How to get an S?

Nakihashi·12/19/2017, 3:03:36 AM·1 votes·766 views

I'm sure we've all asked this before, and I'm sure it has been answered, but I would love it if Riot could post a criteria for those pesky S's. I just played a 3v3 with my wife. I was Udyr, she was Lux. I went 9/1/2 with 97 farm and she went 5/1/4 with 81 farm. I beat her in every category under the advanced details screen except crowd control score, whereas I got a 17 and she got a 34. She got an S- and I got an A. What am I doing wrong? Are a couple more stuns all it takes?

Any insight into this issue would be greatly appreciated; I've been experimenting forever and have come up with no concrete solutions.

8 Comments

Mysticman8912/19/2017, 3:14:49 AM2 votes

Grades are based on your percentile performance compared to all others on the same champion in the same role in your region.

The performances of teammates doesn't offer any meaningful comparison since they're on different champ/role combinations, and theres no absolute numerical requirements. So for example if 98% of udyr jg players all played awful and went 0/10/0 with 20 cs in a 20 minute game, even going 1/30/0 with 20 cs and all other factors being the same would get you an S+ (of course most players are much better, which is why S ranks are hard for most, but that illustrates the idea of relative grades). A side effect of this is that the requirements can in principle change over time, so a performance just barely enough to get an S- one day, might only get an A+ the next day even if you somehow managed an identical performance.

Also important to remember theres far more to grades than just kda/cs; kill participation, objective participation, cc score, vision score and a multitude of other things all contribute, so focusing too hard on any one thing can sometimes hurt you if you neglect another area in the process.

Jo0o12/19/2017, 3:20:16 PM2 votes

In addition to what the others have said, Riot is intentionally vague about how the scoring system works. The intention seems to be for players to always play to win, rather than peeling off to pad their score.

That said, over time the community has seemed to figure out that CS is almost always the deciding factor, at least for non-support players. You can get 25+ kills and 0-2 deaths, but if you gave up on farming to just kill champs, you'll probably just get an A+. Conversely, it's possible to have an average KDA but 8-10 cs/minute and get an S.

And don't forget, 3v3 is a weird map. It tends to heavily favor bruisers, due to lack of wards and escape paths. Udyr's probably pop off considerably more than Lux's in 3v3.

Elycian12/19/2017, 3:22:28 PM2 votes

Cs per minute is the key, not total CS. 200 cs in a 20 minutes game is S territory (10 cs per minute) , 300 CS in a 60 minutes game is bad (5 cs per minute)

Sona Ping12/19/2017, 3:33:31 AM1 votes

You are playing different champions, so you are judged by comparison to completely different sets of players.

Dark Vaatu12/19/2017, 3:41:13 AM1 votes

play with a bronze friend.