LoLKing vs. Mobafire
Don’t say it. I already know. I’m writing a guide about finding a guide. There are plenty of sites out there which provide great insight into your favorite League of Legends Champions, and there are a few different approaches that these sites take. Sure, it’s great to get a guide from a pro player you know and respect, but one thing to keep in mind is that pro players typically only write one guide for a champion, and it’s usually a very general guide giving basic builds and gameplay tips that they use. These players don’t always play the exact same build in every situation, and it’s hard for them to find the time to put together really good situational guides that could help you out with a specific team comp or opponent. That is where crowd-sourced guides come into play as they can provide a wider variety of builds for different situations and playstyles. We’re going to look at two of the most popular crowd-sourced League of Legends guide sites, LoLKing and Mobafire, and talk about the similarities and differences, and try to find out which one should be your go-to site for Champion guides.
Keeping it Current
As we talked about already, you can’t discount the guides and opinions of pro-players. They are better at the game than most of us, and have an understanding of the game that scrubs like me can only hope for. But at the end of the day, they make a living playing the game, not writing guides. Pro guides tend to be very general, and aren’t always the most up-to-date information seeing as how the pros are busy practicing with Champion changes and figuring out how to beat their opponents instead of writing about them. That is perhaps the biggest advantage to sites like LoLKing and Mobafire. There are lots of writers out there who are knowledgeable about their Champions, and new guides are constantly being produced. What you get is a stream of content that is up-to-date with a wide variety of opinions on Champions and builds, allowing you to take in the most current information available.
Both LoLKing and Mobafire have a large pool of guide authors who constantly put out new material based on the latest League of Legends updates. In this aspect, both sites are pretty similar.
Variety is the Spice of Life
Along with a stream of new content, having a wider variety of authors also produces a wider variety of playstyles. While a pro-player may only have time to write one guide for a Champion, and on many sites that will be the only guide for that Champ, a crowd-sourced guide site can have dozens, maybe even hundreds of guides for each Champion available at any given time. So if you have a crazy idea for a Karma jungle game, there’s probably a guide out there from someone who’s tried it. Or if you are just not having much luck running that double bruiser bottom lane strategy that dumped all over your standard comp last game, you can find someone who can help you figure that out. If you can think it up, there’s probably a guide for it on LoLKing or Mobafire. Maybe it’s not exactly how you want to build it or play it, but it will help get you started if you’re not sure where to begin.
When it comes to variety of Champion guides available, both LoLKing and Mobafire have a wide variety. LoLKing hasn’t hosted Champion guides as long, so Mobafire has the advantage of time, and with it a larger pool of guides to look through.
Sifting Through the Trash
The last two topics have left both sites looking pretty similar, and at first glance they both have similar systems in place here as well. Sure, there are lots of guides available from lots of different authors. This provides plenty of choices when looking for a Champion guide, but it also allows for the possibility of you picking up a bad guide from an author who actually has no clue what they are talking about. In order to try to keep the best guides at the top, and let the bad ones float into oblivion, both LoLKing and Mobafire have a reader voting system which allows players who view the guides to vote the guide up or down, and typically this sees the best guides rise to the top. Sure, there are some bad guides with decent ratings, and good guides with poor ratings, but overall the self moderation of the community tends to let readers find the best guides easily enough. Here is where LoLKing takes a step above the competition, and it’s a pretty significant step.
Not only is there a community ranking system on LoLKing, but you can also see the person who wrote its League of Legends Summoner name and where they stand in the LoL ranked standings, as well as their match history and stats. See a guide that you’re not sure of? Check out the author and see if they tend to win a lot on that Champion, or if they don’t quite seem to get it done when playing that Champ. The LoLKing database is the feature that brought the site to the forefront of League of Legends sites, and they’ve integrated that system beautifully into their Champion guides. There is nowhere else you can find that much information about the person who you are taking advice from just a mouse click away. What they play, how often they win, and stats about their LoL life can be seen instantly without leaving the site. That information can be just as important as the Champion guide itself. It sure is nice to know that the person behind the guide actually plays and understands your Champion, and isn’t just regurgitating what they’ve heard. This feature is unique to LoLKing and is the signature feature that really sets LoLKing apart from any other guide sites out there.
Presentation of Information
Both LoLKing and Mobafire present a lot of information in their guides, both visually with easy to read graphics showing ability selection tables and full masteries trees, and also with written text from the author giving details about the info being presented. There is plenty of space given to the authors to allow them to create a worthwhile gathering of information. LoLKing takes another step ahead in this aspect with the layout of the information in the guide. When you’ve got the guide pulled up all the visuals are there for you to see, and if you want to see the written descriptions of each section you can click to expand the box for that, or keep it hidden to keep it simple. The layout of the site also allows for both the abilities and items graphics to be displayed on the screen at the same time, so if you’re tabbing back and forth from the game you can quickly and easily see what you should pick up next. Both sites provide a great deal of information in an easy-to-read format, but here again LoLKing takes things just a bit further to create a better experience.
Conclusion
As with every single League of Legends guide you run across, this information is simply to help you out by providing you some information that will assist you in forming your own opinion. Both sites do a good job of providing a wide variety of relatively up-to-date content from a group of folks who enjoy playing the game. What LoLKing does is tweak its features in order to optimally provide the information readers are looking for, and provide a great deal of data on the actual guide author, and how they play League of Legends. This, in my opinion, makes LoLKing the best site for League of Legends Champion guides currently available.
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