This is part two of a two-part series introducing readers to watching competitive League of Legends. The first part covers the basics and can be found here. The second delves into strategies and how to follow the game as it goes on.
There are going to be some Terms, here's what they mean. Good luck!
(More can be found at the League of Legends Wikia!)
Assassin: A champion type, skilled at doing burst damage and usually able to move around quickly. Most often played in the mid lane.
Baron: A powerful neutral objective found in the top river after 20 minutes. Killing it grants a strong buff to your entire team, but going for it is a risky play if enemies are around.
Carry: A champion relied upon for a large amount of damage. These champions usually take a while to get to that point.
CC: Stands for "crowd control," and refers to abilities that stun, slow or otherwise limit the movement and actions of enemy champions. A good team composition requires plenty of CC.
CS: Stands for "creep score," which refers to the number of minions a champion has killed. Also known as "farm."
Dragon: A neutral objective found in the bottom river. It respawns six minutes after being killed and grants the team that kills it a different buff based on how many times the team has killed Dragon in that game. The first and fifth buffs (out of five) are the most important.
Fighter: A champion type combining the survivability of a tank with the damage output of a carry.
Flash: The most common summoner spell in the game, it allows a champion to blink a short distance but has a five-minute cooldown.
Gank: When a champion (or group of champions) picks off a vulnerable champion and kills them. This is usually done by the jungler.
Mana: The resource used by most champions to cast abilities. It's the blue bar below a champion's health bar.
Peel: Using crowd control defensively to keep enemies away from you or an ally.
Rift Herald: A new neutral monster in Season 6, it can be found in the top river before Baron spawns. It gives a smaller version of the Baron buff to a single champion.
Smite: A summoner spell usually brought by junglers, it helps deal damage to secure neutral objectives.
Tank: A champion with high defensive statistics and abilities.
Ultimate ability: A champion's best ability, usually on a longer cooldown. Most champions get their ultimate at level 6.
Wards: Items that provide vision around the map.
What strategies are involved?
There are over 120 playable characters and nearly 200 items, each with unique skills and abilities. Riot tweaks the game with patches every few weeks to try and make sure it is balanced, so most champions are at least somewhat viable, depending on the situation. Coming up with successful team compositions and buying the right items for in-game situations are vital to a team's success.
Before each game is the pick-and-ban phase, where each team chooses three champions to ban from the game, then alternate in snake draft format picking champions. Teams usually have a team composition in mind coming into the match, but have to be fluid depending on the opposition's picks and bans.
In part one of this series, we talked about how games progress from the laning phase to the team fight phase. Most team compositions are built with the team fight phase in mind, as that is when teams will start grouping together.
Here are examples of some currently popular team compositions:
1-3-1: A team focused on splitting up in the team fight phase. Ideally, the team will put the top laner and mid laner alone in the side lanes with the teleport summoner spell, allowing them to return to the rest of the team if needed, while the jungler and support stick with the marksman, usually in the mid lane. This allows the team to put pressure all around the map while still keeping its marksman safe. (Popular champions: Lissandra, Gragas, Sivir)
Pick composition: A team composition focused on picking off enemy champions to set up outnumbered team fights. This composition is most effective when it can pick off one enemy champion in a single burst, followed up with either 1) another pick 2) a 5 vs. 4 team fight or 3) an objective like a tower, Dragon or Baron. (Popular champions: Elise, Morgana, Jhin)
Poke composition: A team composition focused on damaging enemies from distance to set up an advantageous team fight. This team also needs a form of hard engage for when it does want to fight. (Popular champions: Varus, Nidalee, Corki)
Protect the marksman: A team with usually with only one primary damage dealer (the marksman) and a whole lot of shields and protection to keep the enemy team away from that damage dealer. (Popular champions: Lulu, Janna, Kog'Maw)
Team fight composition: Forget everything else, this team just wants to destroy the other in 5 vs. 5 situations through massive engagement, lockdown tools and area-of-effect damage. (Popular champions: Sejuani, Malphite, Alistar)
How to (easily) follow along
Sure, there's lots of jargon and the explosive animations can be distracting in big team fights, but most of League of Legends is just strategy and positioning, like other sports.
There's a learning curve, like with anything new. But with health bars and the fairly simple interface, it's not hard to pick up.
Here's what the screen looks like:
Let's break that down piece by piece.
The easiest way to tell which team is winning at any given time is the gold score. It's tempting to go by kill score, and while the higher kill score often correlates with who is winning, gold score is a more accurate indicator because it brings in towers, farming and other factors.
In the above example, Team Dignitas is winning by 3.7k gold at 20 minutes -- a pretty good margin, but nothing out of reach.
Okay, bear with me here. If you need some juice, get some juice, take a break and breathe a little because I promise it's less complicated than it looks.
The most important thing to keep track of, especially in often chaotic team fights, is the health bars of players. Above, it's the red bar for Aphromoo, the blue bar for Kirei and the green bar under each characters' image on the edges of the screen.
Other things to know: wards provide vision of the map (without them, you can only see what you and allies, including minions and towers, can see). Players start each game at level one, unlocking and enhancing abilities up to level 18.
Most champions unlock their ultimate ability at level six. Cooldowns of ultimate abilities and summoner spells (all the way on the edges of the screen) are good to keep track of before fights start -- the team with more big abilities available often has the advantage.
This is where you can find scores and item builds for the individual players in the game. Those icons next to the numbers are items that players buy during the course of each game (they have to recall back to their base to do so). The three numbers with slashes between them are the players' "KDA," which measures their kills/deaths/assists for the current game.
The number directly next to the players' champion icon is the player's "creep score," the number of minions they have killed in the game. That is a good way of measuring how much gold the player has earned in the game, and directly comparing a player's creep score to the player he or she is laning against can give you a good idea of who is winning laning phase. It varies by position, but for the three classic carry positions (top/mid/marksman), you want at least 8 per minute. Ten is excellent. Echo Fox's Froggen just recently set the all-time record with 764 in 67 minutes (11.4 per minute).
So how is the season structured?
There are two seasons in each region each year: the Spring Split (which starts in January) and the Summer Split (around late May). There are playoffs at the end of each split and the results of both splits determine who makes Worlds at the end of the year.
In North America, Europe and Korea, there are 10 teams in the top league. In NA and EU, the top six teams make the playoffs (in Korea, it's the top four). There is promotion and relegation across most leagues: meaning that at the end of the season, the bottom teams from the top-tier league and the top teams from the second-tier league play in a tournament to determine who plays in the top-tier league next season.
Previously, in North America and Europe, regular season games were played in a best-of-1 format, two per week for each team. But starting with the Summer Split, NA is moving to a best-of-3 regular season format (like Korea and China) while Europe is moving to best-of-2.
North America, Europe, China and Korea each use a double round-robin schedule, so every team plays every other team twice over the course of a nine-week split.
Okay, I'm sold, how do I watch this?
All games are streamed online on LolEsports.com, as well as on YouTube, Twitch and Azubu.