If you just started playing League, here is a list of things you should know,+easy champions to play

HI there. If you just joined our game community, I welcome you with wide arms. League is a very hard game to go into headfirst, as the game has a lot of things to think about (we have 126 as of the time of the writing of this page). On top of champions, you probably were also introduced to other aspects such as runes, masteries, and items. There are many, many things to look at and your first game of league you probably wont notice 50% of them. While there is a tutorial to the game, it is generally accepted by the community that the tutorial is poorly made. while it introduces you to the concepts, such as what buttons do what, and how to shop, it doesn't explain what to look for in a ability, or what items to look for in the shop.

My purpose of this guide is to give you newer players some introduction. This may look like a bible sized guide that fits in a Elder Scrolls game, but I will make it as simple as I can. If you still have questions after this guide is posted, I will try to answer them and I'm sure other players will answer you as well.

TERMS I WILL BE USING AND YOU WILL SEE IN CHAT THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Ability Power: (normally shortened to AP) Stat used to increase magic damage Aoe: Means area of effect, used to refer to an ability that doesn't hit a champion but rather the ground, and champions in that area are effected by the ability. Assist: Anyway of aiding in a kill without actually being the person who gets the kill. CC, healing, damage are ways to get an assist. Attack Damage: (normally shortened to AD) Stat used to increase physical damage and auto attacks. Auto Attack (AA): Sometimes called your basic attack, this is what you do when you right click on a target. Buffs: A type of effect that makes you stronger. This may come from an ability or an item. Abilities that increase your stats is an example of a buff. Carry: Someone who deals a lot of damage. Normally used to refer to the marksman (AD Carry) but can refer to mages as well (AP carry) Creep Score (CS): The little guys that walk into lane in groups of 6-7 are called minions, but long ago were called creeps. Your creep score is the counter of how many creeps you have killed. Crowd Control (CC): These are abilities that stop someone by means of disabling. Slows, stuns, roots (cannot walk), silences (cannot cast spells) are the most common forms of CC. "farmed" or "fed" :Used to refer to how relatively well you are doing. If you have more gold than your opponent from either kills or creeps , you are more fed than your opponent. Gank: When someone comes into someone else's lane for a kill. If Mid goes Bot to get a kill, that's a gank. Kill: Pretty straight forward. You kill a player Skillshot: Refers to abilities that are not targeted and used like a missile. Normally fly in a straight line, but can be ground targeted as well. Sustain: Refers to the champions ability to continue staying in lane. Can refer to both health sustain and mana sustain. Teamfight: When both teams are fighting each other. Generally only called a teamfight when at least 4 players of one team is in it, although a 4v1 isn't really considered a teamfight as much as a slaughter.

Stats and what they do Attack Damage: Increases the damage of auto attacks and abilities that scale with AD. Abilities that scale with AD will have the scaling number in orange Ability power: Increases the damage of most spells. Spells/abilities that scale with AP will have the scaling number in blue/green Health: Amount of damage you can take. When this hits 0, you die. Mana: Resource for most champions to use their spells. There are certain champions that use an alternate resource, or no resource, or even use health as a resource. HP/MP regen: How much of the respective stat you regenerate in 5 seconds. Mostly shortened to HP/5 and MP/5. Armor: Reduced physical damage taken. The reduction is calculated by multiplying your health by 1+(your armor/100), and this is called effective health. For instance, if you have 1000hp and 100 armor, you have 1000x(1+(100/100))= 2000 effective health vs physical attacks. This may seem complicated, so you can also say that, in this case, 100 armor cuts physical damage in half. 200 armor would cut physical damage by two thirds. Magic Resist: Uses the same calculations for armor, but is used to reduce magic damage. Please note There is a damage type called True Damage. This can not be reduced by anything, even abilities/effects that say reduces all damage. If the spell deals 500 true damage, it will always deal 500 true damage. Run speed: how fast your champion moves. Critical Strike Chance:Chance that your auto attacks can deal critical damage, doubling the damage of the attack. There are items and skills that effect how much your crits will do, but normally it is double damage. Note that, unless the ability says otherwise, abilities can not crit, this includes abilities that apply to auto attacks. Cooldown reduction: Reduces your ablities cooldowns by a percentage, which is capped at 40%. Armor/Magic Penetration: Ignores an amount of the armor or magic resist of the champion you are attacking. if you have 15 armor pen and attack a champion with 50 armor, they effectively have 35 armor. you attacking a champion does not reduce their amor or magic resist, so your armor/magic pen does not increase your allies damage. Attack speed: How many auto attacks you do in 1 second, capped at 2.5 attacks per second.

Rundown of what roles do Tank: Generally someone who can take a lot of damage. If your opponent has a lot of damage, a tank can stop him. Normally come with some form of cc or another way to gain assists. Not generally for getting kills but for getting assists

Fighter: Formerly called bruisers, they are a mix of a Tank and a damage dealer. Many tanks can be built as a fighter and vise-versa. Deal more damage than tanks, absorb more damage than regular damage dealers.

Mage: Someone who's main source of damage is from casting spells (sometimes called abilities).

Assassin: Someone who normally has only damaging abilities (mostly no cc at all) and moves around quickly using their spells in a combo to gain kills.

Marksman: (normally called ADC, or AD carry)Someone who's main source of damage is their auto attacks. These champions generally build raw damage and will end up doing the most damage in the game. Normally are very weak in the early stages but are incredibly strong late game.

Support: Someone who doesn't deal damage but instead makes their team stronger through either giving them more stats, healing, or using CC on the enemies.

What are the lanes and who goes and why Top: Top lane is top/left lane. generally the tank/fighter is sent here. Because the top lane is left alone for a long time, players will sometimes refer to it as an island, as there are some games where the top laners will only stay in lane until the 20-25 minute mark. The role for a top laner is to make sure you can control what happens in teamfights through CC or taking out another player.

Jungle: The jungle is all of the forest looking areas, consisting of the four cardinal directions. Honestly if you are new I would advise not going into the jungle as a lane until you are very experienced in the game OR you have a friend that can explain how to do it, and even then I would still be cautious. Jungle is considered to be a role as well as a lane. The role of the jungler is generally to gank other lanes to give them an advantage. Jungler goes mid to make it a 2v1, giving your mid a kill, and therefor an advantage in that lane. There are other parts of the jungle role such as taking objectives (dragon for example) but like I said jungle is a very complex role and i suggest you don't touch it for a fair amount of time.

Middle: (normally called mid) The lane in the center of the game, generally considered the most important because it is the shortest line from your base to the enemy base. Please note that while I said most important does not mean you should play mid to learn to play NOR do I mean that mid is captain NOR do I mean that mid will teach you the most about the game. Generally a mage or assassin is sent to the mid lane because they have strong gank potential and are able to go to either top or bot for ganking.

Bottom: (normally called bot) The lane on the bottom/right part of the map. Normally the marksman and the support is sent here. The marksman, who has a weak early game, normally needs some time of help, so that they are able to stay protected, which is where the support comes in. Support's job in bot is to make sure the marksman stays safe so they can farm up to the late game where they will carry.

Reasons we stick certain roles where Top: Like I mentioned earlier, top lane is called an island, and so we normally send tanks or fighters there to fight the lane because they can hold their own without much help. Most top laners will take the teleport summoner spell though, so they can gank lanes or help take dragon. There is also a strategy called splitpushing, were you stick one champion top and the rest bot, so that the enemy team will focus on your 4 players bot, hope that your team can either win the fight or stall the enemy team, and your top laner can push out the lane and take out turrets. if the bot lane starts losing then top can teleport bot to help. I dont suggest using this strategy unless you are fairly experienced.

Jungle: We normally send a fighter in the jungle because they have ways to defend themselves as they have to take damage from the monsters and they have to kill the monsters, so they also need offense. Most junglers have strong auto attacks or some ability that makes their auto attacks stronger, and also some ability that heals them or makes them take less damage such as a shield.

Mid: Considered the most important lane, like I said, we normally send mages or assassins here. They normally are good earlier in the game, so they are used to defend their lane and take the opponents lane.

Bot: We send 2 players bot because of the dragon. Dragon gives strong buffs, so since we pair a support and a marksman means we have 2 players near such an important objective so we can protect it or take it if needed.

Runes I would suggest not touching runes until your profile is level 20, because before that you cannot purchase the strongest runes, and if you do purchase runes before that, they cannot be sold or upgraded, so become a waste of ip. By the time you are 20 you should know what you are doing for the most part. ONE THING I WILL SUGGEST When you hit 20, purchase 9 flat armor seals and 9 flat magic resist glyphs. Any champion can use them, and are never wasted.

Masteries: Unlike runes, these are free, and you can have 20 pages of them as well for free. The trees are labeled for offense, defense, and utility, and they are quite complex so I cant explain them too well without giving you a 3 hour lecture. You will learn these as you play, so just use your point you get every time you level up.

Summoner Spells You are allowed 2 summoner spells on your champion. You do not have access to all spells when you very first play, but ill list all of them for easy explanation. Barrier. Protects you for a set amount of damage for a few seconds. {{summoner:2}} Clairvoyance. Gives you vision from anywhere on the map for 5 seconds. can be used as a far away ward. Clarity. Gives you and your teammates nearby 40% of your mana. if you find yourself running out of mana every now and then, consider this. Cleanse. Gets rid of all cc on you. Exhaust. Reduces all damage (except true damage, as i explained) dealt by an enemy champion. good for supports to use on a champion trying to kill the adc. Flash. Teleports your champion a small distance. Good for escaping over a wall or getting closer to a low health enemy champion. This is the most used spell in the game, since it is arguably the most useful powerful with its ability as a escape or a chase ability. Ghost. Gives you more run speed for a few seconds. good for running away or for chasing. Heal. Heals you and one friendly champion. Ignite. Deals true damage to an enemy champion for a few seconds, and cuts heals on that champion by half. Smite. Deals true damage to a minion or monster. If you are going in the jungle, ALWAYS take smite. Teleport. After a few seconds, teleports you to a friendly tower, ward or minion of your choice. good for getting back into lane after recalling or for ganking a lane.

Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards Wards: I could argue that wards are the most important part of the game. You know how people say that information wins wars? That's what wards do. They give you information. Where your enemies are, what they are doing, what items they have, where they are going. I too was a young upstart who just played his first game of league, and I didn't know what a ward was besides a waste of money. Trust me when i say this, if you use the power of a ward, you will cut down the deaths in a game by at least half. Just for you to understand that I am being serious with that, When i was in Bronze 5 (the lowest rank in the entire game) two years ago, teams would have about 50-60 kills each. I am now in gold 4, and my games normally have 20-30 kills on each team. In the championship games, teams rarely break 20 kills. I can tell you that the biggest difference between these games is equal parts skill and wards. Use Sight wards to see if the enemy jungler is coming to your lane for a gank, so you can back off to safety. Use Vision wards to destroy the enemy sight wards, allowing your jungler to gank without the enemy knowing. When you know what is happening, you know what you need to do to make your team win. If you ever hear someone say that it is only the support's job to ward, they are wrong. If i ever hear you say that, YOU are wrong.

Champions to use in each lane I will preface this by saying that all the champions that cost 450 ip are easy to play. You can normally tell the difficulty of a champion by the length of the description for their abilities. for example: Annie's q ability: Annie hurls a Mana infused fireball, dealing damage and refunding the Mana cost if it destroys the target.

Lee Sin's q ability: Sonic Wave: Lee Sin projects a discordant wave of sound to locate his enemies, dealing physical damage to the first enemy it encounters. If Sonic Wave hits, Lee Sin can cast Resonating Strike for the next 3 seconds. Resonating Strike: Lee Sin dashes to the enemy hit by Sonic Wave, dealing physical damage plus 8% of their missing Health.

You can tell that Lee Sin is a much more complex champion because the description of his q ability is about 3 times longer than Annie's.

I would also suggest that any champion listed as assassin you should avoid. Most assassins require very fast button presses and in specific orders. For example. Katarina's combo normally goes q-e-w-r. You generally should press these in less than 1 second and in that order. New players will probably mess up the order if they go to fast, or will go too slow if they try to get the order right.

Don't play champions if their abilities have multiple uses (3 of Lee Sin's abilities can be used twice, so are quite complex) or have factors that effected by things other than the ability itself ( Syndra's ult goes up in damage if you have multiple orbs created by her q, and uses her orbs and minions as a projectile for her w and e)

Top: Garen. Probably one of the easiest champions to play, because of his simple abilities. has a silence, defense boost, and his passive helps sustain him. Doesn't use mana so that is one less thing to worry about.

Dr.Mundo He all about his ability to sustain, because he has 2 abilities (his passive and his ultimate) that regenerate his health. Hard to kill, so will allow you to stay in lane longer. He uses his health instead of mana to use his abilities, but unless you are constantly using them, you should be fine.

Maokai. High sustain with his passive, good fighting power alone or in a group. Has good CC.

Malphite. He has a passive that gives him 10% of his max health as a bonus shield, that refreshes after a few seconds of not taking damage. this makes his sustain strong. He will teach you how sustain can be a very strong tool. He has good aoe damage and good cc as well.

Jungle If you really want to try the jungle, try these champions. Amumu Can clear the jungle fast, and has an ability that reduces some damage. ganks are strong with 2 CC abilities, and scales well into the late game.

Warwick. Has great sustain, and his ultimate is almost a guaranteed kill. Good solo champion.\

Maokai. Basically the same reasons he is good top. Not a great jungler, but a safe one with good sustain.

Nunu. Great sustain, and can buff his allies. His q acts as a second smite, so allows him to clear the jungle fast, and makes dragons much easier.

Sejuani. Takes less damage from monsters due to her passive, and is all aoe abilities so can clear the jungle fast.

Mid Annie. Has very basic abilities, and has great laning and teamfighting due to her sustain and CC.

Karthus. Strong poke, allowing you to safely farm and attack your opponent. His passive means that, even if you die, you can still help your team somewhat. Trying to use his ult will teach you to look around the map, which is a essential skill to have.

Xerath. All his abilities are skillshots of varying types, so you can learn skillshots well from him.

Lux. Roughly the same reasons as Xerath

Chogath. Very good sustain, hard to kill, and has good damage. Becomes somewhat tanky without having to build tank items due to his ult giving him free hp.

Heimerdinger. Arguably the best sustained lane (as well as the most annoying), he can just lay down his personal turrets in lane and let them do all the work. I would suggest not playing him as you cant learn how to play the game, because his kit is extremely unique.

Kayle. Has harass, a heal for herself or her allies, aoe attacks that help getting creeps, and her ult can save you or your friends life.

Bot Marksman Ashe. Considered one of the most basic marksman, has good poke, good abilities for poke, and a strong ult.

Caitlyn. Longest range at level 1, basic abilities, and has very safe laning.

Ezreal. Good poke, lots of skillshots, and a global range ult, meaning you can secure a kill in other lanes. Has a good escape if a fight starts going bad.

Tristana. Has strong power all through the game, and has a good escape if you mess up a fight.

Corki. Has strong harassment and once he hits 6 he has very strong power from afar. Very safe with one of the best escapes in the game.

Sivir. Simple abilities. Her spell shield will teach you about timing spells well, as well as helping you with your laning to defend against strong spells.

Bot Support Janna. Good laning, has lots of buffs for her team, and can protect your marksman with 2 CC abilities.

Morgana. Can protect her marksman with a shield that stops CC, and is very good at helping the marksman gain kills with 2 CC abilities.

Braum: If you want to learn how to protect your marksman with all your abilities.Has CC to secure kills.

Soraka. Considered the most basic support, because her kit is all about keeping your team safe, due to 2 heals, a slow, and silence to stop mages and assassins.

Sona. Her abilities can be summed up as basically buffs, but she is very effective as a support. her abilities affect her entire team (assuming they are in range) and make huge differences for all of them. She has an ability for damage, defense, running, and a aoe stun. she does almost anything.

FAQ Q:I saw someone take a damage champion like Annie as a support. Is this a good idea? A: It is a strategy that is somewhat common, but if you are trying to learn the game, I suggest sticking to the standard supports.

Q: My team didn't have a jungler and we had two top instead. Why? A: I assume, if you just started, the players you are playing with just started, and so don't know how to jungle. If you want to jungle try it out, but if you don't and no one else does, 2 top is fine.

Q:I saw AD Malzahar jungle. Is he a strong jungler? A: Firstly no he isn't. Secondly, that is called a gimmicky pick. Theoretically anoyne can be a tank, or a jungler, or a marksman, but most champions are designed to be built a certain way, and if you just started, I suggest you follow that way of playing the champion.

Q:Top lane Teemo is super annoying and keeps killing me. What do I do? A:Honestly, he is a difficult champion to fight, even the more experienced players don't like him. He has gained the reputation as Satan, and rightly so. He is in no way over powered, but he is annoying to fight. I suggest asking for help from your jungler, or just keep playing. You will eventually learn how to fight him, or at the very least not die from him. I can't give very good advice to players who just started. You could buy him and play him if you want though.

If you have more questions post them and I will try to answer them.