General Tips for Ranked?

Blayz·10/18/2014, 6:16:06 PM·2 votes·866 views

So I've been playing ranked and I've been losing tons and tons. I'm Silver 3 and yet my most recent games only have one win. To be honest? I dont know what I'm doing wrong. I've noticed a pattern though. It seems like I either do Good (By good, I mean not dying/getting kills) or Okay (By okay I mean getting no kills/1 death) during my laning phase. then when team fights break out, things just turn puke-atrocious. I really do try to do my best with whatever champ I Play (Kennen, Heimer, Teemo, Trist, Annie, Miss Fortune, Fizz) but things just dont work and I'm so confused...

I wanna improve and get better but, I just dont see how I can... So I'd like some feedback from the league community and I pray and beg of you guys to be constructive and not just rude. I feel bad enough.

7 Comments

Llanite10/18/2014, 7:53:08 PM2 votes

Some of my experience. If you're having a blast (3-4 kills early), shove the lane and gank others. +Your lane opponent will then yield little gold. +You will be carry a large streak bonus and their jungler will start camping the lane. No point in staying. +You are having a large lead over other people. Start ganking the lane that seems to be stable (i.e 0 kill 0 death). They are less fed, yield a lot of gold and since the lane has equal skill level, your teammate should be able to keep the lead. +Always carry wards while ganking. Don't let yourself be ambushed. 0 kill 0 death with 100 cs is better than 5 kills 5 deaths and 50 cs.

If you only have a decent game (0-2 kills), start taking wolves and wraiths. Check your jungler position, if he's at top then take wraiths and vice versa, don't steal in front of his nose. He'll steal your blue later on.

If you're losing, buy a lot of wards and mia the heck out of it. Do NOT follow your lane opponent to other lanes. It's your chance to catch up in cs. Just ward and ping to alert your teammates. Steal wolves/ wraiths aggressively if they freeze your lane. Do NOT attempt to trade, save your health so they can't dive.

ShadowNinetails10/19/2014, 2:43:08 AM1 votes

Best tip: Go back to normals for awhile.

I'm not even trying to be mean or rude or making fun of you by saying that, trust me I'm not. You're just not really ready yet. My general rule of thumb for anyone making their first foray into Ranked is that if they don't have at least 300 normal wins, they're not ready. Reasons for that are:

General experience. It took me a whole week of reading about all the different champs before I had a firm handle on what they did and even then there were some aspects of them that it was difficult to remember like Sion's old passive. That was years ago when there weren't nearly as many champs to memorize and even then I only knew them by what their spells did and their recommended items. It takes actual practice as and against different champs to truly learn them and with 101 Normal wins and 17 ranked games, you just don't have that.
Specific experience. How fast does Jinx's ult travel? How long is the cast time on Death Sentence and how far exactly does it reach? How can you bait out a Tryndamere's Mocking Shout without getting slowed which would almost inevitably lead to your death? What's the most optimal spell order for Ryze? What are the best places to put Teemo shrooms that you want to go off on enemies vs the ones you want to act as 10 minute long wards? Holy shit that sounds broken. Like it's one of those things you know is a thing but you don't always realize that it's a thing. Idk how the duration hasn't been nerfed considering every other trap I can think of lasts at most 3 mins, but back to the topic at hand, it takes hundreds of games to play most champions at a competent level. Even more for champions like . Sure prior experience with other champs might lower that skill curve somewhat like my previous experience with and certainly helped me pick up a lot faster because they're all heavily dependent on mid-long range linear skillshots that (aside from Zenith Blade) can be blocked by minions or other champions, but you'd still need hundreds of games with the prior champion(s) to have any skill bleed into the next.
Runes. Looking at your rune pages, I see you've done your research and have 2 good sets of Tier 3 runes that can be a general cover for AD and AP champs. Awesome. Most times I see someone with your amount of games played, they've got rune pages that look like Bill Cosby's sweater with Tier 1's and 2's and AP Marks or HP Glyphs or whatever other traps the Rune Shop caught them in. My question is, though, what if you're forced into Jungling? What about Support? What if you have to play a real tank like ? Neither of those pages would really be optimal. Yes they'd be doable and with enough skill you'd still be able to win, but the key to climbing in Ranked is finding small advantages and exploiting them for big gains. has no real need for AD or AP and not having that extra HP from Health Quints or the extra money from Gold Quints could cost you dearly early on which can easily set mid game against you which could also set late game against you. You need more rune pages.
Champion pool. Looking at the champs you've played in Ranked I see 3 marksmen, a damage support, a damage mid laner, and 3 AP damagers that can top or mid. While you don't necessarily have to (and it's generally advised that you shouldn't) try to completely master every champ, it's a good idea to try to master at least 3 champs in every role and 1 in every sub-role (Top: poker, bruiser, tank. Mid: assassin, mage, utility. Jungle: ganker, farmer, counterjungler. Marksman: lane-bully, mid-game power-spiker, hypercarry. Support: tank, healer, utility). Also there's a perk to owning every champ even if you don't play them: during the Draft, you can trade with anyone.

NoMonku10/19/2014, 2:52:15 AM1 votes

As long as you understand your character (like how their skills work and stuff) then getting better just involves practice. All the little things, warding(this is a big one), csing, and knowing when to make plays. Doing any of these naturally takes practice, intuition, and repetition, as doing it naturally take practice. Also something I like to do in lane is "gauge" how good the other player is. If they let you do things you shouldn't, like letting you harass for free when they'd be able to trade, abuse them. Take any advantage you can.

If you can get ahead in lane and push down your tower, as long as your minion wave is pushing into your tower, roam to other lanes and push down those first tier towers down too as long as they are still up. Doing this technically should "end" the laning phase so then you and your team should start focusing on taking objectives, such as tower/buffs/dragon/baron. IF your teammates won't group... well there isn't much you can do besides conceding the objective if you can't fight for it or dying for it(which isn't usually the best option outside of baron and only if it pushes them off it). Just remember that objectives are > kills so if you can get those, you should be able to win the game. Of course this is general, so sorry if it didn't tell you anything you don't already know.

Ch0c0lateJesus10/19/2014, 3:41:16 PM1 votes

Best tip: Rank means nothing.

Blayz10/23/2014, 9:12:10 AM1 votes

I just wanna thank every single one of you for offering your advice to me. Thank you so much! I was really afraid when I posted this, but now I just gotta work harder!