Champions and Skills

Champions are the characters that you choose to control, or play as, in the game. With each new game all players start their champion at level one and can progress all the way up to level 18. With each level your champion will gain additional stats and a skill-point to spend on one of their four skills. To level up a skill you simply need to press the big red plus sign above the corresponding skill icon. (Or hold control and press Q, W, E, or R in relation to their binding)

Passive, Q, W, E, and R. Summoner spells on D and F.

Almost every champion has one innate passive and 4 other skills. Those four skills are key-bound to Q, W, E, and R by default. The R skill is often an 'Ultimate' ability and champions must be at least level six to get the first rank, 11 to get the second rank and 16 to get the last rank.

This is a mock up of all of the crazy things you'll find on an average skill tool-tip.

When you go to examine your characters skills it's always a good idea to understand how they scale, what kind of damage they deal, their costs, cooldowns, and what kinds of effects they might apply to you or your target.

Some skills have a passive effect and an active ability. Passive effects are always effecting you once you have at-least one rank in the skill unless it states otherwise. "Active" is the description of what happens when you actively use the skill by pressing the button or key.

Skills that deal damage or heal will say that they do x amount (+ a number). If the text in parentheses is green then the bonus damage is derived from ability power. If the color is red however, the bonus damage comes from attack damage. If the text is green but not within a set of parentheses the bonus is from some other source stated in the skill description.

Not all spells will have a 1:1 scaling ratio, meaning that you'll often need to get more than 1 point of whichever stat to increase the effectiveness of your skill.

Skill descriptions will state whither it deals "magic damage" or "physical damage" and that damage will be reduced by that type of resistance.

Conditions

Blind: Prevents auto-attacks from dealing damage.

Slow: Reduces movement speed.

Root: Disables movement.

Silence: Disables skills and abilities.

Stun: Disables movement and actions. Some summoner spells are still castable.

Suppression: Disables movements, actions and prevents summoner spells from being cast.

Fear: Forces champion to move in random directions. Disables skills and abilities.

Endless Rage: (Tryndamere only) Cannot die, even when health reaches zero. 

Chicken: Slow, and attack damage reduction.