League of Legends: League of Lessons

The Smart Way to Play

One adjustment that I made, which helped me get better at this game, was moving to smart cast. It can be enabled through the Key Bindings menu. Smart cast basically enables you to cast your spell on the mouse-over target. It's brilliant, really. By doing so, you save a ton of reaction time, and also remove the clunky targeting interface for most of your AoE spells.

It takes some getting used to, but it worked out great for me. However, I would suggest avoiding smart casting certain spells, unless you are really good with it--Anivia's wall, Malzahar's Call of the Void, Karthus' Wall of Pain, and Veigar's Event Horizon, just to name a few.

The Ganking Phase

Like I've mentioned before, the AP Carry in the middle lane has easy access to ganking both top and bottom lanes. Once you're done pushing your first turret, it's time to bring those magical powers to your allies. There are certain objectives that you might want to keep in mind when roaming:
• Help your jungler secure dragons
• Aid your jungler in stealing the opponents' blue and red buffs
• Ganking lanes and pushing for gold and tower advantage
• Ensure your mid-lane turret is not in danger of going down.

It's especially important to keep the fourth point in mind. Helping is great, but you just cannot jeopardise your original lane. This applies to all lanes; you don't want to lose map control. There will be more avenues to gank you and your team if there is a loss of allied turrets. Sure, you can ward up more, but remember: that's going to cost you more gold.

Here are some great paths you can use to avoid conventional ward placements when roaming the map.

On the blue side

On the purple side

The main reason why you want to start roaming once you've knocked down the first turret is so you can start creating that overall team advantage. Early game is all about lane dominance, and, with your help, you can further provide that to your allies. AP Carries have really good early game damage, so use it while it's relevant.

Helping your teammates win their lanes is essential to having a better late game. Pushing other lanes gives so much more map control, and, by 15 minutes into the game, that means better control of Baron Nashor. Once you've ganked enough, the opponents will start sticking together, and this means moving on to the team-fight phase.