Champions

Champions

Champions are one of the most important parts of League of Legends that make every game you play unique and different. There are currently 119 champions and each one is unique in its own way. There are all different kinds of champions. Assassins, bruisers, tanks, marksmen, supports, and mages. Each have their own role on a team and cannot be replaced easily. 

With so many champions to choose from there are about 22 billion different team comps. You could have an all mage team or balance it out with one from each role. Each champion has a primary role and a secondary role though a champion can play any role, some just better than others. 

Here are some examples of team comps:

Top lane tank

Jungle bruiser

Mid lane mage

Bot lane marksmen and support

Each champion has four abilities and a passive. The fourth ability of the champion is called the ultimate. It is usually more powerful but this is not always the case. For example, Nidalee's ultimate transforms her into a leopard which gives her new abilities.

Most of the champions:

League of Legends terms

Text terms

OP- overpowered; as in better. Example: This champion is overpowered so he cannot be beaten.

Nerf- Making a champion less powerful because they are op

gg- good game

hf- have fun

gl- good luck

In-game terms

AD- attack damage

AP- ability power

gank- going into a lane from behind an enemy champion so that they cannot escape and then slaying them

drag- dragon; the jungle monster

baron- Baron nashor; the most powerful jungle monster

push- killing all the enemy minions in a lane over and over so that your minions move closer to the enemy's base

farming- killing minions

laning phase- the beginning of the game where players stay in one lane besides the jungler

mid game- the middle of the game where players begin to roam

roam- going to different parts of the map to either farm, gank, or push

peel- a tank player blocking all damage from an adc while the adc does damage to the enemies

turret hug- staying near an ally turret in lane while farming so that the enemy does not kill you

tp- teleport; a summoner spell

freezing lane- farming minions by hitting them when they are only on very low health so that nor your minions nor the enemy minions push the lane

backdoor- having one or two players sneak through the enemy base and destroying an inhibitor or nexus while the other players defend

frontdoor- acing the enemy team and destroying the nexus

ace- when all enemy champions are dead

Items

ga- guardian angel

zhonyas; Zhonya's hourglass

bt- Bloodthirster

botrk- Blade of the ruined king

Fantasy LCS

Fantasy LCS

Have you ever heard of fantasy football or fantasy basketball? Well in these games you basically pick certain players in a draft and based on their performance during games your team earns points. Every week you go against another player in your league and whoever has more points at the end of the day wins.

Fantasy LCS is just like these games except it is for of course, League of Legends. You will create a league with your friends and then draft 1 top laner, 1 jungler, 1 adc, 1 mid, 1 support, 1 flex player, and 3 alternate players. You will also choose one team. During the games you will earn points based on how good your players and team do. The beta for Fantasy LCS should be out soon.

Source: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/community/community-programs/announcing-fantasy-lcs-beta

Osu

Osu is a korean game similar to Guitar Hero but with the mouse. Many league players play Osu because it helps you get better at lasthitting (doing the last bit of damage to an enemy minion which gives you a bit of gold). Since lasthitting is such an important mechanic and Osu can help improve this.

In Osu, you can download a song from the site with a beatmap made by the community, or make your own. To play you just have to hit the circles that appear on the screen, the better you time the clicks, the more points you get. Osu Site

2014 All-Star

From May 8-11, the All-Star league will be playing. This means that the top teams from North America, Europe, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Cloud 9 will first play against Fnatic at around 12 PM. Unfortunately most people will not be able to watch this game since the All-Star league is in Paris, France. Fnatic is a fairly skilled team from Europe though Cloud 9 will most likely win this game. Unfortunately their next game at around 2 PM on the same day, Cloud 9 will be playing against SKT T1. SKT T1 is the top Korean team and won the World Championship last year. This means that Cloud 9 will be playing against the top team in their second game so they will most likely not make it past their first day.

During the All-Star league, two teams made up of all pro players from other teams. These teams are Team Ice made up of Caomei from China in the top lane. Archie from Vietnam as adc. Madlife from Korea as support. Doublelift from United States also as adc. Finally Froggen from Europe as the mid laner.

The second team is Team Fire. QTV from Vietnam is in the top lane. WX from China as adc. Shy from Korea also in the top lane. Bjergsen from United States in the mid lane. Last but not least, Diamond from Europe in the jungle.

These two teams will compete against each other in four different game modes, one each day of the league, for fun. On the first day, the two teams will play a game in URF mode which has already been explained in another post. On the second day there will be a game mode called Hexakill. The only difference in Hexakill is that there are 6 players instead of 5 on each time. In Hexakill for Team Ice, the sixth player will be Misaya from China in mid lane. The sixth player for Team Fire will be Toyz from China also in the mid lane. On the third day of the league, it will also be URF but all the champions that people play as will be decided by the community in an ongoing vote. The mode on the fourth day still has yet to be announced so stay tuned.

Items and stats

In League of Legends, you will earn gold. Every game you start out with a low 475 gold in most cases. You can earn gold in many ways but you will earn most of it by killing minions, enemy champions, and overtime. Gold is very important in League of Legends because it allows you to buy items that can increase things such as how much damage you do and how much health you have. Each player can have a total of 6 items and a trinket. A trinket is a free item that has its own personal item slot, you may only own one trinket and each one has its own unique purpose.

There are many kinds of items. To understand which items do what, you must first understand your champion's stats. Each champion has attack damage (increases the damage of your basic attack* and the damage of all abilities that use attack damage). A similar stat to attack damage is ability power which increases the damage of any abilities that use ability power. Two more stats are armor and magic resistance which. Armor decreases damage done to you from abilities that use attack damage and magic resistance does the same thing but against abilities that use ability power. 

Another important stat is movement speed which increases how fast your champion moves. A few more stats are lifesteal which allows you to recover hp from dealing damage to an enemy with an attack damage ability or basic attack and spell vamp is the same but for ability power abilities. There are four more stats, attack speed, health, mana**, and cooldown reduction. Attack speed increases the speed that you can use basic attacks. Mana increases your mana (obviously) and health increases your health. The final stat, cooldown reduction, decreases the time that your abilities will be unusable***.

*A basic attack is a ranged or melee(up close) attack, which does more damage based on your attack damage.

**Most champions have something called mana. It is used to cast abilities and slowly regenerates so that no one may spam(repeatedly use) their abilities.

*** Each champion ability has a unique cooldown time, which can range from 3 seconds to 2 minutes, where it is unusable.

Now that champion stats have been explained, I will now describe the purpose of items. All items increase certain stats based on how expensive they are. Items can give an increase in one more stats but no items increase all stats. Some items also have a passive. A passive gives your champion a unique ability that is always active such as slowly doing damage every second to nearby enemies. Some passives can be stacked (gotten over and over) while some passives are unique passives. Unique passives do not stack.

Gameplay of League of Legends

First of all, League of Legends must be downloaded in order to play and can take a while, around an hour, for the game to be playable. Since you probably do not want to wait this long to see what the game is like, here are some pictures.

First is a picture of the main menu of the game when you first login to the game:

Unfortunately I cannot find a better quality picture but I will explain the picture. As you can see, there is a large red play button which is obviously pressed to begin looking for a game. To the right of this play button is your summoner icon, a simple picture chosen from an assortment of given pictures. Next it shows your summoner name, a name that you choose(like a username), which is inside of your xp bar. The xp bar is how you see how long it is until you level up. The maximum level is 30 which can take a while to get. Then comes two numbers. This is the amount of rp and ip that you have on your account. Rp, riot points, is basically how the game makes money, it is a currency that is purchases with real money. Ip, influence points, are used to purchase champions and a few other things. The yellow- orange button below your summoner name leads you to the shop:

Since this post will be long enough , I will quickly explain the store. The store is where you buy champions, skins (bought with rp that make champions look cooler or more interesting), and a few other more complicated items.

Now back to the main menu. In the middle left of the screen, you can find ranked games that are currently being played, you may spectate these games. Below these ranked games, it shows the most current news posts that may contain patch notes, changes made to the game, or things such as new skins. To the right of the news is a video that can be anything from a explaining a new champion or some sort of music video. These are the basic parts of the main menu. Next I will show you pictures ingame.

In the bottom left of this picture, you see a portrait of the champion that you are playing and your xp bar. Your ingame xp bar is different, you gain xp by killing minions. Your level goes back to one each game and the max level is 18. Each time you level up, you can improve or unlock one of your abilities. In the bottom left of the screen you can see your abilities. Each champion has four unique abilities. The fourth ability which cannot be unlocked until level 6 in most cases, is usually the best ability while other abilities may do damage, restore health, or give you a unique passive, which gives you a special ability that is always active. In the bottom right is your minimap which is just a layout of the entire map. In the top right corner it shows how many kills, deaths, and assists you have, and also how long the game has been going on.

That is all for now, and in closing, here is a picture of what it looks like at maximum graphics:

Important Links

These are some important links that anyone who plays League of Legends should know.

The first link is for twitch. Twitch is a site where anyone can stream video games, one of these video games is League of Legends.    Twitch.tv

This link is for people who want to learn more about how to build in game and which champion to play against another champion for a better chance of winning.   Lolcounter

This site allows you to check the stats of people you are playing with in a game.   Lolnexus

If you are having trouble with building items for a champion, this is the link for you  Mobafire

That is all for now but expect more to come.

What is League of Legends?

For all those people who do not know what this game is, it is a MOBA video game. MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. This means that the game is played with multiple people via the internet in a pvp(player vs player) style mode where players compete against each other to win. 

In League of Legends or Lol for short, you can select from a variety of over 100 champions that each have a variety of abilities that you can use to defeat enemy players. In the standard game mode, there are three lanes where one to two champions go and try to destroy the enemy turrets in the lane. On the default map which contains two teams of 5 players, there are three turrets in each lane. 

If a champion goes too close to a turret, they will get hit by the tower which will deal a big amount of damage that increases each time. In order to not get hit by a turret so that you can destroy it, you must get your minions which are small little creatures that each team has. These minions are very weak but by destroying the enemy's minions, your minions will go under their turret and attack the turret while you can also attack it.

After destroying the first two turrets in a lane, there is a turret called the inhibitor turret. After attacking this turret, its health can regenerate over time, but once you destroy it, you are at the inhibitor which cannot be damaged until the inhibitor turret is gone. The inhibitor also regenerates health but unlike turrets, it does not hurt you. If you destroy the inhibitor, the minions in that lane on your team will become stronger for a few minutes until the inhibitor will respawn unlike turrets which cannot respawn.

Once destroying the inhibitor, you will be at the nexus towers. The nexus towers are just like inhibitor towers except there are two of them. They guard the nexus which needs to be destroyed to win the game. 

The nexus turrets and nexus

That is the basic idea of League of Legends and even though it seems very complicated, after playing the game for a while, it can become quite fun and easy to play.

Cloud 9 has won yet again

As stated last Thursday, TSM and Cloud 9, the top two teams in the NA LCS, played against each other. Cloud 9 is now the best team in NA. Even though Cloud 9 has beaten TSM yet again, they may have to face off one more time. The final bracket has been posted and it seems that with TSM in second place, they still have a chance to win the NA LCS. 

In this bracket, there are 6 teams. Team Dignitas, Curse, Counter Logic Gaming, Team Coast, TSM, and Cloud 9. The first four teams stated are each going to play against another team ( Dignitas vs Curse, CLG vs Coast) and the two winners will each play against either Cloud 9 or TSM. The winners of these two matches will then play against each other for NA LCS championship. Unfortunately even if TSM makes it to the finals and loses to Cloud 9, they will still gain a spot in the World Championships along with first place.

Cloud 9 now has a guaranteed spot in at the very least, 4th place. As long as they win their next game against either Curse or Team Dignitas, they have an automatic spot in the LCS World Championships. Based on how Cloud 9 has beaten both of these teams recently, it is doubtful that Cloud 9 will lose. Since TSM has done the same against the teams that they will be facing, either Counter Logic Gaming or Team Coast, it is likely that TSM will also be in the finals. 

It is quite ironic how this happened last year as well. In the 2013 NA LCS, Cloud 9 won first place in the NA LCS against TSM, who got second place. Then later on in the World Championships, Cloud 9 was unfortunately eliminated in the quarterfinals. Though Cloud 9 did manage to make it farther than TSM and they did quite well for their first time in the World Championships, they unfortunately did not win. 

To sum this post up, Cloud 9 has good standings at the moment in the NA LCS and will most likely get first place in the NA LCS. Then in the World Championships, they will hopefully win, though last year, this was not the case.

Twitch Streams

In case you love League of Legends so much that you are willing to devote all of your time to it, here is a way to improve your skills at League. Many people do not know this but watching pro player,s such as the members of Cloud 9, can improve your skill at League by allowing you to learn more about the game and how to play a certain champion

While watching the LCS is a great way to learn about League and I recommend it, I also recommend to watch streams on Twitch. Just go to www.twitch.tv and select the game League of Legends and find a good streamer. In case you have no knowledge of who is good, all members of Cloud 9 have their own streams.

Links:  www.twitch.tv/meteos

          www.twitch.tv/haiL9

           www.twitch.tv/sneakycastroo

           www.twitch.tv/lemination

          www.twitch.tv/manballs

URF

URF, which stands for Ultra Rapid Fire, is a new game mode in League of Legends. Though at first people thought it was only an April Fool's joke, it is available  to play until the end of the week. In this new game mode, all abilities receive 80% cool down reduction, this allows for quicker game play which is why games usually last around 25 minutes instead of the usual 40 minutes. Another part of URF mode is that there is no energy or mana. This allows all abilities to be used without being worried about running out of mana or energy. There is also an extra 60 movement speed and additional buffs for ranged champions*.

On the day of release of URF mode, April 1, Cloud 9 and TSM played a game in URF mode. Unfortunately, the game did not count in the LCS, it was only for fun, though Cloud 9 did win thanks to Meteos.

Cloud 9's Stats in the LCS so far

As of 4/3/14, Cloud 9 is tied in first place in the NA LCS with the team TSM, Team Solo Mid. They both currently have a win loss ratio of 20-4! That means that they have both won 20/24 games, that means they both won 83% of their games. Cloud 9 and TSM also have the top 5 KDA's in the LCS, with "Sneaky" in first, "Meteos" in a close second by 0.1, followed by "Wildturtle," "Dyrus," and "Bjergson," all members of TSM. 

On Saturday, April 5, TSM and Cloud 9 will face off once more to see who is the better team. Go Cloud 9!

Cloud 9, who are they?

Cloud 9, or C9, is one of the top NA* LCS** teams currently. Their team is made up of five members. 

William Hartman, "Meteos."***

An Le, "Balls."

Hai Lam,. "Hai."

Zachary Scuderi, "Sneaky."

Daerek hart, "LemonNation."

Their coach is Daniel Dinh, their manager is Jack Etienne, their analyst is Charlie Lipsie, and their team captain is Hai Lam.

*NA - North America

**LCS- League Championship Series

*** The name in quotation marks is their username