Why You Should Play League of Legends by Michael

Why You Should Play League of Legends by Michael

    So I hear you, you’ve played all the games, gotten all the achievements, and now you’re bored. What could you possibly do now you ask? You must move on from gaming you guess… WRONG! There’s a (not really) new game called League of Legends! It’s a sweet awesome game that is played by 27 million people! Let me explain it.

    League of Legends, or LoL, is a game from the MOBA genre. MOBA stands for multiplayer online battle arena. This means there are three lanes, that players go through, and they push towards the enemy base.  

As you can see in the picture above, there’s the red and blue bases, each base has a Nexus.  Destroy the Nexus, and you win! Usually, there are two players in the bottom lane, one in the middle, and one in the top. You might notice some area between the three lanes (the lanes are labeled as top, bot, and mid.): that’s the jungle! The jungle has monsters in it that players can kill, instead of minions. Certain monsters give players buffs when they’re killed, but I’ll get to that later.

     

Lanes and structures are what stops you from immediately winning. The structures are towers, inhibitors, and the nexus. Towers are big statues that are in each lane, and there’s four per lane. While they’re not destroyed, they’ll lock onto any enemy and will shoot them with a powerful blast. This is why it’s important to push towers with minions. The minions attack the tower and enemy minions, and they take the tower’s shots for the champions. When in the enemy base, there are 5 more towers protecting the inhibitors and nexus. The Inhibitors are static structures that don’t attack or respawn, unlike towers. The enemies that destroy it will be granted Super Minions, that have more health, and have stronger attacks than normal minions. Destroying multiple inhibitors is crucial to winning, since super minions deal a lot of damage to towers and the nexus.

    “Wow this game must be super complex how could I ever understand it?” Well just read and it’ll make more sense. The jungle is very dangerous, and the jungle role is usually most sought after. In this role, the player goes around defeating jungle monsters in their camps, and each camp has different monsters. While players in the lanes, players can kill minions for gold and experience.  Most important to junglers are the buffs. There are two of them, and they’re granted by the Red Brambleback, and Blue Sentinel.

The Blue Sentinel grants a buff that significantly increases mana regeneration, and reduces cool downs on champion abilities. The Brambleback gives a buff that makes the champion’s basic attack inflict a burn and slow effect.  Each buff lasts for 3 minutes, and if a champion kills another champion that holds the buff, the buff is transferred. The burn does damage over time, and the slow reduces a unit’s movement speed. Besides the smaller buff monsters, there’s epic monsters that grant team buffs.

  

The Baron Nashor and Dragons! The Baron Nashor spawns at 20 minutes into the game, and it takes a lot of champions to kill it. When it’s finally killed, it grants the team that killed it a buff that empowers recall abilities, and empowers your minions.  The Baron kill is essential to winning.

    There’s a lot more about League, but my main point is that it’s worth a try. It’ll be annoying to learn, but once you get into it, you’ll love it! It’s a PC game, but it isn’t too demanding on graphics. Just install it through the LoL site, and begin playing! Good luck summoners!