The two friends that got me interested in League of Legends weren’t Dota players. We had known each other through mutual friends and eventually through WoW and it was just something they decided to pick up. Over the past month or so we’ve been playing together more often, but it was just the other night that one had his epiphany, that moment where you realize something about the game you’ve been trying to put into words for days, even weeks: stages.

We had talked before about the importance of managing what most consider the three stages of the game: early, mid, and late. That was easy enough. The revelation had more to do with individual heroes. If you’re new to the game you may be struggling with the difference between characters – some can gank early, some take a while to farm up, some take a lot of work to be viable at every stage of the game. It’s a simple thing to conceptualize but much more difficult to put into practice.

Consider a toon like Nunu. As far as difficulty, he’s pretty low on the scale. You run in, you snowball, you hit a few times, you snowball again, you see friends, you blow Absolute Zero, you watch your team mop up your kills. Nunu is great at harassing early, largely because of his crazy health pool. Try that with Yi, though, and you’re going to get rocked by creep aggro and likely die several painful deaths early on. He requires more farm before he’s truly dangerous, and even then he’s pretty smushy.

The point is this – every hero has a different game cycle and it’s something you need to weigh heavily when strategizing against the other team. Take your time to farm properly if you’re a late gamer or a mage. Harass hard if you have the HP to do so to keep the other team underleveled. Gank heavily mid-game so your farm toon can have a solid late game. And by all means, change your strategy for each toon. The variety of playstyles is part of the beauty of this game. Play to your individual character’s strengths and you’ll be able to increase that gap between your wins and losses.