Konduit's Guide to Steady Improvement in LoL

The 2016 ranked season is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. If you're looking to improve your League of Legends prowess, there's no better time to start your journey than the present - you'll have a whole year to gauge your progress and check out your impressive gains.

But, every venture for improvement needs a direction, a plan. Contrary to the popular saying, practice doesn't make perfect; rather, it's perfect practice that makes perfect. Simply grinding away games will only net you a limited amount of benefit - you've got to consciously dedicate yourself to learning from each match. Today, I've got a couple strategies to show you that'll help in steadily progressing your game and skills forward.

Disclaimer: by no means is this the sole effective strategy for improvement - it's simply the one I used, and what got me results. When I was first getting serious about League of Legends and really wanting to get better at the game (back in season 3/4), these are the exact principles I played by (with just a couple deviations here and there perhaps). Whomever I acquired the ideas to make this plan from, I'm not sure (it's been lost to memory) - but it's likely an amalgamation of the contemporary writing of that age and my own thoughts. Following this general plan, I managed to hit my goal of Diamond I; hopefully these concepts resonate with and help you achieve whatever your goals are for League.

Generic clip art aside, consistency really is key. Keep to a set schedule as best you can, and the results will come.

The first, most important, and likely the most controversial principle I want to emphasize is that in this period of dedicated self-improvement, you should play no more, and no less than two games a day. The benefits that this limitation we're imposing on ourselves are numerous, the most manifest of which is dispelling fatigue. Playing hours and hours of ranked matches a day (with little to no breaks in-between) quickly begets fatigue, both in body and mind. Your performance will almost certainly diminish in quality as you play your fourth, fifth and sixth matches; your mechanics become looser, skillshots start to get harder to land, and unforced errors will start to arise.

Perhaps even more detrimental is the mental drain - it becomes very difficult to think analytically and critically about each decision at the quick pace necessary in League of Legends. Map awareness (which, to be applied at the highest level requires a great deal of focus), seems to be one of the first things to go for me. Tunneling on a particular objective or line of play becomes common, which can lead to easily avoidable blowouts and scrappy teamfight execution. However, playing too few games makes progress slow. Our goal is steady, consistent improvement - skipping League for a few days can dull your game sense and slow down your rate of improvement. Ultimately, do whatever your schedule allows, but try to play relatively consistently.

Don't let exhaustion set in... take breaks between games, and even longer ones between play sessions. Let your body and mind rest and reflect.

Playing two matches a day was the sweet spot for me. For those two matches, I'm extremely focused, energized, and happy to be playing. The true key to this is the long break between each session - for a whole day I forced myself to focus on other things. When I did get around to playing League, I had peak concentration for the task at hand; when I was away from it, I had a clear head regardless of what my performance was in the last session. Speaking of, after adopting this 2-games-per-day strategy, my win rate shot up. I very often went 2-0 for the day, sometimes 1-1, and never 0-2 (that I can recall). Certainly, this could be due to a little luck and typical solo queue variance, but the consistency is high enough that I'd attribute it to the factors that were under my control, namely limiting the numbers of matches I played. It's like weight training - you need to rest in order to grow. Overtraining is more counterproductive than beneficial; let your mind and body rest (and it is during the rest and reflection period that you improve in League as well). Two games made a great session for me; many others can go higher and still perform quite well, but some might even want to stick to just one per day. Experiment and find what works best for you.

This concept is particularly important, so I'll address it just a little further. Oftentimes after a loss, you'll want to queue up again immediately, to redeem yourself; even after a streak of 2-3 losses in a row, this urge is still strong. I've felt (and acted upon!) this impulse, so I'm certain when I say that my performance improved when I resisted this urge and took a break. On the flipside, sometimes you go on winning streaks, taking down three, four games in a row. I've done this as well...but it's logically unlikely that you will continue to win games as you become more fatigued; it's a cognitive error to believe in a super-win-streak in one play session! Sometimes they happen (it might be due to your own contribution, or to solo queue variance), but over more and more games your performance may decline. Thus, I recommend sticking to a 2-3 game limit, regardless of whether you're winning or losing. This limitation also keeps the games from blurring together; running through several matches in a row doesn't allow for proper reflection and introspection on your performance in the game.

The next component of steady improvement is recording what you need to improve. As in, physically recording your mistakes/slip-ups to review later; you can write them out by hand, use a note-taking app on your computer, whatever, but you've got to get your brain to register and process how you can get better (Fiora notebook credit to StRes on redbubble.com). I created an Evernote notebook and wrote down notes for all the roles/champs that I played back then. After a year, I had a massive compilation of sticking points that I had worked on at one time or another, and I still go back and look at it to this day (I'll write about those sometime).

Studies have shown that the very act of transcribing your thoughts down in writing bolsters effective retention of what you've written down. Keep getting ganked at mid? Record that you need to be more diligent with your warding. Picking unsafe/shaky engagements? Write down that you've got to keep track of where the enemy team is before committing. From the smallest error to the biggest throw, don't be afraid to write these things down. You'll retain them in memory and be more likely to avoid those same mistakes in the future. And the reverse is also true: if you made a fantastic, spontaneous play, write down the circumstances in which it happened so that you can replicate it in the future.

Finally, you should take short, 10 minute breaks between each match. Use this time to grab a snack (preferably something nutritious like a banana), get some water, and think about the previous match (after your last match of the day, still take those 10 minutes to think). The latter exercise is significant, as this is when your note-taking takes place. Use those 10 minutes to reflect on the match you just played; consider different lines of play, review footage of the match if you have a replay or stream (I HIGHLY recommend you do this if you're able to), taking note of your successes and misplays. You should do this not only when you lose, but also when you win. Losing is a great motivator for this kind of post-match reflection, but there's still info to be gained by reviewing matches you took down - it's unlikely that you executed everything perfectly, so go back and look at what you could've improved, even in your victory.  This kind of self-analysis is the catalyst for steady, progressive growth. For more information on how to analyze your own play, check out my article on The Art of Being Self-Critical.

In summary, if you've set yourself on the journey of getting better at the game, try and implement this plan: 1. Play a set number of games per day (I recommend just two), 2. Keep a notebook of mistakes you've made in-game and things you need to improve. Read and review it every so often. And 3. Between each match, take short breaks to reflect, review, and reenergize. You'll see great improvements in your play.

That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed the article. If you'd like to discuss anything League, have comments/feedback on this article, or just want to say hi, feel free to tweet me @k0nduit (with a zero instead of an 'o') and I'll get back to you.

Until next time.

konduit

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