League of Legends can make you feel unstoppable one match and completely out of your depth the next. Landing your abilities helps, but climbing ranked also means knowing when to fight, where to move and when to leave a losing situation alone.
If you want to approach the game more competitively, these five habits give you something practical to work on.
Keep your champion pool small
Choose one main role and two or three champions you enjoy. Constantly switching characters means spending more time learning abilities and less time understanding the match.
With familiar picks, you can focus on your opponent’s movements, watch the minimap and recognise when you’re strong enough to trade. Keep a backup ready for when your main gets picked or banned.
Give every fight a purpose
It’s tempting to chase a low-health enemy across the map, but ask what you’ll gain, and what you’re leaving behind.
A kill that leads to a turret or a safe objective can create a useful advantage. A chase that costs you two waves of minions and ends with your own death is harder to justify.
The win condition is destroying the enemy Nexus, so judge your decisions by whether they help your team get closer to it.
Prepare before objectives
Don’t wait until your team starts attacking Dragon to think about getting there.
Check the timer, look at nearby lanes and find a chance to spend your gold beforehand. Arriving with items, health and useful vision gives you more options than rushing through an unwarded jungle.
You also don’t have to contest everything. If your team can’t reach an objective safely, consider whether you can take a turret or collect farm elsewhere.
Watch competitive matches with a question in mind
Professional matches are easier to learn from when you follow one player in your role. Watch when they recall, how they respond to missing opponents and where they stand before a fight.
Those decisions also provide context for discussions around League of Legends betting, although professional results are never guaranteed.
For your own improvement, focus on decisions you understand. A coordinated professional team can pull off plays that five strangers in ranked may struggle to reproduce.
Review one mistake before queuing again
After a loss, pick one moment to revisit. Your first avoidable death is a useful starting point: did you miss a warning, stay with low health or fight without knowing where the jungler was?
Set one clear goal for the next match rather than trying to fix everything immediately.
Ranked progress ultimately depends on results; Riot’s hidden matchmaking rating rises with wins and falls with losses, but reviewing your decisions gives you something more useful to work on than staring at your LP.
About The Author
Jake Bannister
Jake is GGRecon's Co-Founder and Operations Director. You'll find him covering our word game brain teasers, as well as sports games such as Football Manager and EA FC. He's also that teammate on your Rocket League team spamming "Wow!".
