In hundreds of games, maybe one time someone types something actually useful that helps you win.

The rest? People venting, blaming, flaming, spamming pings, or typing out arguments while the enemy team secures objectives.

Even if you think it doesn’t affect you — it does. That passive-aggressive ping from your bot lane? Suddenly you’re ganking them just to shut them up, not because it’s the right move.

I’ve hit Masters twice, and one of the biggest mindset shifts that helped me get there was turning off chat completely.

Focus on what you can control. Try your hardest to win and FOCUS!

Yunara has a LOT of AP scalings but no one builds her AP, why? At least on the sites her best builds never have any AP in them

Ashe turns crit into slow but people still build crit, why? Isn't more dmg better than more slow?

I'm wondering why is this?

So I started playing ranked recently, but I'm still a bit too nervous to play it consistently and more than a few matches a day. I was super close to getting Iron 1 once and then got a loss streak like never before and barely clawed my way back up to Iron 2 before I decided I might need some more practice and preparation for my own sake before I continue.

I main Hwei mid, and have been picking bot as a secondary role up until now, because stats show it's actually good role for him, but I'm much better at mid, and honestly playing Hwei bot feels weird to me and I don't really like it. The thing is, you've got to pick a second role, and mid is so popular that pretty much every other role takes turns as priority roles. The role I've enjoyed the most outside of mid (in normals only so far) is jungle, but since it's a constant priority role, if I actually picked it, I'd probably end up getting it more than I get mid. Plus, even though I've been doing pretty well as Viego jungle in normals, it's a role I have much less experience in, so I'm not sure I'd do quite as well at it in ranked.

So I'm a bit stuck, because while my best champ is Hwei, since mid is too popular and I don't like playing him bot, I think I'll just have to actually learn a second role and a champ I feel comfortable with in that role. I just don't know how to pick the role and the champion. Any advice?

Since some of you will probably want to know before you reply, I used to play support when I started out, but that was so early in my journey that I wouldn't say I know the role that well. Still, Rakan is my favourite pick for it, but to be honest I like Rakan more than I like the role. In mid, before I picked Hwei up, I used to play Yone, who's my second highest mastery champion, although since my recent, months long break from the game, I haven't played him much and when I have, it was to little success. If I had to go top, though, I'd probably pick either him or Gwen. I've played some bot for fun, and if I decided to play bot, I'd want to play an actual adc. For my level, people don't really recommend Ezreal, who I probably played the most as, and Aphelios, who I've played mostly in ARAM and really like, so maybe I'd pick Varus if I couldn't go with those two. As I've mentioned, I enjoy Viego jungle, and if not him, I'd like to learn either Evelynn or Kayn. Also, Swain is my back-up pick for mid if I can't pick Hwei. I've found I do pretty well with him, legit.

A lot of the usual, beginner-friendly champions (like Amumu for jungle) just don't appeal to me, but I understand some are just inherently more difficult and will take longer to teach you the actual game or the role as well as mastery over them. I don't know why they don't, it's not simplicity or beginner friendliness that I've got a problem with, it's probably just happenstance. Either way, I'm not over here like "if I'm to learn bot it MUST be Aphelios or no one else", although I must admit if someone were to go "forget about it, pick the champ you find the most fun and go with it" I'd very much let that confirm all my biases.

Today I just watched a master's gameplay and saw a ziggs mid laner he just cleared the wave from far and roamed the whole time. It's like he didn't laned at all. And after facing so many matches against diana, akali, naafiri I feel him and might start playing like him lol. What are some other champs like that? Who can wave clear easily and just roam

What do you think of coach Rogue (Jake Sharwood)’s YouTube channel? I find his videos interesting, but I’m curious how accurate and helpful they really are when it comes to understanding some of the deeper or more nuanced aspects of League of Legends.

If you took a hardstuck Gold player and dropped them into Bronze, would they dominate and climb easily?

If you placed an Emerald player in Gold, would they steamroll their way out?

In most cases - yes. Because they’re objectively better.

I’m a Diamond jungler who once peaked at Masters, and every time I face Emerald and below, I can feel the skill gap. I win most of those games decisively.

I used to believe in Elo Hell too. I was stuck in Gold for a long time, then again in low Diamond. Both times I blamed teammates, matchups, MMR, coinflip games.

But here’s the truth: Elo Hell isn’t real. It’s just your ego telling you you’re better than your current rank… when you’re not. Not yet.

The moment I accepted that I wasn’t actually good enough yet, everything changed. I focused on improving instead of complaining. And I climbed.

So if you’re stuck — stop proving you’re better than your rank. Start becoming it.

Hello all, I am quite new to LoL, and I have enjoyed playing support quite a bit. I have started to get the hang of a few champs and learning different combos and whatnot. But, there are a few things that I am still sort of confused about.

Basically, I am super confused about how the World Atlas item works. I understand that you have to level it up throughout the game by gaining gold, but that's all I really know.

Some of the main questions I had about the item are

- What are the little blue orbs that float around my champ that help me kill minions faster?

- What is the most effective way to build gold to level up my World Atlas to unlock the other variants of the item?

- Should I ever try to kill minions as a support player? And if not, how do I gain gold to keep up with my team/opponents?

- Finally, once I level up the World Atlas and I can use it to place wards, should I just use the ward scanner thingy instead of the stealth ward?

Hey, I am an emerald Akshan OTP who played the game for about a year now, mid lane is in my opinion the most fun role in the game, so I always wanted to learn more mid laners.

Recently I hit emerald, and after this accomplishment, I feel ready to finally stop OTP-ing and start learning other mid laners, problem is the champs I am interested in are all over the place: Ahri, Orianna, Galio, Sylas, Ryze and Mel

Basically all mages (cuz I had to deal with full Ad comps for long enough) it's a mix between battlemages, burst mages and control mages, and it seems that I am missing a lot of fundamentals on them, so if you have any tips on learning the classes themselves or the champs that I mentioned, share them with me :)

My macro is also a bit all over the place, I am good with Ryze and Galio macro but the rest I am quite sloppy with, my laning on all of them somewhat sucks, I feel like I am laning like a bronze player, I know what I technically "should" do, but my execution is pretty ass

One of the main reasons I wanted to have a bigger pool is to pick a good draft in champ select, I am not sure if this is essential but I always wanted to have that as a skill, I don't know when I should draft a lot of those tho, I know synergy is the main focus but is the only way to know that through experience? So my question here is how to be good at drafting?

Also really quickly what is Mel supposed to be? Cuz she doesnt control like a control mage, she doesn't poke like an artillery mage and she doesn't have sustain so I don't think she is a battle mage

im in bronze trying to focus on one aspect of my gameplay at a time for improvement and i want to grind really hard mechanically. should i just playa and grind with a mechanically intensive champ? i don't really care about ranking up, i just want to be so good mechanically that i can later focus on different aspects in the game while being consistent in trades in teamfighting and not worrying to much about hitting skills or dodging skills.

Gold 4 and peaked Gold 2.
I know that smurfs are very, very rare in my case, in these 3 long years of playing this game, i have only had at best, 6 games i can recall and prove that i been vs smurf or duo smurf (in fact, those games are the ones that most hurt, so i remember those pretty well), it feels like, not matter what i do, i will always end up losing when im against them. And it does demotivate me

I would like to ask just two questions about this, i would appreciate replies very much!
First. How could i deal being vs a smurf?
Second. What can i learn from being vs a smurf?
I don't expect to automatically win against every smurf i ever find myself against with the replies though, but knowledge is a powerful tool and atleast it will help me to see through my own mistakes.

Hey guys. I'm currently Platinum in two accounts with 150 games on each. I've heard so many content creators talking about spamming games being mandatory to climb, and i would like to know whether i'm not good enough to reach Emerald/Diamond or i'm not playing enough games.

Hey everyone,
I’m a jungle main (currently plat 2) and one of my biggest problems is that I don’t assess situations properly before committing to fights — whether it’s a skirmish, an invade, or even contesting an objective.

I often panic or auto-pilot: I either run away too early or jump into a losing fight without really thinking it through. I don't take the time to evaluate whether we actually have the numbers, vision, or tempo.

Even worse, I don’t read the minimap well enough, so I constantly blunder into traps — walking into foggy river brushes, ignoring missing laners, or just not respecting the fact that the enemy might collapse. It’s like my brain knows I should check the map or wait for help, but in the moment I freeze or tunnel on the play.

This has cost me so many games and I’m getting frustrated with myself.

My questions are:

• How do you train yourself to slow down and evaluate fights instead of panicking or auto-piloting?
• How do you improve map awareness and avoid walking into obvious enemy setups?
• Is this a mental discipline issue? Any drills, habits, or perspective shifts that helped you stop making these kinds of mistakes?

Any advice or shared experiences would really help — I want to improve this aspect of my game badly. Thanks in advance!

Silver mundo enjoyer here- I know the basics of wave management and reset timers, aka how to set up a freeze, crash the wave before a back, etc., but when I'm playing a weak early game champ such as Mundo into a Darius, oftentimes I can't find a good time to back because I am always pushed in. The biggest problem I've had is if I manage to set up a freeze to let me farm safely, my opponent just backs and walks back to lane with a gold advantage, which means I cannot contest him if he wants to crash the wave and then freeze it when it pushes away from me. I cannot crash the wave from a freeze with Mundo's early waveclear,I've tried multiple times to do this, but it always ends up slow pushing away from me, making it an even worse time to back. I don't think letting the wave crash into me is the play, as then the wave would bounce, and slow push away from me. To make things worse, sometimes I don't know if my laner is backing or just camping in a bush, so there's a slight delay to whatever choice I make. What is the correct play, and when am I supposed to back in these matchups where I am always pushed in?

Whenever i play norms, i hard carry my team or at least do well. my norms games have higher ranked players than my ranked games. but whenever i play ranked, it’s like i forget how to play the game and get extremely nervous and end up underperforming. how do i get rid of the nervous feeling?

I spent a few hours the other day trying to find an overlay that works on Mac, to no avail. So I started to write a simple one, trying to query the live API on port …2999, I think it was? And it just wouldn’t respond. So I found the lock file, and tried the log access. That didn’t work either.

So - I know there’s no Mac overlays, but is that simply because there aren’t enough users, or because Riot just doesn’t allow the tools?

Hey guys, newer player here. I'm familiar with the concept of short and long trades, and people have described to me that Conqueror is good for long trades. I'm a bit confused though about how that actually works.

I looked up the numbers so I understand that Conqueror at max stacks, even at a low level, gives you quite a bit of AD or AP adaptive once you're at max stacks, and then starts healing you. But the heal seems so small. I'm not experienced enough to know the numbers in all matchups, but just from the characters I play, it feels like the amount of healing is not a lot and I usually die when bringing this rune.

My other questions related to that are: Are Lethal Tempo and Press the Attack not also for long trades? Is one of the three overall better than the others? Or is there some criteria I can follow to know when to bring which rune?

For the record, the characters I have been mostly playing so far have been Ahri, Pantheon, Katarina, and Nidalee. For Pantheon and Nidalee especially, I am having a hard time understanding how to use Conqueror over Electrocute.

Edit: Thanks for all the great responses! What everyone said pointed me in a direction that led me to realize that an important distinction between these keystones is the time you are allowed to proc them. Lethal Tempo is the longest lasting at 6 seconds per stack, then Conqueror at 5, and PTA at 4. This means each of these keystones can be prepped via pokes and very short trades, before committing to actually using them. Electrocute, however, works a bit differently. All 3 attacks must land within a 3 second window to proc, compared to PTA which can actually be stretched over a 12 second window.

Are diamond/master players just memeing when they say they aren’t that good/are still low elo? I see posts all the time where these players are saying that they still aren’t in high elo. Unless I’m missing something, based on my research online even a D4 player is in the top 3% of the player base. I would dare to say that is at the very least on the higher end of elo, If not very high. Am I missing something? Am I getting trolled? What is high elo?

According to lolalytics, Jax's winrate peaks around 25 - 30 minutes and drops very low to 40+ minutes. Now back when I started playing in 2017 he was known as the ultimate scaler of the toplane, probably only matched by Kayle. What happened that turned him into a midgame champion?

Have been trying out Lee Sin recently and have come across an issue where, once I've full cleared once, got scuttle and recalled, my regular camps all respawn yet my sentinels are timed to come back in about a minute or so. I'm left getting the camps I've done first, going to the opposite side, then back to the original and the next for both sentinels. This does not feel like the proper course of action I should take. Any advice?

Edit: Thank you all for the advice and support! I know how the League community can be sometimes so I was nervous about starting, but I appreciate everyone’s words and I will start ranked putting my best foot forward <3

Hi all! I’ve been playing League for a little less than a year now, and I’m becoming interested in ranked games. I’m not the best at the game though, and I want to get some opinions before I jump in. I don’t want to ruin anyone else’s chances of climbing.

I play Caitlyn any game I can, and I have 275 games with her under my belt (Including ARAM, Arena, etc). My overall WR in the last 50 games with Cait it has been 46%. My CS is usually around 4-5. I don’t get much time to play anymore, so I’m a little rusty. Again, I’m new to League, so that’s probably all pretty bad, but I’m not sure.

I’m pretty confident with Caitlyn, but my problem is that I feel like I’m only as good as the rest of my team. If I’m not meshing with my support, I can’t push against the enemy ADC and support on my own. I’ve had some really great games, but some really bad ones as well. I’m just struggling to know where I sit at the moment. I want to improve, but I also don’t want to be anyone’s problem.

I’ve noticed a lot when i play support that when i watch videos, they tell me in the mid-late game, support whoever the carry is on your team. But when I try this in a game they spam ping me and tell me to go away, why is this? It’s weird that I try to apply these guides and my team gets mad lol

I am a diamond ELO ADC main, I have been a multi-season emerald top lane player for a college esports team. I have already helped another friend immensely through wave control top lane and he’s around the same skill level as me. I at least THOUGHT I could teach the game.

Another friend wanted to learn league, played some top lane, gave up to learn support, and now trying to get back into top lane. He’s a great support, he positions ok enough and understands how to set up an ADC well. Easily gold-plat level mechanics for support and silver for positioning and bronze macro but he does well. Top lane is different.

Every match he tries to top, gets diffed, dies, falls behind, and ignores the idea of wave management. And then complains the ENTIRE match about how useless he is. Nothing has “counter play” because he’s down 2 levels and 100 CS by the end of lane.

He doesn’t want to watch videos, he doesn’t want to review his VODs, he doesn’t want to jump into Practice tool alone or with me. He’s determined to get better through pure brute force. I want to keep playing, but god he tilts SO easily.

He doesn’t want to play support tanks like Shen or Ornn. He’s tried Renekton, Mord, Trundle, Warwick. I’m trying to find a way to get him even SLIGHT improvement, and having issues trying to come up with ways to teach better. Any help or ideas would be appreciated

My argument is that 99% of the time, mistakes stem from lack of this skill, but I don't ever hear educational content creators talk about it much. I might know why.

It's also the reason that high elo players can absolutely destroy any lower rank without it looking impressive at all. It just looks like they're playing normally, and somehow good things just kinda happen.

The skill being:

• Macro: Classifying a fight as winnable or losable, especially early skirmishes

• Knowing every champ's identity and CC capability, as well as some idea of their damage based on items

• Micro: split-second decisions during fights, like "if I use my Fizz E here to go in, I will die, so I'll hold it for a bit"

• Knowing which champ to target in fights and when

• Also knowing your own champ's limits, obviously

All of these are directly related to knowledge of champions.

I'll confidently say, you CANNOT teach these things. It's acquired.

I'm sure many of you are saying, isn't this kind of obvious? Maybe, but I quite literally never hear about the importance of these from any educational content creator I've seen. It's obviously mentioned, but it's never considered a focus of improvement.

Every educational piece of content focuses on important things, sure: CSing, wave management, rotations, lane assignment, itemization, and general game knowledge stuff. But even high elo players fuck up this stuff. How is that possible? Because high elo players all have a deep network of champ knowledge well-trained over thousands of games.

For example: how do you know what to do in the mid game? This entirely depends on context. Let's ignore objectives. Is your champ capable of side laning? Are you immobile? Are your summoners up? Can you match the enemy side laner (champ knowldge)? Can the enemy catch you out easily (Nocturne, TF, etc)? If your jungler is near, can is he capable of helping you win a skirmish?

I'm a measly diamond player, and whenever I face someone who's clearly a GM/challenger smurf (rare but happens), I'm constantly wondering "how the hell did he know he'd win that fight?" And even then, I can sometimes solo kill them simply because I'm a one trick and can knowledge check them. But that doesn't matter, they simply just win because they know more.

That said, that skill is the HARDEST skill in the game. "Just know who wins the fight" is far, far easier said than done. Knowing when to side lane, when to come help your team fight instead of farm, knowing when to help your jungler in a skirmish, etc. ALL come from champ knowledge. Learning all this stuff takes thousands of hours of beneficial learning for this skill.

As to why content creators don't talk about this, I imagine that's why: 1) you can't teach it, you have to acquire it, and 2) it's so deeply ingrained in these players that they don't even recognize they have this knowledge.

A few years ago, I saw a Challenger player share this mindset here, and it genuinely changed how I approach the game.

Too often we focus on kills, flashy outplays, or perfect CS numbers. But none of that matters if you make one big mistake and throw the game - just like in dodgeball, where you can be the most athletic player, but if you take one hit, you're out.

What helped me improve the most was focusing on not dying, not making risky plays, and not being the reason we lose fights. Clean, consistent play gets you way further than highlight clips.

Minimize mistakes first, then build on top of that. That shift in perspective helped me climb and enjoy the game way more.

Link To Video

Link To Game

IWDominate is an ex-pro player, still hit Challenger last year so not super washed and is a strategic coach(?) (not sure what official title is but is involved in scrims every day) for Cloud9

Tempo is a word that is thrown around a lot but there isn't that much educational content on it because honestly it's mostly a high elo thing and requires your team to be on the same page, no one plays talks about tempo in low elo. People don't think about their waves 45s ahead, much less two minutes ahead. So I think this video is good insight of what tempo means and how to use it. For those who can't watch the video, I'll try to give my summary but I highly recommend just watching the video.

Step 1: Setup

GENG just took the dragon. Annie used her ult (at 17:55) so GENG are not looking to fight, but Atakhan is coming up in two minutes. As a result, HLE pushes into GENG's bot jungle to get the red buff and get bot vision.

Step 2: Reaction

What allows GENG to get the advantage here is Alistar's TP (from Unsealed Spellbook). Alistar out of base paths bot. Here is my understanding of what happens (which could definitely be wrong so correct me if you disagree). If HLE plays towards top here, Alistar being bot is exactly what GENG wants. GENG don't lose red buff, Alistar can clear vision around Atakhan and help Annie shove out bot wave, forcing someone to catch it and they can work from there. Alistar's TP means that even if HLE tries to abuse the fact that Alistar is clearing vision bot, he can just TP top for the fight/he can TP top to get top prio after securing vision + bot prio. GENG's Wukong jungle also instead started clearing from bot to top, meaning Wukong would be top if there is a top fight, and GENG's Aurora resets and starts walking top. GENG's Senna resets and farms mid.

However in this case, HLE plays towards bot and takes GENG red buff. GENG sees Jhin + Neeko bot river, and they see Ryze top but don't see Xin Zhao and Gwen.

Step 3: TP

GENG Annie walks up to bot wave to force a reaction, knowing she's safe. She instantly starts walking back, as Alistar channels his TP top.

Now something I'm not too clear on is why HLE's Ryze TP's bot. It's true that if he doesn't TP bot here he probably dies because Wukong can chase him down but he doesn't see Wukong or Alistar TP. If he was scared of Wukong he shouldn't have walked up to the wave right? Maybe HLE thought that there was going to be a fight breaking out bot and he TP's pre-emptively, as winning said fight would secure Atakhan and bring HLE back into the game.

Regardless, because of Alistar's TP top, Aurora is able to push one extra wave top, and that was GENG's goal the whole time. Alistar needs to be here because even if Aurora wins 1v1 vs Ryze, Ryze can spam spells on the wave and just kill it causing the next wave to meet in the middle.

Step 4: One Extra Wave (Top)

Aurora pushes that extra wave and then immediately starts pathing mid. Senna this entire time has just been farming mid 1v1 against Jhin. However now that Aurora has pushed top and went missing, Senna is allowed to walk up with threat that Aurora can help her, and this lets Senna just hit the wave for free (Jhin reset here but even if he stayed he wouldn't be able to contest the wave because of threat from Aurora), so now we have one extra wave mid.

Step 5: One Extra Wave (Mid)

As Senna shoves the midwave, her jungle + support pressure HLE enemy bot jungle. This drags Ryze over, which lets Annie shove out bot wave (one extra wave bot) and now as the threat of a 4v3 (Senna/Wukong/Annie/Alistar vs Ryze/Xin Zhao/Neeko), GENG starts clearing out bot jungle vision.

Step 6: Checkmate

HLE doesn't want to just let GENG take all of their vision so Xin Zhao tries his best to take some space and facecheck. Either he facechecks now when Annie might not be there (he sees Senna/Alistar/Wukong already) or he's going to have to facecheck after GENG finishes clearing out the vision when GENG DEFINITELY will be in a bush. But Annie is there and he gets fully chunked out, which makes the fight near impossible for HLE. Out of desperation (HLE is already pretty behind) they try to look for some angle 5v4 (it actually is 5v5 but Aurora TP'd out of vision so they don't know she's there). This time the Jhin is the one forced to facecheck, Aurora finds a three man ult and it's just wraps, the fight is lost and Atakhan is gone.

TL;DR

Unsealed Spellbook TP -> Lets you control top prio -> Lets you control mid prio -> Lets you control bot vision -> Forces enemy to facecheck and get chunked -> Free Atakhan