Tips for anyone willing to listen.

Tips for anyone willing to listen.

To win: 1- Level up: Making sure you get experience is key. Every level you are ahead of your opponent makes you better in every base statistic than they are. Usually a player falls behind in level if they harass too much, roam, or get zoned out.

HARASSING TOO MUCH- remember, creeps come first ESPECIALLY EARLY where a level advantage is even more notable. Don't hesitate to use your abilities to last-hit minions. ROAMING- Moving around is great, but you must not stop farming for long periods of time hunting their jungler or waiting to ambush someone. While you are away, they are out-leveling you. ZONED OUT- It's likely your enemy is spending most of their time HARASSING TOO MUCH. Judge the timing of their cooldowns and prepare to dodge their skill shots. In addition to the enemy missing some of their creeps, they will also run out of ammo (mana/energy/etc) and have to back. If they have close autoattack and yours is ranged, look for opportunities to whittle down their health with impunity. Don't berate teammates for not coming to help you if 2 enemies keep turret-diving and killing you. They are either ROAMING or splitting their experience points, and also racking up a kill streak bounty. You will suffer when this happens, but they will soon be outleveled by your teammates, who should proceed to decimate their team mid-to-late game.

2- Positioning: Being in the right place at the right time makes your tactical awareness shine to those who are watching you play...either that or they are screaming "LUCKY B****RD!" Every time you swoop in at the most vital moment of a fight to hand your team victory on a silver platter. Whether it's by an aptly-timed crowd-control or just a swift cleanup, if you want to look good and rack up wins, positioning is the way to do it. More than anything else, the minimap is your friend in this endeavor. Most of the time people that blame teammates when they die are just embarrassed because the death was entirely preventable. All they had to do was glance at the minimap, see that there were no enemies, and back off to make sure they weren't in the crosshairs. Instead, they keep on pushing their luck. It'll bite your backside every time. THE DRAGON- Prepare the area around the dragon pit about 70 seconds in advance of the dragon's respawn. Vision in the back (blue side) is important. Watch the enemy on the minimap...are they approaching, or oblivious? Which of them could steal?

3- Survive: Your number one priority is to stay alive because you lose too much gold and experience each time you die- what I mean is, you lose time that you could otherwise be farming. There are occasions that warrant sacrificing for the sake of the team, such as finishing an enemy who has a high bounty (if you don't have a bounty yourself) or using an ability to help multiple teammates (or a teammate with a high bounty) at a key moment. Greed is the number one cause of death. Before chasing an enemy who is low on health, ask yourself, "Where are my enemies? Am I being led into a trap? Is there a better use of my time than chasing this jack***?" There's always a better use of your time. While they are making snide remarks and waiting to recall, you are farming and outleveling them. Making an enemy run away is useful, but not if a champion at 1 health is kiting you around when you could be, for instance, taking their blue, or setting wards for the dragon that will soon be available again, or ganking their midlaner.

IT IS NOT, IN FACT, "WURF".

4- Target tanks last: This one is the reason for this post. I can attribute almost every loss to our team- myself included, despite my attempts to watch who I'm attacking- targeting someone with high toughness. It is a mistake virtually every time you do it. When your team loses a fight, look at the health remaining on each of the enemies. If they have a mage, support, and carry still alive and their tank has a fraction of health left, your team has just victimized itself because you could've spent a fifth of the damage that was dealt to the tank to, say, their carry, who would have died twice. Do everything in your power to commit your damage to a more fragile target. Even if their tank is on you ing you into the hereafter, you can screw their team over a lot harder by landing even one ability on their carry than if you spent everything you had on their tank. It's counter-intuitive, but it's most important to do this when their tank is in your back lines. If you aren't peeling, you should be killing the softer targets your enemy has presented you with. Get the more fragile champions out of the way first!

5- Penetration: Items that penetrate armor and resistance are rather limited, and extremely powerful because they increase the effectiveness of any items you buy for damage output. Use penetration runes, masteries, and items when you can. Purchase your penetration and damage items before your defensive ones unless your champion specifically gains damage from certain defensive items, like Galio or Rammus, okay?

6- Balance: No matter how much of a badass you are, resist the urge to dump everything you have into damage. Grab your damage items first, but once you are outfitted with some penetration and damage, save a couple of your item slots for items that are defensive in nature, such as Thornmail or Warmogs. They are expensive and yes, you are giving up some damage potential, but sooner or later you'll be in a bad position or just get surprised by someone else who is in a bad position. Having some extra health will make it harder for someone to stomp you out, buying your team time to either get to you or initiate a counterattack from a favorable position against the opponents. If someone builds nothing but defense on a champion, this is also a great way to severely undercut their threat level in teamfights- ensuring you can focus more on their team's damage dealers. The only thing more useless than a tank who can't provide a threat is an afk.

7- Mute: If someone is distracting you during the game, mute them. Pull up the scoreboard, find that person's champion, and click the little speaker icon at the end of the row on the right side of the box containing their information. A small X will appear on it.

Deal with them in the post-game chat. Nothing but misery stems from attempting to resolve disagreements during the game. As soon as you start typing to them, you are wasting your time and diluting your focus...and without fail the moment you start typing is the moment the enemy decides to initiate a gank, teamfight, lane push, objective, whatever. Game time is for gaming. Post-game chat is for resolving disagreements, trying to give unasked-for advice, etcetera. This exact message will repeat three more times in case you read over it too quickly and/or also for emphasis. Mute during game time, deal with issues in post-game chat. MUTE THEM DURING GAME TIME, DEAL WITH ISSUES IN POST-GAME CHAT. _MUTE THEM DURING GAME TIME, DEAL WITH ISSUES IN POST-GAME CHAT. _

Love, Invisible Ally.