Turning silver into gold.

oOCaillouOo·Sep 9, 2015·2 votes·1,294 views

I am a silver Iv player (hopefully i'll win my promos tomorrow and get to silver iii), but my overall goal is to get to gold, hopefully by the end of the season. I think this is a realistic gold. I'm not shooting for plat i or diamond V. Gold v will be sufficient. i was wondering what really separates silver players from gold so I know what to look for and improve in my games. For example plat 1 players are really strong with their laning mechanics, but there is a huge difference between a plat 1 player and a diamond v. Diamond players are much better at making decisions, especially in the late game (This is information I acquired from stream and youtube channels from SEVERAL diamond players.) I want to know what I need to improve to make it into gold. I have my main role, jungle noc which i fell i play really well, I also have nunu jungle and vi if noc is banned or picked, etc... If jungle is taken then I will support thresh, or nunu, or janna. What separates the silver from the gold, and to some of the gold players out there: what were some challenges you had to face or overcome to get to gold?

22 Comments

Drizzt StrifeSep 9, 20154 votes

Hello, oOCaillouOo.

I made a climb from Silver to Platinum in Season 3, and have been a mid-high tiered Platinum player since then. What I noticed then, and even now that separates a silver and a gold player are: Silver:

Inefficient laning (both farming and zoning farm).
Inefficient trading, or lack thereof (doesn't abuse power spikes, positional errors)
Generally not objective focused (doesn't capitalize on enemy mistakes or utilize advantages thoroughly)
Poor CS (better than Bronze, but by no means near where it could be)
Lack of knowledge (Not understand your enemies trading pattern, or "zone of threat")
Improper or non-optimal build paths.\
Very late on grouping with teammates to solidify a lead, or to turtle a disadvantage.
Overall decision making through all stages of the game non-optimal.
Not as mechanically skilled.

Gold:

Everything listed above, but with noticeable improvements to each.

This list can be much bigger, but I do not have the time to go over everything at the moment. I'll copy/paste an email I sent out to another Jungler who was looking for improvement. So here is that:

For improvement on map awareness what I do as a laner: after every 3 creeps I kill (or between waiting for the wave to reset) I look at the map. Junglers have a bit more freedom than laners, so I'd recommend to look at the map every time you kill a camp, and while you're routing your next path. What I do no matter what role I play (for Solo Queue where communication isn't entirely clear-cut) is I ping whenever an enemy champion appears on the map, and when they disappear I red ping their potential route. This helps alert your teammates who may lack map awareness themselves and increases your chances of winning a game tremendously. I even ping MIA's for other lanes if I catch it. I don't believe in the quote "It's not my job." and I absolutely hate when people use that. You're a team with your Solo Queue players as much as a Ranked 5's team, so be the man that helps your team, rather than let them deal with the problems.

Looking at the map is great, but means nothing if you don't ask the right questions.

Where are my teammates?
Do we have pressure in other locations on the map?
Where are my enemies? (especially the jungler and mid)
Does the enemy have pressure in other locations on the map?
Where do we lack vision? (these are the locations/routes enemies normally take when MIA)
Where are the minion waves located and which side is pushing? (If one of your lanes are pushing you can assist them by preparing a counter-gank, or if the enemies are pushing you can gank them- though be cautious of a counter-gank from the enemy team)

For farming: Junglers normally have much less farm then a standard laner through almost all stages of the game. It's just the nature of how often the jungler roams in comparison to other lanes. If you're having difficulties farming the jungle efficiently I'd look into your Jungle routes, and compare these to how higher players farm the jungle (spectate a high tier game right on the home screen of the client and just glue the camera on a jungler). If your farm is low, and you feel you have little to no impact (because you're starved of resources [levels and items]) then you're doing a couple things very inefficient. One being that you're trying to gank too much, and they're not paying off. You have to get creative with your gank paths, and deny enemy vision as much as possible. What I do when I jungle, is when I'm about to gank I smite raptures for the oracles buff, and try to gank a lane. I'll know if they see me coming because the oracles will proc when a ward spots me, and I can clear it. Another reason could be you're not clearing your jungle as efficiently as possible, meaning you're leaving particular camps up for too long, and their gold/xp values remain low for a pro-longed time. When you farm your jungle you want to clear as many camps as possible. Every time you kill a camp it respawns with stats and rewards (gold and xp) based off what time they respawned, so if you killed krugs as your first camp, and they respawn at ~3:25 and you don't farm them again until 20:00 minutes they still only give you gold and xp values fitted for a ~3:25 part of the game (which is not much in comparison). The only neutral monsters that refresh their stats while alive are baron and dragon (dragon based off the median level all 10 champions are) and baron based off what time it is in the game. Their rewards stay the same, however with the exception of the dragon tier buffs.

There is really no such thing as taxing a wave; it's called shoving- you should only shove the wave on 3 conditions:

You killed the laner(s) or forced them to base and you can deny the wave under tower fast enough before they return.
You plan to siege the tower and destroy it.
You want to establish pressure in a particular point to draw enemies towards that side of the map to allow a play to happen elsewhere. (a fake siege)

You should NOT shove the wave if you're laner(s) is really far behind (you actually want your lane to base after a kill or freeze the lane for as long as possible- you can make a return gank to keep the wave frozen so the enemy doesn't try to "reset" the wave.)

As to warding the map, my first base I almost buy 1 pink ward, 1 green ward, and 2-3 health pots with the first jungle item upgrade. If you got a kill before your first back you can add tier 1 boots this. I normally place my pink ward in my jungle entrances or by the sole river brush near Dragon. I place the green ward on the opposite sole brush. (note if your pink gets cleared buy another on your next base) and place the next pink ward more aggressively or defensively depending on the tempo of the game. The reason it's important to have these locations warded early is it enables your mid laner to roam, catches if the enemy's mid laner is roaming top or bottom, and also spots crucial choke points early on the enemy jungler will route towards to gank your mid laner. That 175g can snowball the game to your advantage. I cannot emphasize that enough. You should always buy 1-2 wards each back and swap for red trinket once your jungle item and at least tier 1 boots are finished. Your next item should be sightstone, unless you're going a more carry oriented jungler.

I hope this information helps.

Cheers, Drizzt Strife

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

XD very extensive and a lot of things i didn't know. Thank you very much I copy and pasted most of this into some notes i created for myself that I go over before I play ranked. I will start applying those minimap questions gameplay immediately. Very good points you make on jungle farming, I didn't know that camps stay stagnant if you don't clear them. I have a bad habit of leaving my crugs alone, partially because they can be hard to clear early if you don't have good health or smite isn't up. When it comes to shoving the lane how do i go about this, I notice a lot that when i gank a lane (lets say mid) and get a kill, the mid laner will immediately recall to hit the shop. If they don't listen to me telling them to stay, and I know i can't push the lane by myself before someone shows up. Am i just forced to give up the push, what alternative options do I have after I get a kill ganking if pushing is not an option and I can't get an objective like dragon either?

Archon XSep 9, 20152 votes

Well I'm a gold 4 support main so I can't necessarily comment on your jungle style but as a support...

I'd suggest focusing on aura items, while item 3143 is nice unless you can really pull off it's active it's a selfish item, I'd prefer a item 3110 because its aura is quite strong. If you have a real itch to slow the enemy team you can always go item 3800 which is a great alternative to item 3069 if you are going the item 3401 route.

Also always consider getting a item 3060 or item 3190 , basically either one are really good since they use the item 3105 aura.

Also there were a couple games where you had a item 2049 and didn't switch to a item 3341 .

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

Ty for your comments. I understand completely about the aura items. I like the way you put how randuins is a selfish item. And I do my best to swap for sweeper when i have sightstone, but it does elude me sometimes. I will have to work on remembering more.

Smegma123Sep 9, 20152 votes

Dont play janna in silver. Take sona instead.

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

I like janna for her disengage, but I will reconsider I can put my pentakill sona skin to good use XD

FrostwomanSep 9, 20152 votes

there are so many attributes to a player's gameplay. it's way too hard to teach someone mechanics through a forum post, so im gonna list some stuff u can do to win games

tell jungler to help push if they get a kill gank

moderately spam ping towers/dragons/inhibs when u get a good fight and u think u can push the objective. make sure to get one or more of these objectives if u can. u guys lost 2 players in fight but they lost 4? go push tower or get drag or baron if u can. whatever objective ur closest to. dont get toooo greedy. u see 5 players gank ur top laner? go get mid/bot tower or drag. u see their mid roam bot? go mid push it down. ping ur bot lane back

u see the jglr top? if u kill the enemy bot lane or if u guys are high enough level(around level 6 is pretty safe) then u can take the dragon for free

dont overstay after getting objectives. in all elos, people overstay so long after getting something like an inhib and end up dying for free.

dont give enemy team anything for free unless u cant fight over an objective. players dont realize that u have to give up inhibs or dragons sometimes. if the enemy team has like 20 kills on u and baron buff, just give up the inhib. also, dont engage after u gave up the objective already, because thats a dumb thing to do.

when ur jungling, always buy a pink ward and place it in the river bush. gives vision of enemy jglr and enemy mid laner roams a ton. learn to ward well. look up vids or something hard 2 explain here. if u can see where enemy jglrs at with good wards, u can win the entire early game with counterganks and stopping them from getting good ganks.

if an enemy laner doesnt have flash, thats a free gank.

just remember that every move u make, the enemy jungler/players can react and take an objective in return. dont show top if drag is up late in the game or something.

good luck

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

Thank you for your comment. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. I noticed I apply one thing you said to my games quite often, even in normals. We were purple team and i cleared my red and saw the four man gank on bottom lane, so i rushed over to top lane picked off the enemy teemo with irelia and took tower then enemy junglers blue. I'm not perfect with my warding, but i feel i'm slowly improving. I often have trouble more in denying enemy vision. I normally always like to keep a pink at my blue buff for the first 20 minutes of the game, after then i'll move it to objectives like dragon and baron. The sweeper is where i fall short, knowing where to sweep, and i'll miss wards with it a lot. I have to upgrade it almost immediately to actually make good use of it. Any suggestion.

NoMonkuSep 9, 20152 votes

One thing that helped me get into Gold a few seasons ago was to focus on one role. I chose ADC because the people i played with at the time sucked at it. Anyways, there wasn't that many ADC's back in S2, so all I did was play a few games with each of them until I felt proficient enough laning and teamfighting with them, then I did ranked. It let me get into gold. Also I tried to learn about 2-4 champions for each role so I had some "options" if I didn't get my desired role. My goal in these roles were mainly to go even with my opponent and hoped my team could make up the difference.

One thing that will help you get better is learning what all the champions in the game can do. You don't need to learn the abilities names or how much damage it will do to you per rank, but just have the common knowledge of how their skills work. Like knowing that Blitzcrank can Q and grab you towards his team is good information to know so you won't stand so close to him. Another that I mentioned before if you like a specific role, is to try and "specialize" in one. Make it your main.

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

I have my role, Jungle. I enjoy it (honestly because farming minions in lane gets really boring some times lol) Do you have any strong jungle recommendations. My main jungle pick is Nocturne, He's not frequently picked or banned, and I come across a lot of lower elo players that really underestimate him (often not considering the ad steroid from his q.) Some junglers like xin, or shyanna who are both really strong with their 1v1s (which is where nocturne truly shines in my opinion) straight out kick my ass. I know you said you play adc but if you know of anyone I could try jungling give it a go. I own over 100 champs nothing but tier 3 and 4 champs left to buy with the exception of corki, urgot, and gangplank.

NoMonkuSep 10, 20151 votes

I say try to find a certain style you like and pick champions around that. If you like nocturne I can assume you like early game gankers? LeeSin Nidalee JarvanIV Elise all fill this role pretty well. I used to like Noc as well, but I drifted away from him when his R got nerfed. Anyways, since I've played so long I don't really care who I play so much as it will help me increase my odds of winning. ADC wise I feel my best is Ezreal , but I won't touch him anymore outside of ARAM because he takes so much more effort for me to win with him compared to if I had picked Jinx or Tristana .

Oh and Gragas is good too, I just didn't name him since he is so popular at high level.

CoolKnightSTSep 9, 20152 votes

To be honnest, it's more about spending enouge time in ranked. I have a 80% winrate as a support & an average winrate of 60% but are still only silver. It really comes to getting enouge games to get to an decent MMR in order to climb. In silver this is really hard todo since you litterly have to babysit your teammates & trying to communicate with that. What's extreemly difficult when their flaming all the time. This is combination with shotcalling & mechanical play it litterly becomes a multi-task nightmare.

The secondary problem with silver is that their champion pool is often limited to a certain role of roles & they don't have a pocket pick to go back too. Making it a verry dodgy expericience for them. So many that doging isn't always a viable option. The only answer to that is expanding your pool creating a situation where you have add least one champion to fall back to when having to play a role you are less experienced with. Some examples are:

Top:
Mid:
Jungle:
Duolane - Carry:
Duolane - Support:

etc...

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

I try to never dodge que, unless there is some serious auto locker (auto lock urgot jungle.) Other than that I know that anything can happen in the game even if you have veigar support enemy top laner and mid can feed their asses off and lose game. I agree that I need to expand my champion pool more, but i always feel nervous about going into a ranked game with a new champ no matter how many normals i've played with them. How do you get familiar with a champion you're trying to learn?

CoolKnightSTSep 9, 20151 votes

I think it's really hard to reflect when you mastered a champion enouge to play ranked with it. Mostly it entirely depends on how your team is build arround it. I have a bad ranked winrate with Braum but when I play normals with them it's always ends in a stomp where in 5/6 games the enemy team surrenders. While I litterly play 3 Thresh games in ranked after not playing him in a haf year and I still win them even when I known it played the game horrible but it didn't reflect my kda.

If I was you I would ask myself the following questions when I want to play a new champion in ranked:

Do I have a good kda in normals?
Do I have a good winrate in normals?
Do you play the champion in your main role? I would generaly go faster in ranked than because even if your mechanicly worse with the champion you still have better knowledges about the role itself. For example I can win games with support. Why? Simply because I known how to forfill my job despite the limitations provided by that pick in general.

Other than that it's just testing yourself. Go give it a try, that's the only way you make sure you are ready for it.

Angry MonsterSep 9, 20151 votes

As a g4 player i would say the difference is the early decision making process is the difference between a gold and silver (on average). Tons of times i have punished silvers for thinking they were safe in the early game when they were not. Figuring out how to punish the early mistakes into early advantages is the best way to advance to gold.

The other thing is to have a come back plan for your self. Knowing how to personally come back (especially in the jungle) is a big thing. I see in your match history that your highs are really high but your lows are really low. Try to figure out a way to to keep those extreme lows from happening. When you are doing bad you want to be mediocre not terrible. This will help your team carry you when you are having a off game.

Just so you know the difference between a plat and gold usually is consistency.

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

Can you elaborate more on "thinking they were safe early game." just a few examples of what happened and how you responded. Also How do you personally recover if you fall behind, I know I probably won't have the same gameplay as you but I'm good with analysis and looking into the nitty gritty details of things.

Angry MonsterSep 9, 20151 votes

Well the "thinking they were safe early game" is almost completely champion based. It has to do with what you are playing and who you are hunting.

Example with elise, i know that i can level 2 invade after gromp on red side. I can slip in while the enemy is doing (blu side) red and sometimes get red and jungler kill and hit level 3. To do this i usually ward deep at 1:10 mark. I have to be confident in my clear and understand the enemy clear speed and pathing though.

A lot of this is watching and looking/ knowing what the enemy is doing. Understanding when the enemy is actually overextending is important. It is different for very champ and which champ you are playing.

Know your champ and know the enemies.

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

So kinda like how shaco's like to steal your buff level 2 by q'ing over dragon or baron pit and getting out the same way, but in a more in depth and well thought out manner. That does make perfect sense. I'm guessing that kind of knowledge just comes with playing games and learning what different champions are capable of.

BeMyFriendPleaseSep 9, 20151 votes

I went from silver iii to gold i in less than 2 weeks of grinding rankeds.... The biggest difference you'll find as you approach platinum is more "competency" in lane. Meaning players will.... sometimes.... play more solid and punish mistakes while making less themselves.

The biggest change for me was to quit dicking around, pardon my french. I threw a lot of my promos to play with bronze friends at the start of the season, and while it was fun, they quit, so I've been working on "winning"

Ranked is... competitive, but it isn't the prettiest KDAv that wins, it's the "team" who kills the "nexus".... if your team is out picked and enemy gets ahead? Split push. Even solo, make objectives happen. Winning lane means nothing if you let your lanemate roam to secure dragon/counterjungling that had more long term impacts.

Too many focus on kills or "kda" and lose entire games forcing teamfights/baron for no reason other than it's meta. What wins the game is objectives... and you need to focus that. Work with your team, if they all CANNOT win teamfights, split. If they can, roam and get them fed to hell.

But... if you want a shorter list:

Objective and map control is underrated in silver and becomes relevant in gold. Wards can make a huge difference to know where the enemy is so you can know when/where to fight when/where to push when/where to run....
Play for the win, not for the score. Anyone can cheese first blood then afk in fountain to have a positive killscore (okay, not that extreme ) but the point is. Play to win, not to look good. (I've won more games than you can imagine suicide diving enemy inhibs as tryndramere while the enemy is literally 3x our teams kills. it is necessary sometimes)

To answer your question of differences in general? Not much. The occasional really good player will appear, good team cohesion will be a lot more effective, but generally it's just more lane competency.

Good luck

Edit: Last thing: Never have the mentality of "x player doesn't deserve to win". Never blame. If you see someone struggling, help them. Don't help them get fed, help them so they don't feed who they're against. Relying on the blame game will save your ego when you got crushed by that nasus with 600 stacks at 23 mins... but it might be more beneficial in the long run to prevent it, rather than justify it.

oOCaillouOoSep 9, 20151 votes

Very true, I've lost plenty of games where the enemy nexus was open for the kill and instead of killing the nexus players would sit at edge of fountain and either try to get more kills, or dance....... MasterYi I wish more people understand this, i've got a friends that will just try for kill kills kills regardless of cs or map control or objectives. Especially if they lost lane to their opposing laner, They will dive 1v5 just to get a shot at a "revenge kill," and 9 times out of 10 they fail miserably. Good point too about not trying to get someone fed, but to stop them from feeding. If someone is 0/4 they are worse less gold their opposing laner who is presumably 4/0 and I go to help them out even If i can't stop them from killing my ally again the odds of me finishing them off are higher and I would get their shutdown gold, feeding me a player who is doing well compacting my effectiveness, as well as giving my ally an assist which could be worth more gold than the enemy got for killing him. Yeah ragging is something every player says is bad, I'm not perfect I do rage some games. But I have noticed I spend more games trying to mediate disputes between other players sometimes a simple "hey man, pls don't flame. doesn't help anyone. We can still win this" is enough to chill some ppl out.

BeMyFriendPleaseSep 9, 20151 votes

Always keep your eyes on the prize, even if its hard to focus on at times, but winning/losing the game is the primary objective :)

It's the hardest thing i've taught my friend who was bronze v... hes now silver i going for gold, and while he only plays adc his mentality is getting better and better.

Keep it up!

PS: DUO with good (meaning, better than most you can find) whenever you can if they same elo as you. It makes life easier, I've been climbing solo que and.... it can be hard at times

Dar RaksadaSep 9, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I am a silver Iv player (hopefully i'll win my promos tomorrow and get to silver iii), but my overall goal is to get to gold, hopefully by the end of the season. I think this is a realistic gold. I'm not shooting for plat i or diamond V. Gold v will be sufficient. i was wondering what really separates silver players from gold so I know what to look for and improve in my games. For example plat 1 players are really strong with their laning mechanics, but there is a huge difference between a plat 1 player and a diamond v. Diamond players are much better at making decisions, especially in the late game (This is information I acquired from stream and youtube channels from SEVERAL diamond players.) I want to know what I need to improve to make it into gold. I have my main role, jungle noc which i fell i play really well, I also have nunu jungle and vi if noc is banned or picked, etc... If jungle is taken then I will support thresh, or nunu, or janna. What separates the silver from the gold, and to some of the gold players out there: what were some challenges you had to face or overcome to get to gold?

People in gold seem more arrogant & self centered thinking they are godlike for getting gold. In terms of mechanics they either make slightly better decisions (when to gank, where to gank, when to drake, when NOT to take baron) OR they have better laning mechanics. It differs per player really, another thing I noticed is that gold players seem to main a champ more often.

You said you main jungle Nocturne, which means you can counterjungle well (strong vs. devourer junglers) and you should be able to pull off strong ganks. Another thing to keep in mind is what fits your teamcomp, usually silver teams lack a tank so maining something like sion jungle could be a good idea.

Another point that can win you games is staying positive at all times, and knowing when to ignore chat. By being a positive influence I managed to win games that would otherwise be unwinnable (while not being an exceptional player)

Source: I climbed from 700 elo to plat while having shit mechanics