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.