When it comes to league of legends there are many ways to go about playing the same champion and role, however it is very important to remember the basics of your champion. In this article, I will talk mostly about support because that is where we can see some of the most drastic negative impacts of “playstyle” on success.

When it comes to playstyle we need to really understand what the term means, from my experience and using my pseudo-professional opinion I would define playstyle as how you deviate from the standard “accepted” way of playing a champion in a certain role. A great example of playstyle is in how someone plays in their lane, for example a Braum player can choose to play aggressively to apply his passive and scrap or choose to sit back and let their AD carry farm while taking damage using Unbreakable (E) to soak some damage.

On the other hand there are many who use the guise of “playstyle” as an excuse for bad play and will therefore not see much improvement in their gameplay or abilities. I have seen many players (especially supports) who will buy items that don’t help them as well as players who will make just simple mistakes for a champion mechanically and when they are questioned by their team they often cite their “playstyle” as their excuse for itemizing poorly.

The first place to decide your own playstyle is in the runes and masteries, you can even see this on a pro level by comparing the runes and masteries used by pro supports. For example in the above picture we can see the differences in runes between Lustboy and Zero. Even though they are playing different champions you can clearly see a difference in style in their runes, while zero runes a cheeky critical chance mark and a more defensive set in general he also runs a decent amount of mana regeneration glyphs. On the other hand lust boy has a much more aggressive page opting for a mana regeneration quintessence and even some ability power. Even in the masteries we can see a subtle difference, zero opts for the enhanced recall and takes a point out of his movement speed bonus in order to do it.

These are great examples of a playstyle difference between two players who are still playing the game relatively similarly (especially at such a high level). So if you were to take anything from this article just remember that playing poorly or itemizing poorly is not the same thing as having a different playstyle compared to the average player.