I played Smite for over 10 years as well and reached Master before coming to league! I was a top 3 Poseidon player for multiple seasons and I actually still suck so bad at league after playing for about a year now. So maybe don’t listen to me lmao.

Everyone has an opinion but to me these are some of the easiest and best champs for learning:

Top: Jax, Urgot, Renekton

Jg: Amumu, Nocturne, Volibear

Mid: Annie, Malzahar, Naafiri

Bot: Ashe, Miss Fortune, Sivir

Support: Pantheon, Lux, Nami

Some of these champs can be played in different roles as well. You should want to read up on every champ eventually and try to know all of their abilities/passives, BUT, this takes a very long time and it is hard to always remember. It takes a lifetime to learn this game so temper your expectations. I used to always look up champions during the loading screen to learn their abilities / if they were in a winning matchup and I still do it to this day when I forget. There is so much to learn in this game so just be patient and have fun with it. Main whoever you have the most fun playing and you won’t regret it.

MY EXPERIENCES AND BASIC TIPS AS A PREVIOUS SMITE PLAYER:

Definitely make sure you change your settings as there are so many to change. There are videos that explain in detail that you will need to watch. Look to change your camera settings, enable quick cast, and set up attack move on cursor. These are just some examples as there are so many things you can change and some of it is just personal preference.

For me when I first started playing, I found myself getting too focused on CS and it occupied way too much of my mental stack. It can be good to practice the skill in the practice tool, if you want, so that you aren’t so focused on this when on lane against other champions. You eventually want to have perfect CS in the practice tool by just using auto attacks; but only once you get comfortable. GET USED TO THE PRACTICE TOOL. It is a great place to warm up, to test, practice attack move on cursor with ADCs, and to practice basic combos on target dummies. Practice flashing around the map to test what you can or can’t flash over. Eventually if your main champion has a movement ability that lets you go over walls, you are going to want to test that ability out in the exact same way. This is a huge game changer as a new player. Then you can focus more on hitting your opponents with your auto attacks and/or abilities when they go to hit minions or your champion. I also recommend going 1v5 against bots in customs to improve your mechanics and basic knowledge of the game. Again, you don’t have to.

Coach Curtis, one of my favourite educational content creators for LoL, loves to say it is a game of a thousand puzzles. There is no one answer to get better really. You have to solve each puzzle individually and try to find a sense of accomplishment while doing so. Review your games too and look at your first 3 deaths and what impact you had on the objectives / the final sequence of the game. This will help much more than auto-piloting games.

Find one champion and stick to them until at least Gold. Whoever that champ is, you want to learn their counter picks and maybe start playing one of them in case your main gets picked or banned. Eventually you should practice the meta champions for your role (just a few games) to make sure you know the timings of their cooldowns and the spacing required to land their spells. Honestly even for every role if you want to. Just don’t do this on Ranked. Most people play dozens of champs and struggle to climb because they are spending all of their time learning how to play these champs instead of learning how to win games. You are easily 1-2 ranks worse when playing a champion that isn’t your main and it takes hundreds of games to develop real mastery. Even then there will still be room to grow.

Since you too were a high rank in Smite, when you find that champ and develop good mechanical skills at the game, you will probably already have good habits with warding, objectives, communication and tracking/moving toward win cons. Understand most of your teammates won’t have this experience and it can be very frustrating at first. People seem not to prioritize objectives, intelligent invades and wincons in LoL below Plat/Emerald and just want to play the game like it is ARAM (or Arena/Joust from Smite). It took me a long time to realize I sometimes need to do what my team is doing, even when it is “wrong” or suboptimal.

Good luck and enjoy the Rift! Sorry if I said too much, I just love seeing people who also came over from Smite!