Are you stuck in Bronze/Silver and want to climb to Silver/Gold? Here's what I did to get to Gold.

I started playing this game about a year and a half ago, and my goal was to get into Gold before my friends who have played longer. A few days ago, I finally met that goal and haven't looked back. Last season was very difficult for me, since it was my first season. I had a lot to learn about the game, but I made the effort to understand it and get better. If you're unwilling to put in the effort to understand how to CS better in all scenarios, how to poke in lane without burning through resources, how to push towers when needed, map awareness, warding properly, etc. do not continue reading.

For Bronze players wanting to hit Silver:

I played about 350 games in Bronze last season, and I thought I was much better than the people I played with. In reality, I was missing a lot of core mechanics that held me back from progressing. You WILL get terrible teammates from time to time, but that should not deter you or tilt you from continuing on your rise. Core mechanics to focus on when trying to get to Silver are these.

• CSing - If you don't know what CSing is, then this is an issue. At this stage in your climb, you don't necessarily need to fully understand wave management, but it would be good knowledge to understand. Last hitting minions is more important than kills, and more important than roaming constantly. A massive issue I have seen with Bronze players is that they do not understand this core fundamental to the game. If the minion has an Axe, it will take 2 tower shots, then you can last hit. A caster minion (3 back minions) require a little more effort to get perfectly if under tower. 1 auto, 1 tower shot, 1 auto will secure the creep. Cannon creeps can take more from the tower, so keep an eye on their health bar to last hit efficiently. CSing is the core component to the game, and can single handedly win you a lane. If you're getting shoved, just focus on CSing. If you're getting harassed and can't return damage, play safe around tower and focus purely on CSing. If you die early, keep track of their CS vs your CS. There are 6 minions per wave, 7 when there is a Cannon creep in the wave. 3 melee minions are worth 60 gold, 3 casters are worth 45 gold and 1 cannon creep is worth 40 gold. That is 145 gold per 7 minion wave, and 105 gold per normal wave. If you're ahead 20 CS and are 0/1, you are actually ahead in lane as far as gold goes. This means your death, 300 gold, is less than 20 creeps. In a 6, 7, 6 scenario, that's 19 creeps. At those gold costs, you've roughly killed 9 melee, 9 ranged and 1 cannon. So the gold amount would be, 180 (melee), 135 (ranged creeps) and 40 (cannon), which equals 355 gold. Since a normal death costs 300 gold, you can see that you just CSing properly and better puts you 55 gold ahead of your laner. This only will leave you at a deficit if you gave up first blood which is 400 gold. And even at that point, you can clearly see you are CSing better than your laner and will continue to do so. So the 45 gold deficit you're currently sitting at will balance out later. If you die in lane, DO NOT go back to lane trying to kill them immediately and die again. Setting yourself further behind is not going to benefit anybody on your team and this is NOT your junglers fault for not ganking.

• Warding - There are multiple guides online to show where the most efficient ward placements were. Wards are not only to prevent yourself from getting ganked. Wards are beneficial to the entire team because you get information of where their jungler is currently or if a laner is roaming. Knowing where the jungler is at all times is very valuable information, as you have far more time to react to a gank than you normally would and will not require you to burn flash (or more summoners) to escape the gank. You should be buying no less than 2 pink wards per game. Even if your pink ward has not been destroyed yet, if you have the inventory space and the 75 gold to buy another, do so. If a jungler or laner finds your pink, they will destroy it and you are left with no vision. If you are controlling the map, you are controlling the tempo of the game. If you manage to push a turret down, place wards deeper in their jungle or deep in lane so always know where your laner or their jungler is.

For both Bronze and Silver's:

• Objectives - Objectives are the key to the game, not kills. Let's create a scenario where you've died in lane and are 0/1. You have placed efficient wards in your bot side river brush, as well as a pink ward in their jungle river bush. You see that your laner did not push the wave into your tower and decides to roam bot for some kills. Ping your bot lane and let them know that your laner, and potentially their jungler are rotating bottom lane to try and snag a double kill. Ask yourself, what do I do here? You should push your lane as fast as possible. This is a time you use your abilities as fast as possible to push your creeps into the enemy tower. This does 2 things, denies your laner more CS and also gets free damage on the tower. Anytime your laner does something like this, you need to make them pay for it. Since you've placed good wards and could preemptively react to it accordingly, they roamed bot and got nothing for the time they invested in walking down there. Although you are 0/1, you now have a CS lead and have dealt damage to their tower. DO NOT CHASE YOUR LANER DOWN BOT LANE. You lose creeps, free damage and you probably will not get anything for it. If you've pinged your teammates to leave and warded efficiently and still lose 2 teammates bot lane, there is not much else you can do other than push for towers. I'm currently Gold and still see this issue in my games. My laner will roam and linger bot while I get Tier 1 and a lot of damage on Tier 2 for free. Had I roamed bot, we would have a stalemate and nothing is to be gained from it.

• Main 1 Role or 1 Champion - With how Dynamic Queue now is, you have a higher probability of getting the position you really want. When I was in Bronze, I had played about 15 different champions in Solo Queue trying to climb and kept bouncing from Bronze 1 to Bronze 3 and back over and over. I found 1 champion I was good with and that worked in the meta (Rek'Sai), and spammed her 75 games in a row from Bronze 3 to Silver 5. Why did I pick Rek'Sai? Rek'Sai is a high impact, low skill cap champion who is very good at map control and pressure. Playing 1 champion all the time will improve your gameplay because you start to understand what times you can engage a fight and what times you cannot engage a fight. Champions I had played a lot of prior to Rek'Sai seemed to make more sense to me after playing Rek'Sai so many games in a row. Having the ability to know when you can fight and when you can't fight is vital, and usually will carry over into other champions as you branch out and climb. Look at my op.gg, http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Ternt, as you can see I have picked 4 champions that I play more than any other champion. Ekko, Rek'Sai, Jayce and Kindred. I played Ekko jungle, Rek'Sai jungle, Kindred jungle and Jayce top/mid. Over the course of a season, and even during preseason, I defined what champions I wanted to focus on. It was not until recently I started playing Kindred because she is a very high skill cap champion. Compare games of my mains to games of random champions I just wanted to play. My Lee Sin games have been abysmal because I haven't played him in awhile, my Diana game was atrocious. I know how to play both champions, but since I had not played them in awhile, I made poor decisions in game that lead to me throwing my lead and losing the game. I can play a lot of different champions, but that does not mean that I should when trying to climb. As boring as it gets, you will find that consistency on a champion is more important than maybe carrying, or maybe feeding. Pick a champion that fits your play style. My play style is heavy ganking/hard engage. All my champions excel in those aspects, so they cater to my playstyle. Find your playstyle and base your champion pool around that.

• Pick a lane/champion you know you can win with - It does not matter what champion you play necessarily, or what the match up really is. I am a jungle main, but I also play top/mid as a secondary role. I picked 1 champion to do both lanes, and that is Jayce. Jayce took me a long time to master and even understand, but this can work for most champions. If you pick your primary role, and have picked your main champion, finding your secondary role/champion should be based on preference and work to do the fundamentals listed in this guide to master the champion.

• Item Builds - Do NOT go to mobafire and just use a cookie cutter build every game. Each game is inherently different than the last game. You need to look at the team each game and understand fully why you are building something. In games where I play Ekko, I look at what the team has and look forward to what I need to be building next. There is a core theme in most champions builds, mine on Ekko is Runic Echoes > Iceborn Gauntlet > Abyssal Scepter. Runic gives you a huge power spike, Iceborn gives you a slow on your E, armor, cooldown reduction and mana, Abyssal gives you MR, flat magic penetration and AP. This is a hybrid build for Ekko instead of a full tank or full glass cannon (full damage). The difference between going Negatron Cloak before Blasting Wand could be the difference between a death and a kill. I had a Bronze friend tell me once when he was playing Galio that he built Spirit Visage, Athene's, and Banner of Command into a full AD composition because "Galio scales off MR". Just because Ekko scales well with Visage for his ult, you don't build it if you don't need to. Spending your gold poorly on itemization is no worse than feeding your laner, because you're investing gold into items that you're not getting the full benefit from.

• There are no counter picks in Bronze/Silver - I play a lot of Jayce, and regardless of the match up I can usually win it. You knowing how to play your champion and understanding what makes the champion you're against so strong will prevail over picking something just because a website told you it was a counter. Counters are considered by trade potential, and champions like Fiora vs Jayce is considered a counter. Fiora is very strong and trades extremely well, understand that you probably won't out damage her early and play safe. Farm as much as you can and let her shove the wave into your tower, since you can CS and not miss many while doing so. Play your mains and be confident enough to know regardless of what a website says, you're better at your champion than the other person is.

• Do not rage - People say this a lot, but it's very true. I rarely talk in my games outside of saying gj or giving somebody a compliment for a nice play. I communicate with lanes through pings or by saying "omw" with a ping to follow. Countless games I have been flamed for "not ganking" a pushed lane that was ungankable. I realize that, they do not realize that. These are the people who will continue to struggle through where they intend to go until they realize their play is more important than a jungler holding their hand.

By no means am I outstanding at the game, but these are core components that got me from Bronze 4 to Gold 5 (and still climbing) after 1 season. You need to analyze YOUR play every game, think about how you built your champion in accordance with how the game played out. If you rushed damage instead of tank and somebody on their team got out of hand, think about how you could have built differently to deal with that person instead of letting them 3 shot you. Realize that games cannot be won sometimes, regardless of how well you play. I've had games where I have stomped, and games where I've been stomped. I can't tell you how many games I've lost to fed Jax or Xin, and there's just nothing you can do about it sometimes. In those games, I realize the mistakes I made and/or poor decisions that occurred that lead to how it played out. Even if my top laner fed, or my ADC did the least damage on the team, I still made mistakes, I still need to improve. Taking a critical approach on how you play will drastically help you climb. I've had games where I was positive and doing well, but still lost. If I was so ahead, why didn't I push my lead more? These are the types of questions you need to ask yourself each time you lose a game. Be proactive, if you're invested enough to complain about how bad teammates were, you're invested enough to do things to help yourself grow and get better.

I still make mistakes, and sometimes forget to do basic things. I lose games, sometimes I do poorly, even pros do this. Unless you're on your way to Challenger, you probably aren't going to shit stomp every single game and single handedly carry, or else you wouldn't be reading this. Bad games happen, positioning mistakes happen, poor warding happens, move on and look towards the next game and remember why you did so poorly and correct it.