Game Review: League of Legends & Learn to Ward

Hello all! This post will be talking on League of Legends, a famous MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game alongside with Dota2 and Heroes of the Storm.

What is it about?
League of Legends is a game by RIOT Games aka Rito. This game was first released back in year 2009 and featured in E-sports due to competitive gameplays. Currently, LoL is moving towards Season 6 World Championship. Last World Championship Season 5 was in Berlin. LoL is similar to Dota in some ways adapting the common gameplay but the changing and dynamic feature LoL is by controlling objectives such as 'Dragon', 'Taking out Towers' and 'Baron'. Similar to Dota, LoL has a large champion pool but gearing towards specific roles for certain champions. In LoL, there are 5 roles for 5 players: Top, Jungle, Mid, AD Carry(ADC), and Support. There are 3 lanes in the map and the gameplay revolves around more of Dynamic Virtual Chess-Game.
For those new to MOBA games, LoL is just like a chess-game and all champions selected by each player starts from level 1 and the game continue until Red Team or Blue Team destroys the Nexus (the big crystal in ally base) or force a surrender vote from opponent team. In LoL, we have EU, NA, CN, KR, Asia, and Oceania servers. Playing in your region server will reduce the lag during the gameplay.

Ignore my newbie photoshop skills.


So, is LoL more to Free-2-Play or Heavy Cashing?
This is actually a very common question asked by many gamers prior to dedicating themselves to play a new unfamiliar game. As for League of Legends, players may choose to spend money to buy skins for their specific champions for ecstatic purposes similar to other MMORPG which player buys costumes for their characters. Cashing probably will be spent on unlocking champions as well or buying skins for wards too.


Cons for MOBA games:
If you have weak internet speed, better to check your pings and speed via speedtest.net prior to be part of the community.
Most players suffer and develop hatred which stem from having bad connection speed and LoL is one of those games, your internet speed plays a vital role in determining your gaming experience. Nuff said.


Moving on, today second focus will be leaning towards 'Warding' in League of Legends.

As you can see from the yellow dots in the map, those are crucial areas for basic warding purposes. Warding is a collective team effort and Support Role will be focus on controlling the wards in the map.

Many new players unable to understand the importance of warding in LoL because lack of experience, insight and failure to grasp the key in maintaining vision for your teammates.

Why should I ward?

Currently in Pre-season 6 patch, every players may purchase yellow trinket for free from the shop which stacks up to 2 wards. During the laning phase, each individual player need to grasp the understanding of warding at the River Region before continue pushing through the lane as many do not understand the "Not Dying/Feeding vs 2-3 minions CS Counts" worth. Yes, it is a basic fact but many decided to forego such ideology. Warding provides vision because JG roles mainly focus on ganking during laning phase to snowball (win the lane 1 sidedly) any of the 3 lanes to gain massive advantage.

How to use wards and control vision effectively?

An experience LoL player will know that timer and map awareness are both important concept in maintaining vision control. Both the Jungle and Support provides vision for the team and individual Laners such as TOp, Mid, and AD Carry mainly focus on providing vision for themselves while laning. One does not simply overextend and push the lane to enemy's lane (meaning to go beyond the river dividing border) and making yourself susceptible for ganking. That itself shows potential gank-lane for Jungle.
Rotating wards and sightstone while knowing when to teleport back to base after pushing the lane safely important in avoiding getting killed. A 'support' player need to recharge sightstone after finish consumption and inform your AD carry or Mid Player that you will be heading back to base to stock up the wards again. Communication and teamwork are both vital in the game but Controlling Vision seem to be lacking among many players. Warding itself is dangerous as well and do not focus heavily on roaming around the map to ward to the extent of abandoning your carries and get yourself killed. Roaming around to ward as support with enemy gaining vision of your roam is as though putting a sign "Yo, I'm Delicious and come Rekt Me'.

Warding for objectives is another skill player need to understand. Playing with the timer, Support should secure vision at bot lane for your AD carry should both of you decided to push the lane. By using your own Jungle level as gauge, you can safely place a ward at river brush when your jungle is level 3. That is when most jungles decided to gank a lane that's overpushed.

I guess that is all for this post. Fellow readers with questions may leave them under the comment section below this post. Cheers!