Ultimate Beginner’s AoV Guide

Welcome to an Arena of Valor guide! Arena of Valor is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game where players competes against each other in a 5v5 map.This is where you can find and learn more about its basics, especially for beginners.

Arena of Valor, formerly Realm of Valor then Strike of Kings, is an international adaptation of Wangzhe Rongyao, a multiplayer online battle arena developed and published by Tencent Games for the iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch, for markets outside mainland China.

My name is TripleC, I’ve been playing MOBAs all my life. I will be covering quite a lot of tips and tricks that will help improve your gameplay. There are so many people out there that are having troubles in being a better player. It doesn’t mean that they are bad, they just need guidance and game knowledge.

What is Arena of Valor?

• Arena of Valor is Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game that is available on the Google Play store, Apple iTunes (ios) and Nintendo Switch.
• Arena of Valor is Free-to-Play which means there are no cost to play the game. Although, you can spend your money for cosmetics or unlocking heroes, which can be purchased with an in-game currency earned by playing.
• Arena of Valor is a team-based competitive game. It also has eSports scene with a large prize pool for the champions.
• Arena of Valor is made by Tencent Games, which also is the current owner of League of Legends (which is available for Window PCs and Apple Macs only). There are many similarities between these two games.
• Each player can make a group to play with friends or play with strangers in a match.
• After players queued into a game, there is a hero selection phase. Players will each select an unique character (known as heroes) to play in the upcoming match. There are a lot of heroes in the game and they are looking forward to create more heroes in the future.
• Each match consists of two teams set against each other, five players in each team and there is always one winner and one loser.
• Each normal match last between 6 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on how the players perform. In extreme cases, some matches can last over 40 minutes.

What is the Objective?

• There are different game modes in Arena of Valor but it traditionally take place on one mode: 5v5 Grand Battle.

• Both team has a base where they must guard from their enemies while simultaneously attacking their enemies’ base.
• There is the Blue team, whose base is located in the bottom left part of the map. The Red team located on the top right.
• Due to mobile game, it is more convenient to play on the bottom left part of the map. It doesn’t matter which team you are in, the map will rotates and each player will always start on the bottom left.
• At the end of each team’s base, there is a building called the Core. Players win the game by destroying the enemy team’s Core.

What are Heroes?

• Heroes are individual units that are controlled by the players. Each team will have 5 heroes, for a total of 10 players in each game.
• Heroes are unique, meaning that no two are exactly the same. In a normal match, there can only be one of each champion in a team. Unlike Rank games, there can only be 1 unique hero in both ally and enemy team.
• Player-controlled movement: Each heroes in the game are individually controlled, each move independently of each other. Heroes are controlled via the movement wheel which locates on the bottom left of the screen.
• Basic-attacking: The basic attack button locates on the bottom right of the screen. When you tap the button, the hero will attack the nearest target, prioritizing enemy heroes. Some heroes are melee and some are ranged. For some heroes, basic-attacking are their main source of damage.
• Each hero has four skills (some unique heroes has more). One passive skill, two active skill and ultimate skill. Passive skills can’t be used but they can be triggered by certain scenarios, depending on the skill itself. The two active skills usually has a short cooldown and the ultimate skill has a longer cooldown (and can be skill-up on level 4 only).
• Life and death: All heroes has a health bar. This bar will always show above the heroes and it will indicate how close they are to death. Every heroes has different amount of health. When a hero’s health reaches zero, that hero will die. When a hero dies, they enters the “respawn timer”. That timer is determined by the current time of the game. When a hero respawn, they will be returned to the map behind the Core, a safe zone called the fountain.
• Resources: Most heroes has a resource to cast their abilities, displayed below the health bar of each hero. For most heroes, this resource is called Mana. Mana regenerates slowly over time. Some heroes has Energy and some heroes has no resource at all.
• Talent: A Talent spell is essentially an ability that players can take with them during the hero selection phase. Every hero can pick them in every single game. These abilities has a long cooldown and each player can only take one Talent spell with them.

What are the Roles?

Certain heroes are good in certain roles and certain players are good at playing certain heroes. Like any sports, Arena of Valor has positions that players play. While these roles were not originally intended when the game came out, they were developed over time as strategies were formed.

• Top Laner: The top laner plays in the top lane and traditionally plays heroes that are difficult to kill and dominant in solo lane. Top laners are usually isolated off from the rest of the team. It can be a tank,fighter or a bruiser, depending on the team composition.
• Mid Laner: The mid laner plays in the middle lane and is often thought as the star role of the team. Because they are middle of everything, they can quickly get to any place on the map to assist their teammates.  Mid lane heroes are usually mages or heavy damage dealers.
• Marksman/Bottom Lane: Marksman, as known as Attack Damage Carry (ADC) plays in the bottom lane and is one of the team’s primary damage dealers. Because of the current meta, most players plays a Top Lane hero in the bottom lane.
• Support: The support plays either in the bottom lane with a Marksman and helps them throughout the game. Otherwise, they would help the jungler in clearing the camps and roam, finding an opportunity to gank with their jungler.
• Jungler: The jungler role always take Punish as their talent so they could purchase jungler’s items and benefiting them. Unlike any other laner, they do not go to lane to farm. They farm only jungle camps and looks for opportunity to help their team.

How do Heroes grow stronger?

• Experience (EXP or XP): At the beginning of each game, all heroes starts out at level one. Each level increases the heroes primary attributes such as Health,Mana, Attack Damage, Armor, etc. and awards them one skill point to upgrade their abilities/skills. Players cannot use the ability until an ability is upgraded with at least one skill point.
• The ultimate ability can be leveled up with skill points at Level 4, 8 and 12. The other two active abilities can be upgraded 6 times total.
• Leveling up heroes is done by acquiring enough experience points. Enemy minions, jungle camps and enemy heroes gives experience points when they die. Destroying enemy turrets or taking objective such as Dragon will also obtain experience points.
• Items and Gold: In Arena of Valor, items are the most important part of the game that makes your heroes stronger. Like learning all the heroes, learning all the items takes time as well. Every item is unique and has special effects or passives.
• Items are bought with gold, when an enemy minion dies nearby your hero, you obtain gold. If you take the killing blow, you have a bonus gold. Destroying turrets, killing enemy heroes or jungle camps awards gold as well.

What other Objectives are on the map?

• Every thing a player does in Arena of Valor should be in service of destroying the enemy Core, and there are several important objectives around the map that can aid in achieving that goal.
• Abyssal Dragon Kraydus: This dragon has a large amount of health and usually takes a few team members to kill it. Sometimes, some jungler can even solo it at early levels but it is not recommended unless they are ahead. The Abyssal Dragon Kraydus awards team with experience and gold when fallen.
• Enraged Abyssal Dragon: This dragon spawns in the late game and grants every role an unique buff that last for a while. It also gives gold like the Abyssal Dragon Kraydus.
• Dark Slayer: It is the most difficult boss and objective in the game. It has extremely large health pool and it takes 3-5 team members to secure it. It gives a buff that recovers health and mana over time. It also has an unique buff you can use to summon a mini-Dragon to attack the enemy base.
• Spirit Sentinel: One of the easiest smaller objective in game, gives health regen and movement speed to the hero who has killing blow. Also gives a small amount of gold to the team.

What are the Game Phases?

• Pick/Ban: The pick and ban as known as the draft phase, actually takes place before each game begins. This is the phase where teams will pick their heroes. Before teams pick, they ban heroes, preventing them from being selected by either team. Keep in mind that this only applies to ranked games (in Diamond or higher).
• Pick/Ban is one of the most important and strategically deepest phases in the game. Games can be won and lost here. Because of how crucial it is, professional teams are allowed to speak to their coaches while the drafting phase is going on. Communication between coach and players is banned during actual gameplay.
• Laning Phase: The Laning Phase is the beginning of the game, where each member of the team goes to their assigned lane to farm and become more powerful. In laning phase, the primary goal of each member of the team is to get ahead of their lane opponent. This is done through a combination of efficient farming and harassing the enemy laner in order to make farming harder for them. This is also the part of the game where the jungler will do their best to gank for their teammates, helping get them both ahead by killing allied lane opponent or forcing allied lane opponent to go back to their fountain to heal.
• Mid Game: While there is no official start to the Mid Game, it usually happens around the time the first turret on the map is taken. When the Mid Game begins, players will leave their lanes to group up with their teammates. It is here that teams will try their best to push the advantages they acquired in laning phase. In the Mid Game, death timers are still relatively low, so mistakes can be easily corrected and losing one or two teammates in a fight is not the end of the world. Usually the Mid Game is either extremely bloody, with lots of kills and lots of fighting, or very rotational, with teams moving around the map quickly to try and take objectives without conflict. Either way, Mid Game is a race against the clock to finish the game before your advantage is diminished.
• Late Game refers to the point in the game where death timers are long and most heroes have bought at least 4-6 items. Often times taking a game into Late Game can lead to two powered-up teams bashing their head against one another for an extended period of time until one chaotic, or even random, fight ends the game.