The Art of the Clock: How to Master Timing in League of Legends

I think one common misconception in the lower divisions of the solo queue is that mechanics makes the player. While having strong mechanics is an important factor of having success in League of Legends, it is still only one factor. A player can increase their level of play by working on their game knowledge, teamwork, planning and attitude as well. This article focuses on how a player can time the respawn rates of objectives and cooldown of summoner spells in order to formulate a plan to lead their team to victory. Having a plan is critical, and the team that doesn't have a plan, doesn't last long enough to make one.

In Game Settings:

The first step to successful timing is to make sure that your in game settings are in order. If you press escape to go into your “Interface” tab, there should be a setting titled “Show timestamps” listed under the Chat options. Make sure this is set, because in addition to showing timestamps on everything said in chat, it will also insert the times that dragon and Baron were slain, assuming that your team had vision of them being taken.

Another important setting that will be helpful to set is to change your “Ability Cooldown Display” from the default Seconds to Minutes + Seconds. This will show all of your summoner spell and ultimate cooldowns in a way that will be easier for you to time in relation to the clock. For example, if the cooldown of Flash normally shows as 300 seconds, it will now show as 5 minutes.

Timing Objectives:

Timing map objectives is extremely vital to your team's planning and success. If you time when an objective will respawn, you will be able to plan to be in a position to take that objective again as soon as it spawns. This will make you a proactive player, rather than a reactive one, who might otherwise go to an objective after it has respawned. In order to effectively time map objectives, one must know how long they are off the map once taken. Here is a chart which shows you just that.

Objective:	Respawn Timer:
Inhibitor	4 Minutes
Red/Blue Buff	5 Minutes
Dragon	6 Minutes
Baron	7 Minutes

There are a number of tips and tricks to make use of while timing these objectives. As mentioned above, if you have timestamps set, they will get a chat notification when dragon or Baron gets taken. Then, you can simply add their respawn timer to the time it was taken, and you get when the objective will respawn. This can also be done with either team's inhibitor.

Another useful tip to keep these timers on hand is to make use of your control key. If you have a message typed out in your chat box, but have not yet hit enter, and you use the key combination
Ctrl + A, your message will be highlighted, and if you press Ctrl + C, the selected message will then be copied. Whenever you wish to reply with that message again, simply open chat and use Ctrl + V to paste the message. This is an easy way to keep track of your timers without having to sift through them in chat again. Keep in mind you can only have one message prepared at a time.

One trick that seems to be overlooked when timing Baron is that one can get the timer of this objective even if their team did not have vision of it when it was taken down. This can be done by looking at the buff titled “Exhalted With Baron Nashor” on an enemy champion. If we recall, the respawn timer of Baron is 7 minutes. The buff lasts on a player for 4 minutes, meaning if you time the when the enemy team's Baron buff wears off, 3 minutes after that time is when the next Baron will spawn. If you wish to get the timer even sooner, each quarter of the buff on the enemy champion is worth 1 minute, so if the Baron buff has only a quarter the duration left on it, then it will wear off in 1 minute.

Lastly, the enemy jungler's first blue/red buff will be taken at approximately the 2 minute mark. Therefore, his first buff will respawn at around 7 minutes, and you can plan to pressure this buff according to this timer.

Summoner Spells:

Timing summoner spells is slightly more advanced. When timing objectives, the respawn timer is static. There are a few ways to lower the cooldown of summoner spells; however, making them slightly more difficult to time properly. The cooldowns of flash, ghost, and teleport can be lowered by using the distortion boot augmentation. Furthermore, by taking points in the Utility mastery tree, one can put points in Summoner's Insight, which will lower the cooldown of all summoner spells by 10%.
Below is a chart of the common summoner spells, and their cooldowns.

Spell:	Standard Timer:	Summoners Insight	Distortion Boots	Distortion Boots + S.I.
Flash	5 Minutes	4 Mins 30 Sec	4 Minutes	3 Mins 30 Sec
Heal	4 Minutes	3 Mins 36 Sec	N/A	N/A
Ghost	3 Mins 30 Sec	3 Mins 9 Sec	2 Mins 48 Sec	2 Mins 27 Sec
Barrier	3 Mins 30 Sec	3 Mins 9 Sec	N/A	N/A
Exhaust	3 Mins 30 Sec	3 Mins 9 Sec	N/A	N/A
Ignite	3 Mins 30 Sec	3 Mins 9 Sec	N/A	N/A
Teleport	5 Minutes	4 Mins 30 Sec	4 Minutes	3 Mins 30 Sec
Teleport (Tower)	3 Mins 20 Sec	3 Minutes	2 Mins 40 Sec	2 Mins 20 Sec

*The cooldown of Teleport is lower if the champion teleports to an allied tower.

Wrapping Things Up:

Timing summoner spells and objectives is one way to improve your planning during the course of a League of Legends game. If you know when an objective will respawn, you can coordinate with your team to have appropriate vision control of the area, and be able to secure it. If you know when an enemy's summoner spells will come up, you know the window you have available for you to pressure them.

Timing objectives and summoner spells may be difficult at first, but after some practice it will become second nature. If you find yourself at a point where you have timing down perfectly, try challenging yourself by timing enemy ultimates. Hint: Be sure to factor in cooldown reduction. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't come to you right away. Good luck fellow summoners, and I hope this article has been useful to you.