[SmG Dragonrage]

Found this on gd. Pretty good post.

I Was probly the worst of the worst (a couple bans i have received give credit to that). and i can help you not make the same mistakes.

I just couldn't understand how i was SO much better than literally everyone i was playing with yet i still wasn't going anywhere on the brackets.. Because i was in fact good i did get great cs i did win most of my lanes and i did get lots of kills and little deaths.

But despite my best efforts i still couldn't rise above the 14xx low 15xx brackets. I read guides watched streams practiced and perfected countless champions and knew what to build when to build why i was roaming this and that.. But still i constantly broke even. (winning streaks were countered by losing streaks). Or went on tilt more often than not.

I even made friends who were diamonds and had them watch my games and tell me what i was doing wrong and they couldn't find any reason why i shouldn't be in the same elos that they were currently in Except for the occasional I would have recalled here instead of there.

If my diamond friends thought i should be there why couldn't i get there.. This made me more determined (and more angry when things didn't go the way i wanted them to.)

Season one Despite my best efforts i was stranded from 900 to 1100 elo.. (i managed to get carried to plat 2156 elo on another account tho not sure how i pulled that one out but i didnt earn it believe that)
Season two i was 1650 elo (still not good enough for me)
Season 3 before the new system i was 1732 and seeded in gold 1 after the reset.) This account sits at silver 2 at the moment (i have just started playing it again i gained 2 promo rank ups in 2 days working on number 3 consistantly winning) my other account (that seeded in gold 1) was in plat promos which i lost and then i decided to go back to my original account and grind out the elos (quite effectively here)And i finished season 4 at about platinum 3. Hopefully to be Diamond soon.

WHY WAS I NOT WINNING DESPITE HAVING THE ABILITY TO PLAY IN HIGH ELOS

I didn't understand it (as you probably dont understand now why you arent winning.) It was because i was playing a team game by myself. I had the ability to play the game at the high elo level but i couldn't play as a team to save my life.. Higher players can compensate for that lower players cannot

Simple answer? yes but not in the least.. League of legends is a team game.. You cannot win it by yourself but you can certainly lose it by yourself. If you go into a game with the mindset that everything you do is right and everything your teammates do is wrong so they dont deserve kills or your respect you will lose ALOT more games than you would if you were playing for your team instead of yourself.

Rage and You

Rage although it makes you feel good sometimes isn't going to help you win. Not in the slightest. if your top laner dies giving first blood and you call him a scrub and the worst top laner in the world and tell him to go kill himself.. chance are that he will in fact go kill himself (the second he gets back to lane because hes angry at you trash talking back at you because you made him angry)

Trash talking is time spent not focused on the game and time spent not focused on the game is time you are missing the small opportunities to come back from your bad smart because 90 percent of your attention is on raging at the guy who's fault you think it is.

If you decide its just bad luck and move on about your own game its a better option...

HOWEVER the best option is that you keep an eye on your lanes.. (this is easiest from mid and jungle.. Use the bar on your left and monitor his hp and if its low take a peek in his lane to see what hes doing.. if he is in danger of dying politely ask him to base and let him know if he needs help to make up the xp or cs you will gank for him shortly.. Or if you think you can turn the bad situation into a good one by ganking his lane by all means do that..

If you constantly look for small objectives to better YOUR TEAMS standings you increase your chances of winning.

Although sometimes Despite all your best efforts someone will still rage and just really not care what you have to say or about receiving any help you give him.. in cases like this just mute him and completely ignore him.. if he starts causing drama within your team encourage them to mute him as well.


Another scenario is you are playing mid lane you roam to bot lane with your jungler and manage to kill the enemy support BUT you miss a skill shot and the adc gets away with a sliver of health.. (because you smartly didnt decide to chase him past his base turrets.) you could say this is good...you might chalk up the one that got away as just bad luck..

This in fact is not true because had you landed that skill shot you would have gotten another kill (and possibly a dragon out of it) thus increasing your chances of winning even more than you would have with just the one kill. So instead of calling this one luck why not start calling it your own bad play.. After all that is what it was.. You played bad and missed a skill shot costing your team 400g + assist money + 190g (dragon) or 150g (tower) each roughly 1500g for your team.. Thats ALOT of money that could be put towards you winning.

You have to evaluate every situation in a split second to determine your best actions and you cant be wrong or you will lower your chances of winning the game.. From Mathematical standpoint consider every bad decision you make an added .25% chance you will lose, Raise this to 1% if you die becaues of your mistake and raise it to 25% if you get your entire team killed because they followed your bad decision.

Objectives and Goals

ELO: obviously the long term goal here. But let me tell you this.. Don't worry about it.. Don't even look at it at all your lp and your division or points don't matter..

What matters is that you improve your own game play (the only thing you control) every game. Set goals for yourself in game.. Whether it be getting better cs than you did last game or roaming etc.. This is how you improve. Recognize what went wrong last game.

Didn't look at your map and died to a gank when your lane was warded set a goal to look at your map 10 times per minute until it becomes habit.. (set up a dinger if you have to) The average pro player looks at his map around 45 times a minute without missing a beat. Keep in mind thats only 15 seconds hes actually watching his own lane .

Lost your tower because you got zoned by your opponent over a bad trade? set a goal to only trade in lane when your opponent would sacrifice cs to trade back or is unable to trade back at all..

Die because your opponent ignited you and yours wasnt up? go write down the cooldowns of ignite and flash and time his summoner spells next game...

I am losing because my team is bad

This may be so. But you yelling at them calling them bad definitely wont make them play any better. In fact it would achieve quite the opposite effect.. If you bait your team into fighting with you they spend 50 percent of their brain trying to explain why you are a worse player than they are ( you all know you've been there) and they play worse than they were before.

Every little thing you do effects the outcome of the game whether it be in a positive way or a negative one. The best you can do is to eliminate most if not all of the things that YOU do that have negative outcomes. Some of it will come to experience some of it will come with quick thinking. Don't make the same mistakes twice learn from what you do wrong and what your teammates do wrong.

Communication is key.. People on your team will be more inclined to listen to you if you have been making solid decisions all game rather than bad ones. use this to your advantage..

what if i have a bad game

Im sure you will at some point be in a lane where you just get rocked. Don't get mad because the person you are playing against is better than you.. don't rage at your jungler because he didn't gank. If you lose your lane its no ones fault but your own.

But if you do lose it the worst you can do is get angry. Playing with a cool head gives you a MUCH greater chance to get back in the game than if you played angry. Ask yourself why you lost what did you do wrong. What did he do right to beat you?

If you had warded would you have lived those ganks?
If you had farmed the jungle creeps and let your tower die could you have caught up by late game?

I cant tell you how many games i have gotten rocked in a lane and come back to win because i kept a cool head and farmed jungle camps (and my lane when it was safe) while looking for opportunities to gank other lanes. In Situations where you are losing your lane and cant come back.. Your goal is to NOT die under any circumstances.. Farm whatever you can without dying. Let your team know you are no longer able to win this lane.. Not dying in situations like this is winning on a small level.. (you might even get those guys that get over anxious and make a stupid tower dive because they are bored or something equally dumb)

If you constantly stay on the look out for opportunities to lessen the gap between you and your lane opponent you will find that often times you can catch up alot easier than you think.. Here are some ways how

1. A jungle gank is the most obvious but often not entirely possible.

2. Did your enemy just back while you were still healthy in lane? Did the enemy jungle just smite steal your wraif? is he ganking top lane? if you are mid top or even bot

Maybe its time to group for dragon.. 190 gold for your entire team is nothing to scoff at.. If dragon is down maybe its time to roam mid and 2v1 that tower or top tower.

Maybe you can gank bot through the tribush..

Maybe its just as simple as pushing two waves before he gets back farming your wraifs and then going back yourself.. (two waves is roughly 410 gold that's around 500 gold if you farm wraifs too and 540 if you have a cannon minion in one of those waves.. That's like shutting down a 6 kill enemy and it was 100 percent free. If that didn't satisfy you don't forget to add in the exp you got that your enemy didn't.

Little things like this (which are actually big things) can drastically reduce the deficit you have gotten yourself into and thus increase your chances of winning.. But had you not made the mistakes that got you behind in the first place you wouldn't have to worry about catching up.. But mistakes happen no matter how pro you are.. the real pros, however, know what to do to make a comeback from those mistakes.

Mistakes Happen
A wise man once said.. If you aren't Fking up then you aren't learning anything. And this is 100 percent true.. If you don't make a mistake (or for this discussion don't realize you've made one.) You can never hope to improve from it. How are you to know that pantheon absolutely dominates riven in lane if she doesn't level her shield first until you actually go ham with pantheon or get dominated by one as riven. So yea Go crazy and by all means lose some games.. This game is designed to lose 50 percent of the time.. if thats something you don't think you can handle.. You should probably find a new game

Studying

Starting to sound like school??? well if you think about it, it kinda is.. Top teir players spend about 9 hours a day playing 4 hours a day watching the games they lost. And another 4 hours a day studying, theory crafting and crunching numbers.

If you want to be As good as a pro you have to know every little minute detail about EVERYTHING you will encounter.. At this very moment if you cant tell me

1. What the cooldown of leonas ultimate
2. if she used her exhaust at 12 minutes and shes running 0/13/17 masteries when it will be back up
3. How long the new s4 wards she placed in the tribrush and lane brush.
4. Where is the enemy ww if you just spotted him at blue buff and he has madreds razor and moba boots..

Then you probably haven't studied enough to be a pro yet.
all of the little things matter. If you don't know them. There's no shame in looking them up when you need to.. Repetition is key to success.
Fun ways to improve your Gameplay

LAST HITTING: Ive found/learned/made up several fun and not so monotonous ways to learn to last hit..

For the begginer.. (boring one) go into a game BY yourself.. pick any champion... (preferably one you are going to be taking into live games or are interested in learning or a soraka if you larn to last hit with soraka you are a god)
Try to get at least 100 cs in 15 minutes without taking the tower or pushing the wave.. ONLY use mana if you absolutely must in order to not miss a last hit.. If you can hit 200 in 20 minutes?? you are a god.. You can add in wraif farming as well in this mode in between waves.. But if you do it right the wave will ALWAYS remain in the middle of the lane..

FOR THE INTERMEDIATE (kinda fun)
Bot games are your friend.. Take a champion with a really really weak auto attack... like soraka is my favorite and go into the mid lane where you will be essentially 1v1ing an opponent.. Focus ONLY on cs.. Not on killing the enemy.. ( you can do this in customs as well.. But the bots are pretty stupid in custom games.) if you can get 100 cs without killing your bot getting killed by your bot or taking the tower then you are a pretty solid cser.. Again you can farm wraifs and wolves and things when your jungler is not around... (be sure to communicate that you dont want ganks you are ONLY here to practice last hitting..

ADVANCED TACTICS
THE 2v1 BOT GAME.... Again take your champion. ( try it with soraka and not using spells.. If you can do it with her you can do it with anybody) Tell your team before the game starts you want to 2v1 the bot lane... To practice cs and not to gank for you... Try to get your 100 15 minute cs.. This forces you to REALLY pay attention to your positioning and know when you need to push your lane back.. And teaches you to cs under constant pressure.. If you can do this without losing your tower dying or getting ganked you sir can win lanes....

Pro tip learn to freeze your lane just out of tower range. To do this you have to push back just enough so your creeps dont die to tower but not so much you allow yourself to be zoned..

AS always you can 1v1 with a friend (preferably better than you) because after all how can you get better if you always win.. Through winnning we learn nothing.. it is our defeats that give us knowledge..

Picking your Champ And Optimizing Him for The game
Every Champion has its Own niche in the game and each excel at certain things (some are inherently stronger than others, Ill leave to you to decide which.) Which champion you play is solely up to you. I would suggest you play something fun to you. After all if you dont like it how can you ever expect to be interested enough to get good at it. I would suggest Learning 2 champions for every role, In case you get stuck in something you dont want.. You have them to fall back on.. Now if you dont have to don't ever play more than one.. If you want to get better play lots of champions.. if you want to gain ranking.. play one..

This one champion that you pick can be anyone because you are going to get so good at him/her that you will rarely lose.. (you still have your fallback champions to play if you get banned out or dont get the role that you want. Me myself i main the mid lane.. My champions of choice for this are Twisted Fate, And lux or nidalee when he gets banned.. All of them have two things in common.. They can push.. They can roam.. Two of them bring heavy cc and one of them brings huge map precense because she is highly mobile.. For top lane i play Jayce Chogath and Singed.. For jungle i Play Nunu, Moakai, and amumu. And bot lane is draven ashe graves and Thresh blitz Leona. See the pattern? all very strong snowbally champions that bring huge amounts of utility to their team..

YOUR RUNES
You can gain small advantages though your runes and masteries before a game ever starts. If you are top vs a heavy ad harasser stack on some extra armor and take the armor in the tank tree.. If you are mid vs a weak early laner like ryze You can rune and mastery for hard early agression to delay his late game monster status.. see the trend this is all pretty basic stuff. (you still need your cookie cutter pages for when the matchup is unclear.) All the pros have around 20 runes pages that are highly specialized for certain matchups that are fairly common. And they are better than you so do what they do.

YOUR ITEMS

Your build is not set in stone. Every game is different so you should build to counter each game.. Dont get set in the "i raped with this last game so it will work this game" it wont. your core items remain the same everything else does not

Playing on Tilt

Everyone has had those days where they feel like they just cannot win.. You go on massive losing streaks of more than three games and you find yourself just getting extremely frustrated and playing worse than you would under normal cirumstances..This is called going on tilt and it greatly effects your performance.. Im here to say DONT DO THAT... if you arent 100 percent dont play..

Heres what you can do to prevent it...

Dont care about winning.. If you genuinely dont care about winning and are strictly using each and every game to improve yourself then you will NEVER go on tilt because you will take the best out of every situation..

For those of you who cant do that.. Take a break go outside.. Do some pushups.. Vent your frustrations outside of the game.. THen come back with a cool level head.. Ignore that match history.. if you simply cant stop playing.. Have some less stressful arams or normals until you win a few in a row to regain confidence..

If you lose two games in a row just stop playing ranked.. YOu wont help yourself in this state of mind.. EVER..


CONCLUSION

The one thing constant in ALL of your games is you. It has been proven countless times that if you are good enough you will raise in points.. But truth be told who cares if you are having a good time.. Improve yourself and the points will come..

Make as many good plays as you can and all the bad plays your teammates make just sum it up as bad luck. If you are constantly looking for small ways to improve your chances of winning you will win more than you lose.

And as long as you win more than 50 percent of your games you will gain points and rise in the ladders.

Rage wont help EVER. Blaming wont help EVER.. 90 percent of the time when you rage at your teammates for something it is something that you could have prevented from happening had you kept a cool head.

Your mummy make a terrible engage and you didnt spam b pings at him beforehand YUP that is your fualt.. If you did spam those pings good for you, just sum it up as bad luck that he made the bad engage and let it go..

Control the things you can AND dont worry about the things you cant.. If you improve yourself as a player you will improve your elo. Simple as that..

Tl:dr stop being lazy and read it for some good insight on how to get better at league.

[Ray88]

legit tl;dr

[Alloy]

Also showing yourself as a role model to you're teammates also help. I remember a time where we were getting recked because it was a 4v5, then my teammates was about to surrender and I told them a lie and said im a plat smurf, and I said if we brought this to late we will have a chance (it was in my promos). They agreed to strive and then we made probably the most epic comeback I have ever witnessed.

Just suck a little ***** to you're teammates and it'll will carry you to high elo, as Sky said. :)

[Beasty]

Also showing yourself as a role model to you're teammates also help. I remember a time where we were getting recked because it was a 4v5, then my teammates was about to surrender and I told them a lie and said im a plat smurf, and I said if we brought this to late we will have a chance (it was in my promos). They agreed to strive and then we made probably the most epic comeback I have ever witnessed.

Just suck a little ***** to you're teammates and it'll will carry you to high elo, as Sky said. :)

This is why I literally never surrender.

I've only been playing for like 2 months and I've seen some insane comebacks. I never like to surrender.

[Alloy]

^Same but you're teammates just give up and then they start intentionally feeding to get it over with or go afk. They were about to do that until i said I'm a plat smurf and I'll carry the team, then came the comeback.

[Omega]

Then I guess I carried the plat smurf. I got matched with alloy on my smurf. I thinks that's good advice. Gonna try last hitting tips.

[SmG Unreal]

he never said he was a plat smurf u dumbazz eloboosta

[BlackHaze]

I think mostly having good teamwork is the key I seem to keep getting honored for teamwork on my account hahaha.

[SmG Phoenix]

Yeah, teamwork is important, but individual skill is quite important as well.

[Mr. Maggot]

lol. I don't want to sound like a complete skeptic here because the post has useful information. But, I think these are very general tips that probably anyone who plays a game(not just LoL) half seriously knows.

In theory its sound but in practice, until you get enough experience its really hard to execute.