How I got to gold this season, after being silver for years (and how I plan on getting plat)

For years I was bronze. Then I made silver. Then for years, I was silver. Now I'm gold.

So what changed? What did I do differently?

Well, I'm a jungler by trade. So this will apply pretty specifically to junglers. Although, maybe some laners could take something away from this as well. First and foremost - I fixed my attitude. If I could pinpoint one thing over the years that has really helped me out, its fixing my attitude. I used to blame my team for losses, I used to flame team mates, I used to walk away from the game frustrated because "I can never get a good team."

That's so wrong. If that's you right now, you gotta fix yourself. That's like... step 1.

Here's how I did it:

Treat the entire team like they're just unpredictable AI bots that you have absolutely no control over at all. Typing to them won't help. Pinging them won't help. Nothing you do will help. Just do your best to play your best, and do everything you can to help them out wherever you can. If you go to NA.OP.GG, you can find you kill participation per game as a stat. If your KP is below 50%, you gotta do more to be a team player. You gotta be with your team, helping them make things happen. As a jungler, your KP is super important. Its pretty much an indicator as to whether or not you were farming too much, and not helping your team enough. Get that KP up.

And just get in your own head, right? Instead of thinking "man, that tristana sucks" instead you wanna think to yourself "That tristana is having a really hard time, what can I do to help her out?"

The answer is usually pretty obvious. "I can ward that side of the enemy jungle so they know the enemy jg is coming." "I can gank that side of the map a few more times than I usually would." "I can keep my jungle pathing local to the bottom side so that if some shit goes down, I'm close."

You gotta think about what YOU can do. Not what THEY'RE doing.

2nd thing that really helped me out is that I grew a set of balls when it came to crossing the river into the enemy jungle. For a long, long time, I was scared to go over there because I figured I'd just get caught and I'd just die and my team would flame me.

Screw that. Get your ass over there. The only way you're gonna learn how to gauge when you CAN and CANNOT counter jungle, and who your strong/weak matchups are is by going over there and screwing it up a bunch until you get it right. So get over there and start flexing your jungle muscles. Don't be afraid. You're never going to learn how to effectively starve out the enemy jungler, or keep track of them, or kill them in their own jungle by NOT going over there. So just go.

You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna feed. But you're gonna LEARN.

And eventually, you're going to get confidence, and I'd say confidence is probably 70% of jungling. On average, now, my enemy jungler is 2-3 levels below me for a good majority of the game. I also pretty much know exactly where they are for most of the game, or at least which quadrant of the jungle they're in. That enables me to make plays around their positioning, grab objectives and yes - sometimes even just straight up 1v1 kill them.

The 3rd thing, and the last thing i"m gonna talk about in this particular thread that really helped me out is sticking to a handful of champions you know who you're good with. Fuck the meta. Fuck popular champion choices. You know who YOU are good with. Grab 2-3 champs maybe 4 that you're good with and just stick with them. Don't play anything else. Don't shoot for counterpicks, don't shoot for composition synergy, don't shoot for anything other than "I'm comfortable on this champion."

I have a huge win rate on Jarvan, Amumu, and Ivern. Up until just recently, maybe the last patch or 2, none of those champions were in-meta. I just happened to get lucky as hell that ardent censer became a thing - so Ivern came into meta, and tank meta came back - so Amumu and Jarvan came back. Pure luck. I was winning on them before they were meta picks ( and amumu isn't and has never been a 'meta' pick, but he's my main champion.)

Play who you're good at, not who's "good".

I hope this helps. If this helps even just one person get out of bronze and into silver, or out of silver and into gold, its worth it. good luck out there.