Boards›Tips & Tricks

New Player - Overwhelmed

Christopher RPh·6/18/2015, 4:49:50 PM·2 votes·1,545 views

I have dabbled in MOBAs before, and I'm terrible at them. I played both LoL and SMITE for a short period of time and I quit playing because I was just bad. So I wanted to give it another shot. I'm not a stupid person, but the massive amounts of information in this game overwhelms me. I'm not at the phase in my development where I need to understand how to farm, warding, laning, etc. I'm stuck at this wall, causing two main problems:

  1. I see an enormous amount of Champions and I have no idea what their roles are, what roles they can fill, and how to play them effectively.
  2. I see a large amount of items and aside from consumables, I cannot even grasp what each item does. When I'm playing, I just choose randomly. "Oh this item is recommended? Sure, I'll grab it. But I never see stats of an item because I'm so focused on gameplay.

I tried a few different things that failed. I tried getting a list of every item and learning what each item does. That failed because when my mind tries to apply it to a champion, I realize that I have no idea about 99% of the champions available. So then I tried studying the champions. But there are so many styles, roles, objectives, and advantages/disadvantages that I get overwhelmed with trying to learn the champions.

What I thought would help is buying all the bundles of champs. So I have every champion associated with all 3 bundles. But when I look at each one, I'm dumbfounded by the complexity of the game.

I will admit that I have played very few games (all against bots). I really want to play but I don't want to ruin other peoples' games because I'm so bad. I usually play against bots and I was even told that I was feeding the bots and that was the first time anybody had ever seen that. Okay so yeah, I suck. I get it. But I can master other genres of games. Why can I not even scratch the surface of this game? It's just all so overwhelming.

9 Comments

The Blue Rajah6/18/2015, 7:08:09 PM2 votes

I completely understand where you're coming from. There is an absolutely overwhelming amount of information in this game. My suggestion is to NOT try to learn all the champions and items.

Pick ONE champion you enjoy playing, and learn them inside and out. At the level you're at, honestly don't even worry about your opponents or where you're supposed to go. Play bot games, and focus on learning your one champion. How they play and what items work for them.

It'll get your foot in the door, and once you become adept at that champion (which can take a while for your first one), you can start broadening your pool.

Also, if you have any friends that play, ask them to explain things to you, it'll help immensely.

Code6/18/2015, 5:00:13 PM1 votes

What I did was pick one champion and stuck to him. You're level 6 though, at that level I was ONLY playing bots till around 12 or so. Then I learned about what items fit my champ (for me that champ was nocturne, a jungler). When I got to pvp, I sucked royally bad, but I would make an effort to look up what every champ in the game I was currently playing could do. It might have taken 3-5 games before I actually remembered their passives and less noticeable abilities, but eventually I got the jist of it.

Communicating with other new players and learning alongside them helps as well. It's great if you have real life friends who play, but if not then just add someone who seemed nice and at a similar skill level in game. By maining one champion, you'll learn all about the items that work on them (which will cover 30-40% of the games items) and allow you to learn other champions abilities without having to play and mess up on them. Once you have a better idea of what other champs do, you can start playing them as well.

Rueian6/18/2015, 5:01:29 PM1 votes

All the Champions have tags, which is a helpful guideline to use when determining where they can go. As you learn the meta and items you should avoid the jungle. Once you are a bit more comfortable you should give jungling a try just to fill in that hole you'll avoid for a couple of days/weeks. After that you want to build a specialization by picking atleast 4-5 champions you like and spamming them to no end.

Randomonium6/19/2015, 5:54:43 PM1 votes

I feel your pain with the complexity of this game, but I assure you it gets easier.

For items, I would look at what items the pros get and just copy them for now until you get familiar with them. probuilds.net is a great resource that shows what order pros get their items, what order they level up their skills, what their runes are and what their masteries are.

For champions there are three ways you can go about it. 1) you can just play that champ a lot and try to figure it out yourself or 2) you can look up guides for that champion or 3) ask someone here on the boards. If you let me know what champions you have, and more importantly which of those champion interest you, I can give you some basic advice on each of them.

Once you get to the point where you want to learn more about how to farm, warding, laning, etc. check out my videos.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2EZm50wNGmfJal7IHM_b8Q

AMYS GRAVE6/19/2015, 6:14:25 PM1 votes

Yeah the new player experience in this game is pretty rough...

Don't really worry too much about what other people are saying to you, If they start to get you down just mute them, it's the number one thing you can do to improve your enjoyment of the game and improve your performance.

To start just play a few of the champions on free rotation and try to figure out what they can and can't do. You will fail... a lot... but thats how you figure it out and in the process you will find playstyles that you enjoy. Oh and while you are doing that buy the recommended items for a while. Itemization is quite overwhelming and situational building is a skill that can wait.

The first mechanical skills to learn is how to last hit minions in lane, and how to position yourself to not die. cs more, die less. That advice isn't even limited to new players, that's advice that people who have been playing this game for years haven't figured out.

Christopher RPh6/21/2015, 6:19:21 PM1 votes

Thank you all for your advice. I'm still trying to get used to the heroes. I'm wanting to play Ahri a lot but every time I join a game, the first post is "Mid" and even when I do call mid, somebody goes mid with me and I'm like "Oookay I'm going to go support somebody I guess."

I'm still too nervous to play PvP. :/

T RexHasTinyArms6/23/2015, 11:00:04 PM1 votes

New player experience is shit. My college roommate got me into the game, and he helped me learn what I was supposed to be doing. Imo this is the best way. I have a low level account from plying with my friend and teaching him. If you add this account in game and I'm on you can msg me to see if I'm duo in ranked and if I'm not ill hop on the low level and play with you and talk you through stuff.

The biggest thing to know is that lanes and the meta and stuff really doesn't matter till you start doing pvp.Early on vs bots you just need to learn to lane and make good trades. Being able to cs is one thing, but being able to harass bots while doing so is kinda the bare minimum. Anyway let me know if you want someone to play with and teach you. Someone did it for me so I figure I should pass it on.

Hotpes6/18/2015, 4:55:37 PM1 votes

Well the game is quite complex at first because yea huge amount of info to learn, but you arent expected to know all that when you start playing. Play the free rotation champions to get to know them little by little and the recommended items change for different style of champions which means you will slowly start understanding what does what. You can also add me in game for more in depth guidance no problemo. IGN: Hotpes

Skia Asteri6/24/2015, 12:05:11 AM1 votes

http://champion.gg/

Lists the roles that at least 10% of games played with a champion are in that role. Click the roles to see a sample of item builds, masteries, and runes used for champs in each position.

You don't need to play every champion, just a few for each position (about three or so should do) and you only need that many for Draft Mode.

Do however play each champ some in Coop vs AI mode when they come up for free rotation, helps learn what all of them do.