League of Legends, or LoL for short, has been one of the most played games in the world since 2012. Riot Games has controlled the online gaming scene for over a decade. If you describe yourself as a gamer, you should definitely know the answer to, “What is League of Legends?”. But if you’re new to the game and you want to learn more, then you’re in the right place.
League of Legends is one of the most well-known games in the MOBA genre – another popular MOBA game is Dota 2. In fact, most people started playing the game after hearing about the popularity of League of Legends. The diversity of the game’s characters, lore, competitive esports scene, game-play, and everything else is what makes League of Legends so popular.
League of Legends is a competitive online game where two teams of 5 players battle. It is a complex game that combines high-level strategy with fast-paced gameplay. If you do not know anything about League of Legends, after reading our guide, you will have a lot of information about what LoL is, and you will be able to play the game easily.
In order to play League of Legends, you need to know many things. Many elements in the game are important for winning. Most importantly, you must know the skills of the characters and the key points in the game, or you will get lost in the game’s flow.
How Is LoL Played?
The main goal of League of Legends is to break the opposing team’s Nexus before they break yours. To do this, you must progress and become stronger in the game. In order to get close to the opposing team’s Nexus, you must first destroy the turrets that protect the Nexus one by one, but this is not so easy as each turret will be defended by a player.
You start the game as a red or blue team, and each team spawns at one end of the map. There are three lanes in the game, and different amounts of players disperse to defend the lanes. Turrets are found in these lanes.
In front of the spawn point where each team starts the game, there is the Nexus, the end mechanism of the game. The team that defeats their opponents will gain the upper hand, and by reaching this point, they will be able to destroy the Nexus and win the game.
There are four stages to win a game in League of Legends:
- Earn gold by farming minions and monsters in the lanes or jungle
- Removing a turret
- Progress in the lane and earn gold by killing your opponents in team fights or lane battles
- Reaching and destroying your opponent’s Nexus to win the game
Lanes
There are three lanes in League of Legends. These are; Top lane, Mid lane, and Bottom lane. In total, five players are separated from each other at the beginning of the game as 1 Top, 1 Mid, 2 Bottom, and 1 Jungle. Each of them farms minions in these lanes, trying to get stronger until the mid-game.
Towards the middle of the game, a tactic called team fight is applied, and 5v5 battles start. These are the points where those empowered in the lane show their superiority. The stronger team wins the team fight and usually dominates a lane.
Usually, the game progresses through the mid-lane, where the turrets are destroyed and teams approach the enemy’s Nexus. After destroying the Turrets, they must also destroy a mechanism called the Inhibitor to destroy the Nexus.
Some players push on their own or someone else’s lane without participating in a team fight, allowing minions on that lane to advance passively. So the players on the opposing team will notice this and go to that lane to stop the minions there. This means a chance to push other lanes.
Jungle
There are open areas between each lane called the jungle. Jungle camps in this jungle and will respawn after being killed after a certain time. There is one jungler in each game, and by clearing these jungle camps regularly, the jungler earns gold and two buffs.
These buffs are:
Red Buff: Deals bonus damage and slows when a target is attacked.
Blue Buff: Increases the champion’s mana regen by a high degree.
Since these buffs will affect the early stage of the game, a jungler should get it before anyone else loses it. The Jungler’s main task is to help other lanes secretly, apart from clearing the jungle camps. This is called “ganking.”
A Jungler should help a player who cannot control their opponent and falls back by contributing to the killing of that opponent. A jungler’s constant assistance, especially at one lane, is called “camping.” This is to help that player dominate that lane. But remember that another jungler can disturb other lanes.
Leveling Up
In League of Legends, you can level up to a maximum of 18 in-game. When you start the game, you start on level 1, and you gain some experience by farming minions in the lanes you play. If there is someone other than you in that lane, the experience is shared (for example, a jungler).
Each time you level up, you improve one skill of your champion. You can develop any skill you want, except for your Ultimate ability, which can only be improved at 6, 11, and 16 levels. The cooldown of the skill you have improved will decrease, its mana value will decrease, and the effects it provides will become stronger.
Apart from killing minions, you also gain experience by killing jungle creatures. But to gain greater experience, you must kill the opponent. Killing an opponent is the most experience-gaining move in the game. As you gain experience, your mana and health will increase, and you will gain many powerful effects.
Gold & Items
At the beginning of each game, players are given a certain amount of gold to purchase items. Gold is the most critical element in the game. The more gold you have, the more items you get. The player must kill opponents and farm minions to earn more gold and buy progressively stronger items.
In the game, gold also accumulates passively, but this is not enough for you to buy an item. You can also earn gold by destroying turrets, killing jungle monsters, and killing giant creatures like dragons.
There are six empty item slots in the game.
According to the class of the champion you play, you will get the recommended items. League of Legends helps you a lot when it comes to which item you should buy. Using these tips, you can buy recommended items.
But of course, there is something called meta in LoL. In other words, you can find out which items are bought for a champion by following the meta. Since the meta is constantly changing, the builds of some champions may change frequently.
In LoL, items have more effective features apart from the health, damage, and defense stats they provide. This is another issue that makes League of Legends so complicated. There are items that freeze the enemy, slow them down, reduce their health regeneration, ignore their armor or give you speed, increase your defense in different ways and provide many other different features.
One of the critical items in the game is Ward. You can’t see if a jungler or someone else is coming toward your lane until they get really close. By the time you see them, it may be too late. That’s why Wards you place in bushes will show you that the enemy is in that bush or is nearby.
Apart from that, LoL has a health pot just like every game. But there is no mana pot. Most champions in the game use mana, but instead of mana pots, they gain mana regen with other items or runes. However, since mage champions run out of mana quickly, they have to use mana-boosting items. For champions in the other categories, this is not very necessary.
Dragons
Dragons are another game-changer in League. There are six dragons in total. These dragons spawn in a particular part of the map every 5 minutes, and when killed, they provide very powerful buffs to the killing team.
These are the dragons in League of Legends:
- Cloud Dragon: Provides Ultimate cooldown reduction.
- Infernal Dragon: Grants a certain amount of AD and AP. (AD: Attack Damage, AP: Ability Power)
- Mountain Dragon: Provides magic resistance and armor.
- Ocean Dragon: Restores some of your health.
- Hextech Dragon: Grants 5% attack speed.
- Chemtech Dragon: Deal more damage to enemies with more health than you.
Each dragon has different buffs, and the team that can kill the first four dragons will get a Dragon Soul. This is a stronger buff than all buffs and can change the game’s flow. Teamfights usually take place near or around the time the dragon spawns. The teams fight each other to get the dragon and become even stronger, and the victorious team kills the dragon.
The dragon is very important in the game, and a fallen team can return to the game and take over their opponents if they gain the dragon advantage. In particular, if they manage to obtain the Dragon Soul, their chances increase even more.
Baron Nashor
Baron Nashor is the hardest boss in the game to kill. To kill it, you need to be in the last stages of the game and have the support of most people on your team. The buffs that it provides affect the game quite a lot. It greatly strengthens your minions and gives you major stats.
Baron Nashor arrives in the valley after 20 minutes. Before it comes, a less powerful creature called the Rift Herald summons. You could say it is Baron’s cousin. Jungler tries to kill the Rift Herald with the top lane whenever they get the chance.
After players kill Rift Herald, it drops an eye. Players can use it to spawn the Herald somewhere on the map. After it is spawned, it charges at enemy turrets for huge damage and destroys them.
Also, Baron and Rift Heralds also reduce players’ recall time to 4 seconds. (Normally, it is 7 seconds.)
What Are The League of Legends Roles?
League of Legends has six different categories for champions:
- Assassins: Assassins move fast and focus on a single enemy and eliminate it. Assassins usually kill the enemy team’s carry.
- Fighters/Bruisers: These champions can deal and take a lot of damage. Usually, they carry the game if they do well in their lane.
- Mages: Mages poke from a distance and deal high damage. As long as they are protected, they can single-handedly eliminate most players on the opposing team.
- Marksmen/ADC: They are fragile but inflict high damage from a distance. They can carry the game if they are protected.
- Support: Their primary purpose is to protect their teammates. They do that with shields, heals, and defensive skills.
- Tank: Tanks are often the initiator and front-line role. Tanks try to take all the damage so that no one dies in their team.
We have already said that there are five different League of Legends roles fighting in the lanes in League of Legends. These; Top laner, mid laner, jungler, and Adc, Support as bottom laners.
- Top Laner: This role is called those who, as the name suggests, fight at the top of the map. Typically, the fighter or tank roles are in this lane. This lane, where more durable and stronger champions fight, progresses very calmly. Camille, Irelia, Darius, Teemo are some of the examples.
- Jungler: The Jungler is the role that cleans up the creatures in the forest and helps other lanes to get kills. Jungle champions vary a lot. You can become a jungler with almost any champion, as there are only jungle-specific champions. Nidalee, Hecarim, Lee Sin, Diana are some of the examples.
- Mid Laner: The mid laner is the most endangered as it is the fighting role in the middle of the game. Junglers come here the most, and the mid-laner is vulnerable on both sides. Generally, mage heroes or assassin heroes are played in mid-lane. Katarina, Lux, Syndra, Azir, and Ryze are examples.
- ADC (Bottom Laner): ADC, or AD Carry, is the role that carries the game in later stages of the game. Marksmen are also ADCs. They have ranged attacks and, although fragile, deal high damage. Caitlyn, Lucian, Vayne are some of the examples.
- Support: As the name suggests, it is the role that supports and protects teammates. They fight side by side with the ADC in the bottom lane, and their job is to make sure the ADC doesn’t die. There are offensive and defensive supports. Lulu, Janna, Soraka are some of the examples of defensive supports. And Thresh, Blitzcrank, Pyke are examples of the offensive ones.
League of Legends Skins and Shop
League of Legends is known for its skins and events in different themes. Even those who do not play League of Legends have seen the champions and skins in LoL on the internet. The hugely popular champions like Ahri and Evelynn even have their own LoL independent bands and songs.
Such a popular franchise, of course, sells well. There are skins in almost every theme in the game, and these cosmetics change the appearance of the character and even many of its features in the game.
Furthermore, skins have Tier levels among themselves, and their appearance changes according to these Tier levels.
Some skins change a champion’s walk and emotes, voice lines, and even interactions with other champions. We don’t even mention the changes in the skill graphics. That’s huge.
Riot Games, which even has a series called Arcane, released in collaboration with Netflix, is getting bigger day by day and is taking over the market. This series became so popular that it became the most-watched series on Netflix.
You buy these cosmetics in the game with Riot Games Points (RP), called in-game money. There are also loot boxes where you can get these skins or various emotes. You can get them by playing the game.
What is League of Legends esports?
League of Legends is the most followed and attended game in esports. Riot Games, which has been the producer of major projects such as the ongoing World Championships and MSI for years, owes some of the success of League of Legends to esports.
Many world-renowned League of Legends players play in the professional arena, and they are followed by a large audience. The most successful in the world of eSports, League of Legends, and has reached millions of views by broadcasting its tournaments on Twitch or its own site.
Faker is one of the most well known and loved player in the League of Legends and esports arena. He plays in mid-lane. Apart from that, there are other players such as Beryl, Rekkles, Uzi, PawN, Perkz, and well-known teams such as G2, Fnatic, Damwon.
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