So you're a noob.. Top
Everyone hates to admit it so I'll be the first to. I, Nicky Tsunami, am a MOBA noob. I'd never MOBA'd, I did not know if ganking was healthy and in my early games I could practically hear my teammates groaning at my mis-steps and bizarro-world builds.
So, in the interest of helping you achieve some "decent-ish"-ness in your game rather quickly, I am writing this
Ringo build for you and sending some good tips and tricks to help you not carry your team but solidify the lane, assist in the jungle when needed and be a great teammate. By following these tips and tricks and build suggestions, I think you'll have an awesome time playing Vain Glory.
Being a VG Teammate - Do's and Don'ts Top
Ok, here are the some of the rules to being a good teammate and contributing to your team's win.
DO'S
DO STAY ALIVE - You don't do anyone any good getting killed, waiting for the timer to drop to zero then spending 10sec or so getting back into the lane to help. Also, if 2 of your teammates are dead, retreat to safety fast because if all 3 of you die, you get Aced and their lane minions gain temporary strength and the enemy heroes get healed. Feeding is MOBA talk for dying all the time and 'feeding' the opponents lots of gold and keep you off the map of play.
DO STAY ACTIVE - Kill minions, try to get the last shot so you get the gold. Farm (this is MOBA talk for getting in the jungle and killing the beasties that post up here and there in the jungle). With
Ringo stay on the near side of your jungle and try to minimize the amount of time you farm (<10% of your time in jungle). You need to be in the lane, the jungle is dangerous for a
Ringo noob. Always be killing something and leveling up.
DO CONTROL THE NEAR-SIDE MINE - This will help your maintain the lane and not get pressured back to your turrets, your junglers should help always and pressure to get the far-side (opponent side) mine.
DO LEVEL UP - Easiest way to lose this game is to work on getting your level up, get some momentum and then get crushed when the opponent levels over your team and sends you scrambling because they are all a higher level than you. Check the scoreboard, always try to leveling up to 12 as fast as possible.
DO MIND YOUR MONEY - More on this later but at the end of the day, the golden rule for Vain Glory is 'Whoever has the gold makes the rules.' In my humble experience, I cannot remember a time when the winning team didn't own the gold game. Always be working to be earning and upgrading your abilities.
DO BUILD WITH THE END IN MIND - Have a plan, it's easy to start with a plan then mid game kind of abandon the plan and buy like four dragon hearts (they will not save you). Always buy with the intent of getting a couple of those level 3 goodies that are really powerful.
DON'TS
DON'T OVER COMMIT - You get an opponent in the lane one shot away from dying and you chase them into their turret, best case is you both die. If you get an enemy to retreat, that is great! Fall back and farm those minions! Gives you some time to level up and get some gold. Get the feel of over committing fast, if you are chasing someone and its one on one, and they are retreating hard to their turrets or teammates, you are over committing and you will die. Bail and go kill some stuff.
DON'T ENGAGE WITH ANYONE EQUAL LEVEL OR HIGHER THAN YOU - Chances are if you are new, they have a few tricks up their sleeves so if you don't have a big health/level advantage, be ready to retreat. Run from Krul and Catherine always, when you get better you can snipe (MOBA talk for hit and run) but if you see either of those two in a one on one, bail hard to your turret.
DON'T GO IT ALONE - Team fighting with two or three of your teammates is really fun, especially because
Ringo can keep distance shoot from a long way away. Chances are if you are leveled up and with your teammate, you have a very good chance at winning against any one enemy. Assists are awesome!
DON'T AFK - For those of you that don't know, AFK means 'away from keyboard'. You'll get punished by the folks at Superevil with a low karma rating and it sucks to have a teammate leave and you get destroyed. Conversely, it's not even very fun to beat a team of two game opponents when one of the opponent heroes goes AFK.
The Noob Build Top
Early Game
Buy
Sprint Boots and a couple of Halcyon Potions - Get into the lane and start mowing down minions. Don't worry about kills and don't over commit. It will be tempting to chase and get one last shot but that turret is mega strong especially in the early minutes of the game and it will end badly. When your energy is at 50%, use the potion, don't let your energy get too low where one random shot is going to take you out, stay alive and keep farming, collecting gold and leveling. Save your Sprint Boot active sprint for when you need to escape, don't use it otherwise. Use your
Twirling Silver to go faster. The speed you get from the
Twirling Silver plus the
Sprint Boots is going to keep you out of trouble most of the game.
As far as early upgrades go, I would start with
Ironguard Contract. It has 5 health regen and gives you gold when you're hit and also when you don't get those valuable last hits upping your early gold earning considerably. I would also go with the
Book of Eulogies, you get 35HP when you kill an enemy. This will keep you alive and earning in the lane with a relatively low investment of 550 gold. This will start you building to
Barbed Needle as well which gives you 50hp when you kill an enemy and 10% lifesteal for each shot landed.
Mid Game
There are a bazillion awesome
Ringo builds in Vainglory Fire (love you guys BTW) to pick from. I don't think you can go really wrong with a build unless you don't have an end game in mind. I'll point out a few items that are great to have for new people because they don't require timing and thought (aka mostly passive abilities) allowing the new player to focus on farming, controlling the lane and helping with teammates.
I'd work up to
Tension Bow it's passive ability gives you an extra 180 bonus damage every 6 seconds. This is a great mid game upgrade. It requires
Six Sins and/or
Piercing Spear so make sure to buy with the
Tension Bow in mind.
Later Game
If you go
Tension Bow early, consider going all in on weapon power (red upgrades). I really like working toward
Tornado Trigger and
Tyrant's Monocle when going weapon power. These two increase attack speed, critical damage and the likelihood of a critical strike. The building blocks of
Blazing Salvo and
Lucky Strike are great to have. Also get a
Fountain of Renewal or two along the way these help your regen, and provide armor and shield (armor protects against typical attacks, shield protects against special ability attacks) and keep you alive while you are sticking to the fundies of building your levels and gold.
Fountain of Renewal is a great team upgrade as you can activate this and heal your whole team mid-battle. Your teammates will love you!
If you want to go crystal power (CP), and I have been completely ruined by some awesome CP
Ringo players, I have had good luck building
Frostburn,
Aftershock and
Alternating Current.
Some Thoughts and Stuff.. Top
For newer players, I like items that don't necessarily have to be 'activated', this takes the guess work out of timing and let's you focus more on developing distance and technique in the game. Also, you have to think about the money game as a new player. Most likely you are going to earn about 5000 gold in a game. If things are going well, you are going to finish the game with about 1000 unspent due to your earnings on your last push to destroy the opponent's vain crystal. So I like to budget for items that have health regen as well as weapon or crystal damage potential. You earn about 3.5 gold per second so think about that too when you are playing.
Think about how you want to use your special/ultimate/ult. I find that getting the most use of the ult as a new player comes when you use it for high effectiveness shots. What I mean by that is to use it efficiently against turrets and the Kraken, these are basically stationary targets and will happily accept the full impact of your ult. By doing this, you'll be helping your team work toward victory by making the most use of your ult. If you use it in battle, you risk being killed while you are winding up (the
Hellfire Brew takes a few seconds to wind up and you're a sitting duck while that's happening).
The Kraken is a challenging beast. A couple of things you should know. WHOMEVER GETS THE LAST HIT ON THE KRAKEN OWNS IT. You get 99% of the damage and someone comes in and sneaks a last shot in, you are out of luck! I think the best way to tackle the Kraken is to wait until your team gets an Ace (or at least two of the opponent heroes killed) and all three of you can engage it fast. Don't die capturing the Kraken, bail when you have only about 1/3rd of your HP left and let one of your teammates take some damage. Once the Kraken engages another teammate, go right back in and keep working on capturing the Kraken, don't go back to base. Also, don't freak and surrender if the opponent gets the Kraken, I've worked through a Kraken attack and if you play as a team, you can make an epic comeback. Thirdly, don't go buck wild when you capture the Kraken, secure the minion mines then conservatively keep distance and work the turrets. Players sometimes go Kraken crazy then get aced after they capture the Kraken. Then the other team kills your Kraken, gains 500 gold apiece for killing it and only loses one turret. It's happened to me and its a bad momentum swing for sure.
Scout traps are super cool. I'm learning to use these and they can be great fun especially early on in the game. Try a few of these sometime and put them near the mid-jungle shop and in the bushes near the bottom of the lane so you see opponent heroes trying to hide in the bottom of the lane trying to gank you.
This is not a build for real super pros, you guys are going to want to build based on holes in what your opponents are building and really work the upgrades that have activated abilities that compliment your player's special abilities. There is some real sophistication in a good counter-build and skill required to execute it that a new player isn't necessarily going to have the expertise to optimize.
If you are a more experienced player, please add some hints for new players in the comments area! I know I would have appreciated it very much!
My Credentials Top
I am not the 'pinnacle of awesomeness', I am not 'the hotness', I have 95 wins and I'm 'decent-ish'. I love fighting with fellow noobs and will always try to be a great teammate and go for the win! I play mainly
Ringo and
Joule and am learning more with
Krul and
Petal.
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