You Want To Actually Get Good at This Game? A Real Help Thread
K, sit down then. I'm not pro, but I am very good at analyzing what needs to be done, and I started playing this game when Pantheon came out. I have been going between Plat 3 and Plat 5 for about 3 seasons now. Why? I haven’t bothered to improve at all because of time constraints etc. I do the same thing I have been doing forever, and I kind of play non Meta champs but that’s besides the point. You want to get good at this game for real? KK
I am gonna start off telling everyone the basics of being better. This same old jargon and basics is reiterated to every single player because it’s easy to give this advice. I am going to go in depth with some of this. I am doing this because I myself don’t have time to play league and I must contribute to the league community somehow. I will hopefully be going to professional graduate school next year.
1st Lesson of the Day- There is no ELO Hell. Sorry. None. Nothing. Multiple people on streams including pros, random high elos, and even ELO Boosters will get super low Bronze 5 MMR accounts to Challenger in a short amount of time. Knowing that any reasonable person can make no argument for ELO Hell. Sorry, the way this game is set up is that you do have to be significantly better than your current elo to go up. Thats how it is. This guide is meant to help you improve your game greatly if you take everything to heart and actually practice it all. So you can kiss "ElO Hell" goodbye. If after evidence that is on videos, guides, streams, etc, you still believe in an Elo Hell, this is probably what you have:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
The 1st step is to realize that you need to get better and that you are just as "bad" as the people in your bracket. You know, I was just like you "elo hell" guys a few years back. In fact, here is my old thread saying that elo hell existed.
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1059492&page=1
I was in denial back then as many of you probably are right now. Its not real. Sorry. Back then that was one of the more "intelligent" debates for Elo Hell. Too bad there isnt an elo hell and it was just me being bad.
KK now that we have that out of the way, lets get better!
***A. CS Better- ***12-15 cs is about a kill worth of gold. Aim for approximately 100 cs around 10 minutes. Most of the time this will not happen, however I have seen Froggen in a pro game have 400 cs at 38 minutes. People are like "yea, yea, we know". No you don’t. You don’t know. Why do you have 150 cs at 25 minutes right now? Because you were being harassed in lane? You know how to stop this? There are 3 ways you can play lane. Aggressive, Passive, or Passive with aggressive instances. Each has its own advantage. If you know your champion is capable of dueling the other champ, then which one would you pick? That’s right, passive with aggressive instances. Hmm... how do I explain this... Ok if anyone has ever played any fighting games, when the opponent is even a tad bit too aggressive you can take advantage of this and use their attack frames against them and attack them instead. Trust me, if you turn the tables on aggression, either they will stop playing like raging buffalos or they will die. Both will allow you to cs way better. Also know your champion really well. What I mean is when you are csing you can’t just always auto attack minions when they have low health. It is never that convenient or easy when you are in lane against another human opponent. Sometimes you have to use many abilities to wave clear minions while in lane or have to do it in a skilled way so to speak. This occurs just because of the way the minions are split and how the enemy minions are damaging your minions. The biggest difference I’ve noticed between Plat/Gold/Silver/Bronze vs Diamond/Challenger is csing. This is one thing I notice most diamond players will do really well. They are getting almost the max gold from cs every game because of their mechanics. Plat and below still miss too much cs because they dont know how to apply their abilities to the creeps. Basically work on your mechanics as much as possible, and become efficient and brisk in your movements.
B. Matchups- Don’t pick champions that can’t duel the other one at all or has no hope of winning. Most matchups in this game are skill based though, so its fine but don’t pick Xerath into Ahri, or Tryndamere into Rammus, or Fiora into Jax… well you get the point. Don’t pick Ezreal into Draven unless your support wrecks their support in terms of damage. Bot lane is kind of weird in that you have to think about the total damage of your support and adc vs their total damage. For example, ashe not a great adc, however with someone like a support sona she can actually be pretty strong. Those two synergize well with their sustained poke and 2 stun ultimates. Now say you get counterpicked hard ( it happens), then you must use the Passive laning style, where you only farm (probably on tower). Often times in League champs that counter others early game scale poorly vs the champion they counter. For example, Jax may get dominated by Yorick early in lane, however, late game jax will contribute to teamfight damage tenfold. You must get skilled at csing on tower and using your abilities at precise timings to obtain every single cs.
C. Wards- Alright, wards are god. Yep... god. You should buy every single ward that stupid shopkeeper will give you. If you don’t, you don’t deserve to win. I main mid but I start fighting for the support player when someone tells him to ward only. It pisses me off to no end. Think about this. Support can only put down 3 wards at a time and a pink. SO CAN YOU. Imagine if the whole team put down wards. Thats 15 wards. GG, you just unlocked God Mode remove fog of war on map. Sometimes you have to make the call though. If you are 150 gold away from an IE and you are adc, it’s probably a better idea to get the IE instead of 2 more wards. But hey, how’s your cs? Cuz if it’s a little less than it should be its your fault now that the bush wasn’t warded and your whole team got caught in it. GG how’s that infinity edge? No good huh. 2 Wards guys... every time you back... 2 wards. Just do it. Oh and don’t be the guy that has 3 wards in inventory and 900 pinks, and doesn’t put them down. God those people are worse than the people who don’t buy wards.
***D. Leaving Lane-***Try not to leave lane if your opponent hasn't unless you are going to die. In that case, What in Gods name were you doing? Were you getting wrecked? Don’t tell me you are losing lane because you didn’t ward, and the jungler destroyed you left and right. When you leave lane......... push your lane to the tower, hard. Real ****ing hard. Like make sure that you push harder than Rocky pushed in Rocky 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,... well you get the point. Alright so now their tower is destroying the minion waves horrendously. Guess what... your opponent misses out on 6 cs that you got. (Well you better have gotten them by efficiently and quickly using your abilities to obtain every cs). What’s more, this resets the lane as well... so when you come back the enemy minions will probably be slightly pushing which is perfect for you.
E. Laning Mechanics- Ok... now this is 1 really good way of getting out of your elo or staying in it forever. Listen man... you cannot expect to go up if you can’t rofl stomp your lane. Sorry. No one is carrying you. The only exception to this is if you are quite good at making plays in other parts of the map or excel at team fighting with good cs. Which is fine because that is indeed safe and that depends on your mechanics. Laning Mechanics involve mind games. For example, I main anivia, and I usually will still get stuns off on other platinum players and destroy them in lane with this champ. Say lux comes at me with her E. What do I do? I have to recognize patterns in my opponent movement. After I MOVE FORWARD AND NOT BACKWARD, I notice she moves the top left every time. Ok so the next time she throws out her E what do I do? I throw my q while I'm moving in that same spot. Voila, she is stunned and then I e her. I now zone the half health lux. GGWP. BUT WHY CANT I DO THAT EVERY TIME YOU SAY? Because she is also platinum and probably knows some of these things, so she may change her patterns. League comes down to "mind reading" your opponent in lane.
As ADC its a bit different. You have to know the ranges of your adc and the adc you are playing against. For example, as cait against vayne you have a lot more range against her so stay at max range aa poke her. She cant do anything unless she tumbles in but you have e and q if she does that. As cait you outrange every adc pretty hard. So you can just aa them a few times run and run back so you dont take minion damage. Make sure you dont take a ton of minion damage ever. Its a huge part of early laning phase. Also use minions to your advantage. If your opponent starts fighting in your minions, go ham because those minions will do around 40 percent of their health!
F. Laning Continued/Counters- When counters are discussed that does not mean you will get kills on them per say. For example, Mordekaiser counters Fizz not because he kills Fizz left and right, but because he pushes lane super hard and fizz cant really do much early levels. Fizz has a hard time csing at tower in the early levels. Morde will be up so much more cs on Fizz and thus... Fizz is countered. Whats more, Morde can go farm wraiths while Fizz is getting destroyed at his own tower by caster minions and legendary siege minions. Or Morde can go help his bot lane which is getting destroyed because they decided to go Ashe Squirtle against Lucian and Batman. (Seriously no one beats batman) If Morde does go bot and he gets a Lucian ghost, He just secured a kill for either himself or Squirtle or Ashe. Now Morde commands (all morde does is command) his jungler to get Dragon. Such is the power of roaming. Laning is all about outplaying and game knowledge. You can’t expect to start beating players based on prediction alone especially in plat and above. No more going 80 kills and 1 trillion assists with -9 deaths like you did in Bronze. How does one beat them now? Hard Outplays. For example, say Im playing Irelia top vs Riven, and our power spikes are about the same (lets say around level 7). If Irelia flashes or dodges Rivens ultimate, she will most likely win the trade. You have to either go up to the casting cone in Rivens face or you have to flash by GUESSING when she is going to do it. Of course, this is assuming you dont have godlike reaction time and can flash as soon as you see frame 1 or 2 of the animation. Abuse Cooldowns. Too many times I will see people not doing this. Riven just used her q and her w bro. Irelia why aren't you going ham for a bit. "No Irelia, not now... Riven has all her cooldowns up... nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo." "An ally has been slain". Also if you are getting ganked that doesn't mean you are screwed. There are a lot of times where you can 1v2 if you use your cooldowns correctly and are fed. Sometimes this is the better option as if you had escaped you would have died or missed out on 2 kills. Here is an example of an effective 1v2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9gATdH2y7o
Crazy huh? If you can do that you reduce pressure on other lanes by killing their jungle and their top. Now it a 3v4 on the rest of the map and your jungler can do dragon very easily.
This next video is what I was talking about with regards to outplaying a riven ultimate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiBSRQME8cQ
G. Runes and Masteries- you really need to understand why you are going what you are going for that champ in that matchup in that game. Dont just go to Mobafire (ok mobafire is trash), Solomid or Probuilds, and copy it blindly. Understand why. Its just like school people. Understand it well and that way you wont need Doublelift to tell you how to play ADC, or Godjeregsen tell you how to play Mid. Do it on YOUR OWN. Understand the game. For example, If I'm playing orianna, and I'm going up against lucian mid, I cant just expect to cast spells on the ground and be my only source of damage against a highly mobile adc. I would probably want flat AD reds for the aa damage that orianna has to keep up with lucian. If I dont, then I have to hit every ability while he gets free autos off (without ad runes he will do way more damage) which is a lot harder than just being able to auto with orianna.
H. Jungle control- I have played every single role extensively like a true nerd. When you are jungling, you have to understand that getting your buff just isnt important when an ally that you can help immediately needs help. Its not your job to win their lane for them, but I mean... if you did win their lane for them..... then............... why not? Understand jungle timers and know when buffs are up even without that new noob timer device that Riot has installed in their game. There will still be times that you wont know from the timer when buffs are up because your team didnt have vision when the objective died. So you have to know yourself how that works. If you are going to play jungle, you really need to understand matchups. For example, they pick wukong. What do you pick? Oh sweet, you are good at Lee Singa (he kick ma brutha in da ass), nice play him and go counterjungle that wukong. Be careful though, too many times I see people trying to counterjungle and then dying because "my team didnt help me like yours did". Well **** no they didnt, its easier for the enemy team to respond to their side of the jungle because its CLOSER to them. First of all as lee sin you shouldnt be dying anyways because you can ward hop from General Discussion to Gotham City. For example, Say i'm playing lee sin, and wukong starts blue. I know his clear speed is not super fast but its not slow either, so he will probably be at his red around 2:40-3:05 give or take some seconds. Bring that trinket and ward his red bush around then, and then put a ward in dragon pit or baron pit depending on which side you are on. When he comes up and starts doing it, dont stand in the bush lmao. You have a ward there. When Red gets to 330 health ( i think its 330 health for smite at around this time), you must outsmite him, and then kill wukong. Oh he w'd away, no problem, just e him. This is why you picked Lee sin right? Oh LOOK THE ENEMY TEAM IS COMING. LOL. Now you can just W to your OTHER WARD in Gotham City.
H-1. Jungle Ganks
Quote: Originally Posted by CataclysmCrash On Ganking:
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Never camp one location for too long. This steals laner XP and is generally wastes your time. This also frees the enemy jungler to take objectives and counter jungle without fear. Instead, leave to clear but return when you see an opening.
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Never gank into a giant minion wave. This increases the chances for a trade or turn around, is a massive tell preventing the laner from initiating, and generally will end up feeding cs to the tower.
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It's often better to close the distance then use your gap closer after theirs then to lead with your gap closer and then have your thumb up your ass.
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Ward frequently trafficked areas to keep an eye on the enemy jungler to counter gank. Watch your own lanes and consider which ones you would gank if you were the enemy jung, then pepare against it.
5)It's better to help a good laner snowball than to reset the gold worth on a bad laner. On the other hand, ensure you don't abandon the chance to turn a lane around for a teammate with her help. This is up to personal opinion, but generally 0/3/0 or 0/4/0 and an extreme CS loss is when they're going to have to bail themselves out.
I. Jungle Control for Laners- Ok you *******s in lanes always blaming your jungler. It’s not his fault you can’t do anything. You should have thought twice before you counterpicked with Tryndamere into Rammus? Wtf. Did your mother drop you on your head while you were eating Reeses Puffs? Lol, no but seriously Game knowledge. Thats all this game is. Game knowledge and decision making with moderate mechanics. Use your brainsssssssssss. Stop relying on others. For example, if someone picks Veigar who destroys AP champs mid, why in god’s name didnt you pick ryze. He hardly builds any ap so Veigars ultimate doesn’t do nearly as much. Ok so say you did pick whoever...you can help your team even if you are losing lane. Instead of giving that Jax top 9 more kills why don’t you just go roam or help your jungler kill their jungler and secure their buffs? Playing mid and your bot lane is stilllllllll getting totaled by Lucian and Batman because that jungle Vi is ulting your adc? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCwDwcjhyoU.
Ward the entrance to their brush and other areas where it’s easy to see when your enemy mid laner and jungler are going bot to gank your lane. It makes it easy to COUNTER gank, or counter jungle. Wards make it easy to bait or really do anything. Once again this goes back to warding. As a team when you are winning you should be placing aggressive wards in their jungle. If you are losing you can easily comeback by placing defensive wards in your own jungle so that you as a team may pick off that pesky Vi or Batman. (Jk you can’t pick off Batman). Seriously though, it takes 1 pick to win the game. Say it’s a close game and its 50 minutes in. You decided to go ahead and buy this green item that costs 75 gold for the sake of the team, and you place this item in their red buff brush or blue buff brush. Let’s say that you guys wait around dragon or baron to catch their adc or apc. Omg did you just catch that Trist that was destroying your team? Fantastic, push, because you just won and are that much closer to getting to the number 1 spot on Challenger.
J. The Mid Game 1000 Lols at this part of the game. I don’t think any player below Diamond 1 Knows what’s going on here. People run around with their heads chopped off in Bronze 5, Silver 2, Gold 1, Plat 1, and Diamond all day. Hell I've even seen Challenger streams of players just not knowing what to do.
Things you can do in the Mid Game:
Farm SAFELY as much as you can because at this point in the game, **** is about to hit the fan soon, and you need to gather up as much as of an adv as possible. Escort your support so they can ward areas on the map (you should be warding with them), and take any easy towers at this point. Take buffs, and set up for dragons. Always be doing something productive. Also Objectives >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >> >>>>>>>> Kills. Do not chase enemies into their jungle as 4 while dragon or a tower is available. If you just killed 3 of their 5 and you have your whole team up with little to no hp, take 2 of their towers and back. That’s it. You are done. You just got 1500 global gold for your team and with a dragon it’s even more. Those 2 kills you could have gotten aren’t worth even close to that amount even with shutdown gold. What’s more, you spread your gold evenly with global gold. Getting 1 person super fed with kills is useless if they die in a teamfight when your Udyr and Renekton have 1 cloth armor and level 2 boots. With global gold your whole team is on steroids.
K. Morale/Attitude This is huge. I totally missed this. I'm going to say Dont Rage ever. Raging isnt going to make your team play better or you play better ever. DONT DO IT. I am guilty of raging and probably would be much higher elo if I didnt. Dont do it.
Quote: Originally Posted by Icecoon
I have trouble hitting 40 cs 10 mins in help? But no for reals this guide is actually legit mathmaticlly. Problem is league is not math. The team "morale" is affected by grouping and objectives rarely would you see a jungler be blamed for overwarding but in reality the jungler is wasting money. Or how bout when you 4 seige an objective and someone is split farming stat wise this generates the most income, but people dont want that. They want to 5 man squad and look for picks then try to seige as a family .
Realize that making your team feel good is more important that some gold. Morale wins games that are unwinnable while cockiness/fighting throws games that have 10k-15k leads.
Quote: Originally Posted by djjomon Yeah, I'm Silver, but I have something to add. If your team won't work with you, work with them. You may have the right call while they don't. But if they won't follow you it's not worth it. Do what they want if it's safe to do so.
Quote: Originally Posted by Solyth
S3-S4 LoL scrub here.
If I had to summarize all my advice for a budding playing in one sentence... Never stop changing, never stop learning.
LoL is a consistently updating game, and even the meta changes constantly. Something as simple as Annie support falls out of practice because people learn how to play against it, and ahem, nerfs. As much as I hate to admit, following the trends is important for counterplay and building your own strategies. I don't care if you play Ashe mid because it was the best thing back in your day, just know how to play against the current meta. If you find something that works, know that it won't work forever. Also, I vote Squirtle beats Batman.
Quote: Originally Posted by Omicron Austin I'd say this can go under morale, but if you haven't seen the "DST" video from Sky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7TWpRXyRY), I highly suggest it.
I'm super garbage at this game and DST alone probably got me to Gold.
Quote: Originally Posted by Wildlash These are very sound guidelines, more people should read this. However, I'm caught in a rut at Plat 5. My kda on my main is 5:1, yet my win rate is at 50 percent.
Here's one factor that controls the outcome of a game more than any other:
Speaking from experience, you could be going 9/2 and have dominated your own lane, roamed to top or bot and helped out your teammates, and maybe even shut down their jungler by timing their buffs and stealing them appropriately, at the end of the day, if even one of your teammates is upset with with another, you've got an issue:
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This player will demoralize everyone on the team through chat (Lets assume he doesnt intentionally feed).
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The player this griefer is targeting will be affected the most (Because even at Platinum elo, people will not mute the flamers, which is adding fuel to the fire.)
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Everyone else on the team will focus less on the game and more on this argument.
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Nobody will group when objectives need to be taken. Why? Because they don't like each other and believe they can win the game 1v5 because they're the best in the world.
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You've lost, because the only time your team is together is right before the nexus falls
Most of you reading this will think "It happens, but not so much, I mean, this is plat elo right? If youre good enough you'll climb, if you're not, you won't."
I'm typing this after 4 losses, each one bringing with it atleast an afk or a highly toxic player. For the most part, I noticed that these flamers came from bot lane, when supports and adcs are unhappy with eachother. And tbh, my kda each game was about 3.7 (I havent done the math, this is my approximation, Indians op)
L. Map Awareness This ties in with wards and such. There will be a point where if you are using all the information given to you in the game from what you know that you will be able to predict where everyone is without wards. But that takes a long time to learn. Use enemy champions positions to your advantage. That being said, use wards anyways.
Quote: Originally Posted by Capitan Rick my number one advice and was and still is my greatest hurdle, periodically check the minimap. Tunnel vision kills. You focus so much on getting cs, watching your laner, and you forget the rest of the map. You have to check constantly what your team is doing even in laning phase. Look at the minimap, watch your team and your opponents, you can't overfocus on one thing. EVER.
M. Champ Select Drama
Quote: Originally Posted by Omicron Austin
Another point of advice, rather unrelated to in-game, is champ select in solo queue ranked. It is my personal experience (experiences may vary) that if you find two of your best roles and say "pref role1/role2", you'll almost always get one of the two. Just saying "pref" in front will go a long way; it implies to your team that you know what you want and what you're best at, but if all else fails you're still willing to do something else. If somebody is coming into a game with a sour mood and you just straight up call a roll, they may try to take it from you just to spite you.
N. Mechanics You Need to Practice
N-1. OrbWalk/Stutter Stepping And Attack Move
Ok, in League there will just be some things that you have to practice no matter what. Want to get super good at ADC? Well sit down and practice stutter stepping and attack moving till you have it down like 2nd nature. Playing a certain champion that requires an extra mechanic to be learned like Alistar? Better get down the w, q combo till its 2nd nature. You get the point.
Omicron Austin makes the point that stutter stepping is important with all roles and its totally true. Of course, if you cant do it with adc, you have no business playing that role at all. Nope, stop making excuses. If you are an adc that stands in 1 place and attacks, go to custom mode and kite the **** out of squirtle.
In order to stutter step all you do is attack your target and as soon as the projectile leaves, you move in the direction you want to go, THEN you immediately auto again and repeat. Sounds simple right? lol... try doing that in a teamfight against good bruiser players. I dont advise starting off with Draven because in my personal opinion he is the hardest adc to play mechanically and probably the hardest champ in the game. Start off with some easier adcs like cait, ashe, etc etc. You will notice that when you do this your overall dps goes up by a ton and you have way more control over your positioning. Here are some videos describing this and a few more details that should help you attack move and stutter step better. They explain this better than I can. Also there is an ADC tutorial that explains more mechanics which I have also linked. The 2nd video is one from Crs COP who explains how to stutter step from a different perspective. I REPEAT STUTTER STEPPING IS IMPORTANT WITH EVERY CHAMPION IN THE GAME, EVEN CASTERS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgMMxTofZ5A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8jFn4khpHc
Quote: Originally Posted by Omicron Austin
EDIT: I'll let you explain these in depth, Leviathan, but I'd add discussion on orbwalking/stutter stepping. Next to CS (if not more important; what good is gold if you're missing autoattacks), I'd say this skill is 100% absolutely mandatory for EVERY role, not just ranged ADC. When you're jungling, orbwalk the camps to the edge of their range. When you're CSing, always be moving. When you're attacking an enemy that's within the edge of your attack range, follow them prematurely, etc.
Another thing, and this often goes with orb-walking and makes it easier; attack move. Most pro ADC players I find will A-click while CSing, when attacking; whenever (with some exception). The primary function is simply to remove room for error. If you A-click on a minion, it attacks it. If you A-click next to that minion (misclicked), worst case scenario is you'll attack the closest minion to you, and lose that CS. If you right click and miss, then not only will you miss that CS, but you'll start walking directly into the enemy, and against good players, can mean some free harass that can ultimately lose you the lane. (NOTE: The time you should NOT orbwalk is when chasing an enemy and creeps are nearby.)
In addition, A-clicking also helps you orb-walk: click away, A-click somewhere behind you, click away, A-click somewhere behind you. This allows you to kite effectively and with less room for error. If you just right click and you miss, then once again, you'll start running backwards, directly into the enemy you're kiting.
With some practice, both orbwalking and a-clicking are easy skills to do with relative effectiveness, and can go a very, very long way.
N-2. Hardcore CS Practice
Umm.... this guy says it all. A guide from a Challenger Player.
There are many more in nitpicky things I can talk about, and I will add to this compendium of knowledge later depending on how active the thread is. I welcome other diamond players/challenger players/plat players to add to this thread. If Diamonds/challenger would like to correct me on something, let me know so that I can make changes to the thread. My goal for this thread is for it to be a 1 stop thread for all kinds of players to improve. I would need more help from players to input into the guide.
tldr; I thought you wanted to get better?
