League of Legends: League of Lessons

Welcome to another session of League of Lessons, a weekly feature where we explore each of the five perennial roles when combating online in League of Legends. These guides are courtesy of Joshua Lim, another avid League of Legends player who's largely involved with the Singapore LoL community.

His notable achievements have been placing fourth with his team EqualsD Gaming in Singapore's first League of Legends tournament in 2011, and recently placing third in a Dominion tournament in the country last February. He and his team were also shoutcasters for last year's WCG selection finals and the Garena Carnival in both Singapore and Malaysia. We now focus on the bruiser role.

Winning in style demands a champion that plays with style. Constantly at the front ranks of a team skirmish, soaking up damage effortlessly, isolating key targets, and being the guardian of your teammates--that's the everyday life of the bruiser. You utilize an arsenal of deadly gap closers, crowd-control and damage-absorbing shields. You are the nightmare to your opponent's carries as you tag them relentlessly, hindering their every attempt to get to your vulnerable teammates.

By choosing a bruiser who dedicates his life to the top lane, winning in style is not that far away.

The Laning Phase

Let's cover the Laning Phase first. No one should be foreign to the idea of last hitting and warding. But there are unique characteristics of playing a bruiser in the top lane in the early game. Here are just some things I'll cover:

Duelling Basics

This is a common occurrence in top lane. Since most bruisers are melee, HP is the highest valued stat to have in the lane. Therefore, if you can start a duel with your opponent and come out the one with the higher hp, lane dominance is almost assured. This way you can constantly farm and force back the opponent, minimizing his farm and experience earned.

Starting a Smart Duel

A common mistake many players make is to engage the opponent despite the presence of a large minion wave. Players often underestimate the damage that minions deal, often drawing minion aggro by engaging in a duel. Caster minions dish out 23 damage at 0.6 attacks per second--sounds minimal, but not when 5 of them are hitting you at a time. A quick way to remove unnecessary minion aggro is by simply popping in and out of the brush. This way the fog of war briefly obscures the minion vision and they quickly switch back to fighting your own minions.

Aside from minion presence, starting a smart duel requires proper knowledge of the opponent’s peak and lull periods of dishing out damage. What this means is that you should take note of your opponent’s cooldowns and strike only when their high damage skills are on cooldowns.

Riven runs away from Garen while he has Courage up. Brave Garen is brave.

For example, Garen charges forward to fight me with his Courage buff on. Courage is a damage negating skill that Garen employs, reducing a sizeable percentage of damage taken while it is active. The wise thing to do here is to, that’s right, run away.

Of course, most fights won't have a Garen running after you with Courage (if they are decent). Although this is a hypothetical situation, what you need to learn is to bait out the opponents skills without suffering any consequences. This is something which differentiates a good bruiser from a great bruiser.

Going in when your foe is at his lowest! Strike him when he has his spells on cooldown!

It doesn’t stop at just running away though. Running alone gets you nowhere: once you spot his buff disappear, turn back and counterattack! Since they can't mitigate your damage now, it is the most effective time to throw in all your punches. Rinse and repeat for lane control.