League of Legends is a very challenging and sophisticated game in which everyone wants to win. Without the proper mindset and strategies, you are running the risk of playing it for years without making any real progress rankwise.
Many of those who play LoL are stuck in their rank division, usually Gold or even lower, for thousands of hours. To avoid this trap, you must learn how to increase your LoL MMR by training properly, with intent and the right strategy.
What Is Your LoL MMR?
Your MMR in LoL is determined not just by your win rate but also by your contribution to each game. Based on the role you are playing, the matchmaking system determines what your responsibilities are and how well you are performing them relative to other players.
This determines how many points you receive or lose after each victory or defeat. You cannot see directly how your MMR changes after every match, but you can approximate it using a LoL MMR checker.
Riot Games, the company that created League of Legends, understands very well that winning matches is not necessarily your merit. Likewise, losing matches is not necessarily your fault. The system wants to rank you not just as part of a team but also individually.
To do this, it uses MMR but refuses to share the details because many players might regard the system as being unfair in certain circumstances. What you need to know is that your LoL MMR is not identical to your Elo. It increases and decreases not just based on whether you win or lose but also based on your individual performance.
How to Increase Your LoL MMR
Here’s what you must do to drastically improve your chances of increasing your LoL MMR:
1. Briefly Experience The Whole Game
There are many LoL players who want to play Mid and will only play Mid from the first game. But that is generally a mistake. You cannot possibly understand the strengths and weaknesses of each role and champion without playing them at least several times.
If you’re serious about your LoL journey and intend to play the game for years to come, spend at least 2 hours playing each champion. Yes, there are around 170 of them, and that will take you around 4 months even if you play consistently for three hours a day. But I promise you, by the end of that process, you will understand the game much better than most novice players.
2. Specialize
After you’ve seen what the game has to offer and determined that you’d like to play a given role because it suits your natural skills and interests, specialize in that role. Pick 5-10 champions and only play those over and over until you’ve mastered them.
At first, every champion will feel unfamiliar and perhaps even weak. But as you begin to learn the timings, combos, and best item builds, your win rate will increase. When you first start experimenting with a new champion, consider using League of Legends smurf accounts to avoid the pain and frustration of losing Elo.
Experimenting on a secondary account is perfectly legal and will help you to preserve your rank. Upon returning to your main account after 3-5 practice matches on your smurf account, you will usually notice that your performance is much better.
3. Take Notes and Watch Replays
Most players do not train with intent. They just play game after game without really caring about what they did right or wrong. Players who become better over time have a habit of analyzing their replays and paying attention to every single detail.
Very often, you will discover that one bad decision was responsible for your loss, and you will know what to avoid in the future.
Watching replays has the benefit of omniscience. When you can see what you’re doing and what your opponents are doing, you can much better evaluate your moves. In hindsight, some will look smart while others will look foolish.
Each time you notice an important lesson, don’t just rely on memory. Write it down and then, at a later time, review your notes to see what you thought a while ago and how that compares to your current understanding of the game. This is how you make progress, slowly but reliably.