I can't get past Bronze I, what am I doing wrong?

SkyWarrior21·Jun 11, 2016·4 votes·1,538 views

So I have been climbing well in bronze since March, except mid-april to mid-may; http://i.imgur.com/NHcYm7j.jpg Now i'm NOT blaming my teammates nor do I expect anyone to carry me through the ranked system. This is a very important point. What I think is happening, and what one of my friends who's in mid-silver have told me is that i'm not aware of my own mistakes. This way i'm making the same mistakes over and over again without even knowing what i'm doing wrong. I place wards, I watch the mini-map as often as I can, I CS as much as I can, and yet I still can't get promoted to Silver V.... I would greatly appreciate if you would watch the gameplays I have uploaded publicly to Youtube, and point out my mistakes. What am I doing wrong, what am I doing right, what do I need to get better at so that I can climb further in the ranked system. Top: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qj_kyu2P9c Mid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR1msZ7Pcoo ADC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g780oaH9NkY

32 Comments

GrashnimJun 11, 20163 votes

Honestly, your best chance is to make friends with someone in a higher elo. Do some normals with them, have them give you pointers. In general, most people fail to CS. A huge chunk of this game is CS, cause CS is gold, gold is gear, gear is win.

xxxDogmanxxxJun 11, 20163 votes

Biggest Mistakes You Commonly Made:

Overstaying. If you're low, just recall. Staying to farm a wave at low health just opens you up to potential dives and risks your life for gold you would have missed anyway due to having to play passive since you're at low health. Often in the games, you also had to waste flash just to escape getting killed when you could have just recalled and not have to waste your flash at all.
Taking Free Damage. Why do you take so much free damage without retaliating? Often times, you just walk around and let them hit you for no reason. Many of your deaths could have been prevented if you didn't take so much free damage before the fight. Never let your enemies get free damage in. Health is technically the most precious stat for all champions. If you run out of health, you DIE.
Wasting Time. Often times, you just literally walk around accomplishing nothing. There are stretches of time in your games where you could have been taking a turret or a Dragon, or Baron, or warding the enemy jungle, but instead, you're loitering in lane doing nothing. Many times, you weren't even farming the lane, just dancing around the enemy team. Objectives win games. Take objectives.
Not Respecting The Enemy Team. You walk into the entire enemy team alone, you don't remove their wards, you go into their jungle without the slightest bit of hesitation. These are signs of disrespect. You have to understand, your enemies aren't stupid and they aren't weak. They will happily kill you over and over again when you do these things. A healthy respect for the capabilities of the enemy team will make you play much safer and expose you to far less risks.

SkyWarrior21Jun 11, 20161 votes

Wow, thank you mate, greatest response so far! :)

Could you give me some examples in my replays were I take free damage and not respect enemy team?

xxxDogmanxxxJun 12, 20163 votes

Taking Free Damage.

It was really noticeable in the Nasus and Caitlyn games. You were laning against a Quinn in the Nasus game, and she often got to land a bunch of E-Q combos on you and lots of auto-attacks without you doing anything. Drop a circle, or cane her whenever she does that. You could naturally sustain the life back with Nasus of course, but any other champion and you would have been recalling so often that you would have been severely underleveled.

In the Caitlyn game, you didn't have the luxury of lifesteal so you got completely zoned out by Ashe and Karma. Ashe practically stayed at full health for the entire laning phase. You might not have realized it at the time because of the potions, but you actually took enough free damage from Karma's Q and Ashe's W to kill you even before that Kindred and Diana ganked you at around 8 minutes. Ashe and Karma methodically forced you to use your potions one after the other, then went in on Annie and you, knowing that Kindred and Diana were coming.

In the Katarina game, you were actually trading really well, but sometimes you forgot the tower range and took unnecessary tower shots. That first Zed kill was actually because you took a tower shot a few seconds earlier when you didn't have to, and then got baited into overstaying just because the Zed was low.

Not Respecting The Enemy Team

The biggest offender is the Nasus game, where you walked straight into the enemy team at least twice chasing a kill and got killed for it without even getting the kill at all. No champion can inherently 1v5 an enemy team when they're not overly ahead. You were also going into the enemy jungle a few times with your teammate, but that really runs the risk of getting collapsed upon by the enemy team. You actually did get collapsed upon at one point. Also, both of you had yellow trinket, when it would have been far more beneficial for one of you to have bought a red trinket to clear enemy wards instead of just placing them down. You also walked right past a couple of visible pink wards without clearing them (or more specifically your teammate walked past them and you didn't clear them).

In the Katarina game, you really didn't respect the Warwick enough. Warwick has a suppress that stops you from using skills or moving. Katarina relies quite heavily on mobility and skill damage, so champions with heavy CC like Warwick are very risky fights for her. But multiple times, you got way too close to Warwick for no discernible reason, and Warwick punished you heavily for it. Even a Warwick who's not doing well would be able to kill you, so take a bit of care.

In the Caitlyn game, you were not really feeding that much, but you weren't fed either. Your other teammates were feeding, yes, but you also still sometimes walked around the jungle with no hesitation and no respect for the enemy team, who were fed and occupying your jungle. This led to you guys getting caught out of position, most notably at around 16:45 in the video. You should play it safe and never face check your jungle.

Overall, you're not that bad as a player. It's just that you make quite a few mistakes that really pile up over the course of a game. Just be mindful of those mistakes and you'll definitely climb. Also, your farming can always improve. Practice last hitting a little more.

disregardableJun 11, 20162 votes

You're dying a lot. It's a bad habit. Stop doing it.

SkyWarrior21Jun 11, 20161 votes

{quoted}

You're dying a lot. It's a bad habit. Stop doing it.

Have u watched the gameplays? In the nasus game I died 5 times, in the katarina game I died 6 times and in the caitlyn game I died 4 times (But whole team failed) Is it really that much??

disregardableJun 11, 20161 votes

In half your games you die over 7+ times. That's too much.

hsumis1oveJun 11, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Have u the gameplays? In the nasus game I died 5 times, in the katarina game I died 6 times and in the caitlyn game I died 4 times (But whole team failed) Is it really that much?

The deaths could be a lot, but in bronze 1 there are other ways to get out of there. You need to punish the enemy team for mistakes they make. For example, when karma lvl 4 flash dives you under twr, you need to attack her, punishing her for using her escape to go in and kill her with your twrs help. Also you need to time her flash for 5 minutes. In that period of 5 minutes before her flash comes back up, you need to get your jungler to gank and kill her. Without flash, she shouldn't be able to escape you, annie, and your jger.

Angry MonsterJun 12, 20161 votes

i haven't watched your games yet, but when i have personally have 5+ deaths i know it was a bad game( i am a jungle tank player). There is merit in being told you are dying to much.

You need to decide a threshold for how many deaths you think are acceptable and still carrying.

SkyWarrior21Jun 12, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Angry Monster,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Tkp1uXQP,comment-id=000000000002,timestamp=2016-06-12T11:38:05.943+0000)

i haven't watched your games yet, but when i have personally have 5+ deaths i know it was a bad game( i am a jungle tank player). There is merit in being told you are dying to much.

You need to decide a threshold for how many deaths you think are acceptable and still carrying.

How many deaths would High-elo players put as a threshold? How about 1 death per 10. minutes, if that's even realistic for bronze/silver players?

Angry MonsterJun 12, 20161 votes

How about 1 death per 10 minutes

if that's even realistic for bronze/silver players?

So stop worrying about what is acceptable for bronze players, they are bottom 40% of a servers population. If your goal is to climb and do better you can not compare your self to everyone else, it is all about pushing your self to do your best.

If you die only die 3 times but every-time was a stupid mistake that you did not have to die for, then it is unacceptable, The goal is to have as much up-time as you can. Sometimes the best play is a sacrifice play where you die but the team gets 3 in return. Your deaths have to have meaning(1 for 1 is not meaningful). Also you are dying to bronze players, do you think climbing is going to magically make it so you die less? Deaths usually are a consequence of failing.

How many deaths would High-elo players put as a threshold?

They are playing against way better players than you are. I pretty sure more than 2 deaths and they would get pretty mad at themselves at the level you are playing at.

I think these lines of thought shows a big problem with game mentality that you have. You want to climb, expect perfection from your self. Excuses like the high elo do not do this at their level does not work: they are not climbing, you are not facing the same level competition as them. If you do not adjust your mentality the climb will be painful until you do.

hsumis1oveJun 11, 20162 votes

Watching your adc game. First, anne sucks not realizing how squishy she is, second you should have leveld up your net as soon as u hit lvl 2, you could have saved annie and maybe killed ashe. Second, you didnt punish karma with your net or q or something when she flashed under ur turret in a hopeless attempt to kill u. third, you shouldnt have backed then, you could have farmed under twr and punished them if they dove with your net. Also when u backed right there, you missed some farm. Annie was shit too, she got a dorans blade instead of spellthiefs. She also wasted her mana farming the waves you missed when u backed. Also, when u got back to lane, you pushed the wave instead of freezing it. At that lvl, annnie was very weak and ashe and karma are stronger. This is the first 5 minutes ill do the rest later.

SkyWarrior21Jun 11, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=B34STLY G4M3R,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Tkp1uXQP,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-06-11T15:17:39.373+0000)

Watching your adc game. First, anne sucks not realizing how squishy she is, second you should have leveld up your net as soon as u hit lvl 2, you could have saved annie and maybe killed ashe. Second, you didnt punish karma with your net or q or something when she flashed under ur turret in a hopeless attempt to kill u. third, you shouldnt have backed then, you could have farmed under twr and punished them if they dove with your net. Also when u backed right there, you missed some farm. Annie was shit too, she got a dorans blade instead of spellthiefs. She also wasted her mana farming the waves you missed when u backed. Also, when u got back to lane, you pushed the wave instead of freezing it. At that lvl, annnie was very weak and ashe and karma are stronger. This is the first 5 minutes ill do the rest later.

Thank you!! This is the kind of answers I was looking for. I see the mistakes now. Is pushing the lane in early game a mistake?

hsumis1oveJun 11, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Thank you!! This is the kind of answers I was looking for. I see the mistakes now. Is pushing the lane in early game a mistake?

When you are behind it is. Annie doesnt really get very strong till 6 and is really squishy. This annie also was very bad at support. Freeze lane when you are behind, by just last hitting. When you are ahead, and you don't think the enemy adc can farm very well, and you think you can 3v2 the enemy jungler and bot lane, then push the wave while still getting cs. Not only will you be denying cs, you can also slowly poke down the enemy twr. After you kill the enemy bot lane, you should push the wave out so the enemy twr kills your minions. This makes sure that the enemy adc misses farm.

Spicy RiceJun 12, 20161 votes

Depends on the matchups and your teamcomp.

EndlessSorcererJun 11, 20162 votes

I may or may not watch your replays, but I'm just going to lead off with a few comments based on your match history on OP.GG.

Work on your choice of Keystone Masteries.

Deathfire Touch is not good on Master Yi and Xin Zhao. It's pretty much worthless.
Fervor of Battle is typically better than Warlord's Bloodlust on ADCs

Work on your builds

You don't always need to purchase Frozen Heart on Nasus. You seem to be building it in a lot of situations where the enemy team has few people reliant on attack speed and has multiple magic-damage dealers. In that case, Iceborn Gauntlet is typically a better option.
With Nasus, you are overcapping CDR. Trinity Force, Frozen Heart and Spirit Visage is 50% CDR when you cap at 40%.

Seaweed DragonJun 11, 20162 votes

After watching you play Kat this is what i think you should work on. First, against zed or yas starting cloth and 4 pots. My build path is cloth or boots and 4 pots, Luden's, Sorcrer's shoes, Hourglass, Voidstaff, Deathcap, then either an Rylai's or an Abyssal. (Also buy pink wards) Second, when zed is low and you shove the lane into his tower look top and bot, if you see a potential kill go to that lane most of time people don't ward in bronze so it should be free. You had an ashe so bot was just free kills if you went there. It will take practice to find good times to roam but work on it. Third, when you see a jungle near or go through your lane play safe for a little while or they will just gank you. (Your second death) Fourth, pay attention to key crowd control abilities. In your game the two big ones are sona ult and warwick ult if both of those are on cooldown you can get fairly quick resets on squishy targets like vayne and sona. (the two that you would kill the fastest.) Fifth, don't use your e to farm. Sixth, buy a pink for akali if your support wont.

VakoshJun 12, 20162 votes

Like xxxDogmanxxx said.

In your nasus vid At lvl 1 you took a lot of free damage. Yes CS is important but you're vs a range champ don't go for cs that's far out. At level 4 she hit you and you walked into your wave. She took almost more damage than what she did to you. This is what you want to do against aggressive players like that early on. Also in that time frame after when she was under 25% mana you let her do free damage to you. Hit her back homie hit that e then drop the w into an auto ->q then back off. Don't just walk out, punish them.

Later on if you still cant stack like lvl 6-7 just let her take the tower and farm between 2nd tower/destroyed outer tower. This way if she comes that far in to hit you and cs your jungle can gank easy. This will help you scale easier with less danger to you. All you want to do on nasus is farm to the point where you got 2-3 items and 300 stacks before 25-28 mins then start port ganking. If your team is being shitter then you keep pushing my boy. Shove the lane and create pressure while you scale. This will give your team time to farm cs while enemy is busy dealing with you.

Dont worry about roaming so much on nasus before 25 mins. Just farm and stack your q as much as you can.

For your Kat game You shouldnt have pushed that much early. If you noticed that Zed was very stiff and looked like he didnt know what he was doing. Let em come to you man. Just Q harass and at 3 just keep repeating Q W E to your minion and try to stick behind your minions. You had good trades. If you had let him out to the middle of the lane you could have killed him at 3 after baiting out his shadow. If you push them into their turret so much then you cant kill em early without dying to tower.

In higher elo the enemy jungle would have killed you a lot of times because of how deep you were in for most of the early lane. Just be a bit more patient with trying to hit and kill the enemy. Dont want to push em into their tower too much unless you're backing or roaming. Its very dangerous when you do that. You are too open to a gank or taking free tower shots then getting killed like you did at 6 mins into the vid. Your jungle also cant gank for you early like that(especially in low elo because most junglers are clueless and wont dive safely)

Buy a pink on 2nd back or 1st back and place in the big bush to the bot side of mid (if red side) and top big bush(if blue side). For your yellow place it a bit further out like the single bush in middle of river(face check bush). Gives better vision and earlier warning. You were pretty deep in and that bush line ward isnt going to help you much. So ward accordingly to where you plan to be.

You could have ganked top a good amount of times in laning phase since the akali was doing the same thing as you(pushing in super close to enemy turret).

Teamfight Your team fight at 15 mins could have gone better. When zed marked you, you should have jumped to your galio if possible or blitz. Be close to your team. Remember kat is squish and you cant fight 3 ppl on your own when you're not fed. You ended up getting one kill and splitting off from your team. Xin would have died anyways because of his really bad positioning. Ashe, blitz, galio, and you could have fared off better if you guys stuck together. Low elo and stuff so dont mind that much as its hard to team fight in bronze/silver/gold due to teammates. It end up being a 4-4 but I think your team would have won that if you stuck close to them.

At 19 mins when akali and WW came to take inhib you should have let them and then killed the rest of wave before it reached nexus tower. All you had to do was just walk around in that area. Your team got wiped and you died which is really bad. Just play safe in situations like this in the future. Unless you can totally destroy them, there is no point of going in to that.

At 21 mins, I know how enticing that zed looked but there was no way you could have gotten to him. Dont do these kind of chases. It just ends up wasting time. You could have cleaned that whole wave then cleared wolves/raptors. Keep your mind on getting farm when its looking shitty like that and your team isnt grouped.

At 25 mins in that fight you used your only escape on an enemy that was in your range. Its just little things like this that a lot of ppl make mistakes on in low elo.

That game could have been winnable but you didnt let zed out of his safe zone much to land some kills. Other than that I think it wasnt bad. Your CS is decent for that elo but could be better with more focus on rotation.

The best advice I can give you is Pick 2 roles and only 2 no more. For example, I main mid and only mid. Then I have jungle as my secondary if I dont get mid. After that pick 2 champs only for each role. One is your main and the other is the one you play if you its banned or you dont feel comfortable picking into something. Nothing more. Practice these 2 champs in normal games for at least 20-30 games each and get a good feel. After that take it to ranked, learn, and get more focused on the points people have listed in this thread. Bronze-gold is mostly knowing the games basics. Like keeping up CS, rotations, and when to roam. After that you want to get better mechanically on your main champ to climb further. Once you learn the basics man you will get out of bronze-silver quick. That doesn't mean you should ignore getting better at your main champ because you always want to be improving on that as well as the games basics.

Post more vids and stuff if you need more help! Im struggling with similar things but my mind is full dum this past week so im Tiltimus Prime atm. Good luck to the both of us.

DreadlocksJun 11, 20161 votes

Well for one u are roaming WAAAAAY too much on nasus. Like there's 4 ppl bot and instead of pushing turret u literally walk there and by time u get there the play is over. U could've had way more stacks and gold for u and ur team. This doesn't just apply to nasus,but in general.

SkyWarrior21Jun 11, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Red Rengo,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Tkp1uXQP,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-06-11T14:01:16.194+0000)

Well for one u are roaming WAAAAAY too much on nasus. Like there's 4 ppl bot and instead of pushing turret u literally walk there and by time u get there the play is over. U could've had way more stacks and gold for u and ur team. This doesn't just apply to nasus,but in general.

Am I not supposed to help my team as much as possible?

DreadlocksJun 11, 20161 votes

Are you implying that getting more stacks/cs and team gold from turrets isn't helping your team?

SkyWarrior21Jun 11, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Red Rengo,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Tkp1uXQP,comment-id=000100010000,timestamp=2016-06-11T14:45:30.263+0000)

Are you implying that getting more stacks/cs and team gold from turrets isn't helping your team?

Okay, I see your point now

DreadlocksJun 11, 20161 votes

Nasus is 1 of those champions who you almost always want to devote ur time to split pushing.. only joining team fights when you really need to. You can check out Sirchez on twitch if you want to get an idea of how to play a good nasus.

hsumis1oveJun 11, 20161 votes

Also, in the cait game, annie kept missing her q onto minions and you had no cs. By 5 minutes u had 18. Are you sure you're bronze 1 and not bronze 5? Cause that gameplay looked like bronze 4 or 5 gameplay to me.

SkyWarrior21Jun 12, 20161 votes

In the Katarina game, you really didn't respect the Warwick enough. Warwick has a suppress that stops you from using skills or moving. Katarina relies quite heavily on mobility and skill damage, so champions with heavy CC like Warwick are very risky fights for her.

There have a lot of games where I play against a champion, that I have never played before and I have no idea about how works. So what it the best I can do when I am up against a champion I don't know how works?

USG FailsawceJun 12, 20162 votes

{quoted}

There have a lot of games where I play against a champion, that I have never played before and I have no idea about how works. So what it the best I can do when I am up against a champion I don't know how works?

Play a lot more normals first, before ranked. Buy champs that are popular right now, or ones you have trouble with and learn them well.

Also, learn what champs are good counterpicks for enemy picks, and which ones not good first picks. For instance, your Nasus game... did you pick first or did Quinn? Not an optimal matchup for you, even though you did well. But she's a lane bully and she denied you a lot of stacks and cs early.

People say Nasus shouldn't teamfight, but I think after about 300-500 stacks or 2nd tier turret teamfighting with Nasus is important. Kill a few enemies, or get some picks then back to pushing into inhib. TP again into a fight if teammates need you. But yes, mostly remain in lane farming/splitting.

As others have mentioned too, and I noticed in your replays - you overstay, and you chase a LOT. It gets you killed, or you ignore other things like objectives. You also lost the first kill mid to Zed for this, you got in his face too much and paid for it. Then chased him later for waaay too long, and died for it again. Gave up a shutdown on Nasus for chasing into mid as well.

Try working on getting more gold, while dying less. Practice csing too, especially under turret. And consider buying a pink ward on every back, or at least the first back.

Angry MonsterJun 12, 20161 votes

during load screen pull up the info on the champs abilities. Play ultra safe in untill you think you have a grasp what the enemy does.

I personally would try every champ out and see what they all do. You do not have to master them, just have a understanding of their kit. I personally do not know the names of most of the moves or what skill does what, but i can tell you what every champ does and possible build paths.

SkyWarrior21Jun 12, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Angry Monster,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Tkp1uXQP,comment-id=00080001,timestamp=2016-06-12T11:41:49.382+0000)

during load screen pull up the info on the champs abilities. Play ultra safe in untill you think you have a grasp what the enemy does.

Probably my best strategy, without spending too much time on it.

VakoshJun 12, 20161 votes

{quoted}

There have a lot of games where I play against a champion, that I have never played before and I have no idea about how works. So what it the best I can do when I am up against a champion I don't know how works?

Play the champs you dont know when they are free or if they are super cheap. Like WW is 450 IP. Play some bot games with those cheap champs if you see them being played and get to know the basic feel of them.