MOBA Basics - Terminology. As this game might be someone’s first MOBA genre game, this little guide will help the beginners when playing the game. In my guide, I’ve focused on Common MOBA Terminology.
Basics & MOBA Terminology/Jargon
Lanes (Solo/Duo/Mid): These are the game map’s main zones. Lanes the long, tower/turret/objective-filled narrow passages in a direct line from your base to the enemy's base.
Solo lane: The left or right most lane with the shortest travel distance from your turret to the enemy’s. Usually, one player will protect this lane.
Duo lane: The left or right most lane with the longest travel distance from your turret to the enemy’s. Typically two players protect this lane.
Mid lane: The map’s middle lane. One player who has good wave clear abilities will protect this lane (usually mages).
Jungle: The land between the lanes. When you are in the jungle you are invisible on the minimap. Jungle also includes a lot of monster camps where you can easily get some level ups.
Tower/Objective: The big installments in each lane. The main objective protects your towers in your base and vice versa. Don't rush a tower if in it’s attack zone aren’t friendly units absorbing its damage. You can die very fast if you rush in undefended.
CDR: Cooldown reduction.
Ult: It means Ultimate. Simple version - your most powerful ability and the longest cooldown.
Lifesteal: Killing enemies or gaining HP back from attacks.
Juke: Escaping death by going invisible to the opponent, hiding, jumping over obstacles or using different tactics that cause enemies to lose their abilities/auto attacks on you.
Team-fight: A Big battle that involves all teammate and enemy players.
CC: It means crowd control. In simple words, it means abilities that cause status effects (silence, stuns, poison etc.) on multiple enemies. Usually, have an effect on a big area.
AoE: Area of effect. Abilities that have an influence on a large area.
(Color name): It means a player wants to get a buff of that color. Usually, these are found in the jungle.
Clear/Clearing: Killing the creep waves of an enemy as fast as possible.
Minions/Creeps: The countless little AI units that produce waves in each lane. Friendly units absorb the damage of objective/tower and they are essential to clear for experience gains.
Enemy MIA/Missing: It’s a warning to other players that an enemy might have left their particular lane in order to gank another lane.
Gank: An act of sneaking/teaming up on an enemy in a particular lane to get an easy kill.
Feed/Fed: Feeding means that by wasting your own life you're helping the enemy to level up quickly. In early stages it's very important to stay alive, so your enemies don’t start to level up faster and gain big advantages by being constantly "fed". If a good player is well "fed" they can level up very quickly and smoothly snowball your team.
Last hitting: It’s beneficial to last hit kill creeps in typical MOBAs for a greater net gain of resources.
Push: Means to aggressively occupy a specific enemy/objective.
Squishy: Simple to kill.
Burst: Do high ability damage in a short amount of time.
Glass cannon: Easy to kill but does a high damage.
Sustain: Abilities that help you stay alive or little longer in your lane.
Focus: It means to put all your abilities/resources in order to kill a certain player. Typically important to focus glass cannons and squishies instead of tanks.
Poke/Harass: An ability (normally long range) that forces an enemy to play defensively or back off from their lane.
Farm/farming: Killing monster camps in jungles or creep waves in lanes for experience gains.
Carrying: The top player on the team that's owning it and holding it together by getting many kills.
Peel: Use of CC to repel an enemy from a retreating ally.
Boss: High risk/reward monsters (normally have high hp and damage) that live in the jungle. To take them down a team effort is usually required.
Initiate: Attacking an enemy first or forcing them to involve in order for your teammates to follow suit and team-fight or gank.
