Using MaddCog to get better at League of Legends
MaddCog tracks mental performance using the Game Band and its EEG and HRV sensors. The key measurement relating to game performance is Flow. Players with high Flow win over 10% more games. Flow is the relaxed concentration state where you are fully immersed in the game and aware of the whole screen.
This article is a quick walkthrough of how you can use MaddCog to track your mental performance to win more games of League of Legends.
All data and examples used are real examples. I am not a high-level League player, just a normal player struggling to improve my rank, but we have seen similar results in players at higher ranks.
If you don’t like reading, check out this video, which uses the same information as the article.
When I go to the MaddCog app, the first recommendation it provides is “You perform best when you have consistent Flow throughout the games”.
Let’s see what that means.
Viewing my average Flow (purple in the image below) throughout a game, it starts high but drops significantly after 10 minutes. This indicates that I start well in the laning phase but struggle to sustain high Flow once the game opens up and team fights become more frequent. This is something for me to work on by staying relaxed during those less certain moments of the game.
Picking my most recent good game (shown below), we can see that my Flow was high and very consistent throughout the game. I farmed well early, or well for me, with a CS/min over 6. I was then able to sustain my Flow after the laning phase and get a KDA of 11.0. In this example, it would appear that if I can sustain Flow, I will play better.
I then wondered what impact the champion I played had on my ability to get in Flow; Garen is the champ I am most comfortable with, although I play Teemo frequently also. The image below shows Garen on the left and Teemo on the right. My win rate is much higher with Garen as my skill is much higher, but my Flow and grade are only slightly higher with Garen than Teemo.I was happily surprised about that as I thought I might panic more with Teemo and spend less time in Flow.
Next up, I wanted to see if my performance changed throughout the day. I generally play at night, but some weekends I squeeze in a game during the day. Knowing when I play best might help me know when to play ranked or unranked games.
The graph below shows my win rate (yellow) and Flow (purple) at different times throughout the day. It is worth noting that some hours have a low sample size, so the 0% or 100% win rate is not a fair reflection of the data.
Instead, let’s drill into the evening. At 6pm, Flow and win rate are high, but then Flow drops a bit, and so does the win rate. Based on this, I need to try to play ranked games earlier in the evening, knowing that I am not a night person and will likely fade as the evening goes on.
The last thing I want to look at is what can help me get into high Flow more consistently. The data above shows the importance of Flow to my performance, so I want to be able to replicate that. With this in mind, I recently started experimenting with a couple of pre-game routines: one was trying a nap on weekends and then playing later.
The graph below shows my results when I filter by the tag ‘nap’. The time in high Flow is 42%, the win rate is 83% and my average grade is 6.7. All three of these stats are much higher than my average acriss all games. I have only tried this for six games, but the results look promising, so I will continue to try these naps to see if it helps me continue to play better.
Looking at this data, I have already picked up several things to improve. I need to focus on ranked games in the early evening and keep experimenting with pre-game routines that help me get into Flow, especially if they help me sustain Flow throughout the game.
This is just a snapshot of what the MaddCog app can report, but it shows the number of useful insights that can be provided. Check out maddcog.com for more details.
