Anyone who has even just started playing League of Legends knows that there are a LOT of champions. Every champion brings something unique to the game, and every summoner tends to have two or three champions that mesh really well with their playstyle. Each of these champions tends to be able to play more than one lane with confidence, but how do you learn an entire new lane with your favorite champion? The answer lies in 4 main components, understanding the opponent, understanding your champion, separating each game from the whole of the role and most importantly, having confidence.

Note that this is not directed towards trying to play something unconventional and new. This is about taking a champion that can play two or three roles, and trying different ones than you are used to (ex: taking Xin Zhao top instead of jungle, Lux mid instead of support, etc.). If you do want to see an article about unconventional picks and trying something crazy, check out my previous article 'From Cheese to Champion', in which I cover the steps to ensure good games with unconventional picks.

Understanding your Champion

As previously stated, every champion is different. Understanding yours, and what makes yours different is very important to how you play them. This means knowing how they scale, how much mana and energy they use, how to use their passive to the best of its abilities and so on. Going to League's main website or the League Wiki are great places to read up on the details of how your champion works by the numbers. So knowing how much damage your spells do early on, or what the mana costs and cooldowns look like early on is a great way to learn more about how you can use your favorite champion to your advantage. Start brainstorming scenarios and combos in your chosen lane that could occur, from how you could clear jungle camps early to how you could try and do the most damage possible to an enemy laner. Knowing how your champion works in full is a key step into understanding how they will adapt once they get into differing positions onto the rift.

This also includes knowing how to build your champion. Maybe you should rush Liandry's Torment instead of Luden's Echo if you are playing top lane as opposed to mid. Maybe you should pick Chilling Smite and Warrior so that you can stay in basic attack range of your opponent as long as possible. While builds are definitely situational, it’s always good to have a rough idea of what you are going to build when you go into a game. Your build does affect how much damage you do, what kind of damage you are going to do, and how much damage you are going to be able to take. Knowing what builds are good before you enter a match is key to getting a great foundation, helping you take a step over the fact that you are a bit new to that role with that champion. Think about what that lane requires. Top lane requires more sustain and beefier items, mid is all about mobility and damage, bot is about damage, speed and range, and the jungle is a bit of a wild card. Knowing how you plan on pathing in the jungle, or how you plan on ganking lanes can influence what jungle item you select and your items later on.

Understanding your Opponent

Every lane has its own cast of characters, but there is no certainty on who you will be up against until either you are loading into the game, or right beforehand in a draft selection. Even still, thinking about how you could beat your opponent is crucial to knowing how you are going to win your lane. Think about all the different aspects your champion has to offer in its position. The first being how aggressive you can be, or how passive you should play. If you are against a champion who likes to use a combo that requires them getting into melee range, then you should have some room to poke. If you are against a champion with range and poke, playing passively until you can all in on the enemy. If you both have poke or both have melee combos, play it carefully, and pay attention to how they could get in and out versus how you could get in and out of a fight. See their damage and their mana usage, their mobility and their summoner spells, and calculate the optimal way you are going to beat them.

Separating Each Game from Overall Strategies

Every game in League of Legends is different, and it takes more than a single game to teach yourself to adapt to a new position and lane. Taking different pieces of information from every game and compiling that into a long term strategy is the first way to turn a couple of games of experience into a lane you have confidence in and a lane that you can rely on. Playing a single game will give you a good idea of how things go, the pace of the lane, what your champion needs to win a match up and so on. This is a great indicator, but each game has different opponents, different builds, different skill levels, and most importantly, different players. You might find it that over a course of games, no matter the opponent, going aggressive in lane seems to be effective. You might discover that builds differ over games, but you can play damage and tank builds equally well, or that building beefier just seems to limit damage without too many benefits. Playing against differing laners is a huge factor into how well a lane goes, and being able to flex a great solution, switching lanes to avoid unfavorable matchups. But matchups do not always dictate the result of a lane. The biggest factor to a lane's success is to...

Have Confidence

There is a large distinction between confidence and arrogance on the Rift. Arrogance is the thought that you have to win because you are simply better than your opponent. Confidence is the thought that you are good enough to win, but you still have to put in effort to beat your opponent. Having the belief that you are competent in lane, despite lack of experience, gets rid of all the X-factors. It eliminates the feeling that you are fighting an uphill battle to win this lane, despite the odds being perfectly even. Having confidence in your abilities separates a game spent learning from a game spent losing. Even if you do not perform as well as you would have liked, you can still look at what you did well and what you did poorly and evaluate your place in lane. If you have little confidence in yourself, good plays get attributed to luck, and bad plays get attributed to a lack of skill and experience. Having the self confidence that you will prevail with your champion somewhere unfamiliar can and will make the difference in your performance.

I hope this article helps you all in your future games to come! If you guys have any questions about anything you see here, or just want to see more of these articles, follow me on Twitter @Buns_and_Roses. Thanks for reading guys, and good luck with your flex picks on the Rift!

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