How To Win More League of Legends Games Season 9

At TryHarder, our goal is to help you win games and reach your season goals. With the end of season 9 approaching we did some analysis across the metrics we capture and found some interesting correlations to winning matches. The TryHarder team tested over 200 models, each attempting to predict a win or loss using a single metric. Our Prediction Accuracy Of Metrics graphic illustrates the accuracy of each metric/model. Higher accuracy means that metric is more important to winning. Our metrics are broken into periods of the game. We sort and color the metrics by their period (events that span the entire game are labeled “game”). The impact of individual actions increases as you get further into a game, which is why the models get progressively more accurate. Every period has metrics that rise above the others, and we will discuss those in more detail.

Early Game: 0 to 10 Minutes

In the first 10 minutes of the game the biggest indicators of success are Bad Deaths, Team Experience per Minute and Gold Difference Per Minute. These are obvious performance indicators that pay dividends across the entire game as getting an early advantage snowballs you to victory. When executed well , these are the ones that are most predictive of a game win. The simple concept here is to out-scale your opponent’s wherever possible. Each lane that wins greatly improves your odds of winning a game.

Taking an early dragon in this period is huge, but we will come back to that later.

Bad Deaths Player deaths that resulted in an unfavorable gold or objective swing for your team. Bad Deaths are some of the strongest indicators to knowing whether your team is going to win or lose a game. Too many of these and surrendering at 15:00 may be the better option. (Read more about why you should surrender more often.) There is no point in the entire game at which this metric is not highly predictive of your odds at winning. Don’t pick bad fights, and even worse if you do, don’t lose them.



Team Experience Per Minute

How much experience your team gains each minute.

This is fairly self-explanatory. Early in the game leveling up faster than your opponent will give you an edge that carries through the rest of the game.

Gold Difference Per Minute

How much more gold you earn than your lane opponent each minute.

Earning more gold than your lane opponent allows you to buy that first big item, have advantage in your lane, keep priority, and secure objectives.

Mid Game: 10 to 20 Minutes

In the second period, Bad Deaths are still a huge signal to your team’s ability to succeed. Take solace in knowing that throughout the entire game having a few bad deaths in the mid game will make the least impact. Everyone has to start making trades at this point in the game. Respawn times are still low enough that you are not out of the game for long. Falling too far behind because of a single death should not be common.

During this time your team’s ability to farm is more important than each lane getting ahead of their individual lane opponent. Gold as a resource is still king, but it’s now no longer about just you. Work together as a team.

The most impact in the mid game can be made from Outer Tower Control Percentage and Dragons Control Percentage. Prioritize these two objectives.

Outer Towers Control Percentage

The number of towers taken by your team out of all towers taken in the game.

It is paramount in the mid game to take more outer towers than you lose. You should take every outer tower by 20 minutes but if that is not possible just take more than the other team.

Dragons Control Percentage

The ratio of how many dragons your team has taken to all dragons that have been taken.

Remember that note about taking an early dragon? Dragons are more valuable than Rift Herald. Even though you can now take rift herald at 10 minutes it should come secondary to securing another dragon. The only time that Rift Herald may be the better choice is if giving up a currently contested Mountain Dragon that doesn’t help your teams composition.



Late Game: 20 to 30 Minutes

As your team enters the late game, taking inhibitors should be the primary objective. Securing one of these at 20 minutes is a sure indicator that you are going to win. Bad Deaths still remain a strong predictor of success, so don’t grasp defeat from the jaws of victory by starting bad fights. Death timers are increasing, and the more time you spend on the fountain, the less time you spend controlling the late game objectives. Your late game Inhibitor Towers Control Percentage and Inner Towers Control Percentage are the two most important objectives your team should be focusing on.

Inhibitor Towers Control Percentage

The fraction of inhibitor towers your team taken out of all inhibitor towers taken.

Prioritize taking inhibitor towers quickly, without losing one of your own, during this time frame and the odds will be in your favor. By the beginning of the end game you should be set up to take inhibitors, and you may be defending a few of your own.

Inner Towers Control Percentage

The fraction of inner towers your team has taken out of all inner towers taken.

It is more important to take one inhibitor that is open than grab another tower and have two open inhibitors. You can leverage the pressure of super minions to come back and take another tower.



End Game: 30 Minutes to THE END OF TIME… or until someone wins

When games stretch to greater than thirty minutes the most important thing to focus on is protecting your team’s inhibitor towers and taking down any of the opponent’s inhibitor towers you haven’t succeeded in destroying yet. There is nothing new to focus on at this point in the game, but it is still worth calling out how important it is to avoid Bad Deaths.



Full Game

When looking at the entire game, there are a couple of obvious factors that will tell you that you’re about to win. If you take the first inhibitor of the game, you’re probably going to win because that’s an event which can directly lead to winning. However, there are a couple of interesting metrics that pop out as predictive: Team K/D/A, Team Total Damage Ratio, and the Time To Destroy All Outer Towers (and whether or not you did at all).

Team K/D/A Your entire team’s K/D/A ratio. Your team’s K/D/A is the largest predictive metric for a team to win a game. Nothing beats this, not even Bad Deaths. We can accurately guess who won a game based on this metric 90% of the time. Hitting 2.5 here is roughly a 50% win rate. A 3.0 comes in at 70-80%, and 3.5 is 95% chance to win. Solo plays are cool, but team plays win games.



Team Total Damage Ratio

How much damage your team deals compare to the damage your team takes.

This one is similar to Team K/D/A. Winning team fights lets you focus on the game objectives. It’s no surprise that staying alive and making the opponents health bar’s hit zero is important. Other factors come into play that lower your team’s total damage impact though, like playing a champion that can take a lot of damage before dying.

Time to Destroy All Outer Towers

How long it takes for your team to destroy all outer towers.

It should be no surprise that this comes in as another incredibly strong prediction method. Taking all of the outer towers gives you an incredible amount of map control. This freedom is important for taking dragons, rift herald, and baron, but it also makes farming that much harder for your opposition. The quicker you can get this advantage, the better. Didn’t finish destroying all of their towers? You are probably not going to win (to the tune of 90% of the games!).



Final Conclusions

To summarize:

This is a team game. Help your teammates. A target K/D/A of 2.5 is for the entire team, not just yourself!

Only fight when you have the advantage. Even if you are going to lose a tower to stay alive, that is probably a better outcome. If the other team picks a bad fight, press the advantage!

Take dragons.

We built over 200 predictive models based on game data from season 9 to understand what is important to winning games. We discussed the most important ones and at what point in the game they are important. Our hope is that you can use this information to improve your game and hit those end of season goals! If you need an extra boost, sign up for TryHarder and receive coaching based off the full 1,400 metrics we calculate for your games!