Rare Essentials - This article is an original high-quality guide by nga伽骆. The editor strongly recommends that players take the time to read it carefully; it is definitely worth it.
This article is aimed at those who are unsure how to choose equipment, runes, and talents. Without dry content and lacking data, I just hope that everyone can move away from fixed routines to understand when to buy certain items and why to choose specific attributes.
Part of Chapter Five is based on various attributes to propose applications for team damage and team survivability, and uses this to explain why some unusual lineups are not good or why some lineups are popular. Some data comes from science posts and evidence-gathering posts whose sources I have long forgotten, while the rest comes from various guides and my own practical experience. Since I started playing LoL a long time ago, some data may no longer match current standards, and I hope errors can be pointed out in the comments.
Rare Essentials Guide - Teaching You Exactly How to Choose Equipment
1. Introduction
In short, League of Legends is a game in which victory is achieved by destroying the enemy's base. Although everyone tends to prefer chasing and killing enemies, no matter how many kills are obtained, what ultimately determines victory is still the base.
And the most efficient way to deal damage to enemy structures is undoubtedly to win a team fight while preserving as much damage output as possible — this article attempts to tell you some basic knowledge about team fights.
First, to win a team fight, you need to understand two key abilities: damage dealing capability and damage taking capability. These are two interrelated and opposing attributes — the former determines how quickly you can eliminate enemies, and the latter determines how slowly you are eliminated by the enemy.
These two abilities are made up of a series of smaller attributes. I will try to describe how various attributes affect these two abilities to help everyone better choose equipment, runes, talents, and even heroes, and ultimately win the game.
2. Damage Output Capability and Types
\ If classified briefly, damage output can be divided into skills and auto-attacks (basic attacks). Except for a few aura-type abilities (like Sunfire Cape and Renekton's ultimate, which deal continuous damage per second), the vast majority of damage comes from these two parts. If we ignore the impact of AD bonus on auto-attacks for AD assassins, these two parts are actually composed of two different types of attribute stacking——except for a few special champions, cooldown reduction won't increase your attack frequency, and attack speed won't allow you to cast more skills. However, a few hybrid-damage champions and most AD assassins can utilize both types of attributes.
The attributes that generally enhance these two different parts are:
Skills: Ability power (AP) scaling, cooldown reduction, flat penetration, and percentage penetration.
Auto-attacks: Attack damage (AD), attack speed, critical strike chance, critical strike damage, flat penetration, and percentage penetration.
As you can see, auto-attacks have more mutually enhancing attributes, which allows auto-attack champions, once equipped adequately, to output the highest sustained damage in the entire league. Some special items will enhance both your skills and auto-attacks, such as Mask of Malmortius (Liandry's Torment) and Blade of the Ruined King, but their damage boost is relatively independent of other attributes and rarely grows due to attributes other than penetration.
All this data might seem confusing, but when you need to increase your damage, understanding which attributes are the most important is essential. All skills and champions generally have base damage and base attack power, and these values roughly guide how you should build items and choose runes.
(1) Detailed Explanation of Skill Attributes:
Scaling: When your scaling is sufficiently high, increasing the corresponding attribute is always useful. A simple and straightforward benchmark is: the total scaling of all your damaging skills added together is 2.0 AP; only beyond this range is it worthwhile to stack AP. If we use the conversion formula where 8 AP is approximately equivalent to 5 AD (thanks to 愛蜜霓 for correcting my obsolete knowledge from the beta era…), you can deduce the scaling for AD champions: 3.2.Although AD assassins can rely on auto-attacks, sufficient bonuses still ensure you can eliminate enemies quickly. The model AD assassin Zed has a damage bonus of 2.9+20%~50%, and his short cooldown allows him to deal even higher damage.
Scaling is the most important criterion for assassin heroes, even higher than their dash ability and base damage. It determines whether you can expand your advantage while gaining an advantage, rather than wasting extra gold. Not all heroes with AP scaling above 2.0 are assassins; this is just a simple way to judge whether a hero continues to build AP items, and you must also consider the base damage of all your skills.
If your AP scaling falls below 2.0, if you want to boost your output, you should consider raising fixed penetration and percentage penetration (and if your base damage is high enough, you can do the same), or consider switching to tank or support.
Cooldown reduction: up to 40%. Some special heroes may not have particularly high scaling, but their relatively short cooldowns allow them to deal higher damage over a longer period. Even if they can't deal high burst damage, they can contribute more to the team while maintaining survival (for example, top laner Xingma's Q and all of Vampire's abilities). Other heroes have special damage methods and lower bonuses (like the percentage damage of Spider's Q). When stacking cooldown reduction, these heroes often gain higher damage benefits and utility enhancements—more control, more healing, or more invincibility.
The stacking benefit from cooldown reduction increases gradually. An extreme case will help you understand this faster: when you have 80% cooldown reduction, an additional 10% cooldown will halve your skill cooldown. In other words, the more cooldown you stack, the greater the benefit you get. Of course, you can't stack cooldown reduction above 80%, but you can still see the increasing benefit.Besides the aforementioned heroes who rely on high-frequency skill output, the vast majority of AP and AD assassins often also benefit from some cooldown reduction, because cooldown reduction is just an additional attribute that appears widely on various equipment. Obtaining it does not conflict with increasing other attributes, yet the benefit is quite clear. Common cooldown reduction items are: AP: Morello's Evil Tome, Athene's Unholy Grail; AD: Ravenous Hydra, Youmuu's Ghostblade, Black Cleaver; Defense: Locket of the Iron Solari; Boots: Ionian Boots of Lucidity; as well as the three types of support items.
For burst-type heroes, more cooldown reduction means you can cooldown all your skills faster and unleash your next burst combo. Simply put, it increases your gank frequency.
However, the benefit of cooldown reduction for burst-type heroes is not simply reflected in numbers—suppose a team fight lasts 15 seconds, and your skill originally has a 16-second cooldown, then you can only deal damage once in the entire team fight and are left either auto-attacking or just watching. But when you gain 10% cooldown reduction, you can use an extra skill to finish the fight earlier, or even turn a disadvantage into a victory. In this special situation, 10% cooldown reduction is equivalent to a 100% damage increase.
In short, if your skill cooldowns are short, buy it.
Flat penetration and percentage penetration: Almost all heroes who want to output enough damage will eventually get these two attributes, at least the latter. They provide a significant percentage boost to damage output, are extremely strong, and are inexpensive—items like Last Whisper and Void Staff both cost around 2300 gold. Whether AD or AP, when the opponents start stacking armor or magic resist to counter you, buying a penetration item will always leave the enemy desperate. There are many posts about this attribute; after Season 2 changed the calculation method, flat penetration and percentage penetration can interact and enhance each other's effect, which made three-penetration items very popular (this trend calmed down for a while after the basic damage of most assassins was heavily nerfed).
In short, when you can't hurt the enemy, buying this is almost always right.Rare Essence Guide: Teaching You How to Choose Equipment
Common Attack Type (Basic Attack Type) Attribute Details:
Compared to skill attributes, basic attack attributes have more obvious mutual enhancement effects: when an attribute is increased, it not only raises your final damage output but also boosts the gains you get from increasing other attributes. All your attributes are immediately reflected in your basic attacks and affect your output.
Attack Power: Everyone knows this. Attack power is the foundation for other basic attack type attributes. Except for a few heroes with inherent attack bonuses, the first piece of equipment for most heroes should be one that increases attack power.
Attack Speed: A very good attribute, you can gain a lot from runes after the essence attack speed buff. Generally, attack speed items are mainly one of Blade of the Ruined King and Statikk Shiv/Bloodthirster, rarely exceeding two items. Some heroes will use Trinity Force instead of Statikk Shiv and Bloodthirster, such as Ezreal and Lucian.
Critical Rate and Critical Damage: Critical rate and critical damage mutually enhance each other. The sources for critical damage are only Infinity Edge and runes, so you don't need to worry too much about it.
Flat Penetration and Percent Penetration: Refer to the same attribute in the skill tab.
Since the mutual enhancement effect among these attributes is very obvious, you can simply increase your final output by equipping one of each.
Apart from the direct output above, some skills can provide additional damage, which can be directly multiplied to calculate the final damage. When facing heroes with strong regeneration abilities, such as Urgot, Dr. Mundo, and Volibear, Deathcap, Morellonomicon, Ignite, and other grievous wounds effects can bring indirect damage, often performing much better than you might expect.
Attack Range can be considered a special attack attribute. Higher attack range means you can initiate combat first. Assuming both sides have the same output and durability, the one who attacks first will undoubtedly have an advantage. Here, attack range is not limited to basic attacks but also includes skill ranges. Some special tactics rely heavily on this attribute.
Damage Defense and Types
Damage defense ability is also composed of a series of small attributes. It is worth noting that compared to straightforward output, defense has more ways to indirectly enhance your survivability.Defense: One of the attributes everyone understands. Every point of defense, when not penetrated or reduced, helps you withstand physical damage equal to 1% of your health.
It should be noted that defense not only works against the enemy's basic attacks but also reduces damage from minions. Everyone basically knows this, but often overlooks it. During the laning phase, the greatest damage you take is often not from enemy harassment, but from minion attacks you forget to avoid.
Minions can often deal high but easily overlooked damage in early skirmishes. This is why rune armor used to be popular in the three lanes and jungle, and it is still frequently used now. Higher armor provides an advantage in trades and subsequent recovery and allows you to quickly launch your next attack against the enemy, forcing them to leave the experience zone and helping you snowball your lead.
Magic Resist: Every point of magic resist, when not penetrated or reduced, helps you withstand magic damage equal to 1% of your health. One of the attributes everyone understands.
You generally don't have to worry about AP damage from sources other than heroes. So, if you are not laning against an AP champion, you can choose scaling magic resist in the blue rune to better face enemy AP in the mid-game. Acquiring magic resist is more difficult than physical defense; few champions have innate magic resist growth, and apart from the Banshee's Veil, equipment with magic resist is not as commonly used as armor. Therefore, runes are an important source of magic resist.
Health: One of the attributes everyone understands. Increasing health helps counter most champions effectively, but be careful against Vayne, Vi, Corki, and Elise—enemies with strong percentage-based damage. Against these enemies, higher resistances and efforts to reduce their attack speed are most effective.
Effective Health: In a purely physical or magical damage environment, effective health equals armor * health or magic resist * health. For those who recently played D3, it can be directly understood as toughness. Effective health determines how much damage you can withstand before going down, and if you want to survive longer, you should look for equipment that maximizes your effective health.Magic penetration and physical penetration will drastically reduce the effective health you gain from armor and magic resistance. When facing opponents who have built Magic Penetration items or Youmuu's Ghostblade, besides continuing to increase your effective health, you can also consider some special ways to mitigate damage, such as reducing the enemy's attack speed (Blue Buff and Frozen Heart), or negating a skill once (Mikael's Blessing), gaining an extra life (Sterak's Gage, having an extra life is especially effective against burst heroes because they usually don't have a second burst combo, and there isn't enough time to wait for it).
Ninja Tabi is an item that can effectively and cheaply increase your effective health, but it only works against auto-attack-based champions.
Percentage damage reduction: You cannot get percentage damage reduction from items; only a few champion abilities and talents provide this attribute for you. Percentage damage reduction generally doesn't reduce true damage anymore, but it can still effectively block all other types of damage, with the only exception being the aforementioned Ninja Tabi, which gives you 10% reduction on basic attack damage.
Flat damage reduction: Sion's passive, Amumu's E, Doran's Shield, and the three points in the defensive talent tree. Flat damage reduction is very useful in the early game against all champions who rely on auto attacks, allowing you to survive longer and turn the matchup around. However, except for the very beginning of the early game, getting Doran's Shield for a small amount of damage reduction is generally not worth it. Aside from the first recall and the first purchase, it's better to spend your gold on more valuable items, unless you really need it to stay alive and avoid being tower-dived.
Reducing attack speed: Reducing attack speed can effectively lower the enemy's output. The effect of attack speed reduction is multiplicative, directly decreasing the attack speed shown on the enemy's stats by a percentage. In the past, Ezreal became the top ADC mainly because of the strong attack speed reduction from his W.
There are two attack speed reduction items: Randuin's Omen and Frozen Heart. If you include the components of Randuin's, that makes three items. Randuin's is the most commonly used attack speed reduction item; it has a passive that reduces the movement speed and attack speed of enemies who attack you (attacker's movement speed reduced by 10%, attack speed reduced by 15%) and an active that reduces movement speed in an area around you. It is also the best item for countering all AD-type champions.Compared to that, Iceborn Gauntlet has higher armor, additional cooldown reduction and mana, and even if the enemy doesn't attack you, they will still be affected by your attack speed reduction aura. However, Iceborn Gauntlet does not provide any health, which means if you take it as a first item instead of Randuin's Omen, you can die very quickly. But for certain champions, Iceborn Gauntlet is still a very suitable item.
I remember that most champions with attack speed reduction skills have been nerfed, such as Ezreal and Gragas. However, champions like Nunu and Malphite have always survived, and even Twisted Fate's W can reduce attack speed. Against some attack speed-reliant champions, they can have a significant effect.
In short, this stat is generally used to counter ADCs who rely on basic attacks, as well as champions who rely on attack frequency for damage, such as Jax, Tryndamere, Master Yi, and many other junglers who can build Titanic Hydra. When facing these champions, building Randuin's as your first item is never wrong. If Randuin's is not enough, you can persuade your support to buy an Iceborn Gauntlet to further reduce their damage output.
Unselectable: No items grant the unselectable effect; only a few champions have skills with it. Being unselectable prevents the enemy from using basic attacks and abilities on you, whether they are AoE or single-target, targeted or not.
However, being unselectable cannot block channeled skills that have already been cast on you, such as Fiddlesticks' Q. It also cannot remove any debuffs, so even if you play Vladimir with W or Fizz with E, you can still die from Ignite that has already been applied. Therefore, when you are low on health and facing Ignite, you should use these skills more cautiously to avoid dying on items like an Executioner's or Trident.
The advantage of unselectable skills is that you can still perform some actions while unselectable. Although you cannot deal damage, you can effectively escape the battlefield or move behind enemies, instead of standing there foolishly.
Invulnerable: Zhonya's Hourglass and Lissandra's ultimate. The invulnerable effect is stronger than unselectable; during its duration, you take no damage at all, but you also cannot perform any actions.This effect generally will not interrupt your already activated channeled skills, such as Crow's ultimate or Sion's E, so you can rely on the effect of Zhonya's Hourglass to activate these channeled skills and boldly jump into the enemy ranks.\Rare Essence Guide: Teaching You Exactly How to Choose Equipment\Healing: Healing is a special form of damage mitigation. Healing can be considered as extra health and converted into your effective health. It comes from lifesteal (basic attacks and skills similar to basic attacks), spell vamp (almost all damage-dealing skills benefit from spell vamp, regardless of whether they scale with AP or deal AP damage. AOE skills only receive one-third of the spell vamp effect), natural regeneration (inherent to the champion, growth, runes, masteries, and effects from items), and skill-based healing.\Basically, all ADCs have a way to protect themselves beyond running or blinking, which is lifesteal. Therefore, almost all ADCs will purchase it, usually opting for a lifesteal item first. This is not only to increase survivability but also to enhance lane sustain, thereby gaining higher experience and gold.\Spell vamp is suitable for only a few champions. Only a small number of champions that use HP as a casting resource (like Vladimir and Mordekaiser) will rush to get it. However, this doesn't mean the stat is useless. An AP champion with many powerful single-target skills can benefit from spell vamp as much as an ADC benefits from lifesteal. Because these champions are usually more focused on eliminating enemies rather than preserving themselves, the priority for such items is not very high.\Natural regeneration rarely significantly affects team fights unless you have extremely high resistances stacked with various regeneration effects. But it determines how long you can stay in lane during the early game—if you have higher natural regeneration, you can recover faster during skirmishes and further pressure the enemy to gain an advantage. Even if you cannot outmatch your opponent, sufficient regeneration can still ensure you reach level six or survive until the jungler comes to assist you.\Besides the life regeneration from runes, the three points in defensive masteries, and Doran's Shield, another very important means of recovery is the health potion.Whether in the early or late game, it's always right to bring a few extra health potions when you have inventory slots. Even if you truly believe you can dodge all of the enemy's skill damage, health potions can help you clear a wave of jungle before a team fight and face the enemy at full health. But don't slow down your item progression just to buy potions—these are meant to help you earn gold more effectively, not to invert priorities.
Healing skills can be categorized into lifesteal and direct healing. The former can be countered by increasing resistances, while both types can be reduced with the 'Grievous Wounds' debuff. Healing skills are often extremely effective and annoying, causing you the pain of being killed by an enemy who should have died. In the current meta, due to the presence of healing spells, Ignite has become less effective at countering healing abilities. However, items that apply continuous debuffs, like Morellonomicon and Mortal Reminder, can still effectively counter these skills.
A 50% healing reduction effect causes even more suffering for the enemy because when they lifesteal, the effective health gained prolongs their life, giving them another chance to heal. For example, if your damage is 200, the enemy's effective health is 500, and their healing ability is 50 per second, under normal conditions it would take you 3.3333 seconds to kill them. With healing reduction, it only takes 2.857 seconds, reducing the enemy's effective healing from 166.67 to 71.425.
Therefore, against champions like Swain and Dr. Mundo, Grievous Wounds is a very necessary stat.
Apart from items and Ignite, the effects of Grievous Wounds also come from certain abilities: for example, Bounty Hunter's W activation, Corki's E, etc. Properly choosing heroes and items to counter these can effectively handle such enemies.
Stun: Stun can essentially be seen as a special form of damage prevention. It's not only stuns—any crowd-control abilities that prevent an enemy who would otherwise reach you from doing so can be considered as "prevent the enemy from dealing damage to you for X seconds." While the primary purpose of using these skills often isn't purely to stay alive, they effectively increase your survival time.
4. The impact of mobility on the above attributes
Mobility is a relatively special attribute, which can be divided into walking and Flash. Strong mobility provides initiation, escape, and support capabilities, making it extremely versatile.How magical its effect can be often depends on the player's operation, so in a sense, it can also be said to have infinite possibilities.\
Walking: This refers to movement speed, which is one of the attributes that determines how long it takes you to reach or escape the battlefield, and it is also essential for kiting. Higher movement speed reduces the difficulty of dodging and further decreases the hit rate of enemy consumable skills thrown at you. It also determines whether you can approach the enemy and hit them in the face.\
In theory, when your attack range is lower than the enemy's and your movement speed is lower than the enemy's, you will be kited to death, so you should avoid these two situations occurring simultaneously at all costs, and try to put the enemy in such a situation.\
All heroes lacking blink skills often try to obtain some of this attribute because a character without mobility, no matter how high their damage output is, is just a target. Even if you are a tank, if you can't catch the enemy, they won't be hit by you.\
To gain movement speed, you can obtain it from talents (common tier, three points, total 1.5%), runes (each quintessence 1.5%), and some equipment. Of course, the most important and commonly used are boots. Some less common or special movement speed increase methods are skills. Many support heroes have skills that increase movement speed, such as Janna's passive speed aura, Lulu's high individual movement speed, Sona's single or multi-target speed shield, and Soraka's sustained and efficient E. Another method is summoner spells.\
There are not many items that increase movement speed. Besides boots and enchantments, the most commonly used items are: Statikk Shiv, Youmuu's Ghostblade, and Trinity Force—these three are used for ADCs and a few semi-tank or melee basic attack heroes. And Lich Bane is suitable for magic damage heroes—although few people get Lich Bane just for movement speed, heroes that get Lich Bane usually need that movement speed as well.\
In addition, Zephyr and Twin Shadows are two relatively rare but useful items. It's hard to say who is particularly suitable for them, but occasionally using them can have surprising effects. And the support item Crown, with its strong group acceleration effect, can effectively initiate team fights or prevent enemy pursuits.Ghost Step is probably one of the few skills that can significantly boost movement speed; most melee heroes who rely on basic attacks and lack mobility will carry Ghost Step—for example, Tryndamere, Tryndamere, and yes, Tryndamere. They need Ghost Step to close in on enemies and deal damage. Other heroes, such as Twisted Fate and Vladimir, who also lack mobility, can use Ghost Step effectively to strike enemies and then escape, catching opponents off guard.
Another skill that can increase movement speed is Heal. The 30% movement speed boost for two seconds may not be as strong as Ghost Step, but it can often save your life or help you secure a kill.
Melee heroes actually depend more on movement speed than ranged heroes. Ranged heroes often face situations where they are slowed and cc'ed repeatedly while being whittled down. Although movement speed is important, few can make full use of it in such scenarios. Melee heroes, on the other hand, might never be able to reach anyone if they lack movement speed.
In terms of teamfight strategies, besides increasing movement speed, reducing the movement speed of opponents is also a tactical option. AP champions can use Rylai's Crystal Scepter to grant all their abilities a slow effect (35%), though area-of-effect abilities and debuffs only slow by 15%. This item can also be combined with a Void Staff for damage. Another AP item that reduces enemy movement speed is Twin Shadows, which can also be used effectively for initiation. Iceborn Gauntlet, meanwhile, is suitable for semi-tank champions and a few ADCs (yes, I'm talking about Ezreal; although Ezreal rarely goes for Iceborn Gauntlet now, it is still very useful against a five-melee team composition). As mentioned before, Randuin's Omen is also effective, but like Twin Shadows, it can generally only be used once per teamfight.
Frozen Mallet is a good but often forgotten item. Although it has a terrifying slow effect, its high cost and the lack of suitable champions make it rarely seen in games.It is important to note that when your movement speed exceeds 415, any excess above 415 will be added at an 80% ratio, and when it exceeds 490, the additional portion will be added at a 50% ratio. Conversely, when movement speed is below 220, the slowing effect you suffer will also be halved.
Flash: This is the commonly known Flash skill. No item can provide this effect; the vast majority of champions can only obtain this ability through the Flash summoner spell. Compared to walking, Flash provides burst movement ability, which can catch enemies off guard when combined with strong crowd control or high damage. Besides engagement and anti-engagement utility, Flash can also be used for traveling quickly or bypassing vision. Using Flash to avoid known wards and then suddenly attacking from a blind spot in the enemy's vision often results in kills. The most typical Flash-type skill is EZ's E.
Apart from clearly defined Flash-type skills, some Flash-like skills that can traverse obstacles can also be classified as Flash, such as Dragon Girl's R, Jax's Q, and Olaf's E. Some of these require a cast target, and some have long or short casting animations, so they are not as straightforward as pure Flash skills. But the biggest drawback is that these Flash-like skills cannot pass through walls thicker than your casting range, in other words, you will bump into the wall.
Flash and Flash-like skills are essential for assassins; without strong dashing ability, even high damage cannot be fully utilized. In other words, knowing how to use your skills and coordinate them with the summoner Flash is a very important ability for an assassin.
The extreme impact of movement speed on a match can be seen in the S2 finals, where CLG.EU's combination of Yorick and Jayce's double wall tactic made it impossible for enemies to approach, while they could rapidly switch battlefields, almost guaranteeing the enemies' deaths under their hands. Besides its influence in team fights, when executing or countering a 41-minute tower-pushing strategy, movement speed also determines whether you can escape or chase down those pushing your towers.
In short, the use of movement speed differentiates experienced players from beginners.Summary:
In terms of damage-taking ability, compared to simple and easy-to-understand attributes like defense and health that often only affect oneself, various healing skills and abilities that weaken the enemy are more useful because they can affect teammates. Although many times they may not allow you to take more damage yourself, they can help your teammates survive longer and deal more damage. In addition to hero selection, some equipment can also effectively increase the team's damage-taking ability, such as the Legion Shield and its upgraded version, the Iron Box. When facing AP heroes, the effects it provides should not be underestimated. Another piece of equipment is the Crucible—it can provide powerful healing effects and cleansing. Use it to frustrate enemy charges and assassins.
V. In team fights, the impact of attack and defense attributes, and common tactics
If you have played SC2, WAR3, or other real-time strategy games, you will realize that under the same tech and unit conditions, the result of thirty units fighting twenty units is often that the thirty-unit side wins. Of course, this is obvious, but the key is the outcome afterward—on the thirty-unit side, the surviving units far exceed the initial advantage of ten units compared to the opponent. The reason is that during the battle, the side with higher output eliminates the enemy faster, causing the enemy's output to decrease more quickly than their own, ultimately leading to total annihilation. On the other hand, a team with thirty output units and zero tanks rarely beats a team with twenty output units and ten tanks. Even if the former has higher output, during the battle, the latter can maintain overall high output while only losing a small portion due to tanks. The former illustrates that the snowball effect is often more severe than what stats reveal, while the latter tells us the importance of output structure and formation.
In LOL, you can similarly use reasonable structures to allow the front line to absorb damage, ensuring that your core output units do not die.The scattered words above (many people probably think they're nonsense...) besides popularizing common knowledge, are meant to clarify the components of the two types of attributes and their opposing relationships (I'm not sure if I explained these clearly in my spur-of-the-moment writing, but this is what I tried to do). When you understand the relationship between them, you can rely on scientific item builds to gain an advantage under equal economic conditions, or choose reasonable tactics to achieve victory. You should be aware of the output and damage-absorbing structures of both sides and try to strike their weakest points.
What to do during team fights:
In team fights, the ultimate goal is to eliminate the enemy and then, while they are unable to resist, harshly assault their structures. To achieve the latter, sometimes it isn't necessary to eliminate all enemies; in some cases, special tactics can be used to take down structures without defeating the enemies. But in all these situations, the essence is the same: it involves the confrontation between offensive-defense attributes and mobility. Whether it's a small-scale or large-scale fight, what you need to do is endure the enemy's damage and eliminate the enemy in the process (or let your teammates eliminate them). Your equipment and actions should revolve around this goal—protecting your team's output as much as possible while striking at the enemy's output. This is also why control skills are often excellent—they not only stop the enemy's output but can also protect your own.
In a large-scale team fight, a relatively classic lineup is one APC, one ADC, one top-lane TANK, one jungle TANK, and one support for speed boost or healing. Other lineups are more or less improvements or variations of this setup, such as replacing the mid-laner with an AD assassin to enhance early GANK ability and burst, or using an all-damage lineup to crush the enemy early on.
Different tactical goals determine different lineups, and if the tactical goals are not achieved, these special lineups will lose their advantage and ultimately fail.An easily predictable goal is that an all-AD team (a bunch of AD champions plus a Thresh, Blitzcrank, or Janna-type support) will try to end the fight early to avoid the late game, where their pure damage type would greatly reduce everyone's output potential. On the other hand, a double-AP composition will try to deal enough AOE damage in team fights to eliminate enemies in one swoop, while also ensuring that when enemies keep stacking magic resistance, the ADC still has room to deal damage. Some time-tested compositions often have great adaptability and can fight effectively in any situation, and controlling vision can sometimes work miracles (like five big guys jumping out of the bush and instantly finishing you off).
The process of a team fight is essentially a game-theoretic exchange: if you can anticipate what the opponent is doing, you can respond in advance and even gain an advantage. The advantage of information asymmetry is fully reflected in Summoner's Rift. In that insane S3 patch, there was almost no place unlit by wards, and any isolated champion would immediately die unnaturally or be finished off by five big guys. Everyone is trying to figure out what the opponent is doing while making sure the opponent cannot figure out what you are doing.
This extreme situation was not improved until S4, when the number of wards was limited. Support vision could no longer illuminate the whole map, and everyone's actions had to be more cautious. But besides the simple and clear vision control, the selection of compositions and the situation on the map at the time also reveal a lot of information, including what the enemy and you intend to do next.
As I mentioned before, a team fight is a game-theoretic process, and what you have to do is deal damage while taking damage. In the confrontation between two teams, you can simply sum up each team's damage and damage absorption as team output capability and team durability, but during the fight, these abilities are constantly changing.Since not all attributes are evenly distributed among everyone, when your ADC is suddenly killed, you may have only lost a small amount of damage absorption capacity, but at once lost half of your endurance — this is also why a single-core lineup with only one person having strong output is so weak and easily defeated. An overly fragile individual holds too much influence, so when the enemy relentlessly destroys them, you immediately lose the ability to resist.
Therefore, a healthy lineup should have two cores or even multiple cores to ensure that your output capability is not affected by the loss of a single point. But it should be remembered that, due to various attributes promoting damage, more cores can, in a sense, actually drag down your overall output. It is equivalent to exchanging output for the stability of the overall structure. This kind of trade-off is hard to judge immediately as right or wrong, but if your opponent has a strong assassin, putting all your eggs in one basket is undoubtedly foolish. When you see the opponent picking a bunch of aggressive initiators first, do not continue to pick heroes that are tanky but have no output, unless you are really confident that you can stop the opponent's large number of aggressive plays from killing one of your teammates. Otherwise, it is better to choose some safer characters.
However, sometimes you still choose such a lineup, possibly because you or your teammates do not know how to play the appropriate heroes, or you simply do not have or disdain playing the right heroes. This is not very rational, but people, including myself, do this often; having fun is what matters most. Given that, you must understand one thing: when your only output-capable teammate rises, you should expect the enemy firepower to focus on them and plan your next actions around this fact.For example, you can use slowing equipment to ensure the enemy cannot approach your damage dealers, invest in a ward to check the vision, use a red trinket and upgrade it to make sure the enemy won't see where your core is and try to flank it, or you can use equipment like Randuin's to jump to the enemy's damage dealer to stop them from dealing damage, effectively protecting your own damage dealers. However, if only one person on your team has damage, it's best to stick close to them. Even two assassins without any items usually have enough basic damage to take down an ADC, not to mention without a dash or equipment. Doing everything possible to protect your teammates is what's true.
It can be expected that if you effectively create obstacles, the opposing team will abandon the ADC they can't reach and turn to focus on you. Even if the dash champions don't do this, their core will (what, you want to say their core has already bypassed you to target your core with the tank face? Just accept it). At this point, you can refer to the attributes listed above to consider what equipment to use.
You must always remember that all your team's damage output depends on this one core, so all your actions should be to protect them—even if you think they are a complete idiot, save your complaints until after winning.
If you yourself are the core, there's not much to say—focus on staying alive. You can refer to the basic knowledge from the speed chapter, then try to maintain a safe damage-dealing distance. But if your teammates are willing to protect you, it will at least be a bit easier psychologically.
In some healthier team compositions, you may have more than one core (for example, the classic double-core, double-tank setup). In that case, your responsibilities depend on your role. Generally, the secondary tank's job is to use its damage to trouble the enemy's core, the main tank harasses the enemy's dash champions, supports protect the ADC, and the ADC and APC deal damage according to the situation. These situations can be extremely complex depending on the champions, but targeting the highest output point on the enemy team is rarely wrong—unless that point is too far away for your team of five to reach it.It's really hard to clearly explain what a certain hero should do in just one guide, but you can watch more videos and find detailed guides based on the types you like, and then practice more (I know this is obvious, but I still have to say it).
Based on the above, everyone should also understand why assassin-type heroes were so popular during S3—the assassins of that era had very strong diving and damage capabilities, as well as the ability to extend the advantage they had already gained (they had enough base damage and damage scaling, and could easily leave the battlefield using Flash or Flash-like skills).
When they could single-handedly destroy one enemy in the midst of thousands, no matter who it was, it would greatly affect the enemy's output and tank structure—even for a support, their various healing or acceleration abilities would effectively increase their teammates' damage and durability. Therefore, it was rare for a team to turn a 4v5 fight after their support was caught out. The barrel theorem not only highlights the impact of weak links on the economy but also shows how an unhealthy team composition is easily targeted.
Of course, these overly arrogant and hard-to-counter assassins eventually all fell to Riot's nerfing blade.
Common tactics:
There are various tactics—not to say countless—but the synergy between different heroes can produce countless variations. Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to excel at all positions or reach the mastery to roam in the Challenger tier. So what I'm talking about here are only some tactics and hero combinations from my personal observations; some may have disappeared in the flow of history, but most have appeared recently—at least in games played by average players.
Rare essential guide on how to choose equipment
4-1 Split Push: The 4-1 split push tactic emerged and became popular in S2, and it exploded in popularity after Kassadin's victory. Later, Jax top, AP Brute top, Healer Strength top, and Shen top were all based on the 4-1 split push concept. This tactic is simple: choose four heroes who can hold the enemies, and one hero with strong duel potential and escape ability, then spread out and fight separately (Shen's concept is not about dueling, but about global assistance when a team fight is forcibly initiated).Generally speaking, one would choose to have one person in the bottom lane and one in the top lane to ensure that the enemy doesn't have enough time to provide support. When the enemy has five players defending against your four, the remaining one can continuously push the tower. If the enemy sends one person elsewhere, they can't stop the solo lane hero, and if they send two, the remaining three are not enough to resist the attack of four.
In other words, the 4-1 split push forcibly disrupts the enemy's team structure, spreads their firepower, and creates a situation where your team has an advantage in fights. The simplest counter to a 4-1 split push is to ban heroes who can handle a solo lane or pick someone who can also perform the 4-1 split push to match the enemy and hope they don't get killed.
In this context, global assistance becomes especially important—if the hero you picked has no support capability or doesn't have Teleport, when the enemy comfortably teleports to the bottom lane, your four can only scold you while watching themselves die. Sometimes this can be quite gratifying, but most of the time it isn't.
Apart from the solo hero needing strong 1v1 ability (any lack of support capability can be mitigated with Teleport), the four-person part also has certain requirements—you should at least have some team initiation and escape ability, be able to deal damage in relatively safe situations, and, if possible, be able to clear minions easily. It may sound like a lot is required, but you don't need one person to accomplish all of this. Generally, a support picking up a Crown and maintaining vision already provides half of what is needed.
Lane swap push: Lane swap push often appears in competitive matches, relying on your team's single-lane hero's stronger tower defense (or pressure resistance) to quickly strike the enemy's solo lane, suppress their development, while quickly taking down towers to gain an economic advantage. In solo queue, few people have the execution ability to do this, but when it occasionally happens, it is extremely difficult to counter—not everyone has extensive experience with pressure.
Although a single tower does not determine the outcome of the game, the morale impact is undoubtedly deadly. More importantly, when the enemy loses their rhythm, they often make strange and foolish moves. You can take the opportunity while their heads are still not clear to push the next tower or secure the dragon, rolling the snowball larger and larger.Global Strategy: The popularity of the global strategy started a long time ago, but due to the increased appearance of the Teleport spell and the rise of jungle Spartas, it has shown signs of revival to some extent. The hallmark of the global strategy is that one or multiple heroes possess support capabilities, and at the moment a small-scale team fight begins, they can immediately teleport to the battlefield to turn the tide. Even with just one Sparta using their ultimate, it's difficult for random players to respond, let alone if Karma or someone like Jax from the top lane also teleports down. Compared to lane swapping and fast pushing, the global strategy is easier to see in play because the heroes it utilizes are well-suited to this meta, at most only needing an extra Teleport spell. Sometimes, the global strategy is combined with a four-one split push, where after gaining an advantage through global support capabilities, four lanes push while one hero split-pushes alone.
Knife Team: Strictly speaking, this is not a strategy, but rather a preference in hero selection… many players like straightforward and brute-force AD heroes, and this is still true even with AD assassins being nerfed. Sparta, Talon, Renekton, and Zed are the most common roles in this lineup, while female tanks, Thresh, and Blitzcrank, who have team initiation abilities, also pair well. These heroes typically have strong early-game advantages, allowing them to force team fights when they have a lead across three lanes.
However, when facing heroes with strong wave-clear abilities, they may be dragged into the late game and be overwhelmed by the armor stacked by the enemy. Unfortunately, apart from accumulating enough advantage to dive towers for kills, your only way to prevent the enemy from clearing waves might be hoping that your support lands a hook or hits a big ultimate.
Double AP: Double AP was a popular strategy in early Europe, but it gradually declined with changes in top lane champions. However, this does not mean that the Double AP composition has no strengths. The advantage of having two APs is obvious: they can deal a large amount of AOE damage. Beyond that, another hidden advantage is that Double AP can bolster the ADC.
When facing two APs, the first thing teams typically do is increase magic resistance to prevent everyone from being instantly burst down, which also means you can't counter the enemy ADC by anything other than stacking health. Regrettably, while stacking health can effectively counter AP burst to prevent instant kills, it is not very effective against ADCs with strong sustained damage.When you proudly set out with the banshee, the one who might end up laughing last could very well be the enemy's ADC.
Because double AP compositions are generally squishy, their tanking responsibilities rely on the jungler. Effective counter-jungling or harassing the enemy jungler can sometimes be remarkably effective.
Invisibility: It's hard to say invisibility is a tactic… because in this patch, it often just depends on the choice of the jungler. But due to the special nature of these champions, I decided to describe it separately.
The most common invisible champions should be Widowmaker and Twitch, although the latter still sometimes appears as an ADC, it has clearly become more popular in the jungle recently. Invisible champions often lack strong crowd control, but they can sneak behind the enemy when least expected, creating a 2v1 local advantage and achieving victory. Since wards cannot detect their presence, they are almost impossible to counter before their first back. Even after you buy a ward upon returning, the revealed ward in this patch will likely be destroyed after alerting them once. What's even more frustrating is their deterrent effect on junglers; if you know there's an invisible champion on the other side who could be near you at any time, you must not only be careful with your buffs but also consider recalling when your health is not fully topped off, to avoid dying in the jungle.
However, because invisible champions are generally more fragile than regular champions (at least before gaining item support), if you can predict their location early and call your jungler for a counter-gank, it usually works well. In fact, wards can be considered points where invisible champions are guaranteed to pass nearby.
Besides wards, another item that can counter invisibility is the upgraded red trinket after level nine, which provides true vision for a short time; let's reminisce about the 400 gold price while making use of it.
If your jungler doesn't come, you can only face them with extreme caution; against Twitch, you must even be prepared to be ganked as early as level one or two.
POKE strategy: POKE is a very common and popular tactic. The former Jayce and the still-popular Nidalee today are such examples. Its characteristic is to use an attack range that the enemy cannot counter to harass, reducing the enemy team's durability and forcing team fights. If the enemy engages, they are likely to be quickly eliminated, and when they retreat, our side can easily push towers.Ways to deal with POKE include having skills with healing abilities and clearing minions, as well as banning Nidalee. Another effective way to respond is to get a Banshee's Veil to block damage. Trust me, no Nidalee can break through five veils and then kill you one by one, but while doing so, you also need to be careful not to ignore her teammates.
