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League of Legends (aka LoL) is incredibly popular and one of the most well-loved competitive games out there. Whether you play competitively or just play to have fun, it’ll be frustrating if your connection to the online servers isn’t good.
It won’t be easy to get the desired results when you have a high ping. Is there a way that you can reduce ping in League of Legends?
Some people – myself included – get frustrated by the ping LoL problem. – And that’s coming from someone who has played online games on a 56k modem!
Luckily, there are things that you can do to try to reduce ping so that you can have a better experience.
Read on to learn how to reduce ping in League of Legends. This should prove useful in League of Legends and other online games.
If it turns out ping isn’t the problem, check out How to Show FPS in League of Legends. It offers some other suggestions to check to locate other reasons for low FPS.
Ping meaning and definition
Before moving forward, it will be good to ensure that you understand what ping is. Many people get confused by the term and what it means.
Ping is how long it takes to send data from your computer or gaming console to the server and then back again, measured in milliseconds (ms). So ping is closely associated with latency. When you have high ping times, the information takes a long time to make the full trip back. This leads to significant latency issues that will impact how you’re able to play the game.
No matter what action you’re trying to take, high ping will make it harder for you to get the expected results. In a competitive game where quick reactions are necessary, high ping will make it impossible to do well.
You can see why the ping issue is something that many players are discussing now. If you’ve been having latency problems, you likely have a high ping.
Thankfully, you can turn things around if you know what steps to take. Getting things better will allow you to have a much smoother experience with the game.
Also, check out how to check how many hours you played LoL.
What Is Considered to Be Good Ping?
Now you’ll want to know what a good ping number is. When you’re playing League of Legends, you can set it up so that your ping will show up at all times.
This allows you to ensure that you have a good ping number. To make this happen, go to settings and click on display so that you can enable “toggle FPS display.”
The ping number will now show up in the corner of the screen. You can see it while you’re in the loading screen very easily. A good ping range is between 10 and 70. Having a ping that is above 70 is going to be bad.
Competitive players try to get ping to an even lower number than the normal range. You’ll find e-sports players playing with a ping number as low as one.
Achieving this on normal servers won’t be possible, but it’s interesting that these players compete with such a low ping number.
All you need to focus on is getting the ping within the 10 to 70 range to play the game properly.
Also, check out how to unlock Ranked Mode in LoL.
This content was first published on GamersNotAllowed.com
1. Start by Restarting Your Router, Modem, and PC
Start by restarting your router, modem, and PC to try to fix ping issues. If you notice that your ping number is a bit higher than you want it to be, then there’s a good chance that restarting your router, modem, and PC will fix things.
It should make it so that things will be much more stable in your game. Some players do this before they decide to play League of Legends each time.
Ideally, you should be restarting your router once per week. It keeps things running a lot smoother overall. If you ever notice your internet lagging or streaming videos taking a long time to buffer, it’s wise to restart the router.
It doesn’t take long to do, and it’ll make it so that you can have a more enjoyable time when gaming online. If this is all that you need to do to reduce ping, then you’ll be able to move forward and have fun playing now.
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2. Renew Your IP Address
Another potential fix that can help ping issues involves renewing your IP address. It can ensure that issues with lag won’t be nearly as bad.
To get this done on a Windows PC, you’ll need to hold down the windows button and the R key. This opens the command prompt, and you’ll now be able to enter “ipconfig/release” before pressing the enter key.
This will renew your IP address. It’s a very simple action that you can take to try to make things better. Since it doesn’t take long at all to do, this is well worth trying if restarting your modem, router, and PC didn’t work.
If it doesn’t help much, then there might be other issues to solve. Thankfully, there are more fixes that you can try.
3. Stop Using a Wireless Connection
Wireless connections are going to have more lag than wired connections. For this reason, it might be worthwhile to plug in an Ethernet cable.
You can run an Ethernet cable from your router or modem all the way to your PC or gaming console. Depending on where your video game setup is located in your home, you might need to run a long Ethernet cable.
This might seem like a pain at first, but it really isn’t that difficult.
If you’re serious about competitive online gaming, then it’s a wise idea to use a wired connection. It ensures that you’ll be able to play with the most stable Internet connection possible. Also, your ping number will naturally be much lower.
4. Consider Updating Your Drivers
When playing on PC, you might be having ping issues for reasons other than your internet connection. It’s possible that you might have out-of-date PC drivers.
Old drivers can make things very tricky when you’re trying to keep latency issues down. It can interfere with the ping and make it worse than it should be.
Going through and updating your PC drivers might not be fun. It’s not hard to do, though, and it can wind up helping you significantly. Go through and look for outdated drivers that you can update. It’ll be well worth your time.
5. Shut Down Unnecessary Applications on Your PC
Having a bunch of applications running on your PC will slow things down. Your ping will be worse if you have a lot of things running on your PC while you’re trying to play.
To have the best experience, you should only be running necessary applications and the League of Legends game itself. So you just want to take the time to shut down any unnecessary applications that might be running.
You don’t need to have other applications open while you’re focusing on the game. It’s easy enough to open those applications back up and run them when you’re done gaming. Focus on gaming when you’re in gaming mode. It’ll help you to keep ping issues from being too pronounced.
6. Use a Diagnostic Repair Tool
Riot Games (the creators of League of Legends) have actually made a diagnostic tool specifically for League of Legends players. It’s known as the Hextech Repair Tool.
Running this tool is going to automatically identify problems with your PC that might be making your ping too high. After running the tool, you’ll be able to take steps to solve the problems that you’ve been warned of.
This diagnostic tool is available by going to Riot Support. There will be onscreen instructions to follow that will allow you to download the diagnostic tool. Using the tool is very simple, and it’s a truly easy way to troubleshoot.
You can figure things out so that you can move forward and enjoy the game as intended.
In Closing
I hope you found this guide on how to reduce ping in LoL helpful.
Fixing ping issues will allow you to better enjoy playing League of Legends. It’s such a competitive game that you’re going to want to have the lowest latency possible.
Use the methods above to ensure that you’ll be able to play the game without being frustrated by lag. You should be able to get your ping number in an acceptable range.
This is truly one of the best competitive video games in modern times. Don’t let a high ping number ruin your ability to play and be competitive.
There are so many simple things that you can do to make things better. You don’t need to be a tech wizard to fix your ping problem.
If you have any friends or family members who are struggling with lag in League of Legends, then share what you learned today with them. You should be able to help them make things better so that they can have fun playing, too.
Remember, for the easiest experience, it’ll be wise to use a wired connection instead of a wireless one. Whenever possible, it’s best to connect an Ethernet cable to your PC.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jan has played video games since the early 1980s. He loves getting immersed in video games as a way to take his mind off stuff when the outside world gets too scary. A lifelong gamer, the big interest led to a job as a lecturer on game sound at the University of Copenhagen and several written articles on video games for magazines.