League of Legends: How to Learn a Role

Mastering a single role is considered to be one of the best ways to earn you LP in League of Legends. This is because if you focus on learning a single role then you will be much more likely to beat your opponents in lane, especially if they are not competent in the role that they are playing. This will allow you to dominate harder and carry much more easily. There is a reason as to why all of the professional players only play a single role. Learning and Mastering a new role can often seem to be quite a daunting thing so this guide is here to make the process as smooth as possible.

An important thing to learn when starting to learn a new role is what is expected from a someone playing that role. For example, you know that, in a top laner, you are expected to be reasonably tanky by the end of the game. Knowing what you are expected to do is always a good place to start from when learning a role. This will also help you choose what champions and build paths you use when you start playing this role.

When learning a role it is important to start by just learning a few champions. Starting off with between 3 and 5 champions tends to be a good number. Out of these you do not want everyone to be too hard as learning 3 high skill cap champions at the same time could be very difficult. To decide which champions you want to learn the number 1 point should be that you have fun playing them. If you don't have fun playing you won't want to keep playing. To help you decide what champions would be effective in your chosen role you may want to watch some of the Pro Scene to see what the professionals are playing and (up to date) tier lists are also a good way to learn who is strong at the moment. One thing that must be pointed out is that there is no point learning a champion wo is about to be reworked. This does not happen very frequently but learning a champion who is about to be completely changed doesn't make any sense. Once you have chosen these champions you can watch videos about them and read guides (only use a guide if you know it is by a skilled player that wrote it, I would recommend LoLPro for good guides by pros) to help you learn the champion.

Another good thing to learn is when to pick which champion. If you are comfortable with several champions, a good thing to learn is what champions out of your pool would be good to pick against certain other lanes. Counter picking can help you to dominate your lane which makes snowballing out of control a lot easier. However, a very important part of counter picking is that you know HOW you counter a champion. For example, Jax is a good pick against Rengar, but if he doesn’t know that he can block Rengar’s Q with his E, Rengar has a good advantage in the lane. Because of characteristics like this it is essential that you learn why you counter a certain champion so that you can take advantage of this.

Another thing that is very important when learning a new role is learning skills that are specific to that role. For example, if you are a jungler, you might want to learn common jungle routes or good, unusual gank routes and if you are a mid laner you might want to learn how and when to roam. If you can master these role specific skills then you will be at an advantage over people who do not main the role you are playing in.

Another good step to take is to have a vague idea of how all of the most common champions in your role work. This means that you are never completely confused as to how you should play against your lane opponent. It doesn’t matter how good you are on your champion, if you don’t know the abilities of your opponent you will not be able to do much against your opponent.

Remember, the most important thing to do when learning a new role is to PRACTICE. The more you play, the more comfortable you will feel on your champion and the better you will be able to perform and carry. However, if you need additional guidance on how to play a certain role, Twitch streams, YouTube videos and guides can always help you to learn various things about the game from some very experienced players.

The biggest point when learning a role is just practising what you enjoy. If you are playing what you enjoy then you will be a lot more motivated to practice and will generally do better. All of the other steps give you good knowledge, but if you are skilled enough, you will be able to carry without some of that knowledge so just dedicate as much time as you want to learning your new role and eventually you will start to find success.