NOT being a skill-shot champ.

So, here was my thought/question, is it wrong for me to focus on being a good defender who may not be great in teamfight (seeing as his skills and mind aren't in istakilling enemies), but is brilliant at controlling the map and helping weakened allies retreat (even killing pesky enemies at times)?

So to all pro-players, can't my role be a long term strategist who wins games and kills towers, rather than having a half win half loss person who just "goes-in-for-the-kill" ? Lastly, do you get good rankings for winning, or is it purely based on KDA. If so, I will have to change me mentality of being a good team player, to only going after champions to become a killing machine (which I can do pretty well, btw)

Sorry for the long-ass post, but its long for a reason. Have a GREAT day :)

5 Comments

NemeBro8/14/2015, 10:48:12 AM2 votes

You get higher ranked in ranked play (which you shouldn't even consider playing until you can play every lane adequately, have a champion pool far larger than the required twenty, have several completed rune pages, and a good deal of experience in normals as well as some idea as to who your "best" champions are) by winning, not through your KDA. KDA is nice because it means you're getting fed without giving gold to the enemy, and don't worry, if you play Teemo well you will certainly have a good KDA. Teemo is frankly reliant on killing or badly bullying his enemy laner so that he can snowball, since he doesn't scale that well. Teemo can also easily rack up kills or assists while being on the other side of the map, back at base, or even dead due to his mushrooms.

There's nothing wrong with playing Teemo, but if you want to win with him you're going to have to put a lot of practice into him, and learn all of his match-ups in the top lane. Personally, I'd only use him as a counter pick, which you will learn about through experience and research.

Ceapi8/14/2015, 11:06:24 AM2 votes

To answer your question:yes and no. You climb ranks by winning games even if you feed you can be usefull to your team but what you will find by playing teemo and climbing trough the ranks is that you will hit a brick wall where people understand how to play againts teemo and it will be very hard to win since they know how to exploit his weakness.Don't change your playstyle we need mroe people that care for their team more and play to win rather than have a good kda but you are still early into the game and people will get better don't worry.Also I think you don't quite understand that teamfights have a big impact into the game also, for example if we get a good teamfight and kill 2-3 members the other team cannot contest us in taking any objectives so we can do whatever we want on the map.Ofc that doesn't mean you should just run blindly after kills when you could get an objective instead.And one more point I would like to make is that by playng your defensive playstyle it works when you are behind but this game also relias in taking advantages and using them to theyr full power to take control over the game and by playing defensive and safe when you are ahead might sometimes give the other team time to catch up.

Sorry for the long post my first one,and sorry for my bad english.

Minrog8/15/2015, 11:36:30 AM2 votes

In order to destroy an enemy objective ( towers, inhibitors) you either have to:

1.- Out rotate the enemy and deal damage to the objective while they are elsewhere 2. Siege the objective down while the enemy defends 3. Kill the enemy champions and then destroy the objective

Everything you do in the game revolves around getting to these three methods in some form or another. Grabbing the Baron buff lets you do #1 and #2 easier, for example. It is extremely difficult to siege up against a team that is designed to defend and waveclear at their objectives, so the alternative is to kill their champions by drawing them out to a fight (like 5th Dragon and Baron).

Regarding your specific question about Teemo you might want to think about how he can help the team destroy the objectives. When you say you are defending with him, I doubt you mean you are safely clearing whole waves like Viktor does. Helping teammates run away at low health is an insignificant contribution that implies your team is fighting 4 v 5 without you so I wouldn't focus on that either. Teemo is also really bad at offensive sieges because he lacks a steroid to increase his tower damage output. Think of Tristana where she walks forward and puts her bomb on the tower and it's half health in 3 seconds, while her tank line blocks the enemy skill shots.

There will maybe be some mains out here to give you more concrete advice, but my suggestion is to focus on his split pushing ability. So the #1 where you rotate around the map forcing the enemy team to redistribute resources. Trying to get a pick on an enemy champion as they trip over your nearby jungle shrooms. I've seen mid lane Teemo do all right but you have to figure out how to clear minion waves before they take tower aggro or the enemy team will be able to push them over. I'm not sure he can handle all the waveclear duties like Viktor Orianna Azir do so you'll need a backup for when the enemy team groups 5. Somebody like Ryze top or Jinx .