To kick start your journey as a new player, we will highlight some of the fundamental points to consider in every game, and what you can think about to learn as much as possible and improve in a consistent and efficient manner.
One of the most nerve-wracking things about League of Legends is knowing where to begin as a new player. Especially if League of Legends is your first MOBA experience, and for some, even your first PC gaming experience. It can be a lot to handle, but the most important thing is that you keep trying new things and learning as best as you can.
Once you’re at the point where you understand the general principles of the game and how to use abilities, you’ll find yourself hitting another massive hurdle on your journey to being good at the game. At this stage, you begin to comprehend the things that you didn’t realize were even part of the game and start to scratch the surface of the deeper themes of the game and where you will be able to accelerate your learning curve.
In this guide, to kick start your journey as a new player, we will highlight some of the fundamental points to consider in every game, and what you can think about to learn as much as possible and improve in a consistent and efficient manner.
First, we must discuss some important aspects of the game that new players likely don’t know yet. These aren’t the whole of how the game works, but they are so valuable to know and use, that without them, you’ll likely struggle to reach certain milestones in the game.
The first tip to discuss, is what you need to do before the minions spawn! Many new players will sit idly by their Tier 1 turret waiting for their escorting minions before making any moves on the map. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable. The game doesn’t start when minions spawn, and neither should your attempts to influence the game! At minimum, new players should understand where they should be standing on the map to ensure they have warning of the enemies invading to try and pull any cheesy plays. For top laners, on the blue side, this is by the entrance to blue buff, and on the red side, this is in the tri-brush closest to your top tower. For mid laners, the ideal place is to position in the other entrance to your topside jungle. For junglers, your ideal starting place is actually going to be in the mid lane! This is for two main reasons.
First, someone should be standing there so they can see if any enemies walk through the mid lane to walk into the river bushes on either side. Second, because information is key! By starting in a neutral position (the middle of the map), even if an enemy spots you, they will not be able to tell which side of the jungle you are starting on, which means they won’t be able to predict where you are headed. For the Support, the best starting position is in the entrance to your bot side jungle near mid, and for the bot laner, it’s in the remaining entrance to your bot side jungle. This starting position uses all five members of your team to guard every entrance to your jungle, ensuring that the enemies will not be able to get in without your team knowing! As a result, this position is referred to as “Five Point.”
The next fundamental tip to remember when trying to improve as a new player in League of Legends is to /mute all! The function to mute not only your enemies, but also your teammates can save you many games, and a lot of mental energy! If you are new to the game, you may not believe it yet, but people can be extremely toxic to each other, and it will impact your gameplay. To avoid the risk of someone pinching a nerve of yours, or to avoid the enemy trash talk that might make you tunnel vision even harder, use this feature. The game has been around for long enough that people understand what the different pings mean, and it’s often much faster to use them than typing out an essay to teammates. Try it out for yourself and you’ll notice that you finish your gaming sessions with much more content than you otherwise would have!
The next tip is to minimize your champion pool. League of Legends has been around for over a decade now and has over 150 champions that you can play. 150 champions with an average of five abilities each (when you include passives) is A LOT to consider. Do yourself a favour now and minimize the number of champions you play every day to streamline your decisions to be about the game, and not about what abilities to click when. When you only have a handful of champions (especially when you’re new to the game), this can be a massive difference maker in your ability to pick up the ins and outs of League of Legends.
The last fundamental tip for new players is to make use of out of game resources that are made available to you! The most important ones to use are guides to teach you the runes and items to build for your champion to help get an understanding of how each rune and item interacts with the game, and more importantly your champion. Ideally, if you have already selected a handful of Champions, you can then go to a guides website to check what items should be built on them for most games, and then create item sets for yourself in the client. Item Sets are a feature in the League of Legends client that allows you to preplan your item builds for specific Champions where you can set out an order to purchase items, and even add in specific sections for situational item choices. By doing so, you’ll streamline your ability to not only remember what you need to build and not have to search for the guide again, but also remember what situations each item may be valuable in.
It’s certainly vague to tell new players to ‘learn the ranges of abilities’, without making them feel like they need to test out every single champion in the game. However, there are plenty of ways to go about this that don’t involve as much time or energy. The most beneficial way to do this is by reviewing videos of people playing these champions, but also by watching their abilities as they are explained in the League of Legends client! Every Champion features an informational page that shows clips of them using their abilities, where you can get a feel for how that ability works. New players should be encouraged to use these pages as a reference after they encounter a new Champion that they have not played against before. By doing so, they can recall what their abilities looked like, and determine what the range is, and if interested, how it works. For example, whether an ability is a skill shot or a point-and-click ability. It may seem obvious to more veteran players, however new players can honestly struggle understanding the difference with specific abilities. For example, Cassiopeia’s Twin Fangs appear like they are a skill shot, however they are indeed point-and-click.
By reviewing what certain Champions ranges are, you’ll start to get an understanding of the radius around them that is within that range, and therefore within their power of influence. Understanding this radius of every Champion is critical to being able to stay outside of the range to avoid being hit by potentially fatal skill shots (like Blitzcrank’s Rocket Grab), and to avoid taking bad trades!
Another area of the game that new players struggle with is the minion waves. Many new players are taught to look at enemy minions as free gold if they last hit them. While this is certainly an important part of the game, it’s not the only thing that matters. New players need to understand that controlling the minion wave is how you can gain control over the flow of that area of the map. This is known as lane priority. When you have control over the state of the minion wave and your lane opponent cannot interfere without putting themselves in a vulnerable position, you can use that advantage to create larger advantages around the map.
Without going too deep into how to create and snowball these advantages, new players should know that reading the minion wave to determine what they need to do to put the wave in a favorable position is essential. Overall, reading the wave is identifying whether the minion wave is pushing away from you or being shoved into you. In general, whoever has the pushing advantage will have priority over the lane! But there are situations where the opposite is incredibly valuable that are more complex and will need to be in a different guide.
At this stage in your journey as a new player hungry to improve, you’ll need to start putting yourself in your enemies’ shoes. This means, identifying what the enemy team is good at, and what their goals are at different points in the game. For example, is the enemy jungler good at ganking? If yes, then you should be expecting them to gank you early in the game, and often. If the enemy team has a ‘wombo combo’, then you should expect them to want to group up and fight as five in a chokepoint on the map. This likely means they will want to contest Dragons, Heralds, and Baron as often as possible to have a more predictable situation to fight in!
Moving on to one of the more complex topics in League of Legends, is vision. Specifically, this means using wards in areas that are incredibly valuable. Think back to the first section of this guide when we discussed what to do before minions spawn. In that section, we discussed the Five Point positioning which is valuable to ensure that your jungle is not being invaded. Now, consider what it would look like if you had wards placed where your teammates were standing instead. With five wards, you can essentially block off your jungle from being invaded by the enemy without your knowledge.
Additionally, consider what it would look like if you did the exact same thing, but warding the entrances to the enemies’ jungle. Now the enemy jungler cannot leave their jungle and gank a lane or invade without walking over vision and your team knowing it. With this setup, the only way for them to do so is with a lane gank, or by using abilities to maneuver around the terrain and vision that you have set up. However, this would require that enemy to have the forethought and knowledge to assume where you have placed your wards without being spotted.
Finally, the last thing to remember about warding and using the minimap, is that just because your ward does not show you an enemy during its duration, does not mean that it was useless. Why? Although the ward may not tell you where the enemy is, at the very least, it is telling you where they are not, which is sometimes just as valuable!
The final tip to improve as a new player is to learn important timers and keep track of them! The most important ones are obviously the timers that you’ll see when you tab (Dragon, Buffs, Herald, and Baron). However, the most important one to keep track of that will dynamically change a lot from game to game are the enemies’ Summoner Spells. If you can keep track of when a specific enemy carry has used an important Summoner Spell like Flash, then you will be able to create a plan to capitalize on their vulnerability for the duration of its cooldown. You’ll be amazed at how reckless some players are when their Summoner Spells are on cooldown and how many times you can gain advantages for targeting them during this period! Use this to your advantage as often as possible!
Overall, there are countless things to consider and learn about in League of Legends when you are just starting out. However, these key fundamentals will kick start you down the path to success! Make sure you are constantly referring to these ideas to keep yourself in check because ultimately, the only one that can truly help you improve, is yourself! Stay humble and keep feeding that hunger to improve at the game, and you’ll start to see the results before you know it!
