Learning from Pros- The average player's biggest mistake

"You are clearly low elo player with low skill in jungling. That 3rd game, you wanted to gank top without red or e. For what? You had no slow, no gap closer. Waste of time. Not to mention other mistakes. Sorry, but there is nothing to watch here. Mistakes you show are just rookie mistakes, not some "nunu" mistakes. You are just bad player."-A "Supportive" Masters Player

With noble intentions I spent around 12 hours to produce a youtube video aimed at helping the below average and average players of League of Legends, for I am one as well. The vast majority are, right? Peer to Peer learning, not Pro to Underling scolding. The quoted text was one of the first comments I received. A little disheartening, sure...But this is exactly why I want to make more videos, to gain the criticism of the high elo players and hear the questions of the low elo players. I believe this will create a new type of informative LoL videos. 

Players need to understand that they will gain so much more from prioritizing a peer to peer evaluation and understanding over pro/high elo analysis. We are not high elo players and there is an abundance of prerequisite knowledge that needs to be learned before we can actually benefit from listening to the elite. 

Yes, high elo players are fun to watch. But if you want to learn, the best place to start is with people you are performing the same as, the ones you are competing against and once you start to consistently outperform these kinds of players, you have truly reached a new level. Now you have a whole community of new players as your peers, and the process continues until you reach the highest levels of competitive play. 

At that point you are no longer trying to learn from these master players or challengers, there is simply no need. You understand all. Your new aim is to learn what they are doing, simply to counter them and out play them. To be better than them, not to play like them. This is the proper way to learn, this is the right way to progress, this is the change us low level players need to embrace. Peer to peer learning.

"If you are preparing for an enemy that you will not face tomorrow you will die to the enemy at your front door." -Mike Hatcher 

Yes, I just quoted myself. Not ashamed. As I am sure you are starting to get it, trying to become better by watching pros is the wrong approach. 

Entertaining, not practical. Look at 2015, Sk T1 won the 2015 worlds in Euro, they then came back to Korea for the 2015 LoL KeSPA Cup and lost to a challenger team and ESC Ever won the whole thing.

Now where is the logic behind this? How does a challenger team beat the world champions and the LCK pros? 

The clear logic is that the LCK pros analyzed each other and prepared for each other, they ignored other Elos, due to irrelevance. But these challengers have just watched SK T1 win worlds and ESC Ever prepared ambush SK T1, with the tactics that came from their challenger Elo that the LCK pros were not prepared for. ESC Ever took them all by surprise. 

This proves that if your goal is to beat the people in your current Elo, you do not do this by preparing to face challengers and pros. Sure the tips can be useful, but that is if the other players play like challengers or pros. The right approach is to learn from your peers, prepare for your peers. Not the other way around. Win today's war, prepare for tomorrow's enemy.

Youtube/bmino71
Twitter@Bmyno_ponyo

In conclusion, I see that there are so many videos of pros or very high level players explaining how to do something or how to get better. I am guilty of this mindset as well. But from many years of training debate students I have seen that if you train a new debater with the skills and strategies of high level debaters, they will lose in competitions.

Why? Well when we understand what the pros have been through, there is a critical step that most average players are neglecting. That is, skipping all the fundamental steps and trying to just magically become the pros they constantly watch. From all of this watching, they will only be able to tell you why you are bad and what you are doing wrong, but in practice they are unable to produce what they preach. Could this be the root cause of toxic players?!?! I think so!

My final thoughts are that watching pros and high elo players are practical for entertainment purposes, but impractical for educational purposes during the early stages of learning League of Legends. 

True learning is done through self analysis and peer to peer analysis. Once habits and strategies are conditioned to the point of high consistency, then we should look into the next tier of players and start the process all over again. 

Also I will show you that all of these "Omg this is so broken" "New secret meta?!" champions are not broken or op if you are a beginner. To consistently get super fed and become overpowered in games, comes from strong conditioning of play style, decision making, and so forth. Don't hate the champions, hate the skillful players. I can fix any broken champion with my rookie play style and decision making! I am the nerf and the pros are the buffs...pros make any champion broken.

As a debate coach I am not shy to controversy, please if you disagree with me I would love to engage in rational discourse in the comments!