How to play every role in LoL: tips from a Chinese high-elo player

There are millions of League of Legends players in Asia, but let’s face it: most of us suck. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn, and in that spirit, the Chinese gaming site Netease Games has put together some tips for each role in the game from a high-elo (Diamond) player in China. I’ve summarized what the article says about each role below.

(You can also probably learn a bit about how high elo Chinese players view the meta from these tips).

Top:

• Build tanky
• In teamfights, go straight for their back line; together with your jungler you should be able to either kill them or force a retreat.
• If their back line does retreat in a teamfight and you can’t catch them, turn around immediately and help your carries kill their front-liners.
• Don’t fear death: your job is to jump in first and soak up all of their most powerful abilities so that then your teammates can come in and wreak havoc unmolested. If you’ve built tanky, you should be able to survive anyway.

Jungle:

• Start at your red, then go to steal their red, but if you see their top or mid disappear, head back and do your blue instead.
• The more you watch the map and the more you ask your teammates where wards are, the more effectively you can gank.
• If you’ve ganked and killed their top lane, put a ward in the tribush or river and then go gank mid. If you can force a flash that’s good; if you get a kill, even better.
• After a successful gank bot, take the dragon. For the jungler, this is even more important than taking the initial outer towers.
• In a teamfight, your job is to either isolate and kill the enemy’s back line or to protect your own.

Mid:

• If you can’t snowball your lane as a mid, it’s best to roam bot and help snowball that (assuming it’s well warded and you can get there without walking through their wards). But never do this if you don’t know where the enemy jungler is.
• If ganking top, go through your own jungle to avoid wards.
• Before roaming, always hit Tab and check the items and CS of your teammate and their lane opponent. If your teammate is too far behind, you probably can’t help. Ditto if they have no wards or if they’ve already lost lane.
• Remind everyone to place wards. In the late game, especially ranked soloqueue, it’s really about who makes more mistakes.
• In teamfights, if you can’t get to their back line, take out their front-liners and look for opportunities to get in.
• Holding your ult until later in the teamfight will often be unexpected, so consider that as long as you’re not at risk of dying.

Support:

• Supports can do a lot in the current version of the game, and one underrated thing to do is roam mid and help your midlaner by ganking.
• Play Thresh, Morgana, or LeBlanc, they all make good roaming supports.
• If you’re playing someone like Soraka or Sona, just focus on protecting your ADC.
• Everyone has their own support playstyle, but ward well, protect your carries, CC the opposition in teamfights, and hide shamelessly in the brush to make plays and add pressure.

ADC:

• First and foremost, need to be good at last-hitting, you want at least 70 CS by ten minutes.
• In addition to CSing, try to poke or win trades with your lane opponent when you see an opportunity to do so safely.
• When your abilities are up and you can do damage, signal your support to CC them while you unleash your full combo to kill them or at least force them back and gain lane advantage for yourself.
• Buy wards, even when you’re winning lane.
• In teamfights, kill their front line if you can’t get to the back line, and pay attention to positioning (yours and theirs). You don’t want to find yourself out of position and unable to do your damage.
• If you can do the following, you’ll be a passable ADC: (1) equal or surpass your opponent’s farm, (2) always keep yourself in a safe position, (3) don’t go blindly tower-diving or chasing kills.
• Good ADCs right now: Lucian, Cait, Twitch, or Graves and Draven if you can snowball your lane.

General tips:

• Don’t blame your teammates, remember that LoL is often a 1v9 game. Even if your teammates are feeding, nothing you can say in chat is likely to change that.
• Dodge ranked games if your teammates are already raging during the pick/ban phase.
• League is a game of intelligence, and if you plan better than your opponent, you’ll beat him.
• Mute ragers immediately.
• If the game is lost, just focus on practicing your CSing, skillshots, and positioning.
• Warding is not just the support’s job. After buying your items when you back, use whatever gold you have leftover to buy a ward or two.

(via Netease Games)