Map Awareness and How You Can Get Better at It

Many people struggle with having a decent Map Awareness, so here is a tip on how you can improve yours.

Look at the minimap after every creep kill

The goal is for you to look at the minimap frequently subconsciously as a habit, and quickly enough that it does not interfere with your other actions. First step to achieving this is to look at the minimap frequently consciously, and doing it after every creep kill gives you a general guideline till your brain can start doing it subconsciously.

Apparently this is the tip given to Starcraft player and it applies to League of Legends as well.

(I heard it from some stream too, but cannot remember who it was from. If someone knows the source I will edit it in later)

Well, looking at minimap is fine and dandy but you should also process that information. Thus here are three things to look for during lanening phase and what to do in each situation:

• Enemy jungler’s position: If you are a top laner and you see an enemy jungler ganking bot then you know he cannot be top lane for a while, which gives you around a minute of opportunity when you can over extend, or not get counter ganked if your jungler ganks. On the other hand if you see enemy jungler mid and he leaves the mid lane through top bush, then there is a high chance that the enemy jungler is going to gank you and you should play carefully. 
• Your jungler’s position: Your jungler will not always communicate with you what they are doing except for ganks, but other information is important too. If your jungler is counter jungling the enemy’s jungle on your side of the map then you should push your lane (for example if you are on blue side then if your jungler invade enemy red then top and mid should push their lane). This is so that if the need for help arise in the enemy jungle then you are closer to the enemy jungle, and at the same time if you and the enemy leave the lane to help the jungle then the enemy will lose cs to the turret forcing the enemy to chose between cs and helping his jungler.
• Adjacent Lane’s position: If your lane is pushing and enemy on adjacent lane is pushing then you have opportunity to gank that lane to either score some kill or relieve some pressure for your teammates. Conversely if you are pushed up toward enemy turret and your adjacent lane’s enemy champion is missing then there is a high chance that you are getting ganked.

and no I am not gonna be stereotypical ward preacher and bring up ward coverage when talking about map awareness, but you really should buy some.

I will cover mid to late game map awareness in the possible future as I feel that it is a lot more complicated, and i cannot confidently give advice on the topic.

Champion Tips(Riven): Broken Wing combo

You can execute Riven’s Q(Broken Wing), auto, Q, auto, Q, auto combo faster if you give attack command on the ground immediately after Q right beside the enemy instead of right clicking on the enemy.

You might have noticed while playing as or playing against some Riven that some Riven has way faster Q, auto combo. This is called animation canceling and Riven’s Q animation has lots of animation that can be canceled to shorten her combo time dramatically (depends on user but you can chip off more than a second).

To properly execute this combo effectively each keyboard or mouse input has to come immediately after the previous action. Faster you can do it the better.

Q=>attack command on the ground=>Q=>attack command on the ground=>Q=>attack command on the ground.

Default attack command on the ground is press A then left click on the ground.

One down side to this is that since you are giving attack command instead of targeting you will auto your closest enemy instead, which makes it harder  to use on a clumped up enemy.

You need very fast hand to execute this properly. However if you do have a pair of fast hands or is willing to practice for it, this method will dramatically shorten the time it takes to perform Riven’s combo and increase your damage per second dramatically.

I personally do not play Riven (probably one of my worst champions), but luckily this information comes from more valid source, aka former korean pro looking for team :p .

Source: http://nicegame.tv/bbs/view.php?id=ngtv_lol_vod_private&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&no=78

the video is all in Korean however.

PS: I do  not know if the animation can be canceled with attack command on the enemy  and I will update if I can get solid info on this.