How to VOD Review in League of Legends Like a Coach

To VOD review League of Legends like a coach, watch one replay in two passes. The first is a fast pass that marks every death, recall and objective. The second is a slow pass that checks the minimap every 5 seconds before each of those moments. Then turn your most repeated mistake into one written rule and play your next games with only that rule in mind. That loop moves your rank, not hours of footage.

VOD review is the fastest way to climb because it fixes the mistakes you repeat, and repeated mistakes are what hold a rank in place. During a game you see outcomes: you died, you lost Dragon, the enemy top laner got ahead. The replay shows the decisions that caused them, which usually happened a full wave earlier than the moment you remember.

Memory is a poor coach. You remember the skillshot you missed and the teammate who flamed. You forget the unwarded river you walked through and the wave you left bouncing toward your own turret. Playing more games without review tends to reinforce those habits, because nothing in a normal game tells you the real cause of a loss.

The leaks change with rank, so your review should change too. From Iron to Gold, most games are lost to deaths with no information: walking into fog, fighting without Flash, chasing a low-health target past the river. From Platinum to Emerald, the leaks shift to tempo, such as recalling at the wrong time or arriving late to objectives. In Diamond and above, review is mostly about small edges in wave states, vision timing and how you play around the enemy jungler.

That is why a coach rarely starts with mechanics. Mechanics improve with volume; decisions improve with review. Pair this workflow with our guide on how to climb to see where review fits into a full ranked routine.

Good review starts before you press play. You need the right file, the right game and a place to write things down. A little setup keeps you from wasting a session on footage that cannot teach you anything.

The League client saves replays of your recent matches in your match history. The replay viewer gives you a free camera, a timeline and speed controls, which covers almost everything both passes need. If you want to check your own camera habits, such as how often you look away from your lane, record your screen as well. The replay does not show exactly where your camera was during the game.

If you stream or record while you play, keep your voice in the footage. Hearing what you were thinking when you made a call is the quickest way to find the gap between what you knew and what you did.

Pick close losses on your main champion, ideally from the same day. A close game is full of decisions that mattered. A stomp in either direction is usually decided by one early event and teaches little after it. Sticking to one champion keeps the comparisons fair, because your options, cooldowns and power spikes stay constant from game to game.

Review a win now and then too. Wins hide mistakes the enemy failed to punish, and a stronger opponent would punish them. Skip games with a disconnect or an AFK teammate, because the map state stops reflecting normal decisions.

Keep one note per game with four columns: game time, what happened, what you knew at that moment, and what you should have done. Add a short tag for the cause, such as info, wave, cooldown or greed. After a handful of games, the tags show your pattern far more clearly than any single replay can.

The first pass is fast. Skip through the replay and mark only the moments that changed the score: your deaths, your recalls and every major objective. Do not analyze yet; log each moment with its game time and move on. The diagram below shows how this fast pass feeds the slow one that follows.

For every death, rewind well before the fight and ask one question: what did I know before I committed? Most solo queue deaths are decided before the first spell is cast. A K’Sante who pushes his wave past the middle of top lane with no ward and the enemy jungler unseen has already made the mistake. The gank only collects on it.

Tag each death with its main cause. Info means you lacked or ignored map information. Wave means you fought on a wave state that favored the enemy, which our wave management guide covers in depth. Cooldown means Flash or a key ability was down. Greed means you stayed for one more minion or one more trade. A death can carry two tags, but always pick the main one.

Recalls are where tempo is won or lost, and they are almost invisible while you play. For each back, check three things: was your wave crashed or pushing toward the enemy, did you have enough gold for a meaningful purchase, and what did you miss while you were gone? A mid laner who recalls with the wave walking toward their own turret loses minions and plating, then arrives late to the next river fight.

Also look for the recalls you did not take. Staying in lane on low health with nothing to buy often costs more than a clean back, because it leaves you unable to contest the next objective.

For each Dragon, Voidgrubs, Rift Herald, Atakhan or Baron Nashor, jump back to well before the spawn and note where you were. Check whether your lane had priority and whether your team warded the area before the timer or after the enemy already held it. Objectives are rarely lost in the fight itself; they are lost by the team that arrives second, with waves unpushed and vision unset.

By the end of the first pass you should have a short list of timestamps and tags. That list is the map for everything that follows.

The second pass is slow. Replay the stretch before each marked moment and pause on the minimap every 5 seconds. You are rebuilding what you could have known at the time, not what the free camera shows you now. The goal is to find the earliest point where the map told you a fight, gank or objective was coming.

Take a Brand in mid lane as an example. If the minimap shows the enemy jungler clearing camps on the bottom side, Brand can push his wave and look for a trade, because the nearest threat is far away. If that jungler has been missing since their last clear, the same push becomes a gamble. The replay shows you which of those two situations you were actually in.

On each pause, say out loud what you would do with the information on screen, then play the clip and compare. Coaches run sessions this way because calling the decision first tests your judgment instead of your hindsight. When your call and your in-game action differ, write it down. That gap is the habit you are trying to change.

The scan you practice in review is the same one you want in live games. Our minimap awareness guide builds the habit in detail; the checklist below is the short version to run during play.

A high-elo VOD of your champion shows you the decisions you are missing, as long as you study it with a question instead of watching it like a stream. Pick a game on your champion, ideally in a matchup you face often. Before pressing play, decide what you will track: recalls, jungle tracking, wave states before objectives, or trade patterns.

On MID.GG, the streamers and pro players hub collects high-elo VODs, and each VOD page lists the player, champion, opponent, rank and date, so you can find the matchup you care about quickly. The games below are examples from the library, from Deft’s Caitlyn against Jhin to Burdol’s K’Sante against Jayce. If you are still settling on a main, start from the champions pages.

Use the same narrate-then-compare method you used on your own replay. Pause before each recall, each objective and each lane swap, predict what the player will do, then watch. Every wrong prediction earns a note, because it marks a decision a stronger player makes differently from you.

You will not replicate a Challenger player’s mechanics by watching, and you do not need to. Copy the decisions that do not depend on your hands: when they back, where they ward, and how they set up a wave before leaving lane. Those habits transfer to any rank.

The most useful session puts a high-elo VOD next to one of your own games on the same champion. Line up a similar moment, such as the first recall or the first Dragon setup, and list what the stronger player did differently. One concrete difference beats a page of general impressions.

Every review should end with one rule, because you can only change one habit at a time under game pressure. Pick the mistake that appears most often across your tags, write it as a rule, play with it, and check it in your next review. The loop below shows the full cycle.

A good rule names a trigger and an action: “When the enemy jungler has been unseen since their last clear and my wave is past the middle, I stop pushing until I have a ward.” A bad rule is a vague goal like “play safer” or “die less.” You cannot check a goal in a replay, but you can check whether you followed a rule.

Keep the rule for several games, not one. A habit needs repetitions before it holds under pressure, and switching rules after every loss resets the work. Judge the rule in review, not by your LP that day, since you can lose a game while executing your focus perfectly. Our tilt and mental guide explains why process goals keep ranked sessions steadier.

Use these drills to turn review findings into practice. Each one has a goal you can verify in your next replay.

This checklist fits a full review into about 20 minutes, a length you can sustain after most ranked sessions. A short review done every day beats a long one done once in a while. Run through it with your notebook open.

If time runs short, cut the second pass down to the deaths that cost the most, such as the ones that handed over an objective. Never skip the last step; a review without a rule is just a rewatch.

Most players who try VOD review stall for the same few reasons.

Tonight, open the replay of your closest loss and run only the first pass: mark deaths, recalls and objectives, then tag each death. Tomorrow, pick the most common tag, write one rule, and play your games with that rule on a note beside your screen. After those games, run the full checklist on one replay and check whether the rule held.

Once your own replays stop surprising you, add a high-elo VOD of your champion from the streamers and pro players hub and run the prediction drill. More fundamentals that pair with this workflow are in all guides.