This is How You Play LoL With a Controller

League of Legends has been a PC game since its inception, and by default you play it best with a mouse and keyboard. That's the way it is and that's the way it will always be! At least that's what hat you'll hear from a real LoL fan when you ask them if you can play the game with a controller.

And... well, they are right. Officially, League doesn't support controllers. But that doesn't mean you can't still go off-meta and play with one. Whether you should and whether it makes you better at the game is certainly another question.... but we're not here to judge you for your life choices. 

• Controllers are fun and all, but get the new HUAWEI phone to absolutely own Wild Rift

But if you just want to try it out, or for some reason you only have a controller and no mouse and keyboard, we'll explain here how you can play League with a controller. Maybe you'll even be better than usual with it.

It'll Work With These Controllers

The choice of controller is largely up to you. You can use any controller that you can connect to your PC. Theoretically, it also works with the Guitar Hero guitar or a joystick. But are you such a masochist to play LoL with a guitar hero guitar...? We sure as hell hope not. 

JoyToKey is What You Need

The whole thing is made possible by a small program called JoyToKey. You can download it for free to configure your controller for LoL. It allows you to reconfigure the keys and assign them to replace your key inputs in the game.

To do this, first connect the controller to your PC and open the program. On the left side you can create a new profile for League of Legends and use it for the game. If you now press a button on the controller, you will see on the right side which button this is in the program. It will be highlighted in yellow.

Now it gets a bit complicated, because you have to assign the buttons. For example, if you press the A button on your Xbox controller, "Button1" will light up. If you click on "Edit Button Assignment" below, you can assign a key on the keyboard to this button in the first field above. For example, if you enter "S" here, the A button on your controller will activate the "S" key on the keyboard.

Example of How to Configure The Buttons

Try to keep the configuration as simple as possible at the beginning. We would place the champion's abilities on the X, A, Y and B buttons of an Xbox controller. Items, on the other hand, can be controlled with the four shoulder buttons or the directional pad.

• If you're not a fan of Xbox, then you can also use a PlayStation controller for your PC

The mouse control is a bit difficult. For this, it's best to use the sticks. These are "Stick1" and "Stick2" with four directions each. Here you go to "Edit button assignment" and then to "Mouse". At "Mouse Movement" you can select the direction in which the stick should move the mouse. Here you can also set the speed and how fast the mouse accelerates when you move the stick. You will probably have to play around a bit to find the right settings.

It's best to play around with the settings a bit to see what feels most comfortable. However, you might not want to start off playing ranked with the new controls right away, since it can be a bit unfamiliar, especially at the beginning.

Disclaimer: We highly doubt you're going to play any better with a controller, but it could add some new ways to try and lose LP, because let's be honest you're not getting out of Gold IV anyway.