So new to league of legends, literally sitting in my first queue 15+ minutes (is this normal?)

Been doing some research & answered most of my questions with taking the time to learn however what champions should I avoid buying for the most part due to high "ban rate" at level 30 when I queue up for ranked games.

Also I want to have a nice bag full of top, jungle & support characters. Which ones would you suggest I pick up first to avoid spending points & money on champions that really have no place in team comp during ranked games.

Would appreciate someone with a higher playing level to answer these as to I plan to breeze through the leveling process & lower ranked games level.

I've been competitive gaming for years now.

Also how do you go about finding clans that are recruiting for competitive hardcore ranked? I wanna try to locate one while I'm leveling and pay my dues by the time im level 30.

Thanks appreciate your time!


If anyone wants to watch my stream & give me points its http://www.twitch.tv/5knuckles

Bump up for answers.

Just play what you like. You have a while until you get to level 30, and "viability" of champions change all the time.

Oh yeah, 15 minutes is not normal. Not sure what's going on there, unless you're talking about the login queue. Sometimes, due to an influx of players trying to log in at once (i.e. right after a patch), it can be 20 minutes or sometimes even 3-4 hours. If you're just trying to play a game, it shouldn't take that long.

You say you plan on "breezing" through the lower level games. You won't be. No matter how good you think you are, you have 9 other people to worry about. The game will constantly be matching you up with people more appropriated to your skill level, so if you think you're good, you're just going to be matched up with better and better people until you get shot down. I know, encouraging words, huh? But seriously. Take your time with the game. It's no rush: there is a big learning curve and you need all the time you can get.

Another thing: try to figure things out on your own. There is no champion you should ever "avoid". If anything, you should play the champ yourself to see why they should be "avoided" or why they are always banned. Just reading is not enough.

Ive been playing Malzahar & wrecking face

Fifteen minutes is extremely unusual. If your win rate is very, very high due to your past as a competitive gamer (like if you're 20-0 or something crazy like that), it could be struggling to find a match for you and giving up, but otherwise I'd think that's a bug or server trouble. Summoner's Rift/blind pick is orders of magnitude more popular than the other maps/modes, which could play a role if you're trying to get the others.

For top champions, some common/powerful tops right now include Olaf, Jax, Elise, Jayce, Darius, or Wukong, but there's many viable ones - it can be a pretty diverse role. For support, Lulu, Taric, Sona, Nunu, or Zyra are among the most popular at the moment, with Blitzcrank being a support who's very frequently banned at mid-Elo. I'd say to take whatever champions might be popular with kind of a grain of salt, though - things can change very quickly, and it could be very different by the time you hit 30, even if that only takes you a month or so.

The only champions I'd outright tell you to avoid are Heimerdinger and Karma, which are slated to be reworked - both are considered mediocre, though may have some use in very niche situations.

Garen is an oped top (450ip).
Alistar is a free support which you can obtain by subscribing to LOL youtube channel. Soraka and Nunu are aslo good support characters (450ip).
Amumu is a good jungler to start with (1350ip).

Alistar Link
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/s...hained-alistar

I've already grabbed the free Alistar & waiting on support to hand me my fre Tristana (spelling?), but thank you for going over the edge and providing that for me.

I am about 17-1? So that may be the issue it went from 20min down to 15 up to 23 now on average. I was thinking about picking up Malzahar, Lulu, Olaf, Trundle, Diana, Graves, Varus, Sona, Lux, Taric & Volibear as my immediate mash up. I've gone over skills & they seem to have a nice kit with passives.

Any of these I should shy away from?

According to lolking, you've been playing Twisted Treeline, the 3v3 map. That might explain the obnoxiously long queue times. Summoner's Rift is the most popular game mode by far. Matchmaking is having a hard time finding other low level players who are also queued for TT. I don't know if 15 minutes is normal for TT or Dominion, but if you want your games to start within 1 or 2 minutes, start playing SR instead.

I don't think there are any champions that you should shy away from. It's worth playing with any and every champ so that you can understand how they work, because you might have to play against one someday. The less popular a champion is, the more skill you should expect from the person playing them. Mediocre Dariuses, Ezreals, Evelynns, and Sonas are commonplace. When someone picks Poppy, Galio, Viktor, or Trundle, it's a good bet that they know that champion very well and you should be wary about laning against them. The perceived difference in power between the "worst" champs and the "best" champs is not so great compared to the power that comes with mastery of a champ.

I would also like to echo what the first reply said about "breezing" through low level games. This isn't CoD where you can rambo your way to victory regardless of whether your team knows how to play. Even if you do really well while laning and get a lot of kills, the game is only won by destroying the Nexus and that's not something you can do by yourself. You will find that there are many games where one person is doing very well with 2 or 3 times more kills than deaths, and yet their team still loses. This is especially true for champions like Shaco and LeBlanc who are designed to easily get kills early in the game but contribute less to teamfights late in the game.

Firstly you've been playing Twisted Treeline.

If you're looking to play competitively at 30... there really isn't a competitive scene for 3's, the game's just not balanced around 3v3's. I suggest playing Summoner's Rift exclusively, maybe dipping into Twisted Treeline or Dominion when you feel like some League but are absolutely burnt out or just want to mess around.

That also explains your queue problems, very few people at level 4 are playing Twisted Treeline.

The Champions you listed are all fine Champs. As was said above, just about the only champions I would steer you away from are Heimerdinger and Karma. Just about every champion other than those two are viable in ranked 5's. Some are easier to carry a team with, some aren't. But there are no champions that doom your team just by their very presence. Karma's sitting around a 37% win rate, and I'd bet that fully half of all Karma games are someone picking Karma just to troll their team, which has far more of an impact on their team's performance than Karma's actual power.

By the time you hit 30 there will probably have been several balance changes, but the best champions to own in order to work your way up the solo queue ladders are champs that can carry a whole team (Akali, Shaco, Twisted Fate, Katarina, Kha'zix etc.) Plenty of champs that fall into that category wouldn't really be seen at the pro level, but that doesn't mean you can't get good with them and blast your way above 2k ELO.

As for joining a "hardcore clan" this isn't CoD or CS1.6, the closest thing you'll find to that is a ranked 5's team. And generally the best way to get into one of those is to either be friends with people that are League players who want to play ranked with people they know, or to get yourself known by being pretty high on the solo queue 5's ladder.

Word of advice though, if you want to play competitively once you get up to 30, you'll want to be a master of Summoner's Rift-- no one cares about TT or Dominion, they're just alternate game modes like ARAM to allow people to play a slightly different feeling League.

Add me ingame if you want and I can explain more another time.