League of Legends is one of the world’s most popular games, with over 27 million active players as of now. However, individuals who have never played a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, might be intimidated because many existing players in the community expect you to know how to play the game (and play it effectively!).
Things might become much more difficult as you progress through the tiered system. However, this is not to say that you will become stuck once you begin climbing!
In this article, we’ll go over five tips and strategies to help you improve in League of Legends.
5 Tips to Improve Your League of Legends Gameplay
1. Focus on one role
To improve your chances of winning games and overall League of Legends performance, focus on one major role and exclusively play it in Ranked mode. If you play every function or choose fill as your primary role, you significantly reduce your odds of winning games.
Consider this: you’ve been full and given Jungle. You don’t know how to play Jungle very well, but you play it nonetheless. You examine your Mobalytics app and see that the enemy Jungler is a Jungle OTP. You’ll have a hard time playing against them because they understand and play the part better than you do.
By sticking to 1 role, you will have more experience and be able to perform well. The more you do something, the better you will be at it. Spending a lot of time playing your main role will make you understand more about how the role is played, how matchups go and what you can and can’t do in certain matchups.
However, it is good to play a secondary role that is similar to the lane you main. For instance, Support and ADC, or Mid and Top. They overlap to some extent, and you can easily transition information and things you learn from one role to another.
2. Solidify your champion pool
Similarly to maining a role, you should only choose a few champions to play in ranked. League of Legends has 156 champions, and if you play them all, you won’t be good enough to win games. If you consistently play 2 to 5 champions, your odds of winning games rise dramatically because you are accustomed to playing those champions.
If you’re up against someone who one-tricks a champion and you’ve only played a few games with the champion you’ve chosen, it’s evident that they’ll win the match, even if the statistics favour you.
We would recommend having one main champion, followed by 2 to 4 champions that you can pick as backups just in case your main champion gets banned or countered. If you are struggling to find which champions are good right now or which ones you should play, we recommend checking out the Mobalytics tier list. Pick some champions that are currently S-tier.
It is a good idea also to pick champions that can be flexed or played in multiple roles. For instance, Lissandra (while not a great champion right now) can be flexed into the Mid and Top lane. You can play Lucian in Top, Mid and ADC too.
3. Place better wards
Warding remains one of League of Legends’ most underappreciated and underutilized tools. Warding gives you and your team with a wealth of information that will assist you win the game. Because it is so powerful, you must understand when, where, and how to ward properly in League of Legends.
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Throughout the game, you should purchase Control Wards and place them on the map. You don’t need to buy one on every back, but rather one every now and then, and replace it when your previous one dies or as the game progresses. Make sure you invest in Control Wards and place them frequently.
4. Understand wave management
Wave management and learning when to push and when not to is a strategy that high ELO players abuse. It is hard to master, but the concept is pretty simple to understand. When I look at lower ELO players and how they lane, I see a common mistake: how they manage the minion waves.
Avoid constantly pushing the minion wave during the laning phase. If you are constantly pushing the minion wave, you open yourself up to ganks from the enemy Jungler, which results in you dying and falling behind.
Furthermore, pushing the enemy into their tower could allow them to zone you away from minions or all-in you when you walk up to secure last hits on enemy minions. On the flip side, you may find it hard to fight the enemy or get kills as their tower protects them.
Learning to freeze is straightforward. If you want the minion wave to stay in the middle of the lane, ensure that there are an equal number of enemy minions and allied minions. To move the wave closer to your side of the lane, make sure there are more enemy minions than allied minions.
Freezing is an excellent method. It enables you to zone the enemy away from the farm and obtain a CS and XP advantage. It can frequently result in solo kills or kills for your Jungler, who can simply gank an allied frozen lane.
5. Master Mobalytics
For our final tip, learn how to master the Mobalytics companion app. On the Mobalytics site, you can find tons of information to help you play your favourite champions, including builds, runes, combos, and much, much more.
One way of improving at League of Legends is by taking the best possible setups to help you win. If you take the wrong runes or build the wrong items, you’re going to do more harm than good.
On the flip side, the Mobalytics App can auto-import the best runes and items, so you don’t need to stay up to date with them from patch to patch.
The Mobalytics App will also provide you with handy tips throughout your game, including showing the enemies power spikes, general matchup tips, telling you when objectives are spawning, and much more. Use it as an aid tool to help you climb.
League of Legends Tips for Beginners
So, if you’re seeking for a quick way to master the fundamentals of the game and eventually get through a battle without being labeled an uber-noob, look no further. Here are some League of Legends advice for beginners to help you get started quickly.
Try Out Different Characters
If you’re just getting into League of Legends, don’t worry too much about trying to find the perfect character or position you’re best suited for. Instead, just focus on testing out a whole bunch of different characters. Actually, the more champions you try, the better sense you’ll get of what role suits your playstyle; be it ranged attack damage, melee fighting, or tanky support. Most game options don’t even become available until you get your profile to level 5, so having a young profile makes it a good time to play as many champions as you can.
Learn the Map
League of Legends’ main game map is Summoner’s Rift, which consists of three lanes: top, middle, and bottom. The twisting passages between the lanes are known as the jungle, and here is where some creatures spawn that, if defeated, might grant your champion specific bonuses. Where you start on the map should be heavily influenced by the champion you choose, as several are more suited to a specific role than others. League of Legends has five main positions: top, mid, jungle, ADC, and support. As the name implies, top is where the top lane champion begins.
Tanks and bruisers fare well in top lane because they can survive on their own and generally either absorb or dish out a lot of damage. Mid lane champions typically focus on ability power (AP) and engage in one-on-one battles with the opposing team’s mid lane champion. The ADC (Attack Damage Carry) plays the bottom lane and needs to concentrate on farming minions early game in order to buy gear and increase their attack damage.
The support also plays the bottom lane and has a variety of responsibilities including protecting the ADC, helping the ADC get kills, and placing vision wards to aid in map control. Jungle is the one position that doesn’t have an assigned lane; they’re supposed to level up by killing the monsters in the jungle and then make assassination attempts on enemy champions in lane.
Learn the HotKeys
Much like in real-time strategy games, using hotkeys will save precious time in League of Legends, and could make the difference between winning or losing a battle. The main keystrokes you should try to memorize are the following:
Q,W,E,R – Champion’s main abilities
F,D – Summoner spells
1,2,3,4,5,6 – Item slots (only work if the corresponding slot contains an item that can be activated)
B – Teleports your champion back to base
Spacebar – Centers the camera on your champion (very useful in hectic situations like team fights)
G – Send a ping to teammates to communicate intentions or threats.
Tab – Opens the stats page for the game in progress
P – Opens the menu of purchasable items
Try to Learn One Position Really Well
To truly understand the intricacies of a specific posture, you must practice it repeatedly. Playing the same position again can help you master the champions and become a more competitive player.
Try to Survive as Long as Possible
Whenever you get killed by an enemy champion, that champion gets a large chunk of experience and gold. Repeatedly dying gives the enemy a huge advantage because it affords them the chance to to level up and purchase powerful gear more quickly. Not to mention dying takes your champion out of the game for a period of time that increases as the game goes on. If you can find a way to survive an engagement you think you might lose, it’s a much better outcome than just going all out and dying in a blaze of glory.
Keep in mind the champion abilities you have at your disposal; some abilities might help you elude enemies in sticky situations. If you find you’re constantly getting caught and ganked by the enemy, try choosing the Summoner Spell “Flash” at the champion select screen. Using Flash allows your champion to teleport a short distance in any direction. It’s absolutely indispensable for getting out of tough spots and is pretty much a prerequisite for competitive play.
Learn How to Last-Hit
Many players who are new to League of Legends might think it’s fine to just sit back and auto-attack minion wave after minion wave until you’re in a position to attack the closest enemy turret, but this approach will surely cost you in the long run as you level up your profile and get matched against more skilled players. To really get the most out of minion waves, you should be focused on getting the killing blow on each possible minion because that way you get a gold bonus for the kill.
This gold adds up quickly (especially if you’re the ADC) and can translate into your team getting the upper hand both in lane and in team fights. Keep an eye on enemy minion’s health bars and make sure you’re ready to attack when you see one low enough for you to kill with a single shot. The only position that shouldn’t be as concerned with last-hitting is the support because their job is to help the ADC get the last-hits.
Learn the Language
Once you’ve been playing for a while, you might notice some players using specific acronyms or shorthand to describe different things in the game. Communicating this way saves keystroke, which saves time, which could give your team the competitive advantage in a tough match. Here are some of the key terms you should be familiar with.
LoL – League of Legends
CS – Creep Score (the number of minions a champion has killed in the game)
Gank – Short for “Gang Kill” (surprise attacks that leave an enemy champion outnumbered)
CC – Crowd Control (any abilities that render enemy champions unable to fight for a duration)
MR – Magic Resist
Wave Clear – Refers to a champion’s ability to clear waves of minions quickly
KS – Kill Steal (dealing the final blow to an enemy champion after a teammate does most of damage)
Leash – A technique used to help junglers that involves dealing damage to, but not killing, a monster)
Drag – Short for Dragon (A tough monster that gives a powerful buff but usually requires teamwork to kill)
AFK – Away From Keyboard
Communicate With Your Team
If your team communicates efficiently, you’ll have a lot better chance of winning than if you play in silence. This does not imply that you all need to put on headsets and join a group chat, but you should always do things like indicate what position you want to play before the game begins or announce when the enemy champion(s) you’ve been battling are absent from their lane. Of course, not everyone will always be as chatty as you’d like, but that doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from the knowledge you provide.
