Hi everyone, I'm looking for advice on who I should be playing to help me climb ELO. I'm currently gold 1, trying to hit plat again.. then hopefully diamond. I used to one trick Akali but I started playing shen, and I'm wondering if I should start playing Maokai as well? Any advice?
garen and mako
Tanks. Just go tanks. Pick any champion you want, and go tank. It doesnt matter what champion it is, just tanks. Tanks are good. Tanks are broken. Tanks can take on 5 people and not lose any health. Tanks help engaging because solo queuers never want to engage because they think theyre the carry. Tanks tanks tanks. Oh and did I mention, tanks.
The meta has shifted to carry top lanners now but here are the best atm. Camile, Pantheon, Quinn, and jayce. I think you'd like panth since he bursts squishiest (at least in the early game) like Akali does. You'd also probably like Camile for dat molbility like what akali had it you actually have your ult which is good for getting whoever is fed on tge enemy team. She can also go bruiser. But you don't have to listen to a mid bronze(at least I think that's where I'm at in terms of skill) player such as myself. Just saying that you'd probably enjoy thoes champions considering you were an akali otp at one point who can be a bursty assassin or a bruiser and has molbility.
Fiora is absolutely scary right now. Lethality pushed her into the god tier and she can carry with the best of them.
Jayce has been a strong choice for a while now. He's hard to lane against.
Meowkai is a perennial favorite. He's a beast.
Nautilus is a hardened bag of Crowd Control.
Shen gives you the unique ability to involve yourself in team fights on the other side of the map. His ultimate is extremely useful.
tank teemo
Bronze player here but I just want to help most of it is mostly likely like a "no duh" but you asked so.
- Silence 5 people in a teamfight, knock everyone up in team fight, burst, tank what not to love.
you can have 0 dmg and he would still burst you, 0-50 and people are still scared of him.
tank and dmg can be built full tank and still do a fat amount of dmg.
most likely going to get nerfed to the ground in a couple of weeks so better take advantage while you can!
- Not a fan of Poppy honestly, her ult can be good but overall it's not that great because you can mess up things like Ashe ult but you use your ult and Ashe's arrow misses because of it etc.
Ulting teammate etc but your teammates will want your ult 24/7 and will do stupid things if they see they have a Shen on their team so just by picking Shen the IQ drops because of it.
Never feels tanky to me even with 5-6 items, idk why but he just doesn't ever seem to stay alive long enough to tank; might just be me but he's a meh pick, also his ult is garbage, unless you just ult in a clear line, at mid, running it down T1 Style.
Need AP, play Swain. Very annoying to deal with in lane phase too.
Good at everything, just build full dmg and you don't even need any dmg items because you have your ult to do dmg for you.
If the enemy gets flipped in the middle of lane with jungler near they're dead
Underrated top in my opinion.
Highest winrate top laners at the moment: 
Quinn, Kayle, and Teemo I'm pretty sure are usually chosen as counter picks into lanes they know they can do well into. You might benefit from having one of them in your repertoire but they may not be best to lean on since their bad matchups are really bad. They also, combined with Karthus, Swain, and Talon, can put your team into a rough spot comp-wise as you have chosen a squishy damage dealer in the lane where most people expect to find someone really tanky to act as a front line for their team. Wukong, J4, and Nautilus seem like solid choices (although Nautilus may have less carry potential than the other two, depending on your team to follow up on your cc without as much personal damage to carry by yourself.) Malphite is also generally used as a counterpick into attack speed dependent champions although he is still a good front line tank regardless.
Highest playrate top laners at the moment: 
Gangplank, Riven, and Poppy all have sub-50 winrates implying they aren't very easy to pick up or may only be popular instead of actually being strong. Most of them are thought of as having a lot of split pushing power at the expense of being a little weaker in team fights unless they have been extremely fed due to either building fairly squishy or being kitable if the enemy has enough sources of cc. In either case since these are all commonly seen you should be prepared to face them. I don't recommend trying to actually have a bunch of counterpick champions prepared since playing a wide pool of champions means you also have a shallow understanding of each one and a deeper knowledge of a smaller pool usually does you better; simply knowing which of these you beat and which beat you is enough to let you play appropriately.
However, YMMV and the most important thing is that you like and are comfortable on the champion(s) you play. Picking what champion.gg says is the best counterpick in a situation when you don't know why that matchup should go in your favor generally results in you simply not capitalizing on it and doing worse than if you played a champion you knew was a bad matchup but simply played overly safely and lost a bunch of cs instead of outright feeding. Playing the highest winrate top laner when you don't at all like how they play generally means you'll simply stop playing the game before you even get good enough with the champion to win games with them.
I am not high enough to really offer an opinion, but here's some thought.
Are the people you are playing with competent in most of your games?
If so, maybe get a super tank like Shen, Poppy, Maokai, or Nautilus cause then you can help save people who make one or two mistakes. People underestimate CC in low ELO at least, but higher up most understand that if someone is locked down that that person should be dead unless they A) are a tank or B) have a QSS/cleanse and flash up.
However, if your teammates aren't as competent, maybe a tanky damage dealer like Darius, Riven, Fiora, Renekton, Wu, maybe even Vladimir or Swain or Ryze (iffy) if you need AP (rip low ELO full AD comps...). You could also maybe try someone like J4 as well, since if you are doing well, just build AD and blow up the ADC from 3 screens away and if you are behind, build tanky.
Now, this is coming from a ADC/support main, so I don't really know top lane match ups. However, I know these are the types of champions that tend to cause problems for me when we get to team fighting stage.
