Counter-Pick: Rules of Thumb --5555--

Now this is only a theory that I am still in the process of developing, and I would appreciate it if I can get some constructive criticism and comments.

Secondly, there is a difference between counter-picking against a team comp, and counter-picking your enemy laner/jungler. Yes, I know Janna beat AoE team comps, but I will being talking about LANE/JUNGLE counterpicking, and not team-fight counter picking today.

With 93 different champions currently available and more coming every month, it would take a considerable amount of work to compile a chart with every match-up, and favor-ability statistics of each one, (though some may try to examine the most common match-ups, which is easier because of the cookie cutter meta that is present in most games nowadays.) especially considering that each match-up is completely different at different skill levels in the game.

However, excluding obvious counters to the fundamental mechanics of each champion (ones that should be no-brainers to counter-pick against) and match-ups that you already have experience with(which could be misleading if you have played only against mediocre players and didn't recognize), how are you supposed to counter-pick?

By recognizing the enemy role's base laning/jungling characteristics of course!

What exactly do I mean by this? Well every champion has characteristics and mechanics in each of their kits and it would be rather difficult to judge them all by each mechanic: damage, utility, CC, mobility, range, health regen. I've narrowed it down a little further into a simple rock, paper, scissors for both laners and junglers.

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Laners:

Kill < Sustain < Poke < Kill

Champions that are pure poke tend to be able to stop the killers at a range from being at an acceptable health to initiate upon, and in turn killing them.

Champions that are pure sustain tend to be able to to stop pokers from doing their job(typically early lane domination) so that they can do their job(typically farm passively and become a later lane winner / monster late game.)

Champions that are pure kill tend to not care about how much the sustainer can keep that health bar from 75% to 100% every couple of seconds, because they usually like to take the whole health bar away from them in those seconds if a fight is initiated.

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Junglers:

Lane Gankers < Jungle Controllers < Farmers < Gankers

Shyvanna- I mean, excuse me, Pure farmers, tend to be able to either resist enemy control efforts or duel and come on top, but more often than not are flexible enough to recover and become more useful to their team than the jungler(a pure controller) who's primary job was to make the enemy jungler's life shitty.

Pure controllers tend to make the pure ganker's life so shitty that they can't gank. Ever. I would know.

Pure gankers make the enemy pure farmer's team's lives so shitty that the farmer gets reported for not ganking and is banned at the end of the game.

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Now the biggest problem is that each champion possesses EACH of these characteristics to some degree, and one last important thing to consider is that some champions possess a CUMULATIVE advantage in these characteristics across the board. This usually (obviously the infallible riot has created League of Legends and therefore it does not contain ANY overpowered champions!) means that these champions are MUCH stronger EARLY GAME than the other champions, while the other champions provide many more benefits to the team later in the game. Early game oriented champions should press their laning advantages and stop the late game oriented from farming. Likewise, the Late gamer should do everything they can(excluding dying) to farm to strengthen their late game domination.

This site will be dedicated to gauging the early game characteristics of these champions, and will be a much more informative alternative to simply looking at a tier list when picking or counterpicking. :))

Why Elo Hell Exists, and Why You Belong There

I see alot of people complaining about Elo Hell these days. It's prominently on the LoL Forums, but people talk about it everywhere else, reddit, 4chan, and it's extremely annoying because it's also on my friends list.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

It is common human nature for people to actually believe they are stuck in Elo hell, and I believe it is this particular trait in humans that gives me little hope for our species. I thought we had alot of potential too, collectively having the most intellect out of species known to humans and all, y'know?

I'm talking about everyone's superiority complex. Everyone has delusions of grandeur. I kind of have it by even writing this post.

This vile, disgusting trait of our species convinces the VAST MAJORITY of people that they are "above average." But this is impossible. Where will all of our below average people come from? Mhmmmm. You guessed it genius. It has to come from a large chunk of the population that believes they are "above average." According to the scientific American mind, "the poorest performers are also the poorest at self-evaluation. For example, the bottom 25 percent of students tend to think they're doing better that 65 percent of the class. A significant portion of low elo players believe they should be high elo. And this is the premise of Elo hell.

"I dont care what you say. Solo queue is only about luck. If you get the team wih 4 feeders you will lose. If they get the team with 4 feeders you will win. Its a dice roll"

Yes. You are right. And im not being sarcastic, you are ALMOST completely right. INDIVIDUALLY, each game by itself is probably about 75% luck. You are legitimately correct in the fact that you can be lucky in getting a team of 4 nerds against an infant leading 2 dogs on laptops that duo queued, someone in a coma, and a vegetable. Literally a head of lettuce or stalk of asparagus that fell on someone who had LoL up and rolled around because of an earthquake and queued them up for a game. You are also correct that sometimes you will have the equivalent of a freak team of 4 infant Brazilian puppies in comas vs. CLG. However, OVER MANY GAMES, EACH LUCK ROLL WILL HAVE REACHED AN EQUILIBRIUM. And in this equilibrium the common factor is YOU. And if you can't push that 50% Equilibrium to be over 50%, then you have reached your true Elo. You belong in Elo Hell.

"But I get a troll/leaver/feeder/afker/whathaveyou every single game! literally every game!"

Statistically, if you play enough games there should be the same amount of feeders and retards on the enemy team as on your team. It all comes down to who can take advantage of those retards as to who goes up in Elo. You don't really truly believe riot places 100%, or even more than 50% of the feeders and trolls on your team only do you? There is GOING to be feeders and trolls on the other team too. You can't win even ONE GAME out of a 100 games with feeders and trolls? While all the games where the other team had a feeder/troll you lost one or two of em? What about the games where BOTH teams have feeders and trolls(most common)? You couldn't take advantage of their retards as well as they took advantage of yours? You deserve your Elo.

"BUT I JUST WENT 489 Kills/2 Deaths/0 ASSISTS 2 GAMES IN A ROW, THE TEAM SCORE WAS EVEN, AND STILL LOST BOTH GAMES CAUSE MY TEAM SUX"

I know you think you got those kills by being the best player in the game, or at least "above average." But lets set aside these delusions of grandeur for just a second. You got ultra-FED by the other teams retarded players. If you lost, that means that the retards at low elo were more effective at using their fed-ness than you. That means that low elo retards are better at this game than you. You got fed by retards, and then lost to them. You deserve your elo.

The average elo of both teams is the same or about the same. When you are in "Elo Hell" you assume your Elo is too low for you skill level, and therefore you will get bad team members. HAVING A BAD TEAM IS IMPLIED, IF YOU ARE IN AN ELO TOO LOW FOR YOUR SKILL LEVEL. DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR TEAMMATES. THEY ARE GUARANTEED TO BE BAD. And guess what? SO WILL THE OTHER TEAM. If you are BETTER than everyone in the game, why are you not winning more than 50% of your games and raising your Elo? It is impossible for 100% of leavers, griefers and feeders to get ONLY placed on your team. Unless you are doing something to create leavers, griefers, and feeders on your team, like QQ at your team in champion select.

People who try to say elo hell exists, either have played under 150 ranked games, or are trying to explain and rationalize as to why they think they are the unluckiest people in the whole world, and that being in a certain elo bracket somehow FORCES you, and everyone else in your elo by extention to be unlucky.

and there ARE unlucky people out there. however,

if you are a truly good player, one who will eventually climb out of our bracket, SOMEONE WHO MAKES MISTAKES AND REALIZES THEM AND IS WILLING TO LEARN what will happen is you'll start to notice 4 people on your team making extremely stupid mistakes and NOT QQ/Rage/whine, because you will also notice 5 people on the OTHER team making equally stupid mistakes - ones that you, as a superior player can take advantage of and turn the game from 5 stupid people vs 5 stupid people to 5 stupid people vs 4 stupid people and a good player that will make good calls WITHOUT RAGING.

^that WONT, I repeat, WILL NOT, WILL NOT happen EVERY GAME. It wont be 4 stupids and YOU, a smart vs 5 stupids, EVERY game

HOWEVER, IT WILL HAPPEN MORE THAN 50% OF THE TIME. EVEN PEOPLE AT THE TOP OF THE LADDER DO NOT HAVE A 100% WIN RATIO

REFER TO THE GRAPH

according to the graph, which is a dice roll on each team, EVERY single game you queue up for will have one of these possibilities for a team makeup on each team

now both teams look pretty similar in probability.

notice the difference though? one of them doesn't have a probability for 5 stupids. and if its not your team, then you are a stupid, and you belong in elo hell.

UNLESS YOU ARE

A: SOMEONE RIOT HATES AND SOMEHOW SNEAKS MENTAL PATIENTS ONTO YOUR TEAM AND SUBSEQUENTLY PITS YOU AGAINST TEAM SOLO MID

B: THE UNLUCKIEST PERSON ON YOUR BRACKET(and if elo hell exists like you all say, ALL of you are unlucky because you are

ALL IN ELO HELL[lol])(yeah unlucky that you are a bunch of delusional retards yelling at eachother)

or

C: LITERALLY STUPID

AS FUCK (according to the graph)

YOU WILL WIN MORE THAN 50% OF YOUR GAMES AND THEREBY RAISE YOUR OWN ELO, THUS ESCAPING ELO HELL

tldr; ELO HELL EXISTS

AND YOU BELONG THERE

Before Teamfights Appear

I often see newer players confused about WHAT they need to do and WHEN (and consequently WHERE they need to be.) Like others have said the general laning setup you will see is 1 top 1 mid and 2 bottom with 1 jungler. In champion select try and make sure you have a champion who can jungle effectively and has smite. Make sure you have two champions that can hold solo lanes (one capable of holding in a 1vs2.) Sometimes this doesn't happen but you ought to do your best to pick a good combination of heroes.

During the game.. some people will make mistakes and die. Let's for a moment assume all your lanes are holding ok, and not feeding needlessly. In this case everyone on your team needs to be getting as much GOLD and EXPERIENCE as possible for the first ~20 minutes of the game. Your main objectives are: Protect the tower in your lane, farm minions, don't die to ganks or bad engagements (don't make poor decisions that result in your death), control dragon (your jungler should ward this, and your team should take dragon if you manage to kill a few enemies

in bottom or middle lane.)

Things you shouldn't do in the first 20 minutes of the game:

Leave your lane to go gank another lane if it is RANDOMLY. ALWAYS favor staying in your lane and getting the GOLD and EXP that is there for you. Allow your jungler to control the FLOW of the game in terms of WHEN your team goes for kills or pushes towers.

However, it is extremely important to stress the word RANDOMLY. When I say randomly, I mean when you have no opportunity. And opportunity can arise from almost ANYTHING. It can even arise from your own dominance in lane. If you are dominating your lane, but your opponent is playing incredibly passively, and just farming while sitting ontop of his turret, you now a lot of free time to go do whatever you want, because it will take some time before you can last hit again without overextending and being a victim of a jungle gank. One of the things you can do is leave to go gank, especially if you are mid, and happen to be an excellent ganker. If any other player is not near their tower, whether it be a laner, or a jungler that you have spotted and you can reach them before they can reach a tower without you endangering yourself, you have found yourself and opportunity, and can possibly capitalize on this opportunity.

Pay attention to the enemies in lane. If, for example, the enemy champion who is soloing top lane leaves to gank mid, and everyone on your team STAYS in their own lane farming and nobody dies to a gank while the enemy top is roaming then YOUR TEAM HAS GAINED AN ADVANTAGE in GOLD and EXP. Your top solo will have more experience and gold than their top solo who made the poor choice to gank mid at the wrong time and it didn't pay off for him.

TL;DR Don't leave your lane to gank at random times. Pay attention to the map and focus on GOLD, EXP, and NOT DYING. If you can do this better than the other team you will generally gain an advantage in the first 20 minutes of the game.

Note: in high ELO games people always stay in lane and farm leaving only if their lane is pushed to the other turret, or they have teleport, or a teammate is covering the lane, or their opponent laner is MIA. Timing is everything. Make sure you don't let your opponents get a gold or experience advantage on you for no reason. Often times staying in lane is the right choice.

Characteristics of Exchange

In the laning phase, this game is all about exchanges. No champion should be able to kill another in a single combo. You are required to bring each other's health into kill range from exchanges before they are able to be killed. Some champions can damage other champions without the other champ even touching them. Some champions do less damage than others but end up winning the exchange because of heals/less mana per ability. Some champions do decent damage, but have a terrible range, but have enough CC to ensure they can exchange their damage without taking any themselves.

Which Champions win exchanges, how you should play against a certain champion, and which champion has an easier time dominating the lane is determined by what the each bring to the table in terms of their characteristics of exchange:

Harass, Sustain, CC, Damage/Burst, Utility

Harass: Takes into account primarily the range of the attack, but is also dependant on CC, both champions sustain/survivability, and damage.

In high elo, harass becomes less important in actually killing the enemy champion, and more effective/important in denying the enemy champion from last hitting.

Usually the more range you have, the better your harrass is, so in general, melees without awesome spammable gap closers and CC dont have as good

harras as ranged. melees tend to have more burst and sustain though.

Sometimes great harrassment comes in the form of not range, but in sustainment through harrassment: case in point: vlad

His Q doesnt have incredible range, nor the best damage, but when vlad and annie trade blows, Q for Q, vlad wins in his harrass, because he didnt use mana,

and he comes out with more health, because his harrassment GIVES him sustain, i.e. health.

However, putting CC into the mix, if the annie had her stun up, She could force 2 abilities on to vlad, or even 3 if vlad was in killing range, and vlad would have only brought one.

Sustain: How well a Champion can shrug off harrassment. Whether its health regeneration, mana regeneration, a shield, or straight being tank as fuck, it is essentially this champions ability to stay in lane.

CC: OH NO YOU DON'T. This is how well a champion can either force an exchange to take place and/or stop the opponents exchange from taking place.

Damage/Burst: While the other characteristics of exchange are the quality of exchange, this characteristic is the quantity. In different lanes this characteristic plays out differently, in mid lane it is typically the champion's Full combo+ignite, which should kill most champions under 40-60% depending on the champion, while in the top lane, it is all their abilities in addition to auto-attack strength when affected with abilities as well.

Utility: Off the top of my head, the majority of utility ends up being an escape/anti-escape ability. It can be free wards, traps, stealth, champion displacing abilities, blood pool, anti-CC shield, a flash, a gap closer, whatever it is, utility is a similar characteristic to CC, which can be considered a utility in itself. They both generally function to either force a favorable exchange to take place for you, or to stop an unfavorable exchange for you from taking place.

It is important to note that while these characteristics are based of their champions, you can also add characteristics to your champion artificially. You can add harrass by increasing your other characteristics artifically, you can add sustain by buying regen runes, and most efficiently by buying health potions, you can add CC by taking exhaust, or even buying an early phage or mallet/rylais, you can add damage/burst through runes/masteries/items, and you can add utility by taking the ever-so-important FLASH.

I plan on a section of this site being devoted to rating each champion by these characteristics, and essentially rating their laning power. If you have ever fed during the laning phase without even having been ganked by the jungler, this will be the section you need to view. If you EVER get fed during the laning phase without the help of your jungler, this will be the section of the site your opponents should have viewed.

By knowing all of these characteristics, and which champion's kits possess each level of those characteristics not only can you: properly assess your own lane and not feed, or know when to play aggressively(as long as you know what/where the jungler is), but you can also PICK champions that counter other champions in lane, not just through knowing the matchup from experience with another experienced laner, but simply from knowing each the exchange characteristics of each champions kit.

AD/Support Combos

Sometimes a lot of summoners just assume you can pick any support you want just as long as it's a support. They all do the same thing, right? They just support, right?

No. You're losing a big advantage if you mismatch your lane. Not saying you're going to lose your lane or the game because of it, but some supports just naturally work better

with different AD carries.

For Ashe: A natural lane choice would be Soraka. Why: Ashe has enough cc of her own to be fine without having any additional cc from a support. Her harass will essentially come

from using Volley and frost arrows. Upon reaching level 6 you're going to be firing her ultimate either in your lane or at other lanes. All these things require a lot of mana,

so picking Soraka here will help tremendously.

For Caitlyn: Cait is a great poker. She has situational cc, but in her case it isn't really required to do damage since she has such long range, so I'd go with Soraka in this

lane. Soraka can heal if she happens to get hit, and can also restore mana for her Piltover Peacemaker and ultimate.

For Corki: Natural choices would be Sona or Taric. Corki lacks cc but has very good damage, so having extra cc in lane like stuns/slows really make him powerful. You might also

consider Janna in some instances.

For Ezreal: He doesn't have much cc at all, but he's an okay chaser. That being said I think Soraka would be a good pick so he can keep his mana and health up. You could also

make a case for Sona.

For Kog'maw: Good at poking and he has a slow, so I'd pick Soraka. She just benefits poke champions the best.

For Miss Fortune: MF is a strong anti-healer with her impure shots and she works really well with Taric and also notable is Sona. If you can trap people under her E and R

it's going to inflict some real pain you can't easily heal from.

For Sivir: I'd just go with Soraka. Sivir is a great farmer/poker as long as she has mana, so Soraka would be a good choice here.

For Tristana: Tristana is really good burster for an AD carry, so she's going to work great with Sona and notable mention Taric. Sona would be the best choice. Tristana

also has an anti-heal in her kit and a displacement ultimate so she's great at securing kills.

For Vayne: Sona,Taric, and actually even Soraka all work reasonably well here. Vayne usually isn't going to have problems catching up to people so cc isn't an absolute

must in this lane, but having an aggressor like Taric and Sona also work great. Soraka works pretty well if you like using Tumble and Condemn a whole lot.

Note on Janna: You'll notice I don't mention Janna a lot. It's not because she is bad, but Janna is actually a pretty situational pick. If the other team has a

strong ganker like WW or Nocturne, or if bottom lane is surprisingly strong (like Tristana/Sona) Janna is going to be a good pick because she can blow people

away and ruin that surprise advantage. Janna does have some cc though, but she does lack lane sustain. That's her main issue.

Jungling

I am planning this out to be a guide in which you can look up champions, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to counter them in lane, midgame, and teamfights. However I'm going to start out talking about jungling, as many people know how to solo top, solo mid. or carry/support bot, but it is often a struggle to find someone who actually WANTS to jungle. Personally, I believe it is a result of the fact that jungling is the hardest "role/lane" to master.

How can that be? It sounds easy right? Just beat on lifeless mobs and come out of the fog of war when the other team overextends and win 2v1 situations or 2v3 situations right?

Nope. Essentially the jungler is the leader of the team during early game and mid game.

At a higher level of play, people should hardly be dieing in lane unlike alot of low ELO players tend to do alot. At low ELO people dont understand their matchups, and they'll waste all their mana and health and summoners trying to chase eachother down into the turret, while barely last hitting.

However when both teams actually know how to play, there is almost NO early game action. The side of the lane that has the upperhand in lane will establish their dominance without overextending by thinking they should be killing instead of last hitting and preventing the other from last hitting, while the person at a disadvantage from the laning perspective will just last hit under their tower.

When this happens, just about the only thing that incites early game action is the jungler. The jungler should know not only their own jungler vs. jungler matchup, but every single other lanes matchup, they should know their own common paths, backup/recovery paths, the should know the junglers most common paths, and their recoveries, figure out what lanes the other jungler will gank so they can counter gank/and/or counter jungle, figure out what lanes are the most efficient to gank, figure out where the other jungler will be low, make sure you are not low at a point easily taken advantage of, and if you are low at a point that is unavoidable, to make sure your team is there to protect you, all while controlling dragon and playing whack-a-mole with your small camps.

Not only this, certain junglers are built to give your team an early game advantage, and certain junglers are built to snowball out of control and carry. Saying this, because of his interaction with the other lanes early/mid game and not just the synergy late game, the jungler has the most pressure and importance in his pick and choice of champion.

In short, the jungler has to know EVERYTHING and EVERY ASPECT of early game, so(as the most mobile AND hidden champion on the map) he can capitalize on advantages and coordinate/synergize/protect against your own disadvantages.

ANY time you are countered in some way on the other team, you require the coordination of your own team comp to beat that counter. Every counter in this game comes at a certain price.

Countering your jungle costs the other jungler in experience from all his travelling back and forth...However, if you are not able to capitalize on this and gank him while

he is in your jungle, then he wins the exchange...it's a high risk, high reward situation. Capitalize on the risk, or he earns the reward.