IX. Teamfighting

Teamfighting

This is another large section, but don't worry, it's also the last. I've broken it into three phases, to provide a more effective play-by-play. There's been an underlying theme running through this whole blog: you are going to instantly start winning more games if you play better as a teammate and as a team. 

Teamfighting is where all the other sections come together. 

Think of your favorite teamfight memories. That chained CC where the enemy backline was on lockdown for six seconds of face-melting burst from your team's midlaner and marksman. Health bars disappearing as you all sliced through the enemy team.  

That happens when a team maximizes its synergy and everyone knows their role. It's a beautiful thing, I'd say if this were a 1950s B&W drama and not a blogspot site. Here's how you can make sure it always happens.

1) The Vision Game

Before any teamfight breaks out, a good team is going to secure vision of wherever the assault is planned. Proactive deep wards enable picks and skirmishes in narrow corridors where the team that seizes initiative can have a powerful advantage. The jungler and support should both have Oracle's by this point, and you 

can set up traps on the enemy side of the river as well as your own.

Moving as a unit is important while you clear wards during the mid and late game. Because of the possibility of a teamfight at any point, you need to be ready to react to a surprise engage. Generally, stacking your team so that the squishiest member is between one frontline tank, the other squishies and the other tank or offtank is preferable when moving through unlit areas. Know which way you want to scatter if you're facing any sort of AoE that could wreck a clumped team.

One last note on warding: don't be afraid to toss out a ward because you think someone else is about to. While it can be a minor waste of resources, there are a few situations in which it's beneficial to have multiple wards in the same location. As Sun Tzu never said, "You can't have too many wards on the battlefield."

2) The Engage

In solo queue, an aggressive, surprise engage can lead to by-the-book teamfight victories. Because of a general lack of cohesive tactics among solo queue players, the team that seizes the initiative can often springboard that into a clean ace with little more than an extra split second of entering "shit-we're-in-teamfight-now" mode. 

Having a tanky initiator who can competently engage a mid or late game throwdown is so beneficial, I'd say that learning how to do it right might have a better effect on your ranked tier than any of the other topics I've covered in what will eventually be this 15,000+ word opus.

As initiator, you're playing the minigame "catch-the-squishy," trying to create positioning mistakes with your aggressive dives and feints towards the backline. Your goal is obviously to isolate or crowd control-lock one of the opposing team's damage threats. 

But, and this part is often forgotten because it's dangerous (or useless) at the highest levels of play, there are situations in which engaging on a tank or off-tank can be the right move. For example, if a damage threat shows in a different lane, or if any champion without a teleport rears his or her head in any lane away from where your team is standing off with the enemy.

In that situation, going in on a tank is still fine, because you're 5v4, and even blowing a few cooldowns is worth making it a 5v3, which is statistically unwinnable for the downsized team (don't tell Uzi, I know).

2b) The Counterengage

As a result of the same issues I raised in the opening of the Engage section, the ability to counterengage competently and effectively is almost as valuable as being able to start a fight. It loses points because counterengaging implies that your team has already taken a substantial amount of damage after the initiation, and so the counterengage is inherently weaker than perfecting your engage. 

Still, doing it well means hitting Mikael's on the caught-out target and speed-boosting him or her to safety. Or it can mean separating the assassins and fighters from the tanks and other squishies, allowing your team to jump on isolated members of the enemy team.

Timing is everything for counterengage, too early and they have follow-up gap-closers. Too late and your carries have already been deleted. Depending on the champion you choose, your counterengage is going to be about either preventing damage (shields or heals) or re-positioning (displacement effects, crowd-control). 

If you plan to re-engage, preventing damage is usually going to be an initial priority to insure you have the health bars to brawl in a prolonged skirmish.

3) Who's the Beatdown?

I'm borrowing a concept from Magic: the Gathering of all places for this third section. This is the part where the frantic button-spamming and mouse-clicking happens, and one of the easiest ways of improving your standing is through knowing how to win once the CC starts chaining and the AoE starts raining. 

I've mentioned it over and over again, but I'll bring it up here, too. Knowing your role wins games.

Assassins and fighters built for damage need to be gapclosing to the backline and blowing up or zoning the ADC, AP or AD caster. The support and tanks need to peel and protect their marksman and other squishies. And the sustained DPS or AoE needs to position immaculately and pump out the damages.

I'll repeat this again here from earlier: if you are the marksman, or you are playing alongside a marksman, please keep in mind that the person they need to be shooting is the highest priority target within safe distance. 

Don't like that your ADC never seems to attack the enemy carries? Practice creating firing lanes or safe zones for them to position into in order to isolate those less-resilient champions. Practice peeling and bodyblocking. If they can't position correctly, the team can reposition around them, as well.

That leads into the last point. It's no one individual's fault if the teamfight goes south. That's why it's called a teamfight and not a ZionSpartan. The concept of who's the beatdown applied to teamfighting is understanding tempo and aggression. 

Does your team have an item or experience advantage? You need to be aggressive and dive harder than they are expecting. Keep in mind that a raw gold advantage that hasn't been translated into items does not signal that your team is the beatdown--you have to consider base stats and relative skill.

If you aren't the beatdown, then you need to identify defensive schemes that will minimize the opposing team's current strengths. Baiting a turret dive with a mobile damage dealer might be worth pulling the tankline back a little. 

Or maybe it means investing more in wards to make picks and avoid roaming death squads.

In any case, teamfighting in solo queue is often wild and chaotic and decided as much by misplays as great maneuvers. That only increases the value of practicing and mastering the art of synergy, as you'll see results immediately, reinforcing the benefit of the work you put in. 

VIII. Baron Nashor

Baron Nashor

This section is real simple: Baron Nashor doesn't exist in solo queue. Baron, and the Exalted with Baron Nashor buff granted by defeating him, is designed to provide a strategic incentive to skirmish in the mid-late game. Specifically, having the buff allows you to push objectives and dive turrets effectively when coordinated well. That last part is important. 

When used by a team that can coordinate turret aggro, maintain their formation, and focus down squishy backline targets while allowing the marksman to whittle down the tanks and utility roles, the purple buff is really strong. Realistically, the solo queue team you're on does not have that level of sophistication. At Diamond or Challenger levels, you may have the game sense to organically orchestrate that kind of play, provided everyone has bought into their role and is equally adept at performing it.

With that in mind, contesting the Baron buff in solo queue is almost never worth it. If you've built any sort of item or experience advantage, it is definitely not worth, as a semi-coordinated five-man push is going to secure at least two turrets if not an inhibitor past the 25 minute mark. You will also normally have the opportunity to grab dragon and purloin buffs from the enemy jungle.

The exception to the rule: There are actually two. You should always encourage your team to grab every free Baron you have served up to you. That's a no-brainer enough I almost didn't include it. But I'm specifically referring to clean aces, or four-for-ones or other incredibly favorable trades that result in you having smite and the carries needed to burst down His Majesty Highness, the Baron of the Rift. A two-for-two where you "know they went b" is not the situation I'm referring to.

The other is when, serendipitously, your whole team happens to be around Baron, at full health, when you catch them with their Armor/MR shredded and health bars half-missing, still attempting to slay the royal wurm. If you can't push towers and secure inhibs, because you all happen to be on top of the enemy WHEN THEY START BARON, then you're good to go in with that Crowstorm, that Unstoppable Force, that Assault and Battery. 

But read that last part again. If, WHEN THEY START BARON, one of you is botlane or getting blue buff, or farming away at those Mini Golems, then you all converge wherever they are and grab as many turrets as you can. Period. Especially if you have an item or experience lead.

Baron TL;DR: Don't bother with the beast in his pit. Take turrets and inhibitors instead. Most solo queue teams can't coordinate effectively enough with the Baron buff, and it's more likely that they'll throw than succeed with it so long as your team is prepared for the siege.

IV. Laning

Yes. I'm aware I skipped ahead two chapters. Those are coming soon. 

Laning

Big bold letters inscribed on the sky in flaming font a mile high: NO ONE ON YOUR TEAM IS FEEDING. 

If you take nothing away from today's blog, remember those big bold letters whenever the urge to bemoan a teammate's peculiar affinity for dying on the enemy side of the river rises. Dude isn't feeding. You don't have a counterargument. He's not. He got beat. Maybe it was a lucky crit like he said, maybe he just doesn't know the matchup as well as he thinks. It doesn't matter. Maybe the jungler showed up. IDGAF. Still isn't feeding.

I'll say it again: dying three times in lane isn't feeding. You know that, I know that. It's annoying, and that guy probably feels horrible, but he's not feeding. Five kills? Approaching it, especially if he didn't secure shutdown gold in exchange for the fifth death. But probably still not feeding.

Intentional feeding is beyond incredibly rare. Thanks to Lyte's umpteen posts on the subject we all know the actual rarity, but even anecdotally, it happens less often than finding an extra McNugget in your six-piece. I've played close to 4000 games of League, and I can distinctly remember an intentional feeder popping up a total of 3 times. I've probably blocked out truly awful games, and let's say my memory is worse than Guy Pierce's at the beginning of Memento and say it's 10 times as common. That's still not even 1%.

Unfortunately, thanks to the sheer volume of games played each day, I know there are some players who see intentional feeders a lot more often than I do--and I could see it a bunch of times in a row at some point--but as a general rule, it's fair to say you should probably go back to that whole defaulting to trust thing and give them the benefit of the Yeah-I've-Gotten-My-Ass-Kicked-By-A-Fucking-Teemo-Before-Too.

Rant over.

Once you've gotten over the feeding fallacy, you can focus on the most salient part of laning. Beating your opponent in gold. That's it. Reduced to its skeleton, that's what you've got to do in lane to contribute to a win. Make more money. Warren Buffett up here in the Rift. If that means outfarming them through careful zoning and harass or just better last-hitting, great. Do that. If you can pick up more gold by counterjungling and dueling the enemy jungler 'til he's scared to set foot in his own forest, awesome. Do that. If roaming or aggressively teleporting for objectives or 3v2s means that you'll end up with a fatter stack than the guy on the other side of the river, fantastic. Do that.

We could debate how to define a winning lane along a number of different axes. But whether you think killing the enemy champion, taking the outer turret first, or having a fifty CS lead qualifies, you should know that come teamfight time, the best way for you to contribute to the victory screen is with an item and experience lead. However you come across that.

I'm not going too in-depth with each lane. Contrary to popular belief, there's a lot you need to learn organically as you play. But I have collected three tips for each lane, culled from the vastness of the interwebs in the form of pro player streams, analyst guides, and tournament reviews.

Top Lane

1) Know if you are building for diving the backline or tanking on the front, and know before the game even begins. Don't just assume the jungler or support is going to be able to peel and soak damage. And if you do plan to build for dueling and split-pushing, make sure the team is onboard. If they aren't, none of you are going to have a good time.

2) Focus on farming and winning skirmish trades, but if you have to prioritize one, concentrate on the CS. With the buffs to Teleport and the general level of sustain among viable toplaners, you can afford to come out on the losing end of trades--especially if they are missing minions to hit you. Whether you're going damage or defense, your build is expensive. Farm up.

3) Pay attention to the rest of your lanes. If dragon is a possibility, you'll separate yourself from other toplaners by knowing when to be around the pit and managing your lane minions to avoid missing crucial gold.  The same goes for countering 2v3s in bot with Teleport, or roaming mid after shoving for a surprise gank. Your team's top lane champion is often thought of as an island, and that's true to some extent, but it's actually more like a lumbering, floating warship that can make its presence felt well inland from the coast.

Bot Lane Support

1) Zoning. The act of positioning your champion in such a way that approaching the minion line to farm results in your opponent getting zapped with a fusillade of damage. Proper zone control can make a lane considerably easier (or considerably more difficult, if the enemy support is winning the zone war).

2) Vision control. Fortunately, the actual warding part of the vision game is usually helped out by the rest of the team in the 2014 season. But you can get a leg up on other supports by practicing de-warding, and using dangerous deep wards to carve out small advantages for your team

3) Building for utility can make a huge difference in solo queue. Some supports still try to build like an off-lane AP carry. Zyra, Morgana and Vel'koz can pull it off, but it still means sacrificing the ability to turn a teamfight with a well-timed Mikael's, or chase down fleeing foes with a speed bump from the Talisman of Ascension.

Bot Lane Marksman

1) Positioning is a real thing, but it's widely misunderstood. For one thing that hardly ever gets pointed out, positioning is highly relative. As you climb while playing marksmen, you'll hear about "bad positioning" and "great positioning" in somewhat disproportionate numbers. The TL;DR of positioning as a marksman is that you need to stay out of range of assassins/dives/burst while still DPSing as much as possible. Finding the right angles and maneuvering with your team instead of trying to force them to work around you will lead to more victories.

2) When your team is shouting about focusing the right target, they are not talking to you. This is an important lesson to learn as a marksman but it's equally important to understand no matter what role you play. 

Remember the first tip? You can scroll up about a millimeter on your mousewheel if you've forgotten already. Because positioning is paramount, you need to shoot the things that are safest for you to shoot. Is that backline Tristana shredding your tanks? Well, the team can try and rotate around to get you an angle on her, but it's still the responsibility of the assassin/AoE/fighter to take her down. If you try and dive in because everyone is screaming to "focus the ADC," you're going to die, and then Tristana is going to finish what she was doing.

3) It's damage per second, not damage upfront. If you're playing marksman as if you were an assassin or mage, you're not right-clicking enough. Learn your animation timing, practice kiting as often as you can, and don't ever forget to right-click on bad guys.

Mid Lane

1) There are a lot of mid champions, and even more midlane strategies. Understanding your goals entering into the laning phase, however, is a universal boon. Always have one. It can be to keep your opponent heading back to base every three minutes. Build a fifty-CS lead by twelve minutes. Whatever your goal is, modify it for the matchup and adjust your tactics accordingly.

2) Take Wraiths. If it's the enemy Wraiths, that's even better. Investing in a ward for the Wraith camp bush on the enemy side is always worth it, even if you never steal the gold. If you have to, take your own Wraiths. Most junglers have very fast clear times now, and with an additional camp on the far side of the map from the Wraiths, with careful timing, you can make sure you get a Wraith camp for every Wraith camp your allied jungler smites down. The extra gold is relevant, but even more relevant in mid-tiers is the extra ticks on your CS count. Building up 4 bonus minion kills on your score every 55 seconds can make it look to your opponent as though they are falling even further behind than they actually are.

3) Make the effort to understand how much damage your abilities do, especially in terms of a full rotation of skills. You don't have to get to Faker's Zed level, but basic calculation of approximately whether or not you'll kill your target in a teamfight or duel can boost your mana efficiency and cooldown management. The good news is that you probably already have an instinctual understanding of the damage you do, so it's just a matter of converting that to real numbers you can subtract from your enemy's health total until you've got enough damage to reduce it to zero.

Jungle Tank

1) The two main styles of jungler are different enough to warrant two sections here. As a Tank, the jungler is still responsible for objectives and crowd control. Because you will most likely have less damage than a carry-style jungler, knowing your opponent's "Smite+X" combo is even more important than it is for Jungle Fighter champs. You or someone on your team needs to hit the bad smite-wielder with CC the instant the objective hits that number, so you can pile on a bit of extra damage and use your weaker combo to finish it off.

2) Mobility boots are your best friend. Tanks who play in the jungle are much slower than their Fighter counterparts. That goes for movement speed and the time it takes them to kill off monsters. For that reason, ganks and the resulting gold are crucial for Tanks. Investing in mobi boots means getting around the Rift faster and creating more opportunities to killsteal your carries.*

3) Bringing that chainable CC hugely benefits your team if you can do it. If you're more of the meatshield-type, don't neglect picking up extra health. Ruby Sightstone's stats are a lot more attractive when you've got the Spirit of the Ancient Golem.

Jungle Fighter

1) So, when the Live Design team stated their intention to bring back carry-style junglers in the preseason, I'm not sure they envisioned Feral Flare's broken release state. But the item has stabilized now, and junglers who want to be clawing and stabbing their way in to the back lines have some solid build paths and strong options that include or ignore FF as needed. That's not much of a tip though, so here's one: many of the strongest duelists and damage-based junglers don't even use FF. But if you are going to, make sure the team is onboard with the plan in champ select. At the very least, explain how you'll use the Feral Flare to secure objectives and map control, along with swifty or mobi boots to wreak some turret-pushing havoc in the mid and late game.

2) That was a little long. When building damage, know your role in teamfights. You'll likely pick up some tank stats along the way, and you need to use those to initiate and burst the opposing carries with your AD as fast as you can. You need to count on your team to follow up. As a reminder, when it comes to your team, default to trust.

3) You are building for counterjungling, so make sure you do it. Opposing jungler shows bot and you're near upper red? Snag his wraiths or wolves, because you're not making it down there in time to contribute. Always leave a ward. When counterjungling, if you can, it is usually better to clear the camp entirely so that you have the timer and your counterpart doesn't. If you remembered to leave the ward, you can time the camps respawns to initiate a duel, or just take advantage of his poor positioning.

*KSing

Worthy of its own section. The infamous killsteal. Whereby a champion blows all of their abilities to secure a +1 to the K part of their KDA. Oh, you thought I meant whenever a champion that isn't thought of as a primary carry kills an enemy that other allies were attacking?

Yeah. Hate to break it to you, that's not KSing. It's probably not the best strategy, either, but the vitriol spewed in solo queue should the support dare to press Q one more time while the opponent running away is at low health is astonishing.

In general, it's better to get extra gold on to champions who are going to be dealing damage in mid and late game. The addition of assist streaks only magnifies the effectiveness of this. But, damn. Gold in lane is gold in lane. Remember what I said way back at the beginning of this section?  Each lanes' goal in the early game is to generate more gold and experience than the opponents in that lane. Gold on the support still counts for bot lane, and gold in the jungler's purse still counts towards gold from the jungle.

If you're playing one of the non-damage roles, then by all means try to avoid getting kills that could be taken down by damage-dealers. But don't make it a bigger deal than it is. We've got more important things to do, like win the fucking game.

The Last Guide to Solo Queue You'll Ever Need

This could have been three times as long. It would have been mostly fluff. I just thought you should know. I've broken this guide into a whole bunch of sections. Here's the Table of Contents. I'll hyperlink each section once I've posted it. Sound cool?

I. ChampSelect

II. Runes and Masteries

III. Level One

IV. Laning

V. Dragon

VI. First Tower

VII. Sieging and Countersieging

VIII. BaronNashor

IX. Teamfighting

A Full Mug of Mead, League of Legends Bonus #4: Day 2 of the World Championships

So far, the Season 2 World Championships for League of Legends have been all about break-out stars. From the resurgence of Irelia, to the overpowering Stand United ultimate wielder Shen, to Ezrael's ubiquitous role in literally every game so far, certain stars have shone brighter than others. Perhaps none brighter than the international presence that has completely taken over the tournament. With Team Solo Mid's shocking ouster by upstarts Azubu Frost, there are no American teams left competing for the $1,000,000 first prize.

There's a lot to cover, so let's get right to it:

A Full Mug of Mead, League of Legends Bonus #3: Three Things to Take Away from the World Championship Play-offs

The excitement of Day One of the 2012 Season Two League of Legends World Championships is over, but the tournament rolls on. Before the quarterfinal matches begin today, I wanted to look at three trends/metagame considerations that emerged from the first twelve matches of the competition.

A Full Mug of Mead, Bonus #2: An Aside on the Honor System

I assure you, I'm not putting off publishing the beginning guide to jungle because it's freaking long and impossible to put together. That just makes it seem even more obvious, huh? Oh well. But it is coming, and in the meantime, I had to say something about the new Honor system that Riot has put into place in League of Legends, because it is that freaking awesome.

Yes. Awesome enough to warrant NPH.

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #10: How to Win Friends and Influence Victory

Sometimes doing the same thing over and over again just isn't the best way to spend those precious moments of freedom you earn from the demands of parents, significant others, and police officers. Or maybe you are one of those people who genuinely enjoys helping someone else do better and feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction whenever you leave an extra dollar in a tip jar or reach the top shelf for a little old lady. It could be you just really love gold-generating items. Whatever the reason, trying out support is an entertaining way to put yourself on the line for someone else, without having to actually, you know, do anything in real life.

A Full Mug of Mead, Bonus #1: Serol Silvertongue

As with any game, it's a popular pastime for fans and players of League of Legends to create their own new mechanics and Champions that would be fun to engage on the Fields of Justice. I am no exception, so occasionally, you'll get a glimpse of my favorite designs. Serol Silvertongue just happens to be the first I've decided to share.

Serol Silvertongue, The Guild Merchant --

A ranged support, Serol utilitizes a unique mechanic that has never been seen before on the battlefield. Instead of mana, energy, ferocity, or any other secondary source of power, Serol's potency comes from the simplest currency possible: gold.

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #9: Tibbers in the Tallgrass -- A Beginning Guide to AP Mid

If you find yourself enjoying farming away in top lane, but yearn for just a little bit more action and maybe even the ability to do quite a chunk of damage once the game shifts later, your next best bet is going to be slinging spells in the mid lane as your team's AP carry.

AP Mid -- 

No list of the Champions I feel play this role better than any other they can be forced into, means it's past time that I do that. I've divided the AP Mid Champs into A, B, and C groups, based on three factors. First, can they sustain themselves in lane without help from the Jungler? Second, how easy are they to play? And third, how likely, in blind pick, are you to get hard countered by the enemy teams' composition?

A Champion in Group A is always a safe pick, and I strongly recommend becoming good with at least one of them to start. As you begin to play draft games and ranked matches, you will need to add a few more Champions to your repertoire, and at that point, I recommend picking up a few of the hard counters to make your options as flexible as possible. Namely, you'll have your main Champion, if the opposing team doesn't pick a Champion which counters you, you can just go with that, and you'll have a stable of counterpicks to work with if they do find someone randomly that hoses your strategy or playstyle.

AP Mid Group A -- Ahri, Annie, Anivia, Brand, Cassiopeia, Gragas, Karthus, Morgana, Mordekaiser, Orianna, Twisted Fate, Veigar.

AP Mid Group B -- Fiddlesticks, Fizz, Kassadin, Katarina, Kennen, Lux, Malzahar, Pantheon, Sion, Talon, Xerath, Vladimir

AP Mid Group C -- Akali, Cho'gath, Galio, Heimerdinger, Janna, Karma, Kog'maw, Leblanc, Syndra, Zilean.

Also, with this list, keep in mind that some of the Champions appear in a lower tier than you might expect, and your mileage may vary. In general, Galio, Heimerdinger, and Leblanc are better as counterpicks, and Zilean, Janna, and Karma typically play better as support champions. Both Kog'maw and Akali will perform better outside of mid lane.

AP Mid Objectives -- 

1) Farm (Early Game) -- As with any solo lane, farming is your most important objective. You should be aiming to complete your bigger items faster than any other lane period. From Level 1 to 10, shoot to have 60 CS by 10:00. If you are level 11-20, you need to be closer to 70 or 75, and from 21-30 you need to perfect earning at least 85 by 10:00 consistently.

Farming mid lane is all about harassment and knowing where you are on the map. Crossing the river is extraordinarily dangerous, as most guides to jungling involve the words "after you finish your jungle, gank mid." Giving them a free roll to smash your face in is going to make it impossible to hit your farm targets. Having said that, your opponent is just as scared of crossing the river as you are, so the early game as an AP Mid will not usually involve a ton of aggression from your opponent, unless they have a clear advantage over you in damage trades. This is why it is so critical to harass your enemy whenever he or she gets within the range of your widest ability. Staying ahead of them, whether that means having more health, not using all of your pots, or simply overpowering them with damage, will allow you to easily win your lane.

2) Push and Roam (Mid Game) -- Many AP Mid Champions lack a ton of mobility, so their farming phase lasts a bit longer, and will involve your jungler giving you blue buff to keep up in CS and stay on top of your item build. However, you are free to roam if your lane is pushed too far to be farmed safely and you have the opportunity to secure a kill or counterjungle the opposing jungler. Although the mid turrets are probably the most important turrets to bring down, unlike top or bot lanes, you do not usually want to destroy the mid turret early, because doing so will allow the opposing mid to freeze their lane by the Inner Turret, and have plenty of gank support if you attempt to continue to farm. Weakening the turret is fine, so that you can bring it down at your leisure when you need to, but actually taking it down should wait until your team is ready or you've finished your item build.

3) Dominate the Team Fight (Late Game) -- As the ranged mage, you will be responsible for inflicting heavy amounts of damage and keeping the opposing team controlled with your deadly Area of Effect CC. What is that? How about a definition?

Area of Effect Crowd Control -- In order to win a team fight, it is necessary to impede the enemy Champions ability to use their spells and skills effectively. An AoE CC is exponentially more powerful than individual CC because it can hit multiple targets. The CC effects in League of Legends include Displacement Effects such as Walls, Knock-ups, Knock-backs, Fear, Slow, Stun, Silence, Snare, Charm, and Taunt. Fear makes your targets lose focus and become bewildered. Charm and Taunt cause the target to pursue or attack the caster without regard for what is happening around them. Slow inflicts a movement speed debuff and can affect attack speed or damage. Stun freezes your opponents in place and renders them incapable of fighting. Some Champions with AoE CC include: Fiddlesticks, Veigar, Anivia, Galio, or Morgana.

Once your crowd control is on, start pouring in the damage. Using items that increase Ability Power or Magic Penetration will make your spells more effective, and some Champions can come close to one-hitting an enemy if they have a full build and a powered up damage source.

AP Mid is a challenging and engaging role to play on a League of Legends team, and this guide should help solidify your understanding of how to get started. If you have any further questions or would like to see this topic revisited in an Advanced Guide sooner rather than later, e-mail wherethemeatcomesfrom@gmail.com, and tell me why or just head to the comments. Odds are, you can even be first!

Until next time, may all your ultimates end in kills and all your games with "Victory."

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #8: Playing by Yourself -- A Beginning Guide to Top Lane

Now that I've gotten a lot of the basics of League of Legends explained and neatly filed away in the Introduction and Glossary (don't forget, you can always check the "Full Mug of Mead" tab for any articles you may have missed), it's time to turn our attention towards how to actually play different roles in lane. There isn't any particular order to these, save for  the fact that they are written in the order that I personally learned the roles, and feel most comfortable explaining them. Which is a particular order, I suppose. Eh, blame my editor.

Solo Top -- 

I have not yet made a list of the Champions I feel play this role better than any other they can be forced into, so it's about time that I go ahead and do that. I've divided the Top Lane Champs into A, B, and C groups, based on three factors. First, can they sustain themselves in lane without help from the Jungler? Second, how easy are they to play? And third, how likely, in blind pick, are you to get hard countered by the enemy teams' composition?

Counter -- In Champion selection, a counter is any Champion whose playstyle, abilities, or base statistics work in such a way as to make playing your Champion against them very difficult. Skill is still important. However,a player with less skill than you might still be able to defeat you if they select a counter to your Champion. This is especially true of a hard counter, which identifies a counterpick that is completely unbeatable without support from other lanes or items.

A Champion in Group A is always a safe pick, and I strongly recommend becoming good with at least one of them to start. As you begin to play draft games and ranked matches, you will need to add a few more Champions to your repertoire, and at that point, I recommend picking up a few of the hard counters to make your options as flexible as possible. Namely, you'll have your main Champion, if the opposing team doesn't pick a Champion which counters you, you can just go with that, and you'll have a stable of counterpicks to work with if they do find someone randomly that hoses your strategy or playstyle.

Solo Top Group A -- Akali, Irelia, Jarvan IV, Jax, Kayle, Malphite, Nasus, Olaf, Rumble, Singed, Yorick.

Solo Top Group B -- Cho'Gath, Fiora, Dr. Mundo, Gangplank, Garen, Lee Sin, Pantheon, Riven, Renekton, Sion.

Solo Top Group C -- Cassiopeia, Galio, Katarina, Kennen, Mordekaiser, Nidalee, Poppy, Rengar.

Also, with this list, keep in mind that some of the Champions appear in a lower tier than you might expect, and your mileage may vary. Still, of the Group C options, only Poppy plays primarily in Top Lane, the others are all in Group C because, honestly, you should be playing them somewhere other than Solo Top, but they are options, and they do occasionally work as counterpicks.

Solo Top Objectives -- 

1) Farm (Early Game) -- As with any solo lane, farming is your most important objective. You should be aiming to complete your bigger items faster than any other lane aside from the AP Mid. From Level 1 to 10, shoot to have 55 CS (meaning, 55 last-hits on creep minions, earning you gold) by 10:00. 11-20, you need to be closer to 60 or 65, and from 21-30 you need to perfect earning 70-85 by 10:00 consistently.

Farming top lane is all about positioning. If you have vision on your opponent, staying above the creep, towards the top of the map, will make it much more difficult for the opposing jungler to gank you and chase you out of lane. Equally so, if you control the top side of the creep, then your jungler can come in for ganks much more effectively. If you can trade damage effectively with your enemy, zoning him out by standing between him and your allied minions will make it hard for him to hit his farm targets.

2) Push and Roam (Mid Game) -- Many top lane Champions will use the Summoner Spell Teleport to help out other lanes. The best way to do this is through lane ganks. To execute this strategy, if you can push your lane up (after chasing away or killing the enemy top lane champion) and return to the Fountain then you can purchase your items and head into mid or bot lanes along the same path your allies travel. Once there, you can hide in the brush and gank quickly, scoring a kill or a chase, and retreat to the brush to teleport back to the top lane. Done effectively, you will lose almost no gold, and barely any experience, and greatly contribute to your team's overall success.

I recommend attempting this every time you return to base and have Teleport off cooldown and available to get you back into lane.

3) Dominate the Team Fight (Late Game) -- Once you have broken a turret or even two in your lane, it's time to start grouping up. Most Solo Top Champions are either tanks (Singed, Cho'Gath, Garen, Malphite) or assassins (Akali, Fiora, Jarvan IV, Poppy) or both (Irelia, Jax, Olaf, Lee Sin). In Team Fights, then, your goal is to either keep the opposition away from your carries using your Crowd Control and bulky body, or keep your carries alive by slaying the enemy Champions that can threaten them. Each Solo Top Champion plays slightly differently, especially compared to the similarities between, say, Graves, Caitlyn, Ashe, and Vayne, so it is important to learn your Champions strengths.

For example, unless she is focused, Irelia can more or less wade into a team fight, using her Hiten Style ability to gain minor health back, and stun her target with Equilibrium Strike, and chase them down with Bladesurge if they try and retreat behind their tanks. Singed, instead, is going to prefer to circle and poison, attempting to chase and flip the enemy carry right into the thick of his team and poison stream while slowing the others with his super glue.

Solo Top is one of the most entertaining and rewarding roles to play on a League of Legends team, and this guide should help solidify your understanding of how to get into the role. If you have any further questions or would like to see this topic revisited in an Advanced Guide sooner rather than later, e-mail wherethemeatcomesfrom@gmail.com, and tell me why or just head to the comments. Odds are, you can even be first!

Until next time, may all your ultimates end in kills and all your games with "Victory."

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #7: Laying Down the Law

I poke fun on this website at the fact that during at least one game of League of Legends during your time playing it you are most likely going to be cursed at by what appears to be a drunken sailor on shore leave but is most likely a thirteen year old kid or a twenty-seven year old, well, kid.

What I've left out, so far, however, is the fact that Riot Games has created an intricate and awesome system designed to slowly weed out and improve the quality of the play experience by punishing players who engage in behaviors that are negative for the growth of the game.

The Tribunal -- A interactive voting system that allows LoL players to view incidents of negative behavior and punish or pardon accused parties based on the reports generated by allies and enemies during play. Anyone who is level 20 or higher can participate, and to get started, you can head to the Tribunal webpage to help make the game more fun and accessible for everyone.

Now that the definition is out of the way, I wanted to go through why you should join in and also why I think it is such a fantastic use of the community.

1) Everyone gets upset sometimes, especially playing a highly competitive game with strangers through the anonymity of the internet. Of course, that circumstance also gives rise to that ridiculously annoying ability to tell absolutely everyone just how upset you are and how it's the lag or hackers or bad teammates and never, ever, ever anything that you did wrong. And occasionally, people take that anonymity and vent their frustration in the game chat, bellowing slurs and insults that would make the most hardened racist blush. When that happens, its no good for anyone, not even the person exorcising their demons through verbal diarrhea. Having the Tribunal in place means that if you do it repeatedly, Riot will find out, and you will suffer the consequences of your immaturity.

2) As a result of that, the Tribunal has the potential to, over time, influence League of Legends players in a way that is tremendously positive, especially once it was revealed that Riot plans to implement a honor system that would reward teaching, mentoring, compliments, skilled play, teamwork, and all of the best aspects of an entertaining League game. You can read more about that by clicking on this hyperlinked sentence that you are still reading for some reason.

3) By creating a system where it is the players themselves who mete out punishment against offenders, Riot has ingeniously incorporated public shaming into their enforcement policies. It seems likely that occasionally Riot bypasses the Tribunal system, and just as likely that the Tribunal makes mistakes from time to time, but overall, the communal aspect of the policing duties makes it hard for someone who is aware of the activity of the Tribunal to blindly ignore it.

There are other games that use similar systems, but I genuinely feel as though Riot is extremely proactive in dealing with community issues, especially given the fact that the game is free to download and thus fosters an environment that could be flush with trolls and trollish behavior. The fact that there is not a surfeit of troublesome players can be linked directly to the success of the Tribunal, and the continual presence of assertive policing by the community that enjoys playing the game so much.

For more information about the Tribunal, or if you have any additional questions about how it works, check out the official FAQ here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/tribunal/en/faq/

Until next time, may all your ultimates end in kills and all your games with "Victory."

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #6: When Base Stats Just Aren't Enough

League of Legends is an amazing game even if you just plug and play, but as you level up, it becomes even better. Every Champion in the game starts with certain ratios and statistics that help them fit the roles they are designed for, yet ultimately, each is able to adapt based on your play-style using the fantastic Mastery system augmented by the Rune pages.

While complex, both features are intuitive to incorporate into your LoL experience. Like most guides, however, I will recommend not using Runes until you reach Level 21, because you do not have access to the Tier 3 Runes that give the best buffs.

First, let's make sure we define the terms more thoroughly.

Masteries: At every level, a player receive a point to use in their Mastery Page(s) that unlocks a special bonus to starting statistics and abilities. There are three Mastery sections: Offense, Defense, and Utility. Offense improves damage output, armor reduction, magic penetration, and similar base statistics, as well as offering bonus abilities like Life Steal or Cooldown Reduction. Defense takes care of your armor, magic resistance, regeneration, and similar base statistics, as well as offering bonus abilities such as extra gold for kills or lowering damage from Area of Effect sources. Utility runs the gamut, from movement speed steroids to cooldown reduction, or adding free gold to your starting stash. There are 49 Masteries to select from, and a later tip will examine each of them in detail. Masteries for individual Champions or role set-ups are expressed using a */*/* notation. In the example, the Champion is supporting bot lane using 0/9/21 Masteries.

Runes: A Rune is a special item available for purchase from the Riot Store that increases your starting statistics based on what type of Rune you select. There are Marks, Seals, Glyphs, and Quintessences. Marks, Seals, and Glyphs all work the same way, and at Level 30 you can have up to 9 of each. Quintessences are more powerful, and typically more expensive to purchase, and at Level 30, you will have access to 3 Quintessence slots (with one becoming available at Level 10, and another opening up when you hit 20). There are hundreds of Runes, and a later tip will record each of them, but for now, this is designed as an overview of the Rune and Mastery systems. The example shows a blank rune page where Red slots are for Marks, Gold slots are for Seals, and Azure slots are for Glyphs. The three runic scripts are where your Quintessences will be placed.

Setting Up Runes and Masteries: Designed to increase customization, there is no wrong way to use your Masteries as you increase in level and become more exposed to the game. Later on, proper set up will be key to competing in lane during the beginning of your matches, and less experimentation is recommended. For example, as adorable as it is, actually taking a point in Demolitionist will be actively interpreted as trolling, as the Mastery simply does not offer enough to be worthwhile. (Your basic attacks deal 10 bonus damage to turrets, which is such a small increase that it literally has no effect on the game)

As a general rule, although there are many, many exceptions, carries, junglers, and mid lane champions will be set up 21/9/0. Support will almost always appear 0/9/21. Top lane bruisers or tanky champions will frequently be seen 9/21/0. When it doubt, using these suggestions as a benchmark will help you build appropriately for your role. (Again, there are dozens of exceptions, such as a Champion like Irelia usually playing 9/12/9 or a carry like Sivir who is probably best set up as 21/2/7)

With Runes, the most popular Marks are Attack Damage, Armor Penetration, or Attack Speed for damage dealing carries, or Magic Penetration and Ability Power boosts for AP Champions like Morgana or Diana. Seals are frequently seen buffing Armor, or adding similar Mana boosts. If you plan on playing support, it is absolutely critical to pick up Greater Seals of Avarice (+0.25 Gold per 10 seconds) as soon as you have access to them at level 21. Glyphs tend to be defensive in nature, often adding Magic Resistence, bonus Health, or cooldown reductions.

When setting up your Runes, keep in mind that more is definitely better. Having a single Greater Mark of Desolation adding 1.66 armor penetration is far less useful than having 9 of them giving you +15. This is especially true of the Runes that buff in percentages, so you won't want to mix and match very often.

Using the Runes and Masteries in Game: So you get all of these neat buffs or at least have the potential to have them, but what is the point? I'm glad you asked, anonymous internet person, because if you hadn't, I would just be talking to myself and I wouldn't have a good introduction to this paragraph.

Except for this totally awesome, although irrelevant GIF

Your main goal with Runes and Masteries can be split into two parts. Either you are attempting to enhance something your Champion does well, or you are attempting to improve some aspect of the Champion that they is normally lacking.

This is how you end up with ADCs packing tons of extra attack damage runes and running 21 Mastery points in Offense and supports that use the Utility section of their Masteries to increase their movement speed or gold production.

If you are fortunate enough to have multiple Rune Pages and have taken advantage of the 20 free Mastery Pages you are provided with, then you can even adopt certain set-ups based on your lane match-up. This happens most often in Draft games, where you can more or less determine who you are going to be laning against based on the picks the opposing team makes. Going up against someone with a ton of Magic Damage? Why not select some Magic Resistance Runes to give yourself a leg up. Fighting a squishy top lane? Equip extra damage and smash them with potent harassing attacks.

The possibilities are nearly infinite, and strategy websites that include Champion builds such as LOLPRO or MOBAFire can give you some suggestions on where to start with your bonus stats. Or you could even stick around WTMCF for the eventual reveal of our own build guides, which should happen sooner than you think (unless you think it is happening next week, in which case it won't happen until long after you apparently assume it will).

Until next time, may all your ultimates end in kills and all your matches with "Victory."

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #5: The Short Kid Gets Picked Last, The Metagame and League of Legends

At the lowest levels, most Summoners just pick their favorite Champions or select someone from the free options that appeals to them and head into lane. It will happen fairly organically, although occasionally you might hear some fighting from three players who all want Mid.

Since few, if any players, will be dead set on playing in the Jungle or as a support Champion who doesn't kill any creep, those roles are typically left unfilled, as everyone tries to play to their particular style. As they might say on a never-forgotten 90's sitcom, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Except that what works when you are level five is not going to pass muster once you start playing against other 30's with full Runes and Masteries.

The lanes are set up in the traditional metagame as Solo Top, AP Mid, ADC, Support, and Jungle, for a reason, and it isn't because someone randomly decided that order looked pretty.

Solo top and AP Mid get lanes to themselves in order to maximize the number of minions they can slay. This, in turn, leads to quicker acquisition of powerful items, and access to higher levels faster than they would earn if they were splitting experience. The Champions that play in those lanes tend to be reliant on their item builds and need to have high levels in order to chain their abilities together effectively.

Solo Top bruisers are designed to play by themselves, able to hold their own even in 2 on 1 gank situations. The squishy AP Mid, on the other hand, gets help from either Top or Bot Lane without too much stress caused by roaming through the river or jungle areas.

For Duo Bot Champions, they work well with a teammate. The support often uses devastating Crowd Control effects (known hereafter as "cc") to Stun, Slow, Silence, or Fear opposing Champions and help their ADC escape from sticky encounters. With a Support around, protecting them, the Carry is free to farm and focus on harassing the enemy, splitting the experience but not the gold.

The Jungler likes having a lane to him or herself, and can farm through the Neutral Minion camps fast enough to mimic playing against waves of minions. Without a successful kill early, the Jungler will normally be behind on levels, gold, and experience, but makes up for it with powerful presence during ganks.

When your team composition does not fit this traditional mold, it can have a negative effect on the laning phase of the game. Champions may become underleveled or be unable to purchase the items they need at the times that they need them. If you don't have a Jungler, the opposing team's Jungler can roam your side of the map. All while stealing buffs and ganking from unexpected positions; wreaking havoc seemingly at will.

Remember what I said about Solo Top Champions being able to handle 2 on 1s with relative comfort? If you try and go against a top lane champion like Singed or Irelia with more than one person, all you are doing is letting them farm under turret while slowly out-leveling and earning more money than you.

Keeping all of that in mind, there are unconventional strategies that some teams will adopt to attempt to beat the metagame. This is a brief list of less common set-ups and what they do. More in-depth treatment of each strategy will come later, when each is covered individually. Also, please note that some teams will experiment with the traditional five roles playing in different lanes; this is a legitimate common strategy that will appear with some frequency at higher levels, and therefore does not fall into this section.

2/1/2 -- The most common non-metagame set-up that you will encounter, usually because no one on the team feels comfortable in the Jungle. When run as an actual strategy, 2/1/2 requires either a Support player in both Top and Bot lanes so that the team is not attempting to have two Champions farming the minion waves, or a lane designed to demolish opposing Champions, earning gold through kills rather than creep (see Kill Lane).

Kill Lane -- From time to time, you will fight against or with a team that insists on having two high damage carries play alongside each other. This is known as a kill lane, as one of the carries will farm and the other will harass constantly, hoping to catch either the support or the enemy ADC out of position for an easy kill (earning them the gold and experience they are otherwise losing from not farming).

Double or Duo Jungle -- In this set-up, each lane plays solo, generally requiring a tankier ADC like Warwick or two traditionally Solo Top Champions, with one playing in bot lane. Two roaming Champions will score experience from the Jungle, frequently heading into the opposing Jungle to steal buffs and Neutral Monster camps. Ganks from a Duo Jungle are particularly frightening, as they can turn a 1 on 1 into a 3 on 1 slaughter without warning. Usually, in a Duo Jungle strategy, one of the junglers will have a teleport ability such as Pantheon's, Twisted Fate's, or Shen's, in order to provide even more presence anywhere on the map.

Double or Duo AP -- With two competent AP Mid players, this 1/2/2 strategy can be overpowering very quickly, resulting in a broken turret in the middle lane as early as the 3:00 or 4:00 minute mark. Once the tower is down, one of the mid Champions will start roaming, if not both, creating a rush environment that greatly speeds up the game. When done well, this is hard to counter, as the Jungler will frequently be underleveled and the opposing AP Mid will have been cut off from farming, starved by the power of the Duo AP lane.

Tri-Lane -- A very uncommon strategy that works like the Duo AP method. Designed to break a turret as fast as possible, this 3/1/1 arrangement preys on unprepared teams that send their Solo Top unwittingly to his or her doom. The three Champions that lane together usually start in the Jungle, biding their time to let the opposing Solo Top push the lane far enough that they can score a fast kill and clear the minion wave before the other Jungler can react.

ARAM --  Not so much a strategy as it is a kind of sub-game for LoL players, ARAM stands for All Random All Middle, and plays out exactly as you would expect. Random Champion picks for both teams that smash together in the mid lane until one team loses the game.

In Conclusion --

Finding strategies to beat the metagame is an entertaining exercise in itself, and while I take a fairly aggressive stance against tricky play, I do so only because when you are starting out, even once you hit 30, you open yourself up to crushing defeats as long as the other team is able to react fast enough to your chosen course of action. When I address each strat individually, I will expand on the counter play options that each is susceptible to, but for now, be confident that knowing your role and playing the traditional team is your easiest route to success and skillful play.

Until next time, may all your ultimates end in kills and all your games with "Victory."

A Full Mug of Mead, Tip #4: Zen and the Art of Last-Hitting

Would you rather have a crisp $100 in your wallet, or forty bucks in crumpled bills? If you were given two weeks to save up for a new car, would you rather be making $8 an hour and get a junky Plymouth van or $100 an hour and ride off in a tricked out new Humvee?

Or a Volt, if that's more your thing, you sneaky hipster you.

The answer should be obvious, and improving your skill with Last-Hitting in LoL is the gaming equivalent to having extra cash put in your wallet by cash-granting faeries that live in the solar panels you're too cheap to put on your roof (or maybe you're just scared of blinding someone or causing airplanes to fall from the sky like in the new J.J. Abrams disasterpiece, Revolution.)

Either way, last-hitting is a skill you absolutely must master if you want to continue to improve your game in League.

At this point, I should probably explain what last-hitting is. (As with any new term, as soon as we define it in an article, you'll be able to find it in the updated list from Tip #1)

Last-Hitting -- The last attack against an enemy minion, Neutral Monster, or opposing Champion is credited with the kill, and assigned bonus gold and experience. When your attack is the one that kills the enemy, you are the one who benefits. Therefore, it is in your best interest to strike the killing blow against every minion in a wave, an action that results in extra money going in your pocket, and a fatter wallet means more gold to spend when you head back to the Fountain.

Of course, it isn't quite as simple as I make it sound, there are nuances to last-hitting that separate the higher levels from those just starting out, and the pros take it to another plane entirely.

Because the gold tallies increase as the game progresses, it is equally as important to deny your opponents the ability to last hit as well, or they will have a chance to catch back up to you incrementally. For that reason, holding off the final hit until the last, tiny shred of life clings to the creep insures that they have dealt as much damage as possible to your own minions, making it much more likely that your allied creep will die before the enemy Champion has a chance to claim the gold.

The difference may not seem like much, but finishing off even a single creep more than your opponent from each wave can mean the difference between buying a Ruby Crystal and a Long Sword, and actually picking up a Phage when you get back to base.

With League of Legends, those incremental gains pay off in huge bonuses when fighting enemy Champions, and can definitely turn the tide in a situation where you are otherwise evenly matched.

For a more detailed look at last-hitting, check out Curse Gaming's LOLPRO website guide that includes more statistics than could possibly be relevant, and a handy spreadsheet so that you can see exactly how much gold you are giving up if you don't practice your last-hitting.

Until next time, may all your ultimates end in kills, and all your games with "Victory."