Improvement Technique using Replays and Match Info

Hey all, just wanted to share the following strategy that seems to have been helping me a lot to improve my gameplay and learn about how to win.

What I do is use both **BaronReplays ** and the Match information at the end of the game, namely, the Team Gold Advantage chart. Replays can be long, and it can be confusing as to what info to look at. Your deaths? Well, that may only help you prevent YOUR deaths, but not win you the game. Your tower's deaths? Well, sometimes it's strategically advantageous to let the enemy have a tower.

What I've found is that the Team Gold Advantage chart can be used to pinpoint the moments, in a losing game, where the enemy team gained a significant overall advantage over your team. These seem to be the critical moments in the game - the teamfights, the barons, etc, that lead to the nexus eventually getting taken.

What you want to look for on the Team Gold Advantage chart are the points where the enemy team gained the steepest advantage (see attachment). While gold advantage alone doesn't win games, it can be a great indicator of significant moments that went in the one team's favor or another. By looking at when the enemy team gained advantage, you can look for the causes of such moments, and learn more about how to prevent those kinds of moments in future games.

Things to look for while watching the replay:

• What happened in the moments and even minutes preceding the enemy gain.
• What you could've done differently to potentially affect a more positive outcome at that stage of the game
• What you saw vs. what the enemy saw (so you can see how your lack of vision might've tricked you)
• What the levels, builds, and unspent gold levels were of the champions involved. (unspent gold is important because it shows how you or someone else could've gone back to shop and gain a greater combat advantage, but didn't)

After observing these things, you can always take some notes. But I feel the most important part is to just try and learn something new that you didn't see while in the game, nor in your memory of the game. Finding out tidbits of otherwise inaccessible information and perspective is what I've found replays to be great for.

Speaking of notes, if anyone wants to check out the notes I've already taken on many aspects of the game - SR, Dominion, and the game in general, you can check those out here: www.theworldwithin.org/LoLLessons.html. This practice of taking notes has helped me to learn about the game and improve as a player - though there's still lots of things to learn, and room to grow! Still, no matter what skill level, I feel taking notes is a valuable practice, and it seems to ease the pain of defeat, once some new insight about what caused the defeat has been gained. Defeats become a resource, then, that one can use to grow.

In any case, thought I would share this general tip, since I found it to be a key strategy for how to approach watching SR replays. Take care. -Delucion

TL;DR: Use the Team Gold Advantage chart to find the minutes where the enemy team gains the most gold advantage within that minute. Watch that minute (or a bit before) in the replay. Look for what caused whatever happened in that minute.