Beginners Tips

Tips for how new or semi-experienced people can get better at the game. Please contribute as you see fit.

I'm just going to stream-of-consciousness some general advice that I think may be of help to some players:

• Use quickcast for almost everything (available / customizable in the main settings window.)
  
  
  
  • It takes just a few days to get accommodated to the switch, and it pays off in a huge way. I was opposed to quickcast for the longest time (years...,) as it gets rid of the aiming indicators on your skillshots, which I always liked, and also because it doesn't make sense for certain abilities (and I really didn't like the idea of having some abilities on quickcast and some not, as it would be another burden, just another thing I have to keep track of.) It wasn't until Final Boss Veigar came out that I realized I needed it... I just wasn't capable of pulling off Veigar's entire combo without quickcast. I spent three days being a bit worse at the game, and misclicking a lot, and then came out a much stronger player. It makes more of a difference than I ever would have imagined. Almost everything is easier / faster to do.
    
    
  • For anyone not aware, quickcast makes it so that you can cast an ability just by pressing q/w/e/r once, rather than pressing it once to "arm" the ability, and get the aiming indicators, and then pressing a mouseclick to actually cast the ability. So for example, just discussing Veigar's full combo: stun with e, cast q on target, cast w on/near target, cast r on target, ignite target. Without quickcast, and after you have stunned with e, the sequence goes like this: Hit q, mouseclick on target; hit w, mouseclick over/near target, click r, mouseclick on target, click d/f, mouseclick on target. After your stun lands, this is four key / mouseclick combos in very quick succession. You can keep your mouse over your target and do this quickly, but it's eight total clicks. And you have to alternate between keyboard and mouse.
    
    
  • For comparison, if you use quickcast, here is the sequence after you have stunned with e: Put your mouse over your target, and press q w r d as fast as humanly possible. That's it. It is more than twice as fast/easy to pull it off in the quickcast case versus normal case as you don't need to alternate between key presses and mouse clicks.
    
    
    
    • Note: Veigar's e is one of the best examples of the small list of abilities that you should probably keep OFF quickcast, as it can be very challenging to aim without the aiming indicators (since where you click is the middle of the wall, and you are really trying to aim the sides of the wall.) However, with enough skill, it is better to have e on quickast, if you are skilled enough to actually land the stun. I tried and cannot, I leave his e on normal cast.
      
    
    
    
  • If anyone is still skeptical, I challenge you to play Veigar in a custom or bot game, once without quickcast, and once with quickcast, and don't worry about normal game stuff, just try to 100-0 the bot as much as possible, and ask yourself which way you think is easier.
    
    
  • Disclaimer: you should NOT use quickcast if you are not yet familiar with the range / size / distance of your champion's abilities - if you don't know the capabilities of your skills like the back of your hand, you probably need the aiming indicators. (You can and should set your quickcast settings up at the beginning of each game as needed. I toggle things around a bit for some champions, although for me 95% of champions I just have quickcast on for everything.)
    
  
  
  
• Know when you should be pushing or freezing your lane.
  
  
  
  
  • This is one of the biggest strategic elements in the game. A lot of people try to freeze as a rule of thumb, which can be correct, but you have to know when that's going to screw you over. Good example: I'm playing Zilean mid against a pusher, say Ziggs. Early game. He's staying out of range of my q and clearing minion waves quickly. If I try to not bomb creeps, and just last-hit only, I'm going to lose this lane hard and fast. Why? Because Zilean has really bad auto damage and sucks ass at farming under tower. Even the melee creep he has to hit twice to finish off after two tower hits, unlike one for most champs. So when I'm playing Zilean mid against a save, ranged wave clearer like that, that's not going to let me easily bomb him, I'm kind of forced to NOT freeze - I have to bomb creeps and auto constantly to make sure I can kill each wave without it going into the tower.
    
    
  • The reverse can be also true. Pushing a lane can easily screw you over. This case is easier for most people to identify, as getting screwed over in this situation 99% of the times means being too far up in your lane and getting ganked by the enemy jungler. How to know when you should be pushing your lane? When you have tabs on your enemy's jungler and know you can't get ganked, (or you know your jungle will counter gank immediately and you will win the 2v2) or if you have a champion with an escape ability you can just hold on to, so you feel confident you can survive a gank without getting chunked. Or you know, if you are playing Singed top or something, at which point you just always 100% push, but that's an exception.
    
  
  
  
• You can probably sense a theme here: you have to know how fights are going to go down before they go down. There's no real science to this, it's just a matter of experience, knowledge, and instinct. Don't get into a 1v1 unless you know you're going to win. Don't push your lane unless you know you are definitely not going to get ganked doing so, or you know you can escape (or in some situations, just straight up win the 1v2, sometimes this happens and usually its gg.)
  
  
• Runes are incredibly important. Make sure you are running the right runes for your champion, and make sure you have more than the basic 2 pages. I know pages are expensive (6300 ip for one rune page is *ridiculous*), but it's a necessary cost to be competitive. A good starting point is this infographic about the most used rune pages from this year's worlds: i . imgur . com / FmakbeW . jpg (forum wouldn't let me post a link so I had to do this, sorry.) Masteries are just as important but people make far less mistakes with masteries in general, as there's far fewer overall choices to make.
  
  
• Find and main champions that fit your playstyle. Over the years I have discovered that I just suck with assassins, I can't pull them off. Going into a 1v5, killing a carry, and getting out, just isn't how I normally play / isn't something I can usually pull off, I end up going into a 1v5, getting CCd, feeding, getting reported, crying, etc. . So I don't excel at champions with assassination kits. Thus, I don't play assassins when I'm trying to win. I've tried to get good with Fizz / Zed / Talon / Leblanc mid, and I couldn't, so I don't play those champs anymore, except of course in normals trying to improve at that roll.
  
  Gotta go to meeting now, will add more here later. Sorry for wall-o-text I can be too verbose sometimes.