Most of us players that play League of Legends tend to be into other kinds of games too. Whether it’s shooters, rpgs, or maybe even card games, a lot of these games have transferable skills that can be carried over and help you improve in League of Legends. This is a very large and complex game that requires a bunch of different skills, and because of that it’s hard to practice every little thing in detail. It’s not very fun or efficient to practice your skills in custom games, but with some of these games you can have fun while honing some skills in your favorite MOBA.

RTS Games

RTS is the genre that gave birth to MOBA back when the mod DOTA was released for Warcraft 3. Due to this it should be no surprise that there are tons of skills that are transferable between any game in the genre. The most notable and most popular of the bunch would be Starcraft 2. SC2 will condition your multitasking and map awareness skills to a point that most League players will never reach. A Starcraft player will have absolutely no problem picking up the most mechanically difficult League champions with absolute ease and performing their combos flawlessly. This is because in Starcraft you not only have to manage the abilities of one unit but a bunch simultaneously. Some races like Terren, use kiting as a primary method of fighting the other races, but even this is more difficult because the player may be forced to split units and control many groups at once. If you put time into Starcraft 2, I guarantee you will become a mechanically advanced player.

Image courtesy of error-xl.deviantart

osu!

This should also come as little surprise because osu! is the game of choice of many big streamers and pros to play when they are in queue. Osu! is a rhythm game that involves you clicking circles that pop up on your screen. Simple enough, but once you get into osu! you should start to see increases in your mouse accuracy and in reflexes. This will obviously help you when you play roles like ADC where you need to consistently accurately click on opponents to aa the right target and you should also find it a bit easier to react to skillshots.

There seems to be a major parallel between League skill and osu! skill and it’s no coincidence, this game really does condition your hands to become machines and give you the slight edge in reactions to outplay and outperform your enemies. As a disclaimer, if you are not into anime culture or can’t stand it, don’t get this game because it is heavily influenced by anime in the song selection and art.

Fighting Games

This may seem weird to some players because fighting games are not traditionally played with Keyboard, they are usually played with some sort of controller. After playing a few I realized that fighting games teach you to outthink your opponents. One of the biggest components in fighting games is prediction, guessing what your opponent will do next based on patterns you pick up. Fighting game players are masters of mind games, coincidentally any big fighting game player is most likely going to have a leg up on their opponents in the 1v1 in the early lane phase.

This is a skill that can completely change certain lane matchups when you learn how to properly bait out and punish opponents spells. After playing Street Fighter I started thinking about matchups differently and worked on winning lanes I thought unwinnable through mind games and prediction. Osu! teaches you how to react, but fighting games teach you how to use your head and properly think about the game.

Image courtesy of de-monvarela.deviantart.com

MMOs

Playing an MMO at a basic level doesn’t relate to playing League of Legends very well, but once you get to a more hardcore level, there is a lot that is similar. Large raids teach you the basics of team fighting in League of Legends since the style is similar with tanks trying to take the aggro of threats while back liners try to stay safe and put out as much dps as possible throughout the fight. A hardcore MMO player should have no difficulty transitioning into the teamfight phase in a game of League and should have a pretty good grip on the role of each member of the team.

An MMO player will most likely also be a good team player, through their experience with teamplay in raids and pvp they will most likely be used to working together and most likely more tolerable of allies than people that come from the traditional twitch shooter background that requires little teamplay. As we all know by now, the proper way to play League is not always the most exciting, sometimes you need to just farm in out and play as lame as possible. A player that plays MMOs should be used to grinding out levels and killing mobs so I would consider them overall patient players, and in mind patience is one of the most important skills you need to be successful in League of Legends.

Conclusion

With most of us gamers having some sort of interest in other games, why not play something that has mutual benefits with League? While I’m not making the claim that any one of these games will change you overnight and make you a god in League, playing some of them, especially in the RTS genre, can give you improvements on your game in League of Legends. If you don’t particularly enjoy playing any of these games then don’t bother, but if you do end of liking them then you have another game you can enjoy and play, and manage to get a little bit better at League in the process.

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