How to get better at League of Legends in 2025: 5 tips to play like a pro

It’s true, folks: League of Legends was released in 2009 and is still arguably one of the best PC games available, maintaining a huge global following with a thriving esports scene. Of course, if you’re reading this article, you likely play LoL and have either recently found the world’s most popular MOBA title or reached an impasse. More importantly, you’re keen to improve your understanding of League of Legends gameplay, even if you don’t envisage yourself involved in LoL esports tournaments.

To help you, we’ve absorbed pro player knowledge and tips and considered the best (useful) things to focus on for maximum gains. And we’ll try not to jump into specific tactics and approaches that may work for some players, but not for you. With so much to master in LoL, even watching the best League of Legends teams isn’t necessarily helpful if you’re new to the game. 

While succeeding in climbing the ranks feels simple, because… well, just win more matches, each match has many turning points. So, before you consider mastery of a role in your climb up the ranks, and some of the 170 League of Legends champions and their various skill ceilings, let’s look at how you can get better at League of Legends. 

There’s no magic solution to improving at LoL, because it’s a multi-dimensional, multi-phase game with a lot to pick up. But knowing that is part of your path to improvement. Here are some top tips to consider:

Think of LoL like a PC, where if one part isn’t working, it can undermine your whole system’s performance. The same is true of LoL, but you need to know what’s not working or what you’re not doing. Let’s break down LoL matches into five general areas: 

If there are any areas that you feel you lack knowledge in or don’t engage in during a match, then it’s a prime target for improvement. For example, you may be a great laner, know your champ well, and understand how to utilise and farm minion waves. But if your map awareness is non-existent or patchy, or you’re not helping your team in fights, these are areas for improvement. And they will deliver improvements quicker than continuing to upgrade what you already do well.

The flip side to this, with champions specifically, is that attempting to know how to play all roles and champs will take away from what you are best at. If you prefer to play as a jungler and are good at jungler champs, you’ll do better sticking to that role. Deciding to understand…let’s say, top lane champions, is good for game knowledge. However, learning to play top lane champs from scratch means avoiding your best role, whereas specialising in a settled class (as long as you enjoy it) will be best for your team and the chances of winning. It’s up to you to balance enjoyment (and perhaps variety) with working your way up the ranks. 

Farming is such a big part of the LoL meta that it’s impossible to ignore here. Farming smart is a huge part of your potential for success in LoL, and it’s why you’ll see professional LoL players focus on it to a point where their CS (creep score) is far beyond what most amateurs can achieve.

As the source of team experience and gold, CS is essentially fuel for you and your team, and so last-hitting well is critical if you want to climb the League of Legends ranks. Farming smart doesn’t just mean dominating a lane and beating down on the opposing player, though. It means staying alive while optimising your CS, a more gradual path to pain for the enemy team. 

Smart farming may mean allowing your minion wave to deplete the enemy’s before last-hitting several minions with a spell. Or it could be that you’re under pressure and let the enemy minion wave deplete to your towers before getting the last hit. What you don’t want to do when farming is to die. But you do want to do whatever you can to farm CS and gold, including spotting jungle camps that you can solo for a boost if the opportunity exists. 

There’s plenty here to look at, and Skill Capped Challenger LoL Guides has an excellent video on improving farming skills. Don’t underestimate how important this is, and how much this can make you a better player. 

It’s an obvious but often overlooked fact that the LoL practice tool is right there in the launcher waiting to be used. It first arrived with the V7.3 League of Legends Update and is such a powerful option for getting better at LoL. You can play around in a sandbox with full control over what happens, whether you’re the only champion or with bots, and you can choose the level of difficulty of the bots on your or the enemy’s team.

Beyond this, you can auto-refresh cooldowns, teleport to any place on the map, instantly level up, and just play around with all the elements that come together in a regular LoL match. Yes, there is the Co-op vs AI option if you want a no-risk match against AI with other human players, but the Practice Tool is well worth spending time in if you’re committed to getting better at League of Legends. This video from Strike Gaming gives a helpful introduction to the Tool.

It’s important to address the social element of LoL here. Because, honestly, toxicity or just distracting and unhelpful messages exist in online gaming, and how you deal with those can have a massive influence on your ability to focus on your own game, let alone win a competitive match. 

You won’t see professional LoL players engaging in unnecessary text chat or voice comms when focusing in-game, and with good reason. If you choose to have voice and text chat active, your best bet to improve your performance is to avoid getting dragged into messaging or typing battles, which can happen all too often. It’s wasted energy and will likely reduce the enjoyment of the game. Even if a genuine point is being made, you don’t need to respond.

Better yet, just disable voice and text chat in the settings menu. This tip may feel odd because teamwork and communication can be a big help for playing LoL. However, trying to learn and enjoy anything while constantly hearing or seeing messages, especially if they’re not constructive, is a huge drain on your energy. 

As a game that has spanned decades, League of Legends has changed considerably, in many ways. Naturally, a game that has been around for so long will have had content updates, including new champions being added to the roster, new game elements, and dynamics to deal with – and Twitch streamer Exil has an interesting video on this very subject. 

The most instantly obvious change for LoL to date has been its visuals. If you compare 2009 LoL to today, you will see that the game looks a lot different and better visually. The Summoners Rift (otherwise known as the League of Legends map) got a technical update in May 2012, before being completely redesigned for 2015 and tweaked in 2019. More recently, rumours of an engine update have (so far) come to nothing, yet Summoner’s Rift was rejigged in 2024 with some changes to solve apparent issues.

Before we get to some of the best players, for improving at LoL, it’s important to note that if you play League of Legends competitively, you’re often known by your role (Jungle, ADC, mid, etc). This reflects on our earlier view about specialising and why it’s important. 

That being noted, some of the biggest LoL players right now are: T1’s Faker, widely regarded as the best LoL player in the game’s history; Elyoya, a powerful jungler for Movistar KOI; Bin, one of the best top-laners in the world, and part of BiliBili Gaming; and Chovy of Gen.G.

Getting better at LoL isn’t a quick fix, but analysing what you’re not good at (or what you don’t do), improving your farming skills, practicing and refining your preferred role/champ pool, and ignoring useless distractions will all help you to find the improvements you need as a new or more experienced player. Tips and tricks don’t work for everyone, so we believe this approach is a winner.