What is the most effective way to keep track of skill cooldowns in lane?

Twisted Fetish·3/28/2017, 8:27:04 AM·2 votes·3,707 views

So, I'm a Diamond 1 player, and one thing I believe could really help me improve in lane is keeping an almost exact count of enemy abilities in lane. I see Korean players like Dopa abuse skill cooldowns to the very last second. Now, I've thought of two ways to do this: count important skills in your head or look at the timer and add the skill cooldowns to it while rounding up or down to whatever number is easier to memorize, keeping in mind that you rounded.

Ex: Darius cd on his pull is 24s, so I look at the timer, which says 5:15, and then add 20, giving me 5:35 and keeping in mind that I will have an extra couple seconds after 5:35 because I rounded down to 20 seconds. However, I don't think these methods are very productive, because they make you lose focus(counting in your head) or time(adding numbers to the timer). Anybody got a better method?

8 Comments

BLACK REALM GOD3/28/2017, 8:31:09 AM3 votes

most abilities due to the nature of balancing are categorized and then given a specific cooldown based on their effectiveness. if you know what the attack does you can sort of estimate the time it will come off of cooldown.

more than anything cooldowns for things like ultimates are 60 90 120 150 180 etc. then if you're good at percentages since percentages go up in increments of 10 (or 5 if you have the bonus 5%) it's pretty quick to determine the cooldown relative to your own cooldowns.

dominusx3/28/2017, 9:28:04 AM2 votes

i personally just shift my eye to the clock everytime a core ability is used and then i just play around its cooldown. I dont remember the exact cooldown for most abilites since idc about learning them anymore since i quit but i just have enough knowledge to always be 1sec - + of the actual cooldown to plan out the skirmish.I suggest you look into your laning opponents champs before game to memorise them it wouldnt be hard for a higher tier player to keep track of 4 spells in game. I used to do a complete countdown of Rengar ulti last season when he was on the enemy team so braindead middiamond monkeys dont get caught by him.

llIllIllIllIll3/28/2017, 8:54:29 AM1 votes

Why not just glance down and see how many seconds are left? Most pros glance at their map every 6 or so seconds anyway, it would just be another quick scan between a CS auto


Poll: What was the best season in League of Legends

Niyumi3/28/2017, 9:22:15 AM1 votes

Option 1: Just flick your eyes to your bar and see the CD. Very hard to do, only pros can pull it off (obviously).

Option 2: Do some silly counting thing.

Option 3: Get a feel for your kit, and instinctively know when the CD is goinna be up.

My suggestion: Some mixture of 1 and 3.