Pick Your Playstyle

There are a multitude of ways to play League of Legends, and everybody plays in their own unique way. There’s also a massive number of ways to combine all of these different playstyles.

Personally, I like a semi-passive playstyle. I like to wait until someone on the enemy team, or the entire enemy team, makes a mistake. Then I like to capitalise on that mistake via a well-timed Blitzcrank grab or Alistar head-butt or some other similarly debilitating ability. Even just a slight misplacement during a stalemate, or staying slightly too long in a lane, wandering slightly too far away from team mates or just standing in the wrong position (or under a ward) while waiting to ambush is enough of a mistake. Champions like Cho’Gath, Maokai, Alistar and Blitzcrank are exceptional at capitalising on these tiny mistakes, as proved by some of the Team Dignitas writers and editors in this clip.

 

Even into late game, I like to keep this mentality going. If we’re winning, then why fight unless we have to? Sure we could force it, but why risk a potentially fatal team fight when we can sit back and engage when we like, when we have the advantage. If we’re winning we have the map control, and we have the choice of when to initiate. If we’re stuck trying to push a tower while the entire enemy team is defending it, why try to engage? Wait for a mistake then punish them for it.Alternatively just move on to a different objective. Unless my team actually has enough of an advantage to make the fight a certain thing, then we just don’t need to engage at all. We can keep pressing our advantage until someone makes a mistake, and someone will always make a mistake. We just need to be better than the enemy team and not make that fatal mistake first.

If we’re losing, then still, this play style can work. We can sit under towers, or make sure that we’re always in a position that it would be a mistake in itself to engage in a team fight with us. If we’re under a tower, and we have the cc, we can lock down and melt whoever engaged first, then take the team down one by one as they try to make up for the mistake, or hunt them down like a Warwick with Blood Scent on an AD carry. If the enemy team decide to try and take Baron Nashor right under our noses, we can engage on it. They’re weakened and still grappling with Baron when we come along and engage, essentially making it a 5v6 in our favour.

Another playstyle I employ is switching objectives. Some players like to tunnel vision and focus a single objective in a sort of battle of attrition. I prefer to be more mobile. If we’re at a stalemate on one tower, we can switch somewhere else while the enemy team try to figure out what we’re doing. We can go to baron, secure buffs, take dragon or destroy towers all while the enemy team try and keep up with us. If we’ve got enough of an advantage we can turn around and do some real damage while the enemy team is disorganised while trying to chase us. As a result, I quite like a team made up of champions with good mobility, with dashes, speed boosts and teleports on most champions.

Going somewhere?

Careful turret tactics are a big part of both of these playstyles. Being aware of when you can destroy a turret at will, when you can leech tons of gold from a lane and knowing when you can fall back and really hold a turret are all situations you need to keep abreast of. Personally I like to save low health towers for later in case we lose a dragon, then we can keep farming the lane or just take the tower down to try and make up for the lost dragon in the short-term.

Some teams like to take out towers as quickly as possible and just dominate the game in that way, just as we saw in the i46 finals between ATK and VYE, where VYE had taken the first tower by 3 minutes and subsequently won the game by the 18th minute.

Another area that you will see different playstyles come to light is in the jungle. Some players prefer to stay in their own jungle, farm up and react to the enemy rather than make their own plays. They’ll just always be around somewhere, ready to help a lane being ganked, or help pick up a kill or even just give some vision of an enemy.

I see you.

Some junglers prefer to refrain from ganking and tend to focus on hindering the enemy jungler through counter-jungling and warding. Taking buffs or jungle camps can really mess up the progress of certain junglers, and sometimes just throwing a bit of extra damage on them while in the jungle can head-off a gank before it’s even planned.

Some others prefer to gank constantly, keeping pressure up in all lanes and making the enemy jungler try to keep up. Doing this can secure kills for your team and keep the enemy cs down, but you could start to lag behind if not enough of the ganks lead to kills and you don’t spend enough time farming in their jungle. It can also make them vulnerable to counter jungling.

All of these personal strategies are reflected in the champion picks of the player jungling, and you can usually get a fair indication of how they will play based on their pick. If they pick Alistar, they’re going to gank all day long. If they pick Cho’Gath, he’s likely to stick to his own jungle and farm constantly. If they pick Lee Sin, chances are they’re going to do a fair bit of counter jungling. If they pick someone like Maokai, you just don’t know, because he can do everything, because he’s Maokai. Maokai is awesome.

She is not having a good day. Maokai is, power ranger style.

Playstyles in bottom lane can also vary wildly. There are those kill lanes like Vayne/Leona, or more passive/aggressive lanes like Ezreal/Soraka, or even the happily defensive style of an Ashe/Soraka lane. There are even opportunity taking lanes like Ashe/Alistar, who can get engaged on and really turn it around. There are opportunity maker lanes like any AD Carry/Blitzcrank who can happily wait, and then all hell breaks loose when dat Blitz grab flies out of nowhere and catches a player off-guard.

These playstyles can vary even further into pushing or freezing lanes, lanes that set up nicely for ganks, lanes that can earn a triple kill when being ganked, or lanes that can push hard, then disappear only to reappear to gank middle lane or to steal a buff from the jungle. There are lanes where nothing happens whatsoever and both parties just sit back and farm up, not bothering to engage and risk giving away an advantage.

Both top and middle lane playstyles can vary, though perhaps neither as wildly nor frequently as bottom lane or jungle. The tactics employed in these lanes often depend on the way the jungler plays.

At the end of the day – well, actually at the beginning of the match – the way you play your matches are entirely up to you, the people you play with, and the style that suits you best.