Ignorance is Strength. Being confident in our abilities is a key part of us and very important in a competitive environment. If we were to doubt our potential and our knowledge about the game, we had better not compete in the first place. The problem is: while this confidence allows us to compete without fear of whatever enemy we may face and whatever goal we might want to accomplish, it might also make us blind towards our ignorance about certain aspects of the game. League of Legends is a game so incredibly complicated and with such depth that it is highly unlikely that one player could ever be able to know everything about it.

"Ignorance is strength"

This kind of arrogance isn’t rare at all and it isn’t necessarily bound to low elo players. Even many pro players have this very same problem. Everyone who read Link’s “Donezo Manifesto” most certainly got an impression of this arrogance towards getting taught by a coach or analyst. Western League of Legends players are infamous of thinking very lowly of supporting staff. Many of them have the impression that anyone who isn’t a pro himself couldn’t ever know more than them about the game. The same goes for us as well, whether we are Silver, Gold or Challenger. The truth is: it’s not “just a Sivir comp”, it’s about ideas and time intensive analysis of the game and how certain strategies and aspects of it work. Investing plenty of work time into analyzing an aspect of the game will most certainly lead to a better understanding of this very thing than even a pro player could have.

"I'm Challenger, I Know Everything"

Knowledge of the game doesn’t equal being extremely good at it. Certainly, if you knew a ton about split pushing, wave control and other strategies you could probably use this to your advantage and get to Platinum or Diamond but it takes more than that, especially when trying to hit an even higher level. Mechanical abilities, being able to communicate your ideas to your team and especially to convince them of your strategy are also important factors. This leads me to two conclusions: One, a mechanical player who has a certain grasp of how to play the map can get to challenger and maybe even to the LCS without understanding macro play and strategy. Two, an Analyst may be unable to reach challenger due to his lack of mechanical practice but can still possess huge knowledge about the game.

Biggest Lie: "I know This Already"

Why can this attitude be hurtful to pro players and to your rank? This type of arrogance leads to two different impressions: One, the impression of knowing enough about the game already. Two, whenever somebody explains a well-thought concept to us that when applied could certainly strengthen our grasp on the game, we get the impression of either having known it already or being able to easily having figured that out ourselves if we had wanted to. Fact is, if everyone already knew about the explained subject, then why is it that all these concepts are not already applied in every single League of Legends match? Again, I can think of two reasons. First, most players have in fact already heard about the subject before but the only thing they really remember about it is having heard about it before. Second, due to the logical structure of the subject and its actually uncomplicated nature, after having had the idea first, which is the more difficult part, most players have the impression that having this thought is easy and they could have done that themselves with ease. All of this finally leads towards the players being unable to work actively on these concepts either because they think they are unnecessary or because they think they know all about it already.

Ignorance is Strength. Being ignorant comforts us; makes us happy. But when it comes to enhancing life quality, solving issues or just to improving in League of Legends, ignorance is weakness. Being ignorant about our own ignorance of the game leads us to belittling the work of content creators, analysts and coaches. Don’t be a fool. If you really want to improve your knowledge about the game you need to stop being arrogant and start to read guides like this one open-minded and with the intention of learning something new that you haven't thought of and/or didn’t apply yet.

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