In League of Legends, you’re not going to find very many game modes and maps, but that’s okay – Summoner’s Rift is one of the most popular. Twisted Treeline and The Howling Abyss are the other two permanent LoL maps, and on these maps, LoL players have the opportunity to discover fun game-modes. Many LoL players exclusively choose to play ARAM or Twisted Treeline. ARAM is super popular, and for a good reason – it’s packed full of fun!
Personally, I love ARAM. It’s one of my favorites, and today, I’m going to give you some tips to help you improve in ARAM. Now, let’s move forward to the top ARAM tips…
1. Engage Carefully
The effectiveness of your engage can either make or break your game. In other words, if your engage is spot on, and you have a good reaction to how the enemy engages, you’re more likely to win.
Before responding to an engage, you should take a second to analyze the situation. Yes, I understand, it’s tempting to go all out when trouble first pops up, but if you stop and think so that you can position yourself well and find the best target, the fight will have a different outcome for you.
The same thing goes for engaging – before you press that E on Leona, ask yourself: “Is this a good engage?”
In ARAM, we don’t get a whole lot of time, but if you take this tactic and use it to your advantage, you’re going to notice an increase in your gameplay performances.
Also, while I’m on the topic, you need to avoid turret diving unless you have a beefy tank. When you engage, you have five people focusing on you, and having a tower focusing on you is purely a blood bath.
2. Stay Healthy
Health is important in League of Legends, regardless of what mode you’re in, but I believe it’s more important in Aram because you don’t have the opportunity to run back to your “fountain” to regenerate your health. For this reason, you need to hold on to every bit of health you have. Sure, your health bar may be full, but this doesn’t mean you need to walk right into battle. If you jump into battle, your health will be drained, and you’ll be stuck at low health until your champion dies.
How do you stay healthy? I’ve played a lot of ARAM, so let me explain each class:
- Assassins: For this class, heal is helpful, but it isn’t required. For extra killing power, you may want to choose Ignite or snowball to get to targets.
- Mages: As your second summoner spell, I recommend taking heal. Buy five potions every time you die, until you’ve reached level 10. From there, use health packs to keep your health up there. As a mage, you will want to stay at your max range and deal as much damage as you can from there.
- Tanks/Bruisers: As early as you can, buy Warmogs and always heal to your max HP before you start another fight.
- Marksmen: Always go for the Warlord’s Bloodlust keystone; you may want to grab a lifesteal item (I always do) and take the Heal summoner spell. As a marksman, staying healthy is all about using your keystone procs to heal up and not take too much damage constantly.
- Fighters: This is the one class that has a hard time in ARAM, so you need to get a lifesteal item as soon as you can – I recommend going for Ravenous Hydra.
Follow this basic guide for each class, and you shouldn’t have a problem staying healthy.
3. Not Enough Mana
Are you always running out of mana? Mana is one of the easiest resources to manage, but it can be a real chore for fighters and assassins. If you manage your mana correctly, while your opponents are continuously wasting it like there’s no tomorrow, then your chances of winning the game will increase. I see Sivir, Ziggs, Xerath all hurling out their skill-shots in the early game, only to deal low damage. After a couple of minutes, they have nothing else to work with.
So, for those of you that continuously run out of mana, here’s some advice for each class:
- Mages: As a mage, you’ll want to start with boots, Lost Chapter, and Health Potions. After getting Morello, you won’t be dealing with any more mana issues for the rest of the match.
- Tanks/Fighters/Bruisers: For you guys, there’s not a whole lot you can do besides taking a health pack. The Clarity Summoner spell is pretty good, so if you’re a supportive tank like Braum, Nautilus, or Leona, go for that. If you’re a bruiser like Wukong or Darius, then you’ll have mana problems, and I haven’t found a good way of getting around that. For this reason, I believe fighters and bruisers are the most difficult to use in ARAM.
- Assassins: Morrelonomicon is great on AP assassins like Fizz or Ekko. If you’re Kha’Zix, Talon, or Master Yi, hopefully, a teammate grabbed clarity; otherwise, you’ll just need to use health packs to get your mana back.
- Marksmen: Start with a BF sword and grab Essence Reaver as soon as you can. This is required for most marksmen, but champions like Corki, Kog’Maw, Kindred, and Ezreal will do fine without it.
- All Classes: During the early phase, don’t go throwing everything you have towards the enemy, because you’re not going to do a whole lot of damage. Instead, you’re going to want to go for the odd skill-shot here and there to make sure you don’t run out of mana before you can really do some damage.
4. Oracle’s Extract
How many times have Shaco’s boxes ruined your KDA? What about those Teemo shrooms? May I recommend Oracle’s Extract? Oracle Extract is an item in the shop that you can buy – it only costs 300 gold, yet not many players are purchasing it. What it does is it reveals all invisible units within a short radius around you.
5. Don’t forget about CS’ing
In Aram, put some effort into CS’ing. Towards that 20-minute mark, the gold you get is invaluable. If you manage to get more minions than your opponents, it’s pretty much GG from then on. Supports and tanks can go without it, but if you’re a damage dealer, then you cannot forget about CS – do it as much as possible.
Getting one item that gives you at least 15 ad is powerful and a good tactic. Go out there and attack those minions as much as you can, especially with DoT and AoE abilities.
6. Facing Poke Champs
Have you ever faced an entire team full of poke? It’s a real horror story. If you have five melee champions, you’re really going to struggle, but this is what makes ARAM fun-to-play, and fortunately, it is quite rare.
What you need to do is take the first 15 minutes and spend it behind your tower, farming as much as you can and dodging the poke. Don’t try to trade back; this is only a waste of time because the damage you do can easily be recovered. Take as little poke as possible and stay healthy. Eventually, the enemy team will overextend. If the enemies are taking a lot of time throwing out poke like there’s no tomorrow, they’re either going to get cocky or tilted. If you have died five times trying to engage, they’re not going to know what you’re capable of and will be in for a real surprise when you finally let loose.
After 20 minutes, you will have good items to get you through the poke, and you’ll have an excellent mental advantage (yes, that’s a thing in LoL). This will put you ahead of the game.
7. Recognize Those Strong Champions
ARAM is random, so most players are assigned with champions they don’t know how to play. You’ll want to familiarize yourself with the strong champions. If you get a champion like Tryndamere, Udyr, or Nunu, you’ll want to reroll for a chance to get a better champion. However, if you get a champion like Zed, Kassadin, or Ryze, you’ll want to keep them.
8. Try to Stay Alive
Of course, you’re going to want to try your best to stay alive in ARAM. Unless you’re Master Yi, staying alive is important. Like Summoner’s Rift, while you’re dead, you’re not going to gain much gold or experience. For each minion that dies close to you, you will get five gold. Sure, this doesn’t seem like much, but over a span of 10 deaths, it sure is.
If you got to die, you got to die, but I try to die after I have around 5k gold in hand – this will allow me to buy an item before I return.
9. Enemies with Hooks/Grabs
In ARAM, one of the most frustrating parts are those hook champions, and it’s even more frustrating when there’s more than one of them. I’ve had my fair share of hook/grab champions and don’t like dealing with them – this includes Thresh, Blitzcrank, Nautilus, and Amumu. There’s not a whole lot you can do to stop your team members from being grabbed, unfortunately. The best thing you can do for them would be to punish them while their grab is on cooldown.
10. What Can You Learn from ARAM?
You can use ARAM as a practice tool. You can learn many different things when you play ARAM, which will help you in the ranked area. After facing Morganas, Blitzcranks, and Ezreals so many times, you’ll get pretty good at predicting and dodging.
You’ll also have the opportunity to learn about new champions and will start to recognize their kits/abilities and identify the weak ones from the strong ones. Basically, ARAM is a big team-fight, so you’ll learn how to position yourself to deal damage and cope under pressure.
11. Don’t Be Too Afraid of Death
Let’s face it, in League of Legends; we’re going to die at some point. That’s just how it is. Sometimes, there’s nothing we can do about it. In ARAM, the only way to get back to base is by dying, so get used to jumping headfirst into your opponents so you can die.
12. Put Your Map to Use
Very often, you’re going to find yourself at your turrets, fending off enemies. When you win the wave, you’ll find pushing to the next turret difficult due to the large distance from that objective to the next. Then, you realize the enemies have respawned and managed to refill their health and their items. This is a challenging situation to get yourself out of, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You just need some skill to regain the advantage point and make a successful push – this can all be done by paying close attention to the map.
You can gain a significant edge by keeping the fight on your enemy’s side, rather than on your own side. There’s a couple of benefits with doing this. Even if you lose, the other team will find it just as hard as you did to push across the map. If you do manage to win the fight, you’re where you need to be at this point, and now, you can push for the towers and move forward to victory.
Another strategy is – you can push the enemy before a real fight starts. Be aggressive, and try to scare them back. This will put out a great deal of psychological pressure, and if you do it right, the enemy will lose ground.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the top 12 ARAM tips – take these tips and use them the next time you’re playing ARAM.
