The League of Legends practice tool is now live

The League of Legends practice tool Riot revealed last autumn is now live. The tool, as the studio explained in depth last month, is "a simple, straightforward, single-player environment" that gives players the opportunity to test tactics and train mechanics, without wasting hours in Custom games.  

The tool is focused primarily on Champion mechanics and combos, jungle practice, endless last hitting, item build DPS checks, and map familiarity, but Riot said that it's intended for players of all skills levels. It launched with more than a dozen player, game state, and jungle commands "aimed at enabling the basics of League," and more will be added as needed to enable other types of practice. 

"Our development process for Practice Tool has been slightly different than the way we usually do things with other features. We’ve chosen to target getting a ‘bare-bones version’ of the tool working for you guys as soon as possible (so you can start practicing while Season 7 is still young), rather [than] wait much longer to release something more polished but would still have very similar functionality," Riot explained. "This means there might be a few things we missed, but that’s where we want to hear from you guys and start the process of improving the tool as we go!" 

Riot said it will monitor its servers to see how much stress the practice tool puts on them, and "if needed we’ll maneuver accordingly." The training tool is available under the "Training" tab—update your client if you don't see it and you should be set.   

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.