User blog comment:Megames1/In My Opinion - How to effectively learn a Champion/@comment-5194571-20130406190615

Something I find that works for me is learning the lore of a champion. It sounds utterly retarded, but there's good reason behind it.

Let's take Diana for example. So, in her lore, she always wanted to be accepted by her tribe, but was shunned for her questioning of her tribe's values. She one day found a temple with the armor and sword of a person entwined with the Moon. She took them and went back to her tribe, showing she now had proof of the moon also being all powerful. She was put to death, but slaughtered the tribe elders and escaped.

Now, if this were to happen to a real person, how would that person feel? Bitter? Betrayed? Angry? I think so, and so do Riot. When designing champions, they tie in the play style of the champion with the lore, to make them more coherent all round, rather than just play X way. This is more important than it sounds, because the lore has a direct impact on the design of a champion, and as we all know, the design of a champion has a direct impact on the way they are played. How would a bitter and angry person play? Aggressive. How does Diana play? Aggressive. By getting into the mind of the person Riot want the players to believe each champion is, you can understand them more. I caught onto how to play Diana rather quick. I got into the head of Diana, and Diana got into the head of me, and I was able to get a better understanding of how she works, how she wants to be played.

Another tip I have for learning a champion is to play normals. In a lot of normal games (At least in the 400 win range on EUW), there are no junglers, there are no dedicated supports. In those normal games, you can freely just pick your champion and you will end up playing them just about anywhere. This works because it doesn't matter if you are top, mid, bot or jungle, your position on the map has no bearing on learning how the mechanics of a certain champion works. I'm learning Nasus and Pantheon at the moment, and it doesn't matter where I play, I'm still last hitting minions, thereby learning the autoattack animations, and I'm still gonna combo on Pantheon, thereby learning the correct skill order to use