For example, blue buff spawns at 1:55 in game. With a standard pull and help, they should kill it around 2:05, meaning 5 minutes later at 7:05, it will respawn, ready to give mana and CDR once more. Why not take that mana and CDR for YOUR team? If your team is blue side, have your support ward it around 5-6 minutes. Also, if you are purple side, it is usually a good idea to have your jungler ward it when they go to counter wolves. So now you have vision of a buff about to come up…what happens next?

YOU. MAKE. A. PLAY. In lower elo solo queue, I almost never see a buff getting stolen at 7 minutes, and I think there are a couple factors that cause that.

• People would rather farm and win their lane…and don’t want to leave to go do something that will benefit the TEAM.
• They time it, and then forget to use the timer.

My suggestion is that around 6 minutes, you would ping blue, and say :

Hey, their blue is up in 1 minute, can mid/top/jungler/anyone in the area come help steal it?

AND THEN YOU STEAL THAT THING. On the surface, it seems like you just gave your mid or jungler and extra blue…but is that all? You have denied the enemy jungler a buff, you have wasted time and possibly summoners of the enemy team, and you have established dominance around the map as a TEAM.

When it comes to Baron and dragon, those are more straightforward. You kill Baron, you get some sexy stats, a sweet wad of gold, and possible the coolest looking purple images swirling around your character the gaming world has ever seen. Sometimes, after a won team fight, you have to ask if you would rather push a tower or two, or get Baron. Personally, I prefer to push down towers and gain global pressure, allow for easier positioning, and again, make a sweet wad of cash. However, in some cases (i.e. The enemy team is either even with you gold wise or ahead), it is better to TAKE BARON OFF THE MAP AS AN OBJECTIVE. Not having to worry about the enemy team having Baron is sometimes the most beneficial attribute to taking Baron. Same goes for dragon in the early levels (though dragon becomes less appealing as the game goes on). Knowing these timers on these buffs, as well as reacting to them quickly can give you an edge in the game. Sometimes, the enemy team doesn’t have an exact timer, or won’t react as quickly as you. Leading your team to a quick baron or dragon kill can net you the entire game.

Lastly, I would like to say that if you are in mid-late game, and you KNOW there is an objective that will be coming soon…ALWAYS HAVE A PINK WARD. I don’t care what position you are playing that game, make sure your team has a pink ward. Denying that vision is key to making that objective happen…and in some cases can even make for a clean up team fight.

I guess that’s it for right now. Make yourself a more self-aware and proactive player! TIME YOUR BUFFS. And make sure your team knows to react with you!

Librarian/Professor/Captain/Officer T1tty

P.S. I’m available for coaching (:

Give my page a look, and let me teach you how I prefer to run MY botlane

First, go to your order and click on “Choose your Booster”



Then you can select the personal alias of the booster you want to choose. Of course, you can check the alias of the boosters who have already played on your account in your detailed progress, or the message box.



If you still want any LoL Academy booster to play on your account, just select “All Boosters”.

So what is the purpose of this feature ? Well, even if many customers like the fact that any booster can play on their account, because it generally makes a boost go faster, some customers prefer to have a certain booster playing on their account. Sometimes because they like this player, his playstyle, or maybe his champion pool.

We believe that elo boosting should be more “personal” while staying 100% anonymous. Hence the alias for boosters which all look something like “White Zeus” (combination of color and name of a greek god). Of course, the booster will still not get any personal information of the customer.

We hope that many people will use this customer, and that it will make our service more friendly for everyone.

This week, I hit diamond rating, which has been a goal of mine since Season 2. I always duo queued with diamond ELO friends, but never got there myself. Recently I have been trying to better myself as a player through new ways of thinking about this game. I learned quite a bit in th e last push to diamond (Plat V-Diamond V), and I would like to share a few of those things here:

1) As cliche as it may seem, a game is never over until the word “DEFEAT” is right in front of your eyes. I’ll admit, I get mad if a game is going horribly wrong…who wouldn’t? I am human… and I love to win! However, I started trying to give my team (and in some cases, myself) a chance to turn it around and make the comeback. It is always possible that the enemy will throw you the game, no matter what rating you are at. 

2) Patience. I main support, and this is something I am still working on. I love support, and I play a really damn aggressive support at that. I want to be fighting and getting my AD kills. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stupidly obsessive about getting into engages, but I would rather be in the mix than sitting there being a zoning tool! However, recently, my AD buddy has been working with me on not being so eager to be in the fight, and to wait for the right moment. Engages are a tricky thing to do properly- timing, landed skills, winning trades, ganks…a lot goes into a well thought-out engage! Being willing to wait those extra couple of seconds to start something can save your life, and make for simpler engages in the future.

3) Stop. Blaming. Your. Team. Yes, we all know how solo queue is. Your top lane goes 0/5 as Garen, and you are left wondering how anyone could lose such a simple lane. BUT! Blaming someone else doesn’t make the game outcome any…better. And going further, you don’t LEARN anything about YOUR game play by blaming someone else. Sure, you could have a good game, and someone else on your team can really be sucking it up…but look at yourself. Is there ANYTHING you could do better? Could you be trading better? Roaming better? Calling out timers better? Warding for other lanes? CSing better? Look at yourself first. It’s not a matter of who sucks the most in solo queue- it’s a matter of who learns the most from their mistakes and transfers that knowledge to the next game.

4) Don’t be afraid to take a break! For me, a break is turning on my music, playing my guitar, watching some TV, going to see friends, or just hanging out in skype with my friends. Losing games isn’t the end of the world, but when you get mad at losing games, what are you accomplishing? You probably are giving up before the end of the game, which means you have lost patience. You aren’t learning anything, except how to beat your head against a brick wall…which means you are getting effectively zero solid practice in. Plus, there is a life outside of League of Legends! I know, I know, call me blasphemous! Heresy! LoL is an AMAZING game, but there are other things out there to do! Your mind needs a break sometimes, give it that!

Maybe I sound like I am on a soapbox, or like a preacher in front of the church…but I’m not trying to be that way! I am simply writing down what I have done to make myself better recently, and these changes have 100% raised my rating. I probably will write more blogs in the future…they might not all be like this, but I will attempt to give insight into what I am learning. Because I am constantly learning in this game, everyone should be!

-Daniel “Professor T1tty” Morgan

The safest, fastest season 2 jungle path on a blue starting
jungler was this (shown in white in the picture): Wolves, Blue Buff, Wraiths,
Wolves again, Red, Wraiths again (hit level 4), gank. If executed perfectly,
the jungler could gank at about 4.5 minutes into the game, depending on which
champion he was playing.

As of preseason 2, the Hunter’s Machete exists, increasing jungle
speed. The new path is shown in blue in the picture. The extra damage this item
grants allows essentially any jungler to down both of his/her buffs and hit
level 3 within 3 minutes – at full health – cutting the
intermediate trip to wolves and wraiths out of the picture. This has deep
implications. We’re now seeing junglers gank with both buffs a full minute-and-a-half earlier than in Season 2, while solo lanes are only level 2, and hence less escapable. We’re seeing earlier action, more warding at start, and more importance placed on the jungler in the early game.

It has also become more beneficial to farm. The jungle minions are harder to kill, but
they’re worth more gold overall. It’s also now harder to counterjungle, since
camps such as wraiths usually take longer to kill, and they’re usually warded
by the enemy.

Ward starts have become standard in Season 3. Bot lane starts with more wards than ever, thanks to the new utility masteries. Since boots were nerfed and the base
movespeed of all champions was buffed, alternate item starts which include
wards have opened for mid laners and top laners, such as 2 wards 9 pots, flask
ward pot, and faerie charm ward 6 pot. This contrasts significantly with the
boots 3 pot start that was so common in every lane in season 2. Now, early ward
coverage is much greater than before.

It’s becoming harder to invade, harder to counterjungle, and harder to gank than
ever before. Junglers have replied by finding a faster jungle route which
allows an earlier and harder gank. It’s also crucial to pay attention to the
number of wards the enemy starts with. If the enemy top comes to lane with a
flask and one potion, he definitely warded before he came to lane. Noting
information like this will win you the early game as a Season 3 jungler.

The lesson for junglers is: be even swifter, gank even harder early, and be ever
vigilant of enemy warding.

So, why is Riot changing the rating system ? The Elo rating system was working. Best players were in the top and even if there was a bit of criticism, mainly because of the fact that the elo rating system was created for individual games (such as chess), the system was stable and working. Unfortunatly, it caused some people to be scared to play ranked games, because of the risk of dropping elo. With the new system, a Gold player will never fall to Silver, even if he loses one hundred games in a row. This will probably increase the number of ranked games played everyday as people who are at the bottom of their tier will have nothing to lose by playing.

Also, the new rating system will actually be much easier to exploit in terms of marketing. Having a Top Tier called “Challengers” is a great way to separate “good teams” from “top teams” in people’s mind, exactly in the same way than SC2′s Grand Masters.

Changing the elo system will make elo boosting impossible, as there is no more elo. Well, of course it will still be possible to do “League Boost” or “Division Boost“, but it won’t be as simple as before. I have received countless emails about what would happen to our current boosting service. All I know is that LoL Academy will try to keep on doing boosts with the new change, but we just don’t know yet how it will work. We currently don’t have enough details from Riot. Orders are staying open until the new rating system is on the Public Beta Environement (PBE).

So many League of Legends related websites use the term “elo” in their website’s name (elohell.net, elophant.com, etc). As the term “elo” won’t be linked to LoL anymore, these websites will lose all the benefits they got from having “elo” in their name. Of course, this applies to the numerous competitors who basically copied my website and who all have “elo” in their name. They all bought domain names with “elo” in it in order to rank easily on Google on terms like “elo boost”, but now all their work will be going down the drain. Needless to say, I am quite happy about that.

Finally, I can say that even if I believe the new rating system won’t be as precise as elo, it will bring a lot of good changes with it. The Elo system was already in place before ranked games even existed (people had an hidden normal Elo), and never really changed. With the new system, Riot will be able to control everything and make the game more competitive for casual gamers, who will see a challenge in “getting to next tier” instead of simply winning +12 elo after each game.

Riot didn’t give us any release date yet, but as the pre-season has already been running for two months, I think this is going to be applied soon, probably in 2 or 3 patches.

RIP Elo

New Caster Items

With the preseason came a couple new caster items, some reworked ones plus some minor changes for old ones.

The old caster items Rabadon’s Deathcap and Rod of Ages had their combine cost and stats lowered, this means you’ll get more items in a shorter time which is a good thing! You also get more utility (actives/passives), more build choices with varied stats and about the same AP you would get before the changes. The only downside is that your very lategame (full build or near that) will be a bit weaker.

A few other old items instead got reworked:

Archangel’s Staff also had his cost and stats lowered, however it now upgrades into Seraph’s Embrace when you reach 750/750 extra mana from the passive. The upgrade gives the staff an active ability that drains 25% of your mana to shield you for the same amount. This item is a great addition for champions like Ryze and Kassadin who needs a lot of mana and can benefit from the shield.

Deathfire Grasp has been reworked, it now gives 100 flat AP, 15% cd reduction and it has a new single target active ability that does 15% of the enemies health in magic damage, and then amplifies magic damage on the target by 20% for five seconds. This change makes Deathfire Grasp a very good choice for champions with high single target burst damage that wants to quickly kill threats on the enemy team.

Lich Bane has gotten slightly changed. It now builds from Sheen and a Blasting Wand and as such no longer has any magic resist. The passive has been altered into 80 base damage plus 75% of your AP from the old 100% of your AP, this means lich bane’s passive is now stronger than before until you surpass 320 AP. I can see a lot of champions using it as a core item now, because you don’t need to build your AP beforehand to enjoy the passive from it.

Among the new caster items the most notable one is Liandry’s Torment. Linadry’s upgrades from haunting guise and retains the same health and magic penetration, the upgrade gives a base 50 AP and a strong passive that burns enemies depending on their current health if you hit them with a spell, the damage is doubled if affected enemy has their movement speed impaired. This item is good on most casters though it’s less effective on those that rely on heavy burst.

There is also a few more niche items like Iceborn Gauntlet which gives a bit of everything (mana/armor/ap/cd-reduc) as well as an area of effect slow sheen effect (looks like a good Ryze item to me). Also, the new “supportish” caster items like Twin Shadows and Shard of True Ice that are made for supports but can be picked up situationally.

All in all the item rework gives midlane casters more variety, adaptability and utility at the cost of slightly worse stats with a finished build.

Masteries

The new offensive masteries are about the same as last patch apart from “Spellsword” which adds 5% of your AP in magic damage when you autoattack, it doesn’t do a lot of damage but it’s a good mastery for only one point. The largest change for casters is the new utility tree, if you decide to go something like 21/0/9 which is pretty standard, you have a few choices to make in the utility tree.

There are some good masteries like manaregen, movement speed outside of combat, less cooldown on summoner spells and longer buff durations. There are also more situational choices like increasing your maximum mana and the very interesting “biscuiteer” if you need some extra early regeneration. As for the defensive tree it doesn’t really offer anything new, there is no longer any purpose in getting the -2 damage from minions since well… it no longer reduces minions damage, but only jungle monsters damage.

Champions

There has been a large increase of AD champions in the mid lane since last patch, the new items (mainly The Black Cleaver) has made AD assassins like Talon and Pantheon viable for midlane again. Time will tell if they will fall off when they make The Black Cleaver unique, become standard (probably not) or just become more viable as situational picks than before.

The new items and masteries are also increasing the pool of viable caster champions. Some champions like Ryze are already seeing more play and strong itembuilds, we will have to see what champions benefits best from these changes.

Gameplay

There are many changes to the gameplay in mid. First of all the early-game of a midlaner is now much safer due to several changes. Since Boots of Speed are now less useful you can start with multiple Sight Wards and regenerative items like Crystalline Flask and Health Potions, this allows you to have a ward on each side for a short time or ward one side for a long time allowing you to be map-aware and avoid incoming ganks. Another thing is that the jungler now has to commit more if he wants to gank you with the recent jungle changes. Jungle is now much harder, but clearing camps is more rewarding, making it less likely the jungler will attempt to gank.

Another change that impacts mid alot is how they have changed wraiths and wolves, the big monster in these groups are now tougher, so the midlaner now has to commit more to killing them which can take longer time therefore becomes less interesting.

Lastly, killing minions now gives less gold, but the passive gold generation is increased. Farming is still very important but roaming and aggressive plays are much more rewarding than before.

Thank you for reading my views on the preseason changes, don’t hesitate to comment below, I’ll do my maximum to answer (smart) questions.

 With season two ending in a few days, I have decided to open a blogging section on LOL Academy, which is going to focus on quality rather than quantity. I’m going to post anything related to the website (new features, discounts, etc) while coaches will make gaming-oriented posts.

But first, let me talk to you a little bit about my website. I opened LOL Academy about 8 months ago for a friend of mine who wanted to find customers for his elo boosting service. Few weeks and few customers later, my friend kind of got “bored” of boosting and wanted to stop doing it. At this point in time, LOL Academy’s future was looking grim, and I basically had two choices. Either completly closing the website and forgetting about it, or keeping it and finding good players who could elo boost and had experience doing it.