League of Legends: Difference between revisions

** This has extended, with a few characters, into getting new character models as well as new art. One of the most thorough revamps was Ashe, one of the oldest champions in the game, as her character models for all of her skins getting a significant rework along with all of her skin portraits getting redrawn in the more realistic style. In Ashe's case, she had already had her main portrait redone once before to get away from her ''really'' awful original art.

** More recent champions occasionally get Chinese art for their skins. Not nearly as quickly as the champions and skins come out, but they're there.

* [[Artificial Brilliance]]/[[Artificial Stupidity]]: The bots zig-zag between these two. The bots on Beginner are notoriously poor players, running into towers without minions and rarely going back for more health. The Intermediate bots, on the other hand, are a whole order of magnitude more difficult, ganking weak champions and making much better use of their abilities -- and yet they ''still'' make stupid decisions like chasing "weakened" champions all across the map while their lane stays wide-open.

** The bots are actually being updated, too - with [[Artificial Brilliance]] intended.

** The item "The Brutalizer" costs [[Leet Lingo|1337 gold]]

** Surprise Party Fiddlesticks, released on the game's second birthday on October 27, 2011.

** [[Playboy Bunny|Battle Bunny Riven]] was released in response to [http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1239078 the biggest thread in the history of the LoL forums].

* [[Attack Attack Attack]]: If you do this, your teammates will hate you.

** Summoner's Rift default laning/team composition: one carry, one tank, one offtank, one caster and one support; one jungler, solo top, solo mid, duo bot.

** Many of the original champions count toward this as well. Ashe in particular has only two attack skills, one self buff, and one vision extender. However, her game-changing ultimates are devastating in the right place.

** In a meta example, Riot Games themselves: "Hi, guys, there's a popularity contest for online games over there, the winner is decided by number of votes. Oh, and if we win, everybody will get a free rune page. Here's a vote link. No, we're not implying anything."

** However you need the IP boosts if you want to quickly get IP at an early level. Once you get past level 10 you no longer have IP bonuses.

** Annie is a little girl. And a magical prodigy. With fireballs. And her teddy bear is a demon from hell that she ensorcelled.

** Nunu looks like he can't be much older than Annie. Both Annie's profile page and Nunu's refer to how terrifying they'll be when they grow up, considering how nasty they are ''now''.

** Depends on the champion in question. Carries need expensive and specific items, casters and tanks are less reliant on them, supports are the least reliant. Janna, Alistar and Blitzcrank can be fine with just boots and lots of wards, as they mostly provide crowd control, which doesn't scale. This is in fact the reasoning behind a strategy for grouping a support in a laine with a carry. The carry gets as much gold as possible from the enemy minions in the lane to make use of their high potential, while the support remains a useful member of the team without that gold.

* [[Combat By Champion]]: The purpose of the League -- because actual wars and the dangerous potential of magic is unpreferably terrible.

* [[Eldritch Location]]: The Void.

* [[Elemental Crafting]]: Referred to in the basic armor items: Cloth Armor grants some armor, while Chain Vest grants a lot of it.

* [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin]]: The Cloak and Dagger item... is made from the Cloak of Agility and Dagger items.

* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: You can be promised from the start of the game that only your team will have disconnects, only your team will have a support that doesn't know how important wards are, and only your team will have the Jax that does bad. It's positive that THEIR team will have the Akali that gets 12 kills by 10 minutes, their team will know how to communicate, and their team will always have the better jungler.

* [[Evil Twin]]: A confusing instance on Riot's forums. There is an Associate Game Designer, Shurelia. There is also an apparently official Riot account posting on the forums called DarkShurelia. Who is comparatively ruder and [[Deadpan Snarker|snarkier]] while posting. One other Riot poster seemed to indicate this was because people made fun of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kxGQ3gWdrM her voice].

** Garen is the king of this Trope. If you walk into a brush and there is a Garen on the enemy team, expect it.

** Hilariously parodied with Wukong's ultimate. He spins and knocks up enemies, but the kicker is that in the code for the game, the trigger for Wukong's ultimate is actually called "spintowin"

** The three champions available in the Battle Training tutorial -- Garen (front-line fighter), Ryze (mage), and Ashe (ranged damage dealer).

* [[Filk Song]]: The Songs of the Summoned competition inevitably brings a lot of them to the field.

** [[The Big Bad]]: Swain

** [[The Dragon]]: Darius and Urgot

*** [[The Brute]]: Cho'gath

*** [[Dark Chick]]: Katarina

** [[The Hero]]: Jarvan

** [[The Lancer]]: Garen

* [[Gargle Blaster]]: There is a contest in Bilgewater called the GrugMug Grog Slog where half of the contest is creating an ''actually caustic drink''. As in, the winner's has burned through the mug, the table and the floor. The other half is drinking the most of that winner before requiring medical attention.

** [[Mad Scientist|Singed]]'s ultimate ability has him drink one for a [[Status Buff]].

* [[Glass Cannon]]: Some champions (unofficially known as "nukes") are designed to deal tons of damage very very quickly. Their defensive stats and abilities are usually quite low. An interesting case is Karthus who, thanks to his passive that lets him continue casting spells for seven seconds after he's killed and his ultimate that damages every player on the enemy team, actually has the potential to deal ''more'' damage once he's killed, allowing him to focus entirely on offense and ignore defense for the most part.

* [[Glowing Eyes]]: Common for a number of champion's portraits for the English version of game. A [[Watsonian Versus Doylist|Doylist]] explanation is that eyes are very hard to draw.

** There are a lot more now after the Songs of the Summoned contest.

* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]: [[Homing Boulders]] aside, Ashe's Enchanted Crystal Arrow and Ezreal's Trueshot Barrage can be aimed across the whole map. Interestingly, truly impossible shots are the ''player's'' [[Improbable Aiming Skills]] (or, more likely, blind luck).

** Infinity Edge, with its huge damage boost, high crit chance, and increase in critical damage done is probably as close as you can get for melee DPS champions. Of course on most spellcasters, it is next to useless.

** Rabbadon's Deathcap is the caster version. Single biggest AP boost of any item, and raises the effective AP of every other source you have.

** Cranked [[Up to Eleven]] with Jax, who is such a master of ''everything'', that he was undefeatable. To make him equal to others, he was saddled with special restrictions to fight under. In protest, he tossed aside his arms and began using a brass ''lamppost'' as a weapon, and ''still'' kicked ass with it. Even when the restriction was lifted, he continued using the lamppost as a self imposed handicap.

* [[Metagame]]: Changes ''all the time'' with new patches and characters. They're seperate between the North American and European regions, even. Champions can be considered useless on one of the servers and overpowered on the other.

* [[Min Maxing]]: This is what Runepages (and, to a lesser extent, Masteries) are for. Made a little easier by the addition of purchaseable runepages and free Mastery pages; now you can have one per character, instead of having two "generic" rune pages and one Mastery page that have to multi-purpose.

* [[Morality Kitchen Sink]]: Very close to [[Grey and Gray Morality]]. Demacia, Noxus and Zaun [[Word of God|are all neutral]]. Demacia is a fascist state, Noxus is full of murderous assassins and cutthroat individuals who believe power goes to the ones who do what it takes to get it, and Zaun of insane mages, chemists, and bureaucrats. Zaun's total lack of lawful regulation may have turned the city into an industrial hellhole, but its respect for the freedom of all sentient creatures led it to grant Blitzcrank autonomy when golems were still considered mere property everywhere else. And in Noxus, where all '''are''' protected under the law <ref> Some, admittedly, significantly so more than others</ref>, the sort of rhetoric common to [[Mighty Whitey|Imperialist Europe]] is used to justify invading and "civilizing" other nations. Demacia is a citystate that, despite being militaristic and nationalistic, is really supposed to be trying to extol and display the values of justice and benevolence to the people of Valoran. Bandle City, Ionia, Freljord are either neutral or good with Piltover being one of completely pure intentions, and there are also unaffiliated purely evil creatures from the Void, and purely good creatures, like Soraka and Kayle.

* [[Multiplayer Online Battle Arena]]: [[Trope Namer]]. The term ''MOBA'' was coined by ''Riot Games'' for ''[[League of Legends]]'' as a marketing term specifically because everybody referred to the genre as "DotA clones" and they didn't want their game always being compared to ''DotA''.

* [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules]]: As the computer says, "Lag? What's that? Disconnectors? Griefers? You can do that?" They receive items on a timer, rather than buying it. Also see [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]].

* [[The Napoleon]]: Veigar, the Tiny Master of Evil. Emphasis on Tiny.

** "'It's just a short way?' ''WAS THAT A SHORT JOKE?!''"

** They're the two "superpowers" militaristically of Runeterra.

* [[Not the Intended Use]]: Very prolific. Perhaps the most extremeexample is Sion. He is clearly intended to be a tanky melee physical DPS champion, but due to high Ability Power scaling, he is most often played as a burst mage.

** Damage dealers that are strong early game but fade late are referred to as 'Tanky DPS' characters. While most of them are indeed tough, the name is still applied to characters like Kayle or Riven that skew towards being a [[Glass Cannon]].

* [[Offscreen Teleportation]]: literally, with the Teleport summoner spell. More subtly in that stealth characters that have gone missing while cloaked could be ''anywhere''. Maybe that Evelynn just beelined across the map towards you. Maybe she's standing ''right behind you'' waiting for you to make one wrong move. Or maybe, while you are cowering at your tower so she can't kill you, she's merrily farming the dragon or even in town.

** [[Level Grinding|Less so in the beginning of the game, and more so later.]]

* [[Our Elves Are Different]]: Runeterra has all sorts of supernatural creatures, monsters and gnomes, but what it does not have is elves. The two pointy-eared characters are explicitly ''not'' elves.

* [[Overdrive]]: Blitzcrank [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|has a move called this]]. It allows him to run at high speed and significantly boosts his attack speed while it's active.

* [[Rasputinian Death]]: Are you a tank? If yes, are you out of escape buttons? If yes, are your enemies all present at the same time your teammates are all absent? [[This Is Gonna Suck|Take a deep breath. This won't be over any time soon.]]

* [[Reality Subtext]]: The champion Tryndamere is also the username of the president of Riot, Marc Merrill. His wife's name is Ashley. The champion Tryndamere has a political marriage to Ashe. [[Averted Trope|But actually this is averted]] - [http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t5gpa/i_am_marc_tryndamere_merrill_president_cofounder/c4jphql the creative design team simply had the two champions marry since the champions both hail from the same region, and they were not aware Ashe was named after Marc Merrill's wife].

* [[Retcon]]:

** The lore entries of several champions have changed over the years, some in slight details, others in major character overhauls. Teemo and Nunu have probably been hit the hardest with the Retcon Hammer; Teemo's lore took a big step towards [[Darker and Edgier]] and then a slightly smaller step back towards [[Lighter and Softer]]. Nunu's lore changed him from a boy to a girl and then ''back'' to a boy, causing much [[Viewer Gender Confusion]].

** The name of the tribe of warrior mountain-dwellers to which champions Pantheon and Leona changed from the Stanpar to the Rakkor, most likely to make the [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|parallels to the Greek Spartans]] a little less obvious.

** Ziggs can use his Satchel Charge to leap over map geometry.

* [[Rule of Three]]: [http://blog.leagueoflegends.com/?p=215 Explicitly played straight] with the three ninja champions of Kinkou.

* [[Running Gag]]: Tamat, Lead Community Manager at Riot Games, is well-known for his favourite champion being Pantheon. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se2_mp3hX3g This patch preview featured him looking slightly unhappy hearing about upcoming changes that would reduce Pantheon's power]. A later patch preview had him say he took a break from Pantheon to play Nocturne, and asked how he would be buffed. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkdP-Xp0N6o Morello holds in laughter and tells him Nocturne would be nerfed]. Tamat is again, displeased.

* [[Schizo Tech]]: Despite being a fairly magic heavy fantasy world, the Lore journals reveal that Runeterra is actually pretty technologically advanced above and beyond their magical capabilities. For instance, the Journal of Justice reveals that there have been dirigible races for the last 16 years with ships, at the smallest, being 27 meters. Such ships are worked on by both mages and engineers as one ship was modified by a chrono mage to be faster.

* [[Shout Out]]: See [[League of Legends (Video Game)/Shout Out|this page]] for the exhaustive list.

* [[Secret Test of Character]]: League Judgements, depending on how well Champions had studied the League beforehand.

** [[Beauty Equals Goodness|Sensible]]: Lux, Leona, Irelia, Riven, Kayle, Karma, Vayne

** [[Hotter and Sexier|Ski]][[Evil Is Sexy|mpy]]: Katarina, Morgana, Eveylnn, Cassiopeia, Leblanc

** Also averted with Anivia and the Yordle females, who not only are dressed sensibly but lack any kind of sex appeal (at least for the usual tastes).

* [[Shoot the Medic First]]: Why you don't see many people playing support champions. Well, other than that they don't score a lot of kills, and in these games, people are ''all'' going after kills... which is why you'll see ones who're either tanky (Galio, Blitzcrank) or can also deal damage or carry (Teemo, Lux) more than the actual medics (Soraka, Sona, Karma).

** Miss Fortune's pistol barrels are thicker than her arms.

* [[The Smurfette Principle]]: Highly averted, in comparison to other games in the genre- at least a third of the roster is female. This is exceptional compared to its competitors. Although notably, although there are female champions with heavy survivability, none of the female characters was a dedicated tank (until Leona, anyways). There also wasn't a melee female carry until Fiora.

* [[Teeth Clenched Teamwork]]: When you really really hate your teammates during a match for some reason, but are close to winning your team becomes this.

** This also happens if you get in a team whose strategy is to faceroll the opponents' team so hard they surrender, and the other team is ''very'' stubborn and refuses to surrender. And if you're doing this in a bot game? This will ascend beyond [[Teeth Clenched Teamwork]] and go into [[And I Must Scream]]. Unlike players, bots don't surrender and get items for free, so really, you shouldn't just decide "I'll farm kills cause it's a bot game" Because they ''will'' outgear you if you let the game go on too long. There is a light at the end of the tunnel though; if the players who turtled the game decide enough is enough they can always turn 'em around and fight Baron or backdoor them.

** Riot then released [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrSihRXTrq4 this "spotlight"]. Game Breaking... no DESTROYING power, a "blurry" screen debuff, and the ability to kill members of ''your own team'' who defect to the other side. They released an actual spotlight video shortly after.

** Their 2012 prank (a really bad 3D mode) was obvious (made even more so by the Urf cameo at the end), but nonetheless hilarious. Incidentally, they've actually named April Fool's Dy "Urf Day."

** Wait, why did one of them die? Two? THREE!? Is that a tea kettle I hear? No, it's Singed. And if the enemy is chasing him, not only did your team gain a boatload of free time to knock down a turret or three, but they're likely not too intelligent. Why? Well, Singed LEAVES POISON GAS BEHIND HIM. If you've ever fought a good Singed, you know just how difficult that bastard is to bring down.

** There's also Master Yi. If you're building to troll, dunk or just be a distraction, Boots of Mobility and five Phantom Dancers coupled with the might of Highlander might just buy your team the time it needs to take that vital turret/inhibitor down. And you can rest assured that your teammate is likely laughing his ass off.

* [[Why Am I Ticking]]: [[Time Master|Zilean]] can plant [[A Worldwide Punomenon|time bombs]] onto units, including enemy champions. It's very possible to get one of these on you while you're running away and accidentally [[Idiot Ball|get a teammate killed]] if you don't keep your distance.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9DtuE0QIW8/ And then there's this.] [[Hilarity Ensues]].