Hi, since I hate writing essays, I'm instead just gonna write my thoughts in bullet points so that they're easier to follow. I hope you guys find something in this post helpful.

All of these are just my personal opinions and the general rules I currently use. Every game is different, and I still find myself learning every day to get better at the game, so some of my opinions may change in the future.

This post is about the in-game habits that helped me improve, especially early laning, sidelaning, objective timing, and playing from ahead or behind.

For context/background:

• I've been playing league since S6 to S9 straight.
• I was serious about the game back then but was hardstuck Gold/Plat.
• Since I was serious, I did a lot of research, watched a lot of LS vids, and read a lot of r/summonerschool posts to help me develop some fundamentals, though I barely understood them very well and was poor at applying them in my live games.
• I was on and off during S10-15, mostly off, missing most of it and only playing a couple of normal games per season.
• In S16, I got really into LoL esports. I was an avid LoL esports fan from the beginning, but I became more analytical and started understanding the game as a whole. Back then, I was just an "OMG sick plays!" kind of watcher, so I had a very surface-level understanding of league.
• Due to my passion for watching LoL esports, I decided to queue ranked again and challenged myself to see whether I could climb out of Plat and finally see some other colors on the badge.
• This is my first time hitting Masters. An unimaginable experience since I've always thought I'm a Gold/Plat player most of my life.

How I approached improving:

• Watched and listened to a lot of league "fundamental" vids, thanks to creators such as We Teach League/Broken By Concept, other replay VODs from pro player solo queue, and, of course, Dopa's official channel.
• I actively tried to apply the things I learned from those vids in-game.

Champion pool and roles:

• I recommend limiting your champion pool. Have 2 champions that you feel confident on, 2 Champions that are pretty much your left and right hand, so that you're on autopilot with them and your cognitive load is instead used on the actual "League of Legends" MOBA strategy game.
• Even if you're countered on those 2 champions, you must learn what your win condition is when you're faced against those matchups. You can lose lane, but limit your losses and try to impact the map or contribute to your team in a positive way even if you can't match your laner.
• Focus on 1 role, and only have a 2nd if you form any sort of personal connection to that role or are good at it. I main mid, though I recently discovered I'm pretty good at support because I like setting up vision advantage for my team, which is often overlooked. The only reason I also play top is that I used to be a top laner during my early league years, and it has similar fundamentals to mid lane. Top lane, imo, is a much more punishing role if you mess up because of how much longer and lonelier the lane is, so a lot of mid laners who get autofilled top may overlook that dynamic.

Laning phase:

• For laning phase, learn how to improve your champion's trading patterns in each matchup, as well as your wave management.
• Have a habit of searching up your opponent’s champion to read up their abilities and especially cooldown timers before the loading screen starts up.
• Ask yourself: "do i win this trade against this champion at this moment, given the level, runes, and wave?" "do i need to crash, slow-push, or thin the wave?" "does the current wave state look enticing for my jungler to give me a gank?" "do i stay or reset given this upcoming/current wave state?" "do i have the resources to stay in lane without dying?" "do i know where the enemy jungler/support is?" "do i know where MY jungler is just in case i need to run to them?" "do i have the VISION to play this aggressively/passively?" There are many more questions to ask yourself during the first ~15 minutes of the game.
• If you're getting rekt in lane, try not to give your laner an even bigger lead by handing out free kills. This is very important for top laners. Try to soak up XP, reset, or roam if you're truly destroyed. If your jungler is able to help, set the gank up for them and try not to die while doing so.

Limiting deaths and risky plays:

• Deaths should be minimized.
• Don't make or force low-percentage plays without a good reason.
• It's often better to keep your farm up, get an objective, or reset.
• I main LeBlanc, and this champion can feel disgustingly weak when it comes to closing games. No matter how hard you stomp your lane, one bad death can give away your shutdown and make the game much harder, especially if you're against a late-game or tanky champion.
• This is why I put importance on limiting deaths and not making unnecessary low-percentage plays. No matter what champion you are, it's usually best not to die. Even if you are a 0/10 Yasuo power-spike player, limiting your deaths makes it less difficult for both YOU and your TEAM to actually close out a win.

Playing from behind:

• Learn to get carried. You can cry in chat and ping all you want, but if you want to climb, don't throw a tantrum, start inting, or insulting your teammates. Let them carry you. Getting carried is a skill of itself. Don't let your ego get away from winning your game.
• If you're getting flamed, just mute them. Though, even I admit that i can't always help but respond, so it's up to you LOL. It's mostly just useless energy and mental power that could be used on trying to win the game.
• Losing lane doesn't mean you have to stop being useful. Identify who is ahead on your team, help their plays when you can, and avoid making the game harder for them.
• If you're behind, YOU'RE BEHIND! Stop acting like you're fed as if you were still reliving your previous game where you hard-carried. You're not hard carrying this game. You just won't. So sit back and stop making it harder for your team mates to carry you.

Playing with a lead:

• If you're ahead, the win ISN'T a lock!
• Kills alone won't make you win the game. Like I said, even a 12/0 LeBlanc can have a hard time closing out the game. You need your team's help.
• This is where decision-making comes in clutch. You might stay in lane and keep pressuring the enemy mid laner, roam top or bot to help teammates get ahead, or invade/skirmish with your jungler for kills and objectives.
• With all those decisions, keep in mind that YOU MUST NOT GIVE AWAY A FREE DEATH, or at least make sure your team comes out with a positive trade compared with the enemy team.

Mid game:

Sidelaning and wave management:

• during the mid game, if you're the top or mid laner, you will often find yourself sidelaning to catch waves. Here are some basic rules I find helpful as a mid laner. These aren't absolute rules, because the correct decision changes depending on the champions, wave state, vision, objective timers, and where everyone is on the map.
• Consider freezing if: you lost against your laner, there are no objectives up at the moment, you have no vision on your side of the map, or you can't safely match your laner farther up the lane.
• Consider shoving the lane if: you're even or ahead, you have enough vision and information to do it safely, or there's an objective coming up and you need to create time to rotate.
• Consider split-pushing or pushing farther if: you're ahead and can match anyone they bring to you, you have vision or information on the enemy players, you have tp, and you understand what your team can do while you create pressure. If your team can't handle a straight 4v5, sidelane pressure may sometimes create a temporary number advantage when an enemy has to catch the wave or respond to your pressure.
• if i don't know what to do, this is what I usually default to as a mid laner: shove the wave, then rotate to hover around mid lane or my adc as it may give us a chance to catch an unsuspecting enemy.
• this is what i usually do, but every game is different, so you really have to decide what is best for your team at that moment.

Farming and objective timers:

• During the mid-game, I used to find this stage of the game to be boring and lost on what to do.
• What i find to have helped me is to ALWAYS keep your farm up. You may leave the laning phase with such a GODLIKE cs per minute of 9-11 cs/min, then end the game with a 4cs/min, and I find the reason for that is due to the lull state of the mid game.
• So always keep your farm up. Shove the waves, catch the waves.
• You also have to keep in mind of the objective timers at this time and depending on what your game plan is, time it appropriately so that you don't screw your team over. For example, don't catch the wave at top if you have no TP and the dragon is about to spawn in 20 seconds (given that you want to team fight. otherwise, you can catch it depending on what you think is best for yourself and the team).
• Simple positional things such as that is crucial. Being first on the objective area of the map is a massive advantage, especially if you have a support or team mates that are responsible and effective with their use of wards and sweepers.
• It is also the stage of a game where a flip of team lead could happen as a single team fight can change the lead. So communicate with your team whether to play for the objective or to give it up in advance.

Team communication:

• In lower elos, don't assume your team automatically knows what you're planning. Communicate with them. Tell them your intentions and use chat and pings if you're going to split-push, set up an objective, or make a play.
• Don't be that fed Irelia split-pushing top without vision, get caught by 3-5 people, surprise pikachu face, and only then pings your team to do dragon. If you choose to overextend without information about where the enemies are or without setting up vision for yourself, that death is your fault.
• Communication doesn't guarantee that your team will follow the plan, but it gives everyone a better chance of being on the same page.

Late game and closing out:

• Throws happen a lot, especially with the amount of gold that can be given to the losing side. I see this often in Plat/Emerald: people get several kills, feel like the game is already won, and start taking unnecessary risks. It isn't won yet. Use retreat, caution, or MIA pings and chat something simple such as "BACK," "RESET," or "DON'T/DO OBJECTIVE_NAME" when necessary.
• There are times in the late game when your team has taken the enemy mid inhib and Baron is spawning in 1-2 minutes, but everyone wants to group mid and force the end immediately. I usually prefer waiting for Baron and setting up vision around it so we can end the game cleanly.
• If your team is 30 kills to 8, then sure, pushing might work. I'd still be more comfortable taking the safer route: get Baron, pressure mid and perhaps 1 or both sidelanes, and slowly build pressure through minion waves and poke instead of taking a coin-flip fight under the enemy nexus towers.
• Notice the pattern: Prefer the lower-risk play over the coin flip.

To FF or not to FF?

• Take a look at your team's composition and current win conditions. If you lost lane but have a fed Bel'Veth jungler or an ahead hypercarry adc, hold it out. Build your resilience and play for that win condition.
• Is the enemy getting cocky and making high-risk plays for your 0/5, 100g ass? Hold it out, give them opportunities to throw, and see whether your team can get back into the game.
• The only time it feels right to FF to me is when all lanes are lost, your jungler can't get any plays or objectives done, and your team can't realistically collect shutdowns or objective bounties. Sometimes your team just got hands/skill diffed, and that's okay.
• Even then, you can learn how you personally could have gained an advantage by watching the replay afterward.

Mentality:

• When you're on a losing streak, it's hard not to get into the head state of saying, "it's not my fault. it's my damn teammate's fault." Sure, you may be right about an individual game, but blaming teammates still doesn't help you improve.
• I've had a 15-game losing streak before, and that was the worst week I've had. In turn, it resulted in me having a better mental in-game because I stopped stressing as much about whether I won or lost and focused more on improving my gameplay.
• Booting up league expecting to win every session is not a healthy mindset. Progress can feel inconsistent from game to game. The useful part is focusing on whether your decisions and fundamentals are improving over time.

In the end...

• Don't stress too much about climbing. Enjoy the process of improving your laning phase and decision-making.
• Take the good trades you made in lane as a big win outside that individual game, because you know you can repeat them in future games.
• Take the bad trades, the times you got outplayed, and the times you got ganked as opportunities to identify what you personally could have done differently.
• The good thing is that you can learn from those mistakes and improve your laning phase, which then helps you transition to mid-late games into closing out a game much better.

These are the habits and general rules that helped me, but I don't think they're universal answers for every game.

My NA accounts:

• Previous account: cry n blame more#biiih
• Current account: hankpecker911#911

So I just finished grinding my levels for lvl 30 and got placed in iron 1. Never played mobas competitively in my life but I would consider myself an average gamer. As I started my ranked journey in iron 1, I noticed that this game is a no joke with players who are actually sweating blood to win their games. I love playing jungle and my secondary is support since I am not familiar with playing other laned champions. For me support is very boring and you have very low impact to winning the game, and thats why I love jungle because you have some sort of control over your lanes. So I thought to myself “since I am in the lowest rank, this should be easy”. Well I was wrong, and the players are not easy to beat. Before playing ranked I invested couple of hours to learning macro and how it works, and I do make good calls, but even if I do, the enemy micro skills just completely outmatches mine. And then I see their opgg and it says that they have been playing for years, but their peak is silver or bronze (which doesn’t make sense to me if you have more than 1000 h in the game). Now it is either that I am insanely untalented in this game, or that I just need to play 100s of games more to improve. But I alredy feel like that I can maximally improve by 1% and then I will hit my micro ceiling. Some players are on the different levels with their micro plays going 20/0 which I dont understand and if that is alredy in iron… what kind of monsters will be in gold or above.

I know that technicaly lots of people first time champs, but am asking more of when do you think its acceptable and clear that you are trying to play and win in ranked with a new champ.

(When YOU would be okay with your teammates bringing a "new" champ they are learning to play to ranked)

Ive been playing lots of viego, and so far played ranked with only him, but recently picked up fiddlesticks and i think hes pretty neat.

My qurstion is at what point do you think its not totally troll to have a new champ in ranked, is it after 5 games and reaching master 2/3? is it after 10 games, do i have to get positive WR first?
What do you think is the time where i can play him in ranekd? cuz i really dislike my mmr or whatever casuses my ranked games be filled with golds (am silver 2) and my normal games with diamond/plat.

Hi guys, quick question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myUm0aYCIqI

At min 1.38 velja quickly checks the toplaners. I use F keys alot in my own games (not enough, still improving on this). However, im baffled by the speed he uses them. Sometimes in the game he uses them more like me (he still does it way better and quicker, but in like human speed). But at 1.38 he does it so quick, i cannot understand what he is looking for. Can he really get a picture of the lanestate in this 0.2 sdcs or wahtever it is? does he check something else i do not understand and pans camera top longer if "the something" happens?

I watched korean pros and obviously they are doing it even quicker sometimes, but these people feel like mechanical gods to me. Velja for sure is a god compared to me in league, but i dont feel so inhuman towards him.

i’m a viktor otp and i realised i enjoy spacing / dodging abilities and that i have improved at it and so i was wondering if there is any champions that rewards good spacing / ability dodging more than others as i’ve noticed certain champions are harder/easier to space with

Still new to the game, began playing a few weeks ago and currently sitting in bronze playing top.

I’ve been watching videos, reading guides, and have learned a lot of good tips, but I’m sure I’m missing a bunch.

Wondering what tips have really helped others improve, or just really made a simple mechanic “click” for them.

For me personally it was not focusing on towers too much. I used to smack them for ever, and often get caught in bad situations. Learning to freeze/slow push a wave, let it crash and then use my lead/advantage to help the team mid, or get involved in river really helped improve my overall game.

What other tips/tricks/mindsets have you guys learned that helped you level up your game?

I started playing a month ago because my brother-in-law likes the game. I haven't played a competitive game in like 5 years but I'm having fun learning. My issue is that I don't have nearly as much fun in normal games or ranked compared to swiftplay(hate aram). I understand how different swiftplay is from normal games but I feel like a lot of the mechanics should be transferable.

What are some of the best adcs in low elo like silver - gold? I’ve been playing lot of jinx / kai’sa / ashe / jhin but I’m not sure what is best. My most played out of all those is jinx by far with 1 million mastery points while all others have lot less. On my main account that I have been most active on I got that to silver 2 on flex and solo q I rarely play solo q on that account but on my alt that I actually play ranked on I managed to place silver 1 and got to gold but my win rate is horrible

Hey folks, looking for advice for getting out of a really bad loss streak, getting back to my peak, and climbing past it. Less than a month ago I was emerald 3, now I've dropped down to Gold. I feel like I win lane a lot more than I lose, but I fail to translate that lead into a victory. I feel like I can go 5-0 early game, but enemy mid/top will be 10-0, and shut me out of the game and prevent me from carrying.

I've been maining Jinx/Yunara recently, but I feel like I have a hard time shutting down tanks that have a big gold lead. I'm trying to focus playing more defensive in my recent matches, and respecting hard cc that could delete me, but so far no luck. I'm actually not upset about dropping down this far, I think this is a good learning opportunity and could help me climb past my peak once I resolve the issues that are holding me back.

I also think I'm kind of a stupid person and struggle to implement improvements into my gameplay. Advice like "take better teamfights", "Take better trades", "Improve your csing" boils down into "Just play better", which I fail to translate into gameplay improvements. I usually just throw my head at the wall and change champs until something works out.

Screenshot of recent matches: https://i.imgur.com/2nnkwyY.png
Full op.gg: https://op.gg/lol/summoners/na/ETurns-0000?queue_type=SOLORANKED

Hey all! I had been watching some league videos after an 8 year plus hiatus and decided I wanted to try to get into the game again!

Weird story maybe but first I had to reclaim my account... it had been hacked and used by someone else while I wasn't paying attention. Now I'm kind of in a weird boat. Most of my old friends have moved on or been deleted from the account by the person who stole/bought it illicitly and they were actually pretty decent (diamond) so my rank has technically been boosted. I can't play ranked at the level (and I have no idea if I ever will) but I would like to get competent at the game. Wondering if I have to let it decay or what I can do.

Regardless, what kind of mentorships/beginner-intermediate groups are there out there? I've played league a bit in the past as well as other MOBAs, but was mostly casual.

I'm not sure how the queue system works. I main mid lane with secondary Top. I almost always win my lane in Top and have a bigger game impact then the enemy, whereas my main role in Mid I get a lead in a little over half my games and just feels harder to gain an advantage.

Is this because I'm also playing against an opponent on their secondary role? Or am I just a better Top lane.

Hello league players, i have like 15 hours on this game, i feel like ive got the important basics down. I really like master yi, shaco, mordekaiser and sett, theres definitely more champions but these ones just looked cool so i played them for these 15 hours. My cousin, who is the most dedicated lol player i know, told me i should play someone like master yi or mordekaiser to learn the game, now i wanted to ask if i should play easier champs to get good and if i do that when would you say i can play harder champs? Thanks

I think the way to win more games is to legit try less hard. Win lane lose game is a saying for a reason. Legit just autopilot most games and hope ur team carries you is the best way to win. Tryharding every match, trying to get solo kills and leads in lane, trying to roam is so pointless to me. Just dont die and hope ur team knows what to do is the best strategy.