I am a noob to League of legends and think that the learning cure is way too high. I do great if I'm on a cooperative team but every time I go into a match, I get pummeled severely almost every single time. How do you combat with this?

You basically have to play vs. bots for at least a little bit and learn how to play. Maybe look up guides on youtube if you really want to get good. Edit: Having a friend teach you is the best option if you have a friend that is good, but being as you are here asking I'm guessing you don't have a friend that plays/is good.

Pick a champion that seems like something you want to play. Play one or two bot games to learn their mechanics (you really truly honestly seriously won't learn to play at a competent level playing lots of bot games). Go solo queue and lose a bunch of games until you're good, which may never happen. Maybe watch some youtube videos about things like zoning.

That's pretty much all you can do if you don't have a friend to give you pointers. Don't worry about losing unranked solo queue games and ignore everything your team says short of asking you to help with a thing. But all things considered the learning curve is pretty low so if you aren't having fun or whatever maybe it's not a game for you.

The best tip I can give is just keep practicing and learning and ignore your team mates, unless they are actually asking for help or something. About 70% of the chat that comes from team mates is 'u suuck at tis gme, uninstal lolololol' even if they are losing/doing poorly :/. Ignore them and move on.

Play against bots for a while, get good with a single character. Then, just play. Practice makes perfect. If you lose 100 games in a row, that's OK, because you're always getting better.

ahhh the days before vs bots i had to learn the hard way -__-.

you know if people actually spent less time complaining or calling each other noobs they might do well.

also anyone ever notice how many quitters there are i swear as soon as one turret goes down or someones negative in kill it's "gg my team is noob" when you can easily pull a comeback

@Xsnipd: I know a lot of people have said it here, but playing bots is a complete waste of time. Play an empty custom game to get used to a Champion's skills, but really the only way to learn is to just play and lose against human opponents.

It's worth it in the end, but you have to get used to playing other people. A big part of League of Legends is less about personal skill and more about what to do in the moment. Whether to stay and fight or run away (even if it costs you a teammate life). That's what separates good players from bad players, and as previous mentioned, ignore your teammates and the abuse they will almost certainly throw at you!

@el_tajij said:

playing bots is a complete waste of time.

Maybe it's not the greatest way to challenge yourself but speaking as a new player it is a) fun b) useful to try out different champions without worrying you'll be holding the team back too much c) an opportunity to get used to the keybinds without completely screwing everything up because your MMO-playing fingers keep hitting D and casting your summoner skill all over the place :D

@Shellra said:

@el_tajij: @el_tajij said:

playing bots is a complete waste of time.

Maybe it's not the greatest way to challenge yourself but speaking as a new player it is a) fun b) useful to try out different champions without worrying you'll be holding the team back too much c) an opportunity to get used to the keybinds without completely screwing everything up because your MMO-playing fingers keep hitting D and casting your summoner skill all over the place :D

this, ive played maybe 30 matches just versus bots. its fun like this :)

My cho'gath does okay agianst easy bots :)

@Shellra: @GloriousDinosaur: It's great to jump into a custom game or a bot game to test out how your champ skills work and feel ("Ok, that's my Q, that's my W, that's my E - Got it!"), but playing against bots is a waste. The OP is asking how to combat the difficult learning curve.

Playing bots will give you a false sense of confidence, since they don't act like humans you'll get stomped all over when you fight human opponents. Most of League of Legends skill comes from 1) Knowing how to counter each champ (this takes a long time to learn, but you'll get it) and 2) knowing when to push, when to pull back and how to trick or zone your opponents so that you're the one calling the shots in a game.

You shouldn't worry about 'letting your teammates down' - LoL is not a friendly community anyways and 1-29 is a mess of a skill mix so each match is anyone's game. The real LoL starts at 30 so use those 29 levels to get as good possible. You'll be a far better player if you've spent those 29 levels in proper matches. Having done that myself, I literally can't imagine how bot matches could be any fun at all. O_o

@el_tajij said:

@Shellra: @GloriousDinosaur: It's great to jump into a custom game or a bot game to test out how your champ skills work and feel ("Ok, that's my Q, that's my W, that's my E - Got it!"), but playing against bots is a waste. The OP is asking how to combat the difficult learning curve.

Playing bots will give you a false sense of confidence, since they don't act like humans you'll get stomped all over when you fight human opponents. Most of League of Legends skill comes from 1) Knowing how to counter each champ (this takes a long time to learn, but you'll get it) and 2) knowing when to push, when to pull back and how to trick or zone your opponents so that you're the one calling the shots in a game.

You shouldn't worry about 'letting your teammates down' - LoL is not a friendly community anyways and 1-29 is a mess of a skill mix so each match is anyone's game. The real LoL starts at 30 so use those 29 levels to get as good possible.

Hey, so, I have tried a few times to get into PvP matches, but everytime, it seems like there are no games available. Does LoL run on servers that manage each country (sorry if thats a silly question). Or does LoL have a system where you have to be a certain level to have a chance to get into those games?

@GloriousDinosaur: Do you mean right at this moment? I think the servers seem a little screwed at the moment, everyone I was playing with earlier had huge latency. Probably try again tomorrow. I think they suffer from massive server overload on Sundays.

If you mean in general, I've been 30 for a while but it doesn't really take into account your level with too much prejudice (which is part of the reason the 1-29 game is so messed up, skillmix-wise) and should slap you in a game with higher levels if it can't find anyone close to your level who's playing. Edit: I don't know if they've made any improvements since then!

Ahh ok, thanks man. Maybe its the fact that when I play (at night in Australia) its probably early morning in the US?

We've all been in that position. You guys are lucky that you've got Co-op vs. AI now to practice in first. It used to be a "throw em to the wolves" mentality. Here's a couple of tips and hints I would throw out there:

1. Find a champ that you really enjoy playing. There are a ton of them that are considered "recommended" champs like Annie. These champs are usually a bit of a lower learning curve, which can help transition you into an actual game. Once you learn that specific champ, find out what kind of champ they are (i.e. - ranged AD carry, ranged AP nuke, support, tank, melee bruiser, melee fighter). Once you've figured that out, play a few more champs like that particular one. For example, let's say you start playing with Annie and find that you like her play style. Try picking up someone like Leblanc, Malzahar, or Fiddlesticks, who are all ranged AP nuke casters like Annie. This will help you understand even more about the game, as you'll see just how AP characters play. After you've figured a couple of them out, then move to another type of class and try them out. I've found that picking about two to three champs of each type gives you a decent spectrum of champs you will be "good" with while learning the game still.
2. Check out MOBAfire and Solomid. They are two of the best sites for guides, podcasts, videos, and everything else you need to know about League of Legends. Personally, I use Solomid more for their guides, as they are typically from tournament players that have seen high-end play and 1700+ ELO games.
3. LEARN THE ITEMS!!! Half of being good at League of Legends is knowing the items that you build in the game. You don't want to be off the battlefield for too long having to shop for what you want. Learn the basics of what your character needs, the basics of defensive gear, and then start easing your way into the bigger items.
4. Let people know that you are still new to the game. This is iffy, as you'll probably get called a noob, a feeder, a dickface, a cocksucker, and about a million other things. Just make sure you let people know that you are still new.
5. Learn the abbreviations. Terms like "MIA", "CS", "leash", "top/mid/bot/jungle", "Baron", "Dragon", "outer/inner/inhib/nex", and even abbreviations for some items like "PD", "BT", "Wota", etc should be things you learn. This helps to know what the hell a lot of other people are talking about. Many of these things can typically be self-explanatory, but something like CS is a term that isn't. That means "creep score", or how many minions you've gotten the last hit on for gold.
6. Turret hump. One of the greatest assets to a noob is the ability to turret hump in a match so they can start learning a bit more as time goes on.

Beyond that, it's the age-old adage: you have to play someone better in order to get better yourself. It's always interesting when we take our lowbie friends (SL 14 or 15) into our SL30 games. They freak out at how much shit is going on at once.

You could do what I do and play Dominion mode. The people who play that tend to be far worse than the people playing the regular mode, and in several cases I have actually gotten the top score with DPS-inclined champions like Ashe or Master Yi (who otherwise have some pretty serious durability problems). Since people are far less able to hide behind turrets, it's great to see them not know how to react when you charge them with a character who's ultimate makes him unable to be slowed. Keep in mind that I am still at a low level, and this could easily change.

You're not going to learn much playing against bots. You can learn basic stuff like what your champ does and what kind of items you want but don't spend more than a couple games playing against bots because you'll likely just wind up with bad habits. After that jump into the fire and start learning from your losses.

The biggest problem new players have is that they're too aggressive against creeps and the other team's champions. During the laning phase you shouldn't ever be auto-attacking the creeps because you'll put yourself in bad position. You ideally want to always be killing your creeps just out your own tower. Always make sure you're getting the last hit on the creeps as well. It's not as glamorous but cs and no deaths are far more important than kills during the early phase of the game.

Be patient and passive to start the game and you'll start doing a lot better. Once you learn more about what each champion does you can start picking the right moments to harass and hopefully add a couple early kills to compliment your superior farming skills.