Need help climbing
Hey everyone, I just entered plat for my first time and would like to continue "climbing" but I feel like I've hit a wall; I'll go into some details first so you can maybe get an idea of what might help me progress.
First, i'll start off by saying I've never really played ranked until this season- often avoiding it because I found it as a stress factor; the worry that i'd play bad, the worry that my teamates would play bad, the worry that I'd get placed in some dog shit ELO. I played two previous ranked seasons, I believe 5 and 6. The 5th season I probably played ~20 games, was placed in bronze- got to bronze 1 and ended up staying their fearing i'd fall further below. Season 6 I applied myself a bit more- played like ~40 games, I think I plataued silver 3 or some shit. Well this season, I've taken a fully new attitude about ranked. It's:
I dont give a fuck. Thats not to say I dont care about winning, or I don't care about losing. No, its something entirely different. It's more like- I place where I place. If I place Bronze, so fucking be it, who actually gives a fuck? That's just what I am. I place silver? Cool. Gold? Big fucking whoop, stroke my ego, I'm not dogshit! Just kidding, my point is it literally doesn't matter, it is what it is. Anyways, with this new approach I could definetely take away a lot of the anxiety that came from ranked and focus on playing to the best of my ability.
That being said, I've played primarily ranked this season. I had a horrible promo, got like 3-7, but managed to get silver 2? (If KDA is a factor, thats probably the only reason why). I got into gold this season by playing quite a few more rankeds, and that was so exciting! When I was Silver 1 I remembered thinking if I just hit gold, if I just get gold I'd be happy- thats probably where I am at as a player. But then Gold came, and climbing past my (semi) duo partner wasn't even really a challenge. Gold 3, Gold 2, then Gold 1. I decided to stay at Gold 1 for a while, because I feared falling (against my strong will to not care). After a week or two of being there, I said fuck it again and took the plunge. Made it past on my first promo- in fact I was on such a hot win streak I went all the way from that, to 4 consecutive +26 LP wins to take me to Plat 5 promo. I lost it, and have been about evenly losing- to winning. I started getting nerved that maybe I didn't deserve it...
So I launched up my second account I made ages ago and decided to do another promo. I went 8-2, and got placed into gold 4... So my fears were somewhat wiped by seeing that. However, I keep running into a consistent roadblock it seems in my plat matches.
My enemy laners; I play consistent Lux/Xerath mid- probably most the reason I've climbed. They're relatively safe- poke champions that can force people out of lane while you get further ahead on farm, all while occasionaly snagging a kill. Cool. Except I miss a lot more skillshots now, and the counterpicks are becoming heavier; I'm running into fizzes, into Ekkos, and now leblancs again. Xerath / Lux are pretty feelsbad choices against these- I mean they can win but its extremely challenging. Worse yet, my winning matchups far more often become my even matchups. Its pretty rare that I feel like I've "won lane". Even matchups are O.K. except the fact that come mid game- my non-existent lead usually puts me at a loss of what do on the map.
If I roam, I get caught out. If I try to press an objective, I overextend- or end up making a bad call. What once were easy calls (Ok guys we should go dragon) are now becoming often bad, sometimes even throwing calls. I've always prided myself on the ability of ALWAYS knowing what to do on the map, I often take the role of a "shot caller" by rallying the team up in some ways. The fucking frightening thing at this ELO is people actually listen somewhat, and one bad call shits the game, and thats so painful. So it becomes harder and harder to utilize my best strength in the game, as mechanically speaking I'd say I'm just average.
**Conclusion/tl;dr: ** Anyways, I've probably already pointed out my flaws and I know them, but they've become very hard to fix: 1.) Expanding my champion pool. I need to have answers for things like LB/Fizz/Zed or Aurelian Sol , Taliyahs, etc. I find this difficult because no one plays normals the same as ranked, so "just playing normals" to build skill is rather difficult. 2.) Better calling/Macro - what to press on the map. This is also difficult because of the same above reason 3.) Consistently getting leads - this is challenging because as I've entered plat, I at least feel like the opponents are a lot more competent to both dodging my skill shots, challenging CS and trades, and catching my roams
Any help is appreciated, thanks!