Gaming
esports
A new viewer’s guide to League of Legends
New to watching League of Legends? Spectator Mode makes it easier to follow the action. Here's how it works and what you need to know.
League of Legends is a world unto itself. A real heavyweight in the world of esports that ensnares new players every year. The catch is that Riot Games’ wildly successful MOBA can be a bit difficult to get into for the uninitiated.
In order to enjoy the competitive side of the game, a trained eye is required to understand the full scope of the action. Fortunately, the broadcast has evolved over the years to help you with your comprehension, and once you've grasped the basics, you’ll be hooked for life.
But to fully understand everything happening in a League of Legends match, such as the ones taking place at Red Bull League of its Own, the best place to start is with Spectator Mode.
01
Understanding the view in Spectator Mode
A League of Legends broadcast can be hard to understand for new viewers
© Riot Games/YouTube
The Top bar
This bar across the top contains the essential information about a match-up. While it won't help you much in terms of a better understanding of the game itself, a few elements here help gain an appreciation of the overall standing of a match.
The two numbers on the outer band area show the overall match results and which team is leading the overall series. Instead of numbers, these might also be shown as little pips that are then filled in when a team wins – three on each side in a best of five, or just two in a best of three. Then come the abbreviations/signatures of the names of the two teams, and whether they're playing on the red side or blue side. It's very similar to any sporting broadcast.
Now, things get more specific. The outermost symbol shown that looks like a rook in chess is the number of towers destroyed. Towers are very important for the gameplay of LoL. They protect a player's Nexus and deal heavy damage to any enemies that come too close to it. A team that manages to destroy a tower has a potential land gain on the map. This is a significant advantage and information to remember when watching a game.
After the tower, the next symbol moving inwards is the gold each team has. Gold is the common currency in the game and is used to purchase certain items to improve champions' equipment, but also to acquire bonus abilities. This is an extremely important resource, although a lack of gold compared to your opponents does not automatically mean a defeat. Both pieces of information can be used to determine which team currently has a small (or large) advantage.
The two remaining pieces of information are the number of kills per team and the stopwatch, showing how much time has passed since the start of the game.
The Bottom Bar
Previous layouts for broadcast have had at-a-glance views for each team on the side of the screens, but these have since been condensed into the bottom bar. These are essential for following a game. Here, you can see what happens for each player, even if their POV is not shown on the screen. You will see the champions of each player and the summoner spells available to each, their strength, the availability of their ultimate, and their health bars and mana.
Possibly the most important element is the availability of a champion's strongest ability, their Ultimate. This is unlocked at level 6 and is extremely important because it allows a combat phase to be won. As a consequence, it has a considerable recharge time. Observing which players have their ultimate ready during a game is interesting because it allows you to anticipate certain phases and foresee a potential attack.
New to League of Legends? Then read these
The overview of each player’s life bar and mana allows you to assess the overall situation, even if two fights occur simultaneously. You wouldn’t want to see every encounter happening at the same time. That would confuse even a veteran League of Legends fan. Instead, one can get a good sense of how the match is going with the sidebar.
Additionally, each player is listed in order of their position, along with a portrait of each played champion in the following order from top to bottom: top laner, jungler, mid laner, bot laner – or ADC – and support.
The value displayed right next to the champion is their Creep Score. This indicates how many minions and monsters each player has killed. In a broader sense, this number also makes it possible to know approximately how much gold each player owns or has spent.
The three numbers separated by a slash are the K/D/A. This is simply the number of kills, how many times a player died, and how many kill assists they have made. Next are symbols representing the items each champion has received.
The bottom bar is a treasure trove of information
© Riot Games/YouTube
The small card
This map view is an indispensable tool for understanding what’s happening in a game. If you don’t yet know your way around the maps perfectly, it helps with orientation. It also shows you the location of each player in real time, allowing you to understand each team’s strategy better.
This tool will also help you analyse the overall progression of the two teams. To win the game, the enemy Nexus must be destroyed. The two Nexus are opposite on the map and located in the centre of each team’s camp. As you may guess, the closer a team is to the Nexus and the more superior in numbers they are, the higher their chance of winning the game.
Over the course of 10 years of competition, these Spectator Mode elements have guided fans to a greater understanding of how matches are progressing, which is one of the main reasons for League of Legends' meteoric success.
These are your basic tools if you do not yet have the experience required to understand the game. Let them become your best friends, and you can follow the broad outlines of a game.
Another thing to do is play the game yourself. Try all the different champions and learn their functionality, curses and ultimate abilities so you can understand what is happening as it's happening.
With these few tips, you'll soon be crying with joy or screaming with disappointment at your favorite players and sharing them in real time with friends.
