Miku's guide for how go be good at this game
I'm not perfect but I still see so many things so often that are just simply wrong, I'd like to take a moment to explain to these players how they could be playing the game better.
First off, there are 5 roles in the current meta: top, mid, adc, sup, and jungle. And here's how you play them:
Laning as top: Mostly about trying to get more money than your opponent before the lane phase ends, but also be sure to let your team know if their top is missing and don't be too afraid to roam, especially if there's a heated battle in contesting bot or a dragon. Also be sure to keep an eye on where the enemy jungler is, and be more wary of them coming for you the further you push.
Laning as mid: Similar to top, but roaming is much more useful. You can roam to top or bot, but mostly only roam if you're ahead. If you're behind, you might run into the enemy on your way to roam and die, or the enemy will roam too and you've made some other situation worse since you've added their stronger champion to it just for adding your weak self. But if they roam, let your team know and do still consider following to try to help your team out. If you do stay, push as fast as you can and try to take objectives. And if there is a dragon being contested, you really should either help out or just keep their mid stuck at mid lane so at least they can't mess it up without you having a presence. Be sure to track the enemy jungler and try to put up some wards and be very careful of ganks if you don't know where the enemy jungler is.
Laning as adc: Last hit the minions. Yes you have to be good at last hitting to be good at adc. Only push if you have enough time to push to the tower and have it deny the enemy the current wave before the enemy adc can get back to lane, or if you're leaving the lane. In this lane especially it is extremely important that you do not push. You really shouldn't roam very much early game, but do help with dragon if it's possible. Once the game is at least 13 minutes in, or you destroy their first tower in bot lane, then you can start roaming. But if you do, and bot lane is pushed beyond where their first tower was, then try to take more towers as fast as you can. Don't just gank for kills, try to push lanes and get more towers out of it.
Listen, objectives win games. You might think that roaming and taking those 3 outer towers that were all easy pickings by you, the fed adc, weren't really all that important. But they so were. Once those are down, your team can invade the enemy jungle with great success. You can take all their camps and kill or at least kick their jungler out of it. Now your team can farm all the jungle enemies and their team none, so you have much more gold income than them so you'll be able to get enough stronger than them that your team will likely win the game. And with the god-awful minion pushing mechanic, it's too hard for the other team to get out of this if you got fed early game.
Laning as sup: Only attack minions when your adc is trying to push the lane. IMO the key to success as a sup is to have the right mindset. Your goal is not to get your adc fed. Nor is it to not die. It's not even just simply to let your adc safely farm. Give up yet? The key here is to recognize that your goal is to create as big of a gold advantage as you can. Meaning that, every enemy cs denied is about as good as a cs that you let your adc get. And, if you're way ahead, and yeah you can stay in lane with your adc safely farming, but really, you should both b as soon as possible so you can get more items with which to help you deny the enemy more cs, thus increasing your advantage. I make it a point to almost always try to help out with dragon, as well. Also you can roam but I would only recommend it if doing so does not lead to your adc missing any significant amount of cs.
And in bot lane, you have to be the most careful of any lane of ganks. Every champion on the enemy team can gank bot. Top can teleport, mid can roam or teleport, and junglers can just walk there. Not only that, there are even 4-man or even 5-man ganks, often when the dragon is up, from which you might not even be safe at your outer turret. So, it pays to ward, but also to track where all the enemies are and what they're likely to do in order to help you survive the ganks. But when you deem it is safe, don't be afraid to play aggressively. And when your laning partner isn't in lane, you play really safe and you better not die or else you just screwed up really bad.
Laning as jungle: Well yeah it's not really laning, but I mean the first 13 minutes of the game. During this time, you shouldn't just farm. Assume that the enemy jungler will gank and thus you need to as well in order to avoid your lanes getting behind. Your lanes getting behind early is a disaster since then they'll likely keep getting further behind. On the flip side, your lanes getting ahead start game is a godsend as it means a huge advantage for your team. Really just gank wherever you think it'll work, which is often the lane the enemies have pushed the most, but also keep track of the enemy jungler and look for counterganks. They'll often not know you're there and way overcommit trying to get a kill, and then you can show up and get a really easy kill as they're likely in a horrible position with all their good abilities on cooldown.
Teamfighting in general: Don't chase. Seriously, just don't do it. And if you win a teamfight, you get as many objectives as possible. Don't just play it safe and recall. But do run away right before they'll get their easy chance to kill you if you stay.
Teamfighting as a tanky champion: This is pretty champion-specific, so please do what your champion is good at instead of what I say, but here's some basics if you still don't know. Catch enemies squishies when you can. A good catch will cause the enemy to use abilities which opens up the door for your carries to go in. Also, protect your carries, especially if one of them gets caught by an enemy then they'll likely need your help in order to survivie. And during the fight, try to help out whoever on your team seems to need it the most. So say there's an enemy tunneling one of your carries, then just go cc him/her and it should turn him/her into meat for your carry so long as your carry is good enough at kiting.
Teamfighting as an adc (or most other carries): I've read other descriptions of what to do as an adc and tbh, they kind require a lot more thought about how to do them than my way of explaining it, and mine is still effective, though not absolute. Basically, you follow these rules, of decreasing importance: Rule 1: You do not die. Rule 2: You attack an enemy champion whenever possible. Rule 3: You kill an enemy champion whenever possible. Rule 4: You attack a higher priority enemy champion whenever possible. Rule 5: You help teammates out whenever possible.
Teamfighting as a squishy non-carry: E.g. someone like Janna, Nami, or Soraka. This one's tricky. It often may feel like the fight is up to your teammates but do not let that make you think you are of too little importance. I recommend you stay about as far away from the enemies as your carries are. Now, you'll probably notice that you're ending up in places where if an enemy tunnels you, you'll die. And, well, it's true. But at least you'll have made that enemy peeled for your carries so they'll die too, and sometimes you'll even live. The point is that your carries should have enough presence that it is still not a net gain for the enemy team to tunnel you. And if a tank for some reason tunnels you, just kite and use abilities all day and they likely won't be able to kill you. You're still peeling them for your carries so your team will likely still do well in the fight. When every one is actually in the correct position, you can use your abilities on any one. Whatever you think will make the fight go in your favor. Although you may want to save your cc abilities for when you really need them or are sure they'll do good, as using these up may open the door for the enemy team to do something better than what they're currently doing.
Building: Ah, where you can really easily see when a lot of players are most definitely low elo. IMO there's really just one think you need to know in order to build correctly. For each item on each champion, give that item a rating. Let that be how good you think that item is on that champion, in general. Now, add on to that a situational modifier. So if there's an item like locket, add some value on to that for each ap user the enemy has, and a big boost if they have a really fed ap user. And don't forget even some champions that have no ap can still do pretty significant magic damage. But the point is, add the situational modifier to the general value of that item on your champion to see how good that item would be. Then go for the item that is the "best" by this rating. The thing you should really notice here is that on some champions, you might want a locket if the enemy has 3 or more ap users or at least one really fed one, but on some other champions, you might promote it up to the best choice even if the enemy only has 2 ap users.
Other than that, strive to get better, not just to win. If you try to win with a new champion, you'll just be really passive and hope your team carries you. But in doing this, you will never learn where you can actually do anything of great significance towards helping, so you'll just be bad. I'd recommend playing normals if you want to just go ham all the time though. And also just consider every exchange you ever take part in. Was there some way it could've gone better, or should it have been avoided altogether? If you think about this a lot, you can really improve a lot about your game. Also do not be too afraid to roam. I see too much of the idea of "win lane, lose game." Well, you know why you lost game? You didn't help the team with enough things. One player that's ahead can roam and get the whole team ahead. Another that's ahead can just peacefully farm all their team loses all its towers on its other lanes. Guess which one is more likely to win? But if you're behind, don't be afraid to try to farm and catch up.
Think you know everything yet? Nah, you've just begun. You need to know every ability of every champion, how well it scales, and what its cooldown is, and you have to keep track of all of them. Or at the very least, know the zone control of every champion as this is especially important. And keep track of what's warded, when the enemy buffs are up, etc.
Finally, I spent months in silver just trying to figure this stuff out. It's really hard to improve very fast when you don't really understand why you lost a game. So I figure players should at least know this stuff so that they can understand how to get better without having to go through the frustration that I did. This is a very complicated game now and you need to know things or else you'll blame too much of what went wrong on the wrong things. So just play smarter, not harder, and you'll likely soon notice you're doing better than before.
