User blog:Nhan-Fiction/Snowballing



There is a key method when you want to win at “League of Legends,” and this is to snowball.

Snowballing refers to building up your character’s in-game strength to the point where you can overwhelm your opponents. In LoL, this method is accomplished through racking up gold and then using this money to purchase power through items.

All of it is rather linear if you think about it.

To make your champion stronger, you need higher stats. The items you buy offer these necessary boosts for you to acquire and augment your champion’s capabilities. The stats can be health, damage or just about anything else for that matter, but the name of the game is to get lots of stats as quickly as possible.

If you think about it in this sense, every LoL match in a way is just a race down a hill to see who can become a better snowball than everyone else. You pick up speed and mass for your snowball as you gain gold, allowing you to run over the competition.

Thus, the concept of snowballing can be very apparent in LoL at times. We all come across those games where that one player gets a bunch of early kills, establishes some momentum and then proceeds to dominate for a while. If your team does not respond properly, it is common to see teams lose to a champ who snowballs out of control.

As a result, feeding someone in LoL is a lot more devastating than some people realize. When you feed a given champion kills, this can give them enough of a push down that slope that they roll and transform into a giant snowball of death that crushes everything in its path.

Again, it is all rather linear.

The more gold you get, the better off you will be in terms of effectiveness. Every time you acquire enough gold for an item, you are doing so to gain stats to help you achieve victory. Conversely, it is crucial to remember your opponents are doing the same thing as well.

Because you don’t lose gold upon death in LoL, you can never take away money from your opponent directly. However, you can definitely slow your opponents’ income down as you try to get ahead. If there is one thing I always want to stress to a newer player, it would be to keep deaths to a minimum. If you avoid dying excessively, just about any game of LoL is winnable. You are keeping things within reach, gold-wise.

For instance, think about higher level play in LoL. There is a reason (at least for the first two competitive seasons of LoL anyway) why many pro matches can quickly transform into farm fests. Pro players realize that giving the opposite team any form of gold advantage can be disastrous, which is why passively farming and minimizing deaths is such an effective strategy for the game. -- Snowballing and LoL (Credit to my friend, Will, for coming up with this analogy)

So picture a giant, snowy mountain. At the top, there are 10 snowballs, with two teams comprised of five snowballs each, that represent all the players who are about to participate in the race down the slope.

The main objective is to be the first team to roll down and smash the cabin (the Nexus) that sits at the bottom of the mountain. You need to be powerful enough as a snowball to do so.

It is vital you gather enough snow (gold) as you roll down from the mountain peak. There is more snow to come by at the start of the race, but there is less and less snow to go around as you head toward the bottom.

Every opportunity to earn snow (e.g. kills) helps you build into a larger snowball. Every bit makes a difference. If you are careless, you may end up granting your opponents an edge in building up their respective snowballs through dying too much and whatnot.

However, even someone who ends up as a frosty-wrecking ball of icy fury can still lose. A player who builds up a considerable lead can get cocky and then crash into a tree because they get too overconfident.

Even people who are on the right track with their snowballs can veer off course at some point by dinking around too much. They may forget that the main way to win, after all, is to destroy the cabin (Nexus) above all else.

You don’t have to be the strongest snowball every time to take out the cabin (Nexus) first. It is something some people don’t realize. Sometimes, the most direct route is the easiest way. In addition, keep in mind that the way LoL is structured, even someone who falls very behind can still catch up over time. It just takes perseverance.

So remember … it’s just a race down the hill.

Keep your eyes on the prize. Execution and finishing a game strong is still very important if you want to earn a “W” when everything is said and done.

How do you roll?

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