Thoughts on the Tutorial from someone who's been playing for a couple of years.

So, recently a couple of my IRL friends have started playing League. As part of helping them learn, I decided to play through the tutorial again to remind myself what it covered, what I needed to tell them to ignore, and what I really needed to teach them once they completed it.

I knew going into this that the new player experience sucks, but didn't quite remember how absolutely incomplete and poorly organized the tutorial is.

Let's start with what it actually covers well:

1. Turrets. The basics of turrets are covered fine, and it's extremely persistent about reminding you to be careful when there are no minions around. That said, it ideally should explain the other reason you want minions (turrets gain bonus damage reduction if there are no enemy minions near them), and should put a lot more emphasis on the fact that turrets are there to protect your base, not you.
2. Basic usage of the UI and hotkeys.

And yes, that's all that I feel is covered well by the tutorial.

Things that it covers that should be covered more:

1. Last hitting minions. This is mentioned twice, but is really under-emphasized. Last hitting is one of the most crucial skills for a new player to have, and the tutorial doesn't really do much to make sure people understand this. This is what really killed me early on when I started playing, and is a not insignificant part of why I played a lot of support when I started out (I still play a lot of support, but for different reasons).
2. Jungling. This is technically covered, but it's done in a way that's really a distraction from the main tutorial, and it doesn't cover the most important things like , Dragon, and Baron. It should also mention the concept of a jungler as a champ who provides roams the jungle attempting to ensure control of neutral buffs and provide both lane support and kill pressure for the rest of the team. Ideally, there should be some separate tutorial for this, including information about the buff-timers, what each camp provides when it has smite used on it, etc. In particular, I do not feel that teaching when and how to gank is a good idea, as that is extremely dependent on a huge number of factors.
3. Items. First and foremost, get rid of in the basic tutorial. It's not 'A great defensive item' at all, it's a situational build that's only good if you're already stacking armor. If you absolutely want to put some defensive item there, it should be either or . Second, you need to cover the concept of unique passive and active abilities on items and why you shouldn't stack multiples of any full item ( is the only exception to this, and even then it's a very off-meta niche build only viable on a couple of champs). Secondarily, update the recommended items in the tutorial to actually match the current recommendations on the respective champs.

Things it doesn't cover that it should (or should have some separate tutorial covering them):

1. Wards and vision. Do a separate tutorial about wards and vision. It's not something that someone just starting out needs to know, but it's sufficiently important that it should be taught to people before they play PvP. Maybe once in every 6 or so times I complain about my team not warding, somebody says 'What are wards?', and about half the time, it's someone who actually has no idea what wards are.
2. Map awareness. The one comment that is present about map awareness ('You're deep in enemy territory and there are multiple enemy champs who are not visible, be careful of ambushes') really doesn't cover the importance of paying attention to the whole map, especially considering the enemies never actually try an ambush.

Things that aren't covered but should be covered by something before people start playing PvP:

1. Counter play and counter-building. Again, this should probably have a separate tutorial. It's important to know, and it's not covered by almost anything in game our around it, so you either have to have somebody who's willing to explain it, or find out yourself. I'm getting tired of people complaining about their enemy laner being 'OP' when they pick somebody who that champ counters. I'm tired of people building full damage and then wandering why they die when they charge headlong into the enemy team (unless they're one of , , or , in which case I hate to admit I can't help but laugh). I'm especially tired of people building a tank with no magic resist and then proceeding to try and kill the enemy mage.
2. Lane pressure. This is a big one, and is something that should probably be covered in the current summoner's rift tutorial. People need to understand why it's not a good idea to constantly push to the enemy tower, why you should be focusing on CS early game over kills, why losing a tower in lane means you need to be a lot more careful, etc. People shouldn't be learning this for the first time when they play PvP, they should be learning before they even consider playing PvP.

Overall, the tutorial is crap compared to DotA2 or Smite or almost any other MOBA I've seen. I shouldn't have to explain more of the game to someone than the tutorial explains, regardless of what type of game it is. Yes, there are other reasons the new player experience sucks, but this is one that could actually be fixed.