How to Master Map Awareness in League of Legends
How to Master Map Awareness in League of Legends
By Mobalytics
Succeeding in League of Legends involves balancing what’s happening immediately in front of you with the big picture of what’s happening around the map.
At lower skill levels, most players will be so focused on last-hitting minions and fighting their lane opponents that they will often die to avoidable ganks or fail to rotate to help contest objectives on time.
As players improve and climb, they begin to use what is happening on the minimap to better inform their actions, such as pushing their lane ahead of time in anticipation of contesting the drake that’s about to spawn
It’s no coincidence that the average pro player will look at the minimap twice as often as the average player.
In this guide, we’ll teach you how to absorb what’s happening on the map like a pro by improving your skills and using an eye tracker.
Master map awareness with the new Alienware m17 gaming laptop which includes built-in Tobii eye tracking technology.
What is map awareness? Why is it important?
Map awareness refers to your ability to quickly look at your minimap to extract information that you use to achieve your goals.
This skill is particularly important because of the fog of war that keeps most of Summoner’s Rift in concealed darkness, making information a valuable resource.
To put things into perspective, imagine that the fog of war wasn’t activated for you and you could see the locations of all your enemies at all times - how would you play differently?
You would probably die much less, arrive at more fights on time, and make faster rotations to help your teammates before they were ambushed.
By improving your map awareness, you’ll have a significant advantage over your opponents who don’t pay as much attention by being able to make better decisions since you’ll be able to perceive more information.
What you should be aware of
The fundamentals of map awareness begin with understanding what you should be keeping track of.
These factors can vary based on the champions and team comps in your match, but usually include:
- The location of your allies and visible enemies
- The ratio of ward control vs fog of war
- The push and pull of the three lanes
- The state of neutral objective spawns
- Teleports and enemy abilities (such as Ezreal, Jinx, and Ashe ultimates)
It’s a lot of information to keep track of so it’s important to understand how to prioritize the importance of each one. Luckily, many of them feed into each other.
As a general example, let’s say that you’re a Top laner and you’ve done a great job pressuring your opponent and pushing your wave into their tower to take plates.
Out of your enemies, you can only see their ADC/Support duo, the rest are missing.
The only place that your team has vision control of is by the drake pit.
Lastly, you notice that your Mid laner has been pushed hard and is farming a big wave under their tower.
In this instance, you should probably back off until you see the enemy Jungler and Mid laner reappear in some capacity.
It’s possible that they may have both backed to base or may be at Rift Herald, but there’s also a good chance that they may be looking for a 3v1 gank against you.
You have a big lead, but not enough to 1v3 so you decide to protect your lead and back off.
This thought process happens within a second or two, even less for high level players!
The more aware you are, the faster and better you’ll be able to act accordingly.
How to improve your map awareness
To improve your map awareness, you need to start by proactively thinking about looking at the minimap.
If you’re a beginner or generally find yourself forgetting to look at the map during a match, you can try out an unconventional method of training yourself with audio clues.
Basically, just leave this Youtube video on in the background while you play. It will give you reminders to look at your map every several seconds.
Use this as something to lean upon until you develop the muscle memory to check it on your own.
Once you have the act of looking at the map down, the next step is to keep track of the factors that we mentioned earlier, such as the state of the minion waves and the locations of your allies and enemies.
Once you take into account those factors, the next thing you’ll want to do is understand your options and calculate how much time you have to act.
For example, let’s return to the Top laner example we gave earlier, but this time, you have more vision control and saw that the enemy Mid laner was in their lane and the enemy Jungler returned to base.
This time, you see that the enemy Mid is leaving their lane and heading towards the top side river, potentially towards you - how much time do you have before they arrive?
In the infographic below, you can see that if the enemy Mid laner had basic boots and ran straight to you, they would take around 20 seconds to get there.
If the enemy Jungler also decided to come to you from their base, it would take them about 27 seconds.
By using this information in combination with what you saw on the map, you can play more efficiently by taking more plates or even killing the enemy Top laner before help arrives.
The more you play the game, the more you’ll develop this sense by second nature, but it’s helpful to have these reference points in mind.
So to recap, the keys to map awareness are as follows:
- Check the minimap regularly.
- Consider relevant factors when you check the map.
- Use your gathered information in combination with the amount of time you have to act.
How using an eye tracker improves your map awareness
If you want to rise above the average player and really accelerate the growth of your map awareness skills, we strongly recommend using a Tobii eye tracker in combination with Mobalytics.
By using eye tracking technology alongside analytical insights, you’ll be able to objectively measure your progress as a player over time with unique metrics that you wouldn’t be able to perceive under other circumstances.
Here’s a sneak peek of what’s included:
These scores are based on how the Tobii eye tracker and Mobalytics analyze your gaze and in-game performance.
Map Awareness is broken down into four crucial metrics: Early Minimap Consistency, Minimap Fixation Time, Check Frequency, and Longest Time without Looking.
The laning phase is especially important since you need to avoid ganks and roams - Early Minimap Consistency helps you understand your awareness during the first 15 minutes of the game.
Minimap Fixation Time reveals how long you look at the minimap when you do check it while Check Frequency highlights how many seconds are in between each time you check.
Lastly, Longest Time without Looking represents the longest gap that you had without checking the minimap at all.
If you’re a stat-head, you can draw your own conclusions regarding these metrics. If you aren’t, don’t worry! The Mobalytics platform will give you advice and insights based on the eye tracking scores you receive.
Overall, the Tobii eye tracker and its integration with Mobalytics makes your journey to improving your map awareness more efficient and more fun!
How to get an eye tracker
Ready to master your map awareness and other League of Legends skills by using an eye tracker? You have a few options.
If you’re looking for a new laptop, we recommend getting the new Alienware m17 gaming laptop that comes with a built-in Tobii eye tracker.
Already have a gaming PC? You can get your eye tracker peripheral from Tobii Gaming.
Lastly, if you already have an eye tracker and just need to get set up, check out this guide by Mobalytics.
Thanks for reading, we hope that you found this guide helpful. Be sure to check out our previous article on tunnel vision and keep a lookout for our next one on information processing!
