[Guide] Basic Strategy (part 1!)
####Last updated 5/8/14
Hello and welcome to my weekly [Guide] post. I’m just your friendly neighborhood Gold player that wants to impart some knowledge about general League knowledge through tips, tricks and experience to hopefully help you or a friend of yours through your games. By popular request this guide will be on Basic Strategy, and don’t worry “I just wanted to click a button” guys, I got something for you too :). (Poll below for next guide!)
Pre-30 player? Welcome! Glad to see you're already looking through the forums! This post may confuse you more than help if you're not already experienced with MOBA's. Try starting on my League Basics guide if you want a lighter (and much shorter) list of basic skills to learn, in-game terms, etc.
Don’t like my guides? While I am trying my best I completely understand if you would like something else, so why not try the guides I started from myself at Mobafire.com? But please be sure to tell me what I can improve on before you go! :)
####1)Strategy?
####2)Roles
####3)Team Compositions
####4)Counters
####5)Laning Phase
Part 2:
6)Teamfighting
7)Map Awareness
8)Objectives
9)Morale
#1. http://i.imgur.com/VYdyikp.png Strategy?
Strategy is a general term for your plan, or a set of “if this, do this” reactions you should think about before starting a game or do anything major in-game. I’m not saying you should go through every possible action that could happen, but the things I will talk about I hopefully will get you to notice and eventually these basic “if-then” scenarios will hopefully come naturally during play. Just like a decent chess player is never open for scholar’s mate, I want to put you on an even playing field.
League may be fun as hell, but there can be (and are) a lot of decisions to make even before you hit the loading screen. In normal blinds, it doesn't really matter all too much, but in draft and ranked things like team compositions and counters can be a major factor in a win or a loss.
#####But Sir, I’m an awesome player. I’ll just kill all the things and win. Strategy is for Bronzies!
Nope! That’s not how it works. I’m sure any number of people can tell you about the games they went 20/1/2 or 32/5/7 and still lost. One player cannot carry a team simply by getting kills. Don’t get me wrong kills help, they help a lot, but it won’t mean anything if your team can’t take objectives or win teamfights.
#2. http://i.imgur.com/hehh05j.png Roles
Roles and how much you know about them are very important whether you’re playing it or not. Establishing a role, along with knowledge and practice of other roles can help with what you can expect from your teammates and what they presumably expect of you. This is especially true in solo que, because the lack of immediate communication makes instant reaction on a teammates’ move vital in a good fight.
These are only general guidelines and summaries, if you would like a much more detailed guide on a specific role feel free to vote for it below!
Note: The champions I am associating with a role are not at all set in stone, they are simply champions I feel fit the profile I describe.
###Support
#####In-depth Support [Guide]
The good guy role. A support is known for playing a champion with great cc (crowd control) abilities and their dedication to keeping their team in the fight. Ideally supports do not farm and get gold almost solely through gold income items like Spellthief's Edge, Ancient Coin
and Targon's Brace
as well as the utility mastery and possible Gold/5 runes. The point of this is because although supports are powerful, they usually need a laning partner to capitalize on their potent engages. In other words, most supports can’t do much damage, but can hold enemies down for someone else to beat to the ground. And the one to give as much gold as possible to is their laning partner, as this will almost always be your marksman.
####Supports are known for their crowd control, peel and sustain.
###Marksmen (AD carry)
#####In-Depth Marksman [Guide]
The sustained damage role. The ADC is there for sustained physical damage, and pretty much nothing but that. They are the ones that shred teams and the ones that end up dealing more and more damage the longer the game goes on. As an ADC you have three things things to worry about:
#####Staying alive
Obvious? Yes. Crucial? Even more so. Entire teams will be gunning for you to nip your damage in the bud early. So your skill of kiting and trust in your teammates will always be tested. Most of time there will be at least one person you can’t kite by yourself (looking at you Vi) and that’s where you need to trust your team to peel for you.
#####Farming
The faster you get your items the better you will be. ADC’s are all about the late game damage, but late game is all relative to where you as an individual are. You can hit late game well before anyone else, and thereby chunking people left and right, but that won’t happen unless you last hit well and get the money for your damage.
#####Damage
This is what you’re here for. At the end of the day all the kiting and gold in the world can’t help you if you’re too slow or too scared to deal damage. This could mean re-focusing a target, attacking while your kiting or simply trading well in lane. The fact is damage is your job and few can do it like you.
####Marksmen are not known for their dps (damage per second) but for their total damage dealt.
###Burst Caster
This role is based entirely on a champion getting as much damage out as fast as they can. Usually with the intention of outright killing a squishy target with raw power. These champions are incredibly reliant on their abilities (caster), most notably their ultimate as that is usually where a lot of their "burst" is locked away. This is the main reason most Burst casters go mid-lane, as this lane gets to level 6 the fastest. Champions like Akali, Karthus or Cassiopeia cannot function properly before level 6. While not all burst casters have this disadvantage this is the main reason a lot of them will lane against a fellow burst caster, as they are both weak until then. Burst casters usually have long range and/or high mobility to better place their damage where they want it to be.
####Burst Casters are known for either high AoE damage or high single target damage. This is a generalized term for assassins, mages and other casters.
###Fighter
The insane role. A fighter’s role sounds relatively simple. Kill the enemy carries. However there are several ways to go about this. You could either:
####a) Kill them yourself
####b) Keep your carries alive and let them kill everyone or
####c) Push the carries away so they can be killed later without the rest of their team.
There will almost always be this choice, and whichever one is the best option depends entirely on the situation. Most of the time though you will hopefully find yourself in the middle of the enemy team wreaking havoc. Fighters have inherently overpowered kits because of their role of jumping into the middle of an enemy team and killing targets. He/she needs to be tanky enough to survive while also doing enough damage to be a threat. Too little of either and they’re a tank or an assassin. Fighters are almost always seen top-lane. Also my personal favorite role. :)
###Tank
Tanks function very similar to what I call “raw supports”, but tanks fulfill the same duties less by augmenting an ally and more by screwing around with enemies via crowd control and debuffs. A tank’s purpose in life is to take as much damage as possible while trying to make the engage as favorable as possible for their team. This can be done by locking down a high priority target, keeping enemies off their high priority target (usually your marksmen), or simply by absorbing all of the enemy team’s damage so none can be used on your allies.
####Tanks are known for their initiation, defenses, crowd control and general unkillable-ness. Note that some fighters like Nasus, Olaf and Renekton can function like tanks as well.
###Jungler
#####In-depth Jungle [Guide]
The jungler is a very versatile role that involves a champion without a specific lane. This champion roams the jungle (the area between lanes) to either reinforce lanes under pressure or to contribute to a kill. This role is the primary balance changer in laning phase and is incredibly dependent on Map Awareness and foresight, as he/she needs to be heading to a lane before something happens so they can be there when it happens. There are 3 common ways to jungle, which depend both on preference and champion choice. Junglers will always farm jungle monsters as much as possible as that is their main source of gold and experience.
#####Ganking (Assassin) Jungle 
This jungle preference focuses on jumping in on a lane that's near your team's turret and getting kills either for the jungler or the laner. This playstyle is heavily dependent on gap closers and damage, so is best executed with assassins or damage heavy fighters.
#####Farming (Defensive) Jungle 
This playstyle focuses on staying in your own jungle only helping lanes to cover or counter-ganking. This gives the jungle higher gold income than usual with the intention of making themselves more useful after laning. However, this puts additional pressure on laners to get kills by themselves during this time. This idea is still new-ish due to it being recently viable with the S4 jungle.
#####Countering (MUAHAHA) Jungle
This playstyle focusing not on your own jungle, or your lanes, but on killing, starving and otherwise shutting down the enemy jungle as hard as you can. Any champion can counter jungle (steal enemy jungle camps)to a point, but a select few can truly get away with complete shut downs, as a decent team will have laners come to help their jungler. This means anyone who can pull this strategy off has to have stealth and major juking capabilities to be effective.
###Junglers stay in the jungle, helping allied lanes and hurting enemy lanes where they deem themselves best used.
#3. http://i.imgur.com/NV9FbCm.png Team Comps #####Example Team Compositions
This is one place where your knowledge of champions and their abilities can be tested. The more you know the better. Team comps are based primarily around two things, champion synergy, and initial strategy.
Synergy is the term for, simply put, how well one champion works with another. Several factors go into this and I could do a whole other post on different champion synergies, but the basic stuff to look for is cc, mobility and staying power. An example of a good synergy pair is Leona + Caitlyn, Caitlyn has enough of a range to capitalize on Leona’s dives easily, with the bonus that a good Caitlyn can place a trap underneath someone taking Leona’s combo. Another is Lissandra mid with a high damage jungle, like Pantheon or Kha’zix. She has enough cc for the both of them when they gank mid.
Initial Strategy doesn’t really come up in normals, but in ranked it’s always good to consider what your team could be going for to make a win easier. Your team could have a very good early game, for example, and you can choose a champion that focuses on improving that good early game. Or your team could be a late game time-bomb, a champion like Anivia would be a good choice because she can stall several people at a turret by herself if your early game gets hit hard. Keep in mind “Even the best laid plans…” though, as any strategy will still rely on you and your teams’ skill within the game. Working with a good strategy simply increases your capacity to do well.
#4. http://i.imgur.com/hVLXdCJ.png Counters #####List of champions counters: Aatrox-Elise | Elise-Karthus | More incoming |
As with synergy, counters are an incredibly broad topic with quite a few gray areas that are open to interpretation, but knowing how to counter your laning opponent will not only make your laning phase much easier but make his/hers harder and therefore less of a presence in a teamfight (in an ideal world). You will again have to use common sense and champion knowledge to your advantage here, think about a champion’s range, their damage, their tankiness. Does your champion have a decent chance against that? Is there a combo they can use to hit you without you hitting them? Can you kill them at all after early game?
Here are some (but nowhere near all) extreme cases of counters, usually known as Hard Counters:
Advantage vs. Disadvantage
vs. Ranged harass combined with a movement speed boost prevent Darius from retaliating.
vs. Riven is incredibly vulnerable to silences.
vs. Silence with extreme mobility prevent Lux from retaliating.
vs. Graves can full combo before Vayne can overcome his passive with 3 hits.
vs. A practiced Thresh can deny Zenith blade with Flay. As well as ranged harass.
One very very important thing to know however is that just because you are countered does not mean you are going to lose, it simply means you are going to have to work a lot harder to break even. Don’t cry “gg” just because you’re going up against a counter. You always have a chance, not to mention it feels a lot better wining against someone you shouldn't have than the other way around.
#5. http://i.imgur.com/1zNQLFk.png Laning Phase #####[Guide Resource] Game Timeline
The laning phase is the second “phase” of the game after possible jungle invades where you and your allies stick to your lanes and keep the fighting within them. With the exception of your jungler or a particular adventurous mid-lane no one should be leaving lane except to back. This phase is where individual skill is met head to head, as you will be dueling (or 2v2 in bot’s case) your counterpart to try to eek out more cs or possibly a kill. Laning is where you will be getting the majority of your cs, so doing well here is very important, but not required, to win. Keep an eye on your enemies’ items, and if you’re experienced enough, what abilities they are leveling as that may help you play against them in your lane.
Things to look out for during laning are:
- mia’s
- enemy jungle
- dueling potential
- your enemies’ early build
