A little background about me, years ago I wrote an Apex Legends guide the top comment called "Probably the best piece of advice I have ever read on Reddit." I've published a psych BA paper, been a multi-season Grandmaster and hit Top 500 in Overwatch, and had a 20-kill and multiple 4k+ damage games in Apex. Now I'm learning League after playing it many many years ago and never being good at it, which has been difficult since it's a completely different type of game, the player base skill level is so high, and the game depth is incredible. 

Yet applying what I know about learning has been very useful, and since I'm currently unemployed/an entrepreneur lol, I thought I'd take the time to write this. After writing the full piece, I had Claude split up the paragraphs to make it more legible and correct spelling/grammar issues as English isn’t my native language. Anyhow, the question I keep asking myself is:

What should I prioritize learning?

The way I think about it is you want to focus on what's important, repetitive, and easily practicable. Take the Elder Dragon. It's arguably the most important objective in the game, and knowing how to play around it is somewhat practicable. But it doesn't spawn in most games, and every game that it does spawn in doesn’t follow a fight for it, and earlier drake fights tend to play out very differently from later ones. So it's hard to get consistent reps in and getting better at fighting for Elder Drake, won’t make you a better player in every game, just some.

Now compare that to farming. Farming is also super important, it happens every single game, and it's endlessly repeatable. You can also break it down into a long list of sub-skills, things like last hitting, freezing, farming under tower, fast pushing, recall timing, wave catching, rotation timing, ability maximization, fight/trade farming, and knowing when to leave fights or objectives early. This means you can practice all at the same time, and also isolate specific areas.

I'm currently focusing on last hitting the first two waves and then hard shoving the third wave while taking as little damage as possible so I can save my potion, crash wave on cannon, recall for Cull/boots/long sword, and then snowball from there. Despite playing for less than two months now, I've had games with 8-9 CS per minute as Vayne, who's famous for her bad wave clear, though it will take time for me to hit those numbers consistently. Fortunately, it’s easy to get that practice. You can break down the entire game in the same way, by asking yourself what's important, what's repetitive, and what's easily improvable. Once you have done that, how do you structure your time?

The 20-30-50 Rule

This is a rule made up by me, that I don't perfectly follow, though it is a useful yardstick. Only 20 percent of time spent involved in a game should be spent trying your utmost to win. 30 percent of the time should be spent not playing the game at all. And 50 percent of your time should be spent on playing to improve. But before you start any of that, you should set an impossible goal, as odd as it sounds.

An impossible goal

A lot of people tilt and remain stuck in their current elo because their goals are just within a couple of good teammates away, like being high Gold with the goal of reaching Platinum. While I'm currently Silver, with the goal of becoming Master in the second split of this year, i.e., before September. Will I reach that goal in time? Absolutely not. Will I ever become a Master player? In all likelihood not, and that is incredibly liberating.

I am confident that I could climb to Gold rather quickly, based on how the games feel, but does that matter? No, since my goal is becoming Master. I had a bot lane that was 1/11/1 and 2/12/2 while I hard won top lane, but does that matter? No, because I made multiple misplays a Master's player wouldn't have.

I mistimed my entrance into a teamfight and killed Amumu instead of the like 17-0 Kai'Sa. I could have won lane even harder, forcing the enemies to play topside. I could have completed my lane quest earlier, then TP'd bot lane and maybe helped feed the ADC. My CS numbers should have been better, which would have allowed me to keep up in strength with Kai'Sa considering I was ahead in EXP as a top laner. And so forth. A Master-tier player would have done all of those things, and the reason I know it is because of what I spend ~30% of my playtime on.

The 30%, studying

One way to manage tilt is to do fewer things that tilt you, as obvious as it sounds. I'm a cringe Vayne Top player and the reason is simple. I tried, really tried, playing bot lane, but I tilt too hard.

So as a cringe Vayne Top, I'm blessed by SaskioLoL, basically a Challenger Vayne one-trick who's able to articulate a lot of his reasoning process. So I know I have to become a worse version of him to reach my Master’s goal. Watching his videos has sped up my learning more than anything else. Yet I'm not just a passive viewer. He basically says micro is as important, if not more, than macro, but that he sometimes struggles to teach that. So what do I do? I analyze.

How does he dodge skillshots? Oftentimes, by first going left-right-left-right in an unpredictable pattern, then he intentionally goes in the same direction for a split second too long, to bait out the skillshot, before he changes direction.

Now that I've started to build up a knowledge bank about the game but especially Vayne, I've started doing the most useful thing you can do. Try to predict what the pro/high-tier player will do, to learn where your instincts and decision-making differ from the pro's. I predicted Saskio would play safely as he was two levels down and even further behind in gold. Instead, he just sent it, to my surprise and the enemy’s, and killed the fed top laner. This revealed to me that I play too safe when behind as Vayne is a character with a lot of room for outplays. The fastest way to learn what you should do, and arguably how to do it, is to watch, analyze and predict pro players. If you find watching gameplay/streams tedious, I’d recommend watching pro play and Caedrel’s streams. LCK is just unbelievably hype, and Caedrel is constantly analyzing, teaching and predicting.

The 50%, playing to improve

Once you have done that, we come to 50% of the playtime. Thanks to Saskio, Caedrel, and many other great creators like Coach Rogue, perryjg, and others, I know way more about what I should do in every game and how to play different matchups. But knowing you can dodge Akali's Qs even when she shoots them from the shroud by perfectly estimating her invisible position, and timing your movement relative to her cooldowns, is not easy, and perhaps not something I'll ever manage to do consistently. But the only way to possibly learn it is to practice it. And the easiest way to practice it is to take basically every 1v1 or even 1v2 opportunity that presents itself. 

Same goes for picking Vayne into Teemo (though admittedly, I never not ban Malphite), which I've learnt to deal with by firing my Qs before his, using the cooldown window, and going all in with ult and Ignite which I found more consistent than Cleanse. I've even played games as mid-lane Vayne, with many more to come, to learn how to better deal with mages and assassins, and how to try and secure kills on a shorter lane with worse opportunities for E-stuns. 

And throughout my games, I try and think, compare, and emulate myself to Saskio. Obviously failing to do so, but I'm seeing consistent progress from trying. Then when I go back to watching his games, I also recognize how he handles things I struggle with and would have done differently compared to what I did. The same principle applies to other roles, but within their context. If you are playing a support healer, you might not want to force 1v2s but you probably want to try and make the game-saving play.

Of course, you don't want to ruin other people's games, so what I often do is I'll never surrender a game, unless the game itself is tilting me, and use the already lost game for practice.

I was two levels below the superfed Jax as Akali and sent it. He then wrote "?" in all chat after surviving with around 25% of his health left. Which was a great eye-opener to me, as I thought I'd do way less damage than that. That gave me the assurance to send it on his teammates later, picking up multiple kills, even though it still gave us no chance to win. Then the game after, I used that knowledge to end up winning with 14/3/7 while being countered.

Treating losing games as learning opportunities is also great for your mental. I faced a smurf playing Varus Top, and I'm so grateful for it even as I lost lane and the game. He cleverly started Hexplate, which meant it was basically impossible to beat him even with ult, he oddly timed his abilities so I had to think more about my movement, and he perfectly tracked my ultimate and went all in when I didn't expect it, which I had to write "wp" in all chat for. Two games later I faced a non-smurf Varus, utilized what I had learnt, and went 14/1/4.

Smurfs can be ranked/game-ruining, but by being up close with better players you can learn tons by analyzing how they position, rotate, and what they prioritize. Back when I would consistently play with and against pros in Apex, but especially in Overwatch, I'd learn so much from them, and even improve simply because they would punish any minor mistake I made or habit I had. Another thing, that might be even more useful, is to try and find friends/a duo who are as serious about improving, as each of you will pick up different things, and then you’ll learn from and by teaching each other. Having such friends on Overwatch/Apex was an improvement cheat code, and even more fun.

The 20%, playing to win

So then we come to the 20% part, just playing to win. What you could do is dedicate entire days or weeks or hours where your goal is nothing but climbing, i.e., no limit testing, surrendering instead of letting lost games drag on, always doing what you think is the highest probability play. But I'd recommend against being that rigid.

If I have good teammates, and especially if I'm at the same time losing lane, I'll play super safe, give up kills, and adapt my build for my team so they get their deserved win and me not losing out on free elo. Furthermore, by being flexible, I'm less affected and get less tilted by poor teammates. If you decide a certain day is climbing, then you get awful teammates on that day, it might still be impossible to win even if you tried, while you at the same time might have needlessly been that awful teammate on other days.

Use AI to your advantage

Furthermore, I have utilized a simple but surprisingly effective approach to both improve but especially to win more games and lane, which is especially useful for newer players and those of us who are less knowledgeable.

Before the start of every game, when I face a character I'm less familiar with, I ask ChatGPT/Claude/but usually Gemini, "How to play vs this champion as Vayne on the latest patch, including item/level spikes and cooldown windows?" Then it will provide an answer explaining what the champion does, when it's strong, and how I should counter it. This greatly saved me when facing Gnar for the first time, as Gemini explained how Mini/Mega Gnar works, and that Mega Gnar can one-shot me even if I'm ahead.

Today's SOTA models (Gemini 3.1/Claude 4.6/GPT 5.2) are also so knowledgeable, and great at looking things up, that they can provide fairly accurate and valuable insights on almost anything, like what the different drakes do and their value for different comps, though I never seem to remember it, or even make a minute-by-minute plan for your role and character. If you also record plays you are interested in or even full gameplay, Gemini should be able to analyze it for you, as it could accurately guess my elo with correct explanations from 3 highlights stitched together. There are also many other things you could do that I haven't done but that seem like they would be useful, like use the voice feature to describe game state to get advice on how to proceed or play teamfights. 

And to summarize this entire piece:

TLDR; Set an impossible goal. Prioritize working on things that have a large effect, occur every game, and are easily practicable. Allocate the majority of your playtime to improvement rather than just winning, preferably with improvement-oriented friends. And take advantage of chatbots knowing tons to help you on your journey.