How Do I Know If I Should Start Playing Ranked

Karyno·4/15/2018, 2:21:43 AM·1 votes·911 views

So recently I have been contemplating playing ranked so I asked one of my friends who has been playing for much longer than I have what his opinion was on the subject and he gave me the advise "Don't play until you know your silver." and sense that day my mind has been racing with the question of "How do I know if I'm silver?". So i was hoping that someone may be able to tell me things I should focus on or look for to know if I'm silver or if i should undermine that piece of advice and just start playing ranked.

3 Comments

Mysticman894/15/2018, 2:29:18 AM1 votes

Honestly think people should play ranked ASAP and just go in with the expectation that they are probably bronze at first, and low bronze at that. The first couple dozen games might be quite rough as a result as you fall from mid silver elo to your 'true' elo, but it's a lot easier to gauge your skill when you're reliably playing against similar mmr players (instead of the very mixed mmr matches that normals commonly presents), plus everyone is trying hard in ranked so it's a more 'real' test of skills, and potentially a better environment to actually get better.

That said, play a ton of normals and see what the average rank of your opponents tends to be. If it's silver+ and you're doing ok in those matches, you're probably silver-ish at least.

If you're not playing support/jg, try to get an idea for what your typical cs/min is. I'd probably aim for at least 5cs/min if the bar is 'only' silver, although keep in mind 5 cs/min is still pretty bad in absolute terms so if you're keen to improve practice that until 7+ cs/min even under pressure is second nature.

edit: Looking at your op.gg a bit, I'd probably say you're bronze 4 or bronze 3 ish material currently. This is a fairly normal skill level to be if it's your first account, the trick is to always be looking to improve. Whenever you die try to figure out why, try to work on your csing, map awareness, and so on.

FooDang4/15/2018, 2:32:16 AM1 votes

I'd say at least 500 wins in norms

OatheSworn4/15/2018, 2:38:33 AM1 votes

There is no way to know for sure what rank you will be placed until you actually finish your promos. You can speculate and guess but that's about it. Instead of agonizing over whether you should do ranked or not just do it (Sponsored by Nike). Even if you place in a rank lower than what you expected/wanted, there are many opportunities to climb and achieve the rank you feel you deserve. The most important factor is not giving up after a loss--otherwise climbing is impossible.