Introduction to League of Legends
What is League of Legends?
League of Legends is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game that is composed of 5 members in each teams. Their main goal is to destroy the enemy Nexus, the most important structure that periodically spawns minions. To be able to do this, you need to a champion, which is a character that you can control in the game. Each champion has attributes (AKA classes): there are mages, assassins, marksmen, bruisers, tanks, supports and fighters. There are also roles, which are like attributes, but slightly different. Roles, such as Top, Jungler, Mid (Middle), ADC (Attack Damage Carry), and Support are the standard, meta formation of a team. Roles and Attributes are pretty much the same. The only difference is that champions can have the same role but they can have different attributes. For example, Rengar, an assassin, can go top while Riven, a bruiser, can also go top. The only difference are their attributes, which differs in each champion.
An average League of Legends game normally takes place in Summoners Rift. It has three lanes and two jungles. The two jungles contain monster camps and are divided by the river, which has epic monsters (Elemental Dragon and Baron Nashor). Top champions go to the top lane, Junglers go to the jungle, Mid champions go to the middle lane, and the ADC and Support goes to the bottom lane.
The first part of the game is all about “Farming” (Laning Phase). Farming is when you kill monsters in the jungle (if you’re the jungler) and when you kill minions in the 3 lanes (if you’re Top, Mid, or ADC). Supports don’t take their ADC’s farm to help their ADC get stronger. Instead, they either heal their ADC or zone the enemy ADC and Support to help their ADC farm. When it’s Laning Phase, the death timers are short, which allows people to quickly go back to lane, only giving a small lead to the enemy team.
The second part of the game is when the two teams group together to get objectives such as taking Dragon or Turrets. This part of the game is known as mid-game, since it normally occurs in the halfway through the game and since people are half-finished their builds. Most teams would stall so their top laner can split push a lane and destroy turrets. The death timers in mid-game are about 30 to 40 seconds.
The third and final part of the game is late game, where the two teams group once again to fight but this time, they have Dragon stacks, they finished their builds, and they destroyed most of the enemy team’s turrets. The two teams pressure all their three lanes so that they can do Baron Nashor and the Elder Dragon, two epic monsters that gives a great reward when slain. Baron Nashor gives extra damage to champions and minions, it gives you more movement speed at base, and it gives champions a faster recall, while Elder Dragon increases the rewards that you got from the Elemental Dragons. The death timers in late-game are increased, so if a team gets aced, the opposing team can either do Baron Nashor, Elder Dragon, or they can end the game. That’s why you should not overextend and split-push (unless you have teleport), because even the loss of one member will put its team at a disadvantage due to the long death timers (60+ seconds).
Hopefully this will help new players get better at playing League of Legends and inspire people to play this amazing strategy game.
