Unless you have been living under a rock, you must have at least heard about the wildly popular game League of Legends. Released in 2009, it gained rapid popularity among the online gaming community. Being free-to-play, it became accessible to anyone with a steady internet connection. The unprecedented success of the game both in terms of number of active players and viewers who watch world tournaments, has resulted in several popular high profile players and clubs, most notable the l9 league of legends. So how does a single match in the game take place? Let us find out.
- Pick / Ban
This is the drafting phase of every League match. Drafting takes place before the actual match begins. Here each team is presented an opportunity to pick their champions. Ban means that a team can ban certain champions from being picked up by the opposing team.
Pick/ban is certainly the most strategically deepest phase of any League of legends game. It is critical to have a thorough understanding among teammates and also about the structure of the game, strengths and weaknesses of champions and how well they can work. This phase will determine what game plan you want to follow and often forms the deciding factor between who wins and loses. Teams are allowed to speak to their coaches during this phase.
- Laning
In this stage, each member of the team goes to their assigned lane to farm and become powerful. The goal here is to get ahead of your respective lane opponent. An efficient combination of farming and harassing the enemy laner is often enough to pull ahead in this phase.
- Mid-game stage
When the first turret on the map is destroyed, the mid-game phase commences. Players will leave their lanes to group up with teammates. The advantages acquired during laning phase are applied here to push forward. Mid-game is usually the bloodiest phase of a match. There are a lot of kills at this stage and it is essentially a race against the clock to finish the game before your advantage reduces.
- Late game stage
This refers to the point in a match where death timers are long. At this point, both teams will be sufficiently powered up and will fight for an extended period of time before one chaotic final push that ends the game.
These are the stages of a single match in League of Legends. Proper strategy and teamwork is essential in all the phases to avoid conceding an advantage to the enemy team. Players also need to take into account rule changes or alterations to champions in the form of game patches released by the developer. Since there are so many variables in League, there is a lot of information available to a player to understand and take advantage of.