This document provides a guide for watching League of Legends esports competitions by explaining the basic elements that appear on screen during broadcasts. It outlines the key parts of the heads-up display including team stats, player stats, buff and objective timers, and event notifications. The guide describes what information each element conveys and which are most important to pay attention to in order to understand what is happening in the game. It aims to help new viewers learn the fundamentals of watching League of Legends matches.

1. League of Legends
World Championships 2016 Primer
Part 4: How to Watch a Game of League of Legends
Prepared by: Luc Ryu

2. This Primer is meant for individuals who are interested in learning about the basics of
League of Legends – both as a game, and as a spectacle.
The 2016 World Championships are just around the corner (October 29, 2016), and
awareness of the game is at an annual high. With that, comes a large influx of individuals
who are interested in watching, but have no idea what the game is, how its basic gameplay
functions, or even how to properly watch the game.
This Primer will be comprised of multiple sections, each designed to explain a unique
component of League of Legends – be it its history and growth, its basic gameplay, or the
head-to-head matchup at the 2016 World Championships.
Altogether, the goal of this Primer is to help beginners learn the basics of League of
Legends, such that they can enjoy the experience of watching the 2016 World
Championships.
The biggest barrier to entry for any video game is the steep learning curve involved in
learning the fundamentals. It is my hope that this Primer will help to break down those
barriers, and help introduce the fascinating world of competitive League of Legends to new
viewers.
About This Primer

3. How to Watch a Game of LoL

4. Having come this far, and having learned this
much, it must be apparent by now just how
much information has to be organized and
processed during a game of LoL.

5. Even as a spectator, it’s important to be able
to separate the important information from
the extraneous. This will help make sure that
the viewing experience is still enjoyable, and
doesn’t become a struggle.

6. This current slide is a direct screen-grab of a
RiotGames production, and shows the Heads-
Up Display (“HUD”) that’s used on the
broadcast.

7. Now that you know the basics to the game,
it’ll be easy to simply walk you through the
layout of the HUD, and explain where certain
information is shown, and when you should
pay attention to it.

8. This is the team score bar.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
These are the most generic statistics, and can
be used to assess how well each team is
generally doing.

9. 1
Quick Hits:
• The icons directly under a team’s
acronym represent the different Drake
buffs that the team has acquired.
• The greyed silhouette to the side of
the acronyms will be coloured in when
the team has an active Baron Nashor
buff.
This is the team score bar.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The neutral buffs acquired by the team;

10. This is the team score bar.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The neutral buffs acquired by the team;
2. The number of towers destroyed by the team;
1 2
Quick Hits:
• Each team has 11 towers in total.
• Comparing the number of towers
destroyed can help assess which
team has more control of the map.
• The less towers a team has
destroyed, the more “on-map” gold
exists (consider this when comparing gold
leads).

11. This is the team score bar.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The neutral buffs acquired by the team;
2. The number of towers destroyed by the team;
3. The overall accumulated gold by the team; and
1 2 3
Quick Hits:
• Differences in gold are more impactful
in the early-game.
• Never look at this number in isolation
(Try to understand why it exists. Differences in gold
can only exist through kills, assists, towers taken,
and creep score. Is the gold lead a function of
individual outperformance, or macro-play
outperformance?).

12. This is the team score bar.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The neutral buffs acquired by the team;
2. The number of towers destroyed by the team;
3. The overall accumulated gold by the team; and
1 2 3
If you ask me, this is the only statistic that
will change frequently, and will require your
attention.
With that in mind, you don’t really have to
pay attention to this part of the HUD all that
often!

13. This is the team score bar.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The neutral buffs acquired by the team;
2. The number of towers destroyed by the team;
3. The overall accumulated gold by the team; and
4. The number of kills secured by the team.
1 2 3 4
Quick Hits:
• This number represents the most
basic indicator of a team’s
performance.
• It should never really be assessed on
its own.

14. This is the individual statistics table.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
This area highlights the key individual
statistics for each player.
Lane match-ups are presented side-by-side,
and move from Top Lane down to Support.
Checking this part of the HUD can help you
assess which lanes are being won by which
team. This may help you think about who the
priority targets on either team might be.

15. This is the individual statistics table.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The items owned by the player;
Quick Hits:
• You can see the portraits of all items
owned by a player here.
• There are over 180 unique items in
LoL, many of which have multiple
passive effects, as well as over 25
items with unique activatable effects.
1

16. This is the individual statistics table.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The items owned by the player;
1
Keep an eye out for the following items,
though! Their activatable effects can really
change the course of a battle!
Shoots the player forward.
Great for quick positioning!
Hextech
Protobelt-01
Removes stuns on a selected
ally target.
Mikael’s
Crucible
Turns the user invulnerable, but
they also can’t do anything!
Zhonya’s
Hourglass
Removes stuns and slowing
affects on self.
Quicksilver
Sash

17. This is the individual statistics table.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The items owned by the player;
2. The player’s kills, deaths, and assists (“KDA”)
Quick Hits:
• To see how active a player as been in
fights, add up their kills and assists,
and compare the number against the
teams total kills above.
• It’s important to not look at KDA in a
vacuum. For example, if a Support
player is getting all of the kills, that
means they’re taking away gold
earned from delivering the killing blow
to an enemy from their ADC.
21

18. This is the individual statistics table.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The items owned by the player;
2. The player’s kills, deaths, and assists (“KDA”);
3. The number of Minions killed by the player
(“creep score”, or “CS”).
Quick Hits:
• Remember that killing a Minion gives
an average of 19 gold.
• During the beginning of a game when
players are less likely to roam out of
their Lanes, you can look to this
number to assess who is winning in
the Lane.
31 2

19. This is the individual statistics table.
Moving left-to-right, it highlights:
1. The items owned by the player;
2. The player’s kills, deaths, and assists (“KDA”);
3. The number of Minions killed by the player
(“creep score”, or “CS”);
Remember that all Champions in LoL are
unique and have their owns strengths and
weaknesses.
Some Champions are relatively ill-suited for
the Laning Phase (the time before
teammates start grouping up), but are
dominant in big team fights!
31 2

20. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
Make it a habit to check these boxes often.
They communicate some of the most
information available on the HUD.
Many of the visualizations here communicate
information involving timings (cooldowns on
Ultimate Skills, and Summoner Spells).
The more-informed viewer will have a general
sense of the cooldown times for certain
Ultimate Skills, and Summoner Spells, and will
therefore likely spend less time making sense
of this information.

21. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
Quick Hits:
• If a Champion’s portrait is greyed-out,
that means that they’re dead.
• The red number beneath indicates
how many seconds are left before the
Champion respawns back by their
Nexus.
• You can quickly glance at these timers
to see for how long a team may have
a number’s advantage.
1

22. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
Remember that LoL is an objective-based
game that only ends when a Nexus is
destroyed. To ensure a game will eventually
end, the duration of respawn timers
increases as the game goes on.
Eventually it’ll take over a minute to
respawn!
1

23. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
2. Ultimate Skill cooldowns;
2
Quick Hits:
• Every Champion has a portrait of their
Ultimate Skill on the top corner.
• The portrait will be greyed-out
whenever it is on cooldown.
• The relative time remaining on an
Ultimate Skills cooldown is indicated
by the clockwise re-colouring of the
portrait
• Note, how EDG PawN’s Ultimate Skill
is about a three-quarters of the
cooldown length away from becoming
usable again.

24. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
2. Ultimate Skill cooldowns;
2
Some Champions are heavily reliant on
their Ultimate Skills. As such, if a team
enters a fight with one of their main
Ultimate Skills on cooldown, they’ll be at a
huge disadvantage!
Professional players have many of these
cooldowns memorized, and will try to force
a fight if they know they have the
advantage in this regard.

25. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
2. Ultimate Skill cooldowns;
3. Summoner Spell cooldowns;
3
Quick Hits:
• Summoner Spells are often used to
enable high-impact outplays.
• An ADC under pressure can Flash to
safety, or Heal to stay alive.
• The cooldown indicator for Summoner
Spells is identical to that of Ultimate
Skills.
• Note, how Ezreal’s Flash and Heal
Summoner Spell cooldowns have just
started their cooldowns. This leaves
him vulnerable for the next little while.

26. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
2. Ultimate Skill cooldowns;
3. Summoner Spell cooldowns;
It should come as no surprise at this point
for me to tell you that professional players
have the cooldowns on Summoner Spells
memorized.
If they ever see one used, they’ll
communicate this to their team so that they
can all start timers in their heads.
3

27. These are the team status boxes.
There are a number of key
visualizations to keep track of:
1. Respawn timers;
2. Ultimate Skill cooldowns;
3. Summoner Spell cooldowns;
4. Health and Mana bars.
4
Quick Hits:
• Players are able to see the Health
and Mana bars above all Champions
whenever they are in vision.
• If a Champion is low on Mana, that
means they will likely have to rely on
basic attacks, thus putting them at a
disadvantage.
• If a Champion is low on Health, that
means they are closer to death, and
must play cautiously, or retreat back
to their base to heal.

28. This is the key events notification
area.
There are three components to
items that pop up here:
Whenever any major event happens
(Champion kills, Epic Camp kills, Turret kills),
they will show up here for a few seconds.
When things on the screen start to get chaotic
and disorganized, use this area to act as a
summary of what’s happening.

29. Quick Hits:
• Remember, that the Champion who
deals the killing blow typically receives
(bonus) gold.
• In case you forget which team the
specific Champion is on, you can look
at the coloured glow around the
portrait to see if they’re on the Blue or
Red team.
1
This is the key events notification
area.
There are three components to
items that pop up here:
1. The Champion who dealt the
killing blow;

30. Quick Hits:
• Key events only revolve around
Champions, Turrets, Inhibitors, and
Epic Camps.
• During chaotic team fights, keep an
eye on this area to see if any priority
Champions have been killed.
2
This is the key events notification
area.
There are three components to
items that pop up here:
1. The Champion who dealt the
killing blow;
2. What was destroyed or killed

31. Quick Hits:
• Any Champion that participates in a
key event will be rewarded with a
small amount of gold and experience.
• However, because the gold is shared,
sometimes it may be wise to funnel
the gold to Champions that need it to
scale.
3
This is the key events notification
area.
There are three components to
items that pop up here:
1. The Champion who dealt the
killing blow;
2. What was destroyed or killed
3. The Champions that assisted

32. This is the Epic Camp timer.
There really isn’t much to say
here. These visualizations help
keep track of when the next Epic
Camp will spawn.
You can expect big team fights to
happen when these are alive.

33. Now you’re all set to watch the best two
teams in the world go head-to-head at the
Grand Finals of the 2016 League of Legends
World Championships!

34. You may not totally understand everything
that’s going on…
…but don’t be discouraged – the more you
watch, the more you’ll learn!

35. And the more you learn, the more you’ll
understand.

36. And the more you understand, the more
you’ll enjoy!

37. https://www.twitch.tv/riotgames
https://gaming.youtube.com/user/RiotGamesInc
Visit one of these two
channels on October
29th, 2016 to watch!
Opening ceremonies
begin at 7:00PM EST,
and coverage of the
games start at 7:30PM
EST.

38. League of Legends
World Championships 2016 Primer
Part 4: How to Watch a Game of League of Legends
Prepared by: Luc Ryu