- KDA
- Kills / Deaths / Assists. The most visible match stat, and the most overrated when read alone. Read together with death timing, lane-opponent deltas, and damage share to recover meaning.
- CS (Creep Score)
- Last hits on minions and monsters. Read as CS/min, not total. Gold-tier laners average 7.5–8.5 CS/min; below that signals a wave-management or matchup issue.
- CS per minute
- CS / game time in minutes. Length-normalized lane-skill metric. The cleanest single stat for evaluating lane phase; the gap to your opponent is more meaningful than the absolute number.
- Damage share
- Your portion of team champion damage. ADC and AP carries should hit 28–35%; supports 8–15%. Surfaces contributions that KDA can't see, especially for carries who absorb fight pressure.
- Vision score
- Combined value from wards placed (weighted by uptime), wards killed, and control wards. Support target 60+; jungle 35–50; solo lanes and ADC 20–35. Placement alone isn't enough — wards have to live.
- Control ward
- 75g placed ward that disables enemy wards in its radius and is invisible until shot. Target 2+ per game minimum, 5+ for supports. Mandatory before drake and baron.
- Gank
- Jungler intervening in a lane to set up a kill. Upside: pressure or first blood. Downside: enemy jungler counter-clears your camps. The single river ward beforehand roughly doubles gank success rate.
- Counter-jungle
- Stealing camps from the enemy jungle. Forces an XP/gold lead but exposes you to a 2v1 if their jungler and laner converge. Best on mobile or invade-strong champions like Shaco, Lee Sin, Nidalee.
- Voidgrubs
- Six monsters that spawn in Herald pit before Rift Herald. Stacks grant team-wide bonus tower damage. Available only until 15 minutes. Taking 3–4 of 6 is standard.
- Elemental Drake
- Neutral objective spawning at 5 minutes. Four stacks grant the team a permanent Soul; one further kill spawns the game-deciding Elder Drake. Buff varies by element type.
- Baron Nashor
- The map's strongest neutral, spawning at 20 minutes. Killing it grants the team Baron buff, super-charging nearby minions. Often the central play of mid-to-late game.
- First Blood
- The first kill of a match. Awards +100 gold on top of the normal +300, making it a significant early-game lead lever.
- First Tower
- First outer turret to fall. Awards a +400 team gold split. The team that takes it wins around 70% of games. Usually falls between 9 and 13 minutes.
- Wave management
- Controlling where the minion wave meets in lane. Three primitives: slow push, freeze, reset. Determines gank vulnerability, turret safety, and roam windows.
- Freeze
- Holding the minion wave near your own turret by maintaining one fewer minion than the opponent's wave. Denies CS and lets you farm safely; mandatory tool against an outpushing opponent.
- Slow push
- Killing only enemy minions while letting your wave snowball toward enemy turret. Builds a massive wave for recall timing or gank setup.
- Reset
- Returning to base for items and HP. Pushing the wave just before recall forces the opponent to recall at the same time, denying them a free CS lead.
- Roam
- Leaving your lane to assist another lane or contest an objective. Mid laners are best positioned for it; reading roam timing on both sides defines mid-game tempo.
- Peel
- Protecting your carry from enemy threats with CC, shields, or your own body. Core support and tank job during teamfights.
- Engage
- Starting a teamfight. Hard-engage spells like Nautilus Q or Leona E. Timing and target priority decide whether the fight is winnable.
- Disengage
- Tools that interrupt or break off a teamfight (Janna ult, Yasuo Wind Wall). Counter to hard-engage compositions.
- Pick comp
- A composition built to catch single targets out of position. Assassins plus long-range engage. Strong at mid-game power spikes around objectives.
- Poke comp
- Composition built around long-range chip damage before fights commit (Xerath, Varus, Jayce). Wins by softening targets to forced engagement.
- Teamfight comp
- Composition optimized for 5v5 fights — AOE, tankiness, sustain. Wants the game to be decided around mid-to-late objective contests.
- Dive
- Killing under enemy turret. Requires coordination and a designated tank to absorb turret aggro. Failed dives bleed gold to the enemy.
- Prox / Proximity
- Short for proximity, used in callouts: "jungler mid prox" means the enemy jungler is near mid lane.
- Summoner spells
- Game-wide spells like Flash, Ignite, and Heal. Long cooldowns (5 minutes) and high impact; tracking remaining timers is a core advanced skill.
- Flash
- Short-range blink, 5-minute cooldown. ADC default: save it to live. Using it offensively after 15 minutes is a hallmark of a higher tier.
- Ignite
- DOT and grievous-wounds (anti-heal) on a single target. Short cooldown, high early kill threat. Standard on aggressive mid and top picks.
- Teleport
- Long-range channel to a minion, ward, or turret. Standard on top lane. The primary resource for joining cross-map fights or skirmishes.
- Recall (B)
- 8-second channel to return to base. Interruptible. Good players time recalls to moments they're unseen, converting downtime into items.
- Base / Fountain
- Your team's spawn area. Where recall takes you. Heals you and lets you buy items.
- Jungle
- The map area outside the three lanes, where neutral camps spawn. The jungler's primary territory, including both jungle quadrants and the central pits.
- River
- The central path running through the middle of the map. Home to drakes, baron, and scuttle crabs. The contested zone between lanes and jungle.
- Scuttle (Rift Scuttler)
- Neutral camp on the river. When killed, leaves a movement-speed zone and vision shrine. Major early-game river control objective.
- ARAM
- All Random All Mid. A single-lane mode on Howling Abyss with random champion assignment. Limited as a practice tool, but a tight time-efficient game format.
- Ranked Solo / Duo
- Standard ranked queue, played alone or with one duo partner. LP gains/losses move you between divisions and tiers.
- Ranked Flex
- Ranked queue that allows up to 5-stack parties. Rewards team-coordinated play. Maintains its own MMR separate from Solo/Duo.
- Tier / Division
- Rank ladder structure: Iron → Bronze → Silver → Gold → Platinum → Emerald → Diamond → Master → Grandmaster → Challenger. Each tier has divisions IV through I (except apex tiers).
- MMR
- Match Making Rating. Riot's internal hidden skill score, distinct from displayed rank. Determines LP gains and matchmaking opponents; high MMR climbs faster.
- LP
- League Points. Currency awarded for ranked wins; deducted on losses. Reaching 100 LP triggers a promotion series in tiers below Master.
- Meta
- The set of currently strong champions and strategies on the live patch. Read it from op.gg or u.gg, not from an LLM (LLM knowledge cutoff is months stale).
- Tier list
- A ranking of champion strength on the current patch (S/A/B/C). Maintained by op.gg, u.gg, Mobalytics, etc.