5 Amazing Tips To Improve Your League of Legends Macro
Though a Silver player may occasionally have a match where their hands are operating at a Challenger level, their Macro may never match up. In today’s guide, we will walk you through 5 tips to help you take your Macro to the next level. First, let us outline what Macro is. In League of Legends and MOBAs, Macro is the big picture concept in the match or your map-wide decision-making. This includes how you interact with ability timers, rotations, objective focus, and the overall strategy to secure the win.
Set Up Objectives
Now that we’ve set the baseline for the concept we’re discussing, we will jump into the first tip. Players may rarely think about objectives beforehand, but preparation goes a long way toward objective control. Dragon, Baron, and Rift Herald should not be contested as they spawn unless that was the plan. Instead, plan ahead so that you can adequately take control of the area and provide your team with the highest margin for success. Here are some key things you can do to accomplish that goal.
Between a minute and two minutes before the objective spawns, look at your team before you begin planning the attempt. Is your team stronger than the enemy? Who will need to rotate or show up to the objective to secure it in your team’s favor? Can your allies take wave control if necessary, or will they need more assistance? Lastly, is this objective worth contesting? Once you’ve considered these and are still interested in the objective, you can move forward.
With about one minute, you will want to get your first rotation of vision and begin the process of crashing waves in order to reset. After resetting, begin clearing vision and regaining control of the objective area. Be sure to shove or slow push waves accordingly to help you and your team safely accomplish the task. Once you have secured vision and good wave states, you can take the objective with your team. Remember to consider that the enemy may appear at the objective and plan accordingly with your team. Whether it’s turning or securing the objective, ensure the entire team is on the same page.
If you’re still feeling somewhat lost on what we mean when discussing vision control, we will quickly cover a few key locations to focus on. For both Dragon and Baron, you’ll want to pink ward as close to the middle as possible, as this will disable all the wards in the pit. With your extra pink ward, you can look to ward Pixel Brush or a spot in river to deny additional vision. This will depend on which side of the map the enemy is on.
As you set up the wards, you’ll want to get vision that allows you to see the enemy if and when they move on the objective. This will give you an early warning system, enabling your team to plan accordingly. Finally, when we discuss taking control of the area, this will include sweeping the area. Be sure that if you’re on sweeper duty, you’re clearing out any wards that provide information about the objective to the opposing team.
Master Lane Assignments
When it comes to Macro play, we often see players get lost during the mid-game. Once the laning phase ends, they default to ARAMing the entire time. This can be useful occasionally, but as a whole, it is a pretty awful way to play League. As you and your allies sit mid, you lose a lot of area around the map. You split experience with other team members, with everyone competing for gold. Another concern here is that your team is not generating pressure elsewhere, so the enemy can walk around the rest of the map uncontested. To improve this, you should look at each role’s general purpose and lane assignments they usually look for.
The top laners will depend on what kind of champion you are playing. If you’re playing a pure split pusher, you will constantly want to be on the opposite side of the main objective. This allows you to pressure the other side of the map while your team contests control. When you’re playing someone like Camille or Irelia who can split but prefers team fights, you’ll do the same but make sure you have teleport available. If not, it’s better to shove the wave and rotate or tell your team it’s a guaranteed 4vs4.
For all of the tank players out there, you’ll be looking to shove the wave and rotate to help your allies out if there’s an objective. If there isn’t, you’ll want to play it safe and be prepared to teleport to a fight if necessary so that you can turn the tides with your CC and robust defensive stats.
We do not have as much to offer the junglers. You will want to adjust your clear path to end up on the same side as the main objective. Being on the wrong side will often lead to the enemy rushing the objective since they know you’re not there to contest, so do your best to avoid vision. Remember, as a jungler your main job will be to hover lanes and be there if a smite is needed. Take control of your jungle and lend help to your allies that need it.
Mid laners will want to be on the same side of the objective unless they have teleport available. When you’re taking a teleport mid and your top lane doesn’t have it, it can be more beneficial to side-lane on the opposite side of the map. If a fight breaks out, your top laner will already be there and now you can teleport to turn the fight quickly. Just be sure to remember that some mages like Cassio and Ziggs enjoy being on an objective before it starts so they can properly zone control and poke.
Lastly, the bot laners are the best to throw into the mid lane as a default but are also great at taking turrets in side lanes with their team hovering them. Due to the nature of ADCs, they are the best at taking turrets and will benefit from the gold and experience of a lane.
Supports will often be hovering their ADCs but it’s important to note that once the ADC shoves the lane, the support, jungle, and sometimes the ADC should all walk together to retake vision control. With these lane assignments, you and your team can adequately pressure the map and rotate to necessary plays. It may feel difficult at first but eventually, these rotations and assignments will become second nature.
Play Around Pressure and Learn to Crossmap
Regarding pressuring the map, let’s look at how pressure can significantly change how you play the game. When it comes to the Macro, pressure is incredibly important. Everything in the game creates pressure in one way or another. If your ally is shoving top lane, they generate pressure as they force the enemy to respond. If the same ally becomes especially fed, the enemy team will have to send more than one person.
Most players will see their split pusher get collapsed on and will do nothing with the pressure in exchange. They’ll simply continue to CS waves and wait for something to happen, or worse, they’ll move towards their top laner to try to save a play that has already been lost.
At the highest level of play, map pressure constantly ebbs and flows as both teams mutually exchange things. Think of it like a small business that both sides are aware of. If the enemy sends 2 or 3 people to deal with your split pusher, they concede their vision control on the opposite side of the map. If the enemy decides to commit and try to contest your ally’s control, they understand that they will lose waves and turrets to your split push.
Most players fail to consider these exchanges and rather than them being relatively even trades, they become an absolute heist. The enemy should never be able to 3-man your split pusher, lose nothing, then go on to secure objective control. Any player on the map generates pressure and it’s up to you to play across the map in response.
No matter what role you’re playing, there is always something you can trade on the map. Did the enemy jungler just gank bottom? You can answer by ganking top. If the enemy mid roamed top to break a freeze, your mid can roam bot to dive. There’s even the common tactic of splitting the map so that junglers can assist their priority lanes. No matter what the play may be, it’s essential to consider what’s being given and what’s being taken away. Be sure to play around the pressure and enemy decisions so you can prevent the enemy from getting away with anything for free.
Maintain Composure and Shotcall
Next, we will talk about how you can guide your allies to victory. While these tips are all solid on their own, they become even more powerful when you begin shot calling for your team. It can be an intimidating undertaking at first, but once you become more comfortable with pinging rotations and making plans, you’ll win far more games. While we wouldn’t recommend spamming pings at your allies by any means, it is always beneficial to call for objectives and communicate as much as possible. Riot’s new pings and objective voting makes this easier than ever too.
When it comes to shot calling, you can look to guide your allies into what lanes they need to be in and what objectives you are all playing for. Be sure to call out the plan and let the team know how strong you are so they can play around you if necessary.
That being said, it’s also important to maintain your composure. Being a shot caller for your team can be stressful, and if you make the wrong call your team could quickly blame you for the results. You may even blame yourself, which can be a slippery slope for your attitude in that match. Keep yourself together and make logical plays instead of emotional ones. When you combine strategy with teamwork, any game is winnable.
Train Minimap Awareness
Though this is our final tip, this is still a huge aspect of Macro play. League of Legends is a game that heavily relies on information. Knowing where the enemy is will enable your team to make plays, seeing the wave state lets you know where it’s going, and having vision gives you a big advantage. What is a better way to gather information than looking at your minimap?
When you watch any high-ranked player, you’ll see they look at their minimap anytime they aren’t actively clicking on something important. If they just hit a CS, they glance at their map. If they’re walking to lane, they’re looking at their map, and if they’re Faker and have high brain processing, they’re glancing around the map in the middle of a team fight.
While you don’t need to be glued to your map like the pros are, it’s still something you should get used to doing. Really talented players check their map every 5 seconds at a minimum to constantly get information about what’s happening around the map. We recommend you train your map awareness by having a metronome or sound go off every 15 seconds. Keep doing this until it becomes a habit to look down at your map even for a split second when it goes off. Over time, you can decrease this timer by 2 seconds until you finally teach the 5-second mark.
It can be a difficult journey because it doesn’t provide that instant gratification as other skills in League, and it will take a lot of discipline and patience. Eventually, you will see that the amount of information you gain from this habit will become priceless.
Take your time and focus on the incremental improvements and it will all come together. As you can put more and more of these tips into action, you will see how they all play together to give you a better handle on the Macro as a whole. Once you are confident that you’ve taken all five tips to heart, pass them along to your teammates, and within time, you will become a well-oiled machine.
