LoL: From Noob to Not-So-Noob: Champions and Archetypes

So you’ve been playing a few games by now hopefully, and you’ve got enough IP to buy a champion or two. Which should you buy, what order and when? Well, the cop out answer is that it’s entirely up to personal preference. Obviously, that would make for a pretty bad guide if I just said that, so there is some advice I can give which will hopefully help you.

Firstly, you should decide whether you want to focus on one role or style of hero, or whether you want to be flexible and have the ability to fill whatever role your team needs. There are pros and cons of each, though eventually you will probably end up doing the latter anyway.

Focusing on one type of hero will make it much easier to learn the game to begin with. You’ll get settled into doing what you’re meant to do much easier, and you’ll find it quicker to uptake new heroes within that role. On the other hand, you may end up in games where everyone picks your kind of hero, and picking that role would lead to a team composition that will most likely get stomped on. You may also find it harder later on to transfer to other roles when you’ve had hundreds of hours of gameplay focused on performing one role. You will save money on runes once you reach level 20 however (I haven’t mentioned this before, but don’t bother buying runes until level 20, it’s a waste of IP you could be spending on champions or saving for your tier 3 runes) as you will only need one or two sets of runes. Playing multiple roles can help you to know how to counter other roles, or to understand what they might be doing at any point in the game.

So, we know we can either focus on one role or multiple, but what roles are there in the game anyway? Well you can do this on multiple levels. At the broadest level, there are Ability Power heroes, Attack Damage heroes and a few hybrid heroes. As a very general rule, ability power heroes tend to be more about doing burst damage while attack damage heroes do more sustained damage. There are exceptions to this rule, but it mostly works. Focusing on just AP or AD can help to decrease the cost of runes once you hit level 20, but it does mean that if your allies all pick the same as you you could end up with a team that is very easy to counter just by building thornmail or banshee's veil.

A level deeper we can see the roles that people play within the game: AD ranged carry, AP nuke, Support, Tank, Assassins or Melee DPS (or tanky dps). You can also have junglers, who tend to be either melee dps or tanks. Choosing which roles you want to focus on really depends on your play style.

Carries and nukes can make you feel great because you get all the kills, but it’s the role which everyone tries to play every game, so you will often end up on teams of all carries and nukes with nobody to take the brunt of the damage or initiate. There's a lot more to carries and nukes than most people think however, because it's not just grabbing all damage items and right clicking or nuking to victory. Much hinges on your ability to last hit and get enough farm, as well as in your positioning and correct focus in team fights.

Tanks are great, especially if you’re focusing on staying alive, and revolve a lot around knowing how and when to initiate fights, positioning and picking off the enemy so they can’t get to your own carries (known as peeling).

Supports are one of the lesser played roles, so maining them will make teams you arrive on love you forever if they know anything about the game. A good support with some average carries can beat a better team with no support most of the time.

Melee dps is great for bridging the gap between being a squishy carry and a bolt-hard tank. You can jump on people or small groups and feel slightly more sure you’ll come out of the other side alive.

Assassins are squishier but more mobile carries and nukes. You’ll be able to dive in and out of combat and kill people in the blink of an eye, but if you jump in the wrong place at the wrong time you’ll be a smear on the tarmac before you know it.

As a jungler you’ll be tasked with controlling buffs, securing your own jungle, possibly invading the enemies jungle if you feel you can, setting up ganks on lanes you can or which need it and generally being the “unknown” for the enemy team, keeping them on their back foot and punishing them when they are being over-aggressive. I wouldn’t solely focus on this role if you’re not playing as part of a team, simply because you only ever want one in a team and if someone else grabs smite and locks in first you’ll be in foreign territory laning with your jungle hero. This is totally do-able, most junglers do well solo top if you can’t jungle (unless you’re amumu, then you just cry), so you could do just jungle champions if you’re willing to switch it up when needed. The other possible downside is that most junglers need decent rune set-ups to jungle effectively, so you will either need to wait for level 20 to set up your runes, or limit yourself to junglers who can do it without runes (ie/ Warwick)

So, hopefully you’ve decided which role or roles you are going to focus on if you’re focusing, or you’ve decided you want to learn all the roles to make yourself as knowledgeable and flexible as possible. Now which champions should you buy? For starters, if you’re willing to drop some real money on the game, I’d highly recommend getting the Gamer’s Choice bundle. For 3900 riot points (so the $35 riot point level, with 1100 to spare for whatever you want) you get 20 champions with a good spread across all the different roles. You also get a cool skin for annie, a few runes which might reduce the hurt on your IP wallet when you hit 20, and 1380 bonus riot points for whatever you want (giving you 2480 RP total if you got the $35 pack of RP, letting you buy another 2 expensive champions and some skins, or if you hold onto it and buy things you want when they come up on sale, plenty more).

If you’re not wanting to drop any real money on the game and want to do it all using IP, I highly recommend grabbing most of the 450 IP champions. They’re cheap enough to buy with a game or two’s worth of IP and are some of the best heroes in the game even up at tournament level play. Soraka, Ashe and Annie are all great choices, would cost you a mere 1350 IP for all three and give you a support, ranged carry and AP nuke to play with. If you hit up riot on facebook and like them you can also get the riot girl tristana skin for free. When you unlock the skin via a code like this it automatically unlocks that champion for you to play for free.

Remember that you’ll need to save up for your runes when you hit level 20, so don’t go too overboard buying champions with IP. Only buy 3150 or above champions if you’ve played them on free week and really enjoy them, otherwise you might find yourself grinding games for IP when you hit level 20 to get those shiny tier 3 runes. A full page of tier 3 runes will cost you at MINIMUM 8610 IP, or if you go for all the most expensive runes you could end up spending a horrifying 28290. So make sure you hold enough back for level 20 as you’re levelling up or you could find yourself spending a long time grinding for runes.

The main thing with champions is that you enjoy playing them. There’s no use forcing yourself to learn soraka just because you feel you should know how to play a support if you find yourself absolutely bored shitless every game you play her. Work out via the free champion rotation which ones you enjoy, and focus on learning them. Make sure you have a good little selection of heroes though, there’s nothing worse than a player who can only play one hero getting to level 30, playing ranked and getting their hero banned out from underneath them.

Champions also come and go with their strength in the game. Often some champions can be seen as not actually viable to play at higher levels of the game, or can get nerfed from being strong to quite weak. Personally I'd suggest putting your enjoyment of a champion over how technically strong they are, as balance changes are happening all the time, so eventually your champion should get buffed up to being good. However, be sure to keep it in mind and check the forums and/or tier lists to see which champions are seen as underpowered, because it can lead to some disappointing playtime if you pick up a champion who is currently really bad and get stomped game after game.

Hopefully this guide will have given you some idea what to do with the huge list of champions in front of you. It should also have given you a little break from mechanics and tactics, because you’ll need your head on when we tackle our next topic: Lane Control