Terminology / Glossary

There's a lot of short hand involved in League of Legends, being familiar with terms will help you get used to the game a lot quicker because players use it varying from summoner level 1 all the way up to summoner level 30.

SS, sometimes MIA, this is refering to their laning opponent as being off the map. If you have no vision of them at outer turret, just type into chat SS and most people will understand your lane is missing. If you're calling a missing champion in another lane, ping the mini map at their location. This will urge them to tell you if they recalled or you just missed them dying.

CS, creep score. This is the number on the right side of the scoreboard (tab key). It represents the number of last hits you've gotten on minions. This is important because Creep Score is effectively worth more than killing champions. You want to aim for 200 CS by the 20 minute mark, which is missing just about 34~ minions. Creep Score also includes jungle camps, so potentially with that score ideal you'll be missing anywhere between 20~30% of all available Creepscore.

RE, this is used one of two ways and it's one that I hate seeing because some people think it means REturned and others think it means REcalled. It's mostly paired with or after SS, to alert players that their lane went back to base so be careful of ganks along their lane. If they say RE alone, it means that their opposition returned to lane.

B, it's the short cut for Recall, it means either recall or fall back. If used in a team fight, it means fall back and it'll often be paired with the V ping shortcut to fall back. If used outside of a fight it means go back to base, I'll cover your lane until you get back.

Blue Pill, it's a term used for the recall function, I think it originated from DotA, but I don't really know.

V, not used in speech, but it's the retreat general ping. Click V and click on the map or mini map for a yellow alert ping.

G, not used in speech, this is the general ping short cut, otherwise it's Alt+Left Click. G allows you to select a target to put a target above their head, very imperative while ganking a lane so you can just G-Click a laner to let them know you're going to focus on them.

ZZ, often used. As far as I know, it was based on "I'm feeling sleepy, zzzz" But it's often used as a "my mistake, I don't know why I did that" as if they were tired and they're the type of stupid mistakes you'd make if you were falling asleep. In other words it's a way of saying "I'm sorry, my bad" without actually having to say it. Other people like to say that it's based off a sound that Koreans make, but I mean, who cares about Koreans.

GG, this stands for Good Game. It's polite to say it because you and 9 other people just put up to an hour of their life into a match on an online game. In other words, it's like when you were a kid and joined a local sports team and they lined you up to shake hands and say good game, it's called sportsmanship. Even if you had a terrible game or you completely rocked them, it helps to not demoralize them.

WP, this stands for Well Played. It's again, part of being polite. It helps people to strive to be better, because even if they didn't play well, most people wont delude themselves enough to think that they played well and give them a chance to reflect on their mistakes. It helps to promote a better community of players that rage less.

GLHF, this is short hand for Good Luck, Have Fun. It helps people to not take the game as seriously. The nicer you are the nicer your enemies will be. There's a lot of debate about being polite and demoralizing enemies since a lot of people play badly when you put them in a bad mood, but that method leads to raging. This is covered more in the etiquette section, just added it into the terminology so people can look over it and understand the acronyms.

Feed or Feeding, it's not always deliberate, but it's when you die to a champion multiple times. Feeding isn't exclusively in reference to dying to champions, if you leave a champion alone in a lane for long enough they'll get fed on champion kills. Insinuating that a player is fed is saying that they've gotten lots and lots of gold. If somebody tells you that you're feeding, it means "Please play more cautiously."

AD, Attack Damage, this affects your basic attack damage and some champions have AD scaling with physical damage based skills. In almost every case, AD translates to physical damage dealt, which checks Armor for mitigation. This is the go to stat for auto attack carries.

AP, Ability Power, this affects most champions skill damage if it deals magic damage, there are obvious exceptions that scale with alternate stats such as Armor, Mana or Health. This is primarily stacked on mages or general AP carries. In most cases, if a skill does magical damage it scales with Ability Power. One additional note is that when attacking structures, you either deal your mitigated Attack Damage based on the structure's defense, or 40% of your ability power with each basic attack.

AR, this is short for Armor, it reduces physical damage from skills dealing physical damage or basic attacks. This includes all minion damage and turret damage.

MR, this is short for Magic Resistance, it reduces magical based damage from skills and skill affects that effect some basic attacks. Only champions deal magic damage.

TB or OB stand for Their Blue or Our Blue respectively, each map has one blue buff camp and it's important to keep control of it. This is through wards and counter jungling. They spawn 5 minutes after the last monster at the camp is destroyed. It's always good to post current time +5 minutes so your allies know when to help counter jungle again, and it's a good idea to ward it within 2 minutes of it respawning. Generally blue buff is donated to mid in middle and late game.

TR or OR stand for Their Red or Our Red, same general philosophy with the above, except that it's not as common that red buff is donated as much as it's stolen by top lane (purple side) or bottom lane (enemy jungler). Red buff is often the deciding factor in ganks as well as winning top lane, so it's important to keep an eye on your red buff. It spawns 5 minutes after the last minion is destroyed.

Counter Jungling, this is when you steal enemy jungle camps to starve their jungler and in the case of middle game dominance when you have most of their lanes pushed to the inhibitor turrets, taking precious experience away from them while you continue to snowball.

Snowballing, stop thinking Clerks. It's the most literal definition of placing a snowball on top of a snowy hill then rolling it down, or in other words, it becomes unstoppable after it gains momentum. We currently play in the snowball meta, where early advantage items reign supreme and most matches are either dominant in one team's favor or the other. Not all champions can snowball, but the ones that can often make use of multiple doran's items for bulk and go for the big items such as Rabadon's Deathcap, Infinity Edge or The Bloodthirster by the 20 minute mark.

Carry, this is a general term that many people have argued over it's true meaning for years. For those of you not familiar with team based MMORPGs, if you carry somebody, you're the driving force in that group. It could range from dealing the highest DPS, not taking any damage as a tank or healing a terrible group that takes too much damage. In League of Legends, Carry is the broad term for DPS classes because generally at different points in the game, each different role will have the most impact. For such an example, Mages are the strongest carries in early game, AD carries are the best in middle game and the bruisers tend to change the outcome of the late game.

Pusher, this is a champion sub classification based on how well a champion can push a lane and destroy a tower. It's generally put on champions that can increase their damage output greatly and drop a structure quicker than others. This includes Alistar's Passive, Rammus' ultimate, Nidalee's power surge and Ziggs' kit in general. In short, they're champions that you can't leave unattended in lane for too long.

Assassin, this is a champion sub classification that is generally only given to champions that have a gap closer and multiple damage skills and are focused on bursting down a single champion then losing all usefulness. Of course it doesn't work like that (coughakalicough) but that was their original intent based on Riot's input on multiple occassions.

Stealth, this is a sub classification for champions that can go invisible (stealthed) for a short duration. The only two champions in the game with dedicated stealth spells are Evelyn and Twitch, every other form of stealth is extremely short term. The way the mechanic works is that it'll either instantly stealth them for a short duration stealth, or give them a timer before they go stealthed which is delayed by roughly a second every time they're hit. Taking damage doesn't typically break stealth, where dealing damage will.

Fighter, formerly known as Brawler it's a sub classification that's given to champions with some form of either sustain, shield or direct heal that tends to give them an upper hand in fights.

Recommended, this is a champion sub classification given to easy to use champions, I don't necessarily agree with all of riot's picks, but they are still very viable selections.

Ranged, this is attached to champions whose default attacks are ranged. Not all ranged attacks are the same, where Ashe has a default 600 range, Graves' auto attacks are 525. Not all mages are ranged, and champions with repeatable ranged skills aren't added to this list.

Support, this is a champion sub classification given to champions who can support others, this ranges from Zilean's Passive, Teemo's ultimate to Sona's auras and heals. I think this should have it's name changed to Utility, but whatever.

Mage, this is a champion classification that is usually reserved for AP carries. While almost entirely all of the original 40 champions had AP scaling, there are some champions that just weren't worth using AP on instead of AD. This list of Mages is pretty reliable, however.

Tanks, their role is just about the same in any other MMORPG, they initiate and do their best to hold agro. The problem is that there's no hidden threat table and only three champions in the game have a hard taunt debuff (Rammus, Shen and Ahri) that forces enemies to attack them, so they need to fit into one of multiple tank scenarios which are;
* AP Tank, these tanks focus on AP/Defensive split items, this works best if they have decent to high scaling on their abilities so they deal high damage while remaining bulky.
* Off-Tank, these tanks focus on one or two offensive items and many defensive items, this is the outdated version of the bruiser, where most Off-Tanks will build into Randuin's Omen and Force of Nature instead of Wit's end and Atma's Impaler for more defensive stats.
* Bruisers, these tanks focus on defensive items that promote their offensive stats, the biggest example is through use of Atma's Impaler with items such as Frozen Mallet, Warmog's Armor and Wit's End for attaining 150 AR and MR and almost 4,000 HP.
* CC Tank, these tanks focus completely on defensive items and use their CC and Team mates to win team fights instead of offensive attributes. Key items on a CC tank include Shurelya's Reverie and Randuin's Omen for initiation and escape prevention.

Steroids, these are skills that greatly increase a character's important stats for a short duration. This ranges from Tristana's massive attack speed buff, Rammus' massive AR/MR buff and Singed's stupidly powerful ultimate which raises just about every one of his stats aside from ArP and Spell Penetration.

True Damage, this is damage that ignores defensive mitigation and typically doesn't scale. True Damage is attained from the Blessing of the Lizard Elder, Olaf's Reckless Swing, the activation on Irelia's Hiten Style and Vayne's Quicksilver bolts, I can't think of any more True Damage off the top of my head, but those are very large threats none the less.

Juke or Juking, according to urban dictionary (since merriam webster sucks) is a football move, where you quickly dodge to fake out an opponent. When used in League of Legends, it's when you either a.) dodge out of the way of a skillshot or b.) use the cover of brush to come in one way and exit the same way when they leave, since a lot of people will continue going the original way.

Brush, this is the grass around the map. Being within the grass gives you brush stealth (not a real term). If you attack an enemy allied unit (as in purple if you're blue or vice versa) then it'll reveal you in the brush. You can attack neutral allied minions (jungle camps) in brush without being revealed. If an enemy has a ward in brush try to lead minions into brush to see if they break their aggression, if they do, it's warded. Otherwise use brush to escape enemies or minion agro. Entering brush there's roughly a second to two second delay before it reveals the brush area.

Skillshot, there's a lot of debate about this term. For the sake of the common folk, I'll refer to any skill that doesn't select a target upon cast as a skill shot. I personally prefer to categorize them as;
* Skillshot, any skill that fires a shot.
* Skillblast, any skill that provides an AoE blast at an area.
* Skillnuke, any skill that hits everything along it's path.
* Skillcone, any skill that fires in a cone like fashion.

Interceptable, it means that a skill can be intercepted by any enemy or neutral unit, while there are some choice skills that will go through enemies and continue to deal damage, a vast majority will hit the first target and stop.

Base Race, this is where, at the start of the game each team will sit in an opposite lane and 5v0 one lane to see who can drop the enemy nexus quicker. In late game, it's where each team races to destroy the nexus with their current advantage.

Troll Game, this is where both teams send all 5 champions mid in Summoner's Rift, both suffer a severe EXP cut and one team tends to snowball while the other tends to lose. It's a blast to play the champions for what their innate potential and not their feed based potential.

Baiting, I'll get more into it later but it's making a champion (preferably your support or ally with least amount of kills) show up in the area's zone of sight and fake them out, luring them towards them. This results in jumping lone members taking the bait or splitting the group for a strategical advantage. Don't take bait, greed is bad. There's also other types of baiting including tower dive baiting and heal baiting for prime examples, where you lure somebody into a bad situation because you have a trick up your sleeve.