League of Legends

About Me & Why From a very young age I was immersed in sports and loved competition. I played many sports throughout the years and continue to play sports. When I am not playing sports I still love competition so I got into E-Sports. E-Sports is a rapidly growing industry and provides competition much like traditional sports. I fell in love with E-Sports for this very reason as a way to have fun but still be competitive in what I was doing. Many people look down on E-sports because they either don’t see that it is a legitimate business or they just simply do not understand. League of Legends is the most played PC game in the world and also a forerunner for the most organized E-sport. I fell in love with the game as well as the competitive and professional side of the game. My goal is to teach the Average Joe enough about League of Legends (LoL) that they can make an informed decision about the game rather than just brush it aside because they do not know anything about it. I am not here to persuade anyone onto the E-sports bandwagon but rather explain what LoL is and how the professional scene is structured. During this article there may be words that you don’t’ understand because I have not explained them yet. I apologize but it is very difficult to explain something that is related to something else without using the correct terminology. Just keep it tucked into the back of your head and I will explain it later in the article, and if there is still something you do not understand reach out to me and I will attempt to make the article clearer while giving you an answer to your question.

What is League of Legends? League of Legends is a free Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game. The game pits 10 players, two teams of five, against each other on Summoners Rift, the map in which the game is played. A winner is decided when one team destroys the enemies’ nexus. The Rift is set up as seen below with the two teams beginning the game in their base. The team will then spread out across the map to begin the game. Looking at the map you can see there are three lanes; these lanes are referred to as top, middle and bottom lane. The corresponding lane also helps identify the position each player is playing but we will get into positions later.

The Nexus sits at the center of each base surround by two Nexus Towers. Each lane has 3 towers or turrets, and the tower beyond that one cannot be damaged or destroyed until the one in front of it has been destroyed. In order to reach the nexus a team must destroy all three towers in one lane and the inhibitor. The inhibitor is behind the third tower and allows the nexus towers and nexus to be damaged. Simply put a team must make its way down a lane and destroy the objects in its path in an attempt to reach the enemies nexus and destroy it. That in it basic form is League of Legends.

Summoner Spells: Each player picks two summoner spells before the game begins and they are commonly referred to as summoners. I am going to highlight the most used and most common spells as to not confuse readers with information that is not important. Flash: Teleports your champion a short distance toward your cursor’s location. Flash is the staple summoner spell and in 99% of games all 10 players will have flash. It allows a player to escape over walls or create distance between them and an enemy they know they cannot defeat. It can also be used aggressively if an enemy is escaping to close the gap towards and enemy and kill them. Flash has a cooldown of 300 seconds meaning it can only be used once every 300 seconds so players have to choose carefully when they want to use it. Ignite: Ignites target enemy champion dealing true damage over 5 seconds, grants you vision of the target, and reduces healing effects on them for the duration. Ignite is most commonly taken on Mid Laners as it gives them a damage boost to help kill their opponent. Top laners and Supports can also take ignite if they feel it is better in that situation over the alternatives. Teleport: After channeling for 3.5 seconds, teleports you champion to a target allied structure (towers), minion, or ward. Teleport is normally taken the top laners so they can help out other lanes in a fight and turn the odds in their favor. Some Mid Laners depending on the champion they are playing will take Teleport as well if they feel they will not be able to kill their opponent so they want to be able to help their team out. Teleport has a 300 second cooldown and while channeling for the 3.5 seconds if the enemy interrupts that channel then the teleport is cancelled and it still goes on cooldown. Players have to be careful where they teleport so the enemy cannot prevent the channel from finishing. Exhaust: Exhausts target any champion, reducing their movement speed and attack speed by 30%, their armor and magic resist by 10, and their damage dealt by 40% for 2.5 seconds. Exhaust is traditionally taken by supports as they want to help their team out and be able to stop damage from coming through and keeping their team alive. It will occasionally be taken on Mid Laners as well if they feel their opponent is going to try and kill them more often than not and they need to stop some of that damage to survive. Heal: Restores health and grants 30% movement speed for 1 second to you and target allied champion. This healing is halved for units recently affected by summoner heal. Heal is traditionally taken on the AD Carry so they can stay alive and do the most damage possible. Some Mid Laners will take it as well if they are playing a champion who is not necessarily trying to kill their opponent in the laning phase but is very easy to kill so they need the movement speed and heal to escape if they are in danger. Smite: Deal true damage to target epic or large monster or enemy minion. Smite is a very confusing summoner if you have no prior knowledge of LoL. I am going to explain it anyway and later in the article when the jungle position is explained it will become clearer. Smite is used by the jungler to help them kill a monster in the jungle. The jungler does to because the mosters have a decent amount of health, but it helps them secure neutral objectives. Each team has their own objectives, the towers, inhibitors and the nexus, but there are also neutral objectives available to both teams. Baron, Rift Herald, and Dragon. They are all monsters on the rift that when killed provide things for your team so it is important that you get them and not your opponent. Smite does a huge chunk of damage in a burst so that the jungler can kill it from a higher amount of health than anyone else who does not have smite. This is one reason the jungler is so important because of their objective control

Positions: As mentioned before each team consists of five players and they each play a different position (similar to a basketball team). These positions are Top Laner, Jungle, Mid Laner, AD Carry (ADC) and Support. Each positions brings a different aspect and responsibility to the table. So when the game begins teams tend to roam as a group and get an idea of what the enemy team is doing but they will eventually report to their positions and begin what is known as laning phase. Top Laner: Top lane tends to be left on an island because they are normally the ones who can still be relevant and helpful to their team with the least amount of resources put towards them. Since they are on an island many top laners use the summoner spells Flash and Teleport. Teleport allows to them to help out their team in an instant even in they are across the map. Many times Top Laners will be a tank for their team. The term tank is referred to someone who builds as much defense as possible so they can soak damage and let the rest of the team do their damage. This is not always true or a steadfast rule but many teams designate the tank role to the top laner. Jungler: The rift has three lanes, but there is also a lot of ground between those lanes. This area is referred to as the jungle. The Jungler kills monsters and minions in this area to level up and get gold for themselves. The jungler will then try to assist their team by ganking. Ganking is a term most people will not know. Ganking means to help your teammate in a lane and try to kill the opponent while coming out of the jungle. The Jungler will get in position and they will attempt to 2v1 the enemy and either kill him or make him use his summoner spells so that if they attempt to gank again it will be easier. When a fight over neutral objective happens it is up to the jungler to secure that objective with smite. Mid Laner: The Mid Laner plays mid lane and they are typically a high damage dealer to help their team. Mid lane is the focus of a lot of team because it is in the middle of the map and accessible from many different directions. Mid lane is typically the most high profile superstar role of LoL. Mid lane has the most diversity in terms of summoner spell as they can make use of almost all the summoners spells Attack Damage Carry (ADC): The ADC gets its name because of the type of damage it does, attack damage. They are in the bottom lane paired with their support and their job is to do as much damage as possible. They build next to no defense and can be killed very easily but they do a high amount of damage to make up for it, and their support is there to keep them alive and help them get kills. The ADC almost always will take flash and heal so they are harder to kill. Support: Support is exactly what it sounds like. They are paired in the bottom lane with their ADC and they more or less baby sit them so they do not die. The support is there to keep them alive and get kills if the opportunity arises. Supports will take flash and either ignite to try and kill the enemy or exhaust to stop the enemy from doing as much damage. Supports also take care of the majority of the vision control, which will be explained later.

Champions: Champions are the characters that the players are controlling. At the time of writing this article there are 134 unique champions. Each team gets to pick five separate champions in what is known as the pick and ban phase. For the competitive scene such as professional play the Pick and ban phase is done similar to pick up basketball. Each team takes turn banning (meaning it cannot be used for that game) one champion at a time until a total of six, three from each team are banned. The first team will then get to pick its first champion. After that the next team picks two, and this continues until each team has selected all five of its champions. Each team gets too see what the other has banned and has picked making the pick and ban phase very strategic and ever changing. Champions fill roles much like the players do, top laners, junglers, mid laners, adcs, and supports. Some champions can fill more than one role making them a mind game in pick ban for the other team wondering which role it will fill and what player will play it. Each champion has a passive, three abilities and an ultimate ability. Each level you receive you can put one point into an ability. At level 1 every player receives one point and you get to unlock an ability (not the ultimate ability) and put a point into it. This continues until level 18 when all points are filled. Each ability has 5 points and gets stronger with each point put into it. The Ultimate ability is unlocked at level 6 and points can only be put into it at levels 6, 11, and 18.

Items: There are more stats than this but these are the five most basic and can give a person an understanding of why an item is being built. Items are bought with gold that is gathered throughout the game and they give the player stats. There are many stats that help improve your champion depending on what you are attempting to do. Let’s start off with the defensive stats. Armor: Armor decreases damage from attack damage. Each character does attack damage with their auto attack, and some abilities get stronger when you buy more attack damage (AD). Armor helps reduce the damage you take from these sources of damage. Magic resistance (MR): MR reduces the damage taken from abilities that do magic damage. Mid laners are the primary source of Magic damage as most mid laners are mages who get stronger when they build ability power (AP). Attack Damage (AD): Increases the damage of your auto attack and abilities that scale with AD. ADCs get their name for this very reason as they use their auto attack more than any other role and they get stronger with AD. Ability Power (AP): AP is used for mages to increase the damage of their spells. ​ Health: Health is exactly what it sounds like. It gives the champion more health.

Gameplay: The players are not the only ones on the map, there are also minons and monsters. The monsters were explained a little bit earlier as the jungler kills them in their jungle for gold and levels. The laners , top, mid and ADC, do the same but with minions. Minions spawn ( spawn is the term used when you appear on the map, and respawn is when you reappear on the map after being killed) out of the nexus and walk down each lane. The minions are uncontrollable but do the same thing every time. They walk down the lane and attack the other team’s minions, champion, or towers. Killing a minion grants the player gold that they can use to buy items to make them stronger. Killing minions while also doing damage or killing your opponent is very tricky. You also do not want to take too much damage from your opponent while farming (killing minions to farm the gold) because it leaves you susceptible to being killed which if you are you are going to miss out on some farm and experience. You are given experience just for being near an enemy minion when it dies even if you did not kill it, but the gold is granted only if you kill it. It is a balancing game of when do I deal damage or try and kill my opponent or do I sit back and farm up and try to kill them later. This is why dying and ganking are very important. If a gank is successful and an enemy is killed they miss out on the gold and experience that their opponent is getting putting them behind. If they return to their position and their opponent is stronger they may not be able to farm as freely and have to sacrifice farm so that they do not die anymore. If you or your team can kill an enemy or make them leave their lane in fear of dying then you have some free time in that lane to either farm more, do damage to their tower, or roam elsewhere on the map and gank another lane. If a player does die there is a respawn timer, similar to the cooldown of a spell, before you respawn. The layer will respawn on their fountain in their base where they intitally spawned when the game started. As a player increases in level the death timers become longer giving the enemy more time to take objectives while you are dead. To many newcomers ganking seems pretty strong as you can come out of nowhere and have a numbers advantage, but this is where the vision control comes into play. The whole map is not able for the players to see. You can see the area around your minions, your teammates and wherever you have a ward. A ward is like a small lantern you can place anywhere that gives you vision of an otherwise dark area. These dark areas are known as “Fog of War”. The support will buy an item that gives him wards which they can then place where they would like to have more vision and protect themselves. Every player should be warding to protect themselves as the support cannot cover the entire map, but the majority of the time it falls to the supports.