League of Legends - My Journey from Noob to Below Average - Entry 6

100 games played. 50 games won

Of course game 100 ends with the servers shitting on themselves...I wouldn't have it any other way. What does this mean? I have no clue. I am pretty happy that it isn't a negative ratio. I also feel that in the last 15 or so games, I have REALLY executed well with what I have learned and have made solid strides to becoming a better player. I have only had a few games were I clearly lost my lane and no matter what is happening in the game, I just will work on my goals...CS, team fighting positioning, sieging, timing objectives...and not allow my nerd rage to transfer from my brain to the in-game chat system.

Currently I am half way through level 26 and have noticed that there are atleast 1-2 level 30s in my games now. I feel that I am starting to hang with them, but some of these players have 500+ wins under their belts and it would be an understatement to say that we are on a similar skill level.

I feel like a REAL boy!!

I have only being playing "Draft Pick" and no longer have any intentions to play "Blind Pick" ever again. In my opinion, it is how the game is supposed to be played. Bans, pick orders, team compositions / synergy, and discussion within your team all take place within the Champion Selection screen. In Blind, everyone just argues over who said "insert random role here" first in chat. I am not alone in thinking this way either, Riot does the Ranked queue with a Draft. It just feels right.

It also seems to me that the players that play Draft are normally overall more knowledgeable about the game. In most cases, a more knowledgeable player equals a better player. This is more then likely due to the fact that in order to play Draft, you have to have least spent a decent amount of money on the game. Sure, you could of just grind out the IP and spent it all on Champions. Maybe you are one of the few that Riot has never seen a dime of money from you, but if that is the case you have quite the hefty amount of games under your belt and are probably way better at the game then a noob like myself.

Oh that's right... I am not a NOOB sir, I am a below average player. Get it right fucko!

Champion Selection!!!

One of the many tips that I have read and heard over and over again was to pick atleast two roles and have a few champions within those roles that you are good at. Once you have a good handle on them, branch out in case you are force to play a different role, but always go for your two preferred roles.

Mine? Middle and Support

Middle is normally my first choice, but I do enjoy both of them pretty equally. Maybe middle edges out support slightly, but eh...

As I have mentioned before, in all games, I normally go for magic wielding bad motha fuckas. So the middle lane was an obvious choice. Thrown in a Mage that gains his ability from beer and I may not play another champion EVER. After alot of debate I decided to purchase Gragas and make him my main. I figured that if I am force to play a role outside of mid / support that I could use Gragas in the Jungle and Top lane. I have also watched tons of videos about him...he doesn't really have a down side and looks like a ton of fun.

...did I mention all of his abilities are based off of drinking BEER? Enough said.

He does get banned a decent amount of the time, so I can always fall back to one of my old homies like Malzahar. However, this week Zed is free and I have been playing a few games with him. I have a feeling that if next week's free champion rotation doesn't have a mid laner that I find intriguing, I might just go ahead and buy him. He is a flipping ninja guys...my inner nerd can barely keep it together when I play him.

I tried several times to stop myself, but I just can not, NOT, sing Rob Van Winkle's Ice Ice Baby. I have tried to stop myself yet every game...at some point...it will be said. More then likely out loud and followed by a shoulder shimmy of some sorts. Now that I think about it, maybe its a good thing that I don't have him on my roster!

Dat Support Doe

So I like Mages which makes me a good fit for mid lane, but I also enjoying support classes in RPGs...ie tanking / healing / Crowd Control’n ect…

The game that this blog was centered around for the first few years of its existence was World of Warcraft. My main role that I played, wrote about, and theorycrafted for, was the Healer. I enjoy supporting other players that pew pew the bad guys and LOVED showing people the difference between a good and bad support player…most of the time I was the good kind…most of the time.

 For whatever reason, Support is by far the least sought after role in LoL, so it made a lot of sense to make it one of my main roles. I have 4 Support Champions that I am comfortable playing, but only 3 that I really prefer to play. Annie, Blitzcrank, Leona, and Soraka are my roster, but I try to avoid Soraka unless I know that my ADC and I are on the same page.  Since I am almost exclusively a solo queue player, Soraka doesn’t get played much.

Recently I have been playing A LOT of Leona. She was on sale last week and I did not hesitate long before I pulled the trigger and picked her up. She is extremely fun to play and her tool kit allows her to be an aggressive super tank. She has flaws, but in each phase of the game (Early, Mid, and Late) she is strong. Not to mention that during team battles, you are the one that initiates the fight! Picking the right moment to jump in and when not to will determine the outcome by itself most of the time. It is uber important and I for one would rather have the responsibility fall on me rather than someone else that has no clue when to and when not to initiate.

Road to 30

I am close. I can feel it. I can SENSE IT!

95% of my friends list is composed of friendly players that I have actually played with during the grind. The sad part is they are almost exclusively level 30 and are enjoying the ranked queue. They don’t have time to play with sub-par level 30 noobs like myself anymore. I did find it interesting that most are in bronze. However, there are a few that are silver and I don’t feel they were any better or knowledgeable then me. I do not see myself being able to grind out of whatever league I am placed in. If I am lucky, I will get 2 games in a night…but that is always influx. With Riot having 5 levels in each division and having to reach 100 points in each to be eligible for promotion, I just don’t think it will be possible.

Hell, it may take me a week just to get my placement matches completed. Well that is about it for now. Until next time people!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/WTFspaghetti
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League of Legends - Journey From Noob to Below Average - Season 4 is Here!

FIFTH Entry

Entry 5?!? Holy balls people. To my own surprise I am still playing this soul sucking game, League of Legends. Now, when I say still play it, I mean I am playing daily PvP matches and watching streams on Twitch of others playing when I am not.

It's official. I have completely been overtaken by the game and it's community. I have even started to make a few gameplay videos on my YouTube channel and I have only streamed LoL on Twitch for the last month. Overall the videos are very basic and to be honest, don't really offer much other then "here is me playing this video game". The plan is to start putting out videos with some sort of information / commentary on them, but the ones I have up now are mostly me just fucking around. The strange thing is that people are actually watching them! Even the super basic, low production, being played by a complete noob, (yours truly) YT videos are being watched. If that doesn't tell you how popular and addicting this game is...then I don't know what will.

Season 4 is Live

LCS Season 4 started this week and you know what I did? I watched the whole F'n stream on Twitch. I was at work as well, so I wasn't able to watch every single moment...but it was on in the background just like if I was watching a a baseball game or any other TV show. Overall it was my first time watching a Professional LCS match live and I have to say I was pretty impressed. It is still very clear that I am a super noob. The announcers, the live crowd, and the TwitchTV chat all seemed like they were on another level and were watching a different game then I was.

I find it very difficult to follow a match when a team fight goes down. Between the announcers yelling and 10 champions health bars on the screen...its tough for me to follow. It all kinda looks like a large cluster fuck. I do realize that the announcers make a big difference and I shouldn't quite judge it yet...but I am not sure how  much a broadcaster change can really help me. All of the team fighting I saw during the EU LCS matches very fast paced and involved ALOT of target switching. It may just be the way it is and maybe once I stop "noob'n it up" I'll be able to follow along a pro game with more enjoyment.

Road to Level 30

It takes ALOT longer then I first realized. The majority of the games that I have played have been against AI opponents and I was well aware that this yields less XP. I thought to myself that if I had just played PvP matches instead of the 100+ AI games that I would already be level 30 and to be honest, I probably would. However, I have probably played close to 40-50 PvP games in the last month or so and I just feel like I will never ever get to level 30. It is a legit grind and begs the question...

How are some people so clueless on how to play when they are level 30? 

I am not trying to be a douche or anything, but from what I have seen from streams and read on various sites, Bronze and Silver leagues are literally filled with players that know less about the game then I currently do. I just don't see how that is possible considering how much of a grind it is to get to level 30. I guess they could have bought XP boosts, but they would still have to play a large amount of games even with the boosts!

Maybe this is just me being a noob and I just don't get it because I have yet to experience the ranked queue. Maybe it is the Internet talking out of their ass (that never happens right?) However, people treat bronze league players that they are COMPLETELY clueless on how even a MOBA game works.

I for one can't wait to get to level 30 so I can actually compare myself to the rest of the LoL community. I still think that I am pretty below average, but that is only MY opinion. The ranking system is in place so I don't have to rely on opinions of myself or others, it does that shit for you. Do you know what doesn't do a good job of matchmaking games for your skill level? Normal games. Some normal games I feel like I am on a COMPLETELY different level then my opponents and then other games I get rolled so hard I feel like I should go back to playing against the AI...

...I mean it is that big of a difference and frankly I am getting annoyed with it. I think overall I am doing a pretty good job of not raging on my teammates and just keeping my frustrating to myself. Sometimes I slip up, but its normally just a passive aggressive / troll comment for the "lulz". Usually when the frustration is pointed at my direction and others are raging on me...I normally just agree with them and tell them sorry. Even if I feel that they are completely off basis.

I am not trying to have an argument with a stranger the few hours a day I get to myself. Fuck that noise.

Review and Improve

There are several reasons why I enjoy watching other, more skilled, gamers play LoL. The biggest of them all is how much I end up learning. LoL is a complicate game to get better at. Due to this, visual evidence of watching others play has been the biggest reason on my play improving. 

As I mentioned before, I have been streaming on TwitchTV and uploading some of the more entertaining games to YT. I stated that I am mostly just fucking around, but it is nice watching your old games to see how much you improved. I watch my Veigar video yesterday and even though I ended up winning the game and had very good stats, I saw SOOO many opportunities to improve. Mostly that I was playing so passively that it almost brought me to rage lol.

It is nice to review games and recognize things that you can improve on that will start helping you NOW. Riot currently does not have a built-in, client integrated replay function but has been working on one...however, there is no ETA on when this function will go to live servers.

The website LoL Replays (third party vendor) is what most people currently use to save their replays. It is legit and has been approved by Riot themselves. It has it's pros and cons, but overall its a pretty good choice.

TwitchTV just makes it too easy for me since I already had everything setup.

Being a better player and in-progress goals

I just read a flipping awesome thread on the LoL forums titled "Tips to being a better player" by Jsp. What a fantastic read and I recommend all LoL players, regardless of skill, to take a look and read it. One of the best reads on the subject that I have come across.

Below are a few goals that I am really going to focus on for the time being.

• If you actively try to improve every single game and set a goal to work towards, The ELO will come to you. Always focus on your own lane and try to improve even if your team is losing their's. You are training for the next possible game and this time it might just be YOU that is failing hard.
  
• Top level players aim for 10 CS per minute. If my math doesn't fail me that is 100 CS at 10 minutes and 300 CS at 30 minutes. At this rate you do not need to kill any champions and still be just as powerful. I am setting my goal at 75 CS at 10 minutes consistently no matter what the situation is in the top and middle lanes. There are plenty of factors that can happen during a game that can throw this off, but if I can hit every game, I should have a pretty good edge on my opponents.
  
• Use smart pings Abuse the smart ping system. Ignore the chat. Stop making that kid's tantrum lose the game for you. Why do you care what that 12 year old kid thinks?  The mute button / feature is there for a reason, use it and make sure it doesn't affect your game. If you really want, disable the /all chat. Your teammates can still smart ping.
  
• Minimap awareness. I think this one has been on my goals list since the beginning. In soloqueue its pointless to assume that your team has your back. Train yourself into looking at the minimap every 30 seconds and after you have mastered that, take a peek every 15 seconds. After awhile you should take a quick peek at the minimap every 2 seconds to watch out for anything suspicious. Examples being empty lanes which weren't pinged or catching an enemy jungler walking towards you. Its always worth it to check the minimap.

HOORAH! We have reached the end and if you are reading this I want to thank you and hope you check out previous articles. Follow me on TwitchTV and Twitter if you so choose. Until next time people!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/WTFspaghetti

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League of Legends - Veigar IS EVIL! Stop Laughing!

Hola peeps!

First off I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope all is well with you personally. 2014 is now here and what better way to celebrate then playing video games and then blogging about it?!?

Is that a short joke?!?

Meet Veigar. He is one of the many champions in League of Legends and is described in game as the "Tiny Master of Evil". He was actually my first champion that I ever bought when I first gave this game a go back in 2011. In every game I am normally drawn to the caster / mage type and Veigar looked like a good fit to try out.

He is super squishy but has one, if not the best, nuke in the game. He is the definition of a "glass cannon" caster. Normally, I don't like that in my casters, especially in PvP game. Knowing that if you make even a little mistake you can be one-shot by anyone is lame, but I don't know...there is something about this little dude that is overwhelming fun. He has a pretty shit early game, but if you can keep pace with your opponents you will completely own them come middle and late game.

I started playing him again and due to the fun factor, pretty much stop playing any other champion. This guide really helped me and the author did a great job putting it together. It goes over everything that you can possible want to know about Veigar and it is currently updated for season 4. There isn't much else I can say that the guide doesn't cover in detail, but here are my big takeaways / tips.

• One of my favorite things about him is that your opponent has to severely slow you in the early game (first 10-15 minutes or so). If not they will pay for it later on in the game. Due to this fact, it is best just to stay by your tower and try to farm as many minions as possible. 
• Veigar's main attack, Baleful Strike, gives a permanent Ability Power bonus if the unit dies. WTF? Yes, you did read that correctly. The more kills he gets with this spell, the stronger he becomes. FYI, there is no AP cap people. Most games you end up with over 1000 AP and this is what allows Veigar to melt opposing enemies' face completely off. It is silly. Try to kill units with this spell every single chance you get.
• The item, Deathfire Grasp, pretty much means your combo will take any champion from 100 to 0. It is crazy good for Veigar and is worth rushing. 
• Bottom lane is a good place to drift to for a gank after you push a wave of minions towards the enemy tower. They are normally more squishy then then the top lane. 

WTFspaghetti proudly presents...

A full game of your's truly playing Veigar against others in the solo queue. I started off pretty shaky and after watching it back noticed several mistakes and things that I could have done differently...but overall it turned out pretty well. 

My end game stats are below the video if you are interested. Follow me on the below links if you would be so kind. Until next time people!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/WTFspaghetti

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League of Legends - Journey from Noob to Below Average - Entry 4

Hola peeps! Entry 4?!? I know, very exciting. If you have been following along this series then you are aware that this must mean that I finally got around to doing my first PvP match in League of Legends. It only took me roughly 2 years and 126 AI "bot" games to give PvP a go...but who is counting right?

I took a break from playing the game since my last entry, but started playing again with the new season (4) starting. I am not sure what exactly happened, but something just clicked for me. I started playing a few of the free rotation players and experimenting with the new masteries / items. Something clicked with the game. I feel much more comfortable with knowing exactly what needs to be done in each phase of the game and normally when to and when not to do it. I think most of it had to do with me finally playing every major role (APC, ADC, Tank, Support, ect) and having a good amount of experience in each lane in the early / mid game. Of course watching other experienced players play and reading up on the game also helps immensely. I just feel like now I know WTF is going on with the game as a whole.

So how did my first PvP game go?

7/1/20

I am very happy with that end score and even more happy I got a win out of it. When I joined up my intention was to play middle lane as Veigar. I called mid in the in game chat and waited about 20 seconds before I locked in my toon. Then all of a sudden someone stated the following...

"WTFspaghetti, I called mid"

Now, I guess it is possible that he called mid before I joined the chat...but IMO that is highly doubtful. No fear though, I have been practicing with 4 different Champions and had no problem doing another lane / role. I asked if they wanted a support and to my surprise...the chat blew up. Everyone was confused and calling for different lanes and what was needed. It was the definition of a cluster fuck. With 15 seconds left to pick, I decided to go top lane with the King of all Trolls, Mr. Trundle.

What occurred next can only be explained as a complete and utter ownage. It was very clear within the first 5 minutes that the two champions I was going up against in the top lane didn't have much experience against Trundle. I was able to poke and harass them enough so they didn't feel comfortable being aggressive. It was glorious. I managed to get to the mid game with a hefty "cs" lead, 4 kills, and no deaths.

The rest of the game I built him up as a tank and just abused the enemy team with all my slows and crowd control abilities. We pretty much won every single team fight and while I don't think I was the only reason why my team won, I know for a fact I was a huge part of our success. It was very fun and while I don't think I am going to completely give up on "AI bot" games...I am definitely going to play PvP way more then I have been.

   

So What Now?

I feel that I have completed my mission. I started about 3-4 months ago with the goal of learning how to play this game due to its crazy popularity. I was not a complete noob per se...but I was pretty bad. Now with the completion of my 1st PvP match I think everyone can agree that I am "below average"

HOORAH! Until next time people!


Twitter - https://twitter.com/WTFspaghetti
TwitchTV - www.twitch.tv/wtfspaghetti

League of Legends - Preseason Changes / Rundown

The new season has not yet started, but the LoL pre-season is alive and well. I haven't been keeping up with all of the changes, so I figured I would share this awesome "run-down" video about most of the changes.



Seems to be pretty legit from a super casual fan of the game like myself. I especially like the free trinket / wards and changes to the Support role. If you are at all interested in LoL, I highly suggest that you atleast keep up with all of these changes.

Full list can be found on LoL's official website - here

Twitter - https://twitter.com/WTFspaghetti
TwitchTV - www.twitch.tv/wtfspaghetti

League of Legends - My Journey from Noob to Below Average - Entry 3

The journey continues people. Previous entries here...

ROAD BLOCK

Like a mofo...

That's right. I was getting that feeling with LoL. My A.D.D. was starting to kick in and with Blizzard deciding to invite me to a closed beta of their newest game, Hearthstone...I thought that my LoL days were going to fizzle off into the horizon.

FEAR NOT! One of my buddies caught word that I started playing the game and wanted to team up and play a few games together. Perfect right? Well, not quite. He is in the exact position that I was before I started blogging about the game. He knows the concept of a MOBA game, has a few purchased toons, but never looked up how to play or how the current meta is. I am still very happy to have someone to play with, but I'm not sure a noob like myself will be much of a teacher.

We finally got some time to link up and play and since he hasn't played in about 6 months, we decided to play against some intermittent bots. It was my first game in about a week in a half and I was okay...not bad, but not great either. I was playing Karthus and I don't know, it wasn't that fun. First game lasted about 25 minutes and we got the victory. We decided to give another game a go against bots and well...

...it was TERRIBLE.

I think the game lasted an hour and only three of us on the team were level 18 by the end. I think I had the most kills and I went 8/12...it was one of the games were you just wanted it to end. We stopped playing after that and it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I mean I got ROLLED by bots. It was all sorts of bad and it totally ruined my view of Karthus. I came to the realization that I am not skilled enough  to really excel with him. He requires someone that pays close attention to the mini map and other enemies health pools. Not to mention I feel very vulnerable in most 1 on 1 situation...especially early / mid game.

Again, I thought that my LoL days were going to fizzle off into the horizon...but those last two games were so bad, I just couldn't leave it all without giving it another go. I mean, WTF would I write about if I didn't play?

The RESURGENCE! 

I went back to my Mage Assassin, Malzahar, and went in to another bot battle. I choose beginner and set a goal for myself. If I don't fucking own and its just meh...then I am giving up on the casters / mid lane and moving on to another role.

The results? I completely dominated and had my best performance in a LoL match ever. I know it was against silly bots, but after the 2 week stretch of meh-feeling games with Karthus, it was a welcomed emotion.

Redonkeyous right? I don't think that I ever got higher then 10 kills with any toon that I have played in my LoL career, so I took it as a strong sign that I should really just focus on playing Malzahar while putting Karthus on the back burner for when I become a super gosu legit pro.

Team Work Hurray!

I got a few more games in with my buddy and we are doing much better. We are ready to take the plunge into PvP battleground. I know that I have been saying this for 3 posts now, but I am now ready and there is no reason to postpone that shit any longer!

Entry 4 of this series will be all about PvP or it will never happen and I will never speak of this game AGAIN!!! This is even more likely to happen because I found out this week a few co-workers also play and play quite often. However, they are not newbies like yours truly, they actually are level 30s that play against other players. I already informed that I am going to need lots of work and they have no choice in the matter, they ARE going to team up with me and teach me how to not be a noob!

League of Legends - My Journey from Noob to Below Average - Entry 2

Ah yes, the journey continues people! Its been about 2 weeks since my last LoL entry and not much as changed to be honest. I am still very much a noob and just grinding away trying to improve. I do feel that I have enough to write another entry in this series as it also serves as a tool to help me review and focus in what I need to be working on in game.

Review and Re-focus?!? LoL is serious business...

Goals from last entry
1. Play against actual people
2. Get better at last hitting
3. Pay attention to the map more / work on communicating with team

Two out of three ain't bad right? I haven't felt comfortable enough yet to jump in a normal game against actual people. I know that I should just start doing it, but I don't know. I really don't want to get yelled at or completely rolled for not playing at a high standard. I mean just from playing against bots I feel I'm surrounded by trolls that consistently want to tell me what to do and what I am doing wrong. Even though they are normally the ones with 10 kills, 6 deaths, and a 35 CS by the 30 minute mark. I can only imagine playing a REAL LoL game and all the bullshit banter that goes down.

When I get the time to play, I normally just want to hop in, practice the basics, and make good decisions. That is what I have deemed more important for the moment and I think that it has paid off so far. A perfect example is that I just finished a game where I wasn't my normal mid lane, but I still thought I did pretty good overall. However, when I looked at the final score I couldn't figure out why my "Gold Earned" was so much less then others. So I took a screenshot and headed over to the Mobafire forums and ended up making a new thread.

Last Hitting is Important Mmmm'kay?

You can check out the thread post and the screenshot from the above link. It got several responses and to my surprise the community basically stated that I was terrible at last hitting. What I thought was decent, was actually terrible for a 33 minute game. Now I don't think that they took into consideration that this was against intermittent bots and that one of the players (Kassadin) was a snowballed super beast. When I would try to farm some creeps, he would come in and kill them immediately with an aura type of spell. The game was never in danger of losing, so I mostly focused on team battles...hints my 13 assists.

HOWEVER! They still brought up a very good point. First off, the reason why the AI team had 3-4k more "Gold Earned" then me was because that is how the AI / Bot team is designed by the developer. Plain and simple answer. Secondly, the point a few of them were making is that I really should focus alot more on my CS.

So the last 5-10 games that I had played I have really been focusing on last hitting and getting my CS up. I am happy to report that I have significantly increased my CS average to about 180-200 by the 30 minute mark if I am rocking the mid lane and ~100 or so if sharing a lane. While I still have work to do, I am pretty happy with my progress.

Middle Lane and the Jungler...

Coordination, communication, and map awareness are all very important when solo in the middle lane. You just can't zone out and not pay attention to the mini map...especially the position of your team's jungler. I know this...but actually doing it and performing the task is harder then it seems. I had a game the other day against bots where our jungler actually seemed like he knew exactly what he was doing. Now, I noticed him pinging and coming into my lane for a potential gank a few times, but I didn't think it was a good time to risk my life for the gank.

Well...I guess after the first 2 passes I just didn't pay attention or coordinate with him and he made sure to call me out on it. I think his exact words were "You are really fucking terrible"

So confused and assuming it was me lol, I asked in chat and it was confirmed that he was indeed talking directly to me. It was at this point where I had to explain that I am playing against bots because I am still learning the game and not a pro like him. When I asked why he didn't type anything out once he realized that I wasn't getting it and he replied "l2play". Very helpful right? I know he doesn't have too, but it would of been nice if he could given me some tips on how not to be fucking terrible. I even asked him after the game was over to help a summoner out, but he never responded. Too pro I guess lol. No worries here though, I have no shame in asking for help for my noobish ways!

I find paying attention to mini map way harder then I realize it was going to be. Now that I am starting to get decent at last hitting, I am going to start focusing alot more on this. Hopefully in entry 3 I will have improved and actually get some games against other players under my belt.

Champions Arise!!

Maybe you noticed that the main picture for this post is Karthus. Well that is because I saw a streamer on Twitch playing him and a few hours later I saw a professional match where one of the teams was rocking him. Even though I am much more comfortable with Malzahar, I went ahead and decided to pay up and buy him. I have only played a few games with him but man...what a powerful and fun toon! All I got to say is that his ultimate is GLOBAL.

Yes, a global ultimate that hits all players...hints the nickname of King Kill Steal. I have yet to get a pentakill, but I am sure after I start playing him more and more that they will come. In fact, I think I am going to play a quick game now with him. Until next time people.

League Of Legends - My Journey from Noob to Below Average - Entry 1

Thats right! I stated that I was going to document my journey on learning this game and I am actually doing it...quite shocking really. If you haven't checked out my first post about the game, go read that first and come back. Then my friends...my journey will begin!

HUURRRAH!

WTF IS A MOBA?!?

LoL is considered a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) and  is a sub-genre of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, in which often two teams of players compete with each other in discrete games, with each player controlling a single character through an RTS-style interface.

Full wiki breakdown on the game here.

There was some pretty basic things that I was confused about...

Now, I know the basic concepts of the game and at its core, it is very simple. However, it can get complicated and complex fast. I started playing it a few years ago, but I only played against AI controlled opponents. Even then, it was clear that I wasn't even the best player on my team and after a few weeks I lost interest. This time around I told myself that I was going to make a much bigger effort and really dive into this game.

MY WTF I'M CONFUSED LIST

1. WTF do I do once mid and late game begin? Do I still focus on my lane and minions or do I try and work with my team and focus more on getting champion kills?

2. You are on a 5 man team and in order to succeed you need to communicate. I didn't know how to alert my team members and ping the map in at the same time. I knew how to chat with my team and ping the map separately, but in the heat of the battle sometimes you just don't have the time to type it out.

Example - "player 1 has targeted the inner turret"
Example - "player 3 alerts his team to retreat"
Example - "player 4 alerts his team to be careful"

3. What is up with the item tree and how does it work? If I buy an item that apart of a bigger recipe, does the main item get discounted?

4. I knew I had to last hit minions and that it was a big part of your individual income. However, when I would look on how many minion kills I had compared to my team, I was normally 4th or 5th by ALOT. WTF am I doing wrong?

5. The jungle and neutral monsters. I knew that they gave you buffs and gold and that the current "meta-game" is to have one champion on jungle duty the whole game. Sounds pretty easy I thought. I gave it a try and lets just say I was pretty lost and didn't realize what I was doing.

6. Terminology - Like the awesome noob that I am, I have no clue what terms people were using like "cs", "leash", and a "carry".

Dem Resources...

Over the course of a few days I have played 4-5 games all with very specific goals of answering these above questions and getting better. Normally I would read a few online articles and then I would search for a video of someone showing / explaining it. I think the combination of reading about it and then seeing someone do it is a winning formula. I tried to focus on 1 or 2 things at a time and then move on once I got a good understanding of what I should do.

One of the best resource sites that I have found for noobs and pros alike is MOBAFIRE. They have a huge LoL community and tons of guides. One of the guides that I like the most is a basic general guide to the game. It is not too often that I spend time reading through a whole guide, but it was so well put together and helpful for a noob like me, I just had to read it from start to finish.

Here is it in all its glory - The General Guide to League of Legends

I am happy to report that all of my questions on the above list I have been able to answer. I have started the process of practicing and can already tell a big difference in my game play. Don't get me wrong, I am still very much a noob, but now I at least have a good idea of how the game should go.

I played a game last night against the intermittent AI difficulty and two of my teammates seemed like me before I started reading up on how to play the game. They were doing a pretty terrible job of killing minions and they kept on dying. I think one of them ended up with 21 deaths or something like that. It was the first game that I thought we were going to lose and if the AI controlled champions wanted to end it, they could have easily. However, a few of us just kept on grinding away and to be honest, I have no idea how we ended up winning. It took over 100 minutes and it was the first game that I really learned the importance of the jungle and mini bosses buffs.

Notes / Take Aways / Tips

1. Pick one champion and stick with them.

That doesn't mean you cant play around with a bunch of champions, but I think the best way to learn the game and get good at it, is to stick with one champion that you like and master them. I am still messing around with a few, but I think I am going to roll with Malzahar exclusively. What can I say, I like dark magic characters and I like dots.../evil

2. Learn how to last hit and execute it EVERYTIME.

I didn't realize how important this concept was but after reading up and watching others play online...I couldn't of been more wrong. It is one of the easiest ways to improve your game.

3. Communicate with your team and recognize the transition from "laning" to team battles.

This was one of the most confusing things to me. I had no idea what to do in the mid game and didn't understand what my other teammates were doing. What really helped me recognize this is just watching other people play. I think one of the videos I watched actually stated that mid / late game was all about team battles first and farming minions second.

I am still trying to get used to pinging the map and emoting correctly. However, now that I know how, its only a matter of practicing.

Upcoming goals for entry 2...

1. Play against actual people. Even if I only do it a few times and get rolled. I need to start playing people to get a better understanding of the game and its fun factor.
2. Get better at last hitting.
3. Pay attention to the map more and work on my communicate emotes

Copy and Paste like a Pro

Here are some of the more helpful videos I watched. They cover quite alot and helped a noob like myself A TON.

Beginner Guides - I really enjoyed both of these and highly recommend the terminology video. 





Replay Analysts



Ranked Match in the Middle Lane - I loved watching this guy play and found his thought process very interesting



Until next time people, I'm WTFout!