User blog comment:Steelside/Do You Believe in Skill Caps?/@comment-5201408-20120617080747

Ok, I've read a lot of the comments here and I think we must agree on one thing: there is no such thing as a skill cap( side from the biological/hardware limitation that are out of our hands).

I am going to give a personal example how I improved and how I keep improving.

It is long to read, but some new players may find useful tips.

One year ago (14 months to be precise) I switched from DotA to League of Legends. My DotA background was 5 years, so you would imagine I had most of the mechanical skils. At first things like masterie baffled me, but soon I guess I... "masterted" them (YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!). More to the point- when I began to level-up my summoner I realized LoL was unique due to the chance to make one character different every time. At level 20 I discovered runes... so the adventure began. At first, like all newbies, I didn't know the current meta, I didn't know all the champions, what they do, how to respond to them and so on and so forth.

BUT!

I knew that in order to improve I had to practice more. And I'm not talking only about the mechanical skills- most of them I had already and bealive me, lasthitting six out of six minions in a wave was not a problem( there is a thing in DotA called "denying", where you lasthit your own minions when they are below a certain % of their max health so that you opponent does not get the exp/gold from them and once you master THAT, you find yourself in a game that doesn't have denying and you have alot of free time between your lasthits).

So what is there besides mechanical skills? Tactics! Meta, positioning, knowing the enemy champions, strategies, counter strategies, jungle timings for all the junglers(fuck you Fiddlesticks, nobody likes you), dragon respawn time, baron respawn time... all of that. With more and more games this information revelaed to me.

And then I realized- now what? Well, now it was time to... step out of my League(YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!). Watching pros play, listening to the comentators(which are sometimes really inadequate)... and finally: playing ranked games.

So time came for a new skill to develop- banning and picking. Appropriate, dedicated bans. Picks and their counterpicks. With more and more games that came mroe easily to me. But soon I mastered that as well with a lot of practice.

Time came for something else- watching your own replays. It is a sound strategy for improval. Watch a game of yours. Observe yourself and say- why didn't i do that? Why did I do THAT?! So next game you pick the same champion. And you dont't do these mistakes again. You will make new mistakes, ofcourse. So watch again, clear them again. For 3 months the amount of mistakes I was making ran down to a satisfactory level for 1700 elo.

And finally there is the most important skill that has a cap due to the limits of the very own game- countering gameplay. Easiest example: You see 5 AD champs(normal game, ofc xD). THIRNMAIL! "but I am Xerath, I shouldn't do a thornmail". THORNMAIL! That ability to counter items and champions, summoner spells, abilities, that instant decisionmaking in those skirmishes that occure in a flash... all of that makes the good player really good. And wards :P