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Level 29 and still at a loss.

YukiSnake·10/3/2016, 3:17:16 AM·2 votes·619 views

Hello, I've been playing the game for at least a few months now, I picked up the game to play with my friend who is pretty good at the game. Then again, he has played for years now, so of course he knows what he's doing. I know I won't get really good over night but something bothers me, I just can't seem to get a hang of the game no matter what I do. My main champions consist of Lux, Ahri, and Veigar. I know I could do with some more options but I'm just telling you, I have found my first few mains.

My main problem really comes from early game, I don't quite understand how people are able to combat other champions so early. I can't seem to manage my mana either when I'm farming or anything like that. I have good item paths for my champions, and I have a mastery page for each champion I play, even if it by some chance isn't the three I mentioned above. Late game isn't too bad, but obviously how I perform early game factors in greatly.

I know what my skills do but I don't know when to go in for the kill either. I know it's a team game, and I shouldn't worry about racking up the most kills in the whole match, but I want to successfully hold my own and do well. Tips?

8 Comments

Brutalitops0110/3/2016, 4:27:05 AM4 votes

League overall takes years of practice to get good at. I've been playing for 6 years, but for most of that time didn't really play to improve, and now that I've started playing to improve, I'm noticing a massive difference in my skill compared to just last year. There are a few things I highly suggest you do to help you.

There's an option in the esc menu that makes it so that your abilities will display their mana costs in the top right corners of their icons. Turn this on, very helpful for making sure you know you have enough mana.
Read your abilities carefully. Not just to know what they do, but what EXACTLY do they do? How do they scale with your stats you're buying? How much base damage do they have? Do they do anything extra that isn't exactly conveyed the best in-game that you didn't realize before? Ahri's Q is a good example. It gives her movement speed while it's flying, and the return deals true damage (ignores resistances), which is very good to know. Ahri is a pretty safe mage who's all about positioning and kiting; skills you learn on her can be transferred better than most mages over to ADC, and because she's so safe and one of the most well-rounded champions in the game, she's easily maintained a spot among the best mages since her release, even after some nerfs and a very powerful item that she used a lot (Deathfire Grasp) being removed. Also, one thing you notice even diamond players doing on their mains (Redmercy is a great example) is looking through their abilities to see exactly how much damage they'll do before going in for a trade. Knowing your costs and your damage output is just as important as knowing when you can use them.
Don't hesitate to do something you think you can get away with, but don't do something that you know you can't. You'll need to learn your champion's limits before you know what you can get away with and what you can't, so don't hesitate to do some experimenting. If you die or lose the fight, well, now you know that you can't get away with that for the future. Just be sure not to try and 1v5 or something crazy like that, k?
Know what the items do. I could name every item in the game and exactly what it does, at least for what's available on Summoner's Rift. Even if you know what items you want to buy, you need to know what your opponent's items do, too. For example, your opponent rushed this: and you rushed this: . Do you know what stats their item does? What's its passive? How will it impact your likelihood of being able to kill them (and I guarantee you that item will)?
Ward. Ward, ward, ward, ward. Light that map up, and don't be afraid to drop 75 gold on a pink if you have enough. Lux, and Ahri especially are strong pushers, so if you're just willy-nilly using mana on the waves to push, you will get ganked by the enemy jungler in PvP games. A lot. Maybe not at first, but a good jungler will punish you pushing that hard.
Know how, and when, to freeze your lane, and how, and when to push. Freezing is when you're trying to keep the wave where it is, and should usually be done when it's around the middle of the lane or just outside the enemy's tower. You do this by clearing your wave at about the same speed as your opponent is clearing his. Pushing is when you're trying to move the wave forward in the lane, and, for mid lane, will mostly be used when you want to go for a roam or before you back. Before you roam, always push the wave into the enemy turret so that you can disappear into the fog of war, and by the time they notice, it'll be too late for them to notify their lane that they're roaming to that you're gone. Also, usually it'll make it impossible for them to push the wave back into your turret, so this way they can't punish you for roaming by dealing damage to your turret and making you miss farm. Push the wave in whenever the enemy is out of the lane so that they miss farm to the turret, and pushing before you back is also a good plan for the same reason as before you roam: more difficult to punish.
Do NOT blame the jungler when you get outskilled by your opponent. This is just a personal thing, but a lot of mid and top lane players will get stomped on by their opponents and then spend the rest of the game yelling at their jungler, no matter how good the jungler is doing, for not camping and saving their lane. If you're gonna do poorly, recognize and learn from your own mistakes. It's your job to win the lane, nobody else's, and blaming the jungler for your mistakes doesn't help you improve. Using something like replay.gg or a recording program can also be good ideas. Replay.gg is a website that automatically records all your games and then you can just enter a summoner name and watch them back, see what you did well and what you messed up, and then learn from your mistakes.
Keep your experimenting out of ranked. You have your set 3 mains for your primary role, good, but that role is the most popular one in the game. What's your secondary going to be? I'm personally an ADC/Jungle main. Have set up a relatively small champion pool for the primary role and secondary role you want to play, and learn those champions inside and out. Imagine you've climbed to, say, Platinum. Plat isn't seen as high-tier or particularly good, despite it being well above the average rank (silver 5), but you played only mid lane to get there. Now, you start getting matched up with your secondary role more often, but you don't know the role as well. You're pretty much guaranteed to fall in rank because you're not a platinum, say, top lane player. You're a platinum mid lane player. So, pick champions in your main AND secondary role and learn how to play them at the level you're playing at. Variety is bad when you're trying to climb the ladder, but very good when you're still learning the game. It's good that you have your select few mid lane main champions picked out already, but I recommend you play every role and as many different champions as possible to learn just what different champions can do in different situations and what different roles are likely to do at different times. It's also a good idea to look around on the Game Info section of the website, specifically looking at champions. It shows you how they scale and how much damage their bases do. It's good to know how much damage that Zed should be able to do to you and to be able to predict when he's gonna do it so that he doesn't surprise you.

Overall, League is a pretty complicated game to learn, but it's a ton of fun and you won't regret deciding to put in the time to learn it.

ShadowDragonAxe10/3/2016, 3:26:30 AM3 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfmm40Ow-T8

Orinne10/3/2016, 3:47:16 AM1 votes

At least in terms of runes, wait until you have enough to purchase Tier 3 ones and get those. You shouldn't really be trying to split more than 2 different kinds of a type of rune, eg. you have 4 different runes for gylphs.

Eventually, try to replace some of the more useless ones you're using. 0.5 gold every 10 seconds is a whopping 3 gold every minute, so it's essentially not doing anything for you.

Seems like at the moment, the most popular mage runes are Magic pen marks, health seals (scaling or flat, depend on your style), flat AP gylphs and flat AP quints though if you want to be more defensive, Armor seals and MR gylphs are also good generic runes to purchase.

Head Connoisseur10/3/2016, 12:46:27 PM1 votes

If you want to add me in-game, I can take you through some 1v1 custom games to show you how to play the early laning phase. Ign is the same as my boards name

Angry Monster10/3/2016, 12:59:31 PM1 votes

some quick tips,

your masteries you are splitting to much which is bad. Stick 2 trees not 3. 12/18/0 is the most common for mages.

You may or may not be aware but your runes need to be cleaned up, you be surprised what the properly tuned rune page will do.

You need to learn how to last hit as a mage with autos. Use spells as a harass for the enemy champ or to clear multiple creeps at the same time. If you are CSing with spells it usually means you are on the defensive.

It is ok to buy a secound doran ring if needed.

YukiSnake10/6/2016, 8:44:26 PM1 votes

Thank you all for the advice, this helps greatly. I've been looking into good item pathing and mastery pages through Moba Fire so I feel like I'm not too far behind in some ways. Thanks again.