League of Legends is a complex game, requiring awareness, reflexes, timing, game sense, communication and a plethora of knowledge in order to compete. Not all of these skills come naturally and none of them are simple. The people at the top of the ladders and circuits all had to learn the game at some point, but how?

There are two ways in which we learn things throughout our lives, you either learn from observation or you learn from experience. Both of these types of learning are pushed pretty hard in LoL but what exactly are the methods of learning, what are the pros and cons of each and why do people choose some methods over others. Lets find out in the League of Learning!

Method 1 – Watching Streams

Pros

-Fast Food style learning is great for shorter attention spans

-Learn from the best, see their every choice first hand

-Learning + Entertainment

-Full games allow you to see the consequences of choices

-See the things the pro’s do wrong, avoid them.

Cons –

-Subjective material

-Irrelevant content

-Distraction

-No consistent learning

-Skill level relevance

There is no denying that streams are probably the most widely accepted form of learning, most people don’t even consider them a vessel for learning the game; but in reality every time you watch someone else play, you absorb that play, you learn from people's mistakes and successes. Having a no-holds-barred inside peek at how the pro’s play is great, but there are issues. People tend to take pro’s word as gospel, undeniable facts when really the information you gain from a personal stream has to be treated as just that, personal information. It is subjective. Another glaring issue is the player's relative skill level to the learner. Myself watching Chaox play Sivir may not teach me as much as some of the other methods I will go into shortly. You do learn from steams but you have to be careful about whether you are even capable of applying what you have learned.

Method 2 – Replay Analysis

Pros –

-Watching YOUR play and YOUR mistakes

-Easy, everyone who can load up LoL can do it

-Potential for learning is endless

-No distraction

-Objective information

Cons –

-Takes a long time

-Requires knowledge of the correct thing to do before you can assess mistakes

-Learning from sub-par play may lead to sub-par learning

-3rd party programs

-Emotional attachment

Replay analysis is tough. It requires a lot of knowledge and the ability to look at your play completely objectively. It also takes a long time, meaning you could spend an hour watching a game, only to wonder where it all went wrong and be left with nothing. That said if you have the base knowledge and the drive you can improve your play beyond belief. With LoLReplay for example, the ability to slow team-fights down and see how slow your reactions/positioning was is invaluable as long as you know what you should have been doing, otherwise the information is lost on you. It’s a shame this method relies entirely on 3rd party software, something that can cause compatibility issues as well as security problems if you don’t research your sources. RIOT! GIVE US A REPLAY FUNCTION!

Method 3 – Guides

Pros –

-Immensely fast way to learn basics

-Reasoning behind decisions

-Applicable to almost any skill level

-Cuts the fat out of learning a new character

-Synergises with in-game learning

Cons –

-No obligation to learn anything

-Temptation to copy-paste

-Variant builds are often ignored

-Quality filtering can be biased

Another wildly popular form of learning that has major problems in its applications. The tendency for people to simply look at the item builds and follow them with no justification is a problem and guides written by people who look like the know what they are saying can shoot to the top past more concise and detailed guides. It can teach you basics faster than any of the others, it can teach you reasoning and builds, but it can’t teach you how to play as effectively as streaming or replay analysis. The format of most guides also doesn’t obligate people to know why certain choices were made, only that they were made by people who are presumably better than you. A guide also cant show you what you are doing wrong, if you are following a guide you need to be able to see when you are making mistakes on your own too or you wont progress.

Method 4 – Solo queue

Pros –

-Actively apply your learning

-Learn to make decisions on your own

-Justify your own decisions

-Create something that fits you (A Playstyle)

-Learn different roles and expand your own knowledge

Cons –

-No barriers to entry

-Reliant on others to do their jobs too

-Does not teach much without being combined with one of the others

-Community Stigma

-Temptation to blame others

-Flaming

Solo Queue is hard. It requires perseverance and the ability to recognise when you are doing things wrong in the moment, without the safety net of hindsight. Usually this kind of learning requires one of the other three methods to be truly effective, playing Solo then reviewing your own replays or using the information from a guide. Sometimes just playing the game isn’t enough to help you progress especially with how easy it is to avoid responsibility in the heat of the moment. Still, you should find a way to objectively view your in game actions. Even champion switches can teach you specific skills, like picking a champion with a global ability to make you focus on your map awareness. If you can deal with the pressure this is the only way you can truly improve your game, combined with these other methods, especially replays, it can skyrocket your skill!

Method 5 – Coaching/Mentoring

Pros -

-Catered to you

-Relevant info from people better than you

-Set time frames

-Fast rate of improvement

Cons –

-Requires quite a bit of effort on the mentor's side

-Can cost real money

-Information can still be subjective

-Requires patience

-Requires the ability to deal with criticism

More prevalent in Starcraft 2 than League of Legends, coaching is a sure-fire way to improve and fast as long as you are able to accept that you make mistakes, you play badly and sometimes you lose the game for your team. There is also the issue of who is teaching you, bad players teaching you their bad habits is not going to help you, but the higher up you go the less potential help there is to get. Paid coaching is an aspect of competitive eSports that doesn’t seem to have hit LoL yet but it's still a possibility.

Method 6 – Forum Research

Pros –

-Overwhelming amount of information

-New angles and ideas

-Plenty of content

-Learn to spot useful information from opinion

-Developer input

Cons –

-Offensive content

-Outright useless information, or useless threads

-The temptation to adhere to a consensus

-Angry, angry people

The community in league of legends is an amazingly diverse group of people and as such opinions clash, this isn’t in itself a bad thing but it does make it difficult to use the forums as a learning tool. The onslaught of personal opinion can taint all learning attempts. Not only that but just like watching pro-streamers you unfortunately get people who just want to agree, just want to say yes this is OP or BAD and that’s it, with no reasoning outside of general consensus. For these reasons, I don’t consider the forums a particularly good resource for improving your play.

Method 7 - Practice sheets

Pros -

-Record of past mistakes

-Helps to record progression

-Helps re-enforce learning

-Will help you avoid mistakes

-Break losing streaks by identifying the problem

Cons -

-Time consuming

-Requires personal effort

-Self monitored and suceptible to emotion

Using a practice sheet (A google doc or some kind of record of your practice games) is undeniably one of the most positive things you can do to improve, all of the downsides comes exclusively from having to do it yourself, theres no templates or guides on how to record the games, you just do it yourself. But if you can keep a routine then you need to make a document and record your losses, watch the replays and criticise yourself to the ground!

Now that I have compiled this list I hope it will help people see the information they get through different methods at a certain level of usefulness, not every guide or stream will give you 100% accurate information and not everything a pro says is gospel. That said there are so many positive and interesting ways to learn, all you have to do is find them!

Until next time!

Neonhowl – EU