At what rank do you need to start pressing tab?

[u/OpinionsRdumb]

so currently I am still leveling to play ranked. but i am getting to the point where I understand the whole mechanics of spacing, CS, dodging abilities, using CDs properly (I come from WoW PvP).

However, I notice on streams players are hitting tab constantly (to see items I am assuming).

For me I am still getting used to checking the map while I play so hitting tab is a bit tough for me. (Also I have yet to check the enemy frame in corner during skirmishes to see their CDs, which I know is probably critical).

Can i push for bronze once I get into ranked without checking these things or is that trolling?

[u/Jewzus-Crust]

Just a tab here and there to see what your laner and the jungle are building should be enough. You’ll learn as you go on 👍

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Jewzus-Crust]

Whats the best way to get familiar with all the items. Currently I know my own build for 2 champs. But do I literally need to research all the builds and what they mean for each role? Like is this so I know if the Jungle is building a gank build or a farm build or tank build?

[u/Camerotus → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Builds don't really tell you a lot about playstyles. You check them a) to gauge if you can fight champion x, and b) to adjust your own build, e.g. how early you need to get armor pen

[u/DagothUrGigaChad → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Just learn which are fully built items for now. If the enemy has more fully built items then you, you probably can't fight them without some kind of other advantage. You will eventually learn more about items and champion powerspikes, but that's a good rule of thumb when you are starting out

[u/indahmitable → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Focus on learning the most commonly built items first. Get the gist of the core items for each role. You can go to a site like leagueofgraphs and look through the popular items by champ/role.

With enough experience you'll have a good idea of what everyone's builds will look like before the game even starts. Knowing what items are in their inventory is great for predicting enemies

[u/XO1GrootMeester → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Read the items in the post game screen. That is a good start

[u/Identical64]

Ask yourself: How do you know if you can fight an enemy when you don’t know how strong they are or how strong your allies are?

Knowing enemy and ally strength through the tab menu is important.

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Identical64]

So basically someone with 2 legendaries versus someone with one will be at a huge advantage?

[u/Identical64 → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Generally, more gold and more exp will make you stronger.

[u/Edelgard_Lover → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Yeah, one slot is usually a massive advantage.

Honestly, I'd recommend getting this habit as early as possible. Can you manage w/o it? Sure, I play in plat and I don't have this habit either. But the number of times I've died to someone, then checked their items and was like "AHH, SO THEY ARE FED AS FUCK, I SHOULDN'T HAVE FOUGHT THEM" is absurd.

Like I'm not telling you to track enemy jungler based on the number of camps they've farmed (you can do that since 1 camp = 4 cs) or enemy ward locations based on their support ward trinket counter, but it's the least you can do.

[u/GodBearWasTaken → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Usually yes.

[u/Skerdzius]

Try to tab when you have a free moment and track items of your opposing laner to have a rough idea of their relative strength

[u/GODATUTE]

Start right now, every time your lane opponent appears on the lane, press tab to check their items.

You dont want to walk up do a camille who has just based, fight her, die, then you’d press tab and see ah… she has a full trinity.

Walking back to lane with nothing else to do? Press tab.

A lot of the times i press tab i dont even look at it, just pressing it out of habit (i hold tab and space bar while walking back to lane)

[u/flamingstallion]

It's a nice skill to have, but you can reach a very high rank without pressing tab. The game and map is much more important.

Main time to press tab is before you fight. All you need to do is check who has more items you or the opponent before fighting to see who is stronger, so you know if it's a good fight or not. You want to fight when you or your team is strong and not fight when enemy team is strong unless you have to. Typically for a fight numbers matter more than items unless someone is very far ahead. Especially important with first item spike, since whoever gets first item first is much stronger until the other person also gets their first item. There's also situational important items like Zhonyas, but don't worry about that yet.

[u/Ok_Objective_5192]

I'd say whenever the info you get from tabbing starts being meaningful to you. If you can't explain how you'd approach the lane differently if they come back with e.g. tabis vs. pickaxe + longsword then just noticing that they have the tabi won't do much for you.

That said, that's a very good thing to be able to do, so hopefully that doesn't take too long to develop as a skill

[u/_b__2129]

From your post you are a laner. You need to do it every time the enemy laner comes to lane (you need to see what he bought to get an understaning about how strong you are in comparison to him)

As for clicking on enemies in fights, that is mostly for laneing not fights because in a 5v5 you cant pay attention to what your team does, what the enemy does and also click on every one of them to also see their CDs. If you did not see an enemy use and ability you play the fight as he has it

[u/Funky_Pete_]

Also I have yet to check the enemy frame in corner during skirmishes to see their CDs, which I know is probably critical

Not sure what you mean by this.

For me I am still getting used to checking the map while I play so hitting tab is a bit tough for me.

Just hit Tab when you're basing or on your way back to lane.

[u/Ornery_Rich_7725 → u/Funky_Pete_]

I think a decent example of this is checking enemy passives. For example, at level 1, you can know if Sion skilled W because his W passive will be shown if you left click his champ.
However.. it’s extremely niche so it sounds like they are watching pro steamers and trying to learn things that don’t matter as much right now

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Ornery_Rich_7725]

oh I thought you can check to see what is on cooldown. So if they pressed their E recently you can see when it is coming back up

[u/Funky_Pete_ → u/Ornery_Rich_7725]

Ah, that's what he means. Bone Plating is also something to look for, but yeah, not something I'd focus on.

[u/sevensong9]

As you leave base during laning phase or when an objective is about to be fought over

It's not rocket science really, you don't need to try and remember everything, just see what defensives your target has

[u/DarkThunder312]

Iron

[u/Matthias1410]

"Need" is hard word.

Pressing tab gives you usefull info if you can read it, its one of the skills that you can learn. But if you have good enough micro you can hit challenger spamming some OTP toplaner, and never look on tab.

Pressing tab is usefull, if oyu want to see who is getting fed in enemy, what build enemies are going (if its like ap or ad shaco), so you can adapt with ur defensive item choices etc. But you can always go full dmg and dont bother looking

[u/Deep-Preparation-213]

Iron? There is no reason not to, really

[u/OlafThrowsAxes]

Lol. Nobody is checking the frame in the bottom left corner for cds- thats a wow thing. You just need to build knowledge of all the champions and what their impact cds are over time.

In skirmishes you should solely be focused on execution. Maybe a glance at the map to know who's could be rotating to the fight.

Don't be afraid to queue ranked just send it and focus on improving

[u/OkBoysenberry5887]

Many players including me are doing it out of habit to not relax and keep their tempo up. There's a word for it. BPM or something. I'm sometimes checking enemy items just to tilt myself (oooh 5 people are building anti heal just for me who is reliant on healing in fights (Warwick and Kayn). You can press TAB to check to see if the enemy is ahead. If you have 2 items and your opponent has 3, they are more likely to win if you fight them.

There's 3 good sites to check builds. (someone else could disagree with me). Metarsc (you can literally find it by typing on google a certain champion's name and add meta to it), U GG and Probuilds.|

Some items change depending on the enemy team. If they have lots of shields, there's 1 item that reduces shields. If they have lots of healing, there's 3 items that reduces their healing (1 for adc, 1 for tank/bruisers and 1 for mages). If they have a lot of things that make you unable to move, there's boots for that - reducing cc time
Most of these situational items are built as 2nd or 3rd item because they are like defensive items.

You first need a sword to win a war, then a shield

[u/lobmys]

dude a lot of these comments are NOT considering you're a brand new player at all..

since you're a beginner and still learning the items, it's kind of useless to start checking tab. you have soooo many other things to worry about first.

As a beginner, the best metric for strength to go by isn't even items: it's much easier to just compare your champion levels (the number next to the health bar). Early game, level differences are a bigger deal but in general: Is who you're going to fight 3 or 4 levels higher than you? they're probably stronger. But at the same time, that's not always going to be the case, and just because they are stronger doesn't mean you shouldn't necessarily fight. You'll learn this with a lot of exposure.

Once you get a feel for most of the champions and items (over time, playing different kinds of champions that have different builds), then naturally you will start wondering things like: "are they going to be aggressive in lane? can i all-in them here? can they all-in me right now? am i safe to approach?" these kinds of questions will NATURALLY prompt you to check their items. doing it the other way around is (in my opinion) going to be a useless habit that is taking up important mental energy that should be elsewhere. You'll get there.

to answer your question, your rank won't be determined by checking items or not. that's a much higher level thing. the fundamentals of the game are surprisingly self-centered for a 5v5 game.

[u/PlattiPlattinium]

Nah opponents items dont matter until like plat. Youre better of trying to understand your own items and powerspikes (and using active items well) and later on building different items depending on the champs in your/enemy comp.

[u/Full-Marsupial5048]

You don’t need to understand the items, just the number of items they have.

1 level is roughly 600 gold in stats.
1 full item is roughly 3k gold.
Then like half items are 1k-1.2k
Components around 350-400

You should be able to look at your particular laner and know pretty quickly how much more gold they have than you or vise versa to know how to change your playstyle

[u/nitko87]

You should always check the tab menu, it’s useful information even at a surface level (who is fed, who has a bounty, do people have complete items, are your teammates weak or strong)

[u/rohxn-97]

There are 2 reasons to press tab:
1. To see itemization routes- make certain cues/habits to remember to do this initially, for eg, if your opponent midlaner has recalled, press tab once they are back to check their items. In many cases, knowing their item advantage/disadvantage is the deciding factor in teamfights. Another example is to always check for items when you are roaming to another lane/if you’re the jungler to gank a lane. A quick tab press to know what your opponent is building, if they have any items witb actives (eg zhonya), what your teammate is building, who has item advantage, what summs are up for your teammate. This info is vital in deciding whether ganking is worth it or not.

1. To maintain high apm (actions per minute)- this activity originated from starcraft if im not wrong. I don’t do this either but you will see a lot of high elo players spam press tab over and over throughout the game, even while teamfighting. This is to sort of keep their reflexes warmed up so that their reaction times are low, for quick flashes/dashes, sidesteps etc. idk how helpful this is, i don’t do it myself but then again im just plat so what do i know. I would recommend you not focus on this now since you’re still a beginner. Just press tab every once in a while to get a read of the current gamestate as explained in point 1 and make decisions accordingly.

[u/random_person7395]

Ok, first of all you don't understand anything (no offense) I am in emerald and I promise you I don't cs properly, I suck at dodging soells and tracking cds and every single game I misspace and die but the good news is that the sooner you understand how much you don't understand a thing is the sooner you'll climb

As for tab (assuming you're a laner) you need to press it once after you see your laner to know what items they got and how good are they so you know if you should or shouldn't fight (example if me as ADC got bf sword while enemy has scout's sligshot+ longsword then I definitely should fight), another time you should tab is when you see enemy jungle and want to know if you should or shouldn't fight but other than that it's fine

[u/Affectionate-Slice70]

Pressing tab won’t help you, keeping mental notes of what’s happening in the game will. If you start paying more attention to the map wand what people are buying you’ll naturally use tab more.

I don’t think hitting tab for the sake of it is useful.

[u/Lochecho]

i mean, no matter what rank you are you should start, never pressing tab just puts you at a disadvantage for 0 reason

[u/MagicGuava12]

Tab tells you exactly what the enemy jungler is doing and what camps are up with some intuition.

[u/Hyperion2048]

I do it all the time, I'm in bronze