The LoL Scoreboard: What Every Number Actually Tells You

Ten numbers on the scoreboard, sorted by how much they actually tell you. The two people argue about are near the bottom, and the most useful one is printed small next to the number everybody reads.

League of Legends Guide

The Scoreboard

What Each Number Means

Every number on the scoreboard describes something, and almost none of them describe what people use them for. Ranked, most useful first.

Creep Score Vision Score Gold Kill Participation Kills, Deaths, Assists Damage and Wards

Creep score

Minions killed, printed small next to the number everybody actually reads. It's the most useful figure on the screen because it's almost entirely within your control and almost entirely a description of your own habits.

Nobody else can take it from you or hand it to you. Compare yours to your opposite number (the same role on the other team) after a loss and you'll frequently find the game there rather than in the kill line.

Vision score

The one number that tries to measure something invisible, and it does a decent job of it: wards that lasted and were useful, wards you cleared, and time spent giving your team information.

Most players have never once looked at it, so it has the most left to teach them. Compare yours to the same role on the other team. If theirs is double, that's a description of who knew where everybody was.

Gold earned

The closest thing League has to a single measure of how well you did, because almost everything you did well eventually turns into some.

Compare it instead of just reading it. Your gold against the same role on the other team is a cleaner verdict on your lane than any kill count, and the gap between the two teams at the moment things went wrong usually explains the entire game.

Kill participation

The share of your team's kills you were involved in (your kills plus assists, against the team's total), and the most honest answer available to "were you playing the same game as everybody else".

A low figure with a good kill line usually means you were farming somewhere while the game got decided without you. A high figure with a bad one means you kept turning up to fights you couldn't affect. Both are fixable, and neither shows up in the numbers people argue about.

Kills, deaths and assists

Deaths are the only part of that line unambiguously yours. Kills can be handed to you and assists can be luck, but every death was a position you chose to stand in. The count hides the timing though, and timing is most of it: three deaths in the first ten minutes and three in the last five are wildly different games.

Assists are treated as a consolation prize and deserve better. An assist means you were there, and being there is the hard part. A high count on a support or jungler is close to a description of the role done properly; on a solo laner it means you attended every fight and finished none of them.

Damage and wards

Damage to champions is the number people post in chat, and it counts damage rather than results. Poke into a shield that healed back looks identical to the damage that ended a fight.

Damage taken gets used as an argument more than any other figure, usually by whoever has the biggest one. Granted, absorbing damage and surviving is doing your job. Absorbing it and dying is a fight nobody needed. The number is identical either way, so it settles nothing.

Wards destroyed is far more informative than wards placed, and for some reason hardly anyone looks at it. Killing vision costs you time, so anything above zero means somebody was thinking about the map. Wards placed is last because you can inflate it without trying: it proves you had the habit and says nothing about whether the habit helped.

---

The short version

Read creep score, vision score and gold against your opposite number, and treat kill participation as the check on whether you were where the game was happening. The two numbers people fight about (damage dealt and damage taken) prove the least.

For the systems behind those numbers, our gold guide covers where income comes from, and our vision guide covers what a good vision score is actually made of.