Why You Shouldn’t Pay for OP.GG Reviews/ Vod Reviews.
One of the best places to find information on how to improve at League of Legends is by watching Twitch streamers. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes with some only having a few viewers to their name compared to others with several thousand. One of the main categories of streamers are the educational ones who tend to provide advice and give you information to step up your game in order to climb.
In this short guide by PicklePants, I will talk about why I think paying for coaching from select streamers is a complete waste of money and you should never pay for coaching, VOD reviews or OP.GG reviews from them.
I personally think that educational streamers are underrated as a whole. Players who offer free advice on how to step up your game can be very beneficial when trying to learn as they can often give insight that you may have overlooked or not understood. The majority of these streamers will interact with the chat and make sure that they answer every single question and try to provide as much information as they can.
However, there is also a dark, money hungry side to this genre of streamer. I will avoid naming any streamers because there are quite a few that do this. I would also like to say that this is not hating towards any person, any streamer, anybody who buys the product, any company or anyone in general. This is just my thoughts on why I would not pay for one of coaching.
OP.GG Reviews
One of the more common forms of paid content is by streamers who charge money to read an OP.GG. If you do not know what this is, basically, they pay somebody money to read off the screen and read some super simple information that anybody can find just by looking themselves.
The cost of this is different for every streamer and I’ve seen quite a few charge from $2 up to $10 per review. I think this is expensive for something that you can do yourself if you know what to look for.
I’m going to review your OP.GG for you without seeing what your ELO is and what rank you are. In short, I’m doing what they’re doing for free without even seeing your profile…
1) You’re dying too much. One of the main things people say is that you’re dying too much. How do they know this? They see how many deaths you have and tell you to die less. Doesn’t matter what KDA you have- just die less.
2) You’re not buying enough Control Wards. They take a look at how many Control Wards you buy and tell you that you need to buy more.
3) Your builds are bad. Go to Pro builds and copy what the pros build.
And that’s it, I’ve reviewed your OP.GG for you for free, now instead of wasting money buying these sort of products from streamers, go and give your money to charity.
VOD Reviews
The second most popular type of paid content on Twitch is people who offer VOD reviews. This is probably my weakest point because I actually believe that this can be beneficial in helping you improve and it can be a good way of improving… Kinda.
The issue is who you are purchasing the product from. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fabulous coaches out there who offer great deals on VOD reviews and who are incredibly educational and are worth paying for. Personally, I wouldn’t pay for them, but I do not see any problem with you paying for a VOD review if you want one.
I like to use a term that I think sums up a good portion of these types of streamers: “Just because you’re high ELO, doesn’t mean you can coach.” I think this is a perfect way to describe a lot of people who do VOD reviews. Whilst I never charged for VOD reviews, I do feel like I fell into that category and that is the reason why I stopped doing VOD reviews.
VOD reviews are pretty generic and do not always benefit the customer. A VOD review is normally a one-off payment where you get one game reviewed. Unfortunatly, one game doesn’t really mean anything in League of Legends. When you get a review, most people try to improve on the things that are told to improve on in the review but then they tend to not actually improve at them.
To continue with the theme, I’m now going to review your VOD for you for free and incredibly quickly. As a Support main, I will only be providing advice for Supports, sorry.
1) Your positioning is bad. Make sure you stick close to the ADC, but not too far up in the lane. This will prevent you from taking free damage in the lane while also being a threat to the enemy.
2) You need to ward more. Vision is important if you need to have the map warded at all times to spot the enemy.
3) You need to stick close to your ADC. You are not protecting your ADC enough and they are getting killed because of it.
Furthermore, many people who actually do the VOD reviews are not very good at it and they’re just there to get money. This is reinforcing the fact that not all high ELO players are good at coaching. You should never pay for a VOD review unless the person who is doing it is a reputable streamer with good reviews and is worth your money.
However, I did say that I do believe that VOD reviews can help you improve especially if you are unsure on what you are doing wrong. One of the great things about streaming is there are so many people who are doing it. But, there so many talented streamers who do not get the recognition they deserve and overshadowed by other streamers. If you want a VOD review, go to a smaller streamer and ask them for one. Usually, they will be free and they will be just as good as something that costs $20. They will appreciate the company and they will be happy to provide extra information that a lot of paid VOD reviewers will not do.
1 to 1 Coaching
One-to-one coaching is actually a really good way of understanding what you’re doing wrong and also being able to talk to somebody who is better at the game than you. I do feel that this can be beneficial to some players, but I do not feel that the price that many people charge warrants the advice that they give.
This falls back to what I was saying earlier about focusing on the things that they say but then don’t actually improve as a whole. Whenever somebody pays for coaching, usually they’ll see a slight increase in ELO but then they will get to a wall or slump and then drop back down to where they were before. This is pretty easy to understand because they’ve been focusing on what somebody has told them to be improving on and not actually improved at the game.
One-to-one coaching can be good however, I just personally do not feel that paying $15 to $50 for an hour is worth the money.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, I’m just some random person on the internet and if you don’t want to take my advice, I don’t blame you. It can be quite nice to have a one-to-one personal session with a streamer who you are a big fan of. I just feel that you can get more bang for your buck by not paying inflated prices for something you can do yourself. One way of doing this is by applications such as Mobalytics or going out of your way to try and figure out how to improve your self.
All the information you could ever need to improve and climb is already out there for free on the internet. If you want to truly improve at League of Legends, paying for a one-off or a one-to-one review from somebody is not going to help you improve as a whole. You have to put in the work yourself to improve to actually maintain your skill and play at a high level. No streamer, reviewer or coach is going to help you maintain at that level unless you are paying for it.
As a league of Legends content specialist and creator, all of my work and articles are out there for free which you can find here. Give them a read, and then come back to me if you’re still struggling.
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Hi there, I hope you enjoyed this guide. If you did, maybe you’d like to show your support by checking out my Twitch channel. I stream very frequently and if you have any questions about this guide or improving at League of Legends, please come by some time and ask me a question or two. Thank you for your support, and I hope to see you soon :) PS, I’m Diamond 1 if that helps.
