Imperfect Game: League of Legends

Hello and welcome Imperfect Game, less of a review and more of a personal journal about my video game hobby. Today am covering League of Legends, a highly popular entry in the MOBA genre (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) and I’ve poured quite a lot of hours into this game from on-again, off-again playing. I even used to be a huge rager on this game and am a bit shameful to admit that I once or twice took things too far back before I had psychosis.

Anyways League is a real-time strategy RPG hybrid where the goal is to destroy the big glowing gem called a nexus in the enemy team’s base with nine other players in teams of five. You control a hero called a champion and move and basic attack with the right mouse clicks and examine entities with the left mouse clicks. Your champion has a passive ability, four active abilities one of which is an ultimate, a whole bunch of other stats, a rune page that has a bunch of small additive effects that are then added on top of your champions stats and abilities, and finally you can buy items that can range from simple stat increases or yet another active ability attached to the item or even a combination of the two. NPCs known as Minions spawn from each team’s base and help provide cover from the enemy turrets when their on your team and provide gold and experience if they are on the enemy team, I’ve heard of some players having mastered manipulating these minions but I personally couldn’t figure it out to save my life

Then you have the main game map; Summoner’s Rift, it’s got three lanes, a river, and a jungle where power-ups called buffs are earned by slaying NPC monsters while the game itself doesn’t enforce any rules on what lane or character you can play the community at large has a common Meta which is basically what the community has agreed on as the best possible strategy to use, the roles this community has generally decided on are Top Laner, Middle Laner, Attack Damage Carry, Support and Jungler. The top and Middle are descriptive of their position in the map, for example, Top means the player goes to the Top lane in the map. ADC and Support take the bottom lane as a duo and Jungle gets their exp and gold from the monsters in the jungle both guarding buffs and occasionally providing extra support to struggling lanes by ganking them usually turning a 1v1 into a 2v1 in their ally’s favor.

Top laners are usually tanks or fighters with high health pools however some ranged and low health characters have been known to be in this role as well. Personally, it’s my least favorite role as I am a casual who hasn’t studied every single pixel or mechanic in the game. It’s like your playing a fighting game like King of Fighters where you have to have both knowledge of your opponent and the mechanics of the dueling aspects of League to perform at your best.

Middle laners tend to be Mages or Assassins, both are glass cannons that damage Ability and Physical damage respectively. Assassins usually have more mobility than mages and rely on picking off weaker characters such as other glass cannons or low-health enemies. Mages usually have little or no escape options however they may have crowd control acting as either a defensive or offensive tool, both Archetypes tend to have high burst damage. This role is my favorite as I get to play Heimerdinger, he uses turrets had zoned out any lane opponent, and asset farming minions, he also has a high damaging projectile and an area of effect stun/slow bomb. His Ultimate gives you empowered versions of his three basic abilities so really he has three ultimates in one, it’s like an EX move from fighting games. One of his core Mythic items “Liandry’s Anguish” makes damage from any of deal damage over time percent Health damage. That means when a turret so much as touches an enemy they may lose a quarter of their health.

Attack Damage Carries or ADCs for short are typically marksman characters that deal physical damage over time via basic attacks rather than in the form of a burst. They require a lot of gold in order to perform at full power and they are once again glass cannons like mages and assassins. They are one of the few roles that get help in their lane from the other bot laner known as the Support. The Support or Sup for short is tasked with helping their carry grow into a formidable threat later in the game and how they do this task varies based on the character the support uses. Some champions heal, others shield, others still may even be focused on providing an opportunity to kill another player more often earning the carry that much-needed gold. The support doesn’t require any gold investment to be useful, in fact, good support doesn’t take any of the minions or kills from the ADC as the support doesn’t need either as their goal is to help get the ADC to their power spike before the enemy’s ADC does and getting every bit of those minions helps the ADC get the gold needed to buy their core damage items. Support was more favorite archetype to play for a while but I quit playing them due to how frustrating it was to rely on a complete stranger to avoid getting killed, sure healing and shields help mitigate this but it can’t stop suicidal ADCs.

Lastly, the role of Jungler is a hard and unique role in League of Legends as you have to be knowledgeable about the areas known as the Jungle where the NPCs known as the monsters, don’t attack anybody on their own unless they attacked, to Jungle it takes a special kind of character to survive let alone provide good ganks or protect buffs. I admit I don’t really know much about the Jungler but from what I understand you need to clear your side of the jungle efficiently while keeping an eye out for both good ganking opportunities and for signs of an enemy jungle seeking your buffs or even your very life. It takes hours of experience to understand how to jungle well and the skill gap between two junglers will be apparent.

There are also a few other game modes aimed at more casual players of the game like All Random All Mid or ARAM for short whereas the name implies players are given a random champion and there is only a single lane for the whole team.

Then you have Team Fight Tactics, it’s advertised as a separate game than League of Legends I think it still requires an installation of League, at least on PC

My experiences of League have been hit or miss, while there are enjoyable aspects I can’t say I would recommend. The learning curve is huge and the game really punishes not knowing the game so there is a barrier to entry right there. Most of the playable characters are behind a ground level as while they're perfectly able to be obtained just by playing the game you have to keep in mind the long time investment the game requires of you, you have to wait in the queue to play the game which is longer then I remembered and the main game itself can last for an hour at least so it’s not hard to imagine spending real money just to play the character you want.

Then you have to learn all the different champions and their kits just to play against them well. Then you have a lot of other vague mechanics like map vision and awareness, learning all the items, and rune page effects. In closing I would only recommend League of Legends if you want a massive time sink with lots of mechanics to learn, it’s a good game but the stress it can bring you is a bit questionable at times. Anyways this has been an Imperfect Game and Thanks for reading.