How to Master a Champion in League of Legends

One thing almost everyone who has ever played LoL can agree on is that mastering a champion in League of Legends takes a lot of effort and time. Well, it depends which champion in particular you’re talking about, though since not all champions were made equal. However, there’s an off chance the kind of cynicism that floats around may have gotten to your head and mastering your champion is actually easier than you think.

It just takes the right mindset, a fair bit of research and an almost equal amount of effort before you’re as good as can be with whichever champion of your choosing. To ease your transition into the process, we’ve compiled a basic guide to help you figure out how to learn and master a champion in League of Legends

Doing Research

As with all great discoveries, the initial phase is the part where you sit down and try and learn your champion. Obviously, you aren’t going to get a lot of mastery done if you can’t master the fundamental. So, pick your champion and let’s get started.

First, take a look at their skills as a whole. How do those skills work and what do they do exactly? Do any of the attacks scale off of the amount of Magic/Attack damage? It’s pretty easy to miss the fine print when it comes to a League of Legends champion, but those are the most important of all. For instance, one of Cassiopeia’s attacks resets on an enemy that’s been poisoned and will increase the amount of damage caused by the poison by 20%, and stack up double. Missing crucial but otherwise often ignored information could make you miss out on a lot of opportunities.

On the same note, you need to know how the champion works and what they are capable of. Maybe diving blindly into the game is your prefered kind of game. But empirical evidence has shown that well-planned games are more likely to end in your favor than random gameplay. Besides, the kind of people who do play games without any plan of action tend to ignore the research part.

Another critical part of research is watching other players play. It’s been said before of Michael Jordan that he spent a significant amount of time studying other players games to see what he could learn from them. The same goes for any League of Legends player looking to learn something new. Watch other players carefully and try to discern why they take the plans of action that they decide to. Note what they do – how they react to their opponents’ defensive and offensive plays. It’s not something you’ll likely be able to do straight away, though. It comes with experience.

Once you’re able to pick them out, look at things like laning, skirmishing, lane phasing and even how the player uses their skills and how the combos are set up. These are some of the most vital aspects of using any champion in the League of Legends universe.

Once it’s all said and done, everything comes down to the two most important factors that affect whether or not you’re actually going to master that champion fast enough:

• Do you like using that particular champion?
• Do you feel comfortable enough with the champion to play with them repeatedly?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you don’t have the mindset required to play with that particular champion. In which case, you’re free to give them up and try again with someone else.

Playing the champion

Before you get absorbed with playing with your champion on a consistent basis, one of the first things you should check is what their runes and masteries are. This should help you out, especially the first time around so you literally don’t go in blind. Afterwards, you can decide what setup suits them the most.

Once the runes and masteries are all set up, the next logical step is to check what to build on your champion. Builds can usually be changed at your discretion, depending on what the situation you’re currently in demands, but knowing the standard build is an excellent way to learn what your champion may need. Some champions are more attuned to magic protection while others are better centered around attack damage.

At this point, you should set out to get some serious experience with your champion. Using the information you gathered, you now need to get a feel for your champion. It’s the time you should gather that experience you need so much, and the only way to do that is by playing as often as you can. Practice involves various aspects of gameplay – lane phasing, utilising different item builds, accessing fights and various other obstacles along the way.

You will also need to learn how to strategise using the champion of your choice, because every champion is unique in their own way. What works for one may not work for another. And in terms of strategy, what matters the most is knowing when (and how) to attack and when (and different ways of) to attack.

Mastering the Champion

That’s all well and good, but in truth, these are all just prerequisites of mastering your champion. The actual process of having the kind of knowledge you need about a certain champion is a bit more involving. Different people describe mastery differently, but for our specific cause, mastery can be defined as being able to play with your champion without thinking. The simplest definition of being a master is when you reach a point where everything comes naturally to you.

Mastering your champion will be a lot of work – start from scratch and play until you have enough muscle memory and dedication to live out the longest of battles. Until you have enough perseverance to be able to stay back and salvage the most hopeless of battles. It takes a good while to be adequately good at last-hitting and executing perfect combos while playing with the rest of your teammates. You should be able to adapt in teamfights and play with your champion in all manner of match-ups and compositions. Once you have all these under your belt, you are well on your journey to claiming you’ve mastered your champion.

The next crucial phase of mastering your champion in league of legends is keeping the good and getting rid of the bad. In other words, keep note of your actions – remember what you did right and wrong so you can avoid repeating mistakes. Unlike what most people say, mastering a champion in league of legends is relatively easy as long as you have the kind of patience that’s required to get there. Rinse and repeat until you’re confident enough to do everything with your champion – whether it’s doing the same thing over and over or learning something new.

Just as a bonus, in order to claim you’ve actually mastered a champion to other people, it will probably help to have gained Rank 5 in the in-game mastery system. Even better, once you get there, you can taunt your enemies not only with your impressive skill, but you’re also going to have a special emote to use against them.