Whats wrong with me

Prophetic Meme·Mar 1, 2015·1 votes·721 views

So I never post on here just because I've never had to until now that I need advice. Anyway, I really don't want this to come off as me raging or being irrational or anything but lately I've been having the most difficult time winning ranked games. Now I'm not going to say its my teammates and how they always feed etc etc, obviously I'm not good enough to carry. However, I feel like my laning is fairly decent, I buy wards, I roam when I can, I play 3 of the 5 roles fairly well and its just never enough. What is it? What else do I need to do to improve and become better? Is there anything that you can see from searching me up on those LoL websites about how I can improve my gameplay? Anything would be appreciated 8D

4 Comments

0bliviousMar 1, 20151 votes

you cant win all of them old sport, but getting objectives is the goal to winning not kills. In that zed game you didn't get top tower until 27 minutes and try to secure dragons. Maybe play a top lane with teleport so you can directly influence this

Ticking DeathMar 1, 20151 votes

There is a lot of strategy to ranked. Almost too much for anyone to master. Granted, I'm not ranked, but I've been playing for the last 3 years, have watched numerous pro streams, and followed many tournaments and splits. I've seen a lot, to be honest. Here is some of the best information that I've gathered along the way:

There are three main strategies for winning the game: keep an iron fist on objectives, split push the hell out of the enemy to divide their forces, or build to win by a determined point in the game (early game or late game dominance).

In Riot's tournaments and splits, each team knows the others' strengths and weaknesses and can take advantage of the third point I mentioned; as for just any ranked game, this one isn't really one you can exploit, but coordination with your team to build an early- or late-game comp can help tailor your play style throughout the game. Early game comps excel at pushing enemies out of lane and having a ton of damage and pressure early on. Late game comps generally lack power until about 30 minutes or so. They key to both these strategies is to play aggressively when you have the power and play defensively (i.e. wait for the enemy to be stupid, make a mistake, and then punish them mercilessly for it) when you don't.

The other two strategies are about both objective control and map control, but their focuses are completely different. Here's why:

Objective-Oriented Gameplay -- the goal of this strategy is not primarily to kill your enemies mercilessly, but to oppress them enough that you can plan to take objectives while they're far away or unable to mount decent retaliation. The key to this strategy is having champions that can push or bully the enemy out of lane early on and building up a vision advantage (i.e. you want to use a lot of wards and sweep out the enemy's vision around dragon and baron whenever possible. If you can keep the enemy's vision down, you can even sneak a quick dragon or baron while they're trying to push back a lane or clear their own jungle.
Split Push-Oriented Gameplay -- this strategy is a little less useful unless you have someone who is or can do the following: rapid waveclear, mobility, and has become enough of a threat to warrant two or more individuals from the enemy team to try to take care of them. Champions that excel in this strategy include Tryndamere and Jax. Split push Zed was a thing at one point, but I'm not too sure if that's as viable now.

Wards are your friend... your very best friend who, much like Pegasus (Yu-Gi-Oh reference ftw), knows all and sees all thanks to a magical (Millennium) eye -- but in all seriousness, warding in general is essential, but knowing what to ward is a different matter entirely.

Bottom lane warding -- when on the blue side, there is one place that should always be warded: somewhere just up the river. Not in the river bush. Just up the river. You want as much advance warning as possible, especially for the roaming mid-laner (cough Talon or Ahri cough). If there is an enemy ( Jarvan, especially) who can jump walls, always ward at the dragon pit and in the river bush. This will allow you to see them as they go over the wall to plan a super-behind-enemy-lines gank or try to avoid river wards by jumping into the bush right next to the lane. On red side, always ward somewhere up the river and the tri-bush on the blue side to see impending blue-side ganks. Vision wards are a beautiful asset if you know your enemies want to ward the tri-bush or the river bush. You can even bait them into trying to kill it and jump them. It is a good idea for the support to rush a Sight Stone so that they can get to clearing wards with the Sweeping Lens
Mid lane warding -- the enemy jungler will usually start near bottom lane because they can get a much stronger leash there. Take advantage of this fact and remember that early warding will save you when you do it in the bush leading into the top river. Later on, warding a small bush in the river will give you great vision for ganks where the enemy jungler can wrap around behind you or if the pesky top laner or ADC/support come roaming. A vision ward in the bush behind red buff (to give vision of the ramp and raptor camp) or in the small bush in the river is really good because people tend to not watch as they go through it. Or they may not go through the bush at all!
Top lane warding -- as will bottom lane, don't just ward in the river bush next to the lane; ward a little further down near the baron pit. If on blue side, ward the tri-bush when you push your enemy in to avoid nasty ganks. If on red side, ward at the baron pit and the river bush to make sure blue-side junglers that can jump walls can't gank you by avoiding potentially warded areas in the river.

Summoner Spells -- the spells you choose can make or break your laning experience and clench or lose you valuable objectives in the late game. I will talk about the major ones.

Flash is the ubiquitous Summoner Spell that you take to make plays or avoid certain death. There aren't really any options that are worth it to replace it. Learn to hold on to this spell and gauge the damage you're about to take before you pop it. A lot of times, you will survive the damage you take and live to use Flash for a better time.
Heal is generally reserved for the ADC to help them in lane in the early game. As they progress through the rest of the game, lifesteal will generally replace it, but it still has uses in running away or catching up to enemies later on.
Barrier is another viable choice, but I usually only see it on ADCs. It has a lower cooldown than heal and, though the shield is temporary, blocks more damage than heal will.
Cleanse is, again, mainly seen on the ADC, but not as often as Heal or Barrier. This spell is good to take when you use a champion who lacks escapes. However, Quicksilver Sash is a decent replacement for it and builds into a nice AD item ( Mercurial Scimitar).
Ignite is another ubiquitous spell, but your use of it is really important. Learning to hold this spell is as important as with Flash. Ignite is best used on a champion with great healing or who is so far ahead that the combination of true damage and grievous wounds will make it incredibly difficult for them to survive. Use in a 1v1 situation is only recommended if you're going to all in them with no plans to retreat. Otherwise, saving it for a team fight or gank from your jungler will ensure its best use. This spell should only be carried by the support, mid laner, or top laner. For the top laner, it's if and only if they are made to burst to deal tons of damage.
Exhaust is a great spell that can destroy an enemy that has managed to become a dueling or carrying machine. The support (and maybe top laner in rare circumstances) should take it if there are an abundance of Ignites and/or there are enemies who have the potential to snowball harder than a Miley Cyrus wrecking ball (pardon the pop culture reference).
Teleport is one spell that plays well into the hands of three different situations: you plan to split push super hard, you know you're going to lose your lane and need it to keep up, or you know you can win your lane without Ignite and have the potential to teleport to a nearby ward in a team fight to give your team the edge. When you split push, you are essentially planning to make a portion of the enemy team come to you and create an advantage for your team when they siege. You can teleport to your team and siege 5v3 while the enemy tries to make it back in time to stop you. Whether or not you're losing your lane, teleport is valuable for defending your structures or ensuring the victory of your team at those big dragon or baron fights. Finally, Teleport's biggest secret: this spell is made to give you an advantage in terms of gold and experience. Simply put, if you're in lane longer than you opponent, whether they're kicking your butt or not, having this spell lets you keep up or puts you ahead just by having the flexibility to leave and return to lane as fast as your want.
Ghost is an odd spell that I don't really like, but it has its niche uses, such as with champions like Singed, Fiora, and Tryndamere. Take it when you are totally split pushing or when you like to chase your enemies down or need to run away fast.

To Be Continued in another post since Riot doesn't like long posts -_-

Ticking DeathMar 1, 20151 votes

Take advantage of auto attacking -- this should be an unspoken rule for ADCs, but what about with supports and mid- and top-laners? Auto attacking in these roles can net you two very important things.

Expanded mana pool -- regardless of having Doran's Ring, auto attacking will leave you with more mana overall. I know, this probably seems pretty intuitive, but if you really think about it, isn't the mage who runs out of mana first the one who ends up screwed? My next couple of point will show what kind of advantage you get as the one who can manage their mana better.
So, you've pushed the enemy to the turret and they are out of mana. They are royally screwed, and for two reasons: (1) they can't kill minions easily (or at all) because of their low auto attack damage or your constant harass, which results in them losing valuable gold; and (2) if they have to go back because they can't do anything, they end up losing experience as well.
Forcing the enemy to their turret results in two things that affects EVERYONE on the map: the enemy jungler is forced to come gank you and, if necessary, hold the lane until their ally returns. This means that the jungler's location is known and takes huge pressure off the map and gold is now getting shuttled from the mid-laner to the jungler. It's not bad if the jungler gets the mid-laner's gold, but the jungler typically needs to balance farming and ganking, typically making them gold-deficient throughout the game. With this in mind, the jungler will still probably be gold-deficient, and now the ally (or allies) in that lane are now behind their enemy.
Auto attacking also means that you get better sustained damage against your enemy and allows you to create an HP gap that lets you bully them. If you have resources to cast spells AND your enemy is at a low HP than you, then you have a huge advantage in your lane. Milk it for all it's worth.

Carrying isn't the only way to "carry" a game -- don't believe me? Just ask Morgana, Sona, Thresh, Lee Sin, or Malphite. They are all about making plays happen. A timely Morgana binding, Sona flash/ult, Thresh hook, Lee Sin Q/kick, or multi-target Malphite ult can be the difference between getting sieged to death and screaming "rekt" in chat. None of these champions really excels in the damage department. And no, Lee sin only has a lot of damage IF he manages to get ahead and builds glass cannon; a typical Lee Sin build will make him tanky and his main job is to make plays happen, not dish a ton of damage. If we take Thresh as another example, I can tell you that part of the reason why CLG won against Winterfox in the split earlier today (if you saw it) was that Thresh managed to make plays with his hook. His first play was roaming to mid and flash-hooking for first blood. The second amazing play was hooking Corki and initiating a fight where the rest of his team could clean up 3 or 4 members of Winterfox.

What is the point that I'm making here? It's that being able to carry is about as important as being able to make the plays that count. If you can't carry with damage and mechanics, then practice with champions who carry by setting up big plays.

Identify your threats and communicate your intentions to your allies -- half the battle of LoL is getting your allies to stop being boneheads and actually listen to you. If you're lucky, you get one opportunity to prove that you know anything about this game. The other half is knowing who the greatest threat to your victory is. If you can get your team to listen to you and effectively single out the one champion on the enemy team that needs to die to ensure both victory in the fights and the game, then you'll have a much better chance at actually accomplishing your goal. On the other hand, a measure of humility can be a good thing and letting someone else take the reins can be beneficial. If you can't lead your team, ally yourself with the one who can.
Watch pro streamers and learn from their commentary. Some top streamers that I enjoy include WingsofDeathx and Nightblue3. Wings will play any role in solo queue, but he mainly plays top, mid, and jungle. Nightblue is strictly jungle. They both do a great job with relating to their audience and teaching how to play well. You can find them on Twitch regularly.

I hope that all of this has been beneficial! Good luck climbing the latter.

Edit -- just as Kouga was saying above, there is a relationship ship between latency and ranking. Check out this article from NerfPlz about the relationship between wards, latency, and ranking: http://www.nerfplz.com/2013/07/correlation-between-wards-ping-and-elo.html

KougaMar 1, 20151 votes

There are a ton of variables. Whether you are Solo or Premade, your lane, your matchup, counter picks, even lag times and latency can make the difference in such a twitch-focused game like LoL. Especially as they move further and further away from safe, targeted abilities and start pushing everything towards skill shots and mobility.

So without more data (champs, roles, server, etc) it is hard to say what your "problem" is. It could also be that you've just hit your ceiling. I'm not saying you're bad, but theoretically everyone is going to have a place where they just stop rising, unless they dedicate their lives to learning the ins and outs of the game (and even then some fucking 8 year old from Korea will beat you with one hand).

Also, I've been playing this game off and on since I played the Beta. Champions rise and fall, their popularity comes and goes. I suggest just sticking to the Champions you like playing and try to have fun with it. If you're not trying to become a Professional E-Sports player, then what does it matter? If you are having fun then the color of your rank badge shouldn't matter.