Picking a Role
In League of Legends, there are five roles to choose from. Top lane, jungle, mid lane, ADC, and support. Each lane serves its purpose, and adds an element to the game that is crucial for a team to utilize in securing victory. Each role presents itself with its own set of challenges. These challenges require varying degrees of skill.
Top Lane
Top Lane is home to mostly bruisers and tanks. This is because top lane is the longest lane in the game. A lane this long requires a champion able to weather the storm, and not crack under pressure. Often, top lane is left in isolation for a large portion of the game until team fights begin happening later on in the game.
Jungle
Jungle in terms of champion picks is a jack-of-all-trades role. Tanks, assassins, bruisers, marksmen, supports, and even some mages are viable in the jungle. It is a beginner-friendly role. Although, some concepts are lost when learning the jungle, such as wave management, and CSing (last hitting minions to earn gold). You will earn gold and experience by killing monsters, instead of directly being pitted against another player. Having access to ganking (Walking in to another lane to assist) any lane with ease, jungle is one of the highest impact roles in the game, and can heavily dictate the early game.
Mid Lane
Mid lane is also a role that has a heavy impact on the map. It is the shortest lane, but do not be fooled, you are not safe. Being positioned in the middle will pit you between both lanes, and jungles, making you vulnerable to ganks. Assassins will generally play mid, and due to their nature of high burst damage, you are not safe at any point
ADC
ADC is one of two roles that shares a lane with another role. ADCs reside in bot lane with the support. Due to the fact that ADCs are weak early, supports occupy the botlane to assist the adc in getting to become strong later in the game. Being positioned by the dragon pit, there is a lot of action that takes place around this role.
Support
Last but certainly not least, the support role is the second part in the one-two punch of bot lane. Support is the only role that does not have to kill minions or monsters to earn gold. Instead, so that they can focus on helping the ADC, supports are allotted a trickle of gold throughout the game to compensate. While it may not seem that they have a large impact since they are on a budget income, supports serve a crucial role in setting up bigger plays for the rest of their team.