League of Legends (LoL) Question: Losing skill why?

Skill progression in real life never follows a consistent, linear pattern. There are highs and there are slumps.

If I were to map out someone's skill level on a line graph, there wouldn't be a straight line or a smooth curve. The line would be going up and down and up and down and up and down over and over again. When you are developing a skill through practice, other external factors can affect what you do on that day as well. If you were to sit through a 3 hour maths exam, you would get vastly different results if you were to sleep 10 hours before it as opposed to 3 hours.

At other times, your mind body could just be not feeling it. I play a lot of basketball myself, and have noticed how during specific games and training sessions, some of the skills I perform better than others, despite having other skills I performed better the day before. I could be great at working and posting up inside, and then the next week I could be killing it with all my jump shots, yet miss all my layups on the inside because my body just doesn't feel it. It's an intangible concept, so it's difficult to express through here without experiencing it by yourself.

One other thing is that you're constantly playing against different people. Your skills aren't being assessed with a consistent thing to test against. Different people have different skill levels and things they are good at. Say you're playing an assassin and you're specifically good at teamfighting. If you were to play against a very aggressive ADC, the. You will obviously do much better in that teamfight than against an ADC who's exceptional at positioning. People play the game at different levels, and people are better at specific things than others. It could just be that you're against a playing field that you aren't good at playing against.

The main thing is that you've probably hit a slump with your skill development, and at an inexperienced level as well. When you practice a skill, you shouldn't be only working on the best that you can perform. You should also work on the worst that you can perform. You should aim to develop your skill so that the worst that you can perform is at a very good standard, and that the best you can perform is an excellent standard. That's how you can perform consistently well and get results like you were describing in the beginning all the time.

It isn't that you can't perform like how you were in beginning. It is more so that you simply aren't performing like in the beginning as often. By practicing, you're aiming to make it so you're performing like in the beginning more often, as well as making your excellent performances even better.

I +1 what HiFromBuddha said, and add a bit of my personal experience, because I had that very same problem with every lane champion I started to play.

You may have a really good early game, where you stomp your opponent with the little advantage you can get. This makes you a mid-game powerhouse, so you'll naturally start killing peeps and whatnot. But once the other team realises this, and the gold values start to even up (because late-game everyone starts to get fullbuild), you lose that advantage and another kind of skill comes to play. "What to do in a 1v1/2v2 lane" is very different from "What to do after lane phase".

"What to do after lane phase" varies a lot from champion to champion, and is the hardest part to learn when mastering a champion. If your role is to kill a priority target, you should know how and when to do it if everyone is grouped up. If you are a tank, you may be an initiator, a disengager, a carry protector, etc. Positioning is very variable too, and varies more when you're being focused by their team and when you're not. This can also vary wildly with different builds. Full attackspeed Fizz and full AP Fizz are both assassins, but they have a very different play pattern both in lane and in teamfights.

You can learn what to do from guides, playthroughs or just playing and testing stuff, but in the end it's just another skill that you need to polish.

On the "main champion" recommendation, it's prone to frustrate you more than anything. I'm currently maining Fizz, and use him top, mid and jungle, but if tomorrow he gets nerfed, or the meta counters him, I'll need to play something else (he's really solid though, so you I totally recommend him if you like him). I did the same with Ezreal as an adc and mid, but right now he's weak as an adc, and his mid lane works as AP, so I got back to Caitlyn.

Just a bit of adult learning theory FYI:

There are 4 recognised stages of adult learning. Think about how you learn your next main champion:

1) Unconscious incompetence
You understand what all the champ's skills do and you can play them but you don't see the risks or realise how you might contribute to them. You don't yet have a good understanding of when to fight and when the odds are against you.

2) Conscious incompetence
You get a little better and now you see the risks but you aren't a good enough player of this particular champ to avoid them all the time. This makes you anxious and you feel like you are making a lot of mistakes. In reality you are probably making fewer mistakes but you just recognise them better. This is how you start to learn to avoid them.

3) Conscious competence
You are a good player of this champion and you see and can avoid risks but you have to concentrate all the time which makes it hard work and you still make occasional mistakes.

4) Unconscious competence
You have now reached the plateau of the learning curve and playing this champion doesn't take much effort for you. You can free some of your attention for concentrating on strategic aspects of the game and thinking about the way other players are playing to best counter them.

I suspect you have just moved from stage 1 to stage 2 of learning your main hero and therefore you see your weaknesses much more clearly. It seems to be harder work and you think you are performing less well but in all probability you have actually improved and are moving up the learning curve, as we all are. Keep at it!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Best wishes
Fanconi

I find when I play a new champ i play them very well. Over time, it seems, like it degrades a little. I figured out my problem. I would play them a little more careful when i first play them vs being confident i would play too aggressive. Maybe you have the same problem? Anyways, if you do, i suggest mentally preparing yourself for that.