Learning to farm with... Episode 4

Learning to farm with...

Midlaners are the usually fantastic at wave-clearing in the late game, and often have the best CS numbers at 20+ minutes, unless the ADCs are doing a really good job. The best style of mid-laner for this high CS number is the waveclear and seige style champions such as Ziggs and, you guessed it, Xerath. These champions have fast and effective waveclear from some serious distance, and in the late game can often clear a wave with one or two spells, while being so far back the enemy has no chance to capitalise on it. However, Xerath has a mildly better laning phase than his closest rival of Ziggs and is far less blue buff dependant thanks to his passive, so I believe he's a little more 'noob-friendly' due to not needing as much mana management skill, so here he is!

Unorthodox Picks Episode 3 - Twisted Fate ADC

Usually played as a bursty midlaner with a fantastic global presence, Twisted Fate can also rarely be played as an Attack Damage and Attack Speed based carry in the bot lane, bringing plenty of utility with Pick a Card and his ultimate. It does lose out on his presence from the midlane, meaning roams are harder, and he is far less bursty. However, with more consistent damage output he can be useful, and he even has a steroid on his E in the form of stacked deck, which stacks with attack speed. However, he does somewhat lack any burst, and his ultimate becomes less useful due to the lack of a Zhonyas, as well as his Q becoming almost entirely useless.

Champion of the week - Rek'Sai

Rek'Sai is not too different to how Lee Sin was in season 4. She excelled in the Warrior heavy meta, and is great with Cinderhulk too. Whatever the jungle throws at her, she has a great kit for ganking and applying pressure early game, and has enough CC for the late game. Whether played as a tank or as a bruiser, she excels from the jungle. She is also great in most team comps, and makes a fantastic diver or peeler, and her two forms mean she is a great duelist and counter-jungler because she essentially has six skills rather than the three that most other junglers have, similar to Lee Sin and Elise. She is a little weaker than some junglers at level six due to her low-impact ultimate, but is still a fantastic pick nearly all the time.

Learning to farm with... Episode 3

Learning to farm with...

AD carries are notorious for needing farm more than nearly any other role in the game. They end up in a lane with another player, meaning they level slower than the other solo lane roles and even the jungler, but they are well protected to get plenty of farm so they can hit their item power spikes. Some AD carries are nearly fully item dependant, as their kits simply provide them huge steroids to boost the power of their items, such as Vayne's Silver Bolts and ultimate. Corki however DOES scale well with levels, and always turns up competitively due to his nearly unrivalled mid-game power-spike, but he tends to fall off in damage late game. This is because he has no conventional steroids, but is does a lot of ability damage through his rockets and Q, phosphorous bomb. However, his ability reliance also makes him amazingly easy to farm on, but not quite as easy as Sivir, who just hits W and last hits EVERY minion in the wave. This makes him great for learning how to clear waves with ability combos, while still building AD to make last hitting a bit easier than on a full AP carry.

Unorthodox Picks Episode 2 - Shaco jungle

So Shaco is a bit of a soloQ kind of champion. He has the perfect kit to play mindgames with his opponents, with an invisbility and dash, an invisible box which fears and a slow on his autoattacks and E. When he ults, he even creates a false clone of himself, which looks identical to opponents, and they must figure out which one is the real one if they hope to survive. However, despite the mindgames, Shaco has very little brute force in his kit, and without using his mindgames correctly he can be fairly weak. He has amazing ganks and great level 2 invades, but is very vunerable to level 1 invades and is countered hard by good vision control, pink wards/upgraded sweepers and good team communication. This is why many people consider Shaco weak in the late game, but a good Shaco will mean the enemy won't HAVE a late game. Someone to watch to truly understand Shaco is the player Shaclone.

Champion of the week - Malphite

Malphite is one scary rock. A staple of the top lane with his strong initiation and fantastic scaling, as well as a relatively safe laner, he finds play at all levels when the comp suits him. Due to his damage scaling with his armor, and having an attack speed slow, he is usually picked into heavy AD comps that consist mostly of auto-attackers. He is more of a solo q champion, as he makes great use of wombo-combo team comps and the poor positioning and co-ordination of players in there, so doesn't see an awful lot of competitive play. However, as the main initiator of a team he is very difficult to rival, and few champions can keep up with him.

Learning to farm with... Episode 2

Learning to farm with...

Throwing a strange pick in here, and moving onto the support role! Usually supports DO NOT CS. That is the role of the AD carry, and the support tries to prevent the enemy ADC farming and keep their own carry safe from counter-harass. They also ward, set up kill opportunities for their carry and generally make life as easy as possible for the ADC. However, melee supports can grab relic shield which provides a nice buff to cs'ing and allows the support to share farm with the carry whenever they have a stack. All supports can use this, but only melee supports get the execute passive. however, one support that does not get this execute bonus, but often takes relic shield as their prime gold generation item is Thresh.

Unorthodox Pick - Heimerdinger Mid

Heimerdinger is an unusual pick. He's never really fit into the meta and has a slightly unusual kit compared to other champions. His ult is only used to buff his other main skills, and his kit in lane revolves around his turrets on his Q which can give him an unresponsive playstyle sometimes. However, most people don't understand how his kit fully works, or how to deal with him in lane, so he can be a really strong pick in solo q. This champion can't be mentioned at all without giving credit to Heisendong, who has made it to Master tier in North America playing almost exclusively Heimerdinger, and is one of the best streamers to watch if you want to get better at him!

Champion of the week - Braum

Braum is the strong man support of the League. With a deep masculine voice that soothes his ADC, telling them things like 'You can always trust Braum' and 'My Shield is here for you'. With his oversized shield and muscles, and these quotes, which ADC can NOT feel safe with him? He is the ultimate bodyguard, taking hits and CC for his team with his shield, boosting their MR and armour, dishing out stuns with his basic attacks and knocking up whole teams with his earth-shattering ultimate. A good Braum player will make several clutch saves, and frustrate the enemy team by forcing them to focus him rather than his squishy allies and makes a great scaling off-tank in the late game, with decent laning prowess too. The ability to go aggressive or defensive and save your ADC nearly as well as a Janna make him a great pick for a Solo Q support and his wombo combo potential can make him fairly strong in competitive play, and he holds just above a 50% winrate in both. Some of the best Braum players include: Krepo, Lustboy, BunnyFuFuu, Aphromoo and Madlife

Learning to farm with... Episode 1

Learning to farm with...

Ok, so the premise behind this is pretty simple. I tell you a champion, you go play them for 5-10 games and focus on farming, and see if you can achieve any better scores by the end than when you started. By doing this you should improve your mechanics of last hitting as well as learning something specific about a role that will be stated here, and hopefully getting a better knowledge of the champion you have to play Today's farming friend is: Nasus.

Riven - The solo Q menace hits the LCS

Riven is known as a  terror in Solo Q, she snowballs extremely hard and does an insane amount of damage, which makes her near impossible to duel and one of the better top-lane carries in the game. Her difficult mechanics and high skill cap, along with her hard carry potential make her a prime candidate for some solo Q one-trick-ponies such as BoxBox, and is known for attracting some of the more toxic players in the community. Despite this, she is very rare in competitive play, as a co-ordinated team can really shut her down, keep her down and CC her in teamfights making her fairly useless in comparison to how strong she is in Solo Q. Despite all this, Huni played her into Roccat's Steve in the recent Fanatic vs Roccat game in the EU LCS.

Unorthodox Picks - Yasuo Top

Yasuo is usually seen as a strong assassin in the midlane. He has strong early laning against AP mages that are cooldown reliant, and squishy, as he can blow them up and outplay them with his windwall and dashes with E. Late game, he has great engage followup via his ultimate, and insane damage thanks to his passive giving him double crit chance, and the auto-attack boost on his Q. However, he is very squishy and can often need synergy with his team to get his ultimate off well without being blown up, and he can struggle in lane against bruisers that simply out-damage him while building tank. He has seen some competetive play recently in most regions, usually as a specific counterpick to Gnar, to outsplit push The Missing Link.

Champion of the week - Lucian

Lucian was considered trash tier on his release by most people, for having a 'useless' ult, but after some experimentation Lucian soon came to flourish in nearly every region as THE top tier ADC. However, after numerous nerfs, he has been taken down from his god tier status in competitive play and is now a fairly balanced ADC, that shines when someone has put a lot of practise into him or likes more mobile ADC's. He is particularly loved by players that have fast reaction times and/or slightly poorer positioning due to his dash, but is easy to punish due to his short range if the player does not predict incoming threats, and can't carry too hard due to his lack of strong steroids while waiting on his cooldowns. Despite having the lowest win rate of all ADC's (hovering around 46%), he is still a go-to for many high level ADC's in solo Q. Some great Lucian players include; Forgiven, Rekkles, Sneaky, Imaqtipie and Space.

Three Smites?

In the recent WinterFox vs Renegades game in the North American Challenger Series, WinterFox ran a composition consisting of three smites. Although used to seeing smite top laners running the ever popular cinderhulk, especially on the Hecarim that was played, and being aware of the 'new meta' AP Ezreal mid running runeglaive, three smites was still unexpected. Smite is usually reserved as a jungler's summoner spell, replacing an offensive or defensive summoner spell such as ignite or barrier (as most junglers run flash/smite), but recently we've seen it appearing in lanes.