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Need Tips on Improving Mechanics

Chuck Charles··2 votes·1,108 views

Hi there, I'm a Gold 3 player with super high elo aspirations (think master/challenger) and I feel my biggest issue currently is my mechanics.

While there are still some very basic concepts of this game I am learning about how to trade, when to trade, etc, matchups, where to be on the map, I know that will all come in time.

I have been doing what most people tell me and that is "just keep playing the game" but it is clear to me that my mechanics are simply not improving. My knowledge is, my decision making is. I can destroy most anyone in lane if I don't mess up my mechanics. the problem is I mess up big time about 70% of the time and cost myself a lot. Against my elo and below (think Plat V and down) I do not get punished for this, but the moment I go up against high plat players and above, they just beat me purely off their mechanical prowess. (and boy do they beat me, they absolutely destroy me.)

I need tips on improving my mechanics to a someday elite level. I have the work ethic to do what it takes but I'm not exactly sure where to start. How do you practice mechanics? Do not dare tell me its "natural". That is pure bullshit. For some people yeah, they are naturally gifted and good for them. But not every mechanical god simply just "has it". That applies to any sport or competitive anything.

So people who consider themselves mechanically gifted, what did you do to get there? So far besides just playing a lot, I've tried playing Osu and practicing skills in a custom game. I've done the whole practice last hitting in a custom game with no ad runes and only last hitting without using abilities blah blah blah. Last hit timing is less of an issue for me than it is simply making sure I'm clicking the cursor in the right place. For example my most frustrating thing for me is I will click on someone in a team fight and at first start autoing, click back to move and click on them again and this time I missed just sligthly and am now walking into melee range as a move command. that is how bad my mechanics are.

any tips will be appreciated ^.^

7 Comments

l Helios l1 votes

An eye sensor is always a good pick up. Helps you determine if you're being passively distracted and can improve your focus. Mechanics can follow from there.

WookieJesuz1 votes

Preface: my mechanics are bad so take or leave this advice

When going against an opponent, know their abilities. Rry and predict what they will do, and when. WHEN will zed do his shadow-shuriken combo and more important WHERE will he aim it.

Then when using your own abilities, try and predict what enemy eill do to avoid it. If I'm ahri the other guy will bait out my charm then go in, so save the charm until you can hit it, or he is not ready.

In teamfights, predict who will do what. Obviously that blitzcrqnk is eyeing your squishiness and getting ready to grab at any time, so position behind minions or your team tanks, then go in when its down.

Those are just examples but hope it helps

Aeko1 votes

As a diamond player, I've learned a lot climbing through the ranks on my smurf. So yes, mechanics are good to have but they don't decide a game. You can get to diamond simply by making correct decisions and playing as a team rather than trying to mechanically dominate. But that's beside the point, you wanted to know how does one learn mechanics.

Have you ever played any other decision games? Perhaps something simple like street fighter or marvel vs capcom. In these games there's thinking involved. Quite a bit in fact. Decisions like knowing what the enemy can do, and preparing for it. Same thing applies to League of Legends. The moment you start spamming skills without a game plan, you've already lost. Even if you're getting pressured in a lane by perhaps a renekton, you need to be able to think how you can play the lane without getting rekt.

I don't know if its the same for other players, but my mind works incredibly fast. I think of all the scenarios of what the enemy laner can do, and which is the most probable. For example, I'm playing riven vs renekton and he's bullying my lane and zoning me off the cs. From here I know, due to his farm and lane dominance above mine, there's now way I can out damage him so I choose to max e. Now that I've chosen to max e, how do I ensure that I stay in the game while maxing a shield ability. The answer is by farming. So I dash in a couple times to get the cs. After paying attention to how he reacts, probably with an auto reset into w, and q. I start trading with the fact that my shield is my maxed ability so I need to play it right if I want favorable trades. While he last hits a minion, I q into range to stun him, before autoattacking and cancelling out with my shield, and proccing thunderlords. At this point, I again think what can he do. He has all his abilities up and my shield is down. So if he dashes to me and combos I will have lost the trade once again. So as I shield out, I cancel again with my second q. At this point if he decides to e again, I make sure to dash away from minions so that he won't get two dashes. If he does decide to dash towards me, I can cancel it with my q knockup.

This is just a small scenario of how to play the lanes, but essentially these make up 50% of your mechanics. Thinking about the game, the cooldowns of your abilities, the range of theirs, what they can do. Don't ever get engaged on and start panicking because you didn't expect it.

Other factors like reflex and other game mechanics, they came from me playing warcraft III a lot, it requires a lot of actions per minute.

Another simple question is, how fast are you right-clicking around in the lane? Most of my lower ranked friends, tend to not right click as much for a reason that is alien to me. When I play my right hand is constantly tapping the movement and my left hand is completely ready for whatever happens. Osu helps increase your actions per minute and reflections.

About the right click thing, I had that same issue to the point where I started to lose ranked games as a result of my melee adc. So I changed my playstyle to using the a key and left clicking. This essentially targets the nearby enemy closest to your cursor, when you click a you also see your attack range so this helps with trading as well. But the most important thing about auto attacking moving is your champion won't move to that position. It'll move in range to attack whatever is closest to your target. As you can imagine, this helps immensely when kiting while moving quickly, if I'm playing vayne and kiting I know that if I use my right click at that game speed, I will misclick and die. After switching to auto attacking moving, my kiting is almost perfect.

Simple things like understanding your champion limits and taking opportunities when you see them are also very important. Giving me specific examples of what lanes you tend to play and what champs can help me help you. :)

Chuck Charles1 votes

{quoted}

As a diamond player, I've learned a lot climbing through the ranks on my smurf. So yes, mechanics are good to have but they don't decide a game. You can get to diamond simply by making correct decisions and playing as a team rather than trying to mechanically dominate. But that's beside the point, you wanted to know how does one learn mechanics.

Have you ever played any other decision games? Perhaps something simple like street fighter or marvel vs capcom. In these games there's thinking involved. Quite a bit in fact. Decisions like knowing what the enemy can do, and preparing for it. Same thing applies to League of Legends. The moment you start spamming skills without a game plan, you've already lost. Even if you're getting pressured in a lane by perhaps a renekton, you need to be able to think how you can play the lane without getting rekt.

I don't know if its the same for other players, but my mind works incredibly fast. I think of all the scenarios of what the enemy laner can do, and which is the most probable. For example, I'm playing riven vs renekton and he's bullying my lane and zoning me off the cs. From here I know, due to his farm and lane dominance above mine, there's now way I can out damage him so I choose to max e. Now that I've chosen to max e, how do I ensure that I stay in the game while maxing a shield ability. The answer is by farming. So I dash in a couple times to get the cs. After paying attention to how he reacts, probably with an auto reset into w, and q. I start trading with the fact that my shield is my maxed ability so I need to play it right if I want favorable trades. While he last hits a minion, I q into range to stun him, before autoattacking and cancelling out with my shield, and proccing thunderlords. At this point, I again think what can he do. He has all his abilities up and my shield is down. So if he dashes to me and combos I will have lost the trade once again. So as I shield out, I cancel again with my second q. At this point if he decides to e again, I make sure to dash away from minions so that he won't get two dashes. If he does decide to dash towards me, I can cancel it with my q knockup.

This is just a small scenario of how to play the lanes, but essentially these make up 50% of your mechanics. Thinking about the game, the cooldowns of your abilities, the range of theirs, what they can do. Don't ever get engaged on and start panicking because you didn't expect it.

Other factors like reflex and other game mechanics, they came from me playing warcraft III a lot, it requires a lot of actions per minute.

Another simple question is, how fast are you right-clicking around in the lane? Most of my lower ranked friends, tend to not right click as much for a reason that is alien to me. When I play my right hand is constantly tapping the movement and my left hand is completely ready for whatever happens. Osu helps increase your actions per minute and reflections.

About the right click thing, I had that same issue to the point where I started to lose ranked games as a result of my melee adc. So I changed my playstyle to using the a key and left clicking. This essentially targets the nearby enemy closest to your cursor, when you click a you also see your attack range so this helps with trading as well. But the most important thing about auto attacking moving is your champion won't move to that position. It'll move in range to attack whatever is closest to your target. As you can imagine, this helps immensely when kiting while moving quickly, if I'm playing vayne and kiting I know that if I use my right click at that game speed, I will misclick and die. After switching to auto attacking moving, my kiting is almost perfect.

Simple things like understanding your champion limits and taking opportunities when you see them are also very important. Giving me specific examples of what lanes you tend to play and what champs can help me help you. :)

Well my goal is to be an elite mid laner, but my secondary role is ADC. Proficiently, I can play Lux, Annie at a pretty good level. and at ADC I can play Sivir, Ashe, and Lucian as best as I feel can without good mechanics. My decision making is mostly on point for ADC while it obviously can still use improvement, it is not my weakest area.

i WANt to be able to play most champs at a damn good level, but I plan on focusing on Azir, Leblanc, Yasuo, Zed, Riven when I train coming up here. I know those are all some of the highest skill cap champions and require so much mechanical prowess to be played at the highest level.

I've been trying A-click and it helps, but i dont use it 100% exclusively, should I be using it exclusively? and when you use the A-click do I still aim for my target when kiting or do I just click where i want to move. Cuz when I was originally taught A-click..I know my friend said there was standard attack move and attack move click where you click a spot and you attack the closest thing to you along the way. I'm not sure what the elite ADCs like Gosu/Sneaky/Dlift use for that.

Aeko1 votes

On melee champions I tend to shift between right clicking and auto attack clicking but even so its normal for me to cancel animations when right clicking. Right click-->right click ground...

You should still be clicking on enemies when auto attacking moving, but when you do misclick it saves your life. Eventually I do it so often now, that its feels much more normal and even faster when I auto attack move to kite. A-->leftclick on enemy--> cancel animation with right click ground--> repeat. Dlift is the only one who actually uses auto attack move I believe, the other ones have it binded to a micro so they just like middle mouse click instead of clicking a and then left click.

Sneakyy XD1 votes

Increase the sensitivity of your mouse.

Jungle Lux God1 votes

The best advice I can give you is to just play. However, you can play a lot of games and not have your mechanics improve. What you need to do is to play games with the intent of practicing your mechanics, and whenever you have the opportunity to work on your mechanics, do so.

I can't give personal examples from League of Legends, but I can give examples from my Smash experiences in Project M and Smash 4. I remember when I first started playing Project M I was really bad at L-canceling, so I started playing Bowser to get me thinking more about practicing my L-canceling, and now I can L-cancel relatively consistently compared to when I first started. Likewise, I main R.O.B. in Smash 4, and wasn't doing any of the gyro setups that are standard for R.O.B. to use in competitive play. I recently started playing games on R.O.B. with the intent of practicing those gyro setups, and while I still can't do them consistently I am still doing them more consistently than I was doing a month back (although to be fair I also took a break from R.O.B. to pick up Villager).

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