League: How to improve map awareness?
Map awareness is necessary skill for every LoL booster and, of course, for usual player. There is no benefit in proper vision and gold spent on wards if you anyway miss upcoming enemies or events in which you should participate. In this article we gathered several tricks how you can improve your map awareness in LoL matches.
USE INTERFACE FEATURES TO IMPROVE MAP AWARENESS
There are few ways how you can interact with LoL interface in order to improve your map awareness.
CHECK SCORE PANEL
If you watching live streams of pro players you could notice that they regularly press “tab” key to check score panel. One of the main reasons is that you can see if a certain enemy is visible on the minimap. You can learn it by color of the summoner name. If it glows white then this champion is visible, if not then foe is missing and you probably should be care about it.
Just a short example of mechanics during the game with bots
INCREASE SIZE OF YOUR MINIMAP
Set 100% scale of the minimap in the game options to make it more attractive for your eyes. Or you can try to repeat this (^^):
SET A BEEP TIMER
You may set up a timer which would beep each 20 seconds to remind you to check the minimap. By using this way it’s possible to develop the constant habit thus you won’t need this timer in the future. You may use this online tool for this purpose.
CHANGE YOUR PLAYSTYLE TO INCREASE MAP AWARENESS
While you are learning to follow events on the map you may change your playstyle to ease the process.
LEARN TIMINGS
Learn common game timings to know when to expect enemy jungler gank. For example, you can expect first gank on top lane in the interval between 3:30-3:50, at the same time you may use a trinket to put a ward.
PLAY JUNGLER OR SUPPORT ROLE
You may spend some time on playing these two roles because they aren’t involved in the creep slain process. Thus you will have free time to check the minimap which in turn lead to the emergence of habit to follow the events happening in the game.
PLAY CHAMPIONS WITH GLOBAL ULTIMATES
If your champion mechanics forces you to watch what is happening on other lanes then your map awareness would be improved even against your will. We have a list of champions with global and high range ultimates, you may choose there a champion which suits you.
USE THE GAMEPLAY PROCESS TO FOCUS YOUR ATTENTION
You can use ingame events as triggers to improve your ability to track events on the map.
GLANCE THE MINIMAP EACH TIME YOU LAST HIT
You can use this simple trick to develop a reflex. Just briefly look at the minimap each time you are going to slain a minion.
MAKE A MENTAL CHECKLIST
We recommend you to focus on the simple things first. Just focus your attention on 1 or 2 simple things that you have to track:
- Amount of your Health Points
- Amount of your lane opponent’s Health Points
During the lane phase you just need to check yours and your enemy HP time from time until you start to do that automatically. Then you can focus on next things in your checklist:
- Amount of gold left for next item
- Wards expiration time to renew them
At the end of each check make a short look at the minimap. Don’t rush – accuracy goes first. If you make this process automatical then speed will come with time.
There are many ways to improve your map awareness in LoL. You may use those you like most or try to combine all of them. The more ingame processes you track the more chances you have to win.
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Sometimes i’m so involved in lane fights and csing that i notice jungler when he is already too close or someone starts to ping like mad
same problem, mate :D
try to look at the Minimap after each lasthit, that helps alot!
Well when i constantly fighting with my enemy on a lane my awarness is going straight to 0, dunno what to do with that..
lol’d at this photo with minimap for giants
That’s why you have to ping your team mates about upcoming ganks even if from your point of view it looks obviously. Often people are so focused on their lanes that don’t see upcoming gank while one push on button “V” helps them to get out.
My map awareness is good and very rare i miss something, but anyway pings of your team mates helps me to be focused on the game + it improves team play. Pings ftw :)
I love your collection of League guides and this one is really nice. My map awarness is on a poor level however i’m trying to improve it. I will try to use your advices, maybe it will become better.
Oh great, another article and exactly about my problem! I hope that this guide will help me to improve my Map Awareness because I just do not know what’s wrong with me. But I think that the only chance for me is to increase the size of the minimap like at the picture above :D hilarious, but if it works it is not stupid! XD
I really often don’t notice that jungler is coming to my top lane until my team mates start to ping. I don’t know what to do with myself, i will try this advice to make a constant habbit looking at the minimup once in a while!