LoL What? Beginner Guide to Kayle

Kayle the Judicator
Hybrid AP/Support

There is a world far away where an ancient conflict still rages. Kayle was a champion in her war, the fair bringer of justice, and there are those that call her an angel. However, there are many who would call her murderer or monster. Kayle tirelessly fought for her people, bringing enemies to their knees. That is, until the day she was summoned. Plucked from her conflict, Kayle at first raged - until she saw the cause for which she had been called. Now she has brought her role to Valoran, dispensing her brand of justice to the League of Legends in an attempt to salvage the very survival of the planet. She is a striking winged figure. Though incredibly beautiful, Kayle hides herself under armor, knowing that justice is so often an ugly thing. Despite her newfound life, there is still a part of her that yearns for her home. Kayle is, for lack of a more sophisticated term, a bruiser. She can sear enemies with what she calls holy energy, sucking the life and magic from a victim. She is capable of sharing the harm done to her with those who inflict it. Her ability to intervene can help an allied Champion return from death with haste then she can bless them with increased speed. When the time comes, Kayle can ignite her sword with holy fire, bringing out the true avenging angel within her. In the League of Legends, Justice comes on swift wings.

Kayle is a fun champion for beginners to play. She looks extremely impressive with her bright armor and wings, and her invincibility and heal gives some wiggle room that beginners can really appreciate, yet she still does enough damage to feel powerful. She can fit into most any team, and brings a lot of utility to a group so you'll be quite popular with your teammates. Your main job with Kayle is to save people's butts. If that sounds awesome, read on!

Champion Abilities

Passive: Holy Fervor

When Kayle attacks a champion, the target loses 3% Armor and Magic Resistance for 5 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5 times.

This passive is pretty pathetic. However, the effect does work for everyone on the team, not just Kayle, so it's still worth trying to get a few hits on whoever your team is focusing down.

Reckoning (Q)

Blasts an enemy unit with angelic force, dealing damage and slowing movement speed. While the target is slowed, Kayle inflicts increased damage to them. 

This is your harass ability. Use it as an opener (allowing increased damage), or in particular, to allow you and your team to catch up to a fleeing enemy. It's also your longest range offensive ability, so it's useful as a poke.

Divine Blessing (W)

Blesses a target friendly champion, granting them increased movement speed and healing them. 

This is your main support ability. The heal is pretty much negligible, as Kayle is a hybrid rather than a straight support character. However, in addition to the heal, this gives a speed boost that can be significant at higher levels. This is great to use in conjunction with Reckoning to allow Kayle or her teammates to catch a fleeing enemy, or to help Kayle or her teammates escape.

Righteous Fury (E)

Ignites Kayle's sword with a holy flame, granting Kayle a ranged splash attack and bonus magic damage.

This is your primary damage output, and will help in farming as it allows your attacks to splash to nearby enemies. Additionally, combined with her other abilities, this helps Kayle chase down enemies as it allows her normally melee attacks to hit at range.

Intervention (R)

Shields Kayle or an ally for a short time, causing them to be immune to damage.

 The move Kayle is most known for, her ult. This makes one champion of your choice (including Kayle herself) invincible for a short time. It can be great for many things, including escaping a near death situation, tower diving, or throwing on a massive DPS to allow them to get off their full attack while the enemy team looks on, unable to stop them.

Summoner Abilities


Ghost (F)
Your Champion ignores unit collision and moves 27% faster for 14 seconds.

Ghost greatly increases your mobility. Combined with Kayle's already deadly mobility spells, it allows her and her teammates to catch or escape from enemies with ease.

Other choices: Flash

Exhaust (G)
Reduces a target's Attack Damage by 70%, Ability/Item damage by 35% and slows its Movement Speed by 40% for 3 seconds.

Exhaust is used primarily to slow an enemy. Like Ghost, it can be used both offensively (to catch a fleeing enemy) and defensively (to escape)

Other choices: Ignite, Cleanse, Clairvoyance

Mastery

Kayle works well with the go-to mastery set up: 9/0/21. This mastery set gets you the following at max level: 9% reduced cooldowns, magic penetration, increased experience, mana regen, move speed, and longer Neutral buffs. Now, this guide assumes you aren't at max level, so I'll give the order in which you should pick these masteries up.

Offense Tree:
3/3 Deadliness
1/1 Cripple (if you use Exhaust)
4/4 Sorcery
1/1 Archaic Knowledge

Utility Tree:
3/3 Perseverance
1/1 Haste (if you use Ghost)
4/4 Awareness
2/2 Utility Master
3/3 Meditation
3/3 Quickness
3/3 Sorcery
1/4 Expanded Mind
1/1 Presence of the Master

Skill Order

Skilling for Kayle is easy. Grab Righteous Fury first so you have it available, then level in the following priority:

Intervention >>> Reckoning / Divine Blessing >>> Righteous Fury

Items

This is the most generic item build for Kayle, but be prepared to substitute items in based on your opponents and the specific situation you are in.

1. Doran's Ring
2. Mercury Treads
3. Hextech Gunblade
4. Guinsoo's Rageblade
5. Nashor's Tooth
6. Rabadon's Deathcap

If you need additional survivability, a Guardian's Angel (if people are focusing you down specifically) or a Banshee's Veil are good substitutes - insert one of them between step 3 and 4 in the item list.

Laning

Kayle is a strong soloer, so mid or solo top is good. However as a beginner, you may want to stay paired until you feel comfortable.

Before Level 6
Your goal is to get as many last hits as possible while harassing the enemy and trying to keep them from getting as many last hits. Use your movement speed to keep on the move and only hit minions to last hit. Use Reckoning and Righteous Fury to harass the enemy and Divine Blessing to escape if needed. Reckoning is really your best friend in this phase, and you should do your best to make your enemies fear it.

After Level 6
Stay in your lane to harass and farm as long as you can, but coordinate with your team if you can and join up for the occasional gank using your Intervention.Do your best to get gunblade before the main teamfighting phase begins.

Team Fights

It's important to remember that while Kayle can be awesome on her own, she really shines as a support character. Remember that you can't save butts with Intervention if you are stunned or dead, so don't draw too much aggro to yourself.

• Let your teammates initiate. Your moves are usually better used in reaction to the situation.
• Hit the team's focus target with Reckoning, then follow up with Righteous Fury.
• Heal your weaker teammates with Divine Blessing
• Use you Intervention as soon as one of your powerful DPS allies begins being focused down, when they reach around 30% health.
• Only enter melee range if you seem to be winning, to help chase the enemy down.
• If you are losing, help everyone escape using Divine Blessing to boost their speed and Reckoning to slow the enemy down.

More Information

If you'd like more information, check out the guide by "I am the Walrus" on LeagueCraft: Kayle, the Saver of Asses. I have essentially paraphrased his guide here, making it as short as noob friendly as possible. He's got a lot more information about why this build is recommended as well as hard numbers supporting his recommendations.

Have fun!

LoL What? Beginner Character Guides

Way back in my original League of Legends article, I mentioned that I wanted to write some character guides. Why should I, a beginner myself, make character guides to LoL? Wouldn't it be better to just read the guides on LeagueCraft? Well yes, it would, if you are looking for in depth strategy and tips relevant for high level summoners. If, however, you are looking for tips for summoners level 10 or below, just learning the game, the best person to ask is someone who just went through the learning process themselves.

Don't expect tips here for high level competition - this is guide is for lower level summoners who want help starting out. I plan to make LoL What? a series, and I'll be covering the following things:

• Champion Abilities: To even begin to understand how to build your champion, you must know what their abilities do. For each champion I cover, I'll describe in simple terms what their abilities do and how to use them effectively.
• Summoner Abilities: The recommended summoner abilities for the champion will be given, with a short explanation as to the reason for the choices.
• Mastery: The recommended mastery spec for the champion will be given, with a short explanation as to the reason for the choices. NOTE: Runes will NOT be discussed as this is intended for beginner summoners, and you shouldn't really buy runes until level 20. However, a more in depth guide will be reference at the beginning of every guide, where you can find Rune recommendations.
• Skill Order: The recommended order to setting up your skills for the champion will be given, with a short explanation as to the reason for the choices.
• Items: Recommended item choices and order will be given. I'll give a few choices for different situation but the focus will be on brevity.
• Laning/Jungling: This section will cover early game strategy and tactics for the champion. I'll give a few choices for different situation but the focus will be on brevity.
• Team Fights: This will cover late game strategy and tactics for the champion, revolving around team fights. I'll give a few choices for different situation but the focus will be on brevity.

In general, I will be trying to keep these guides as short and concise as possible. I will NOT be including much advice for specific situations or alternative builds. The idea here is to get someone up and running as quickly as possible, then point them in the direction of more advanced guides.

Look forward to my first guide coming later this week, for the champion Kayle!

LoL What? An Introduction to League of Legends

Since my WoW account was offline the last month, my friends and I revisited a game called League of Legends, also known affectionately as LoL. LoL is a free game - and when I say free, I mean FREE. Not pay to win, as so many free games are these days. LoL is legitimately, 100% free. You can pay for special cosmetic skins for your champions, or to unlock features more quickly, but there is no significant disadvantage in NOT paying.

So what is LoL? In short, it’s a team based PvP e-sport in which you combine macro and micro game elements to destroy your opponent’s base before they destroy yours. But there’s a LOT more to the game than this simple summary. If you've played DotA (a mod for Warcraft III), then you've played LoL. LoL is made by the same folks who created DotA. You control a single character (a champion), and team up with two to four other people in a team contest to destroy the opponent's base. Your character begins each game at level 1 and can advance up to level 18 by gaining experience through killing minions, creeps, and other champions.

The most popular map, for five
player teams, called Summoner's Rift

In the early game, players stay in one of three lanes - this time is often known as laning, though some champions are designed to jungle instead. The idea is to farm minions, which mindlessly walk from your opponent’s base towards yours down the lane. When minions die near you, you gain experience. Even better, if you get the last hit on a minion, you gain money which can be spent on gear. Unlike laners, junglers farm by running through the jungle in between lanes, killing the neutral creeps located there. They have to be much more durable than laners, since they must essentially tank these creeps from level 1. Farming well in the early game can give you a big advantage later on.

The shop, where you can purchase items

This introduces what is known as the macro game - how to build your character, in gear and in the order of the abilities you unlock. There are a wide range of items available, and there are many guides on exactly what items to get for each character. Often the best choices will change based on your team and the opponent’s team.

Ashe sets her sights on Teemo

Of course, even though the early game is more about farming than killing the opposing champions, it’s important to always look for opportunities to harass and possibly even gank your opponent. Keeping your opponent from farming effectively can also really help out late game. Killing the opponent keeps them out of the game for a short time, gives you an experience and money boost, and generally improves your team’s morale. Junglers, in particular, are designed to help where needed and assassinate unsuspecting opponents early game.

Tower pushing can be dangerous!

During the farming phase, it’s also possible to push the opponent’s lanes and take down towers, though this more often happens later in the team fight phase of the game. There are some champions that are much better at tower pushing than others, but most can succeed in tower pushing with enough skill. The idea is to kill the opposing team’s minions faster than they kill yours. Your minions will slowly move down the lane, and eventually reach one of the towers which guard the opponent’s side of the map. The towers are extremely deadly, but will attack minions preferentially over champions, as long as you don’t attack the opposing team’s champions while in range of the tower. With enough minions surrounding you to take hits from the tower, you can destroy it and move closer to the opponent’s base. Pushing towers is one of the most important facets of the game, and the number of surviving towers is a good way to measure how well a lane (or team as a whole) is doing.

Nunu's ult makes for an
interesting team fight.

Finally, once champions start getting a significant number of levels, teams will start grouping up and pushing a specific lane. This begins what is known as the team fight phase of the game. These massive brawls usually involve all members of each team, though clever teams will find ways to pick off members of the opposition or set up ambushes in order to gank some or all of the opposing team. Synergy of champion abilities and communication between players is essential during this phase. Even if all players are highly skilled by themselves, they won’t be able to succeed in the late game without supporting eachother in team fights.

Nexus destroyed!

The game ends when a team destroys the opposition’s nexus, at the heart of their home base. However, it is possible to surrender early if most team members agree that it’s a lost cause. Experience points (used to level up as a player) and influence points (used to purchase new champions or runes) are awarded both for winning or losing, though you gain the most from winning. Surrendering awards the fewest points, but it allows the team to more quickly move on to a new game.




Outside of games, your player (known as a summoner) has a level as well. This level ranges from 1 to 30, and increases the more games that you play. This level determines how many mastery points (think talent points from WoW) that you have to spend, and what rune slots (think glyphs in WoW) you have available. It also determines what summoner spells you can use - you have two spells which you chose at the beginning of each game, which act as extra utility and customizability for your character. This level-based mechanic gives high level summoners a mechanical advantage, in addition to their experience advantage. In general, when using the matchmaking service, you’ll be placed with summoners of similar levels.

As a whole, LoL is very enjoyable to play even without knowing your teammates. However, it really shines when the entire team is coordinating in a voice program such as Skype or Ventrilo, and has arranged their champions and skills to compliment eachother. There are a huge number of champions, builds, items, and spells available, and more being added constantly. Additionally, Riot (the makers of LoL) just announced a brand new game mode which will be playable at PAX Prime later this month. I’m extremely excited about this, and will report my reactions to this game mode here on the blog when I play it at PAX.

I can’t recommend LoL enough. If you want to jump in and get your feet wet, I suggest trying a game against bots (computer opponents) first before going up against other players. Riot has really improved the AI on the bots, but they are still much easier than real opponents, even newbies. Just pick a champion that seems interesting to you out of the free champions, look up a build on Leaguecraft (or use the recommended items that Riot provides for you in game!), and get started! The free champions change every week, but if you find one you like, you can use the points you earn playing each game to purchase them (that’s right, you do NOT need to use real money, though you can if you want to get champions more quickly).

Hopefully you’ll try it out! I’m still quite a League of Legends newbie, but I’m enjoying it quite a lot and may write some character specific guides later on if the fancy strikes me. If you play, be sure to look me up and request a game! I go by Jiyambi, as always.