Transition to PVP help

SirOrange921·Apr 26, 2015·1 votes·812 views

Hi all. I've been playing bots for a couple weeks now, level 15, and have been Jinx in nearly every single game played. I just began doing PVP and my first 2 games have been a success but I definitely need a much broader idea of what the game entails. Here are a few things I would like your opinions on:

I love Jinx, and therefore I love being ADC and desire this to be my predominant role. I also know that I still need to work on other ADC's and would like to know about how many I should be comfortable with using and which ones you suggest.

What should be my next role and which champions should I practice with?

Also, I know the bare essentials on the roles and locations of the team but would like any tips you may have about meshing with my team or specifics/tips on my goals as each role.

Thanks in advance to all that reply. I appreciate it.

SirOrange921

15 Comments

LegendaryLemurApr 26, 20152 votes

Alright i'll get the ball rolling here:

I'd suggest picking up sivir and kog'maw for adc's. They both bring some unique factors that can make them useful picks depending on your composition. Sivir provides your team with (dis)engage, while kog'maw busts tanks. I'd also suggest you learn one of the more mobile adcs: ezreal, corki, or lucian. There are other good choices but this would be a decent start.

For your next role, i would suggest support. You'll be laning with a support as an adc, so getting to know that role will help you understand better how you can help each other during laning phase. There are many to choose from, i will throw out a few names that i like: thresh, janna, and annie. Thresh is extremely versatile, while janna is a great disengage support and annie offers fantastic engage.

As far as meshing with your team and specifics on goals: First and foremost prioritize objectives. Kills may look great on your stat sheet, but remember after your team scores a kill during the mid or late game, you should be looking to take a tower, dragon or baron whenever possible.

The first most important thing you should be learning as an adc is to cs properly (farm minions) but i'm guessing you already know that.

Good luck on the fields of justice, summoner!

SirOrange921Apr 26, 20151 votes

Awesome. I was thinking support would be a good place to start as well. So I just try to get my ADC fed and keep them safe, right?

Annie is one of the few others I've tried, she seems to be fun and easy. How does she work as a support?

Thanks!

LegendaryLemurApr 26, 20151 votes

Yep as a support your job is to make the enemy laner's life as difficult as possible so your adc can farm safely. What this means changes depending on your support.

If you are on a heavy engage support like leona you want to try to be a presence in lane, threatening to go all-in on them as a moment's notice. This'll make it hard for their adc to farm and if they try to get the wrong last hit it can end up as a kill for your side. Establishing control of the side brushes can help a lot to zone the enemies away from the minion wave entirely, denying them experience if you are doing really well.

If you are on more of a disengage support like janna, your job is basically to stop the enemy side from engaging on you or your adc. If they try anything you knock them up with a tornado and pop your shield on your lanemate, buffing their ad and hopefully coming out with a favorable trade.

As annie support you have a pretty long range on your autoattacks, so you can use those to harass. Just try to keep your stun up when you can to dissuade the enemies from attacking for the early part of the game. Then at level 6 you have probably the best all-in there is, so get ready to flash tibbers for a double kill (if things go well) --- just make sure you ping first or communicate to your adc so they are ready to follow up!

Edit: I forgot one to mention one of the more important things (it might be obvious to you already, i'm not sure). As a support you need to keep the area warded to dissuade ganks from the jungler or roaming mid laner, and to keep an eye on dragon until your team is ready to take it or the enemy tries and hopefully you can stop them.

You'll want to buy a sightstone ASAP which will give you free wards. I also like to drop a pink ward near my blue/red buff (whichever is nearer bottom lane on your side). Oh and start with a support item for income (you don't last hit minions when you play support so that the adc gets more gold).

Good luck!

SirOrange921Apr 26, 20151 votes

Wow, thanks a lot. A lot of great information in there. I'm going to have to read up on wards, I've actually never used one.

KMannnnn1Apr 26, 20152 votes

My recommendations for good champs to learn each role with are Garen top, Annie mid, Sona support, and Amumu jungle. All really cheap (except sona kindof), really easy to learn, and still fairly strong at higher levels of play.

The most important thing I can tell you for any role (except support) is focus on last hitting minions. Your goal in every game is to get fed, and you get fed by having a lot of gold, and you get lots of easy gold by last hitting. Kills are good, but in terms of risk vs reward, early kills are high risk-high reward, and farming is low risk-moderately high reward at literally all phases of the game.

SirOrange921Apr 26, 20151 votes

Awesome! I have Garen and Annie and I'll pick up the other two next time I play. When Jungling, how do I learn which order to kill the monsters and when to attempt ganks?

Thanks!

KMannnnn1Apr 26, 20152 votes

I hate to just send you to do homework on your own, but a really good place to learn how to jungle is watching high rank players and following their recommendations for different paths.

My personal go-to for all jungle guides is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9U_UPJLasfZYZ0icNI0vBg but there's no shortage of info available if you just do a quick youtube search for "season 5 jungle routes."

SirOrange921Apr 26, 20151 votes

That's perfect! Thanks so much.

Icestar1186Apr 26, 20152 votes

Start at Gromp (the frog thing), then get blue buff and red buff. Then, go around farming. Gank when you meet any of these conditions: No camps to clear, a lane needs help, the enemy jungler is ganking a lane and you are close enough to help, or you see an opportunity to burn a flash/get a kill.

LarasoApr 26, 20152 votes

I'd recommend Warwick for new junglers. He's the cheapest, easiest-to-play jungler in the entire game. His mechanics are braindead simple so you can skip learning the champ and just focus on learning how to jungle.

KMannnnn1Apr 26, 20151 votes

I thought of him as well, but I've hated that champion for about a year now. It's not that I think he's bad, just that he's probably got the least gameplay out of any champion in the game.

Jungle Lux GodApr 26, 20151 votes

To add onto your point, Nunu is also really easy, on par with Warwick, and is about as easy, if not easier.

LarasoApr 26, 20151 votes

He's mechanically simple, but compared to Warwick you have to worry about a lot more things as Nunu. You have to know how to kite with your E, when and when not to ult, who to use your bloodboil on, how to counterjungle, etc.

Warwick is literally just autoattack, press Q and W to kill things faster, and R to make sure they don't get away.

Jungle Lux GodApr 26, 20151 votes

A lot of the strategic stuff you talked about with Nunu is more high-level stuff. Who to blood boil, how to counterjungle, and how to kite with Ice blast are more high-level Nunu stuff, while at a basic level he's still very simple.

The flipside is true for Warwick. You can make the argument that Warwick also has his own stuff to worry about like managing cooldowns, choosing who and when to ult, and kiting enemies as an immobile melee with no CC barring his ult.

Jungle Lux GodApr 26, 20151 votes

As far as roles are concerned, ADC is a lot different from the other roles in terms of champion pools. Most ADC's don't actually fit too well in the other lanes, and meta picks for the other roles don't normally mesh well in the bot lane as an ADC.

As far as ADC's are concerned, I don't play it too often, so I can't really say too much about ADC's to learn. One thing I do think has value for the ADC role is learning some of the caster-based ADC's in the bot lane, as learning one or two caster-carries like Corki, Ezreal, or Lucian really helps learning some of the other roles. Corki is personally my go-to ADC when I have to fill for it, and I personally think he is really good for both mid laners to learn to play ADC's and for ADC's to learn to play mid laners because he casts spells and auto attacks so much.

I would recommend that your next role be support because you likely already have a good understanding of what to do in a duo lane. You already play one half of the bot lane, why not play the other half? I can't really recommend too many supports because I also don't play support a lot. You probably have quite a bit of experience already playing ADC, considering it's your predominant role, so chances are you have already played with and against quite a bit of supports. I would recommend you try learning a support based on what you think you would want to play as a support and what the supports you have played as or against have done.

On a final note, something I feel sounds strange at first but I think has some real merit is to learn how to play your favorite champion in some of the other roles. Jungling with Jinx isn't ideal, so don't try that, but try taking a solo lane with her. You'll get into some unfamiliar lane matchups that you won't otherwise play, but because you see these weird lane matchups you will improve yourself by making you able to better adapt your play to what your opponents are pulling out. In addition, you also get to learn the other lanes in a more familiar environment. For a while I was playing Trundle and Shyvanna jungle, and I didn't know how to play top lane well, so I started playing both of them in the top lane instead of the jungle. I got better at both champions by learning how to lane with them and I learned how to play in the top lane better.