Insight To Improvement: Finding Your Mistakes

I think that I can say, without being pretentious, that I have almost seen it all in League of Legends. I have been playing since around the middle of season 1 and I still currently play with season 4 almost wrapping itself up. I am currently Diamond V, but back in season 1 and season 2 I was a 900 elo bronze player. Now the question at hand is “How did I know what to improve on?” but probably more importantly is “How DID I improve?” I can speak from experience when I say that League of Legends is a high skill cap game and time and practice are the two ways you will improve.

Before I jump into anything, the biggest factor to an improvement in anything you do will be based on your mentality towards it. You need to accept that if you make changes you will not immediately yield results. But if you stick to it then after you get more accustomed to your changes your results will surely come.

So now let me address the first question. “How did I know what to improve on?” Bluntly, I knew what to improve on because I was tired of people being angry at me. Sure, I had the mentality of “I’m the best player in this game, what I’m doing must be right!” like everyone probably has gone through. But, if I’m constantly being yelled at for the same problem, maybe I’m not right and the people who are yelling at me are. So to prevent people from becoming angry at me, I worked on what they criticized me about.

For example, if you’re playing support and your ADC’s are yelling at you because you aren’t showing presence, make a change. Change up your gameplay a little bit. Play a little bit more aggressive; go in. The only way to find your limits and find the true capabilities of the champion that you are playing is by making mistakes! Show presence, make the enemy know you’re there, and be an impact in the lane. Take the force of your enemies so your ADC can do his/her thing, it’s your job!

The second question is a little trickier because everyone learns differently. The only common trick that we all share is playing the game. So the short answer is: play the game, and focus on a mechanic you want to learn. Don’t just mindlessly play the game.

If you want to learn to CS better, get into a bot game, or queue up with 4 other friends, and practice last hitting. The second is knowledge. Sun Tzu once said, “If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.” What Sun Tzu means is that knowledge is the essence of power. Find out your enemy cooldowns, time wards, time summoners, check items, time buffs and objectives, and track the enemy jungler. If you know how exposed your enemy is, you can take advantage of them and come out on top.

I also noticed that improving my hand-eye coordination and mouse control skills has a correlation to my improvement in gameplay. I play a flash game called “Invisible Cursor” in order to improve my mouse control so I can rely on instinct to flick my mouse for predictive skill shots.

I also play a game called “Osu!” to improve both hand-eye coordination and mouse control.

I don’t play them religiously but it’s a nice warm up so I can control my mouse as well as I would like to before I jump into a game. It’s fun and beneficial so why not?

Improving in League of Legends is hard. But it’s really fun once you do. Climbing ladder is frustrating, yet satisfying. Don’t be discouraged and keep at it. You won’t become better if you don’t try. Focus on your gameplay rather than being sidetracked by your teammates. If you focus on what you can improve on, you will become more aware of it and subconsciously work on it as you play. Other games can help you play League of Legends better. Streams and guides have endless amounts of information that can be accessed to help you improve on your gameplay.