My girlfriend plays League and whilst from just listening to her play I have a vague understanding of the game, I still don’t really get it. I’ve asked her but she’s absolutely awful at explaining things.
Some questions that have sprung to mind whilst listening / watching her play: what’s a lane? what’s mana? how do you win/lose? ~~why does this game make her so angry?~~
I’m also not much of a gamer so please dumb it down as much as possible – I’m just a clueless boyfriend that wants to enjoy his girlfriend’s interests.
In: Other
Goal of the game:
To destroy the enemy Nexus
Condition to attack the Nexus:
1. destroy all towers on one lane
2. destroy the now unlocked inhibitor
3. destroy the unlocked towers protecting the nexus
4. now attack the nexus
Problems in achieving that:
* enemy team can attack you
* towers deal very high damage
* enemy minions attack you
How to avoid the problems:
* gather more resources than the enemies to outscale them
* get buffs from wild monsters
* outnumber the enemy with strategic positioning
* use your minions to tank the towers damage for you
How to gather resources:
* every unit gives money when you kill it (monster/minion/champion/towers)
* minions/champions give experience to nearby enemy champions on dying
* monsters give experience upon killing them
How to spend resources:
* spend money at the shop to buy better items and improve your champion
* spend money to buy utility like potions to regain health
* experience gives levels that give you access to/improve your abilities
* the important ones here being 2/3/6/11/16 usually
* 2/3 give you your two other regular abilities which are a big advantage
* 6/11/16 let you level your ultimate, usually your strongest ability by far
From here strategies evolved to best accomplish these goes on the way to destroy the enemy nexus. They vary slightly depending on the characters chosen, but generally there is something called the “meta”, which is the best known way to go.
The game is broadly described in three phases, early-, mid- and late-game.
Early-game:
You stay on your assigned lane and try to get as much money and experience from killing minions, while skirmishing with your opposing player. Killing them does give you quite the advantage as they are worth a lot of money, but the risks are also high, rather focus on the minions and only go for the kill if there is a good opportunity.
Mid-game:
mid-game starts as soon as the first towers fall and players have time to leave their lane. That is, because now the enemy needs much longer to push their minions under the tower to essentially deny your team killing them and getting their xp+gold, since they are further away now.
Now strategic movement puts pressure on different lanes to either catch other champions, destroy towers or secure other objectives, like dragon and baron.
Late-game:
Late-game starts when all players have good equipment and are high level. Now resources lose importance, due to champions not being able to use them anymore. Now objectives are the most important goal.
The higher level a champion is the longer is their respawn time. So killing a high-level champion is worth your while because they will take up to 80 seconds to respawn. Destroying inhibitors will spawn an extremely strong minion on that lane, so the lane will push itself and needs defending by a champion. Dragon buff basically becomes stronger every time the dragon is killed, so in the late game dragon buffs are extremely valuable.
So the team focuses on objectives and picking single enemy champions until one team either gets a good entry or feels strong enough to initiate a team fight. On winning a team fight the possible surviving champions are not strong enough to defend the base and the winning team can heavily attack.
Lose enough of the base and you lose the game.
Latest Answers