Views: 771 Improving your LoL play.
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Getting better at a game like LoL can be pretty difficult, And it's quite a journey too. You're gonna win games you should lose, Lose games you should win, win games that teach you nothing, lose games that teach you everything, win 4v5s, win 5v4s, feel bad about winning an unfair game, feel good about winning a game that was unfair to you, There's so many things that can happen on your trip from level 1 newbie to diamond I veteran.
This blog isn't going to be about how to learn LoL, how to get better, What strats to use, or anything like that. What it is going to be about is common mistakes, methodologies, and mentalities, that hold you back.
LoL is a huge game, There's at the time of writing this, 129 champions, and in order to be one of the best you have to know the inner workings of everyone, What they can do, what they can't do, Their strengths, and their weaknesses. That's a lot to learn already, pretty daunting, right? I mean, Until today did you know that Elise can one shot scuttle at level 3 with a full combo + smite? How about that Fizz takes reduced damage from auto attacks, AND can move through minions? Well you might have, or, If you're like me, It might take 10 or 15 games as, or against these champions to figure it out. So next time Elise is against you and you walk out of your buff to take scuttle and it's already gone, You know why.
Why am I telling you all this though? League is a scary uphill battle to learn, and this video is for all you bronze players who actually want to get good. Now a lot of youtubers will tell you how to improve your play, Learn to last hit, Learn to gank effectively, Clear jungle right, Manage your minions. I'm not going to tell you any of that, Because quite frankly, without the few tips I'm gonna give you, None of that is going to matter.
If You get anything out of this video, I hope it's a dedication to improvement, and an understanding of how long it will take to actually improve. And if you don't believe me, scour your friendslist for that guy that's Diamond I or masters, anyone in diamond even, and look up their time played. For sure, you're probably a few thousand hours below them.
This is a testimonial from my Friend, whose diamond V. Now, This happened a long time ago and I asked him to re-***** so to speak because I had none of it.
You know what sparked this? I complained that I wasn't improving, or that I wasn't getting where I wanted to be. Truth is, I was improving but I wasn't seeing it because I was focusing on the wrong stuff.
Now I'm the kinda guy who knows everything there is about kits, I know dragon timers, Flash timers, Ward timers, and I'm capable of keeping all of that in my head at once. Sounds like I know a lot about the game right?
Wrong.
I mean, sorta wrong. Yeah I know a lot about this game, but I don't have a clue how to apply that knowledge. I don't know when leblanc hits her powerspike, I don't know when to solo dragon as elise, and I definitely don't know if I can 1v1 that zed or not. But I thought I did. That's why he said those things. I wasn't improving because my macro play was based off of prior knowledge that I did not have, so when I made mistakes I went "well that's weird, Maybe it'll work later."
Now I want to focus on two things he said: I hadn't played it nearly as much as a pro has, and The only way to get better is to play.
You hear that tutorial makers? Throw that **** out the window, Not literally, but figuratively. Now I don't mean stop watching tutorials, Some people wont learn what a slow push is by going "wow if I kill these caster minions my wave doesnt die" and then apply it, They may need someone to tell them "Hey, If you last hit caster minions your wave pushes and gets bigger over time, Because caster minions are the soul of the wave, and they're what gives it potential."
What I really mean is simply this: Don't think watching a tutorial on slow pushing is going to teach you WHEN to do it, Even if they give you examples. If you don't apply it at the right time, it's not a useful mechanic. If you take slow pushing into 100 games, and address why it didn't work in certain situations, and start ruling those out, THATS how you learn to slow push.
So what does that mean to you? Just play. That's right, Just play. You learn to slow push, last hit, roam, towerdive, siege, baron bait, EVERY strategy in this game, by just doing it over and over and over again, and failing over and over and over again.
Think about a fighter, OK? Lets say you can pull off a 100-0 combo in training mode over and over and over again without fail, but you go into a full game and suddenly you miss inputs, You cant confirm, and you can't even get the combo off. It's because you don't know how to apply it, You don't know how to hit confirm into the combo. Suddenly landing that standing jab is a lot harder than you thought.
The same thing applies in LoL, You pick Lee sin after watching a tutorial on Lee sin, And you try to insec and you're gonna drop it at the ward hop every single time, because you know what it is, how it's done, but don't know how to do it or simply lack the mechanics to do it.
So what do you do to get it right? The answer is simple, Just play! Keep doing it over, and over, and over, and over again. Sure every missed insec might piss off your team, and you'll probably die a lot, But thats how you learn. After 200 games of Lee sin, You'll start landing it like it was second nature, and suddenly those teamates that were BMing the bad Lee sin are going "God Lee sin have my babies you own me."
I play a lot of Orianna, and I'd say I'm pretty good at the champion overall, But it wasn't until recently I learned that I was building her completely wrong. Sure I was stomping lanes, carrying games, and getting those big ulties with my morellos rush, But I wasn't playing to her FULL potential, because I was rushing that Morellos. I thought I knew what I was doing and I didn't until, that same friend, told me "Stop doing this, it's bad." and I looked it up, and behold, It was bad.
So that brings me to my next point: Be malleable, If someone says "You shoulda done this" I don't care if it would have gotten you killed, I don't care if you THINK what you did was right, Or you got a quadra kill. Look at it through their perspective, Maybe you were stronger than the champion you THOUGHT would kill you, maybe you weren't in the right, maybe adjustments woulda gotten you a penta.
Just because I was winning lane with Orianna doesn't mean I was playing her to her maximum potential. If I had instead rushed RoA into Athenes, I'd of not only been able to survive damage, but I'd of had my Mana problems sorted by athenes, and Orianna doesn't need the cooldown reduction from Morellos as much, nor does she have the instant burst to take advantage of the grievous wounds passive. When you take that into account it becomes much more clear that RoA > Athenes is a much better build path, that can take advantage of her spammable Q and teamfight presence more than a morello's rush, which will leave you with Mana problems, which considering RoA has equal to or greater (as it scales) Ap to morellos means a loss in DPS despite the cooldown reduction allowing you to spam that ball a whole .6 seconds faster than usual.
Now when you think about that, just for a second, You might realize that, again, my friend was right. My diamond V friend thats infinitely better than I am, was right. But at the time I argued with him about it, and insited yet another mental *** whooping.
That brings me to my next point: Stop arguing. You don't really know everything, If someone tells you Morello's rush on Orianna is bad, You should be inclined to believe them, not only because the stats and gold efficiency are there, But because they're probably better than you. People don't get to plat and diamond based on mechanics alone, In fact the primary determinating factor in how high you climb is your decision making.
Decision making is a big thing to tackle, But let me just say it like this... Are you gold or lower? Yes? That means your decision making sucks. Ever heard that story about the bronze I riven main beating the platinum V Renekton, and the Riven BMing him? Yeah well, that doesn't actually make that much sense. While yes, a plat V is probably mechanically superior to a bronze I riven, That reneketon didn't get to plat V on his mechanics alone, and chances are that Riven lost the game, or just got so fed she could literally faceroll her Keyboard until her brain was bruised and win team fights that way.
Decision making is THE most important factor in LoL, and that's why jungling is one of the best ways to carry. Let me clarify: Jungling is one of the best ways to carry, if you're GOOD. Junglers have to make a lot of decisions, when to dragon, baron, rift herald, what lanes to gank, who to get fed. These decisions lead to a winning game, Can you gank mid and get that tower down too? How about gank bot and get a dragon. Where will that enemy jungler be? Can you be there and ensure he fails? This kind of stuff is real decision making, Not "Hey, I'm 8/0 as riven with a 50 CS lead, lets teamfight."
The decisions you make will determine if you get ahead or if you get behind, And because of that, Decision making is the primary factor in your skill level, and yours sucks. Don't worry so does mine, and basically anyone below high plat. Taking advantage of death timers to secure a tier two, or a dragon, Forcing enemies off of an objective you NEED to keep, gaining proper vision control, these are things that win games and they win them fast. That's why games in Low ELO last so much longer than games at High ELO.
The truth is, No one cares about your 1v5 pentakill if your entire team was dead and you couldn't secure an objective with it, all it does is pad your score. Good job on that, Obviously you were either far more mechanically skilled than your opponent and played out of your mind, OR you were already way further ahead to begin with.
So when you're a lot further ahead of your enemy team to the point that you can 1v5, why are you 1v5ing? Setup for baron, Push down the middle tower, or splitpush and give your team time to push other lanes by drawing one or more enemies away. Stop trying to be flashy, being flashy loses games. An 8/0 top laner carries his leads to other lanes with turrets, ganks, and map pressure, Not with flasy plays that show off his mechanical skill while his teamates suffer.
Now I know what you're thinking: "But if my decision making sucks, how do I improve it?"
There's two things I want to tell people who struggle with this: 1. is what you've heard me say this entire post, but it's quite simple: PLAY THE GAME. The more you play, subconciously you'll start to make better decisions.
2. Is a more active approach, and I genuinely believe both go hand in hand: Actively watch yourself, analyze what you're doing as you play, and after you do it. Often times you'll be doing scuttle when teams are stacking mid, and you'll go "wait why am I doing scuttle?" but it's probably to late. The enemy team capitalizes on your mistake and destroys your team. You probably go "I wasn't there why did you fight?" But you were in the wrong. Now if you examine this more carefully, and before you even start scuttle go "The enemy team is stacking mid, I probably need to help defend this push" and you've made the right decision suddenly.
The same goes for after a game, Analyze your replays, or if you cant see something wrong with it, ask a high ELO friend, sometimes you misplay things that are so hard to notice that you wont, but they will. Often times these are game changing plays that could be so much as vlad misplacing his ultimate, Alistar headbutting the wrong target, or the bruiser focusing the wrong person in a fight.
I want to drive this point home more than anything, that you really DON'T know what you are doing at all. If you're in bronze, and having trouble climbing out, And you REALLY think you can hit gold, You need to step back and adjust.
Remember: You probably havent played this game that long, Or if you have, You haven't been using that time effectively. You're in bronze or silver for a reason, and that reason is simply because you lack experience in the game, and you lack GOOD experience in the game. One of the biggest reasons people stagnate is because they believe themselves better than they are and don't make a conscious effort to improve, And thus do not analyze their play.
I want to encourage all of you who are like that to change your ways, Be more open about being bronze or silver, ask for help, play the game a LOT with the sole intention of improving, and not climbing. Analyze every mistake you make, and try to understand why everything you did right worked. When something happens on the map, you need to think "How could I have made that work in our favor" and 80% of the time, if you had done something about it, You could have made it a winning play. the other 20% of the time is when someone gives FB before you finish your first buff, Or Your mid laner lost a duel 1v1 due to a mechanical outplay and you were to low to help them, Or you got dived on by rengar at the start of the fight and the only thing you could have done was buy zhonyas as caitlyn. only 20% of instances where things go wrong are unfixable.
Well, lets be honest, the true ratio is probably somewhere around 40%, You cant roam bot as mid lane every second, and you cant baby the bad top laner all the time, But that still leaves you a 60% carry ratio. So if you play in that ratio every single game to your very best, That should be a 60% win ratio at least.
If you think like that, and you conciously analyze your play and make efforts to improve it Via finding coaching, Or just playing a lot, You can get better, you WILL get better, and you will hit diamond one day, But you have to be dedicated to it.
I believe in you, But now it's time for you to believe in yourself.
This blog isn't going to be about how to learn LoL, how to get better, What strats to use, or anything like that. What it is going to be about is common mistakes, methodologies, and mentalities, that hold you back.
LoL is a huge game, There's at the time of writing this, 129 champions, and in order to be one of the best you have to know the inner workings of everyone, What they can do, what they can't do, Their strengths, and their weaknesses. That's a lot to learn already, pretty daunting, right? I mean, Until today did you know that Elise can one shot scuttle at level 3 with a full combo + smite? How about that Fizz takes reduced damage from auto attacks, AND can move through minions? Well you might have, or, If you're like me, It might take 10 or 15 games as, or against these champions to figure it out. So next time Elise is against you and you walk out of your buff to take scuttle and it's already gone, You know why.
Why am I telling you all this though? League is a scary uphill battle to learn, and this video is for all you bronze players who actually want to get good. Now a lot of youtubers will tell you how to improve your play, Learn to last hit, Learn to gank effectively, Clear jungle right, Manage your minions. I'm not going to tell you any of that, Because quite frankly, without the few tips I'm gonna give you, None of that is going to matter.
If You get anything out of this video, I hope it's a dedication to improvement, and an understanding of how long it will take to actually improve. And if you don't believe me, scour your friendslist for that guy that's Diamond I or masters, anyone in diamond even, and look up their time played. For sure, you're probably a few thousand hours below them.
This is a testimonial from my Friend, whose diamond V. Now, This happened a long time ago and I asked him to re-***** so to speak because I had none of it.
You know what sparked this? I complained that I wasn't improving, or that I wasn't getting where I wanted to be. Truth is, I was improving but I wasn't seeing it because I was focusing on the wrong stuff.
Now I'm the kinda guy who knows everything there is about kits, I know dragon timers, Flash timers, Ward timers, and I'm capable of keeping all of that in my head at once. Sounds like I know a lot about the game right?
Wrong.
I mean, sorta wrong. Yeah I know a lot about this game, but I don't have a clue how to apply that knowledge. I don't know when leblanc hits her powerspike, I don't know when to solo dragon as elise, and I definitely don't know if I can 1v1 that zed or not. But I thought I did. That's why he said those things. I wasn't improving because my macro play was based off of prior knowledge that I did not have, so when I made mistakes I went "well that's weird, Maybe it'll work later."
Now I want to focus on two things he said: I hadn't played it nearly as much as a pro has, and The only way to get better is to play.
You hear that tutorial makers? Throw that **** out the window, Not literally, but figuratively. Now I don't mean stop watching tutorials, Some people wont learn what a slow push is by going "wow if I kill these caster minions my wave doesnt die" and then apply it, They may need someone to tell them "Hey, If you last hit caster minions your wave pushes and gets bigger over time, Because caster minions are the soul of the wave, and they're what gives it potential."
What I really mean is simply this: Don't think watching a tutorial on slow pushing is going to teach you WHEN to do it, Even if they give you examples. If you don't apply it at the right time, it's not a useful mechanic. If you take slow pushing into 100 games, and address why it didn't work in certain situations, and start ruling those out, THATS how you learn to slow push.
So what does that mean to you? Just play. That's right, Just play. You learn to slow push, last hit, roam, towerdive, siege, baron bait, EVERY strategy in this game, by just doing it over and over and over again, and failing over and over and over again.
Think about a fighter, OK? Lets say you can pull off a 100-0 combo in training mode over and over and over again without fail, but you go into a full game and suddenly you miss inputs, You cant confirm, and you can't even get the combo off. It's because you don't know how to apply it, You don't know how to hit confirm into the combo. Suddenly landing that standing jab is a lot harder than you thought.
The same thing applies in LoL, You pick Lee sin after watching a tutorial on Lee sin, And you try to insec and you're gonna drop it at the ward hop every single time, because you know what it is, how it's done, but don't know how to do it or simply lack the mechanics to do it.
So what do you do to get it right? The answer is simple, Just play! Keep doing it over, and over, and over, and over again. Sure every missed insec might piss off your team, and you'll probably die a lot, But thats how you learn. After 200 games of Lee sin, You'll start landing it like it was second nature, and suddenly those teamates that were BMing the bad Lee sin are going "God Lee sin have my babies you own me."
I play a lot of Orianna, and I'd say I'm pretty good at the champion overall, But it wasn't until recently I learned that I was building her completely wrong. Sure I was stomping lanes, carrying games, and getting those big ulties with my morellos rush, But I wasn't playing to her FULL potential, because I was rushing that Morellos. I thought I knew what I was doing and I didn't until, that same friend, told me "Stop doing this, it's bad." and I looked it up, and behold, It was bad.
So that brings me to my next point: Be malleable, If someone says "You shoulda done this" I don't care if it would have gotten you killed, I don't care if you THINK what you did was right, Or you got a quadra kill. Look at it through their perspective, Maybe you were stronger than the champion you THOUGHT would kill you, maybe you weren't in the right, maybe adjustments woulda gotten you a penta.
Just because I was winning lane with Orianna doesn't mean I was playing her to her maximum potential. If I had instead rushed RoA into Athenes, I'd of not only been able to survive damage, but I'd of had my Mana problems sorted by athenes, and Orianna doesn't need the cooldown reduction from Morellos as much, nor does she have the instant burst to take advantage of the grievous wounds passive. When you take that into account it becomes much more clear that RoA > Athenes is a much better build path, that can take advantage of her spammable Q and teamfight presence more than a morello's rush, which will leave you with Mana problems, which considering RoA has equal to or greater (as it scales) Ap to morellos means a loss in DPS despite the cooldown reduction allowing you to spam that ball a whole .6 seconds faster than usual.
Now when you think about that, just for a second, You might realize that, again, my friend was right. My diamond V friend thats infinitely better than I am, was right. But at the time I argued with him about it, and insited yet another mental *** whooping.
That brings me to my next point: Stop arguing. You don't really know everything, If someone tells you Morello's rush on Orianna is bad, You should be inclined to believe them, not only because the stats and gold efficiency are there, But because they're probably better than you. People don't get to plat and diamond based on mechanics alone, In fact the primary determinating factor in how high you climb is your decision making.
Decision making is a big thing to tackle, But let me just say it like this... Are you gold or lower? Yes? That means your decision making sucks. Ever heard that story about the bronze I riven main beating the platinum V Renekton, and the Riven BMing him? Yeah well, that doesn't actually make that much sense. While yes, a plat V is probably mechanically superior to a bronze I riven, That reneketon didn't get to plat V on his mechanics alone, and chances are that Riven lost the game, or just got so fed she could literally faceroll her Keyboard until her brain was bruised and win team fights that way.
Decision making is THE most important factor in LoL, and that's why jungling is one of the best ways to carry. Let me clarify: Jungling is one of the best ways to carry, if you're GOOD. Junglers have to make a lot of decisions, when to dragon, baron, rift herald, what lanes to gank, who to get fed. These decisions lead to a winning game, Can you gank mid and get that tower down too? How about gank bot and get a dragon. Where will that enemy jungler be? Can you be there and ensure he fails? This kind of stuff is real decision making, Not "Hey, I'm 8/0 as riven with a 50 CS lead, lets teamfight."
The decisions you make will determine if you get ahead or if you get behind, And because of that, Decision making is the primary factor in your skill level, and yours sucks. Don't worry so does mine, and basically anyone below high plat. Taking advantage of death timers to secure a tier two, or a dragon, Forcing enemies off of an objective you NEED to keep, gaining proper vision control, these are things that win games and they win them fast. That's why games in Low ELO last so much longer than games at High ELO.
The truth is, No one cares about your 1v5 pentakill if your entire team was dead and you couldn't secure an objective with it, all it does is pad your score. Good job on that, Obviously you were either far more mechanically skilled than your opponent and played out of your mind, OR you were already way further ahead to begin with.
So when you're a lot further ahead of your enemy team to the point that you can 1v5, why are you 1v5ing? Setup for baron, Push down the middle tower, or splitpush and give your team time to push other lanes by drawing one or more enemies away. Stop trying to be flashy, being flashy loses games. An 8/0 top laner carries his leads to other lanes with turrets, ganks, and map pressure, Not with flasy plays that show off his mechanical skill while his teamates suffer.
Now I know what you're thinking: "But if my decision making sucks, how do I improve it?"
There's two things I want to tell people who struggle with this: 1. is what you've heard me say this entire post, but it's quite simple: PLAY THE GAME. The more you play, subconciously you'll start to make better decisions.
2. Is a more active approach, and I genuinely believe both go hand in hand: Actively watch yourself, analyze what you're doing as you play, and after you do it. Often times you'll be doing scuttle when teams are stacking mid, and you'll go "wait why am I doing scuttle?" but it's probably to late. The enemy team capitalizes on your mistake and destroys your team. You probably go "I wasn't there why did you fight?" But you were in the wrong. Now if you examine this more carefully, and before you even start scuttle go "The enemy team is stacking mid, I probably need to help defend this push" and you've made the right decision suddenly.
The same goes for after a game, Analyze your replays, or if you cant see something wrong with it, ask a high ELO friend, sometimes you misplay things that are so hard to notice that you wont, but they will. Often times these are game changing plays that could be so much as vlad misplacing his ultimate, Alistar headbutting the wrong target, or the bruiser focusing the wrong person in a fight.
I want to drive this point home more than anything, that you really DON'T know what you are doing at all. If you're in bronze, and having trouble climbing out, And you REALLY think you can hit gold, You need to step back and adjust.
Remember: You probably havent played this game that long, Or if you have, You haven't been using that time effectively. You're in bronze or silver for a reason, and that reason is simply because you lack experience in the game, and you lack GOOD experience in the game. One of the biggest reasons people stagnate is because they believe themselves better than they are and don't make a conscious effort to improve, And thus do not analyze their play.
I want to encourage all of you who are like that to change your ways, Be more open about being bronze or silver, ask for help, play the game a LOT with the sole intention of improving, and not climbing. Analyze every mistake you make, and try to understand why everything you did right worked. When something happens on the map, you need to think "How could I have made that work in our favor" and 80% of the time, if you had done something about it, You could have made it a winning play. the other 20% of the time is when someone gives FB before you finish your first buff, Or Your mid laner lost a duel 1v1 due to a mechanical outplay and you were to low to help them, Or you got dived on by rengar at the start of the fight and the only thing you could have done was buy zhonyas as caitlyn. only 20% of instances where things go wrong are unfixable.
Well, lets be honest, the true ratio is probably somewhere around 40%, You cant roam bot as mid lane every second, and you cant baby the bad top laner all the time, But that still leaves you a 60% carry ratio. So if you play in that ratio every single game to your very best, That should be a 60% win ratio at least.
If you think like that, and you conciously analyze your play and make efforts to improve it Via finding coaching, Or just playing a lot, You can get better, you WILL get better, and you will hit diamond one day, But you have to be dedicated to it.
I believe in you, But now it's time for you to believe in yourself.
I remember I used to be stuck at silver I. I just couldn't make it; I lost and lost my promos to gold over and over again, so I eventually gave up ranked.
Later on, I discovered this one video (gbay's I think) that said similar words to yours. "Stop thinking that you are really good and focus on learning". So that's what I did.
Went back to ranked. Lost 2 more promos and won the third. After that, I never got stuck again.
Just trying to emphasize how important it is to be "malleable", like you said.
Anyways, you deserve a Rep+ for this. Hope you keep making these!
I actually focus on the very tutorial videos I bash in this blog, but I intend on being more forward with my blog updates.\ as well.
Fun fact: I asked my friend to say all that stuff again, expecting it to hurt, but with simply thinking of all of this in my mind it really didn't. You'd be surprised how much better things are when you're incapable of defending your flaws because you wont let yourself.
I remember I used to be stuck at silver I. I just couldn't make it; I lost and lost my promos to gold over and over again, so I eventually gave up ranked.
Later on, I discovered this one video (gbay's I think) that said similar words to yours. "Stop thinking that you are really good and focus on learning". So that's what I did.
Went back to ranked. Lost 2 more promos and won the third. After that, I never got stuck again.
Just trying to emphasize how important it is to be "malleable", like you said.
Anyways, you deserve a Rep+ for this. Hope you keep making these!
Would show this piece of advise to 13 out of 10 bronze. And it helped to refresh some stuff for me aswell.
Nice work
Fun fact: I asked my friend to say all that stuff again, expecting it to hurt, but with simply thinking of all of this in my mind it really didn't. You'd be surprised how much better things are when you're incapable of defending your flaws because you wont let yourself.
Nice work