LoL Ping | How to Fix Your High Ping In League of Legends

League of Legends is an online game, which means that you need to have a decent connection to the servers for the game to function. Sometimes you’ll experience pretty awful gameplay because of a thing everyone calls ‘high ping’.

But, what does that even mean? What is considered a ‘high ping’ and when does it start to impact gameplay? And the most important question of all — if we experience high ping, how do we fix it? Let’s go over all the details, so you know how to have the best in-game experience next time you boot up League of Legends.

• Everything You Need to Know About LoL MMR

LoL Ping: What Is Ping In League of Legends?

Ping is a term synonymous to latency. It basically means the time it takes data to be transmitted from your device, to the server and then back to your device. So, the longer it takes for data to be transmitted and bounced back, the worse your ping is.

Latency is counted in milliseconds (ms) and is extremely significant for online games. Especially ones like League of Legends where any second of lag can mean life or death. Seriously, a Blitzcrank hook can come out of nowhere.

Now, one thing that is important to note as well, is that we have the ping that means latency in League of Legends, but there are also ‘pings’ in LoL with which you can quickly communicate your intent within the game. Just so we’re on the same page, we are not talking about those types of pings today.

Are Ping And FPS related?

Ping and FPS are not the same thing. While you want to have an extremely low ping when playing online games, you’ll want a high FPS number. FPS stands for frames per second and refers to the rate at which back to back images appear on a display.

Take old-school animated films that were filmed frame-by-frame the rougher the movements between images are the choppier the animation will be. This goes for standards today as well. To have a game running smoothly, you’ll want high FPS numbers.

Where To Check Ping In League of Legends

Now let’s move onto the important stuff. Where can we check the ping in League of Legends? Well, follow these steps, and you’ll be able to see if your game is running smoothly:

1. Start a game of League
2. Press CTRL + F
3. The ping time and FPS should be displayed in the top right corner of your screen.

If that didn’t work, then you’ll have to go back to the League client and follow these steps to enable the CTRL + F display hotkey.

1. Go to LoL Client
2. Click the Settings menu in the top right corner
3. Go on the Hotkeys tab and scroll down to Display
4. Open the drop-down menu
5. Set the Hotkey for Toggle FPS Display to CTRL + F
6. Start the game and press the newly set hotkeys to see Ping and FPS

What Is Considered Bad Ping In League of Legends?

League of Legends can be played on latency of up to 100-150 ms in most cases. The game might not be as smooth, but you’ll be able to play nonetheless, though most would prefer a Ping under 100.

Once the Ping moved up into the high 100s and anything above it is considered bad ping or high ping, and it will make games completely unplayable.

Why Do You Have Bad Ping?

There are multiple reasons why you could be experiencing high ping. Either your internet connection is dogs*** or you’re playing on the Oceania server while living in Europe. Of course, there could be some issues with the Riot servers as well, which is why we’ve also got a list of all error codes for you to check out.

So, let’s go over some reasons that cause high ping in Riot Games’ MOBA — and if we’re honest, with any other online game.

Those are just a few examples of reasons that you could be experiencing ping in your League of Legends games. So now we’ve got to figure out how to fix them, right?

High Ping | Solutions to Fix in League of Legends

To fix bad ping, you’ll need a stable and decent internet connection. That is a given, but there are quite a few other ways to fix your ping. As you just read, there are many reasons why ping is bad, and we need to tackle all of them!

Download the latest game patch

This one is quite simple. You’ll be able to have a much better experience playing on the newest patch. If you somehow manage to get into a game without updating the patch, then hat’s off to you. Riot usually updates the patch automatically once you open the client.

Close Bandwith Hogging Apps

As already mentioned above, some applications can hog your bandwidth and make your latency shoot up into the sky. This happened to me on my old computer whenever I had steam open while playing League. So, how do we know which apps are blocking our path to perfect Ping?

1. Press the Windows Logo Key and R to bring up the ‘Run dialog box’
2. Type in ‘resmon’ and hit Enter
3. In the Resource Monitor, on the Network tab you’ll see the total B/sec column, which can tell you what applications are using how much bandwidth.
4. Right-click the application using all the bandwidth and select end process

Another thing to note is that it could also be your antivirus. Disabling antivirus could help your ping as well. If that helps, you should consider contacting your antivirus provider.

Disable Your Proxy & VPN

As already mentioned, you could be having issues due to a VPN. If you are using a VPN, League should technically work for you, but it could disrupt the flow of data. Follow these steps to disable your Proxy or VPN to see whether it’ll improve your ping

1. Go to your setting and click Network & Internet
2. Go onto the Proxy tab
3. Move toggles of Automatically detect settings and use setup script to off
4. Disconnect from VPN
5. Launch LoL

Use The Hextech Repair Tool

Riot Games has created their own repair tool which can help out in situations like this. This tool will analyze the installation files of the game to check whether there are any bad apples in there. The tool will then delete the compromised files and replace them with a fresh copy.

You can download the Hextech repair tool right here. Make sure you run it as administrator as well, and then it should fix some of the problems you're experiencing.

Swap To An Ethernet Connection

If none of the steps above worked, then we suggest trying to swap from Wi-Fi to an Ethernet connection. If it's your internet connection that isn’t working, well then how do you expect an online video game to work, right?

Ethernet connections are much more stable than wireless. So, if your mom has the router in the kitchen, but your room is on the other end of the house in the basement, then you might not have as good of a connection.

A Few More Tips To Try To Improve Ping

There are a few more things you can test out to see whether you can improve your ping. If none of those work, then it’s just a sign from the big man up top to finally quit this hellish game.

Hopefully these steps will help you with your ping problems. There are many reasons why you could be experiencing these issues in any Riot Games’ game or even in other video games. These options should work and let you get back to spending time on your favorite games.