League of Legends Beginner Guide – 7 Essential Tips to Start Strong
What’s good newbies? I’m Librarian Husky, so, you have just started playing League. It is a good day to be alive, man. And I am so happy that you are here. You’ve got five or 10 games under your belt so far, but things aren’t really going well yet.
League Tips for Beginners
Trust us, we know exactly what you’ve been going through. League’s been out for 15 years, and it’s one of the most competitive games in the entire world, and everyone in this community expects you to have been playing that entire time, making the new player experience honestly pretty miserable. Let’s just say it outright. That’s why in this article, we are going to be sharing seven extremely simple tips to help you on your League journey.
These are the tips for true beginners that are going to help you have a much better idea of what’s going on in the game and how to start having more successful matches immediately. Now, our first tip definitely has to do with how nerve-wracking League can be for new players. There is so much going on on the map and everyone’s pinging, everyone’s typing, everyone’s telling you what to do. Man, it can be overwhelming. With constant action that you’re responding to, it is easy to make mistakes dying and falling behind.
Understanding Early and Late Game Objectives
To help remedy this, here’s something you should know. There is a massive difference in League between early and later game objectives. Objectives that spawn in the late game, such as Baron Nasher, giving your team an insane buff to all your minions that help you push and destroy enemy towers. The Elder Dragon, which gives you a powerful execute, which, let’s be honest, all but guarantees you to win any fight you take. And the dragon soul buff you get when you stack four individual dragons gives you a permanent buff that’s so strong that whichever team ends up getting it tends to win the game.
Now on the other hand, the early game objectives like void grubs, individual early dragons, and the rift herald pale in usefulness by comparison. So here is one of our best bits of advice on this. It is genuinely going to be okay to not feel pressured to fight over these objectives early on. It’s very common for less experienced players to overvalue them because, well, you’re encouraged to prioritize anything called an objective in most video games, and you’re definitely going to get constantly told by your teammates that you need to contest them in League.
Players will often just fight over them, even when they have no chance of winning that fight, and they just end up dying for no reason. So, our tip here is really simple. Feel free to not fight over these early objectives if you don’t think you can. Are you low on health, low on mana? Is your ultimate not up? Trust your gut instinct. You’re more than capable enough to make a decent decision based on what resources you currently have. Now, we know that a lot of newer players just default to following what their teammates are doing because you think others know better than you do.
Guiding Your Objectives
But trust us, your teammates, they’re not any smarter than you are. So, don’t follow them and die for free over these early objectives. It’s not worth it. Now, of course, if you do think you can fight for something, you do want to help your team. The early objectives do give okay-ish benefits that are going to help you win, but again, they’re not so important that you should throw your life away over them.
We understand how overwhelming it can be to get into a mobile like League. Everyone expects you to know what’s going on at all times when you don’t know what a tenth of the champions in the game even do yet. Looking up guides on YouTube, let’s get real, it feels almost useless. Content creators throw out league terminology, expecting everyone to know what they mean, even in guides aimed at beginners.
Like we said, you should not fight over objectives when you don’t think you can. But how do you know when you can fight over something? Here’s a simple guideline to follow that will drastically increase how many fights you win. You should almost always look for a fight immediately after you complete a core item. This advice is easy to follow. If you just bought a finished item, then go brawl. We’ll also explain the logic behind this thought so you understand why this can be so beneficial. After your first game of League, it is obvious that building items makes you stronger. Those items are comprised of components that build into the completed form at the end.
Understanding Power Spikes with Completed Items
What you should understand about this is that completed items are a much bigger power spike than the components they build out of. To visualize this, think of the item components as kind of a bump in power. You’re definitely getting stronger, but not by a crazy amount. On the other hand, completing an item is a much bigger bump in power, usually because they come with unique effects that are likely very powerful on your champion.
Again, we just want to say we’re about to explain why this advice is good, which is going to seem a bit complicated at First, but roll with me here. But you do not need to fully understand what I’m about to say. If you don’t get it, that’s fine. You can still apply our tip anyway, which is just to fight after buying completed items.
Here’s some common outcomes that you’re going to experience by following this advice. First, you might fight your opponent right before they get to complete their core item. So, they’re still going to be on components while you have your completed one. In this example, Fighting would be great as the player has two core items versus one core and some components. This is a sizable advantage for you.
The second outcome is even simpler than this. You fight after buying, but your opponent has also just bought. Having that same amount of core items makes the fight even, which is more than fair.
The third example is for when you’ve lost early on. When playing from behind, you want to give yourself as high of a possibility to make a comeback. By fighting right after buying a core item, your opponent might still be building into their next one. So, for example, if you fought right after building your second core item, your opponent could still be sitting on the components of their third one. Fighting now would still put you at a disadvantage, but it’s not insurmountable.
Basically, to sum this all up, you’re really trying to avoid the following. If you fight after buying an item component and your opponent has just finished their next core, then you’d be at an even bigger disadvantage. You’re almost guaranteed to lose that fight, which is obviously not good.
Now, of course, there is a ton of nuance in this game. We get that. And following this advice, it won’t win you every single fight. But as a new player, if you’ve got absolutely no idea of when you’re strong or when you’re not, or when to brawl, then just remember our core item rule and you’re going to be okay. fight right after shopping and you’re much more likely to come out ahead. Okay, so skirmishing, it’s something you’ll definitely do a lot of in League.
Improving Your Mechanical Skills in League of Legends
Many players get into the game because of a common notion that League has a lot of strategy elements. While that’s true, the game has shifted towards rewarding skirmishing and fighting skills. Mechanical skill now plays a significant role. You don’t need to be a gaming prodigy, but understanding key concepts can enhance your gameplay.
One such concept is Attack moving. Instead of simply right-clicking to attack, using the attack move keybind can improve your gameplay. By pressing ‘A,’ you can automatically move to a designated spot and attack the nearest target. This is crucial for ranged champions trying to maintain distance from enemies.
This technique allows you to hit targets without precise clicking, making it easier to kite opponents. For marksmen, it enables them to attack and evade simultaneously with minimal effort. Attack moving is a valuable skill that enhances your efficiency in combat scenarios.
To further enhance your attack moving technique, consider implementing additional tips to streamline your gameplay experience. Remember that mastering this skill requires practice and patience.
Mastering Attack Move Keybind for Improved Gameplay
Practice using the attack move keybind to enhance your in-game performance. By incorporating this technique into your gameplay, you can effectively navigate combat situations and optimize your champion’s abilities. Experiment with different strategies to find what works best for your playstyle.
Developing proficiency in attack moving can significantly impact your success in League of Legends matches. Utilize this skill to outmaneuver opponents, maintain control in team fights, and secure victories on the Rift. Remember, consistent practice is key to mastering this essential gameplay mechanic.
Improving Attack Move Efficiency
First, A to Change your cursor and bring up your range indicator and then a left click to input the command. If you want to turn this into one click, go into your settings, hotkeys, then open up player movement. Change the keybind from player attack move to player attack move click instead. This makes it so you only need to press that one keybind to attack move rather than Having to left-click as well. It’s a personal preference, though. You may run into issues with precise target selection.
To hit a specific target, open your settings, go to game, scroll down, and enable attack move on cursor. This setting allows your attack to prioritize the target closest to your cursor, giving you more control over your auto attacks without needing extreme precision. Having the right settings can significantly ease your gameplay. For more useful tips like this, check out our settings guide.
Enhancing Movement with Attack Canceling
To make your movement even more fluid when combined with attack moving, cancel the wind-down animation of your auto attacks. Your auto attacks consist of three parts: the wind-up animation, the actual attack animation, and the wind-down where your champion resets their weapon. Canceling this final animation involves inputting another movement command right after your auto attack goes off, allowing you to begin moving much faster. This technique is particularly beneficial for champions with high attack speed. Mastering this concept, along with attack moving, will make your champion feel smoother to play.
It’s essential to note that the timing for canceling the wind-down animation varies based on your attack speed. For example, Trundle‘s W ability grants him a significant attack speed boost. The timing can be affected by changes in attack speed, as seen when Trundle’s ability ran out and caused a mistimed auto attack. Practice canceling the wind-down animation with different attack speeds in the training tool to improve your efficiency.
Improving Minion Last Hitting
This way, you can get a better feel for how the timing is going to change as the game progresses. Trust us, this absolutely is not hard to learn either. Just spend a few minutes in the training tool, and you are going to have this down in no time.
So, before you can even get to a new fight to use all these new skills, though, you need to power through the laning phase, which involves obviously killing Minions, and a lot of them. And probably the single most beneficial skill any new player can learn is being a bit more consistent in scoring the last hits on every minion. Minion gold is by far your most reliable income in League. And to put it into perspective, on average, 15 minions is about a kill worth of gold.
If you find that you’re mistiming the last hits on minions, then you’re throwing tons of gold down the drain and you need to listen up to our following tip. So later into the game, your spells do tend to destroy waves. So, it’s much easier to score last hits late in the game. But in lane, you’re typically trying to secure each minion with your auto attack or a weak spell.
To make this more consistent, pay attention to how much damage you’re dealing with your autos or abilities. Keep those numbers in mind at all times. Then, on last hits that you’re going to be unsure about, you want to left-click a minion to open up their information panel on the top left. What most players do is eyeball it and try to guess when they should last hit.
But with this panel, you can wait for the minion to drop below the health threshold of your auto or spell. This way, you’re going to know for certain whether you can score last hit or not. And of course, this isn’t a tip you can implement every time all the time. But if your opponent is trading aggressively in lane with you, you’re not going to have time to click on a minion and focus on its HP at the top left.
But at the very least, you can use this whenever you have breathing room and you aren’t being pressured. And especially on the cannon minions, securing those is the equivalent of three last hits. So, you definitely want to do everything possible to make sure you don’t miss those. As simple and newbie as this tip sounds, even the very best players in the world still use it consistently. That’s just how effective it is for securing those all-important cannon minions.
Now, on the topic of killing minions later on into the game, waves start dying pretty quickly to your spells. However, there is a common issue that we notice a lot of newer players dealing with. settings guides all over YouTube and including our very own will often recommend to newer players that they should quick cast their abilities. If you haven’t done this yet, we would recommend doing so here in the settings. Basically, it just makes it so you don’t have to press an ability and then left-click for it to go off. Instead, your spell is going to go off immediately after pressing the initial keybind.
Optimizing Spell Usage
This is quite important in League as it allows you to combo abilities a whole lot faster. But we found that newer players often suffer a huge issue when using quick casting, particularly around minion waves. Most champions have one, maybe two spells that deal area of effect damage, which allows them to clear waves. But if you quick cast your spell, you might misplace it, not hitting all of the wave. Now, it’s going to take you forever to kill all those minions, which can significantly reduce your ability to help your team at fights or objectives.
In League, you’re going to be interacting with minions a whole lot. So, you definitely don’t want to be slow at clearing waves. You’re going to spend a lot of time doing a whole lot of doing. And so, you want to make sure you have both a quick cast keybind for your spells, but also a normal cast one. Typically, players are going to use a shift modifier so they can use the normal cast version when needed. Now, as you can see, this lets you line up your spells perfectly, allowing you to clear those minions quickly. Now you’re going to have way more time to join up with your team and enjoy the fun parts of the game.
There’s a wide variety of spells in League which will interact with minion waves in a bunch of different ways. So using normal cast is extremely important, particularly on mages who are a bit more ability focused than other classes.
Maximizing Ward Efficiency
Now for our all-important final tip, let’s talk about vision. Your trinket gives you periodic wards which are important for lighting up the map with information. The problem is these are limited. So you want to get the most value possible out of each and every ward. You want to be able to consistently spot potential threats coming your way so you’re caught off guard less and less often.
So here’s the tip. Try not to mindlessly place your wards. An extremely important concept you want to keep in mind is that you want to place them in areas with high traffic and where you can scout multiple paths. For example, if you’re a mid laner, putting your ward in the brush beside you is kind of mediocre. You’re only going to see enemy champions if they come through specifically in that area of the map.
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