The truth about ranking up (especially low elo)

I add especially low elo since I am not a high elo player. I wanted to take an opportunity to write one final post about ranking up. Why? Not really sure. Maybe its because I am feeling high on my 14 game winning streak, which no doubly will soon be followed by a 14 game losing streak because # . However, I think its more because I know the struggle of low elo and the grinding process of ranked and wanted to provide some proof that you can reach your goal, but it will take some work and perseverance and offer a different perspective on the ranked ladder.

Quick background about me: I am 6 year veteran who has been playing ranked since season 2. I am no where close to a pro player skill level, just an average low elo player who loves the game and grinding the ladder. My highest ranked obtained is only gold 4, which I currently have on two accounts with a third account (my main ironically) sitting in gold 5. I was bronze in season 2 where I first realized even though I had played hundred of game I still did not know much. I did not really start grinding the ladder until season 3 where I was first placed in bronze 4. Of course I was mad that I was placed so low on the ladder and "I was obviously a silver player, probably more like gold level actually". Well whether it was true or not the only way I was going to rank up was to put in some effort. I did reach silver in season 3 but was stuck in silver 2-3 from the middle of season 3 all the way until the end of season 5 where I finally reached gold during preseason. Now as you can see.... I am clearly not a role model on how to go pro in this game or how to climb from whatever rank to diamond/master/challenger, but I can share what I have learned within the last year after grinding the ladder for years and countless hours.

1. Ranks in this game are based on player distribution. By season end 200 top ranked accounts are in challenger, a very small percentage are in master, generally top 2ish percent are in diamond, top 10% reach plat, and by the end of the season roughly 35% of accounts are ranked gold or higher, but generally 30% throughout the year. If you want to look at current rank distributions go to http://na.op.gg/statistics/tier/ . a.) Its a good thing to visualize when thinking about ranking up. Even though plat 5 to gold 5 is only 1 tier, its is a difference of roughly 407,500 accounts or 22.66% of the player population (assuming I did this math correctly and with rounding).

2. Ranking up is a grind. Whether your in Diamond or in bronze, ranking up takes time. The better you are the quicker you will rank up but it does take time. Speaking in generalities If your win percentage stays above 50% you will eventually slowly rank up. Staying around 50% means you are currently playing around that skill level and less than 50% means you may be too high ranked and either need to improve or rank down until you against players of equal skill. That is where the idea of 50% wins/losses come from. Of course this does not come out perfectly and due to promos and other things in the system ranks do not always affect this. But it is something to keep in mind while grinding the ladder.

Keeping those thoughts in mind, climbing the ladder to your goal rank can be a daunting task. But it is achievable if you put the time and effort in to practicing and improving. Of course your goal rank has to be somewhat realistic and obtainable. I am sure all of us would love to be master or challenger, but reality is most of us will never be that good and obviously only a small portion of the player base gets there. Were not all meant to go pro in this game, but if you have the skills and put in the time and effort maybe you will make it one day.

My goal has always been to achieve gold since well season rewards but also because it seems achievable. I have to consistently play better than roughly 25-30% of the player population (depending of the time in the season) but its still not beating out 90% or 98% like plat/diamond. As you can see it has taken me a long time to reach my goal, but once I reached that level of play I have been able to reach that rank over & over again.

So if you are low elo and really want to rank up this is what you have to do.

1. Focus on your mistakes, not your teams. Yes.... you will get trolls/afks/terrible players, you will carry some games hard and get carried in other games. None of that really matters. You have to focus on yourself and your play. If you playing to win and playing well with a level head you should be winning more than your losing. When you lose, try to think why you lost and maybe some things you could have done better to improve your chances of winning.

2. Take breaks to avoid tilt. We all get tilted even if we don't feel like it. You lose a few games in a row you going to feel worse about your play and you will play worse, therefore resulting in more losses. You just have to trust me this is true. Tilt held me back from reaching my goal for a long time. I now take a break if I lose 2 games in a row. Just to clear my head to give myself time to forget the past game and focus on the present game.

3. If you wan to rank up you have to put in the effort to learn and get better. Start reading guides, watching streamers, watch you tube videos on how to mechanics, how to play roles, what builds to rune/masteries to use/etc. When watching pros, don't just focus on the champions they play but more of what their doing at certain points of the game. Like... I love watching nightblue3 since I now main jungle. But if you try and copy his builds and champion pool from his you tube clips you are going to do poorly in ranked. The dude is a freaken challenger player smurfing in lower elo. He knows the game and has insane mechanics.... of course he can pull this shit off verses people he is better than. You don't however see him doing that shit on his challenger account now do you? There is a reason for this. What I noticed in his videos is whether he doing poorly or has 30 kills is that by the end of the game the dude always has insane farm levels for a jungler. I cover this more in point 6. Also, I noticed a lot of his ganks are not until he is level 6 or higher. Most his videos are in diamond/plat games so one must think it is a little harder to pull off low level gank cheese. But I have found it overall just better and safer to usually just do a full jungle clear and focusing on some early gold/levels before looking to gank all the lanes. It obviously depends on champion/player/etc. but just something I noticed and took into consideration. It took me 5ish years before I started actually reading the patch notes.....

4. Stick to select roles with 2-3 champions. If you want to play every role with a very large champion pool then good luck reaching your goal rank or (true rank/mmr). Reality is, we are all better at certain champions and roles then we are with others. If you not playing your best roles or champions in ranked and pissed that your not ranking up, then you are clearly missing this obvious point.

5. I personally think map awareness and rotation is a huge difference between gold & silver. There are many aspects of the game to work on, but map awareness and knowing when and how to rotate help a lot. I definitely am no pro at these two things, but have really worked on these aspects of my game and have started winning more games because of it. Map awareness is important so you have an idea where the enemy team is to avoid ganks/fights while also knowing where your team is to do objectives or assist in a fight. Map rotation is key to providing pressure on the enemy, keeping up your farm, and denying the enemy team pressure. a. Example: Its really common especially in say silver 2-5 for players to rotate really poorly. I never realized how true this was until the last few months. Like after laning phase people just don't know where to go. Everyone just groups mid and sits there shooting at each other. Meanwhile bot and top just sitting there begging to be pushed and farmed. If you back from mid and see your adc & support head to cover your lane and you see a wave pushing to your bot turret your new lane is bot. The adc & support have mid covered so don't worry about that, bot lane is yours now for the time being so get that farm and push it out. Same goes for top. Junglers should also cover lanes when wave pushing to turrets and your laner has backed.

6. Keeping up your farm is extremely important. I think a huge difference between bronze & silver is bronze players don't realize how important csing is (along with other things such as taking objectives). But keeping up your farm is very important. But what I started noticing in myself and in silver is although players understand to cs in lane, they get in a habit of roaming a lot and giving up free farm. I think the biggest area of lacking in farming is jungle mains. Everyone wants their jungle to gank their lane for them. Obviously your jungle can't be in 3 lanes at once so you have to make your decisions wisely. But one thing players lack especially in silver/bronze is keeping up their farm while jungling. If you ever wonder why you keep putting up awesome k/d/a as a jungler say 8-2-20 but still don't get an s rank from the mastery system the reason is most likely because your farm sucks. I just started maining jungle within the last couple of months so the concept is still new to me as well. But what you will see is the average silver/bronze jungle will be so worried about ganking lanes and getting their team ahead, they will completely neglect continuously farming their jungle or covering/pushing certain lanes. The result is, although you may get your team some kills and assists you starve your self gold and experience. Meanwhile the enemy jungle knows farming is important and although they not ganking as much as you are they have more farm and are a higher level and start out scaling you. Not only have I seen an increase in my win percentage since I started focusing more on farming as a jungler but I have also noticed an increase in s gradings for cubes and mastery tokens so its a win/win. Obviously keeping up farm in all other lanes is important as well.

7. Peeling for carries and positioning. You have to figure out if it more important for you to try and engage the enemy carries ( ) or peel for your mid/adc ( . Also positioning is extremely important especially if you adc or mid. You are going to have a hard time winning if you playing and always in the front line leading the engage for a team fight. It always makes me frustrated when I see my adc use his dash to get closer to the enemy at the start of a fight rather than saving it to dodge/kite.

8. Don't give up unless there is a really good reason. Many games in low elo are thrown, so stay optimistic. Also, don't flame teammates and mute flammers.

9. Learn how to get carried along with learn how to carry. You obviously want to try your best every game and carry hard, but sometimes you get behind and thats ok. Play safe and learn how to get carried. There are games where I am doing poor in lane. The difference between me and the average silver/bronze player is instead of going back to lane and continuing to try and fight my lane opponent resulting in more deaths and feeding the enemy, I play more cautions and just focus on farming and waiting for help. I then look to try and make some plays in the mid and late game to help my team win. It just takes one awesome play to save your team and help out. So even if you have a rough start, but you get that clutch ult late game that sets your team up to ace the enemy then nothing that happened earlier matters anymore.

I am sure there are other things to add but this getting long enough. For me, improving has all been about admitting I have a lot to learn and getting rid of any ego I had. I opened my mind for helpful tips/suggestions. I stopped raging at teammates and focused on myself. I stopped giving up in games and learned that being behind early doesn't mean you going to always lose the game especially in low elo games. I am not sure what my actual rank is as I am still winning at lof my games. I doubt I am plat, so I am sure I will hit my next rank wall soon. But keeping an open mind and continuously trying to improve is really rewarding and has made me find a new joy in playing this game. Sadly it took 5 years but we all grow at different speeds. My speed is turtle, maybe your a rabbit.

Hope this helps

Dukes/Oldwisepotato/Smalltomahawker