Tips to Improve in LoL: discovering our obstacles and overcoming them

As the season reaches its end, this is the perfect time to reflect on our past mistakes and find ways to overcome the obstacles that prevented us from reaching the division we thought we belonged in. I challenge you, as a player, to improve your game in the following ways:

1. Start recording your games and watching them. Look for any mistakes you may have made. Search for poor choices and discover ways to change the negative outcomes of you game. Maybe you died because you didn’t ward, maybe you decided to invade just as the enemy jungler was ganking and you could have prevented a double kill. Every game has its mistakes. Identifying them and finding ways to fix them is a great way to improve your skill as a player and it may help you identify further mistakes in the future as you make them. This will allow you to turn around a game before it’s too late.

2. Practice your last hitting. CS, or creep score is a vital part to becoming a better player. Knowing how to last hit in lane and under tower can improve your gold income and create an additional item or two that you may not have been able to achieve otherwise. There are different ways to practice CSing and you don’t have to be in a game with other players to do it. Create a custom game and just practice last hitting with no one else in the game. Once you're confident in your ability you can move on to doing it with someone else in your lane. Effectively CSing (under pressure or otherwise) can really help you and where you stand on the rankings.

3. Practice specific champions for each role. If you’re going to play ranked you need to know how to Top, Mid, Jungle, ADC AND Support. And you need to know how to do them well. All of them. You won’t always get the role you want and you’d be surprised at how much you can affect the outcome of the game just by knowing the ins and outs of the champion you are playing. That being said, don’t just pick champions you think are good. Pick champions you are good with. I’m sure we have all experienced it in Yolo queue. There is a player that first picks Amumu or Malphite because the champion is “OP". Yes, these champions can be very strong at times but if you don’t know how to play them then you are only hurting you and your team’s chances of winning. Play champions you are confident in, champions you know the matchups to and can identify their strengths and weaknesses.

4. Be kind to your fellow gamer. We’ve all had our moments when we can’t stand some of the choices our team mates make. We’ve made them ourselves. When was the last time someone calling you names or being rude to you has helped though? Never. It only makes you want to do worse. Kindness can go a long way. People react to kindness positively and are far more likely to try harder.

5. Every time you are ready to blame someone else for something they did to get you killed, think of 2-3 ways you could have changed the outcome yourself. This kind of goes along with number one but reflection is an important part of growing as a player. I know your support did something stupid to get you killed or vice-versa. Or maybe it was the jungler. Whatever the case may be I want you to step back and look at the situation. Is there anything you could have done differently? Figure it out and in the future try it. See if the outcome is more desirable. If not, then try something different. We have a team and we do have to rely on them at times but there is always something we can do differently. Remember that.

6. Take a break. If games aren’t going well and you’re just having a bad day then it’s likely things are only going to get worse. Stop playing and go do something else. Change games, watch a movie, talk to someone, whatever it is you like to do. We have our bad streaks or unlucky games but don’t let it continue frustrating you just because you want to get one good game in or win before you sign off. Not worth.

There are a lot of different ways to improve your game. Find your weak points and work at them. No one ever became a pro without practice and everyone started at the bottom. I’m confident that you can become a better player. It’s all up to you. Good luck out there summoners.