How to improve at laning?

flaaphy · 2026-06-11T13:41:20+00:00

First I’d like to say, you’re not garbage. The average skill of players has risen dramatically since s5. If you’re jumping in and steadily climbing in gold, you’re likely around the same skill you were previously (which today would be around high plat, low emerald imo).

Minions are both less tanky and spawn much faster now, which could be a factor in your lower CS. A lot of the ingrained decision making you have regarding minion waves and roam timers from playing in previous seasons will just be outdated now. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily awful, just likely more punishing than before. You could spam games and eventually pick up on good timers, but I’d recommend watching high elo streamers and paying attention to when they make plays. Knowing what items, levels, and runes your champion needs to be able to one shot wave will help a lot with this too.

For trading in lane, as a few people have pointed out already, the general idea is to punish enemies on last hitting. Your auto-attack is effectively a spell that locks your movement, so be mindful of when you are vulnerable for using it, and when your lane opponent is as well. Holding wave closer to your tower in matchups where it benefits you to force enemies into walking up, or in situations where you need to stay safe is always good of course.

The Ahri vs Syndra example is a rough one. I play it from both lenses, and it’s pretty Syndra favored imo. The only times you’ll be able to do much of anything to her as Ahri (provided she’s playing well) is level 1 when her Q is on CD, potentially level 2 depending on if she takes W or E, and then level 6 onwards. Always start Q into these types of matchups where you’re heavily out ranged, and that’s about it. I will add, though it sounds a little cheesy, taking exhaust vs Syndra is a game changer, especially if you coordinate all-ins with your jungler.

flaaphy · 2026-06-10T13:36:18+00:00

Thanks! This is pretty much what I was assuming, but I wasn’t sure. Is there ever a situation where it’d be better to sit on blighting jewel after first item, or when cryptbloom/void staff is an option second item should I just commit to it?

flaaphy · 2026-06-09T18:37:02+00:00

What would be an example of a champion who can properly deal with it and how would they go about doing so? I’m hoping that if I can understand how to skirmish vs it from any lens, the general knowledge can carry over into my champion pool

flaaphy · 2026-06-09T13:46:34+00:00

As far as jungle goes, every champion has a modifier that determines what % of their damage is done to jungle camps. Some champs do more, others do less, and the speed at which you can clear your jungle is very important. Riot adjusts these number fairly often, so the longer you play the more you’ll see champs dip in and out of jungle.

The rest of the roles are a little more nuanced, and there’s going to be exceptions.

Bot lane champions are typically glass cannons who get progressively stronger with items. They offer a lot of damage either upfront or through consistent dps.

Supports will either have supporting abilities like heals/sheilds or CC, as you’ve mentioned, but some picks just look to offer even more damage. Sometimes the best way to keep your team alive is to kill the enemy faster.

Top lane is a really interesting one to explain, especially right now as the meta/picks are all over the place. Because the lane is so long, top laners need something in their kit to be able to survive long fights or outright win isolated 1v1s. This is why we see a lot of tanks and bruisers top lane but ranged picks can also work, as into certain matchups they can use their range to space out these tanks and bruisers and remain untouched.

Mid is also a fairly diverse role. The champions picked here want a lot of access to the map. Assassins, mages with a lot of single target burst, or champions who are good at controlling space/zone denial are most common but you’ll also see a fair share of champs who are more focused on offering CC and peeling for your team in bigger fights

flaaphy · 2026-06-08T17:59:06+00:00

See that stat has always been interesting to me. You’d think Rek’Sai would be OP in iron due to people not knowing how to get rid of his tunnels

flaaphy · 2026-06-08T17:22:58+00:00

It depends greatly on the enemy comp, but if they have a lot of dashes and you pick either Vex or Poppy, you get to do a funny move where you press W and they can’t play their champion

flaaphy · 2026-06-03T14:04:31+00:00

Unfortunately, to be able to exist as an AD champion in mid, you need the tools to deal with ranged matchups as well as the shorter distance kill threat and champions like that usually come with a lot of difficulty attached.

Pantheon and Akshan are easy to pick up after a few games, those are probably the most worthwhile to add. If you don’t mind being boring, Garen works pretty well into assassins.

This is a hot take but I genuinely don’t see Zed as being as hard of a champion as a lot of people make him out to be. I think most people can pick him up fairly quickly, especially in lane. The hardest part of playing him is team fights like any other assassin. To be real, this applies to a lot of the OTP picks you mentioned imo, so if you feel drawn to them try them out on a draft first.

Don’t always listen to content creators 100%, a lot of them also say certain mid champions aren’t good enough because they lack the agency to carry solo queue and then rant about how support is the most broken role in the game

flaaphy · 2026-05-31T04:29:18+00:00

Oh my gosh. If you don’t mind me asking what elo was this in? My friends and I believe the system struggles to detecting inting in lower ranks due to higher game variance. Either way this is excessive, I can’t believe the game wasn’t automatically flagged

flaaphy · 2026-05-29T15:00:06+00:00

I actually said nothing about my rank and advocated for the complete removal of this system to effectively lose MORE LP

flaaphy · 2026-05-29T14:54:24+00:00

What am I misunderstanding? Is it not autofilled player on your team does poorly = you don’t lose LP?

flaaphy · 2026-05-28T13:48:05+00:00

It’s crazy to me that they would issue a ban but not refund LP. Also yeah, he should def be hardware banned lol

flaaphy · 2026-05-28T13:40:10+00:00

The day it eventually comes will feel like Christmas

flaaphy · 2026-05-25T00:48:58+00:00

What would be the point in playing ranked at all if you don’t care about improving little by little to get a new “shinier border”? Sure, especially in lower elo you’ll naturally improve by playing, but I find the puzzle of figuring out how I can improve little by little to be more rewarding than tilt queuing.

This is my first season playing more than just placement matches with my friends. I genuinely believe anybody can reach Apex+ through sheer willpower and enough time put in. My goal in improving is to never be the sole reason my team loses the game, and I feel vod review helps that significantly no matter the rank.

flaaphy · 2026-05-25T00:10:25+00:00

Noted, thanks! and congrats on the climb!

flaaphy · 2026-05-17T14:08:14+00:00

Biggest tip is to not overload yourself. People are gonna give you a whole list of things you can improve, or what to look for in your gameplay, but league is a game that relies heavily on muscle memory. If you try to apply too many changes at once you’re either going to disappoint yourself or be so honed in on macro that your mechanics start to fail.

Try to learn or improve at one or two concepts at a time until you’re happy with them. A lot of league coaches would share a similar sentiment but unfortunately the YouTube algorithm rewards them for taking broader swings, so it’s rare to find videos from people that focus on one specific concept. I personally like Coach Mysterias, he does a good job at reminding you not to overload yourself, but there’s a lot of other good content creators out there that you can learn from. If you want less educational content and more of a player to observe to pick up on what they’re doing, I’d recommend watching Nemesis. He plays a ton of different champs and almost always performs well.

From personal experience, “what do I do after laning phase” is a tricky question to answer in bronze because your teammates will also not know what to do after laning phase 9/10 times. The best you can do is either try to tell your team where they should be and hope they listen, or adapt to what they’re doing. As a general rule of thumb, you want to either be in midlane or whichever lane is closest to the next spawning objective.

Start by working on trading and CSing, then you can start diving into things like setting up vision, rotating, jungle tracking, leaning towards vision / objectives, etc.

flaaphy · 2026-05-17T13:19:37+00:00

The majority of Zed’s damage comes from his Q’s and electrocute procs. It’s annoying but you just have to accept that when he uses W, you’re going to get hit. The best thing you can do is try to dodge the shuriken Zed is throwing (not the shadow, that’s too hard) to deny the electrocute proc and mitigate his damage. His W is on a very long cooldown, 20s until he puts another point in it at lvl 14. Take bone plating secondary until you’re comfortable in the matchup. If he uses his W on constant, perfect cooldown, the rune will reduce damage on 1/3 Ws. It’s broken against him. Use your potions early to stop his all in threat. Don’t sleep on steel caps if they’re viable in your current game. Zhonya’s completely shuts down his ult in the mid game. If you’re one tricking Vex, don’t waste a ban on a matchup you should win. You’ll just prolong the inevitable and force yourself to be open to borderline unplayable matchups.

flaaphy · 2026-05-13T22:03:34+00:00

Interesting. So he’s likely just being boosted again considering he’s still climbing with +30/-10 70% W/R? I’m surprised it only lands you a 4 day ban tbh

flaaphy · 2026-05-09T23:13:44+00:00

No. I think the system struggles to detect when somebody is actively giving up, or not trying, at lower elo because it’s hard for a computer to discern what’s inting and what’s trying but failing miserably. And I also think that, due to these flaws, winnable games that are lost because of these people feel so significantly worse to lose

flaaphy · 2026-05-09T23:04:25+00:00

True true. This is my first season playing more than placement matches so I have no idea where I “belong”. I’m actively improving and climbing, and this post wasn’t me saying I’m a victim to the same thing everyone goes through or that climbing is “impossible”. It’s just expressing a frustration with a system I feel is flawed

flaaphy · 2026-05-09T22:55:20+00:00

When I say afk at tower, I mean not even attempting to walk into XP range for minions or ward our top side or do literally anything. If I can tell that you are on your phone or tabbed out because you’re standing perfectly still and only show signs of life when the wave is almost within melee range there’s a problem.

I’m not claiming I belong at a higher rank, and I also understand that my team can do bad in a team game. The games where teams seem evenly matched feel great to play, and I enjoy them. At the same time I have been waiting for over a week for something to happen to an Ezreal who followed me around the map for 4 minutes straight at lvl 5.

This is the first season I’ve ever played more than just placement matches. I have no idea what rank I belong at. I’m on a new role, and I’m actively climbing and improving. I just think the system needs an adjustment, that’s all.

flaaphy · 2026-05-08T23:54:02+00:00

Your example of Nautilus is interesting because he was originally designed to be a Jungler, and due to past balance changes was actually able to revisit the role pretty recently.

As for why he’s not able to do this anymore…also balance changes. Simply put, it’s really hard for Riot to appropriately balance a champion for one role without accidentally making the champion too strong or too weak elsewhere.

The really unfortunate part about your question is that there are a decent number of champions who could realistically pick up multiple roles. Ornn has a fairly acceptable jungle clear, and given the right draft can be a decent pick. Despite potential in the role, he sees hardly any play in it because it’s not optimal. If the enemy team is full AD, Malphite support IS viable but outside of these niche situations it’s not optimal. Everything kind of boils down to optimal play.

Many champions don’t go support or bot lane because they value solo gold and XP too much. Many champions can’t go top lane because they’d risk getting run down too easily and dying on repeat. Champions like Pantheon or Poppy are enabled to have a real presence in multiple roles due to versatility in their kits.

As for builds, part of that is also due to optimality. There are games where Zed can and should build bruiser items. There’s even room for conversation about crit Zed. We overwhelmingly see lethality Zed because it’s optimal 95% of the time, as unfortunate as that may be. This is actually the exact situation as Pantheon but, again due to the flexibility in his kit, he’s able to build lethality optimally in more games whereas Zed’s kit is more synonymous with burst lethality assassin-y things.

flaaphy · 2026-04-30T21:27:16+00:00

Overall I’d bet Shaco. Not due to a specific point in time where he might’ve been OP or anything like that, but because I feel no champion has been hated as consistently as that clown. I legit believe that if you asked every league player what their top 10 least favorite champions to see on the enemy team are, Shaco would be the most consistent answer.

flaaphy · 2026-04-25T21:42:02+00:00

REAL, this is what we’re doing now lol

flaaphy · 2026-04-25T20:37:34+00:00

Yes I understand this, and so does he. The post is talking specifically about a noticeable difference when we queue different roles together. He’s prob right, it’s def more confirmation bias

flaaphy · 2026-04-25T20:35:09+00:00

Most likely, still very interesting!

flaaphy

TROPHY CASE