how do you climb when your teams constantly feed
not a rant post, just genuinely curious, because no matter what lane i play, 2 others feed and i cant carry above it no matter what
12 Comments
I wouldn't recommend listening to high ranked players that try to offer advice as if your climbing experience remotely resembles theirs.
People here reference anecdotal cases of carrying 0-10 top laners to win a game and act as if that is proof that you should be able to rank up, or they reference diamond level players that can rank up from Bronze to diamond to validate a very flawed ranking system.
The truth is, you have to get very lucky with your teammates. That is all. I've deranked 2 divisions despite winning my lane literally everytime.
Players throw out the "60% of games are winnable" metric, but even if that was true, think of how stupid that is. That openly admits that 40% of the games Riot puts you in, are automatic losses. In what other game is such a stat acceptable?
This is the result of not tracking individual performance in a team game. In ELO hell, there is simply too wide of a skill discrepancy. Until Riot understands that the 0-10 top laner deserves to derank more than the 5-0 mid laner, you will continue to have skill mismatches. You need to punish players that are bad, and reward players that are good.
I've made the case before: Track your lane performance up to 15 minutes in a game and have a metric for individual lane performance, then if a kid goes 0-10 against a kid that is the same rank as him, you can either raise the 10-0 kid or lower the 0-10 kid, but either way, FIX IT.
As a platinum support main, I have figured out quite a few tips and tricks for climbing when you or your team is behind and/or incompetent.
1.) **Play champions that can carry games. **Learn which champions are good at carrying and why, and learn what champions are BAD at carrying and why. This alone can take you from Bronze to Gold. Champions who are dependent on their teams to shine can be really risky to play.
2.) Die as little as possible. It sounds simple but its really not - Analyze your own play and set a goal - Aim to die 5 times or less each game. Anymore than that, and odds are high that you either fed or played sub-optimally. Find out why and adjust for next time.
3.) Remember that even the best of the best only win about 60% of their games, so you will always lose. Focus on your own play, and play the best with what you have. That's how you get better.
4.) Learn how to stall games where the enemy is ahead - Wave clear and split pushing can be incredibly important here. Always remember that the longer a game goes, the more likely a comeback is.
Split push.
You don't. You stay in elo hell for the next few weeks, and hope season 8 is better.
Which it won't be.
Pick something that can solo carry. When I was placed in Bronze in Flex Queue, I played Brand support. It helped cover up our all AD comps, offers a ton of damage due to his passive cause most people don't understand how much it actually does in low elo, has excellent poke damage so long as you can hit skill shots, and can clear waves easily if you comp has no wave clear. Another good support is Vel'koz for the same reasons. In games where we're ahead, I try to make picks with my CC or I save my CC to peel for whoever is ahead. When we're behind, I use my AOE to damage minion waves to make them easier and safer for my team to clear. Support is the hardest role to solo carry from in my opinion, so in other lanes, you will most likely have the gold to get items to help you. Support though is great for enabling a solo carrier, so long as the support player can identify who is carrying the game and protect them.
Identify the win condition. If are a pick comp, make picks. If you have a strong splitpusher, let them splitpush (assuming they actually know how to splitpush safely). If you have a teamfight comp, teamfight. Nothing is more annoying than watching a team try to force a Tryndamere to teamfight, or an Amumu to splitpush. Yeah, it's possible, but it's so much better to use these people where they excel instead of just making them work. You don't play Draven as a heal/shield support cause he just doesn't do that. Yeah, he can build Locket, Redemption, Athene's, etc, but that's just ignoring his natural strengths and forcing him into something he isn't. Play to your champions/comps strength.
Look at the minimap and ping more. No one looks at the minimap in low elo, so if you can be the eyes for your team, you might be able to save them from themselves. Obviously some people don't listen, and you can't do anything to make them listen, but if you call out a gank a few times before it happens, they might be willing to listen later.
Learn to macro the game. Had a game where we were winning and enemy had an open nexus with one inhib down, and my team kept trying to get kills, running at the enemy, dying one by one over and over, until we lost. If you are in the lead, don't force fights. Just take objectives and let the minions help you win. Unless you literally have vision of the entire enemy team and see that someone is off solo that you know you can kill quickly, trying to get a kill late game can often be the end of the game if the enemy team is there to counter. If you take an inhib, do something with that pressure. Taking an inhib is like having an extra champion on your team because that lane will never be threatening your towers without an enemy champion sitting there, meaning there is one less enemy to contest you for towers/dragons/barons/etc. If you take an inhib, don't sit in that lane. Go somewhere else and do something. If bot inhib is down, group top and wait for the minions in bot lane to push. When they push, look for your chance to take the top tower. If they defend top, your minions might take a nexus tower. If they defend against the minions, that means a 5v4 at that tower. This doesn't mean instantly dive unless the perfect opportunity arises, but you can go a little more aggressive cause you know you have an advantage. Learn to look at the minimap and read minion waves. Is that wave pushing to you or to the enemy? Creating a slow pushing wave is similar to having an inhib down. A slow pushing wave will keep building up damage over time, and will take towers if no one stops them. You can set up a slow pushing lane in bot lane, and then group your team around baron and watch are your enemy has to decide over defending their bot tower or stopping you from taking baron. Banner of Command/ZZ'Rot can help create a slow push if you feel like you can dedicate an item slot to it, though ZZ is much better at pushing towers than redirecting a wave. Additionally, do stuff when you know the enemy can't respond. It takes Master Yi (one of the highest base move speed champions) with Mobi's about 20 seconds to get from base to mid, 25 seconds to get from base to top/bot lane, and 35ish seconds to walk from top lane to bot lane threw river. So if you see someone back, you know you have some time when they can't get there (movement abilities and items obviously affect the time some). That could be a free baron if you see the enemy team in the wrong place when you can punish. See how big this section is. And this is just the stuff I know. There are plenty of things I don't know about macro that could help you win without having to rely on just winning a late game teamfight.
Play something with CC. If you CC someone, it's sorta like extra tanky stats, because if someone is CC'd, they aren't doing damage. A great counter to Yasuo? Lulu Polymorph. Zed counter? Soraka Silence. The slightest bit of CC does a ton to shut down people. I've killed a ton of Zed's who ult me as the low health Soraka under my tower, only to silence and let them die to the tower cause he can't use abilities or flash away and is too focused on hitting his combo to think to walk out of the silence. I got my ADC a kill by silencing a low health target from taking a Thresh lantern. It's not hard CC like a stun, but it's CC. You just have to know when to use it. Sejuani doesn't do a ton of damage, but has CC on 3 abilities so it's insanely hard to kill her when she can literally stop you from doing anything for 2 seconds every few seconds. Early game Leona can literally solo an ADC because she can just constantly keep applying CC and her W giving her resistances which keeps her health when they aren't CC'd. Nautilus is the same through his CC, shield, and AOE. It allows you to prevent damage from the enemy while still being able to dish out damage yourself. If nothing else, it buys you time to think, which might be all you need to turn a fight.
First off, the MOST important thing is keeping motivated and not giving up. Because if you don't tilt and play enough games, luck always come and go and doesn't matter in the end. On average, your team will feed uncontrollably a quarter of your game, but they will also carry you another quarter, and the last half are close games. You can't win everything, even Masters and Challengers don't have more than 65-70% winrates, so it's that fraction of close games you really have to focus on.
Second, what can you do when one lane feeds? Adapt and play around it.
- Be paranoid. Respect the fed enemies. If they got fed in the first place, they must be good. Don't assume they just got lucky or that your team-mate is trash, to the contrary, assume that the enemy is better than average, and respect the fuck out of that. Don't try to 1v1 them unless you're 200% sure you can win that fight. Take big margins of security.
- Ward a lot. Buy pinks. We always say that "Vision wins game", but to be more precise, "Vision stops losing games", because it enables you to see the enemies coming and to choose your battles wisely. If you're ahead, you don't care about having vision as much as you want to deny it from the enemy team to ambush them or force them to retreat and give up objectives. If you're ahead and you fall into an ambush, you often can just brute-force a win, but when you're behind, you're forced to be smart about when and where you fight, and what for.
- Be conscious of your own value. If you're the only one fed in your team, you can't afford to die. Even if you go in and trade 1 for 2, if you die it's still not worth it, 'cause the remaining 3 can still win against your underfed team. Even if "1 for 2" sounds good, YOU did a mistake, not your team, and you can't blame them for that, even if they fed and have a negative score.
- And I already mentioned it, but to tie everything up: choose your fights wisely. Most of the time, you don't need to fight to win games. Push towers while staying safe, farm, wait for late games when the gold deficit won't matter anymore, wait for an opportunity. You're behind, so you can't win a fair fight, so you need to pick an unfair fight in your favor. You need to wait for a mistake from your opponents, and don't worry, they'll make some. We all do, and especially when we're ahead. We're more relaxed, we get cocky, and then throws happen. Be patient. You'll win, in the end ;)
Focus on your own play and improve.
Unless you're literally perfect, there's still room to get better.