Have you been grinding through improving your mechanics, and you’re desperate for something that can make a difference without introducing a new practice regimen into your daily life? Check out these 10 tricks that high ELO players and Pros abuse to get an edge over their competition.

We want to stress here that all 10 of these tricks are more about know-how than insane mechanics, so you will be able to apply them almost instantly. Let’s get started.

Cheater Recalls

The first trick that the Pros abuse is the cheater recall. This is a zero-risk, medium-reward way to give yourself an advantage in lane. This is one of the most well known tricks, but just in case you’re unfamiliar with what a cheater recall is, we’ll give a quick rundown.

Usually, when you want to go for a reset, the default way is to hard shove the wave so you can get back to base instantly, but when you’re going for a cheater, you want to slow push the minion, stacking up two waves. Then, once the third wave arrives, you start clearing as quickly as possible.

Now, the massive wave of minions that you’ve stacked will crash into the enemy turret, and you can slip off back to base. You’ll be able to buy, then get back to the lane without missing much, if any, CS.

This is made even more OP as your opponent can’t reciprocate because now the wave will bounce back toward you. If they try to leave, you can easily build up a freeze and turn it into a snowballing CS lead that they can’t address, which more than likely forces them to stay in the lane with you.

Having that item advantage over the opponent on the lane is a big deal, as even a single long sword or amplifying tome can make a huge impact when you’re in the early levels of a game due to the base stats being so low. As far as timing this cheater recall, technically, this method can be used at any time, but the true cheater recall is done right away, with the first three waves in the game.

Abusing Slow Pushes in Other Ways

There are more ways to abuse slow pushes aside from the cheater recall. By the time the game is in the mid to late phases, many players have pretty much abandoned the concept of wave management. They either freeze forever trying to farm, or they simply hard-shove waves to rotate away quickly.

It’s a waste not to integrate slow pushes into this phase. If it’s done right, a slow push in the mid to late game can be a massive source of pressure. This is called the “6th man” strat for a good reason.

You can generate this massively stacked-up wave, then rotate to fights elsewhere, leaving it to split on its own. By doing this, you’re forcing the enemy team to make a decision. They can take the 5v5 fight over whatever objective you’re targeting, letting that massive wave die and/or, do a ton of damage to their tower, or they’ll have someone catch it, which delivers you the win in the objective fight.

The other option you can try is to push with the wave. Most of the time, someone will come to try and answer you eventually, but if they don’t, having all of these minions means you’ll be able to shred through a turret easily, sometimes taking more than one with that single push.

The key to using this well is to read the map effectively. The best time to start up the slow push is about two minutes before a big objective fight pops off, so you can set it up, then decide how you’ll use it based on the information you gather on the map.

Level 1 Trinket Swap

This next tip that pros abuse will take much less thought process, and it’s something that has begun to appear in lower ELO matches in the last few years as well. At level 1, you can throw down your trinket ward, usually around 50 seconds, then recall and get Oracle’s Lens. This Oracle’s Lens recharges so quickly it’ll always be back up by the time you’re looking to gank, so this is extremely efficient.

There are a few useful spots you can place the ward to get information. The most popular is the pixel bush on the opposite side of the map. This is most commonly done when the enemy jungler is a strong early Champ that can invade you in your second quadrant. It also doubles as a way to prevent cheesy mid-lane ganks at level 2 from that side of the lane.

If you don’t care about being invaded and you just want more information on where the opposing jungler starts, you can also throw the ward down on one of their buffs. This will be a bit riskier since it involves crossing into the enemy jungle to place it.

This ward strat is often carried out by junglers, but support players can also do the same thing. Having sweeper for a lane can actually be really nice if you’re playing a Champ with good lane pressure since you can deny bush vision constantly.

Dip into Bush for Level Up

If you’re a side laner looking for a different type of vision play, this next tip may be right up your alley.

When you know the next minion or two will be enough XP to ding level 6, you can slip into a bush, then hit your opponent with a surprise ult from within the bush for an engage that no one can react to.

Obviously, this will not be useful for every single Champion, but those that will benefit from it should use this more often. It’s a bit easier to coordinate if you’re playing with teammates in VOIP, but even if you’re not, you can just communicate that you plan on doing this to your lane partner beforehand.

One very specific use of this can be done with Shaco. If Shaco was last seen as level 5, then hits 6 out of vision before sending his clone out of the bush, the enemy laners will see him as level 5 still.

An engage support can easily be baited into jumping on the clone immediately, giving you some free shots at them if not a full-blown secured kill. This is really niche, but when you pull it off, it’s really satisfying and can instantly tilt your opponent.

Warding Over Walls

The next trick that pros abuse is a quick one, and you’ll see it all the time in high-level games. Warding over walls prevents one of the silliest mistakes that we see players making all of the time. Think about it like this, if you think that you’re about to be ganked by the enemy jungler, the last thing you should do is walk straight into the river to drop a ward.

If they’re already there, you’re either blowing flash to escape, or you’re simply dead. Instead, learn all of the different places that you can place wards over walls. There are a ton of videos out there providing information specifically about this tactic.

Auto Spacing / Orb Walking

This is going to be one of the more significant tips on the list. Some players may call it auto spacing, others may call it orb walking, and there’s plenty of other jargon that’s used for it too, but it comes down to being able to integrate movement between your attacks.

This is a crucial skill that far too many players overlook, and no, it’s not just for ADCs. It doesn’t matter if you’re ranged or melee, carry or tank; every Champ can use it to help kite better or chase opponents depending on the situation they find themselves in.

Sure, we did say that all of the tricks in this article would be easy to implement and wouldn’t require a ton of practice to learn, and sure, you may be thinking that this is one of the most mechanical things in League, but give us a moment.

Yes, in order to pull this off, you’ll need some incredible mechanics which have been acquired through tons of practice, but even basic-level orb walking is something that you can work into your game, and it will make a massive difference.

Use Bushes for Trading

Here’s another bush trick that you’ll see the pros abuse in high-level gameplay. You know when you have a big range advantage, so you want to harass your opponent on the lane constantly, but each time you hit them, the minions just pummel you, negating your advantage?

The solution is to simply adjust your positioning and look to trade near the bushes. Every time you poke, run into the bush to get out of vision, and the minions will completely forget you were there.

Four Ways to Buffer

This next one is actually going to be a 4 parter, and it’s a few ways that you can properly buffer spells.

The first is learning to buffer spells while using flash. Everyone knows the classic ones, like Ahri Charm and Lee Sin’s kick, but there are many more that players aren’t using as often. Orianna can flash with the ball on her to move where the ult lands at the last second. Alistar can Q Flash for a knock-up that enemies can’t react to. Xin Zhao can even do an Insec of his own with an R Flash.

There are way too many to list each one, so the best thing to do if you’re wondering if your Champ can buffer one of their spells is to hop into the practice tool and test it out quickly.

The second buffer trick is using abilities to negate CC. This tip will be very Champ specific, as only a few Champs, such as Ezreal with his blink and Tristana with her jump, can really do it. That’s because they have an uninterruptable cast; if they are CC’d during the cast, the mobility goes off anyway.

If you’re playing a Champ that doesn’t have a mobility spell to escape being CC’d, you can still use damage spells as a buffer to trade back while CC’d. For example, imagine you’re playing Senna.

Senna’s ult is a powerful 2v2 spell, but with its long cast time, it’s pretty easy to dodge. On the of that, that’s also a good bit of time where you’re not auto-attacking or using other spells.

If the enemy bot lane forces an engage on you, neither of those issues really matters. Enemies that are going in aren’t really in a position to dodge. Plus, since you’re likely CC’d, it’s not really time you’d be autoing or using spells anyway.

For the last buffering trick, we’ll look at using a targeted ability before you flash. The best example of this will be Malzahar, so that’s what we’ll talk about here, though you can apply this to other Champs.

Let’s say your jungler is coming in for a gank, so you go to Flash R your opponent. If they have really fast reflexes, they may react to your flash before you can get that R on them.

If you instead attempt to cast R from them when you’re out of range, Malz will start auto-moving toward them. Then, once you’re in the flash range, once you use the summoner, he will instantly tether from them with the ult, something that absolutely no one can avoid.

Turret CS Denial

Something that we feel people used to do much more often is actively using the enemy turret to deny CS, meaning you’re about to take the first turret on your lane, but you let it thin out the wave first. Every minion the turret kills is one that your opponent isn’t. If the wave is 15 minions deep, letting the turret kill them all right before you knock it down is equal to denying them a kill.

On top of the face-value amount of gold that you’re denying your opponent, you also have to consider the wave state after you break the current. If you were going to be able to shove that minion wave all the way to the inner turret, the wave would definitely bounce back to you.

Usually, though, when you’re killing the first turret in the lane, it’s happening early on, and your enemies will return soon. If you leave a stacked wave and don’t crash it into the turret, they could turn that into a freeze, making it impossible for you or your team to return to the lane to farm.

Play Around the Right Teammates

Our final trick that you’ll see pros using but solo queue players don’t is playing around players that are already doing well rather than the players who are using. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the job of the jungler, or anyone else on your team, to bail people out when they’re feeding on their lane.

It doesn’t matter if they ended up that way after losing a few 1v1s or dying to 5 jungle ganks; if you go to their lane when they’re already far behind, you’re just risking the game for nothing. What happens if their opponent is fed enough to 2v1`? What if the opponent is waiting to show up?

Instead of that, just play to help other lanes get ahead, then later, you can work towards shutting down the problem from that lane.

Obviously, if you can stop the bleeding early on, then go for it. It’s just about recognizing when a lost cause is just that and knowing that you really need to focus your efforts elsewhere, so you can drag that teammate across the finish line kicking and screaming later on.