The Basics and Getting Started

First things first, play the advanced tutorial match. If you're extremely clueless to the way RTS games work, start at the basic tutorial. You'll get to choose from one of three different types of champions and get a rough feel for how the game works. The way the advanced tutorial is supposed to work is to send you top and lane with Master Yi bot, since it already sends one character to mid and two to bot, you can go to top or middle, but most of the time you only send one champion to middle.

Alright, did you finish your tutorial? Good. What are some things that we've learned?
* It's a reverse game of tug-of-war, where we push instead of pull.
* We can't target structures with spells, we can only auto attack them.
* There are skulls in the jungle on the map.
* These turrets die really fast, especially the closer in we are.
* All units provide a sight radius in the fog of war.
* Everything breaks off aggression in brush.
* It's customary to recall right behind turrets.
* Turrets hit really hard.
* The enemy summoner platform hits really hard.
* Everybody stays in their lane forever.

Now, it's time to play a Co-Op Vs. AI game to find out parts of which we just learned are completely false.
* It's still a reverse game of tug-of-war.
* We still can't target structures with spells.
* These skulls in the jungle represent monster camps.
* The turrets don't die half as fast as they did before, they had reduced health in the tutorial.
* All units still provide a sight radius, and I just realized this free to play champion has an extension that provides sight.
* Some enemy champions didn't break aggression in the brush and killed me.
* I tried recalling from right behind a turret and the enemy killed me.
* Turrets still hit hard, but I realized that they wont prioritize me if I don't hit an enemy champion.
* The enemy summoner platform still hits hard.
* The enemy bots wandered after we destroyed a turret, and we ended up losing the match because none of us could deal with all five of them at once.

Now, that was a little bit theatrical, but I hope you understand my point. The tutorial is bad, and you'll learn just about everything you need to know just by playing the game. It's a long process, I know, but it's worth it in the end.

Now, I'll give you a general outline of the game phases.

- Pre-Game, pick champions, spells and rune/mastery pages.
* Pick Champion.
* Pick Summoner Spells.
* Pick Rune Page.
* Pick Mastery Page, you can edit this in the champion selection phase.
- Early Game, 0:00-15:00~
* Suggest Base Race to enemy team. If they don't fall for your shenanigans, go ahead to next step.
* Pick a Starting Item(s)
* Protect your jungle from invasion, give leashes to junglers.
* Go to your lane, focus on last hitting without auto attacking more than once per minion.
* Poke enemies, play super aggressively to zone them out of creep score.
* Eventually farm passively when you run low on mana or health potions or general lane sustain in comparison to enemy damage (I.E. losing trades)
* Want to start warding as a group effort.
* Help with map objectives such as Dragon or stealing enemy Buffs.
- Mid Game, 15:00-25:00~
* Go back to base, purchase at least your first big item.
* Try to force a dragon now if you haven't already.
* Go to enemy lanes to help gank overextending foes, otherwise back to lane.
* Farming becomes much more passive, where you'll poke and heal it off.
* Take advantage of situations where you can kill a foe.
* Focus on destroying your enemy's outer turret for freedom to roam.
* When roaming, do in this order; Punish nearby overextending lane by ganking, steal enemy jungle buffs, steal enemy jungle camps, take your own jungle camps. You wont do all of that while roaming, generally you only have a 1 minute window before your lane is pushed back to your turret and in trouble.
* Want to suggest one player to pick up an Oracles (usually support) and suggest counter-warding if enemy team has purchased any wards, otherwise ignore this step.
- Late Game, 25:00-40:00~
* Most of your ideal item kit is complete now, closer to level 18.
* This is the general team fight phase, where if your team is stronger you can split push, otherwise you'll want to trade team fights to secure objectives such as Dragon and/or Baron.
* Each lane has specific values, where baron > turrets > buffs > dragon > killing lonely enemies.
* Initiate during opportunities, focus in team fights in the general order of; Ranged AD > Mage > Bruiser or Support > Tank, obvious varying threat values do apply based on how individuals have been fed or farming.
* Win a team fight, push in to an inhibitor, where Mid > Top/Bottom, and if you have a minion wave at top or bottom while just barely taking down outer turret in mid it's more valuable to push in multiple lanes through split pushing. Each turret is worth Gold and Exp, Inhibitors just make it harder for your enemies to push back.
* Try to secure two lanes destroyed to inhibitor while passively defending them and encouraging team fights, where you take an enemy turret with each squabble victory.
* If losing team fights, immediately go back towards base and defend any threatened lane as best you can.
- Late Late Game, 40:00~90:00~
* Everybody's kit is complete, this is where smart playing takes most priority and there are no more hyper carries.
* This is also where both bases are almost completely destroyed, where you can't overextend easily or send a champion out to backdoor their nexus with the threat of a 5v4 approaching.
* Wards are important but most likely there's either no inventory space or being cleared just as fast as they're put down, one team has the advantage until they win a team fight then it's game over.
- Late-Late-Late game, 90:00+
* Sell everything, buy six boots, base race. (sarcasm, in a way)

After outlining what can happen, I need to place emphasis that it wont always happen. I'm writing this guide as if you're a novice reading through blindly, you'll learn what you need to learn, this is based more around the general outline. In low level games, getting map objectives don't tend to matter as much.

Nobody expects as much out of you when you're at these low levels, more or less this is a time to learn and get better. Just like with anything in life, you can't expect to be the very best starting out. You'll get there.

Things I want you to learn

- IP/Exp rates, the winning team gets a bonus (this shouldn't be in the game) and the overall reward is based on time spent in the game, where the longer the game goes on, the more rewards you get per minute.
- Hidden ELO, there's an elaborate system of Hidden ELO for normal games where you'll be ranked and not be able to see your rank, and the matchmaking queue will put you into groups based on how well you perform.
- This is a time consuming game, so learn how to enjoy your time spent on it. Whether it's a bot game a day to get your daily or a couple normal games a night to learn, enjoy yourself or else it's no longer a game.
- Pinging is important. Alt click on the mini map for a blue ping, this is the quickest method for alerting allies of something coming. When you come to gank a lane, click G and select a champion to target them. Click V and then click anywhere on the map to do a retreat ping. Master the pings.
- Map awareness is key, I read somewhere that a man trained himself to glance at his minimap whenever he got a last hit. This is a great way to train map awareness, otherwise think of it like driving, every 7 seconds you check your mirrors.
- Map vision removes pressure, while junglers exert pressure based on their gank potential, having vision of the map to see roaming champions will give you a huge advantage. If you're on bottom lane and the enemy jungler just ganked top, push hard and ping for your middle to come in if they can to help push the tower and dive.
- Play intelligently, not all champions play the same, and especially in the case of jungle routes, if you know where a champion is going to go in most cases you have the advantage to gank them and get an early lead. This is in part setting traps.
- Steal! Taking jungle camps from enemies is taking precious gold and experience from them. While in late game the experience from jungle camps doesn't tend to matter as much, their gold values still hold true, each camp is worth about half a minion wave.
- Some champions have visual queues, ranging from Irelia's four blades floating above her shoulders representing her blade surge charges or Annie's ready to stun passive through a circle of energy around her waist.
- Most champions have sound queues, while it's hard to react to them all in time, you can typically hear what they'll do before they do it, this include's Graves cocking his shotgun for buckshot, or the rumbling that Malphite makes as he charges in for his ultimate. This is a visual and audial game.

tarting Items, what's really the best

I try to always start with Health Potions with a core item to something I wish to build. The only exception is for Ranged AD carries who have range and can justify a Doran's Blade.

The significance of Health Potions is major at low levels and tends to fade off by later levels. What this means is that when you get knocked to 100 health by falling for your opponent's trap at level 1, you can play passively at tower while a health potion restores 150 health instead of having to go to base. In my opinion, it's not viable to start without health potions in more advanced play.

But for the other aspect, I typically only start with Boots, Faerie Charm or Cloth Armor, where boots are the prefered choice because your laning opponent probably has boots and a 50 speed advantage is major, followed by Faerie Charms being almost exclusively for supports for a mp5 item while being able to buy up to 5 sight wards. Cloth armor is in reserve for a lane where you feel you'll be harassed enough to justify 5 health potions instead of 3.

There are alternate choices for certain champions starting items including Meki's Pendant or Null Magic Mantle (galio only) if you build into Chalice, or Sapphire Crystal if you build into Catalyst the Protector or Tear of the Goddess first. Finally you can start Regrowth Pendant if you plan to build into a Philosopher's Stone, alternatively Doran's Shield is a justified first purchase if you'd build into Regrowth Crystal but don't want the Philosopher's Stone, it provides a good amount of health, defense and HP5, you just have to passively sit at tower for longer amounts of time because you start without a health potion.

Doran's wonderful items

They're for early game advantages. The stat per gold ratios are massive, while they build into nothing and sell for a reduced cost, they're worth getting up to 3, depending on if you're winning or losing your lane, where if you're winning you'll typically cap off at 2 and if you're losing you'll need the third.

In the example of Vayne, she's a fairly low health somewhat squishy ranged champion with decent chase and escape mechanisms. If you start off with a Doran's Blade, you get 10 AD, 3% Life Steal and 100 HP for 475g, if you purchase three for 1425g that's roughly 14~ minion waves, with another 4~ minion waves to get your boots you have 9% Life Steal (12% with masteries), 30 AD and 300 HP which is huge in early game.

To get all of those stats through other items, it would cost 1245g for the three longswords to get 30 AD, 425g for the Vampiric Sceptre to get the life steal and 950g for two Ruby Crystals for the health for a grand total of 2620g or 27~ minion waves sans boots.

When it comes to casters, boots are still a priority to start with, but it provides you with 15 AP, 100 Health and 5 MP5, which is more than 9 greater seals of Replenishment, that's a lot. The significance is that in the caster lane, you desperately need that health to remove your initial squish factor, starting roughly 100 HP behind melee champions, you're two full rotations and a gank away from death until your teens.

Finally Doran's Shield is a specialty item, you take it if you're alone facing two enemy champions, one of which being an AD carry. Otherwise it's almost always wasted gold. Ideally you can start with it, but you have to play cautiously because you forego health potions, which are that important.

Last Hitting at Tower

This is what a lot of people have problems with. Last hitting at tower is one of the easiest things to do for most champions for one specific reason, the tower does most of the damage. The real problem with last hitting at tower isn't the chance for failure and losing CS but because regular minions deal double damage to turrets.

To farm at tower it's essentially let the tower hit the melee creeps twice then hit it once. Hit the caster minions once and then let the tower hit them once to hit them again. There's obvious exceptions and that's the general rule, because sometimes you have a creepwave hitting enemy creeps at tower and it takes a while, but you'll get a good idea for judging creep health and your own damage.

After you get better items, at 129 Attack Damage, you can let the tower hit caster creeps once then hit them to kill them in one hit.

Pushing your creep wave to the enemy laner's tower is most effective when you have a creep wave on the way so you can afford to go back to base and walk back without worrying about missing creep score. Denying gold by forcing your creep wave to their tower is a very important skill to learn, as well as holding a creep wave outside of turret range to let them build up so they can split push for you.

When you should buy runes

Most people tell you not to buy runes until summoner level 20, but if you do any PvP without purchasing runes you're at a disadvantage. For the most part, lesser runes still add 60%~ of a greater rune's worth which is of course better than nothing.

If you feel it's wasted IP, you can always combine 5 in the rune combiner to get a random tier 2 rune. This adds no immediate significance unless you luck out, but you should definitely start buying tier 2 runes at level 10 and work towards replacing your runes at summoner level 20.

When you reach summoner level 16, you'll want to start stock piling IP with priority of tier 3 (greater) runes on your quintessences, you only can slot two at 20 but they add the most effect to your laning phase, after that Marks are typically better than Seals which are better than Glyphs, but of course this changes per role. Marks are the primary offensive glyph, but with most casters you'll want glyphs of force which are AP/level that add a lot more to your end game, especially at level 20 and you've got your bonus AP% masteries.

XP Boosts and why you shouldn't buy it

Rushing to 30 unlocks one item of significance, the Tribunal, where you can judge reports and if you guess properly, you get 5IP. Take your time, this game isn't about racing to the very end because there's so much to learn that you want to take your time because there's hundreds of thousands of people that poach off newbies at level 30.

Potential EXP at rank 30 isn't converted to IP, so it becomes a wasted stat per minute investment. The only time to ever use EXP boosts is when you're power leveling an account and in that case you're not reading this guide.

IP Boosts, when you should buy them

Alright, first things first let's put them both in their own categories. The per win IP boost is a flat reward based on game mode, starting at 149~154 in summoner's rift, scaling downwards per game mode.

Time based IP boost double the initial IP you would have gained and don't vary between modes of play and don't double the amount of the matchmaking bonus or the per win bonus or even your first win of the day bonus.

Additionally sometimes Riot enables double IP weekends, which used to be multiplicative with time based IP boosts, per win IP boost and doubled the first win of the day bonus. Since I've started playing they haven't ever enabled it, so I can't confirm personally.

But to get to the point, one boost doesn't cancel the other, it all adds up. If you do buy a time based IP boost, you'll need to play on average 4 hours per day, or get 8 wins per day to get enough IP to equate to just flat out purchasing a 6300 champion. If you have a lot of time available to play, they're amazing. If you don't, not so much.

I don't personally buy per win IP boosts, just because I don't know the math behind them. They have no time limit so they're the better purchase if you desire an IP boost that badly, but can also be earned through the Refer a Friend system, because honestly who doesn't have friends that they can carry to level 5 in bot games and then completely ignore them.

Spending RP the smart way

Every wednesday, Riot announces between 3~6 champions that will go on sale, have their RP cost cut anywhere between 50~75% off. If you're sitting on RP, save it for sales. On the other hand, I greatly suggest buying the Champion bundle because it has some of the best champions in the game in there.

I'll admit that the power of positive thinking does have a lot to do with these sales, I had purchased Graves and Lee Sin a week apart from each other, and then two weeks in a row they went on sale, which ushered me to not purchase any champions, and whenever I got a hankering to play a champion it'd go on sale.

I don't suggest buying the digital collector's pack or the gamer's choice just because they all consist of low cost champions with the exception of Rammus, who is permanently banned anyways.

Also, twice a week, skins go on sale, if you care a lot about vanity, in which some cases I admit I do as well, it's also best to save your RP for these scenarios. Get those skins while they're cheap.

Additionally it's great to buy at least your first Rune Page bundle with RP, it's expensive but it has the best cost ratios and having the extra 7 pages of padding leaves you with lots of leeway. Otherwise you can only buy rune pages by piece and they cost 6300 per.

Auras and how they work

Alright, so let's take Will of the Ancients for example. It gives you 50 AP and then provides an aura to all allies for 30 Ability Power and 20% Spell Vamp. Auras by nature are unique, but they work in one of two ways, personal aura and friendly aura.

What this means is that your WotA gives out personal Aura to you and Friendly aura to all allies, and what Betty Sue's WotA gives her Personal Aura and Friendly aura to you and all allies.

So now you have two WotA auras, one personal and one friendly, while she has the same, and the other 3 champions in your group only have the friendly aura.

In short, you get double the effect of friendly auras if you double them up.

This doesn't work with offensive auras such as Frozen Heart, which reduces all enemy champions attack speeds by 20%, where you only need one of those per team.

Unique Passive
This is simple and it confused me at first, Unique Passive means that the stat on that specific item will not stack with the exact same item. If you have two Hextech Revolvers, the Spell Vamp will not stack but the AP will.

If you have one Hextech Revolver and one Hextech Gunblae, the spell vamp percentages will stack.

If you have two hearts of gold, the health will stack yet the 5gp10 will not.

If you have a heart of gold and a philosopher's stone, the gp10s will stack.

Simple, right?

Unique Active

If you have two items with a unique active, they will both be activated when you activate one. In the case of two bilgewater cutlasses, both are activated if you activate one.

In the case of hextech gunblae and bilgewater cutlass, they wont both be activated, but they will overwrite each othr and not stack.

Champion Extensions

Some champions have extensions that are either, as I like to refer to them, type 1 or type 2. Type 1 extensions are extensions that provide vision of the map, type 2 are the kind that provide vision as they move, but not where they land.

An example of a type 1 extension would be Orianna's ball, it flies out and reveals a portion of the map where it lands.

An example of a type 2 extension would be Olaf's Axe, where it provides vision during flight and about a second thereafter but then does not provide vision.

Champions with type 1 vision are great resources for a team since they can place their extension in a bush to face check it, in the case of Trundle he can block people off from entering a bush and prevent sight through it. Maokai can place his saplings in an area that act like traps that provide sight and will go jihad on any enemy target that comes near.

Champions with type 2 extensions are a bit depressing when you think of the difference, they can still check bushes with the same skills, you just have to listen for the noise instead, otherwise it'll only reveal the terrain that your character has immediate vision of, so it's an effective way to increase your vision, but not much else. Some champions will only reveal terrain, like with Nidalee's Bushwhacker.

Juking, how you do dat

Juking is when you go into a bush, wait briefly then leave the bush in the direction you came in. Simple, right? Most people will follow you in a linear path, so if you escape the way you came in they wont expect that and will keep going straight while you make a clean escape. This is countered by attack move (a+click or shift click through a bush) as soon as they appear you agro them.

Laying in wait, why to never face check

If you face check you die. Try to think of it as a life and death scenario, because honestly late game that's how it goes. If you face check a bush to see if anybody's there, most opposing teams will be smart enough to gang up on you. This is why champion extensions are important that can provide vision of an area.

Good strategies for this are having most of your team in a bush right outside of Baron and jump the enemies as they come along, you have a severely huge upper hand.

Traps, as in skill traps

Teemo's mushrooms are one example, Caitlyn's cupcakes and Nidalee's bushwhacker are the varying degrees. Teemo's mushrooms provide just about the largest sight radius and have no limit to how many can be on the map.

This significance is that with blue buff, you can keep mushrooms in just about every bush on the map, which deal high damage as you rank the skill up and slow enemies, while the slight explosion reveals them shortly.

Caitlyn's traps are limited to three, they provide a very slight sight radius and vision when popped. It's best to lay a line in mid to keep the enemy laner pushed back, then she'd line a defensive barrier in the river to help counter ganks.

Nidalee's traps kinda suck. They don't do much in the long run, have no max limit but don't stealth themselves and are easy to ignore unless you hit them at the edge of a bush.

Protect brush, protect jungle, protect lane. This is how it works, make the most out of your traps.

A short guide to jungling

At 1:40, all the minor jungle camps spawn. This includes Wolves, Wraiths and Golems. You want to either start at Wolves or Wraiths for most champions, and if you can have bottom or top help you, Golems in some rare situations if your first big stop is red buff.

At 1:55~, the first objectives spawn, Blue and Red buffs on each side of the map. Most champions have an easier time starting Wolves, then doing Blue Buff then continuing with clearing camps as they spawn.

Always start at a minor camp, yes you will hit level 2 if you're the only champion in range of the buff camp, but that 15 seconds you wasted is wasted gold, no matter how you look at it. A good group will help you kill your starting camp, taking some experience but none of the last hits, then give you a leash or big leash depending on if you're going to steal enemy buffs immediately.

Leashing is important, because if you get a good leash they'll essentially kill your starting buff with you taking very little to no damage. What this means is that you have more freedom, starting with the freedom to get boots to start since that 50 movement speed in the jungle is massive, especially for a level 2 gank on middle.

How leashing works is that your mid will hit the big mob with an auto attack if they are ranged, use an ability then hit it with one or two more auto attacks before going back to their lane, while the top hits it after the middle hits it and leaves when they're almost dead. For starting on the opposite side, typically you'll have your support pull, your ranged AD damage and you tank after the support is out of range, just encourage your top and middle to steal a jungle camp or buff in these cases.

Because the exp and gold in the jungle start at what feels high but fades out near the end, you need to gank to keep up with the rest of the group. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. If all of your lanes are frozen or pushing you can't safely gank. It sucks, but it happens. In that case, your aim is to counter jungle the enemy by taking the big minion and leaving the rest alive, this further delays their gold and experience income, especially if they don't check that camp for a while.

Also, in the case that you didn't know, if you check a jungle camp and it's not there, the skull on the minimap disappears and reappears as soon as they spawn. Actively timing said objectives helps with getting there on time and stealing them, buffs are 5 minutes, dragon is 6 minutes and baron is 7 minutes. Make a habit of putting in group chat when objectives will respawn. It's also fun to "accidentally" tell the enemies in all chat to perform a gank. Warning: does not work on passive and intelligent enemies.

But for the guide, if you want to start with blue, your general path is;
Wolves->Blue->Wraiths->Golems->Red->Wolves->Wraiths and you're level 4, time to go back to base, get boots or if you started boots and have high enough health, gank.

If you're starting red, on the other hand you start at either wraiths or golems and follow the general route of;
Golems or Wraiths -> Red -> Gank Mid, if unsuccessful gank enemy jungler at Wraiths or Red, if unsuccessful gank Top, if unsuccessful -> Steal any enemy jungle camp, -> Clear own jungle or try to gank bottom.

Starting red, you need to start boots, it's the super aggressive path and generally yields the best results. The best champions that can start red are Shyvana, Udyr, Pantheon and Rammus. Shaco typically can do both red and blue at the same time, so he ganks at level 2 as well as long as nobody pops his boxes.

Leashing and why you should do it

It's not because it's a nice thing to do, but you leech experience from the minor camp and by the time you're done leashing the buff mobs you get to lane and don't lose any CS, if your opponent didn't leash then you hit level 2 before them. If your opponent did leash then he doesn't out level you sooner.

Invading, a more advanced tactic

Invading the enemy jungle is a very high risk high reward situation. The reasons why you invade are to deny your opponent's early experience as well as potentially their early blue buff. If you take the enemy jungler's blue buff and then protect your own, it puts a major hindrance on the enemy jungler if they have reliance on blue buff before level 4, which most potential junglers do.

Don't forget that when you invade a jungle, don't just invade it for a buff. You invade it to steal as much as you can and safely get out. I've had games where we'd kill the enemy jungler at their blue with mid barely escaping, took their blue, wolves, ganked mid that didn't go back to base then took their wraiths and red and even got a kill on the enemy jungler back at my blue.

In situations where an enemy champion always starts at a certain place, such as with Lee Sin always starting Red or Maokai always starting blue, you can typically safely steal their opposite buff and be there for a counter gank at level 2 or send your top or middle laners to lane with a buff, which is severe early game dominance.

This section is devoted primarily to the above topic, if you go to your outer turret and sit there you're doing it wrong. Flat out. Protecting your jungle and even more your jungler is top priority in that first minute and thirty seconds. Learning how to level 1 fight is imperative to learning how to properly fight as a team at level 18.

Don't take your first skill point on the summoner platform

Some champions benefit greatly from doing it, such as Shyvana's W or Shaco's boxes, but other champions can pick a different skill that better fits the situation. If you're Vayne you don't take tumble first, if you get into a level 1 fight with tumble in the middle of the jungle, what does it amount to? Nothing, but if you took condemn it would have been first blood.

Get out of the habit of starting with one certain skill unless you're a champion whose core is based around that skill. You never know what is going to happen, so get into the habit of ctrl-q, ctrl-w or ctrl-e'ing that first skill to fit the situation.

Various Tips, as if the last few sections weren't the exact same thing

These are tips designed around strategies you might have not considered, they aren't advanced tactics but most likely things you might not know.

- Turrets are friendly, just misunderstood.
They always prioritize minions unless an allied champion generates a Call for Help, then it will prioritize you. This means that you can walk right through their range without there being any real threat as long as you have a minion taking shots. If you're dominating a lane, farming minions beyond turret range is very risky, but also very beneficial since it completely denies enemy creep score.

I don't know how many times I've seen players get cranked in by Blitz' rock-em-sock-em panic grabber and tried to fight him at tower when they could have just walked away because they had minions there.

All turrets have a default range which is easily judged by looking at their sight radius when no minions are in range, that's right, they shoot whatever they provide vision of. Look over at the tip of your lane once and when you play on the enemy team and voila, you've mastered turret range. Also for the most part, visual terrain changes are the warning sign for "You're about to be in my range".

Additionally, turrets wont react to calls for help if the allied champion is out of their turret range. You can safely harass an enemy within their turret range if you keep them out of it.

And one additional note about turrets being your friends, if you push your minion wave to their turret every time you win a skirmish, it denies them farm. Don't be tempted to take an early tower, if you push it to the turret and you don't have a minion wave approaching, go to another lane or back to base. Don't sit there hitting it rushing to push a turret because the longer it's there, the longer it can potentially deny farm instead of letting minions pile up closer to their base where it's much more dangerous territory for you.

Even though Turrets do hurt, and continue to hurt more, they aren't as threatening as most people make them out to be. Get over your fear of turrets and you win the game (not literally).

- Don't push in your enemy turrets early.
It does provide a large amount of sight and safety but the further you go along in a lane the more risky it is. If you destroy a turret at 6 minutes you have to enter the very risky area of their pushed out lane or go to another lane and push their's in, starting a very early and very unwelcome team fight phase.

Especially that early on in the game when you're still a squishy target. The only exception to this rule is middle lane outer turret, and that's simply because while top and bottom outer turrets don't provide a large amount of safety to progress into their jungle, middle turrets do.

- If you lose your lane don't leave it.
At worst go passive and farm nearby jungle camps while not leaving the safety of your lane. I don't know how many times I've been farming in mid, while the solo top is continually dying and just shows up in my lane taking my farm. This isn't the right thing to do.

The right thing to do is to request a lane swap if your ally can potentially handle it for you. If you just randomly show up in their lane that's doing well you pretty much put them at a disadvantage now because you're stealing their creep score, cutting their experience in half and completely abandoned your lane.

- Don't sit in the river for too long if you're trying to gank.
This works the same for sneaking into lane from the turret since the waves are pushed out. Lots of people ward and if you don't have any idea they warded there, you're wasting your time and wasting experience.

Try not to wait longer than 10 seconds per gank attempt, if the gank wont be successful after 10 seconds, try anyways to see if you can force a flash. It's not too rare for a gank to fail just for the ganker to come back around using the same method. Sometimes people let their guard down after a failed gank.

There's always opportunities and blowing summoner spells is one of the best opportunities you can take because it leaves them at a severe disadvantage in lane.

- Sound and Visual queues.
If you shoot a fireball through a bush that's interceptable, and it comes out of the other side, most likely there's not a target in there. With some champions, however, their attacks aren't interceptable so you have to listen for the sounds that the skill makes when it hits a target, just about every skill has a sound that it makes when it hits a target, that's why playing this game muted or with sound effects off is putting you at a huge disadvantage.

- Rune tier doesn't matter.
Well, it does, but it doesn't. At level 10 you can purchase tier 2 and at level 20 you can purchase tier 3. What you can do at the start is buy 25 tier 1 runes at the lowest ip rate and put them in the rune combiner to get a random tier 3 rune that you can equip.

This is a method for getting a minor early game advantage that tends to show up at about level 10. Using this method costs roughly 375IP per tier 3 rune made, but it's completely random so it's a high risk very high reward situation where you might get what you want and you might not.

How the rune combiner works is if you put two same tier runes in it, it'll produce a random same tier rune. If you put five same tier runes in, it'll produce a random rune of the next tier. So 5 Tier 1 Runes make 1 random Tier 2 Rune. Then 5 Tier 2 Runes make 1 random tier 3 Rune.

I've gotten extremely lucky and made a large amount of high cost dodge runes using this method before they were refunded and used that profit to just buy quintessences, but it's roughly around 15~20% chance to get a very high cost quintessence out of this method, and if you've already got enough of the rune it created you can just create two tier 3 runes and see if you get something useful.

Also, this isn't an exploit, this is a game feature because the digital collector's pack and the original collector's pack both offered tier 3 runes.