Climbing the Elo Ladder: Preparation

In order to help people learn now to climb the Elo ladder, I'm going to give any tips I have personally tried and have garnered success with. People like to say that they get stuck in Elo Hell, and while there is a possibility that's true... I tend to disagree. So, the first thing I'm going to mention are some tips for your general life style. Honestly, these will not only help you play better, but will improve your life in general.

• Get sleep. Pretty simply, but staying up 20 hours a day means you're barely able to focus on anything, much less a League game.
• Eat as healthy as you can. If you can afford to not eat garbage all day, you really should. Food you actually have to cook yourself is a step in the right direction.
• Get some form of exercise. I seriously mean this. It doesn't have to be working out at the gym for hours. Go on a 20 minute walk. Do some situps or push-ups. The best thing I can recommend for people who play League is to do situps and push-ups for every death in a game, and do them right after the game. It works wonders.
• If you don't feel like you are going to play your best: don't. On a side note: if you have ranked anxiety, I recommend the opposite: just play, get over your ladder anxiety.
• Be positive. This wins more games than I can count. Don't give up ever. If you truly want your elo to rise, stay positive, and never surrender: people love to throw games, especially at lower elo's.
• Along the same vain as positivity: never rage. It never get's anything done. Even if people rage at you, do not return rage. Just keep calm and farm on.

Overall, these are simple tips (and I cannot stress the positivity, never surrendering, and never rage tips) that WILL help your elo.  It may not be the difference between 600 and 2k, but it will raise it up even just a bit, and if you are intent on getting high elo, every little bit counts.

Next list will be in-game/in-queue tips.

Pro Tip #2

Communication is key. Pinging can be one of the most effective and easiest ways to communicate with your team. However, pinging in excess can be annoying for everyone. Pinging to intiate on a target or to take a specific route can be helpful or pinging the enemys position to ensure that your allies are aware. Overall communication is a plays a big part in winning and losing games, afterall it is a team game.

Pro Tip #1

Don't play games if you are in a bad mood. You are not going to be able to think as clearly, try to relax a bit and maybe do some pushups or situps or something to take your mind off of whatever is bugging you. Maybe go for a walk and get some fresh air.

Champion Dissection: Vayne, The Night Hunter

Vayne, The Night Hunter

Champion Dissection

Vayne is arguably the highest single DPS AD carry in League of Legends. In this post, we’re going to break down her kit in terms of Mechanics, Gameplay, and Theme (Theme is actually important in terms of how a champion feels and is presented, and shapes their kit pretty significantly). 


Let’s start by going over her role in a team and her theme: Vayne fills the role of AD carry, with a high amount of single target damage (above the level of other AD Carries), and exceptional chasing ability. Vaynes theme is that of witch hunter and destroyer of evil. Now let’s see how her kit enables her role and fits her theme.

Passive: Night Hunter

• Mechanics: Vayne's passive gives her 40 bonus MS when moving towards a visible enemy. Stealthed enemies, enemies in brush, or enemies out of sight for whatever reason do not 'proc' this passive.

• Gameplay: Night Hunter makes Vayne an exceptional chaser, and gives her fairly higher mobility in fights where she can be aggressive. Note that Vayne's passive is worthless for running away (unless you happen to be running AT an enemy to get away from others), so it is primarily an aggressive passive.

• Theme: Vayne's passive fits her 'hunter of evil persona' excellently. Her phrase ‘you cannot escape me’ is the epitome of this Passives feel, and you really do feel this passive when you're chasing someone down for the kill.

Q Ability: Tumble

• Mechanics: Upon activation, Vayne tumbles towards the cursor, travelling a short distance. At the end of this Tumble, Vayne gains increased attack damage (% increase) for her next auto attack.

• Gameplay: Tumble provides not only significant burst (with high enough AD), but increased damage over time, and mobility (which means better chasing, running, positioning). So not only does this skill do everything every AD carry might want, it is also more effective when used aggressively. Tumble cools down whenever Vayne uses the attack buff. This means that when tumbling away from someone (and not attacking), the cooldown is 6 seconds longer, whereas if you had auto attacked, you’d be able to tumble much sooner.

• Theme: Tumble furthers Vaynes persona. She can use this ability with an incredible amount of utility, which is what one would expect from someone who must adapt to destroy any evil she finds.

W Ability: Silver Bolts

• Mechanics: Silver bolts is extremely simple in a mechanical sense. Attack (or use abilities on) the same target three times, bonus % true damage occurs.

• Gameplay: Silver Bolts is not only immensely powerful, but incredibly fun as well. The reason for the power is that percentage true damage which scales on enemy health is strong no matter how you look at it. The fun comes from the feel of the ability. You WANT to hit that person three times, you want to do it as quickly as possible, and when you DO do it, you’re rewarded with not only a satisfying particle and sound, but a chunk of enemy health disappearing.

• Theme: Vayne's Silver Bolts fits fairly well, but mostly due to the ‘flavor’ of the ability. It’s the explanation of why the ability ‘works’ that makes it fit. Using silver to slay evil? Perfect.

E Ability: Condemn

• Mechanics: Condemn is a targeted spell, which causes the targeted enemy to take physical damage, and be knocked back. If knocked into a wall (or other such terrain), they take bonus physical damage and are stunned.

• Gameplay: Condemn brings arguably the most fun part of Vayne's kit. It has a slightly lesser amount of utility as her Q, but the reward for landing a successful Condemn is much more satisfying than a tumble. This is because the feeling of pinning an enemy to a wall is amazing, and in many situations, it’s a fight changer (especially in a duel).

• Theme: Thematically, Condemn still fits Vayne. Crossbow-ing the evil dude to the wall with a bolt is the epitome of evil hunting badassery, and condemn captures this feel perfectly.

Ultimate: Final Hour

• Mechanics: This ‘merely’ gives Vayne an AD steroid, stealth when she tumbles, and makes her passive more effective. Pretty plain in terms of function.

• Gameplay: However, the game-play associated with this ultimate is huge. The ‘boring’ mechanics generate a huge impact on how you play. Vayne’s ultimate is full on offense. You CAN use the stealth to potentially escape an opponent or gank, but it fully complements sheer offense. Everything it gives Vayne is for offense, and Vayne's ultimate quickly lets her catch and demolish most opponents one on one.

• Theme: This is an amazing ability thematically, and it's all because of how the ultimate is communicated. Vayne is done playing around when you press that R button. She puts away the kiddie crossbow, and pulls out the crossbow she uses to PIN PEOPLE TO THE WALL, and just goes to town on you. If the particles and animations conveyed something less intense, this ability might feel boring to use. However, the sheer visual thrill you get pushing that R key means that you really feel the mostly passive power she gains.

So, we see that Vayne is scary and awesome. What stats does she want? Much like all AD carries, she wants the Holy Trinity of AD, Attack Speed, and Crit. These stats synergize with her kit as well (AD benefits Q and E; AS benefit Q, W, and R; Crit benefits Q and R). What else might a Vayne want? Lifesteal, enough survivability to go toe to toe with your targets (lifesteal, defensive stats, etc), cooldown if you really want to tumble every second. For the most part though, Vayne is extremely happy with just the Holy Trinity (and even a trinity force if that’s your thing) and lifesteal.



I do want to go over briefly how to get the most out of your Vayne play with a few tips:

• All of Vayne’s kit is geared towards being aggressive, so keep that in your mind.
• Tumble > Condemn > Auto Attack is a scary amount of burst early game (especially if you have any bonus AD) and will cause a lot of people to flee from you despite the fact that you won’t be able to do that again for 10+ seconds.
• Vayne’s power (in duels) peaks at level 3 when she gets one point in each ability, and again at 6 when she gets her ultimate. Vayne can easily win many engagements at level 6 (especially if you land a tumble > condemn into wall with that ultimate on).
• Vayne’s Silver Bolts is not your major source of damage against anyone. It IS effective and nice against everyone, but her physical damage outclasses it severely. Do not get attack speed as your first main item purchase, get a BF item. Please.
• If you’re equivalently geared to the enemy AD carry, you can probably take them in a duel in most cases, so don’t be afraid to Rambo the enemy carry if you catch them all alone.
• A justification for potential Tri-force. It’s on-hit syncs perfectly with Tumble, it gives mobility via movespeed, it gives a (potential) slow for kiting, and there are zero wasted stats. It’s not the most optimal item, but it gives solid stats and utility.

A New Post Series Approaches!

I will be posting a series of Champion Dissections here on the League blog. They will go over how a champion works, breakdown their abilities and show how they work, feel, and fit the character thematically, and then conclude with a summation of ideal stats and tips on how to play the champion. These will actually be fairly shallow posts in terms of 'how do I play this champion', as these are intended as a look into the design of a champion.


I WILL be posting much more in depth guides on how to play champions effectively, it just won't be the Champion Dissection series! So don't lose hope.


Every Champion Dissection will look roughly like this:

Champion Dissection

Passive:

• Mechanics: I will explain how the passive functions mechanically, so for instance, Amumu's passive lowers MR per auto attack.

• Gameplay: Here I will explain what the ability brings in terms of gameplay. Following the above example, Amumu's passive adds incentive for Amumu to auto attack critical targets, so his abilities and friendly magic damage abilities deal increased damage. This means the player has to make a decision on who needs to die first.

• Theme: Here I will go over how the ability fits and shapes the champions theme. For Amumu, the passive is not doing a huge amount of thematic lifting, but it fits his theme of being a sad cursed mummy passing his curse on to his enemies.

Every other ability will be detailed as well.
Q Ability:



W Ability:

E Ability:



Ultimate:

After I go over each ability, I will have some tips on optimal stats and other tips on how to get the most of the champion.

Welcome!

Greetings everyone, welcome to the aptly titled League of Legends blog, a joint effort between myself and Waterbubblez. We will be writing about anything League based, mostly strategy, theory-crafting, and how to climb the elo ladder. So stay tuned!