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Improve your gameplay: advanced tips for excelling in League of Legends
League of Legends is great because there's always a way to improve. Striving to be better and seeing the results is one of gaming's most satisfying experiences and these tips will help with that.
League of Legends is one of those games where you never stop improving. There’s always a part of your game you can refine or a tiny interaction between champions you didn't know about before.
If you’re still new to LoL, our beginner's guide is the perfect place to start, but if you already feel comfortable on Summoner’s Rift and know about the dangers of enemy turret range and minion waves, then these next tips will help improve every aspect of your play.
Whether you’re hoping to become an esports pro or just want to earn more LP, here's some great advice on ensuring you become a better player.
01
Dedicate yourself to one role
Yes, it's important to have knowledge of all roles, but everyone will always have a preference. If you haven't already, choose a preferred role as your 'main' and your results in ranked will improve drastically.
By focusing on one role, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of its intricacies much more quickly. You’ll know what champions you’re most comfortable on, their good and bad match-ups, and how you can best to help your team.
Pick one role and stick with it
© Riot Games
It's why one-trick ponies who only play one champion regularly end up climbing to pretty high ranks. By mastering a character and a role to the point where it becomes second nature, you can then start focussing on the wider game of LoL as a whole and play much smarter.
02
Perfect your champion pool
Once you've chosen your role, it’s time to find your favourite champions. Don't be a meta slave who only plays whatever has the highest win rate each week, find champions that you actually enjoy playing and perform well with.
If you’re having fun, not only will you be more invested in improving, but you'll also probably play more games – which will also help your development.
Pick what's best for your team as a whole
© Riot Games
Do make sure you’re comfortable on different types of champions as well, though. During every draft phase you should look at your team-mates’ and opponents’ picks, and then decide what your team needs.
Being a big beefy tank who absorbs damage isn't the most glorious job, but in doing so you'll be much more likely to win fights if your team already has a lot of damage. You may like playing assassins mid, but if you already have an AD top-laner and jungler, then pick an AP champion to diversify your team’s damage. Otherwise, your opponents will just stack armor and win the late game.
03
Always focus on objectives
It’s the hardest lesson to learn in LoL and we’re all guilty of it, but kills aren’t everything. Random kills will only get you a tiny bit of gold. When you get kills and how you react afterwards is much more important. Objectives really are where LoL games are won or lost, so use your bloodlust for good.
Everything you do should be with objectives in mind. Baron or Dragon spawning in 30 seconds? Take down the opposing jungler and the monster is practically yours. If you want to destroy a tower so you can leave your lane and group with your team, get some help with your jungler for a gank followed up by a siege.
Fight when it can help you secure an objective like Elder
© Riot Games
A bonus tip: if the enemy team is getting a lot of dragons, try to contest them on their third Drake rather than the fourth. That way, if you don't win the fight, at least the game isn't lost. You’ll have another chance to regroup and try to prevent the Dragon Soul.
Rotations are when you group up with team-mates and push your advantage by moving from lane-to-lane. Once your siege wave runs out at the enemy tower, group up and move down to another lane together, and try to push for that tower instead. Then, by pushing big waves towards the opposing base, you can peel back to Baron, knowing your opponents will either arrive late or miss out on loads of gold if they ignore said minions.
04
How to get better at farming
Let's set expectations. If you watch pro LoL matches you'll notice that players regularly reach 10 CS a minute, but that just isn’t realistic for 90 percent of players and that's OK.
There's a lot of factors that go into getting good farm. Practicing last hitting in the practice tool is a great place to start, but it's much harder once you also have to trade with a lane opponent.
So, in the early game it's all about the match-up. If your opponent is stronger early, then stay safe and maybe use more abilities to farm from afar. Dying will cost you a lot of CS, so staying alive, letting your opponents push and setting up your jungler for a gank is your best bet.
Otherwise, try to pressure your opponent when they try to farm. If they're last hitting with autos, watch your own minions' health and once they're low you can step forward and hit your opponent for free, knowing that they're locked into their auto animation and can't trade back.
There's a lot more to farming minions than just last hitting
© Riot Games
In the mid-to-late game, make sure you're still always farming. You should never be doing nothing. Instead of pointlessly grouping mid, find a side lane where the wave is pushing into your half of the map and go collect it on your own, as long as you're safe to do so. Other than when needing to set up for epic monsters or trying to siege, you should always be farming waves or jungle camps to keep leveling up.
Just make sure you don't push too far and become vulnerable to a gank. Walk where you have vision and team-mates nearby. If you cross into the opponent's half without deep wards, you're going to get killed and miss out on more CS than you gained in the first place. And also make sure you communicate with your team and don't miss a big fight.
05
Become a laning phase monster
Laning is an art form. To boss the early game, these are the main things you should focus on:
Learn your match-ups
This one will take some personal research and experimentation. Every champion has counter-picks, so it's crucial you understand your champion's strengths and weaknesses, and know how to play around both.
One thing to help you in bot lane, where match-ups are more complex in a 2v2, is understanding the rock, paper, scissors rule between poke, sustain and engage. Engage beats sustain, sustain beats poke and poke beats engage.
Healers like Sona and Soraka can heal any poke damage and retaliate with range of their own, but if you’re a Nautilus or Leona, you can engage and kill your opponents from full health before any healing spells come off cooldown. However, poke champions like Lux and Zyra can constantly harass these melee supports and put them to low enough health that it's then too dangerous to engage.
The best way to counter healers is to engage on them
© Riot Games
Level 2 and other trading advantages
It's so easy to forget in the heat of the moment, but rather than focussing on mechanically outplaying your opponent, just be smarter.
At the start of the game, hitting Level 2 first is a ginormous advantage. As soon as you hit Level 2, you should look to heavily trade with your opponent, because they can't respond. And it’s similar for Level 3. Keep an eye on your XP bar and walk forward before you hit Level 2, so you can start your lane perfectly.
You can count minions to know when this will happen, too. In top and mid lane, the first wave and one melee minion – so seven minions total – is enough to level up. In the bottom lane, it takes nine minion with the first wave plus three more melee minions from the second wave.
Otherwise, you can easily win a lane battle by not wasting your abilities. If you watch your opponent miss their main form of CC or waste it farming, you can confidently trade, knowing you should have an advantage. And watch for if your opponent is low on mana, because they might just forget.
06
Master wave management
You can beat your opponents without them realizing. Wave management is incredibly powerful. It will allow you to farm much easier and control the lane to your will. Stick with us, this is difficult, but there are three crucial concepts you need to understand: crashing, slow pushing and freezing.
Turrets can help you manipulate minions in your favor
© Riot Games
Crashing: This is when a wave of minions reach a tower. Of course, this is good if you want to siege a tower, but actually it's best used as a defensive tool. You see, your minion wave will bounce back from the enemy turret to your own tower. So, if you crash a wave and then immediately recall, by the time you return to lane, the enemy wave will be in front of your tower ready for you to farm safely. This means you can back without worrying about losing any farm.
Slow Pushing: This is the act of building up as big a wave as possible to make your crash more effective. The more minions you send into a turret, the more time you have to recall or roam out of the lane and help your team in a fight or at an objective.
For this to happen, wait until after a cannon wave and then keep the enemy melee minions alive as long as possible, but take out one or two caster minions. That one minion difference means your wave will push, but slowly, and your own wave will take less damage while doing so. Only last hit and eventually your two waves should combine, at which point you can push faster if the minions are about to reach the enemy tower.
The tempo you gain from forcing your opponent to deal with such a wave can be a really big, albeit subtle, difference.
Freezing: This is the act of holding a wave of minions in one spot that’s unfavorable for your opponent. Typically this is just in front of your tower, but, crucially, outside of tower range. You don't want the wave to crash.
This can be hugely advantageous when you’re winning the lane, as your opponent will be forced to overextend to farm, meaning they barely get resources or they step forward and risk being harassed out of lane or ganked.
Wave manipulating will make you feel like a pro player
© Bartek Wolinski/Red Bull Content Pool
Freezing is a complicated technique, but the main thing is simply only attack to last hit at the last possible second. You also need to match any damage that your opponent deals to your minions, so that neither wave grows stronger than the other. Executed correctly, this can be extremely punishing for your opponent.
You can even freeze when you're behind, so you can safely farm, but this is very difficult to pull off.
07
Improve your teamfight decision-making
Yet another aspect of LoL is that you don't need to become a mechanical god to improve. There are a ton of ways you can boost your skirmishing.
For starters, try to chain your CC. When one of your team-mates lands crowd control on someone, try to layer it so that your own CC hits the same target just before they can move again, so you can keep them locked down for longer.
On top of that, figure out how both your champion and your team comp wants to fight. If you have a big beefy tank and a really fed ADC, you should use the classic strategy of fighting front to back. Put your tankier members at the front and have them block the enemy from getting to your valuable, squishy team members at the back. From there, it's up to you if you use CC to peel for your fed team-mate or try to lock down the opponent’s biggest threat.
Good decisions will help you win more fights
© Riot Games
However, you don't always have to go all in for their strongest player. Taking the easy kill, say on a squishy support, can be just as effective as you can create a number advantage without committing too much.
Just be very careful and intentional with your ultimates and other powerful abilities. Waiting for the perfect moment could just flip the fight on its head.
08
Ward with a purpose
There's more to gaining vision than just sticking a ward a bush, you need to think about what your and your team's current plan is.
If you're scared of getting ganked, obviously you want to ward in the river near you, but sometimes rather than a bush, it’s better to drop a ward at an entrance and spot the enemy jungler earlier, so you have more time to retreat.
In general, you want to use vision to track the enemy jungler, so you can make informed decisions. It’s easier said than done in solo queue, but you shouldn't go all out into an engage in lane unless you know the opposing jungler is far away. This will also make your own jungler's life much easier, as there’s less chance of a countergank and more opportunities to invade. Warding enemy buffs so you know when they spawn is particularly good for this.
Ward saves lives
© Riot Games
If it's later in the game and you want to know where your opponents are going to focus next, a central ward in the mid-lane near their base will give you a much better idea of where they're rotating to after clearing the wave.
And, of course, don't forget about major objectives. Watch the timers and make sure that you’ve warded the opponents' approach to Baron ahead of time, so your team can safely setup or even start attacking it.
09
Hone your resilience
This isn’t a gameplay tip, but it will win you more games.
Don't get suckered into typing battles with team-mates or opponents, criticizing your team-mates, surprisingly, won't make them play better. Don’t give up immediately, you'd be amazed at how many mistakes opponents will make from overconfidence – and that can be all you need to find a way back into the game.
It isn't easy, but keeping a cool head and staying calm will make you a much more consistent player. We all have games that annoy us. At that point, walk away from the computer and take a small break before playing another game. You’ll be much better off for it.
10
Time Summoner Spells
Summoner Spells are incredibly impactful, especially Flash. If you watch esports tournaments like Red Bull League of Its Own, you’ll notice not only does Flash lead to a lot of exciting plays, but also a player having Flash on cooldown can cost a team the game.
Summoner Spells are game-changing abilities
© Riot Games
Knowing your opponent doesn’t have Flash is a huge strategic advantage, as killing them is suddenly much easier. Thankfully, LoL has a built-in option so that you can time this using the chat.
In settings within the client, go to interface and then tick the box under chat that says show timestamps. Then, whenever you see an opponent Flash, hold down tab, click that player’s Flash icon and it will automatically be pinged in the chat for your team and you'll know exactly when. Flash has a five-minute cooldown, so a bit of quick maths will tell you the window you have to catch that opponent out.
This can be great for any Summoner Spell, Teleport being another useful one to track.
11
Click nearer to your champion
You’d be amazed at what a difference this can make. LoL is a game where you should always be moving and when you’re trying to dodge skillshots, placing your cursor closer to your champion's model will make them turn much quicker. It's subtle, but this habit can make a huge difference to your gameplay. That one ability dodged could be the difference between life and death.
These tips could turn you into the next Faker
© Marius Faulhaber/Red Bull Content Pool
If you watch Faker, the best LoL player of all time, you’ll notice that he's very good at this, hence why he's so famous for always dodging abilities.
12
Analyse your replays for better progress
Now you have a lot of tips to implement into your game, but don’t try to do it all at once. Take it one step at a time and maybe even focus on just one element per game.
To ensure these tips become good habits and that you’re utilising them in the best way, you should regularly watch and analyse your previous games. With a clear mind, you'll be amazed at what you notice and can learn.
You don't need to be a big-brain, high-ranked expert to analyse your gameplay. Just keep asking yourself simple questions like why did I die here? What could I have done differently? What should my team be doing here?
If you really want to improve, watch your replays
© Bartek Wolinski/Red Bull Content Pool
And as an added tip, look out for how efficient your recalls are. Every time you recall and also every time you die, count how many minions you missed out on and you'll soon be making much better decisions.
Watching replays will help you progress much quicker than simply spamming games. Everything you do in the game should be with intent and questioning your own replays is the best way to develop that.
