The Summoner's Guidebook

One of the things that really bother me is when players make tier lists of characters in League of Legends. Tier lists are an often subjective measurement of how good a character is when matched up against other characters, and players like to voice their opinions on who is strong and who is weak.

Unfortunately, even tier lists that are fairly accurate are fundamentally flawed in any competitive game, and they're especially flawed in League. At their best, tier lists show characters who do well in many situations or who are very difficult to counter. At their worst, tier lists are flawed and show a lack of understanding on the part of the author.

This doesn't mean that there aren't strong or weak champions, but a tier list doesn't even tell part of the story. It just gives an arbitrary rating that says very little about a character's true strengths or how to leverage them.

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I would have loved to cover the IGN Pro League 5 this week, but at the time of this writing it is still ongoing. I'll do a brief overview of it next week, but its timing didn't mesh well with the timing of the Guidebook.

I've been playing a lot of Dominion lately, and as many readers of the Summoner's Guidebook know, it's the gametype I focus my skills on. I try to build knowledge of League of Legends' other maps, including Summoner's Rift and the Proving Grounds/ARAM, but Dominion is definitely my focus right now (I haven't played much of the beta Twisted Treeline, so coverage of that will have to wait).

One thing that really bothers me about Dominion, particularly as I creep into high level play, is that people still randomly pick champions without regard for a strategy. While I do think my overall skill has improved a lot, a major reason that I win 60-70% of my matches is because I look for where my team is deficient and pick a champion to cover that area.

As you escalate into the intermediate levels of Dominion skill, a good arsenal of champions to fill roles can be a huge asset. This week, we'll look at some of the possible roles and compositions and some good champions to pick up to fill those roles.

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Even though League of Legends' new Honor Initiative has greatly improved the conduct of summoners as a whole, I've become very frustrated with "selfish" player behavior as of late.

I've been playing a lot of ARAMs inbetween Dominion matches lately, and both game modes give rise to the same problems: impatient players who are too hungry for blood. Killing enemy champions is given a lot of incentive in LoL, and players often put themselves in awful situations that end up putting their whole team at risk of defeat just to get a single kill. This "blood in the eyes" phenomenon is pervasive across the entirety of League, but it is especially common in ARAM.

This week, I'm going to look at this kind of selfish behavior and cover some ways you can focus on more team-friendly actions. No, this doesn't mean giving me all the kills. It just means playing for the benefit of everyone and not just for your own personal pride.

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Last weekend, we saw the League of Legends World Championships come to an end. While I thought the grand finals were a bit disappointing, the teams that made it to the final four put on an amazing show. I think few would say that any of the four teams in the semi-finals didn't deserve a place there, and I think equally few would question the validity of the Taipei Assassins' final victory.

The World Championships were a Cinderella story, and the Taipei Assassins became the unlikely champions in a decisive victory against Korean favorite Azubu Frost. The characteristic heavy aggression of the top Asian teams has already trickled down to the lower levels of play, and a few less common faces have come to new popularity in ranked and normal games all throughout the League.

In the aftermath of the World Championships, what did the tournament mean for the rest of us, the less fortunate who aren't at the top?

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I'm a big fan of e-sports, but League of Legends is currently one of the worst e-sports to garner a major scene. This isn't because the game is bad, though some aspects of LoL's Classic gameplay are bad for e-sports. It is universally because most LoL tournaments are poorly run and organized. A badly run tournament can ruin everything, regardless of how good (or bad) the game being played is.

I would expect more from Riot Games, which creates and publishes League of Legends and which has a vested interest in fostering competition for the game. However, the studio seems to have learned absolutely nothing from very successful e-sports tournaments such as the Evolution Fighting Championships, the GOMTV Star League, and OGN's The Champions. All of these tournaments have better seeding structure and better venues, which contribute to a better overall event.

Why can't Riot learn from these very successful events?

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It's no surprised that League of Legends has a very caustic community. Players on messageboards all over the internet (including our comments section) can attest to the fact that LoL's community leaves a lot to be desired. Unfriendly players and offensive language are the norm, and these bad attitudes keep many summoners from logging in.

Riot hasn't let the issue lie, though. The Tribunal was a good first step toward building a better community, and if reports are to be believed, it does a fairly good job. However, simply punishing players doesn't encourage good behavior. That's where the latest effort, the Honor system, comes into play.

Honor allows players to give positive feedback to friendly or supportive players, either friend or foe. Gaining honor alerts a player of his or her good behavior, and Riot has hinted that it may be the basis of future rewards. Is it a good step in the right direction, or will it just encourage "honor trading?"

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Multitasking is a skill that is fairly useful in any competitive game. Even if there's not a huge need for external situational awareness, the ability to multitask lets you do things while paying attention to other elements of a PvP match such as in-game resources, the timer (if present), and the actions of enemy players. If you can't multitask, you are stuck focusing mostly on what you're doing and can't adequately counter what the enemy is doing.

League of Legends requires a lot of multitasking. While it's not a true real-time strategy game, LoL still requires players to be aware of the minimap, the current state of minions at their location, and the potential positions of enemy players who are not visible on the minimap. Couple this with the "normal" flow of a PvP game where a player must juggle her positioning with that of her opponent, and you have a game that is very taxing on a person's mental resources. While multitasking is a hard skill to develop, learning it is intensely satisfying when knowledge about the "big picture" leads to a decisive, game-winning play.

This week in The Summoner's Guidebook, we'll look at how you can improve this critical skill. Even if you don't play League of Legends, it might be worth it to follow along. While many examples I'll be discussing will be LoL-specific, the broader concepts we'll cover after the jump can be applied to many different games, whether competitive or not.

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One of the most popular alternative gametypes in League of Legends is All Random All Mid, or ARAM. ARAM is a simple concept; it involves a single lane on which all 10 players must fight, rather than the three lanes of Summoner's Rift or two paths of Dominion. Additionally, all champions selected are randomized; you're never sure whom you'll be playing in an ARAM match until champion select begins.

ARAM began life on Summoner's Rift, hence its name. The single lane used for ARAM was the middle lane, and traveling into the jungle or other lanes meant immediate disqualification of one's team. It was fraught with the normal trappings of an alternative ruleset; the rules for ARAM were not enforced by the game, so players were expected to play within the community-created rules. It evolved into ARAB, played on the Crystal Scar, with two teams fighting over the bottom capture points. ARAB proved to have its own flaws, most notably that games went on for a bit longer than normal, but the passive gold and experience as well as the health relic helped to add interesting spice to the game mode.

Finally, ARAM became a more or less supported gametype with the addition of the Proving Grounds. That addition streamlined ARAM gameplay while keeping some of the elements of the Crystal Scar version of the game such as health relics and Dominion items. Today, while there is no matchmaking for ARAM, it is extremely popular in custom matches.

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One thing that pops up a lot in the comments of the Summoner's Guidebook is how you readers like to play outside the metagame. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with new builds or compositions, and with over a hundred different champions, League of Legends has a lot of room for experimentation. However, the established metagame is the way it is for a reason. People played the way they thought was best, and through collaboration, determined what strategies worked the best. Laning champions in their current "accepted" positions has evolved over the few years since LoL's release.

Choosing to play a composition outside the metagame is always a gamble. You're trading stability and familiarity for a gimmick, and that can backfire. Playing in the established metagame is a statement that you want to let skill be the deciding factor in battle and that you can handle silly tricks like moving the duo lane or running a heavy kill lane on bottom.

On the other hand, unorthodox positioning of champions can be an asset, since the initial unfamiliarity of whatever composition you've run can lead to mistakes on the enemy's part. As little mistakes can easily snowball on the Fields of Justice, playing a gimmick is all about making the most of those kinds of openings. This week, we'll talk about some common choices for unorthodox lanes and also how you can deal with them.

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This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, I'll be talking about the matchup against Blitzcrank, League of Legends' own rock-em sock-em robot. We'll be looking mostly at his matchups in bottom lane on Summoner's Rift, but we'll also examine his gameplay in Dominion, where he is also very strong.

Learning the matchup against Blitzcrank is extremely important in my opinion. He is a very popular champion, and this is due to his incredibly brutal gameplay. If you do not know how to deal with Blitzcrank, you will get owned by him. He's not a champion you can just "do your best" against. Failing to properly account for his strengths will result in deaths, and this makes him a very popular choice. If you're struggling at all against Blitz, you owe it to yourself to keep reading.

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Although building a team composition in League of Legends is all about synergy, the bottom lane in Summoner's Rift is the most critical. In Dominion, players may split up as the needs demand, and the other characters in Summoner's Rift spend around 15 minutes of each game on their own against a lone enemy.

The bottom lane has two characters that are essentially joined at the hip for most of the game. While the support will eventually roam free and the carry may engage in some solo pushing or farming, those two characters spend much of the game together.

It makes sense then that these two characters should mesh well. Here's a list of my favorite teams. If you're stumped on whom to pick for carry or support, you should try some of these out.

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I've been doing quite a bit of jungling lately in League of Legends. Jungling is hard, and one of the keys to being successful as a jungler is simply out of your hands: Your lanes need to play as if there were junglers in the game. I've played a jungler in countless games in which there was nothing to gank at all because my lanes played without regard for whether a jungler might come into lane.

I'm not a pro jungler. Out of all of LoL's myriad roles, jungling is my second weakest (after mid lane). Rather than give advice on something I'm really bad at, I'd rather talk about jungling from the lane perspective.

This week in The Summoner's Guidebook, we'll talk about the jungler's role and how you can help your jungler out. It isn't a simple matter, but I've been taking notes over the week about things that frustrated me and things that worked out for the best.

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When I first started following the League of Legends pro scene, I was introduced to top teams like Team Solo Mid and SK Gaming. As I watched matches and player interviews, the first thing that came to my mind was this: If Korea fielded a LoL pro team, it would be incredibly scary.

When Riot Games added support for Korean League of Legends and OnGameNet began running regular tournaments, I had to check it out. Sure enough, big pro-gaming teams like StarTale and MiG started fielding pro League teams, and most of the things I suspected were true. Korean teams have amazing coordination and incredible mechanics compared to their western counterparts.

This was put to the test last weekend during Major League Gaming's LoL Summer Arena, where Korean qualifying team Azubu Blaze utterly destroyed the other teams, losing only once to Curse Gaming. Most of the matches weren't even close. What's the secret to Azubu Blaze's dominance? Can it be reproduced in the West, or is League of Legends going to end up like StarCraft -- dominated by the Korean scene?

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League of Legends has had one of the most meteoric ascensions of any current e-sport. From the first tournaments of season one to tomorrow's MLG Summer Arena, LoL has made a bigger splash in the e-sports community than any title launched since StarCraft II.

However, the long grind to get to summoner level 30 poses a difficult barrier of entry for players looking to someday join the pros. It isn't necessary to grind levels to unlock +3 infantry weapons in StarCraft, so gating runes and masteries behind a grind seems a bit ridiculous.

I've thought that the forced grind was excessive since I started playing LoL. I'm not opposed to having a grind at all, but I've always thought it was silly that levels and runes can't be purchased with real money. Are levels and grinds bad for a competitive game like League of Legends, or does the grind actually improve the quality of player skill at the higher levels?

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There are five roles on Summoner's Rift, and I play four with reasonable competency. Support is my strongest role; I'm cautious and attentive and I like warding. Also, I don't have to last-hit, a role at which I feel my skills are a bit deficient compared to the rest of my skillset. Despite feeling deficient at last-hitting, though, I actually play carry fairly well, given my current matchmaking rating. I am virtually always ahead in creep score compared to my opponents, and if an ally in my lane gives up first blood, it is almost always my jungler grasping at an opportunity that is not there. I've always been decent at solo top, I've recently learned how to jungle, and my jungling has been directly responsible for my team's victories quite frequently.

There is one role in League of Legends' Classic gametype I'm not so good with, and that's solo mid. I'm not even an apologist for it, really. People fight over mid lane often enough that I've really never felt the need to field champions that play there. Many of my friends also specialize in mid lane champs. Although I feel my Classic skills are a bit on the weak side, solo mid is a special deficiency for me. Can we improve it? Let's find out!

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