Are health and mana potions useful throughout the entire match, or is there a point where they become ineffective?
For the most part, they're really only useful in the first few minutes of the game. After backing two or three times, you just generally do not need them. Still, if you don't need the item slot for anything else, it doesn't really hurt all that much to grab one pot or something.
Around what percentage of health (ignoring any other factors such as if the enemy is pushing or not), is it better to use recall than back off and drop a couple of potions or healing abilities if I have them?
This is entirely dependent on the state of the game, what champion you are, what you're against, and the lane dynamic. The most general rule of thumb is if your HP < your opponent's full combo, you want to play cautiously. You really don't want to back all that often as giving your lane opponent free farm is fairly huge.
The most important thing for learning laning in top or mid is to get comfortable with how much damage you deal in various circumstances so you know exactly how much health (number wise, not percentage wise) to look for a kill. And then, of course, start learning what other champions are looking for. Basically, it's an experience thing.
Ganking is, as far as I can tell, using a champion that starts off strong to harass junglers and other champions rather than sticking to a direct lane and killing minions. Is this correct?
Ganking, in the general sense, is just when a champion comes into a lane to create an unfavorable situation (2v1 for the solo lanes, 3v2 for the ADC/Support lane) to score a kill. This is mainly what the Jungler (and many mid laners) do.
Is it really possible to last hit 90%+ of minions in your lane early game as a melee champion? I usually find that by the time my champion has ambled over to them and readied their attack, they're already dead.
In relation to the above, when waiting for minions to get low enough to last hit them, should I be almost on top of them at all times, just clicking around their general area, or should I just stay still and wait next to them?
Move sooner then; if you're waiting for minions to get low enough for you to kill before you move, then you may want to start going towards them when they're almost there. Without intervention, minions won't just suddenly switch targets so the damage they're dealing is pretty consistent.
Learning how to properly get your cs is one of the biggest parts of the game. Chasing down kills and focusing on harassing over cs is generally not worth it.
Is it worth purchasing a champion in each role, so that if the type of champion I want to play is already filled by someone more skilled, I can switch to someone more useful? Is this something to do later on, if not as I'm learning, or will using the free champions of the week to fill my gaps suffice?
Well, you can't use free champions in Ranked later so there's that. Besides that, it's more important to have a champion you like to play in the role rather than having a champion for that role. It's pretty worthless to have Zyra as a support but don't actually know anything about her, for instance.
Is it usual for teams to have gaps in them for certain roles, and do the lane rules change because of this? For example, might there be a match with two adcs or three bruisers which will change the entire game, or are issues like this resolved in chat before the match starts so you usually have a balanced team? (remember, I haven't played with actual people yet)
For low level games (and, later, low MMR games), a lot of team comps will probably just be random stuff to be honest. Low level games will definitely lack a jungler and often times the "support" will be a "whatever I want to play fffffffffsupport" pick. It'll eventually get better in regards to good team comps but when starting out, just kind of expect whatever.
Should I use skills for minion farming, assuming I use them wisely or should I keep them at the ready in case an enemy champion appears, or simply because I might accidentally kill some minions I could've last hit?
It largely depends on the champion and the situation. Mid lane is generally the lane where you "clear it and look to gank" so you'll often have champions that waveclear with their skills really well. Most the other lanes won't really want to speed up killing the minion wave too much without a good reason (it's pushed into an unfavorable spot, wanting to push it up to back, enemy laner cleared most of the wave so you want to match theirs, etc.).
And just to clarify, killing a minion with a skill still counts as "last hitting" them.
If a minion isn't dying fast enough to my minion waves, is it wise to whack them once before backing off and preparing for the last hit, or should I just wait it out?
Again, it depends on what you're trying to do. If you want your minion wave to slowly push forward, you can hit a minion once or twice and try to speed up the process. If you want the minion wave to stay where it is, you wait as long as possible before hitting them.
If I'm in a game with a AP Carry, and I'm playing support, where should I be? If there's no AD carry? Will there ever be no AD carry?
The support should be with the AD Carry. If there's no ADC, then you cry yourself to sleep.
If I'm lane sharing with another champion, is it every man for himself on last hitting, or is it best to try and split the kills?
Based on the above, if I'm a support lane sharing with an ADC, what should I be last hitting on? Since I'm there primarily to keep the carry alive and feed them, surely it's counterproductive to actually kill to many minions myself, but if I don't kill too many, I can no longer protect them.
As a support, you don't last hit anything unless there's absolutely no way the ADC would have gotten it (e.g., he's dead and you're in lane already waiting for him).
As a support, where should I be placing wards? I understand it's good to place them in the grass, but is there any more specific advice? I also assume it's only for the lane I'm in until the carry is self-sufficient?
You're basically in lane until laning phase ends (which just sort of happens, not like a "well, it's been X minutes, time to move on" sort of thing). Ward positions vary a lot but the most general locations for bot lane will be river area so you can see incoming ganks and the far lane bush so you can see if the enemy jungler snuck into lane (and/or just to keep vision on enemy ADC/Support that walk into bush).
As the game moves away from laning phase, you still want wards that cover objectives (e.g., one near Dragon and, later on, one near Baron) and then wards in spots that you think the enemy team will go through to reach your team. Or
here's just some reading on it.
Should I be dying at all? How much is an acceptable number of deaths in a standard match?
Well I mean, none. But, realistically speaking, you never want to die for free. Ideally you don't have to trade a death for things (e.g., 2 for 1 is strictly worse than 2 for 0). Always look for the way to accomplish something without dying. Don't plan for trading a death, basically.
Tank/Bruiser - Top lane - Generally there to fight other champions and push that lane. A useful deterrent with nothing particularly complex about them
They generally don't push their lane unless the laner is ahead enough to kill their opponent regardless of the situation. Usually you see top lane frozen.
Jungler - Jungle - Champion that farms the jungle camps and kills the golem and dragon to provide buffs to lanes.
Just to note, the team doesn't get buffs when the Jungler kills Golem/Elder Lizard. That buff goes to the one who killed it. Dragon gives no buff, just gold (a good amount of it), but it's not really a solo thing for the most part.
And the jungler should, ideally, spend half their time in the jungle and half the time out looking for gank/countergank opportunities really. Not really a set in stone rule since it largely depends on the game (e.g., if all your lanes are winning, it's hard to find gank chances then) but eh.
Ganker - Varies - Made to make the junglers life hell and harass champions in whatever lanes they can
It's not really a role, just more of a job done. Some junglers are better gankers than others (and, as such, those junglers tend to be better picks overall than others). To "gank" is basically just something that happens, not really a role.
Support - Bottom - Keeps the ADC alive, places sight wards to stop gankers from getting the drop on the team.
Just to save some sanity here, the top lane/mid lane should be warding for themselves, though you'll often see them not (and then die to gank and blame the jungler/support/god/other solo lane/ADC for some reason/roit pls). Come mid-to-late game, you're still the primary source of wards but the rest of the team should be warding as well, especially if they go off on ill-advised solo adventures (and then die to gank and blame the jungler/support/god/etc.).
Sorry again for the overly long post, but thanks for all of the help you guys have given me. This game is quite obtuse and since it's been around a while, it's quite overwhelming to try and get into.
If you're NA, don't forget to join the NeoGAF channel so you can join the AFK club. Besides that, there's a group of us that are always in Mumble (Address: chi.eoreality.net, Port: 64739). Or
just check this for the chat and mumble info.
