League of Legends Tips and Tricks

League of Legends is an incredibly popular game. 12 million players across the globe go to battle every day. It has quickly become a prominent title on the main stage of e-sports.

Pro teams were awarded $4 million in 2012; $1.9 million of that pool awarded in a single tournament, the largest prize bestowed to date in e-sports.

If you are new to the game, you can download and play for free at www.leagueoflegends.com.

Whether you play for fun with friends, or you're battling your way through the ranked ladder system, you can always learn and improve. If you have more tips feel free to share them in the comments below.

• See that green dot in the portrait of each champion on your team? It shows up if they have their ultimate available for use.
• Smartcasting. Smartcasting saves you key presses and enables your skills to activate faster. You can hold alt and mouse over the skill to pull up the skill's range on your screen if you need to see it.
• Holding Alt + Q, W, E, or R will cast the ability on yourself without having to mouse over your character in a crowd or your portrait.
• Hitting Ctrl + Q, W, E, or R will level up a rank in the particular spell freeing your mouse from having to.
• Last hit to secure gold and control lane flow. Harass opponent when he goes for last hit to get a free damage trade or push him out of the minion kill.
• Red and Blue buffs in the jungle have 5 minute spawn timers. Dragon has a six minute timer. Baron has a seven minute timer. Typing out when it dies gives you a reference when it will return.
• Dragon kills net you 190g for each teammate +25g for the killer. It's a good idea to ward the pathways from your opponents jungle so you can see if you will be challenged for the kill.
• When drafting, counter pick. Check www.lolcounter.com if you are new to counterpicking for suggestions.
• If you are a ranged AD, remember to move between auto attacks, don't just right click them to attack and let them walk out of your range. This practice will also help you avoid incoming skill shots.

• Under tower, melee creeps take two tower hits and one auto attack. Caster creeps take one tower hit and two auto attacks.
• If you are support and the wave is pushed under tower you can help by hitting each caster creep once.
• Don't engage in rage. Try to compliment good play and avoid insulting others. Trolling or raging will unfocus the entire team and encourage less patience, likely ending in poor results.
• Follow enemy champion cooldowns. If they flashed, you can let the jungler know they are susceptable to ganks. Track the short abilities as well so you know how to best trade and expose the weaknesses they have imposed on themselves by using their ability.
• Upon a kill, ~50% of the gold gained is put into a pot and split across those that assisted. So don't go charging in to kill someone and die just to give their team assist gold.
• Adapt your item build to better handle opponents if they start to become fed.
• Alert your teammates if your lane goes missing. Ultimately it is still your responsibility to watch the mini-map yourself though.
• Creep waves are important to kill. The gold you get from a kill is worth about 2.5 creep waves. Remember this if you are going to wander away to help another lane. If you need to go back, push the lane first.
• When you are going back to shop, look to see if you have enough gold for the item(s) you want before you leave your lane.

• Use VOIP if you are playing with friends.
• If you don't have wards and enemies are missing, pushing deep into their territory is going to get you killed.
• Use exhaust primarily as a means to weaken your opponents AD and a snare second.
• Know when your champion is supposed to shine and press your advantage during that time. Udyr starts off strong and falls off late so you can't just stay in the jungle farming and wonder what happened.
• You can teleport to allied wards and teemo's mushrooms.
• If you attack a champion, you will get targeted nearby minions. You can use a bush to break their aggro.
• If you are having trouble ganking as a jungler because of wards, use an oracle potion to clear them or have your support put down a pink ward.

• Everyone should buy a ward, but if your champion can leap to an ally (Lee Sin, Jax, Katarina) you can place a ward as a jump target.
• You can use flash to mess with certain skills. In the middle of Shen's taunt it will double its range. After a Blitz grab it will pull them back even further. Or if a Leesin, Maokai, Jarvan, etc leap onto you, you can use flash to reposition him into a poor place.
• Chogath should use his ultimate on creeps to power up to six stacks.
• Some abilities will reset your attack allowing you to attack quickly again such as Vayne's tumble.
• Shaco's passive increase of 20% damage if you are behind your target works with all sources of damage including activated items and summoner spells as well such as ignite and smite.
• You can use Katarina's and Morgana's ult to check if someone's in bush without walking in it.
• Nunu can use his ult inside a bush unseen to enemies unless it's warded.
• You can control your pet (Tibbers, mordekaiser ghost, LeBlanc clone) with alt + right clicking.
• Use minions to block being grabbed by champions such as Blitzcrank and Thresh.

You can find a guide for your favorite champion at sites such as:

http://www.solomid.net/ and http://www.lolpro.com/

If you want to see stats about a certain champion you can visit

http://www.elophant.com/

If you want to follow the major tournaments, watch VODs, and check out the pro-scene visit:

http://lolplay.tv/ and http://na.lolesports.com/

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And as always, if you thought of more to add, leave me comments below.