League of Legends - Sylas? New Season? You bet.

[Cappytaino]

-snip-

for top lane, I'd suggest learning Tryndamere, Malphite, and Nasus.

They're all mechanically simple, but will teach you fundamentals of the game pretty well.

Tryndamere is great for learning split pushing, given that he's brain-dead easy mechanically and is very successful in an uncoordinated environment like soloqueue provided he's played well.

Malphite is an armor-stacking tank that thrives in teamfights and has really strong teleport ganks. Looking to learn the laning phase as a tankier champion and how to rotate/gank in the mid-game is paramount to learning the top lane role.

Nasus is a bit different. Nasus is the archetypal Juggernaut. His Q ability, Siphoning strike, permanently gains 3 damage each time you last hit a minion with it, 6 damage if you last hit a cannon creep, a champion, jungle creep, or epic monster. Playing Nasus will teach you how to position yourself in lane and how to play through a weak early game. Part of Nasus' design is that he is very weak in the early part of the game, so learning to manage that and understanding power spikes and last hitting will teach you a lot about the laning phase as well.

for Tryndamere, Boxerpete is a great resource. He is generally informative while he plays, and he is a challenger Tryndamere player on the NA server.

For top lane in general, SoloRenektonOnly is a great resource for learning concepts like trading, positioning, wave management, etc. A lot of his content is focused on Renekton, but the concepts he covers are very broad and can be applied on any top lane champion.

When it comes to Nasus, my personal favorite player is SirhcEz. He is a great Nasus player, however, don't put much stock into his item builds, as he sometimes does very strange things (Warlords nasus, blade of the ruined king nasus, etc.) But in terms of understanding the champion, he definitely knows what he is doing and was challenger for a couple of seasons iirc.

This is my personal disclaimer, so feel free to ignore it, but if you want to learn Singed at any point, IGNORE ANY CONTENT BY SINGED420. He is not a good resource for learning Singed because his builds are often very strange, his playstyle is borderline trolling, and there is much higher quality/less meme-y content out there for learning Singed.

Minishcap1 is my personal favorite Singed resource. He is a  Challenger singed main and he makes very informative videos about how to play singed, itemize as singed, rune and mastery setups, matchups, etc.

Ankan is another great resource for learning Singed. He is masters at the moment and plays a much more supportive, team-focused style of Singed.

Anyway, spiel over.

[Ad Bot]

[ArmyUnit]

Thanks again for all the advice everyone!

I checked out the mobafire site some but I didn't feel like poring over a bunch of guides since I haven't got much time tonight, so I just jumped in a match.
I figured I wouldn't gain much by doing bot matches over and over again, so here's my first PVP match:



I feel like I'm sandbagging or something lol, everyone was bad
We probably would have smashed them but we had two DCs right at the beginning.
Only time I died was within the last 5 seconds of the game because I got tunnel-visioned on killing Tryndamere :p
My item build was probably terribad but I wasn't sure what to go with. I just picked what I felt like I needed.

Edit: got stomped in second game lol. Kha'zix is tricky.

Also, how come in the collection screen, it lists one set of free rotation champs, but when I actually get into a game it gives me a different set?

[Anybody]

there's a different set of champs untill you reach level 6 and open up the weekly rotation

[kongo]

you should always buy black cleaver on garen unless the other team is for some reason a bunch of squishies that don't build any armor

stacked with his e you can get an (iirc) 47% aoe armor shred which is pretty massive

plus rage (phage's unique passive) is really good on garen since he can be kited so easily

[Donnies Catch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFMldmv5fIk
this just went live on garena iirc its actually a p good way to solve the grind to level 30

[Shift Kitty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFMldmv5fIk
this just went live on garena iirc its actually a p good way to solve the grind to level 30

Manual unlocks outside of the game. Oh boy.

The XP boosts will probably help, but it still doesn't solve one of the biggest leveling up issues. New players are not experiencing the game the way it's intended to be. They still have an underwhelming early game due to missing runes and masteries, and even missing summoner spells.
Sure, it feels like it's actually rewarding instead of "another point, and another point, and another point", but I'm sure most people will probably not notice the feature altogether seeing how it's not even in the game itself.

[Tophat2]

I feel like the XP boosts are actually going to be a bad thing(assuming that there was a direct translation over here to our servers, etc). It speeds up people who want to smurf, I dunno. I remember playing a lot of aram with some friends and then my game knowledge was stuff because that's all I ever played. Now IP boosts, and the amount if IP, even if was only like 15k over here, would be a godsend to newer players, ensure that they have some way to get into draft pick and get to play with other roles. Facebook thing I remember hearing about is dumb. Could social media please be kept out of rewards? Though it is Garena and they do things in very strange ways.

But for a long time the leveling to 30 road has been broken. At the same time everyone wants changes to runes(myself included), I've grown so used to my 13%-ish attack speed for a page. And y'know, AD. Honestly they should just make them free until they can find another way to do the runes. They already did it was T2 runes then reduced the price of T3 but that still doesn't fix the problem. With people starting the game who are going to be at a huge disadvantage, who finally get to finish their T3 rune pages at the cost of not having a couple champions(or a few), it doesn't feel like you've worked towards something, rather worked away from actually getting to experience more champions.

Masteries I feel should be better than 1 point per level. Sure points would stop at 15 or so but then newer players would get to practice with a full mastery page.

[Shift Kitty]

I'd say do away with runes entirely. Refund the IP values of all of them. Increase the base and per level stats of champions by a bit.
Rework the mastery system (again).
Remove a lot of the fluff and add more base stats, and do away with the "need x points to race down to the bottom of a tree, just pick whatever garbage is better than the rest".
Maybe give more points so you don't have to sacrifice too much utility to get the missing base stats entirely back.

I haven't put the effort into what this rework could become from these changes, as it's unlikely to happen anyway, but I'm sure these changes will be much better than having runes.
If they feel this takes away from 'people buying IP boosts', then good. People shouldn't need to spend money to get to the level playing field faster.
Though if they're that concerned, throw in some more chromas for IP.


As for changing the level up system.
Don't limit the points you can spend by level.
Introduce a new queue, called the "new player queue", which is a queue that will start after a certain amount of time has passed, no matter how many players have entered the queue. They can use the store, but cannot use runes or masteries, or any of the standard queues.
If 10 players are matched, it becomes a pvp game. If 1-5 players are matched, it becomes a vs AI game. If 6-9 players are matched, it becomes two separate vs AI games. This queue being separate will divide the new players from the somewhat more experienced players, which may not be many, so this max waiting time will keep them interested while they learn the basic mechanics of the game.
Then at about level 3 or 4, lock the new player queue, and give them a rundown on masteries, unlocking all of the points for it.
If we're still keeping runes, completely wipe T1/T2s, and give them some basic rune pages, which are empty rune pages that give you some typical T3 stats based on which one is selected, but cannot be modified. This gives the players the missing stats they would need, while still giving them the incentive to buy new runes to get the customization they want.
This unlocks blind pick and co-op vs AI, as well as all summoner spells, masteries, and rune slots.
Draft pick, ARAM, and custom games could be unlocked at later levels, as well as champion mastery, crafting, etc. Maybe restrict certain more intricate champions or masteries till they're a higher level. This gives the player nice milestones to work towards.
In order to make each and every level still feel rewarding, give some IP. Give a loot chest and/or a key at certain levels. They're already giving RP at... level 4 I think. So maybe some RP at certain levels too. IP boosts, some cheap skins, chromas, etc.


Both of these systems together would really help the game feel better for everyone involved, as well as make it easier for new players to get into.
Most other mobas don't restrict this much power over the course of a lengthy account grind.

[Cappytaino]

XP boosts are stuff

if riot wants to give ppl xp boosts, start all new players in Bronze 5

otherwise, placing them any higher would cause match quality to decline in other tiers.

Let's be real, match quality in bronze 5 cant be any lower than it already is, so it wouldn't hurt to throw all the stuffty new players there.

[Tophat2]

Purely just to speculate, I don't think increasing the base values of every champion is how to fix it, just with how runes end up working. End up with "why does this champion go top lane but have very little extra AD?".

But further down you mention basic rune pages, yes. Giving everyone a 'standard' set of T3 runes is something I've been thinking about for a while now. Doesn't completely fix the problem, but if someone gets to run two pages for AD and AP, then branch off later, they can. Though I don't see anyone buying other runes just short of mana regen for certain supports or scaling runes. Others are just beyond trash unless I'm missing something. MS quints are fine for a few oddball champions, prob some others around there that are really situational at the bottom line.

[Shift Kitty]

I think what really needs touching up rune balance wise is the per levels.
Most if not all of the 'per level' runes don't surpass the flat ones till level 12.
By level 12, you're barely even seeing the power of the flat runes anymore, so you're definitely not going to be seeing the power of the per levels at 18 any better.
Those runes should be better tradeoffs. Bump them up so you see the same power at level 6-9. You'll be equal at mid game and have more of a noticeable power difference late game. This still gives your opponents an early power advantage, as the per level runes will still be stuff at level 1.

As for the rest, yeah, mana regen runes are seeing significantly less use than when I first played. Probably due to the heavy item and mastery changes involving mana. Mana almost seems free for a lot of champions that use it, only really limiting their early game poke/sustain. Last few times I've played, I almost forgot mana existed for my champions in the late game, despite building very little mana and no regeneration. Probably just from whatever mastery I had alone, as well as a ocean drake.

Another really cool idea for runes is incorporating them into the in-game item system. The runes on your page are a 'pool of runes you have available'. And when you buy/build an item, you can attach some of your runes to them, each item having a different number of sockets. When you upgrade or sell the item, you may reuse the runes in another item. Powerful items will have quint slots. Not sure how good this would feel or how it'd balance well, but it does sound like a fun idea to play around with.

[Tophat2]

Nah. Meditation alone is enough mana regen as long as you aren't facerolling your keys early. Example is a Janna q or e. Actually, if the lane isn't pressuring too hard, supports get so much mana regen from stuff like Redemption. It's like 17 per 5s, crazy numbers considering most other items like ardent are 13 per 5s. Whereas Redemption still gets so many other things like health regen. So I guess mana regen really isn't required unless you're playing like, brand and for some reason have been in lane for 14 minutes with no back and somehow no kills have gone down.

I like socket systems like in path of exile(or diablo 2 for a better example) but I feel that would put too much power into higher tier items. Or not enough in lower, idk how the socket balancing would go but it's a neat concept. Like, at the same time it would be cool, unless you could save certain loadouts on champions for specific items(like IE always having buffed crit or more AD on Caitlyn), then it'd probably work out. I'm just hoping they don't screw up too badly on what goes on with runes in the future.

But the scaling runes, yeah. Literally no point in taking scaling AD since people get more health later on so it's still hard to kill them, adcs don't even take them because of trying to win very early trades, etc. I kind of feel even if there was like an attack speed scaling quint, it probably wouldn't be worth taking due to the nature of bot lane(where I am currently, anyway, something like silver for my norms mmr). Where people tilt into a black hole of salt before 20 minutes because they missed 5 cs due to zoning from the enemy laners. or something dumb. Eh. I'd love to see improvement there.

[Shift Kitty]

I like socket systems like in path of exile(or diablo 2 for a better example) but I feel that would put too much power into higher tier items. Or not enough in lower, idk how the socket balancing would go but it's a neat concept. Like, at the same time it would be cool, unless you could save certain loadouts on champions for specific items(like IE always having buffed crit or more AD on Caitlyn), then it'd probably work out. I'm just hoping they don't screw up too badly on what goes on with runes in the future.

Of course, to prevent an ADC from just socketing everything with more AD, the runes are assigned as you buy/upgrade the item, and can only be chosen from your available runes from your current rune page.
So if you had 9 AD reds, you would only be able to assign up to 9 AD reds to items you buy, total. It'll give people a reason to put more thoughts into their choice in runes, as they're not getting that free power at level 1 anymore. This would also give a chance to buff all runes as a whole, while still keeping  the scaling runes at their current ratio (breaking even at about 12). You'd be more likely to cram a per level AD rune into your IE because you're already leveled by the time you get it.

[Donnies Catch]

soraka with perseverance & health regen quints/seals is a joke. who needs pots

[Tophat2]

I like this. Pretty cool. If they made it so you could easily insert gems in, like a small area below the stats and I could just click a few in and be done, would be nice.

soraka with perseverance & health regen quints/seals is a joke. who needs pots

I dunno if perseverance is all that great on Soraka. I had done the math a while back when I wanted to run it on Vayne because of her short range and gets bullied a lot but it didn't end up working out to be worth it. Though I am running 18/0/12 on most of my adcs for that sweet, sweet reduced cooldown on heal and flash. seriously though, pots are great(that part is probably a joke pls forgive if it went over my head). Maybe you don't need it because of Soraka's q, but the flash cooldown is something I love taking. Just my two cents tho. really tired at the time of writing so I might go do the math in a bit unless I pass out beforehand

Or take fearless if you're in an extremely rough matchup and are a fervor user for those longer fights. Helps with burst but I didn't really notice it helping me too much.

edit; I did not realize the quints were 2.7 health per 5. it boils down to(assuming you take recovery in resolve as well as runic armor), 20ish health per 5. 4 health per second is pretty good, all things considered. that's actually at level 1, which would get buffed up even further if you end up at dangerously low health. huh. today I learned.