How to Actually Read the Minimap (Not Just Look at It)
Wondering why you keep dying to ganks you never saw coming? Here's how to start reading the map and taking better fights.
You die to a gank that "came out of nowhere," except it didn't. The enemy jungler gave away exactly where he was going to gank, despite being missing from the map for a full minute before it happened. The information was right there. You just didn't know what to look for.
Reading the map isn't a talent some players are born with. It's a habit, and like any habit, it's built through repetition until it happens without even thinking about it.
Where Most People Fail on Reading the Map
Other than not knowing how to read the map, people often don't know what they're looking for either.
The most common mistake is that the information is usually there, people just don't know how to read the map.
If that sounds like you, it's not a lack of awareness. It's that nobody ever showed you what a "good" map read actually looks like.
The Framework: Make the Map Be Useful to You
What Are We Looking For on the Map
People often look at the map aimlessly, just to look at it. But if you know what state the game is in and what concerns you, you'll know what to look for.
An example I can give: let's say you're laning mid, and you find yourself in an awkward wave state that's hard to crash but manageable in the lane you're playing. The only thing that can go wrong in trying to crash it is if someone else comes. There's quite a lot of people that can usually come to mid, but most of the time it's jungle or support. When you flick your eyes to the minimap before making your decision on what to do, you want to know if you see jungle or support, and if not, can you tell from previous moments of analyzing the map where they are? (I'll explain more in the next point on how you can know where they are based on previous position.)
After you've gathered this information, you take a decision based on whether or not they can be mid.
How to Read the Map
I'll start with explaining what I meant earlier when I said you can tell where jungle or support are based on previous map analysis.
For jungle, we'll need a basic understanding of jungle clears in order to be more on point with predicting where the person might be. But usually the safest bets, or easiest reads you can have on jungle, are during the first clear. Let's say you have a ward on enemy raptors, and the enemy jungler is starting blue (but you wouldn't know that in the game). By the time your jungler is on their 3rd camp and the enemy jungler isn't on raptors, you can assume that means they're on wolves, and that raptors will be their 4th camp. Your ward might expire, but the info is already there. You don't have to actually see him do the raptors to know.
For support, that's a bit more complicated, as that role is unique in its ability to be anywhere on the map without much consequence. But most of the time they're readable. Let's say you know they're based from the pings of your bot lane, and they can then open through mid. Will they? Maybe not, but you can play around it if you're in a bad state and don't want to lose HP or be ganked right now.
What Reading the Map Actually Gets You
You'll be able to make more advantageous decisions, whether that's taking a skirmish in the river because you saw beforehand that your ADC will arrive first and the fight will be favorable due to a numbers advantage, or being aggressive in your lane and confidently doing so because you know where the enemy jungler is from your previous map read. There are a lot more examples of how being able to read the map puts you at an indisputable advantage, so go ahead and practice it!
Want more examples and situations you can use as a reference?
Come to me with your replay, and I'll point out all the times this could've been of great value to you.
Written by Lachezar Iliev