How to understand item builds?

murderant·3/6/2017, 2:25:15 AM·1 votes·7,883 views

I'm relatively new to League of Legends (maybe a little over 3 months of exp.) and each day that passes I get more comfortable with how the game is played, the only issue I am having with the game is understanding items and why you would want to build a champion a specific way. I understand that abilities and passives play a big part, but how do I learn to build effective items for the champs that I play or understand why I would build a champ the way that its meant to be. If some one would be kind to explain to me how to easily understand items it would be greatly appreciated. I'm not looking how to build a specific champ I'm trying to learn how to build all or any champ I play and how to understand items better.

8 Comments

PureSilvrr3/6/2017, 2:28:34 AM1 votes

what champions do you play?

Micbran3/6/2017, 2:30:00 AM1 votes

Depends on the champion and the enemy comp.

Zezockary3/6/2017, 2:36:50 AM1 votes

What I do is when the game is loading up I type my username in here: http://www.lolnexus.com

That will load up a page about your game, and at the top will be builds that higher rank people have recently used. You can click the arrows on the side to scroll through them if you don't like the first one, it also shows what runes they use, mastery spread, and what order they leveled their skills in.

You can also check the rune pages and such of your opponents. For example, when I am playing Talon I look for anyone who doesn't have the standard 9 armor seals to pick on early game.

EDIT: Over time you will find out different things you can try for your character against certain champions. For example as Talon I would build hexdrinker if I was expecting a rough lane against a mage, but I wouldn't build it against a Zed.

Grimspeake3/6/2017, 2:37:51 AM1 votes

you try to build your champion to their strength and the other teams strengths. like if ur a xin zhao against a heavy ap comp, u want mr and something to compliment ur innate sustain so building a spirit visage would be good. its kinda hard to explain because its a very diverse thing and is super dependant on the situation. it mostly comes from experience and using ur best judgement.

Mysticman893/6/2017, 3:03:20 AM1 votes

I think I'd probably work backwards from probuilds. So look up whatever champion, and see what a pro player built on that champion in a particular game, and then try to figure out the 'why' behind each item (and for bonus points, why in that particular order). Sometimes items are situational based on comps, other times certain items in certain orders are simply mathematically more efficient, other times there are playstyle preferences, or other times it may be due to forced back timings. (Note that in some cases, people have actually pulled out spreadsheets to compare DPS of various builds at different points on different champs, so optimal builds aren't always obviously optimal until you do the math.)

It's much easier to look at a champion and be given the 'answer' (as pros are usually going to be building optimally, albeit not always) and then justify it yourself, than try to look at a champion, consider all the items out there, and try to figure out which ones are best. Then once you've figured out why a pro built all the items they did on a certain champion in a certain game, do it again for a different champ. Repeat until most probuilds are more or less intuitively obvious to you.

Then try to figure out builds for champs you didn't look up pro builds for using your now somewhat developed intuition. See how what you comes up with differs from what the pros did, and try to figure out why the difference(s) exist.

Beyond that, you can playtest builds. Don't do it in ranked, but once you've got a pretty good understanding of item builds, anything that you think is worthwhile to test out is probably plausibly viable enough that people in normals won't notice/care. (Note I said once you've got a good understanding of item builds though, theres no reason to 'test' AP Garen for example. People have done it, but they're knowingly trolling and/or taking advantage of the fact their 'true' elo is somewhat higher than the one they're playing at, not actually testing it.)

Paying attention to how pro builds change between patches can also be insightful if you can get a feel for how significant buffs/nerfs are and what sort of rippling effects from even non-item changes can result in changes in item builds.

Hallbuster3/6/2017, 3:04:48 AM1 votes

You buy the essential items first and then move onto the situational items.