How to get better at League of Legends?

As many of you obviously know, MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) games have gotten huge since the release of the original DOTA (Defense Against the Ancients) on the WC3 custom game client.  The biggest MOBA game currently is League of Legends, followed by DOTA2 and HON.

With the influx of popularity more and more people are trying to better themselves and their skills in lol, hence asking the question ” How to get better at League of Legends?”.   Really, the concept and game are fairly simple as the controls are only left / right mouse and Q W E R skill buttons.  What people don’t realize until later is that the hard part is strategy and teamwork.  You can only carry your team so far unless you are super crazy fed or it is still semi-early/mid game.

Here are my personal tips on how to get better, consistently, at League of Legends.

Map Awareness – I decided to put this point first and foremost because it is what I think many people overlook.

Example:

‘You are bot lane farming against another AD + SUPPORT Meta combo, both lanes seem even, 4 minutes in and still no gank from, or spotting of, the enemy jungler.’

Noobs – Continue to farm even at half health, usually pushing their lane up towards the enemy’s tower and then get ganked shortly after. How to get better at League of Legends? Look@Proz.

Pros – Would check bush (*IF YOU HAVE 75% HP ATLEAST) with their lane partner, so that they don’t face check the enemy’s jungler and get instakilled.  If health is too low to check bush, then someone, support usually, needs to go back and get a ward and place it into the shrubby bush in river, and maybe even another above bottom tower, this needs to continue to happen all game, or at least until the laning phase is over.

With the wards in place, and map awareness, it is literally almost impossible to die early by a gank.  The ward will spot the gank with plenty of time for you to run back to the tower.

Teamwork and Communication – People need to remember that this is a team game, how many games end for you by the 15 or 20 minute mark? Probably about 5 – 10%, so you can see where the “team fight” part of the game comes into play.  DON’T RAGE AT YOUR OWN TEAM! Suggest something they can improve or try not to let happen again, but don’t belittle them for a clicking in a few wrong spots, you have done the same thing, and I’m sure have been yelled at before.  No excuses, if you want to win, try to win, be a leader, and get the team feeling like a team with friendliness and helpfulness.  You can argue this point all you want, but has anyone yelling at you, or calling you a newbie or troll made you want to play better? That’s what I figured…

Champions – Champions are a fine line between getting better and just getting experience.  The most I can say here is try to counter-pick the enemy team at champion select.  If you are still semi-new and don’t play any ranked yet here is my suggestion.  When you play ranked there are usually the same group of characters picked, at least MOST of the time for the current meta game of Solo top(tanky dps), AP mid, Jungler, and then support and ranged AD bottom.   Most of these characters can be counter by another character.  You need to learn who counters who (or just Google the matchup while waiting, if you know what lane you are in and versus who) and this will help out your laning phase really good.  There is one catch to this, and that is you need to be able to play the character semi-well.  If you are still leveling up, playing a lot of normal games or maybe just trying to find the champions you like and want to call your mains, then you need to learn some good champions now!    Good Champions aren’t “SHACO’S SO OP ZOMG NERF” champions; good champions are ones who bring the most to the synergies of the team composition.  Do a search for “League of Legends Champion Tier List”; learn two or three of each of the top tier champions, of each role

Examples –

Support Champions – Sona, Soraka, Alistar, Janna

Jungle Champions – Maokia, Gangplank, Lee Sin, Jarvan

Mid Champions – Ahri, Fizz, Morgana

Top Champions– Irelia, Yorick, Riven, Shen

Ranged AD Champions – Ashe, Miss Fortune, Graves, Caitlyn, Corki

Last Hitting – Last hit, don’t push your lane up to the enemy’s tower unless you can’t help it, example being, Mordkeiser.  There are multiple reasons for doing this.  One reason is that your lane is now unable to be ganked, and you are more likely to be ganked, because you have to run twice as far to be in a safety zone, aka your tower.  Another reason is that you are enabling the other team to farm and get experience points.   I will break this down a bit further.  If you are winning your lane and the opponent is unable to last hit without risking death or punishment in the form of harassment, then DO NOT PUSH! If you don’t push you can last hit and keep the minions in the middle of the lane in front of river, and if you stand between their minions and their tower, well you just denied them all the possible last hits, and you also denied them the XP because they are out of range.   This advantage gets huge the longer it goes on.

TL:DR Version

1. Ward your OWN lane early game, unless jungler, then ward what is needed
2. Pay attention to the map, always have a good idea of where ALL FIVE of the enemy team members are, and think of what their skills will do CC wise if they catch you and if you will survive.
3. If you are still learning champions, pick good ones to learn, aka top 1/2/3 tier champions.
4. In champion select, try to out pick the enemy team, if you don’t know what your laning opponent is weak against, then Google… “Best champions to lane %top% against %enemy champion%”.
5. Act as if your team is next to you at a tournament, be nice and helpful.  You can tell them what they did wrong but do it constructively, or else they will just give up on the game just to make sure you lose because you called them a noob and who knows what else.  If someone called you a noob and raged at you for getting caught 1v2 top against two ranged as a melee, most likely you would laugh to yourself and then troll the rest of the game, or at least not help the rude person once team fights come around, which usually makes for a swift defeat.
6. Last Hit, don’t push your lanes past river towards the enemy tower.