It's a God damn shame that I can't get dog training colleagues to post the science they speak of but Coach Curtis can bring his receipts for a video game
@@kierangb tradition training is the best assuming you have an experienced dog to lead the way! You're not always going to have that, but it is the most streamlined training. I do behavioral cases mostly nowadays, but my trainers do basic obedience and therapy dog training
I would like to share my experience of how I learned different objectives through otping different champs. I started playing league half a year ago and I'm currently plat 4, so here's my journey: As I only started playing league I got into ADC role and I was obviously bad at csing, warding, laning, basically everything, but the one thing that stood out the most is ITS SO EASY TO DIE. So after like 100 games I started otping Kai'sa and played like 500 games of her. Basically what I learned by playing it is threat assessment, basic spacing and kiting. And with those skills I was playing somewhere in bronze 2-3 ranks. Then I realized that to learn how not to die from assasins or whatever might kill you, is to play them. So my next otp was Akali mid. It felt like I'm playing completly different game. I learned when to roam, basic warding, leaning and stuff. I was not really good at those, but I tried XD. And after playing her like 300 games I believe I was pretty solid with her mechics, BUT there was one really fascinating thing to me. My average KDA was like 12/6/6, but my winrate was about 45-47%. I was winning a lot of my lanes, but I couldn't convert those leads into victories. And at some point I had a game where I had 35 kills and 4 deathes and I STILL LOSE. And in that moment it clicked for me that it's importent to understand HOW TO DESTROY ENEMY'S NEXUS , but all I did is just gettnig random kill,s which I couldn't convert into real advantages for my team. At this point I thought that Akali is way to hard for me and I dropped her for another champion. Full tank Sion top was my next onetrick champ. And it was mindblowing at first for me how much easier this champ compared to Kai'sa and Akali. I was watching Bausffs a lot and I realized that kills doesn't matter at all in league if you can farm really well and get towers and platings. I learned tempo advantage really well and for the first time ever I was able to hit 10 cs per minute in my game. And I was able to avg 8 cs per minute on avarage with Sion, compared to 5 cs per minute on my Akali and 6 cs per minute on my Kai'Sa. And what's the most importent by playing Sion I knew the answer to 'HOW TO DESTROY ENEMY'S NEXUS' question. And the answer is simply by splitpushing. And with Sion top I went from bronze 3 straight to gold 4. I went up by the total of 700 lp with LITERALLY 75% WINRATE. So I learned something really importent - Doesn't matter which champ you're playing, you have to understand how to use your champ to win the game. And since splitpushing with Sion is quite easy, compared to utilizing Akali's identity I could climb that high. But when I started playing in gold, people started to itemize way better, and some champs have %damage in their kits, so basically in some teamcomps it was really bad to pick Sion. So I decided to play someone new. I started playing Riven top, because I felt like if Sion really had a lot of bad matcheps, then Riven will be usful in any kind of scerios thanks to her build variety and mobility. And I couldn't really abuse Bausen law anymore, since I'm not playing Sion, but what Riven has instead is a huge control over the lane. You have strong lvl 1 and most of the times you can get a minion advantage in first waves. And the I realized just HOW STRONG CORRECT WAVEMANAGING in toplane. I was watching a lot of AloisNL, and I learned how to get advantages just by good wave control, without even mechanicly outplaying your oponent. And then since Riven has a lot of mobility and insane waveclear I learned how to convert those little leads into more massive ones, without acutally killing my opponent or doing some risky stuff. Also by playing Riven I started to get way more into details of different champions abilities, runes, trade patters, since when I was playing Sion according to Baused law I hadn't really cared about those details. And currently I've played 300 games with Riven and I'm still playing her. I was able to climb with her from gold 4, and just two weeks ago I hit plat 4 for the first time. In conclusion, I just want to show my journey through ranks and champs as an evidence to the video, that different champs require different skills and knowledge about league. Hope someone will find it useful!
This was a really interesting read! I definitely have to second the idea of experimenting with different champions and playstyles to gain a better understanding of the game as a whole!
I agree that with cycling through a variety of champions, you learn different aspects better, while with an otp pick you focus on just a very few of them, simply cause the champ is laid out that way. But think you need to make the point that swapping champs too fast also brings disadvantages, like learning the champs' mechanics and playstyle hindering you to focus on your cs'ing, visionscore or whatsoever.
Being a one trick is also good because you get to learn how your champion do on every matchup, so for instance i main varus, i know i can't win a 1v1 fight early against a kalista or tristana if i'm not ahead , but i can destroy ashe and lucian for example, learning that is crucial for your game too!
I literally experienced this earlier today and yesterday. I went “ok why am I basically getting caught out on thresh but not zyra and lux” when I sat and thought about it for a second I realized that it was simply me face checking things unnecessarily. I realized I did this on lux and zyra too but it just mattered less because of all the usage I got out of my abilities.
Correction: the green group focused on first 1 variable, then another variable and then to do whatever. the way i implemented this technique to improve is that every loading screen i would tell myself what to focus on. be it csing, dodging, aa poking, landing q's, map awareness etc.
Yeah like the point was to focus on a variable and then go back to just playing, then when you see another variable you're lacking at- focus on that; and then go back to just playing again. You can't spend all your time just trying to learn, sometimes you needa just play
100% Agree with this video. The short term results may not show but over the course of developing individual areas of skills, you become a well-rounded, consistent and better player resulting in rank (results). The one difficult thing about league is, if we bring a learning objective (eg. improve spacing in laning phase) and it only covers the first 1-5 minutes the rest of the game becomes a not-so-useful use of time. Definitely keep the learning objectives small, but have enough to focus on throughout the game :)
I really like this video just because it isn’t centric to League only. I’m a beginner dancer and your advices apply very well for me to build that muscle memory. In fact, I would say this video is a great example of using this learning style
I used to play support alot when i started to play league. Then i changed my role to mid and these days I play jungle. I can say that in some games my inner support really shows as my vision score is often higher than my teams supports. When i played mid i learned to control wave. Now as a jungler i've learned the importance of the lane priority. This is just what you were talking about those graphs.
i really love this style of video, i don't really rank in league anymore, but this kind of general concept has been aplicable to magic the gathering and other parts of my life, i will always continue to support your channel after all you help me while i played league
This has been my philosophy with learning league as well. It's the same with powerlifting, picking a technical skill to focus on for a month, then picking something else, and occasionally limit testing those skills with near max or max reps where you can't focus on the technique but just have to push with all you've got.
I love your videos Curtis, so I really wanted to take the time to share something on my part for probably the first and only time. Ever since I started working as a psychiatry resident, working a lot with people with underlying personality disorders, I came to realise how these individual traits are also widely applicable to something like League of Legends. It made me realise how psychologically the game is in nature. Traits like avoidant personality or narcissism are even more easy to recognize in players. More narcisstic behaviour for example leads to overestimation of their own plateau, missing out on details, making it really hard to receive feedback and improve (much like the dunning-kruger effect). Avoidant people tend to create ranked 'anxiety', play overly safe in game, leading to not even reaching their plateau. Friends of mine that keep telling me they should be WAY higher in elo, but ending up hardstuck silver/gold, making up excuses, mainly because of these personality traits. Personality is extremely hard to change, and makes the learning process very unique for every individual. I know that this doesn't directly add to the video, but this is what makes the coaching process also very biased. People that are willing to learn (and pay for it), who are open and receptive to feedback, are usually the ones that are going to benefit the most due to healthy behaviour. This obviously doesn't count for the most players in the game, and probably a large amount of people in the comment section. Watching countless "how to improve" videos and still not managing to get out of silver, how is it possible, people think. People expect major results with the least amount of effort, bless RU-vid right? Everyone wants to improve ofcourse, be it at anything. But for that I also need my patients to set out specific goals/learning objectives to achieve in order for me to help them properly. In reality though, personality acts often as a defensive mechanism that makes people get stuck in their recovery process; or in this case improving in league. Anyway, pardon my bookwork. Just here to letting you know that your psychological approach in a lot of videos really hit the jackpot for me. Keep it up :)
Hey, just wanted to say that this is the first time coming across your channel and I found the topic you chose for this video very interesting! (so gj YT) I'm one of the people you were talking about that were by chance rotating champs regularly at the start of their league journey. I didn't have a learning motive in mind, but instead got bored of playing the same champions pretty fast while having the goal of getting all champs to mastery 5 which just made rotating champions the natural thing for me. I became a fill-main which always comes in handy when being autofilled as I now have decent enough knowledge not to hardcore feed even when playing a role I hadn't intended to play originally. Although I could play a specific champion now without getting bored of it, I still don't since I believe playing different champions just makes for a more fun experience. That's why I'm always baffled how people don't try out many champions especially when starting to play the game, but it's their choice to make not mine I suppose. 🤷 I have noticed improving faster than my friends though which might be because they weren't as flexible in their roles as I was (and still am). Something to mention though is that I do think that I took the game the most serious out of my friend group which is probably an important factor as well. Anyways, I learned a lot from this video so thank you very much for publishing it :)
Great video & concept! You did a good job of connecting it to league. I would like to see a follow up video on this like you said at the end. This video you seemed to focus on the difference between the "grey" group vs. "blue/yellow" group, when relating it to league. I would be interested in hearing your more in-depth ideas on how to relate the "green" groups approach to the game. I would like to see more about the different mindset approaches to each game, the "high score run" vs the "focus on one aspect game". What would trying to get a high score in league even look like? Would it be trying to win the game, trying to get most kills, trying not to die, or something else? Also should you be flipping approaches every game? Or focus on one aspect for say 3 games, and then go for the "high score" for the next 3? I really liked this video and hope to see more, Thank you!
my old thoughts about map awareness as an otp morde, "i have my ult, if they try something it's still a 1v1". i tried a few champs, but non really made fun, so i switched often. but i learned what they can/can't do. then i played a game as swain, it was fun and i tried to be good with him. this boosted my map awareness so much, thanks to his w. i also "found" tham that way, and he was/is good to learn wave management, because of his abysmal wave clear befor those two champs and their lessons, i never was abel to get something higher then an a on morde and often got b. but now i often get a and sometimes s(-)
Definitely agree with the point about focusing on a particular champion/style of play can inhibit climbing in the long run. This season has been tough for me because I primarily love assassins mid and they’re much harder to pull off this season
Your last point about cycling champion pools pretty much sums up my experience with the game and is imho the best way to learn it. I feel like players in league develop ambitions regarding ranked way too early and dont try out stuff enough. When I started playing the game I tried out as much champions as possible during their respective free week just to know which champions to buy. I'd also argue that the intent of a roster of so many champions is to try out at least some of them and not be stuck with less than 5 characters. When I compare my experience with the journey of friends who struggle in silver I realize that they havent made the same experience. You can clearly see that they have very poor threat assessment because they dont know the other champions. They have a very reductive view of the game which is informed by the small champion pool. They are hesitant to pick up mechanically demanding champions because they have never played any mechanically demanding champions. They are slow at learning other champions because they havent learned champions with similar mechanics to transfer that knowledge. They dont know the strengths and needs of other roles because they play mostly one.
I find this the exact same for learning a piano song. I will just focus on a specific 5 chords and play it over and over again, then play the song from scratch, yes, my overall skill will go down for the song. But that specific spot a played would become exponentially greater, soon I will develop muscle memory and won't even have to think about it! Unfortunetly i'm not sure what the "What" i need to learn. Because I suck at everything being a top rank of silver 3 and down to bronze 4 in 4 years lol.
I play Lillia jg. Lillia really likes to dance around a team fight and chip people down slowly while going in and out of threat range to bait important skills before fully committing. She's fantastic for learning how to play around a team fight if you're a champion that does not want to exactly dive into 4-5 people. I've been duoing with a friend as the ADC to their support recently and having that knowledge has certainly helped me with staying safe while posturing as 5 on objectives. I played a lot of twitch who is a menace at picks in side lanes and a great team fighter, but can still easily choose to play for split pushing and cross mapping objectives. Now, I'm learning Kalista and focusing heavily on maximizing my csing and objective rotations and wave control since she really benefits from running the enemy adc and support down in a long lane to get massive rend hits while I still cross map towers when I can't make it to a fight. It's fun to switch things up sometimes and try new things, but also focusing on learning new things with each switch really helps with actually getting the fundamentals down and keeping them retained.
I am going to try to focus on any number of early game concepts from now one, one every time I get into a new game, and then just play the game in mid-late game.
I started in s11 as an urgot otp. Sat in gold for abt 2 seasons with some improvement and hitting plat a few times. Decided to try to learn the game and think about what effect my actions have. Now I was low master a few months back and now I’m sitting d2 with a 65 wr without touching my old otp at all
An other extremely interesting video from you Curtis, thanks a lot. I would love to know what you guys consider to be the isolated skills we should work on specifically in game. I'll try to make an exhaustive list down here. Let me know what you think. - Abilities & ressources management (trading) - Spacing / tethering / kiting / dodging (movement) - Punishing ennemy CSing / fake CS - Farming - Wave management - Warding / map awarness / threat assessment - Roaming - Sidelaning - Team fight positionning / targeting - Itemization / playing around spikes - Communication / attitude
If you hate a matchup, play your opponent champion, watch videos from mains and then you'll start to understand its weaknesses, when to strike and when to play safe etc. Really makes a difference!
As an OTP in ranked. I think I benefit a lot from playing random champions and roles in norm draft. It gives me a better perspective on what other champions can/can't do well. Also, it's just fun to kick back on a new champ and full limit test in a low stress environment. I recently went on a Talon learning journey where I played like 15-20 games of Talon in norms over the period of a week or so just to get a feel for the champ, and meanwhile in ranked I climbed from Emerald 3 to Emerald 1 on my main during the same time period.
I don’t play league anymore so I often feel like there isn’t much which is contributive for me to comment. But as a scientist and someone currently working on climbing in Street Fighter 6, there’s so much to bite at here. The scientist in me is skeptical, but the fighting gamer in me agrees so much The part about plateauing you mentioned was really cool to hear from you, that’s a great point for sure. On top of that, replicability is something we have to consider here. This study occurring long enough to reach a plateau point would have been fantastic to see, but also to see such studies in a variety of games. For example games with varying pace, mental stack, and burden of knowledge. The demo game has a fairly intermediate pace from what I saw in the footage in this vid, has relatively high mental stack per second for a game of its simplicity, and very low arguably even instant burden of knowledge. Meanwhile a fighting game is fast paced, high mental stack, reasonably high burden of knowledge. League is slow speed by live-action game standards, high mental stack, and extremely high burden of knowledge. If we saw similar results across a greater variety of games like this, it would be awesome But as a fighting game player, yeah that’s what I’ve experienced. Fighting games can become extremely modular with robust replays and training mode tools, so you get the chance to really focus on specific skill sets. But ultimately if you want to win, you need to be a well-rounded player who is not over-indexing into specific skills, has all their bases down at least all the bases for their character of choice, and can have a well-rounded autopilot. That fourth strategy is effectively what I’m describing, and what you’ve found the most success with. So anecdotally/qualitatively, it’s pretty great that you found this study and shared it with us all
I actually liked this video a lot. And my experience seems to heavily agree with that(however, not in league) I play Pump it up semi professionally(a rhythm game similar to dance dance revolution, but more complex) and, to me, when nearing a championship, i found the best way to train was to alternate between a song with the sole intention of learning(even if i have to stop to playing stop playing to read the chart, or even take a bad score) and playing the same song with the sole intention of getting the highest score possible(even if i dont learn anything at all)
To complement a bit what i said, to me, it feels like playing the song with just the intention of doing the best i can, without focusing on any particular skills, allows the muscle memory to build up, while the training session allows me to consciously devise how i should tackle certain parts of the game, which makes complete sense from a neurological point of view I say this, because to every movement there are a few steps. To most everyday movement you need to use the prefrontal cortex and your premotor cortex to plan your movement beforehand. However, after you do a certain action enough, it is sort of "stored" in a region of the brain called cerebellum, which can bypass the need to plan the action before executing. Another thing is, research shows that if you plan a certain action calmly without worrying about getting it perfect, but just learning it, it actually makes you do them more precisely when you need them at the highest level
the biggest problem with singling out skills is that players would need to compare themselves to whats perfect trading and laning/wavemanipulation and not what wins on their current rank. most say im already good at X but if u only compare urself vs ppl on ur current rank ull reach a rank where ppl are better and the skills u thought u have turn out to be not good enough
I had an discussion with my friend about this as well, he think you should do everything when you learn like playing a song from beginning til the end everytime he pratise music. Me on the other hand think that you should break it down into smaller thing to work on and I believe it will help you get way better improvement. My friend now plays multible instruments and a great job, meanwhile I have no life and a hard stuck plat player addicted to league
Same thing I have noticed in CSGO. When I started we used to just play the game. We were low ranked for a long time. When I decided to put some effort in trying to improve myself I was ranking up, maybe slowly but constantly:D people in the same rank could have very different skill set. Some people were better at aiming but didnt know how economy works. Other were shooting like bots but kneew utility usage coms and possitioning. U need to analise ur gameplay, find weaknes and put some efort to improve that aspect. During game u have to pay attention to what are you doing end try to not the same mistakes again.
As a support main, I feel like learning to play all other roles and getting at least 4/5 champions mastery 7 for each role helped me a LOT in my understanding of how the games are played and what to do in which situation. I played so many different champions from the get go when I started league and today I'm diamond 1, I climbed by playing mostly shyvana jungle, ahri mid and janna support, who all have very VERY different playstyles, but I feel confident on them. I cannot stress enough how useful it is to learn different champions and roles, at least 2 or 3 roles, it made me a very well rounded, versatile player with a good understanding of the game overall in my opinion.
Is there a list of like lets say the 20 most important skills for league? That way one might actually asses themself and get a grip on what to look for. Or is there to many things and you just pick something you find
I would have liked that study to also split it into "Playing the game without a focus first, then a specific variable later". They did the reverse in this study. Many of us just play a game first then try to improve at it.
The point is to constantly alternate between focusing on a learning objective and not focusing on anything specific, so it would still be the same thing.
Interesting. I've been pretty much Syndra OTP since her release in 2012 and always thought that's mostly positive. I love knowing and making use of the little tricks and details. But it feels as if I'm only climbing because I can take advantage of my opponents NOT knowing the tricks. So I know for me to actually climb, I have to work on some fundamentals that I absolutely lack, rather than rely on stomping my lane every game. So I like that approach of viewing different aspects separately and focusing on something. I feel like it's a good way to learn and I mean as an OTP I should know how to focus on 1 thing 😂
i struggle with learning stuff cause of disability. but i always try to have a goal to work on, but then it just leaves my brain when i am in game and i dont know how to keep it in brain.
People quit on their learning program cuz they don't see the desired results (like winrate) short term. However they don't even realise that the 1st group of players that dont focus on skills, who just play are actually getting the same results short term but would get worse results long term. The 1billion mastery gold 2 OTP, who does the same things over and over again, will have 48-52% wr just as you will but for you it will start to improve. Even if you finish a season in the same elo you were in with mediocore wr you would still skyrocket next season
Before i watch the video; i think for me its a cycle of trying to have fun at the game with a background objective in mind. I'm not playing to get better. I'm playing to have fun but finding ways of aligning that with improvement. im a midlane mostly but currently spamming top lane and ive noticed im getting much better at 1v1 dueling which will help me in mid. i've done jungle before as well, where i spammed that for a month and i died way less to the jungle in midwhen i realised what the jungle timings are, and what they want to do. E.g as pantheon vs sion; i cant use both my w and E in a combo; i use one for the the first sion q and the 2nd for the his second sion q. I have friends who played league for 10 years and I'm gapping them after 1 year because im just naturally curious on how i could have played that situation better on my grey screen. Whilst they don't think about that stuff in downtime. If i find myself making same mistake over and over i actively think about it
During covid I spammed alot of kayle games with a 63% win rate. It was total insanity but I kept persisting because I wanted to experience what ranked was really all about. What motivated me were two concepts that I thought were applicable to the nature of ranked solo q. The chaos theory in where every minor event that is changed can lead to a completely different outcome, meaning that whatever small adjustments you contribute towards the game makes a massive difference in the form of a snowball affect maybe. Another one that fascinated me was the myth of Laplace, a demon that could calculate and knew everything including what was to come and every possible future and their different branches. How do these apply to one tricking? One tricking felt like digging a narrow but long tunnel and yeah I did get alot out of it and was did find success but I felt empty because it did not really make me a better player but a better kayle player. The nature of the game also changes metas heavily every patch so all that knowledge and experience became less relevant as well. What I learned from it was that ranked was not a fair system and I needed dedication to learning rather than just trying to win games which did not sit well with me. For those that want to one trick, please just uninstall the game and do something else like I did, it is not worth it.
Can you make a video about how to deal with not being able actually concentrate on learning something? I usually when i wanna improve my map awareness i do it for a couple of minutes and then instinctively go to muscle memory and i get distracted and rarely check mini map
set a timer to ding like every minute on a loop. when it dings, look at your minimap. slowly lower the time in between dings. get it down to like 10 sec between dings. check map every time. and play like this for like a week. after you've played enough games with the timer reminding you to check your map, you'll be able to take the training wheels off and play without a timer reminding you to check map, because you've already developed it into a habit by that point.
@@astrologikalmusic i mean i tried to do that but the timer was very short tho i had the problem of it annoying me and me tunning out the noise it mafe completely
@@thehades8818 yeah i agree, it sounds like it would get irritating quickly. okay, heres my new advice then. assuming you're not a sup player, you can remind yourself to check map by checking every time a minion wave gets to lane, and every time the wave gets cleared. then work your way up to every 3 minions that you farm, check the map. eventually try to glance at the map after every minion you cs. dont feel bad if this is hard at first, esp if youre new to a) the game b) your champ, c) lane matchup, d) lane your in. Another thing you should start doing is watching allied health bars above the minimap. if you see someone getting low, take a quick glance at their fight and see whats going on, maybe you can rotate and help, maybe you'll see key cooldowns get used and can go clean up, maybe you'll see their jgl low and likely to recall allowing you to play far up in lane for a min w/o worrying abt being ganked. Last tip i have for u relating to map awareness is that keys F1-F5 each correspond with a player on your team, and pressing it will center your camera on that player, then space to recenter it on you. (might not work if u have locked camera on, if you do, you need to take those training wheels off. if youre just now turning locked cam off, holding spacebar keeps the cam centered on your champ.) GL HF in ur games. If you wanna add me feel free, i can give more tips or we can play together. Im on NA and my ign is "outplay w invis"
Hey Curtis, have you ever used mobalytics gpi tool and/or their challenges? This concept is something I found myself using utilizing their tool by just ever so often glancing back at my gpi and viewing my weakest area and using their challenges to focus on the things that should help me improve that area. Maybe you could do a video assessing the real utility tools like that might have for the average player.
I wonder if assigning a certain goal per champion could be a good method of applying this idea. I've been playing since before OCE was even a thing, but I still haven't played much compared to a lot of that veteran playerbase. I'm also very new to jungling (usually played ADC) and to try and improve, I've started an "S rank challenge". I'm aiming to get an S rank on every single jungle champion in the game. Because each S-rank is per-champion, it doesn't matter how "bad" a champion is. If I played a D-rank jungler better than a portion of other players of that champion, I get an S rank even if the enemy jungler was just stronger. Do you think that idea has merit? I've also been trying to check which aspects of the game I'm behind in using the in-game performance metrics
You can do either in league, you CAN intentionally 'overload' your mental stack and focus on something IN GAME (at the cost of other skills) OR you can focus on it in the post game. BOTH work. It really depends on the personality of the client
one of the first things i learned at university and learned again through league is that learning is a skill. learning is something you can get better at. don't give up, brother
Ive been emerald (or old plat) for 10 years, I watch all these videos and can't ever hit diamond. I don't think it's possible for me to get better.@@WebberPereira-ux1wt
@@crimsonxii9361 and yet I literally watch all the coaching videos and never improve, some of us just arent able, so people shouldnt act like everyone can.
Nothing in life is ever really fair. Ranked is just a game of numbers that moves you either up or down and does not account for whatever anyone does inside those games so results can vary with luck. That is how probabilities work.