Competitive gaming is often associated with reaction time. See an opponent, recognize the threat, and respond before they do.
But some of the hardest moments in competitive games involve more than reacting quickly. Players must decide what deserves attention, which action makes sense, and how to coordinate with teammates while the situation is changing.
A 2026 study of a semi-professional League of Legends team examined this decision-making process during teamfights. Researchers identified 21 heuristics across five cognitive demands, providing a closer look at how experienced players use learned rules of thumb to navigate complex situations.
The findings don’t prove that heuristics make players react faster or win more games. But they offer a useful way to think about a common performance problem: hesitation and unclear decisions when too much is happening at once.
Why Fast Decisions Aren’t Just About Reaction Time
Reaction time and decision-making are related, but they aren’t the same thing.
Reaction time concerns how quickly you respond after a stimulus appears. Decision-making adds another problem: What should you do?
During a League of Legends teamfight, players may need to interpret multiple pieces of information while positioning, using abilities, tracking opponents, and coordinating with teammates.
There may not be time to consciously evaluate every possible action. That’s where heuristics become relevant.
What Researchers Studied in League of Legends
Researchers Jorge Rodríguez-Robaina and Loel Collins examined decision-making in one five-player semi-professional League of Legends team.
The study focused specifically on teamfights—fast, complex situations in which players must make decisions while multiple events unfold.
Rather than simply observing what players did, the researchers used Applied Cognitive Task Analysis (ACTA) to investigate the knowledge behind those decisions.
The research included knowledge-audit interviews and simulation-focused discussions designed to uncover how players interpreted situations and what information influenced their decisions.
The goal was to identify expert decision-making knowledge used during teamfights and examine how much of that knowledge was shared across teammates.
That’s an important distinction.
The study wasn’t testing whether a particular training method makes gamers better. It was examining how experienced players described the thinking behind their decisions.
What Is a Heuristic in Gaming?
A heuristic is essentially a rule of thumb that helps simplify a decision.
Imagine trying to consider every possible outcome before making each move during a teamfight. By the time you finished analyzing the situation, it may already have changed.
Experience can provide shortcuts.
Instead of evaluating every possibility from scratch, a player can recognize familiar cues and use previous knowledge to narrow the available choices.
The study identified 21 shared heuristics across five cognitive demands among the players it examined.
That doesn’t mean heuristics always produce the correct decision.
They’re context-dependent. A useful rule in one situation may become inappropriate when the situation, team composition, strategy, or game itself changes.
Their value is that they can help make a complicated decision more manageable.
The Five Cognitive Demands Behind Teamfight Decisions
The researchers organized the identified heuristics around five cognitive demands.
These represent different types of decision problems players encounter during League of Legends teamfights.
Tracking Important Information
Competitive games continuously present players with information.
The challenge isn’t simply seeing more information. It’s determining which information matters for the decision you’re making right now.
During a teamfight, experienced players may draw on knowledge about abilities, resources, positioning, and other changing conditions to decide what options remain available.
The practical takeaway is simple: good decision-making isn’t necessarily about processing everything. It can involve knowing what deserves attention.
Deciding What to Prioritize
Fast-moving situations frequently present more than one possible target, threat, or objective.
Players therefore need a way to determine what deserves priority.
A heuristic can simplify that decision by connecting recognizable conditions with previously learned priorities.
Instead of beginning a completely new analysis every time a fight starts, experience gives the player a framework for narrowing the choice.
Managing Position
Position changes what actions are available to both you and your opponents.
Players therefore need to interpret where they are relative to teammates, opponents, threats, and opportunities while a fight develops.
This isn’t simply mechanical movement.
It also requires deciding whether the current position still makes sense as new information appears.
Coordinating With Teammates
Team decisions create another layer of complexity.
Five individually reasonable decisions can still produce a poor result if the players are acting on different assumptions.
The research therefore examined not only individual heuristics but the extent to which decision-making knowledge was shared across team members.
If teammates interpret an important situation similarly, they may have a stronger common understanding of what should happen next.
That doesn’t mean teams can operate without communication. It means shared knowledge may help players understand what teammates are likely to do when familiar situations occur.
Adapting When the Situation Changes
Teamfights rarely remain static.
An expected play can fail. A player’s position can change. New information can make the original plan less useful.
Experienced decision-making therefore isn’t simply about following a fixed rule.
Players also need to recognize when the situation no longer matches the conditions that made a particular heuristic useful.
That’s one reason heuristics shouldn’t be confused with rigid instructions.
How Heuristics Can Simplify Decisions Under Pressure
Think about the difference between these two questions:
What are all the things I could possibly do right now?
and:
What matters most in this situation?
The second question narrows the problem.
That’s the practical value of studying heuristics.
A player who repeatedly encounters similar situations can begin developing rules for interpreting them. Instead of treating every encounter as completely new, previous experience provides a starting point for the next decision.
This doesn’t eliminate thinking. It organizes the decision.
And that distinction matters for players who feel as though their performance falls apart when the game becomes chaotic.
Sometimes the problem may not simply be that your physical reaction was too slow.
You may have been unsure what you were supposed to react to.
Why Shared Decision Rules Matter for Teams
The study also explored the degree to which the players shared decision-making knowledge.
Suppose two teammates interpret the same situation differently.
One expects the team to continue engaging. The other expects everyone to disengage.
Even if both players make their decisions quickly, they may still end up poorly coordinated.
Shared heuristics can provide a common framework for interpreting recurring situations.
The study does not establish that shared heuristics automatically improve win rates or make teams faster. But examining what teammates believe should happen in the same situation may help reveal differences in how they interpret a play.
How to Review Your Own Gaming Decisions
The research used formal cognitive-task-analysis methods, but competitive gamers don’t need to conduct a research study to borrow the underlying idea.
When reviewing gameplay, don’t look only at the final mechanical mistake.
Suppose you died during an engagement.
Instead of stopping at:
“My aim was bad.”
look earlier in the decision.
Ask yourself:
What information did I notice?
What was happening immediately before the decision?
What information did I miss?
Was there an important cue available that you didn’t recognize?
What did I expect to happen?
Your decision may have made sense based on an assumption that turned out to be wrong.
What rule was I following?
When you’ve encountered similar situations before, what do you normally do?
Did the situation actually fit that rule?
A heuristic that normally works can fail when important conditions change.
What would I look for next time?
Turn the mistake into a cue you can recognize in a future match.
This shifts VOD review from:
What did I do wrong?
to:
Why did that decision make sense to me at the time?
That question can reveal much more about how you make decisions under pressure.
Build Rules From Repeated Situations, Not One Mistake
One bad decision doesn’t necessarily mean you need a new rule.
Look for situations that repeat.
If the same type of mistake occurs across several games, compare the moments leading up to it.
You may discover that you’re repeatedly missing the same cue, prioritizing the wrong information, or applying the same assumption when conditions have changed.
A simple review framework is:
Situation → Cue → Decision → Result → Review
Situation: What was happening?
Cue: What information influenced you?
Decision: What did you choose?
Result: What happened?
Review: Was the rule behind your decision appropriate?
The goal isn’t to memorize hundreds of rules.
It’s to become more aware of how you’re making decisions when time is limited.
Decision Clarity vs. Reaction Speed
This distinction is particularly important when you’re trying to fix inconsistent gaming performance.
A player can respond quickly and still make the wrong decision.
Likewise, hesitation doesn’t necessarily mean their physical reaction time suddenly became slower.
Sometimes the problem is uncertainty:
Which opponent matters?
Should I commit or disengage?
What is my teammate about to do?
Which piece of information should I prioritize?
If the problem is decision clarity, spending more time exclusively training reaction speed may not address the underlying issue.
Instead, reviewing recurring situations and identifying the cues behind your decisions can help you understand where the hesitation begins.
What This Study Doesn’t Prove
The research provides an interesting look at esports decision-making, but its limitations matter.
The study examined five players from one semi-professional League of Legends team. It therefore does not establish that the same 21 heuristics are used by every League of Legends player, that professional players necessarily use the same decision rules, or that heuristics make players physically react faster.
It also doesn’t prove that using heuristics automatically improves gaming performance or that these specific decision-making patterns transfer directly to games such as Valorant or Counter-Strike.
Different games present different information, objectives, mechanics, and decision problems.
The broader idea of examining how experience shapes decision rules under time pressure may be useful elsewhere, but the specific findings should remain grounded in the League of Legends teamfight context the researchers actually studied.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a heuristic in gaming?
A heuristic is a rule of thumb that helps simplify a complicated decision. Rather than analyzing every possible option from the beginning, a player can use experience and recognizable cues to narrow the decision.
Is decision-making the same as reaction time?
No. Reaction time concerns how quickly someone responds to a stimulus. Decision-making involves interpreting information and choosing what action to take.
The study examined players’ decision-making knowledge and heuristics. It did not demonstrate that heuristics improve physical reaction time.
Do experienced gamers think faster?
This study doesn’t establish that experienced players’ brains process information faster. It shows that the semi-professional players studied used identifiable heuristics when reasoning about League of Legends teamfights.
Can heuristics improve gaming performance?
This study did not test whether teaching or using heuristics improves gaming performance. It identified heuristics present in the decision-making knowledge of the players studied.
Do these findings apply to Valorant or Counter-Strike?
Not necessarily. The research examined one semi-professional League of Legends team and focused specifically on teamfights. Other games involve different information and decision demands.
How can I improve my decision-making during games?
One practical approach is to review repeated situations rather than looking only at mechanical errors.
Identify what information you noticed, what you expected, what decision you made, and whether the rule behind that decision still made sense.
This is a practical application inspired by the study’s focus on decision knowledge, not a training method proven effective by the research itself.
The Bottom Line
When performance breaks down under pressure, the problem isn’t always slow reactions.
Sometimes the difficult part is deciding what deserves your attention and what to do next.
The 2026 League of Legends study identified 21 heuristics across five cognitive demands in one semi-professional team, offering a window into how experienced players use learned decision rules during complex teamfights.
The research doesn’t prove that heuristics make players faster or better. But it provides a useful framework for looking beyond mechanics when reviewing performance.
When a decision goes wrong, don’t only ask:
“Was I too slow?”
Ask:
“What information was I using to make that decision?”
Because fixing the decision may require something very different from fixing the reaction.
