Noticing Your Mistakes: Basic Micro Analysis
NOTICING YOUR MISTAKES: BASIC MICRO ANALYSIS
Just like everyone else, you want to improve as a player and see the “victory” screen at the end of every game. However, you can’t win every single game. Why? Because in League of Legends, there will always be five winners and five losers. You will be on both sides numerous times in your gaming career. You will either be part of the five people who will smile and look forward to their next game and or you and four others may have to invest in a new keyboard (because you accidentally smashed it in frustration).
When you are put into a game with nine random strangers you know nothing about, you hope your chances of winning are in your favor or at least 50/50. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s not in your favor. You can (and will) get the short-end of the stick when you play League of Legends; Instead of being greeted by the “victory” screen, you are visited by the red “defeat” screen (that you try to avoid like the plague). So what can you do to keep the scales in your favor? You can’t change your allies nor your enemies, so what can you do? You change yourself. You improve yourself.
If I had a tool that gave you a competitive edge in every single game of League of Legends you play, would you use it? If the answer is no, then go back to playing normal games (you filthy casual). But if your answer is YES, then prepare to learn how to properly conduct self-analysis and notice your mistakes (so that you may fix them).
RECORDING YOUR REPLAYS
First thing’s first, you need a way to watch your gameplay/replays. You can stream or screen record yourself playing or you can take advantage of a few sites or third party programs that offer replay recording services.
Reliable LoLReplay Recording Websites:
Reliable LoLReplay Recording Third Party Programs:
Once you have access to your replays and have the ability to review them, it’s time to break out note taking materials. Open up Notepad on your desktop, Google Docs in your browser, or the old-fashioned pen and paper. Don’t commit a common mistake of proper self-analysis: failure to write down the mistakes you’re making and/or new things you’re learning.
When it comes to analyzing yourself, more specifically your actions and decision-making, you need to pay attention to three stages: preparation, action, and results. In this article, we are going to cover the action aspect of analysis. We will mainly focus on proper analysis of the preparation to action phase:
FACTORS OF ANALYSIS
The following are factors that should be considered while analyzing the preparation and action stages of your gameplay and decision-making:
Immediate pressure factors:
- Your ping
- Current conditions
- Your HP/MP, Your enemies’ HP/MP
- Your Level/XP, Your enemies’ Level/XP (KDA helps too!)
- Your available Summoner Spells, Your enemies’ available Summoner Spells
- Your available abilities, Your enemies’ available abilities
- Your Items, Your enemies’ Items
- Current conditions of nearby allies, Current conditions of nearby enemies
- The minimap
External pressure factors
- Gold
- M.I.A.’s
- Current conditions of distant allies, Current conditions of distant enemies
- Respawn timers for buffs and objectives
- Game duration
TERMINOLOGY AND EXPLANATION
Your ping: The amount of time it takes for your champion to perform an action is your reaction time plus your ping. If you have a 272ms reaction time and your ping is 128ms and you have to react to a surprise, it will take at least 400ms for your reaction to show in your characters action. If you have relatively high ping or slow reaction time, I do not recommend playing micro-intensive champions. The higher ping you have, the more prediction ability you need.
Current conditions: Sometimes a quick check of whether or not you have an advantage or disadvantage is a great way to notice opportunities to make a play or stop a big mistake from occurring. Opportunities come when you pay attention to health, mana/energy, levels, experience, abilities and their cooldowns, items, and current conditions of nearby allies. Many times, mistakes can be easily if people asked themselves “am I ahead, even, or behind?” If you’re low on health and mana/energy or at a level/experience disadvantage, don’t try to trade any more – you’ll lose! If you missed a majority of your abilities in a fight, retreat! A lot of mistakes can be fixed if you take the time to discover them and use some common sense and some self-analysis to create solutions. (It’s can be hard to use common sense in the middle of a fight. I know.
The mini map: The mini map is your best friend who is always there for you. You can always rely on it to be there. The minimap tells you important information at a single glance. It tells you where all your allies are, tells you where your enemies are, and tells you which enemies are missing. If you and your allies have been warding responsibly, it tells you where your enemies aren’t. The minimap exists for a reason – to help with your decision-making. Don’t believe me? Try playing a game with a sticky note covering your minimap. You’ll have lots of fun.
External pressures: When you have enough gold for a major item purchase, recall and purchase it as soon as possible. When enemies are M.I.A., play with an escape route in mind. Do any distant allies or enemies have global abilities that could influence the fight? Is a buff or river objective about to respawn? Maybe you should hold off on fighting for now. What point of the game are we in? If I get caught by the enemy and killed, how long would my death timer be? How much can the enemy take?
So just like everyone else, you want to improve as a player and see the “victory” screen at the end of every game. But unlike everyone else, you know how to properly conduct self-analysis and create value from your games – win or lose. Assuming you write down your mistakes, create solutions, and apply what you learned from game to game, you will, more likely than not, gain LP. You’ll climb the ranked ladder and friends and family ask you, “What’s your secret?” And you’ll tell them, “proper self-analysis.”
Written by Angelo “Misleading” Rodriguez
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Sam Benfer
Thanks for the article. Good read.