"How do I get better?"
"How do you guys do it?"
"What is the secret to becoming so good?"
People will ask me these types of questions the most. On the spot, I can't say anything. There are so many different ways to improve. I have been down that path before. After all, I was never a competitive player. I was one of those people who would cheer for CLG when they were at IEM Gamescom.
League of Legends (LoL) is a different game compared to Heroes of Newerth (HoN) and Defense of the Ancients (DotA). Even though they are all of the MOBA genre, LoL emphasizes more on decision making. Do not get me wrong though. DotA and HoN require a similar amount of strategic thinking. Maybe I should say LoL requires less mechanics. There. I won't delve quite into it (maybe a different post as it is quite a big topic I could talk about... I've played all 3 games at a pretty high level so just trust me on this)
It does not mean mechanics are still not important. Mechanics are required in every role minus perhaps jungle. If you do not have the decision making skills to back your mechanics up, you are worthless. If you are getting ganked by 2 people and you had no idea it was coming... well, you're probably dead. Mechanics won't save you. This happens quite often due to the small map size.
What is also important is, many heroes in league don't require you to be good at skillshots. Take a look at heroes like Ryze/KhaZix/Zed/Twisted Fate/Shen etc. Almost all of these heroes have no skillshots but are still top competitive picks. All you need is above average mechanics to play them and you are good.
Let me go on a slight tangent here and explain how League kind of works and how I perceive League.
League is a game of pressure. The drafting stage is to help you create a team composition to help pressure the map and win you the game. If you can outpressure the enemy team, you will win the game by overwhelming their base. Sometimes, your team composition might be weak early, but it might be stronger late game. Sometimes, your team composition might be incredibly strong early, but weak later on. Recently, Caitlyn/Lulu was a heavily picked bottom lane combo. Its pushing power is insane and the pressure you can create early game can snowball the game versus inexperienced teams. By taking a tower, you can completely control the map by controlling where you send Caitlyn/Lulu. Doing so will give your team more gold/exp via taking towers and more map control -> dragons -> more towers -> baron. More gold/exp will most likely help you win a teamfight. Very rarely do teams set up a team comp where their early game is complete trash but their late game is god (greedy team comps as I like to call it). Most of the time, you will see all around strong team comps (during lane, mid game, and late game). What a team picks is all preference (or based on covering their weaknesses or playing off their strengths).
When you die. You lose pressure. When you die at a crucial time to push, you lose momentum (therefore the inability to pressure). When you win (or kill someone), you can CHOOSE to 1. do nothing with it (therefore, not pressure) or 2. do something with it and take a tower. Lower ELO players will run into #1 quite often. They killed this guy in lane... now what? Not buy wards and then give back the lead? Could happen. Maybe not heal and not buy items? Definitely a possibility. Maybe team wipe the opposing team... then not do baron. Sounds about right. Decision making... like I said.
So... how do I get better as a player?
1. Improve mechanics
2. Improve game flow by improving map awareness
3. Play the game and understand your hero [limits] - spacing
4. Decision making (note 1+2+3 => helps 4)
5. Learn
(1) Improving mechanics
Mechanics are what allows you to get into this position to make a decision. By outplaying your opponent and killing them, you are now able to make a decision of what to do. So mechanics are kind of important. There are easy ways to improve your mechanics. Mechanics is a broad category that I like to split apart.
a. Last hitting
b. Skillshots
c. Precision clicking
a. Go into a custom game and practice last hitting on a hero you like to play for about 10 minutes. You should hit around 90-100 cs. Do this everyday and you will naturally get better. Last hitting is much harder when you are fighting vs someone else though. To solve this, you can just 1v1 someone so you can practice finding a balance between harassing/last-hitting. You will learn how to space as you play this game. More on spacing in (3).
b. Play nothing but skillshot heroes. I remember playing nothing but lee sin, ezreal, lux, nidalee, kogmaw just to help improve my skillshots. A tip: don't smartcast skillshots. By taking the time to aim (even for a split second) it increases accuracy tremendously.
c. Precision clicking is basically being able to hit the target you want to hit during say... the middle of a clusterfuck teamfight. 4 people around you and you can't click that 1 hp hero? Well... you let him live. By being able to utilize your skills (i.e. ignite) on the correct target allows you to basically do your job. ADCs require extremely good precision clicking. Take for example Vayne. You have 2 silver bolts procced on one guy then you accidentally clicked someone else. You just lost a lot of your dps. To practice this... well it mainly has to do with hand eye coordination. Playing games like OSU (or just the game) can help you quite a bit.
(2) Improve game flow by improving map awareness
You need to be able to know where your enemies could potentially be. Obviously there is no way to know all the time, but there are some ways you can. The easiest way is through wards. By having wards placed at proper choke points, you can play without being afraid of being ganked. Map awareness can be improved by knowing what jungle path they are taking. Maybe their mid lane came from their blue. Chances are, their jungler is now gonna go to his red (which gives you a window of like 1 minute of safety). The most dangerous times are when someone can be anywhere. In that event, you just play back and safe. Dying is the worst possible thing you can accomplish.
Say your opposing laner randomly does go bottom lane. Say 5 people are bottom lane. What happens if you aren't paying attention and you are scared out of your mind to even move forward. That's a problem. You need to be able to watch the map to know as soon as someone is in another lane, you want to try to get something out of it. If you are freezing on purpose... good job! (just as long as your other lanes can hold...) If you are freezing and well your lane opponent is taking everything on the map... well you are doing nothing. Being able to differentiate between when to push and freeze is something that comes from playing the game. Knowing how to punish and knowing how to trade is extremely important that only comes from playing the game.
(3)Play the game and understand your hero [limits] - spacing
Play the game. Play the game. If you don't play the game and not know what your opponent does... you are kind of screwed. Maybe he knows exactly what your hero does and knows its weaknesses. If you don't know cooldowns, mana costs, skill builds, you are in deep trouble. If you play the game and learn all of these different things it only helps you. By being able to play multiple heroes (and not just 1 role WHICH A LOT OF LEAGUE PLAYERS TEND TO DO)... chances are you are in a more advantageous spot. I cannot emphasize this enough. I am able to play almost every hero in this game at a capable level. I took the time to learn what they all do. (sure I don't know what Yorick does still because fuck that hero LOL) One of the biggest reasons why this happens is cause of how the League system works. By not being able to play every hero... well, you can't play -ar like you can in DotA. So you are exposed to a lot less champions. When I started this game though, I knew whenever it was a new week of champions I played them all in an instant to figure out what they do and in search of someone incredibly fun.
By knowing the limits of your hero, it allows you to play accordingly. You know when to take advantage of maybe their long cooldown. Maybe they are incredibly strong at level 6 so you should play passive from now on. Knowledge is the key to this game. It helps your decision making and allows you to play reactively.
Every lane requires you to know how to space. Spacing is basically purposefully creating a distance between you and your opponent. If you know the exact range of their spell, you can stand just outside of it. He walks forward, you walk backward. You are spacing vs him. Doing so allows you play safe and outside of his reach. Hey, maybe you have longer range and he has lower range. In that case, space outside of his range and utilize your long range. Now you can harass without fear of getting harassed i.e Syndra vs Ryze matchup. By knowing the extent of your and your opponent's hero, you can play the matchup smart.
(4)Decision making (note 1+2+3 => helps 4)
So all of this (1/2/3) all help aid your decision making. All of this is basically knowledge. By knowing more, you can do exactly what you need to do in the right situation. Play a bit safe because you know their jungler is nearby. Play aggressively cause you know their jungler isn't here. You have to be able to process the information and utilize it effectively... decision making.
(5)Learn
Learn. When you lose a game you have to have the mentality of "What did I do wrong?". If you continually to blame your team for sucking and not doing something properly, you are in the wrong (almost 99% of you guys out there). You need to be able to learn from why you just died. Figure out what you can improve on. "Hey... I missed a lot of last hits here for no reason. I shouldn't do that."
"I just got harassed for free here.. why?" "Oh his range is much longer than me... I shouldn't walk up like that in the future"
"Why did I just get ganked? NO WARDS??"
By constantly asking yourself why (like I do after every game), you improve as a player. It might be a slow and tedious process, but I can guarantee you that MANY people that play League do not do this. I've played MOBAs for a long time... I did not get good instantly...
So there you have it. Kind of droned off... Hopefully it makes somewhat sense.. Not going to proofread this (even though I probably should.. hmm) Oh well. Hope this makes a bit more sense. If there is anything you guys want me to expand on (maybe in a future post...) well just tweet at me ^o^
"It's easy to be good, but it's hard to be great"
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