League of Legends Guide Basics

Guide Basics

This wiki article is dedicated to providing you with some nice and nifty tips and tricks for Guide Writing, written by the MobaFire community. Chapter organisation, what a good guide should contain and characteristics of a bad guide are amongst the theory you will encounter, along with advice geared towards making your guide as fantastic as it could be. Further reading: Making a Guide, BBCode Guide, Ten Commandments of Guide Writing, Katasandra's Table Coding Guide

Recommended Guide Outline

You should try to make your guide accessible to new players but also have beneficial information for more experienced players. Remember you don’t have to follow this outline exactly. You could combine some topics into 1 section, split them up, or rearrange their order. If you write a guide by yourself you might cover a lot of these topics, but this outline should provide you with common questions players want answered when reading a guide. Try to cover most of the topics, even if you don’t cover all of them.

1. Introduction

Requirements of a Good Guide

Relevance: Simply put, keep your guide updated. Keep it as relevant as possible to the CURRENT metagame. If you have a big paragraph about how to counter roamers, and then the metagame shifts to AD carry+support bottom, put in a new chapter emphasizing the dominance of AD+Support instead of roaming. Explanations: Explain every single choice you make, from your items to your masteries. People always want to know why this > that. Organization: An unorganized guide is messy, causing trouble for the reader, therefore making it less likely he/she will understand/like your guide. A general set up explains all the pre-game selections (Runes, Masteries, Summoner Spells), then goes into detail about Skill Sequencing, Jungle Routes/Laning Tips, Item Choices, and Gameplay. Detail: Go into detail about things that seem vague, like tips on how to use a certain skill or what not. This shows the reader that you know the champion really well. Going into detail about the map the guide is written for, is also a good idea. Format: Having a good format to follow, and not having everything lying around is key to a good guide, it makes your guide easier to follow through. Good formatting includes using coding like Columns, Lists, and Font Effects to emphasise or draw attention to importan aspects of your guide. Focus: Don't go off on tangents when writing your guide. Try and keep all of the information in your guide relevant to the main topic or champion you're explaining. Don't go on a huge rant about warding when there are several detailed warding guides for that purpose. Originality: A good guide is original. Sure, you have the core items and such for each champion, but your explanations, descriptions, situational items and even skill sequence have to be original. Having the exact same build and guide as a top rated guide doesn't mean yours is good. Be original, show that you actually know the champion by putting some of yourself into your guide.

Additional Aspects of a Good Guide

Tips & Tricks: People generally know how the skills of a champion work. If they don't, they can just roll over it. If they still don't, that's why you include a brief section in your guide explaining the mechanics of each skill. But what's REALLY valuable are tricks and nuances to playing a champion a certain way that people may not know immediately. For example, Flash + Powerball on Rammus is extremely strong, and not many people pick up on it. For Amumu, maybe mention that ulting before you throw your Q when you gank someone is usually much more reliable, since it's easier to stun a rooted target. These tips aren't immediately obvious to newer players and need to be pointed out, and are what many people consider valuable information in a guide. Variety: Try to have some change of character during your guide. Add some humor, to make it fun to read, not just an essay. The most dedicated players will be fascinated to learn more about a champion but many readers are simply reading to get a good foothold on their playstyle. With some humor or color/images/videos, the reader stays interested. Use Resources: Take advice from others about your guide, and consider any changes they suggest. Take a look at other guides to see where yours is lacking, and feel free to include links to other relevant guides in your own if it will help your reader. If you don't want to go into detail on jungling or warding, include a link to a good guide on that topic. If you want to make a great guide, focus on helping your readers.

Improving Your Guide

Images: A picture is worth more than a thousand words, so why not show instead of tell. Using images (jungle maps, skillshot examples) helps the reader understand things that are hard to explain with words. Screenshots of recent scores acquired with your build will also boost confidence and trust in the reader towards your guide. Videos: Videos are even better than pictures for a guide. A jungle video with the best route, or the best ward placements, or the best way to use a certain skill is excellent and will help your guide a lot. A simple video showing a game where you dominate as a champion isn't a good illustration of that champion's performance. If you have a trick you describe, try to have a video showing the trick and how it's useful in a game. If my Amumu guide says what "bandage juking" is, I should link to Stonewall008's video showing an excellent bandage juke. Using Icons: Icons allow the use of tooltips, which explain a Skill, Champion, Rune or Item, in some detail. Read how to implement icons with tooltips. Divided Sections | Sub-Dividing Sections: Doing this will bring more organization to the guide and break up unnecessary walls of text. Sub-dividing sections is wise when you have multiple sections related to the same topic. Including Alternatives: Alternative Rune setup, Mastery setup, hell even an alternative skill sequence will make your guide much better. This allows your build to be used for multiple setups. Whats more, it helps having alternatives because not everything always goes as planned, and sometimes you have to use a certain mastery point or a certain rune setup to counter a pick (for ranked mainly). For example, if your team doesn't have any DoTs (damage of time abilities), and the enemy team has a Dr. Mundo or Vladimir, changing your standard summoners of Exhaust + Flash to Ignite + Flash will shut down those champions in a teamfight, as both rely on their self-healing abilities.

Characteristics of Bad Guides

Walls of Text: They are unattractive. People will literally not read your guide if it contains even one HUGE Wall of Text. This is why images and videos help the guide. They reduce the need for words. As long as the text is embedded with coding, colour and an interesting style of writing, then the reader should stay interested. Grammar mistakes: I'm not saying there can't be a typo here and there, we are all human. But to make your ideas clear for the reader, you have to present them in the best way possible. Inconsistency: Keep the parts of your guide looking similar, in a format that's simple to read. Don't just shake things up halfway through - it makes the work look shoddy and patched-up, and can confuse the reader. If you stress a certain point in the guide, do NOT contradict yourself later. Complication: Unless it's necessary (like if you're explaining a difficult mechanic or trick), you need to keep the guide as simple as possible so as many people will understand it as possible. This applies to SO MANY THINGS, including items, runes, skill order, masteries, et cetera. On 95% of the champions in the game (barring jungle champions), you generally cannot go wrong with the following: -Some kind of 21/9 mastery setup, with 21 points in one tree and 9 in another. -Standard 9/9/9/3 runes meant to optimize certain areas. -Standard QWQEQR (to level 6) skilling order with R>1>2>3 for the rest of the skills. In short, max one skill first, then another, then another, getting ult when possible. Redundancy: It's annoying to read something in a guide that's being repeated over and over in several different sections. There's repeating a point for emphasis, and there's saying the same thing as if it's a brand new idea.

Credits

Bryun, Jebus McAzn, jhoijhoi, Mowen, PsiGuard, th3BlackAngel