Advice for a new League Player

floons·Nov 14, 2019·1 votes·1,726 views

Hi everyone! I've been playing league for a little bit over a month now and have found myself a good handful of champions that i enjoy playing for each lane! My preferred role is ADC but i don't mind dabbling in other lanes with my other picks to practice and get better handling on the champions moveset. I haven't started playing normal mode yet, still in bots but I have moved on to intermediate where the bots seem to be a lot more smarter. My question is: Is it normal to have such a large pool of characters when starting out? How can I manage who to play and when? Any helpful advice for a newcomer would be welcomed, thanks so much!

7 Comments

CurS1VENov 14, 20192 votes

i would say it really depends on what you want. It can be a little intimidating at first starting out. What i would say is work on Last hitting with your preferred role and whatever champ you currently enjoy the most, only play that champ for now. It's kinda like building blocks, start with a good foundation and then you can learn other things but for now just work on learning how to last hit and get steady gold early, then you can learn how to trade / harass and when and also (if you are ADC) you should look into how to Attack-Move if you don't already know how to do that (https://youtu.be/56oan7GNopQ) that is just 1 guide but there are a lot of ADC guides that talk about how to attack move and things. I would recommend learning this early as well tbh because if you can do this now and work on it, then learning other ADCs will be so much easier since most of them (not all) do dmg by auto attacking.

Dont worry about buying a lot of champs early, work on those small things like CS, Attack Move and how to Harass / Trade, especially in bots! When those games are insanely easy thats when you could look towards blind or draft pick to play vs other players. Trust me when i say some of those bots early on seem super tough but it teaches you about the champs and how they have different times in the game when they are strong and also teaches you when you are strong with your champ.

Attack Move took me awhile to learn tbh maybe you already know how to do it but i would say flat out that movement and positioning (in your role with your champ) is probably the 2nd most important thing to work on as a new player while CS / Last hitting would be the first.

Get super super confident and comfortable with your champs and roles and then you can slowly add another champ to learn to your pool.

Also some champs have similar playstyles especially as ADC so for instance if you learn Caitlyn, then naturally I would say the next champ to learn should be Jinx; they are different but they have kits that are similar enough to make learning the other a little easier (i suck with both tho). If you learn Xayah I personally think Sivir is a good side champ to learn or vice versa, not because they play exactly the same but because their ranges and how they want to use certain abilities weaved in with autos kinda helps.

To practice CS just go into a Practice game and all you do is just practice last hitting minions and after 10 min you see how much you got. So if at 10 min you had 10 cs per min well that is really great, that's pro / challenger level cs, if at 10 min you had 8 cs per min thats still very good same with 7 cs per min it's not bad or anything. Just keep doing that till you get a nice consistently high CS, then you can add a bot and practice laning against that to just work on CS vs the AI and still try and keep that 7+ cs per min. Anything under 60 cs @ 10min with no AI; i would say you need to exit and restart over and over until you get around that mark.

Cind3rkickNov 14, 20191 votes

It really depends on who you play and which role.

Personally I have 1 or 2 champions I can confidently carry a game with for each role.

As and ADC main, I also have 3-4 champions to play ADC for when my main gets banned. That being said, I can play Xayah 80% of the time, so really you only need to know one other aside from your main.

as for deciding who to play: If you are looking for new champions to play, pick ones with similar playstyles to the champions you like. Lets go off Cait for this, She loves to bully her opponent in lane as safely deal damage.

For another ADC why not play Ashe or Varus, they both are traditional marksmen that will sit back in safety and have powerful ranged abilities.

Now lets move to support, which is the easiest to learn as an ADC main since you already know the mechanics of the lane itself. Going off the similar safety, lets try an enchanter like Soraka or Lulu, who can poke from range and have multiple ways to get their ADC out of trouble

I could go on but I think you get the idea, I would reccomend moving to PvP asap though. Its very different to bots in the way the game is played but all the more fun.

Just a warning, blind pick is full of trolls who will ignore what roles others claim. Oh... you will also encounter plenty of smurfs for your first 10 or so matches so dont be discouraged if you end up doing terrible.

TalisidNov 14, 20191 votes

I think new players should focus on the fundamental mechanics that aren't champion dependent, like Creep Score, macro decision making/play making, vision/ward control and teamwork. Of course you can't really get that from a bot game.

If focusing on one champion lets you pay more attention to your mechanics, that's great. If getting to see the game from the perspective of a variety of roles helps you understand those things better, also great. It will depend on how you want to learn.

Cind3rkickNov 14, 20191 votes

{quoted}

I think new players should focus on the fundamental mechanics that aren't champion dependent, like Creep Score, macro decision making/play making, vision/ward control and teamwork. Of course you can't really get that from a bot game.

If focusing on one champion lets you pay more attention to your mechanics, that's great. If getting to see the game from the perspective of a variety of roles helps you understand those things better, also great. It will depend on how you want to learn.

I feel like playing one champion is definitely the way to go,if you find one that you really enjoy, that way you can worry less about how a new champion works and learn more about the actual game itself, Playing multiple different champions and roles would mean that alot of time is spent learning how to play a champion that you will likely not play again for ages once you find one you like.

CominTowardsYaNov 14, 20191 votes

Like they said practice. Watch a youtube beginner video to explain all of it. Laning phase, trading, csing, positioning, champ mastery and builds. You have a lot of work ahead of you.

Troll SlaiyerNov 14, 20191 votes

I never learned how to play the game properly when i started and did juuuuuuuuuuuuust not completely terrible. My point is, find something u enjoy doing and keep doing that thing. u'll get better a it and have the most fun possible.

Dont worry about learning the complicated stress-inducing stuff. The basics come naturally over time, and thats all u really need unless u plan on climbing above diamond honestly.

TarcathosNov 15, 20191 votes

To add to this list of generally good advise, I personally find that it is really helpful to play your first several pvp games played with other players your know. When a dear friend of mine started playing, I took her into a practice match or two and played 1v1 against her using the same champion she enjoyed. Over chat, I started coaching her a bit and taught her a couple of easy combos/tricks that she needed to be aware of for her first pvp games.

Once she was ready we hopped into game together along with her boyfriend. We laughed at some of the little things, and helped her build up her confidence (and her creep scores), and eventually she got the hang of it. Having other people in chat with her that she could talk to in real time and ask questions helped her game play ALOT very quickly.

On a side note, just be aware that playing against bots is basically NOTHING like playing against real players. Bots follow very straightforward consistent patterns, and you will quickly learn that consistency is a problem for human players. Also, depending on the type of person you are, prepare yourself to lose. It is going to happen, probably a fair bit at first. That was another reason that having people playing WITH her was so helpful for my friend. We were all just having fun and goofing around while teaching her, so it was less pressure.

Welcome to the Rifts and I sincerely hope you make friends and slay plenty of enemies! See you on the Fields of Justice!