Looking for help climbing the ladder in League of Legends? Here’s your answer

This story is sponsored by LoLwiz. Climbing the ranked ladder in League of Legends is one of the hardest tasks in all of gaming. League has 135 playable champions, each with four unique abilities, and many work for multiple roles. That’s a lot of learning, even disregarding the hundreds of items, runes, and masteries you have to choose from. It can be overwhelming for anyone. Couple that with incompetent or emotionally-charged teammates and high elo players using new accounts just to mess with beginners, and learning League of Legends can be extremely intimidating. It’s not great for veterans, either. Unless you play with friends, your teammates will always be wildcards and there’s a chance they won’t help you in game, much less take your play to the next level. If you want to learn how to play, LoLwiz can help. LoLwiz is an “in-game scouter” for League of Legends. Normally when you sit in the loading screen watching everyone’s percentages slowly move up to 100, all you can do is see everyone’s summoner spells and keystone masteries. That’s not helpful for judging your opponents. With LoLwiz, the loading screen turns into a scouting ground. Stats are shown for all 10 players, including you. If the person you’re scouting is ranked, you can know their KDA, how often they play their current champion and role, and how often they win those games. Regardless of ranking, you can see everyone’s runes and masteries, and the type of damage their champion deals (physical, magic, or true). Knowing the type of damage can help you determine what you want to build defensively, whether it be armor for physical damage or magic resist for magic damage. Let’s run two scenarios. Scenario One: You’re loading in as the jungler and LoLwiz shows that your ADC might be playing off-role and has a low win rate at his current position. Adapt your route to help your teammate, spending a little more time near the duo lane. The ADC may tell you that he needs help, but I’ve found that people playing League of Legends are a little too wrapped up in their pride to admit they need anything. Scenario Two: You’re in the mid lane and LoLwiz shows that the enemy mid laner has a moderate win rate, but definitely brought the wrong runes and masteries. You can be a lane bully, taking advantage of their mistakes. Let your jungler know that the enemy mid laner will be vulnerable early, get some team gold, and then spread that lead across the map. The app’s creator knows how valuable that kind of information is, because he’s a League player himself. But Florence Espinoza didn’t have a ton of time to prepare for his League matches in 2014.  “With increasingly limited time to play League, I turned to stats websites to help me get an edge on who I was playing against. I wanted to quickly size up my often random teammates, as well as my opponent’s strengths and weaknesses,” Espinoza told Dot Esports. “As I began to rely on these sites I realized the entire stats-scouting user experience could be made to exist in-game as an overlay solution using the Overwolf platform.” Overwolf is software that delivers apps directly into games, displaying information that’s usually hosted on websites. That means users don’t have to alt-tab between their browser and the game. Espinoza thought a combination of his League stats concept and the Overwolf platform could be the perfect way to realize his vision. He began to put a team together to help create a proof of concept for the app. LoLwiz also teaches you about the game, giving you tips for your lane matchup in every game. Never played against an Udyr? LoLwiz has 15 tips telling you how to beat him, including “Pay attention to how he builds. If he decides to build damage, you can focus him and kill him easily.” And if you need a pick-me-up during a bad run, you’ll also get funny tips like “You do not counter Udyr, Udyr counters you. All your bases belong to him.” Pulling data from games played this season, LoLwiz will also tell you the full item build for your champion that has the highest win rate. If you’re not sure what to build, or what order you should level up your skills, following the highest win rate is never a bad idea. “If you want to gain a competitive advantage, get LoLwiz,” Espinoza said.  “Having instant visibility to strengths and weaknesses of your teammates and your opponents can play a vital role in formulating your match strategy. “ Lolwiz started out small, with a limited budget. It’s since grown substantially—and quickly. Part of that is thanks to the company’s good relationship with Riot—Espinoza says Lolwiz set an early priority to establish a line of communication with the League developer and to make sure the software aligned with all of its terms of service.   “As a company we continue to work closely with Riot,” Espinoza said, “engaging regularly in open communication and keeping them informed of new features and functionality we are building into future versions of the app.” And there’s a lot of new functionality coming. This includes Facebook and Twitter sharing and socialization tools, a Champion Select “assistant” to help you balance against (or counter) the opposing team, and a completely redesigned stats UI based on user feedback and requests. The company is also considering ad-free, premium content via a small paid membership fee—”keeping in mind,” Espinoza emphasizes, “that this is totally optional, and that we envision LoLwiz will always be available as an ad-supported, 100 percent free app.” There’s one thing that’s key to remember about LoLwiz, however. Yes, the software is immensely helpful. It provides a ton of knowledge that can really help your game. But, as Espinoza notes, “it’s up to you to best use that knowledge to your advantage.”