Experiencing MOBA in Summoner’s Rift [LoL]
For the past few weeks, I’ve been diving into League of Legends. I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about jumping in, but after finding out that you could play against bots until you’re comfortable with the game, I decided to give it a go. After installing and updating, I hopped into the tutorial and I’ll have to say they’ve done a really good job teaching you the basics. From an overview of how the game works, how to spend and build items, to turret assaulting and basic ganging hotspots, the game describes them all. Although, there is plenty the tutorial does not teach you it’s enough to get to you going.
As I went through the tutorial a few more times to get the hang of it and purchasing some cheap champions, I set sail for the bot matches. Thanks to the MOBA community Mobafire and Riot’s own recommended item builds it was easy to learn and understand how to play champions. Item building is key and that is where all the meta gaming comes into play; having the right build separates the men from the boys.
Through my experience, I like to play the damage-dealing champions, though I did enjoy some of the support champions. One of my favorite champions so far would have to be Master Yi because with his ultimate skill ‘Highlander’ and the right timing, I can go nuts on the opposition and if I manage to get a kill with it, I can reuse repeatedly. It is a wonderful feeling hacking away an entire team.
I’ve also grown quite fond of Caitlyn the sheriff of Piltover. She has excellent range with her steam punk sniper gun and I fell in love with one of her skills, Yordle Snap Trap because it uses a cupcake as bait for the bear trap that locks an opponent in place for a set amount of time. Since her skill ‘Piltover Peacemaker’ goes through terrain I can manage some fancy last hits against enemy champions or some surprise attacks from unexpected places. Her ultimate skill ‘Ace in the hole’ is excellent for finishing off opponents since it has phenomenal range and does pretty decent damage.
However, I would have say that my very favorite is Teemo, the Swift Scout. He uses a blowgun take down enemies as well as strategically placing his mushrooms in key locations to set-up ambushes and gives everyone on his team excellent map awareness. I’ve been building him with hit-on effects, meaning my basic attacks are granted additional effects, so his damage can be misleading and when combined with his Venom Shot skill that grants my basic attacks poison, the damage Teemo can do adds up quickly and before people know it their health damn near zero.
Some things can only be learned while you play. For example, it is very important to understand how other champions work. Beware of a Warwick jungler, be aware that Ashe and some other champions have ultimate skills that can transverse across the whole map, and above all Shen is a jerk and a cheater. You’ll pick up on key elements that help you win a game, like zoning, map awareness, getting the lizard buffs, what’s your role in team fights, who to fight first, what to look out for etc.. All of these things are easy to understand but take time to master.
All and all, I’m really enjoying my time with League of Legends but there are some things I don’t like about the game. For a team-oriented game it promotes quite a bit competition between teammates, even though on the more competitive professional side of things, player really into don’t mind it, but if I hear another person complaining about so and so stole his/her kill, I’m going to flip a table. I wish they did more with the bots, they only have a set rotation in place and I wish they would add more champions in the rotation to expose players to other champions and learn their quirks and style.
At the intermediate level, most of what they did was boost the gold gain they receive making it so that even if you have a decent game going, the difficulty can spike depending on your team setup. If the game goes south, it can get very bad. At that point, you are probably behind on items and even the best tactics falls by the waist side. I’m sure they can do a better job at programming them.
If any of you want to try the game, feel free to do so. I’ll be happy to play with you in some bot matches to get you settled. Feel free to add TramellH to your friends list should you download and install the game.
