How to climb divisions?

Bent Pixels·Jan 26, 2018·2 votes·5,066 views

Just got placed in my first ranking ever in league (Bronze V, please dont clap too loudly) but i was wondering what is the best way to climb ranks? is it about personal performance or do i have to win games or what? Can someone just give me a brief overview? Thanks!

15 Comments

AnastaeciaJan 26, 20182 votes

Ranked is all about winning the game. TBH, the games play just like norms. Some will say that people generally take ranked more seriously. Maybe if you take a huge sampling, but on the small scale there are just as many screwy games in either.

Xion The XIVJan 26, 20181 votes

That is not possible. All 1st time ranking are placed in silver. I have tried it on 3x accounts. I have lost all 10 games and I was always placed in silver4 or 5.

Bent PixelsJan 26, 20181 votes

well when i reached level 30 during preseason 8 i played those 10 placement games and got to silver IV but when the season started i played my placement games for the season and ended up getting bronze IV. are u telling me that im getting screwed over by riot rn?

RessurectDec 9, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Bent Pixels,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gKrAE7Jy,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2018-01-26T03:25:04.566+0000)

well when i reached level 30 during preseason 8 i played those 10 placement games and got to silver IV but when the season started i played my placement games for the season and ended up getting bronze IV. are u telling me that im getting screwed over by riot rn?

Nahhh not really, its how it is, pre season is like a window where u cna climb a couple of devisions or u can fuck up and go down... but yeah as a silver 4 to bronze 4, been there done that... but bronze and silver is like a child game.. its mroe about u than the enemy team or your team. Hard carry every game or get hard carried. thats how it works. Ive been in bronze and silver. No difference. As soon as ou hit gold 2 or low plat tho things will change drastically, you will have like people poking you as soon as thye see u get close to their wave. thats how the lanes mainly win or lose. poke is everything in silver and bronze, poke the shit outta them and thye cant farm, cant get kills cuz its turret or nun for them. so just keep pushing and poking, make them feel like they are weak, as soon as they get aggressive they are basically tilted. AKA bronze and silver is a more like tilt proof game. Good luck climbing tho. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Bent PixelsDec 10, 20181 votes

Bruh this was 11 months ago. Im chillin

AnastaeciaJan 26, 20181 votes

They shouldn't call it preseason...it just confused things. It is really just the end of season 7. SO, you did your initial placements at the end of S7 (and got silver like Xion said). Then the soft reset hit when S8 started and you did your placements for S8 right after. You will almost always be lower than the previous year because everyone (6 tiers) is smooshed down into the lowest 4 tiers. (There are soft resets and new placements every year,btw).

SO you kinda screwed yourself. But at the same time (looking at your OP.GG and the fact that you are new to league), you would've dropped from S4 down into bronze anyway. Ranked is a brutal place.

Bent PixelsJan 26, 20181 votes

yes ranked is very brutal and toxic. not a game goes by where im criticized but idec anymore lmao. i guess i did in a sense screw myself, so thanks for letting me know that if i make a new account or something

Mysticman89Jan 26, 20181 votes

In-game performance doesn't directly matter, just wins or losses, in so far as a win where you fed all game and got carried counts the same as a game where you 1v9 hard carried (but of course if you personally do well consistently, you'll win more often).

When you win games, you gain (hidden) mmr and LP, and when you lose you lose mmr and LP. The amount of LP you gain/lose depends on your mmr (and your mmr also determines where you get placed after placements), so if you have a high mmr relative to your rank, you gain a lot of LP and lose very little, while if your mmr is low relative to your rank you'll lose a lot for losses and only gain a little for wins. When your MMR is about 'right' for you rank, it's roughly equal gains and losses of around 19 or 20.

The amount of mmr you gain/lose for wins/losses depends on your mmr relative to your opponents mmr. Usually this doens't matter too much since matchmaking puts people of similar mmrs together (thats what mmr is for really), but it can become a factor when premades are involved, as well as in long-ish queues where matchmaking begins to allow increasingly large mmr differences.

(It's worth noting you can't actually see your mmr anywhere, sites like op.gg just estimate it but it's not necessarily accurate.)

Bent PixelsJan 26, 20181 votes

Thanks for your feedback! I think i am a bit low for my LP gain (i got 68 in a game) and im currently in my promos with one win to get to bronze IV. hopefully, after this bug is fixed, i can get up there :)

L1tespeedJan 26, 20181 votes

Play one champ
Play one role
Trade with enemy at correct times (dont trade when enemy has big wave, dont trade in enemy wave)
Get good farm. If you are trading properly, you should always be ahead in farm.
If youre ahead, freeze minion wave near your side, when enemy comes up to farm, harass him a lot.
Roam.
Place deep wards.
Make sure youre warding in general.
Get drakes/baron/rift.
Prioritize in getting other lanes towers before getting your own lane tower.

Bent PixelsJan 26, 20181 votes

Thanks for your feedback! Warding isnt really ever a problem for me (usually anywhere between 10-20 wards a game, hopefully thats a decent amount) and ive been grinding zoe midlane and shyvana jungle mainly, and it seems to be going pretty okay. zoe gets me a lot of assists though, which is weird because her design is to perform one shots, but its whatever

QQshaJan 26, 20181 votes

Play 1-2 champions. If you find a single champion you really enjoy, spam just that champion.
Dodge if you don't get your role/champ if you want to climb as quickly as possible. If you want to be slightly more well rounded, pick 1-2 very simple fill champions for each your off-roles. They don't necessarily have to be meta champions, just something you can consistently do okay on.
Set a goal for every single game/ranked grind session. Something performance-related like hitting 90 CS at 10 minutes, not dying in lane, dodging skillshots, hitting skillshots, using TP to help team, warding properly, tracking minimap, etc.
Focus on your performance only. Worrying about your interactions with the team outside of Korea is entirely pointless. If you can't guarantee a play working based on your performance alone, it's not worth going for the play (basically, don't rely on your teammates).
Always look to be doing something. Every second should be spent either getting objectives, setting up objectives, or getting gold/experience. This is why you want to avoid deaths, because you can't do any of that when you're dead. Even if you can't farm your lane, you can farm the jungle, roam to other lanes, or wait (it costs you less time off the map than dying).
Don't autopilot. Always consider what your immediate goals are, how to accomplish them, and what you should avoid doing.
Limit your use of chat. Spam pings instead. If you must use chat, keep it to the point. No arguing with teammates, just say what (you believe) the team should be doing if it's something that requires coordination, like split pushing or cleaning up teamfight engages or putting extra focus on taking down a priority target.
Be your own harshest critic. When you make a mistake, figure out what you can do to avoid doing it again in any future games so that you enter the next game as a better player. Mistakes happen, your goal is to cut out as many from your gameplay as possible so you can consistently play at your highest level. Climbing quickly is more about consistency than peak levels of play.
Be willing to cut yourself off if you're having a bad day. If your mindset deteriorates too much, you'll autopilot, make more mistakes, and learn next to nothing. If you're doing well but are having an unlucky streak, you can keep powering through, but once you start feeling discouraged from the losses, you need to stop. Once you care about winning and losing, stop. That's not important. What is important is improving every game. If you look for wins, you start cutting corners and overreaching to hard carry.
If you have extra time, look up outside resources. Watch high level streamers in your role (don't watch the entertaining ones, watch the intelligent ones). There are plenty of videos on the basics that would take a long time to learn by yourself, like freezing, lane management, trading (you can learn this by yourself faster than lane control), ward timings, etc. It'll save you some extra time from figuring this stuff out on your own. When watching higher level players, analyze every move they make. Think what you would do in their position at every second, and when they do something different (even something as simple as where they position in lane), ask yourself why. If you can't figure it out after seeing it a few times, ask the streamer directly.

Bent PixelsJan 26, 20181 votes

Dang thank you so much for all that information! I really wasn't expecting something as detailed as this but thank you anyway :) i do get really mad at myself when i have shitty games and such and i usually play league every day, even when my day has gone bad (which i kinda knew i should probably avoid playing but its just too addicting lol). i watch a lot of videos and streamers with my champs that i use. i type a lot in chat which i probably shouldnt do anymore just bc it 1. wastes time and 2. could get banned for toxicity. what do you mean by dodge? like say if i get assigned support or bot (im usually a midlaner or jungler) should i like close the client to leave the game or is there an easier way to do it? and will i get leaverbusted for doing that too? i hope for your response. thanks!

QQshaJan 28, 20181 votes

Leaver buster only applies once the game starts ("Welcome to Summoner's Rift!"). If you close the client during pick/ban, you're fine. There will be a queue timer delay (like 5 minutes) and like a 3 LP penalty (and a game loss if done in promos, but no loss to MMR), but it's more time efficient than spending 20+ games losing 20 LP. And it's beneficial to you to avoid tilt. People also recommend looking up your teammates in the lobby, and if they are trolling with their picks (picking a champ their played like 30 times and have a 30% winrate on instead of the champion they played 600 times with a 57% winrate), just dodge to save yourself the time and tilt. I just grit my teeth and focus on improving my play in some way during the game.

A few more tips:

Quality of practice is much more valuable than quantity. If quality of practice drops (due to fatigue, tilt, lack of motivation), just stop. Playing under those conditions creates the opportunity to let bad habits slip into your play. Yes, you want to hit a certain minimum of quantity for practice (a lot of people will say 4 games a day), but don't push yourself beyond what you are capable of. It's a pretty big thing in sports training and it translates well in games as well. Eventually, even if you're only able to start off with a small number of games, it gets easier later to maintain your performance for longer and you'll naturally be able to grind more games.
ARAMs are okay to take a break with if you still want to play league, but you should avoid unranked Summoner's Rift games except in situations to play with friends (preferably a larger group since that happens less often). The reasoning for this is due to maintaining expectations in game. This matters more once you hit mid/upper gold, and becomes significantly more noticeable in mid/upper plat, but skill brackets have habits and tells that you can abuse. For example, around low plat, ganks become EXTREMELY obvious. A player will start being super aggressive in lane when you know it's effectively suicide for them to do that. Even with no wards, 3 seconds later a jungler is almost guaranteed to show up on your flank (if he doesn't, your enemy laner is tilted and inting). In normals, the matchmaking is all over the place, and you'll face all different levels of opponents with different levels of commitment to playing well. Basically, it falls back to extra tip #1 - stop when quality of practice degrades. Bad habits seep in during normals and your ability to read the tendencies of players in your skill bracket becomes next to impossible because your experiences with them are mixed with your experiences with the massive pool of players in normal games. The reason ARAM is exempt from this is that it's an entirely different map, and any expectations you draw from ARAM are impossible to carry over to Summoner's Rift EXCEPT in cases of teamfights, which don't change too much.
To tie into #2, if you are going to warm up before going in to ranked, do it in a custom game by yourself or use the training tool. Practice combos on the dummies or the creeps and focus on farming/pathing/overall good mechanics. If you use normals as a warm up, again we go back to poor quality. If you use ranked as a warm up, you deal with the fact that your first game might be atrocious. Not the biggest deal, but it's a small tip that might help some people. In my first climb to diamond, before each ranked session I would spend 30 minutes in custom games trying to pick up as much CS as I could in 10 minutes against an intermediate Ziggs bot (at the time, the highest aggression bot) without killing it. I'd have to dodge Ziggs bombs and stay out of range of his auto attacks while trying to pick up every CS. You don't need a Ziggs bot in your game (in fact, at your current level I'd advise against it until you get better and get to the level where players are better at harassing in lane, like upper plat).