Welcome to the Intermediate Tactics article. This article should help familiarize you with some important strategies and habits central to League of Legends gameplay.
Utilize Brush – Brush can accomplish many goals for you in the laning phase. It will allow you to advance on enemy champions without them noticing, or pulling aggro from enemy minions. This will help you position for kills, or harass with skill-shots. Second, because walking into brush will shroud you in fog of war, you should quickly dart into it when you pull minion aggro.
Know your Enemy – It’s imperative that you know the intricacies of the champions you face in lane. At level 7, how much damage can Annie throw at you during a stun? Check the scoreboard: Does she have Ignite to finish you off? Does she have Flash to close into range? Does she have Cleanse to escape your stuns, slows, or silences? These are all vital points of information that will determine how you can play.
Watch the Minimap – Intelligent teams will run a jungling champion. Many of these champions make for great gankers. Additionally, your enemies may leave their lanes to come gank you. Make a habit of checking for “missing” enemies frequently: it may save your life.
Working in a Team – When playing in a lane with a teammate, try to pick lanes with strong synergy. For example, Sion and Anivia have great potential: Sion stuns with Cryptic Gaze, which lets Anivia land Flash Frost, as both players follow up with their other spells for further damage. Another example is Janna with Pantheon: Eye of the Storm will significantly buff Pantheon’s Heartseeker Strike, making for easy early-game kills. On a larger scale, it's wise to have a healthy mix of both melee and ranged champions.
Soloing – If you’re laning all by yourself, you typically won’t be able to kill your enemies. Most players can comprehend what one champion can do much better than they can predict what two will accomplish. Thusly, your best option is to last hit as many minions as possible. Great players can consistently kill over 100 minions by the 15 minute mark. Use that as a template to see how strong your last hitting is.
Champion Synergies – When picking a team, especially in Draft Mode, you may want to consider picking champions that specifically work well together. Pantheon and Janna, as mentioned earlier, are great at controlling a lane. Amumu’s ultimate makes for a great opening into Fiddlesticks’s Crowstorm. Morgana’s Black Shield can allow Katarina or Nunu to finish channeling their own ultimates without interruption. There are many possibly combinations in League of Legends: Try to find your own!
Playing a Tank – As your team’s tank, you have three possible goals: Initiate a fight and absorb all the initial burst damage you can. Get to the enemy team’s “carry” and make his life miserable. Protect your team’s “carry” and make anyone who tries to mess with him pay dearly. For example, as Alistar you should walk right up to the enemy Ashe, hit Pulverize, walk behind the stunned archer, and Headbutt her back into your team. Chances are she should die almost instantly. Some champions, like Udyr or Shen take a slightly different approach. They will simply dive into the carry and deal great damage to the squishy target while shrugging off most of the damage directed back onto them.
Carrying – As a “carry” champion, you have 3 main goals: First, farm lots of gold. Carries scale with items much more than other types of champions. Thus it is almost always better for you to farm minions for the first 15-25 minutes of the game, with a few exceptions. Second, you must choose your targets correctly. Target selection may be difficult because sometimes the most damaging enemy champion is extremely far away and behind their tanks. Weigh their damage output as an incentive for killing them against their distance and durability as negatives. Basically never kill a tank unless you absolutely have to, and otherwise choose your targets wisely. Lastly, the carry is a bit of an all-star. If you die early in a fight, your team will probably lose that battle. It’s okay to play selfishly and safely if it means being able to kill 3 enemy champions and surviving, instead of killing one and dying. Especially with a champion like Twitch who can easily kill an entire team in three seconds, you should wait until the enemy tanks have cast their stuns and blinds.
Supporting – Support champions can have a variety of roles, depending on the champion. Taric for example just needs to heal damaged teammates and stun important enemies while maintaining his ultimate. Morgana should hold onto her Black Shield for a champion who needs to do a lot of damage in a short time, like Katarina or Twitch. Understand your champion’s strengths, and make sure to use your specialized spells properly.
Why – When escaping from enemies you may find simple running insufficient. In these cases, you may want to jump, dash, Flash, or otherwise move to the other side of a large obstruction. Here we will detail some of the ways to move across barriers.
Ground Jumps – Ground jumps are abilities that physically move your champion to a target location on the ground, like Tristana’s Rocket Jump or Shen’s Shadow Dash. However, if you don’t give yourself enough room to land on the other side of the barrier, you won’t go through at all. Ensure your champion has enough room to spread out before you attempt any daring maneuvers. Amumu and Blitzcrank work similarly with Bandage Toss and Rocket Grab. Sometimes the champion and the target will end up on opposite sides of the barrier if there’s no room for both champions on one side.
Ground Flashes – Ground flashes instantly teleport your champion to the location. Ezreal’s Arcane Shift and Shaco’s Deceive are examples of ground flashes. Unlike jumps, flashes react differently when interacting with barriers: If you attempt to flash to a location inside a barrier, it will push your champion out to the nearest opening. Sometimes this may result in your champion not moving anywhere, but often it can double the distance on your flash as it pushes you out the other end. Any champion make use this trick if they pick the summoner spell “Flash.”
Targeted Spells – Some abilities require you to choose a specific target to jump or flash to. Jax’s Leap Strike and Katarina’s Shunpo are primary examples of targeted movement spells. In these cases, you must have an enemy (or teammate if applicable) in range in order to cast the spell. Like with ground jumps, you may not always end up on the same side of the barrier. There is one exceptional trick you can pull off with targeted movement spells. If you carry a ward around with you, you can place it on the other side of a cliff, and Leap Strike or Shunpo to safety after placing it.
When – Starting a push can rely on a variety of circumstances. A common rule of thumb is that players should start to group together at 20-25 minutes into the game. Look for undefended turret, especially if your minions are close to it already. If it will take your team more than a minute to wade through enemy minions to even reach the enemy turret, you likely won’t succeed in pushing it. Some champions also excel at destroying turrets quickly, like Master Yi and Heimerdinger. You can often push one lane with 4 champions, and push on the opposite side with a specialized one.
How – Many champions excel at helping their team push. Sivir and Taric are two great examples, because their ultimates affect their entire team, giving them significant attack speed or damage, respectively. The summoner spell Rally is also extremely useful in helping a team destroy buildings.
Know When to Retreat – While pushing is extremely important, know that fighting an entire enemy team while protected by a turret can be a very bad idea. If you’ve succeeded in killing a few enemy champions and are pushing into enemy territory, check the scoreboard to see how many players are currently alive on both teams. If you find yourselves outnumbered, retreat and try to accomplish other objectives, like killing a few epic monsters.
Who – Most commonly, the jungler is assumed to place wards in high-traffic areas during the beginning stages of the game. Later on, tanks and support champions – ones who don’t necessarily scale supremely quickly with items – are typically called upon to buy wards.
What – There are two types of wards in League of Legends: Sight (Green) Wards, which are cheap, see far into the fog of war, and last quite a while; and Vision (Pink) Wards, which are more expensive, but also reveal invisible units. Sometimes there is a bit of a mini-game if both teams purchase wards: Buying the more expensive ones could allow you to kill the enemy wards while still revealing a sizeable area of the map.
Where – Wards can serve a variety of purposes. Vision Wards may be placed in the middle of lanes in order to look out for stealth champions like Evelynn and Twitch. Otherwise, high traffic areas, especially in front of Dragon and Baron Nashor on Summoner’s Rift, or near Grez and the Dragon on Twisted Treeline, are common locations.
When – If you’re most concerned with allowing the opponents to kill the significant epic monsters, you should ward their openings at their spawn times: For Summoner’s Rift, that’s 2:10 for Dragon and 15 minutes for Baron Nashor. On Twisted Treeline, it’s 2:10 for Grez and 4:30 for the Dragon. Why – Wards will allow your team to gank enemies as they attempt difficult objectives like the Dragon. Additionally, placing them in high-traffic areas allows your team to protect themselves from being ganked.
Clever Uses of Wards – As mentioned in an earlier topic, champions with unit-targeted movement spells may target wards with abilities like Leap Strike or Shunpo. Additionally, certain abilities like Gangplank’s Raise Morale need to target a friendly minion. Carrying a Sight Ward in your inventory allows you to Raise Morale at a moment’s notice.