Why don't I learn anything?

EZ Viktory·3/26/2018, 9:13:58 PM·12 votes·1,778 views

People on many many occasions have told me that I'll "learn it as I play" and "It will just come to you naturally" and "keep playing and you'll learn"

But the thing is that I don't learn from experience. People say i'll just learn stuff naturally. But the only way I learn anything is if it is written out physically to read. I only learn something if I just see it. People say i'll learn item builds but I just blindly copy the same items from item builds, copy the same gameplay without knowing how to do it differently. Apparently I could be farther on learning on my own but I simply don't know how anyone learns anything on their own. Can someone "teach me how to learn on my own" and "Learn from my mistakes" and "learn how to build items" and all of this stuff you apparently learn from "experience"

Thank you for reading, sorry if this didn't make sense but I honestly really need to know what this is

31 Comments

A Latte Deaths3/26/2018, 9:49:17 PM10 votes

I'm not exactly sure how you play, but I know a lot of people play really passive and wonder why they don't get better. You will not learn if you play super passive all the time. You have to be aggressive. Is there a play that you think will end terribly? Make the play anyway. Did it work well? Yes? Great! Did it end up badly? Okay, now you know not to do that. You have to make mistakes or you will not learn how to play. You can not learn from mistakes you don't make. If you're afraid of your teammates flaming you for risky plays, just /mute all at the start of the match. You can't know your champion's limits until you test them fully. Additionally, you can not get better at making plays if you don't practice making them in real matches. Watch diamond+ level matches for the champion you're playing. Focus on their trading patterns and how much damage they're doing at each point of the game.

There are basic ways to get better that you can learn without using the trial and error method above, such as CSing, warding, and having map awareness. Additionally there are simple strategies that you can learn without trial and error, like how if the enemy jungler is top and your jungler is bottom lane, you can take dragon since you have the jungler advantage, etc.

Lastly, this Youtube channel can help you out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeGtVfZD9LVttCJzjIJLY1g

Ahristocats3/26/2018, 9:29:36 PM7 votes

you learn if you remember your mistakes

if you play without remembering anything, or without caring about learning you don't learn

today i died at lvl 1 with aatrox against renekton in a pure trade i learned that never again will i try to fight renekton as aatrox at lvl 1

brônco3/27/2018, 2:03:33 AM5 votes

just dont have double digit iq and you should be able to learn

HopeStartsWithU3/26/2018, 11:48:04 PM4 votes

Best way to learn is: Do risky stuff. I may not be high elo but I can tell you playing high risks high reward champions will help you a lot with your decision making. Especially assassins could help you learn to control waves, help at roaming, making cool plays and most importantly position right and playing around vision. In lower elos.

For item builds you have to know 2 things: Your enemy and your own champ. If you think an item synergizes well with your champ TRY IT OUT. Even high elo players say that they copy builds from noobs because they either find the best builds or the alternatives ones.

For learning from your own mistakes: Everytime you die think about what could have been avoided. Usually it is mispositioning in teamfights or timing. But it could also be bad map awareness, bad warding and other stuff. Always think what you want to do as a player and think about what the enemy could do to prevent your play. For example: You play Zed. The enemy jungler is about to gank you. Now either you can pull of a 2vs1 (if you want to do the risky stuff) or you just back off. By backing off you just lose experience on doing 2vs1 when you see an oppurtunity. BUT the actual question is CAN I even pull a 2vs1? Do I have the items, the damage? Do the enemies have abilities to lock me down? Eventually you will just react but it will take some time ofc.

That's the way I learned. I was bronze in s4 and jumped to gold 1 in s5 (didnt do platin promos on purpose because of border color :P).

Drugoth3/26/2018, 10:13:23 PM3 votes

Sounds like you're just playing on autopilot to me if you're not learning anything. You have to be actively analyzing every mistake you make in order to learn what you could have done better.

FullmuteAll play3/26/2018, 9:39:10 PM3 votes

Tbh I find this "keep playing and you'll learn" bs or as min not effective. I was struggling in bronze and kept building shit without realizing why I do this or that and why it didn't work. My true knowledge and effective decision making was gained from watching one proplayer's (RIP senpai) stream. He gave me the base, although now he is no longer streaming or profesionally playing I am able to self-develop and so far have enough knowledge to improve my current plays.

Self-learning comes with having good examples and information, that you can apply towards self-imprvement.

Of course, if you are really eager to learn or experienced learner you can use different techniques like cause-effect analysis or what-if analysis as well as calculating different data yourself, but imho it is not the most fun way to learn from the very base.

Trias0003/27/2018, 8:23:06 AM2 votes

Learning by just playing is not the way to go. It might even hurt your progress, because if you have bad habits you will only perpetuate them. Sure, you will practice mechanics that way. But you can do it better in the practice tool or against bots, but focusing only on a certain aspect and ignoring everything else. In my gold V opinion you should do it this way:

Pick a champion you want to play.
Practice last hitting in the practice tool. This is the most important skill in the game. Unless you play support or jungle, but even then it's useful.
Read guides* to see how its mechanics work.
Practice the champion's mechanics.
Play until you're comfortable with your mechanics in game.
Read* more in-depth guides about builds - what to build and why.
Play some games focusing on item builds.
Read* more in-depth guides about strategy, map awareness, wave control, jungle pathing etc. etc. Just not everything at once. Focus on one thing at a time.
Practice that in game.
Analyze your replays to see which decisions you made were good and which ones were wrong and why. Just don't be result-oriented. Just because you died, doesn't necessarily mean you made a mistake. And just because you went 15/0 doesn't mean you played perfectly.

*Watching instructional videos obviously works just fine, maybe even better.

Obviously all of that is a never ending circle if you want to keep improving.

Wimbledofy3/27/2018, 1:35:57 AM2 votes

You have to be willing to figure out stuff on your own. From what you said, it sounds like you have never figured anything out on your own in life? Experience is one of the best ways to learn since your body remembers it better. You can't just listen to what someone says once and then all of a sudden you can do it, you have to practice it. There's nothing wrong with copying other players builds, you don't need to be the best of the best, let other people figure out the best build mathematically, you don't need to do that. Learning how to play champions though is more of an experience thing, and that's what you should be learning from experience. Learning builds is both experience and observing others.

C9 Squeeky 3/26/2018, 9:33:24 PM2 votes

Maybe you need to talk aloud to yourself everything you see. Explain what is happening/happened, how did it happen, what could you have done differently to prevent it from happening again. Is there a pattern to my juking or the enemy's juking (same direction every time?) Basically am I/they being predictable. If I walk up for this CS, can they harass me with poke or all-in me? What are my summs, their summs? Abuse their cds, they can't trade after using an important ability (their man dmg ability they are maxing first, or perhaps a CC ability like blitz hook).

For item builds, you need to understand what role your character is and its good to know essentially what each item's purpose is. You also need to look at the enemy team composition and the current state of the game. Are you getting blown up by assassins? Maybe should buy a item 3157 / item 3026 . Do they primarily deal magic damage? Build an MR item. When I say "current state of the game", look and see who is most fed. There may be 4 AP on the enemy team but if the ADC is the one thats ahead, build an armor item. But usually you want to build vs your lane opponent first. Going defensive is usually best when you're behind. You may be losing damage, but that OK, that's not as important as staying alive so you can farm up for those items later. Your presence on the map is a big deal so keeping yourself alive (minimizing deaths) should be a priority. You don't need kills to be relevant; kills just help you hit your item powerspikes faster. A kill = about 15 minions. If your opponent is 2/0 but you're up 30cs, congrats, you're on equal ground with them.

It will come with time/practice. Just read what each item does and try them out. Open up the shop and hover your cursor over the item, it should tell you all its stats and passives/active. Building recommended items is OK at first but eventually you'll have to adapt & change up your builds. Just ask yourself "What do I need right now and which item will fulfill that need?". Just kinda always be thinking about which item you're going to buy next, so you don't waste any time as the fountain trying to decide (also helps to learn which components build into Legendary items and how much each cost, combine cost, etc.). Usually backing on 800-1200g will get you a decent upgrade.

Sorry for the wall of text, I hope this helps!

Chief Kebbie3/27/2018, 1:34:56 PM1 votes

As a former teacher I can offer a couple points:

Seek feedback; you don't learn from an activity you learn from the feedback on the activity. The league grading system (S+, etc) is the current best system for this.
Don't try to master the material in one go; focus on one thing, last hit every minion in a game. Then worry about trading

Late For Tea3/27/2018, 1:51:04 PM1 votes

It is not enough just to play the game, you should think your choices through. It helps to reflect back on your decisions after a game. What went wrong, and how can I avoid it next game? If you want to go that far, you can even check out the replays of the games you play and analyze them critically.

It also helps a lot to seek sources outside of the game. Read up on some guides to get a better understanding of what to build. Not just copy/paste builds, but understand why you're building something. That way you can come up with your own builds and alter mid-game. I personally watch 3 pro-leagues (EU LCS, NA LCS and LCK) every week. And watching pros play the game daily has helped me improve my macro and game-sense so so much.

HalcyonDweller3/27/2018, 7:07:40 PM1 votes

You could do what I do, read lots of guides. Learn rules of thumb and pattern strategies and then try to apply them in-game.

Do what the pros of learning do, read up on one thing and study it, then practice it, then move on to the next thing, do the same, then come back to the first thing, then do a third thing, then come back to the second thing. By getting in repetition spaced out over time you will be more likely to have the ideas and strategies stick in your mind.

My Waifu Vanilla3/27/2018, 9:49:40 PM1 votes

You're playing on auto pilot and not actively analyzing your mistakes. There ARE things you can only learn by playing (macro play and using things like TP as a top laner), but you can read up on things like item builds for MOST champions. You learn way more from your mistakes than you do from actually doing well so when you die you should always ask yourself "what did I do wrong?" or something along those lines. If you do that and at least make an attempt to remember it then most likely it won't happen again. It's like when people complain about getting dumpstered top lane by the jungler every game after he clears both buffs, but have never learned to actually you know....ward at like 2:40 and make that gank never work.

Basically, chances are you aren't actually learning anything from playing because you aren't actually thinking while you're playing. You are treating every game as an isolated experience and not actually paying attention to why things go south. Constantly checking timers and such is something you aren't going to do overnight or suddenly having godlike teleports bot lane for counterganks, but actively paying attention to things and not just going through the motions helps you improve greatly. Also, I am not sure if you already do, but turning on timestamps in chat and having a rough idea of how long ss cooldowns are is the best thing you could ever do since you can ping them and know when they come back up so you know "if I flash on their Orianna I know she can't flash away and I get a free kill" or something like that.

EZ Viktory3/28/2018, 2:21:33 PM1 votes

There were a LOT of comments on this post, holy hell! Thank you for all this advice, if any of you see this post, usually I just blindly do the same things repetitively, without thinking, "sure I'll just build black cleaver first item every single time" "Sure I'll do this exact thing every time" and other things. But thank you for the advice everyone, I appreciate it, and I think I have an idea of what to do.

Lunar Lunacy3/28/2018, 5:26:24 PM1 votes

There's no single answer to this question but I got a few things to say. One is repetition, the more you play the more things will become second nature to you. Another is that you need to put a put a lot of thought, theory crafting, and trial and error into it, and it's not enough to just know what you're supposed to do, you need to put it into practice as well. So maybe you are learning, but just not using what you've learned. Next, you've gotta stop looking at teammate's mistakes and just focus on what you are able to do with your own champion. Last piece of advice I'm dropping here is that taking breaks can help to break old bad habits which have been reinforced through repetition.

BALDG1VEN BOOMER3/27/2018, 12:41:39 AM1 votes

I was always told that every death is a mistake.

Now obviously you can't expect every death to be a mistake but if you conjure up an average of say 6 - 8 deaths a game roughly a large portion of those were simply silly mistakes.

If you ever need further help in terms of learning more in depth things about the game add me.

SpecterVonBaren3/27/2018, 2:02:52 AM1 votes

Different people learn in different ways. Some people learn best by reading instructions on how something works or how to do it while others learn better by just diving in and trying things out until they get it.

The problem with LoL is that there's no instructions on how to play outside of the basics in the tutorial. There are guides for different champs and how to play them but they can vary WILDLY in their age, accuracy, usability and actual usefulness.

I guess if I were to give you a good way to learn how to play the game without just learning as you go, which seems to not work for you, I'd say watch LCS and high tier players in Diamond and up play the game.

Eerrman3/27/2018, 2:47:29 AM1 votes

Different people learn in different ways. You should find someone who can help broaden your horizon! I mean learn in other ways. It's not commonly focused on, but most people can develop these abilities. AKA the workaround for how to learn with different methods. This is something you need to learn from a teacher or a mother. I remember back in the day, I had trouble learning all the same ways other people were learning, except one. But I was taught how to adapt this learning method I had, to make other ways work almost as well.

You might also want to put in for some memorization practice for the ways you have trouble learning.

I am telling you to seek out other people for help. The inability to learn by multiple methods, is a disadvantage.

Morticianjohn3/27/2018, 4:28:41 AM1 votes

As with anything you won't learn from playing but practicing. You might think these are the same thing, however, they are not. I've been to basketball practice without a ball. I've been to baseball practice where we just went to the batting cages. In the same way with league to get better you shouldn't play but practice instead. This is why I remain a bad player. I love the game but I don't love it enough to practice. In fact I don't even know what all the runes do. At one point I had set up my runes and mastery pages for different champions but when they changed everything I just went with the default rune pages. I started to set up a few pages but I just don't care enough. I'll just play my default rune pages and what's cool is that the game automatically changes your rune if the champion doesn't work with the one you select.

TLDR to get better just read about the game and play custom games for practice. Play practice mode so you can learn the flash plays and the spell rotation combos that you'll use (for example the E Flash on vayne to knock an opponent in an unexpected direction).

Andrey03453/27/2018, 8:39:31 AM1 votes

Well, I don't know about game in general, but if you play a lot of specific champ, you DO start understanding his better build paths, how to utilize mechanics and therefore how to play the game in general (roaming/pushing/teamfighting). When I play a lot of one single champion, I start testing different builds and how to play lane, aggressive or passive, and what seems better in-game is probably the way to go.

Well, it's mostly just about noticing your own mistakes, maybe watching replays or remembering what you did wrong that game, that always helps.

Z3Sleeper3/27/2018, 8:47:29 AM1 votes

Reflect on what happened in the game. Either after the game (via a replay) or during it (better option imo). That's how you learn. You have to actively look for ways to improve.

How to do better in a matchup, what items could have helped you more, where you should have been on the map, etc. etc.

Just playing won't do anything. You have to actively try to learn during those games.

Most of all, never put something off as "I couldn't have done anything better". There's always something, just look for it.

Limeheart XI3/27/2018, 9:47:02 AM1 votes

All these long ass answers indepth into the game to answer such a simple question. And the answer isss....learning by experience is just saying to do it trial and error style till you get it right. Think of it like running an extended experiment.

Snowman Arc3/27/2018, 10:52:22 AM1 votes

There are things that you probably do in game that can teach you things. I play Janna, and my first two items are Ardent Censer and Redemption, probably 100% of the time. The order changes though. At first I always finished Censer with W max. As I kept getting more experience, I found out that sometimes, getting Redemption first is better, or maxing E is better. The build path for Censer is also critical at times. Sometimes I get Aether Wisp first, sometimes I get the Forbidden Idol.

These are all small things that you can slowly get to learn that can definitely win you games. The smallest things can win you the 2v2 and then snowball that into a bigger lead. Simple because of the extra MS on Aether Wisp, I was able to catch someone off, or escape a gank and so on and all these are things that can influence the game a lot.

Learning even the slightest tricks about your champion, the skill order, items, runes, mechanics is very important, and you do that by taking risks in game sometimes. You either have high brain capacity to be able to understand what item is best for what situation, or runes setup depending on the rest of the players, or you do the trial by fire, or both. That's why you can play normal games. You can try out strategies and things there, see how they influence the game.