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Bronze Ranked - Numb to defeat, apathetic to victory

The Climax·11/4/2013, 12:36:51 AM·2 votes·992 views

I'm in Bronze. I drift between Bronze 1 and Bronze 2. In Bronze 2, most of my games are landslide victories. I get to series, I usually lose. There's often very little I can do to help, especially considering I often end up taking the supporting role. I'll try to help, I'll sit back and do my best to aid the ADC, but in the end it often feels hopeless. I don't understand what goes wrong. I don't see ways to help any more than I do. The game rolls into the enemy's favor in different lanes. I have a defensive match down in bot, and by the first time I see the jungler he already has three kills and scores a double kill under the tower. They'll take the tower, and it just gets worse from there.

If I do win the series, it's usually a tooth and nail struggle. The name of the game is team cheerleader. No matter how bad it gets I remind them we can win. The ones that believe me, the ones that focus on their farm, the ones that can contribute to teamfights will win. If the series passes, I end up in Bronze 1. I get up to about 30 points, but then it just ends. I lose 5 games in a row (happened 3 times now) and back to Bronze 2 I go. I'll win the next two games, enter series, and the cycle restarts.

My strategy is centered to passiveness. 15 CS is a kill, so not dying and earning 15 CS is practically the same as getting a kill and being executed by the turret. This doesn't work, however, when both teams are betting on snowballing. Whoever gets first blood usually gets second blood, because the champion that just died doesn't understand that the gold advantage hurts their chances of winning that 1v1 even more than the first time they tried. It's like two tectonic plates pushing against each other: one will obduct, the other will subduct. Rarely does the process reverse, rarely does the player realize "this isn't working, let me try getting my gold advantage through farm." They will allow a snowball until the /ff at 20 minutes.

And meanwhile I'm trying to keep people optimistic. I try to remind people that a death is 350 gold, and so are 15 minion kills. I remind them that one good teamfight can lose their inhibitor, one mistake at dragon or baron can lose them their game. At the 30 minute mark, if you both have complete builds, their score stops mattering and the playing field is completely level once again. All you have to do is defend and hang in there. But it doesn't matter. "gg noob fedder team".

What if I win? What if it's my team that snowballs? Well, what role do I play in that? Sure, I can help. I won a game recently as Galio mid. I put the mid laner through her paces and I won that lane, denying her all the CS. That game ended at 20 minutes to a surrender. My score was 0/0/3. I did nothing, I did not earn that win. They just gave up as my team snowballed out of control.

The end result is this feeling of helplessness. Very few times do I feel like I've actually won a game. Sometimes I pull off an incredible ult and urge my team to push, resulting in a comeback victory. These are fun games, incredible games that are pulse pounding and the only reason why I even bother. Blood rushes to your brain and you get a moment of euphoria like a shot of pure joy. I just won that, I'll think to myself, *that was me *. A 50 minute game that wraps up in my favor because of what I did and what I said to encourage people. And then the next game Aumumu feeds 6 kills and goes AFK. All of those little league points I just earned vanish, and all of that time was wasted.

The little pop-up is happy to inform me I'm in Bronze 2 again, with nothing left to do but start all over. Another few days, maybe, and I'll be in silver.

9 Comments

Sproctor11/4/2013, 10:27:40 PM2 votes

My strategy is centered to passiveness. 15 CS is a kill, so not dying and earning 15 CS is practically the same as getting a kill and being executed by the turret.

The boon to getting a kill is that it stops the enemy from getting CS and XP for that period of time.

The end result is this feeling of helplessness. Very few times do I feel like I've actually won a game.

As support, make sure you're doing a good job of warding. Low bronze (I mean 1 - 2, not sure if that meaning comes across) is around where you can start to make a real impact with your wards. Be aware of what is going on in the game and try to lead your team. A lot of people don't have good objective awareness. Setup the plays and hope your team can execute.

Watch some pro games and take some lessons from there. You may not be able to match their mechanics or use the same kind of strategies, but you can learn a lot from their tactics.

The little pop-up is happy to inform me I'm in Bronze 2 again, with nothing left to do but start all over. Another few days, maybe, and I'll be in silver.

I'm with you here, except silver 2 - 3. My last run I had 6 wins where I felt I did pretty well, followed by 6 losses where I felt that I did at least as well. Life goes on. We'll get there eventually.

Vishnu11/4/2013, 1:56:55 AM1 votes

One think I have learned is that it is always better to be aggressive than passive. If I'm mid vs a passive laner, it wont matter if I am countered or not. I will be aggressive and the pacificity of the enemy laner will give me lane control.Being aggressive you can learn the limits of your champion, and when you know them, you will be able to make big plays.

sumphutos484811/4/2013, 5:40:27 AM1 votes

Man I feel your pain. I don't know the answer, but the process is so frustrating. I wanted to hit silver this season so bad, but the combination of terrible angry teams and poor choices in game on my part has prevented that from happening. I'm not the best player at all I make plenty of mistakes, but being in bronze your mistakes are amplified because of the terrible teams. I had a guy just now go 1/12 with kas mid lane, and he tells the team sorry I have not played ranked in months...it was my promo of course. It's stuff like that where I get frustrated. I love the game, the competition but it's tough to get breaks in bronze by yourself. :(

If you want to play some games together message me, maybe that's the answer.

Solan Stonewhip11/4/2013, 4:36:54 PM1 votes

i can't offer much more than sympathy and a suggestion to play more. try to stay positive like you are. the only other thing i can say, is to essentially do what voyboy does on his stream. he is very self critical. self analyzing his own mistakes. scarra does it to. and those guys are just fooling around when they stream. really take a look at what you do. either by downloading one of the replay things and self analyzing or just by thinking over what you did wrong without it. (the official replay is stuck in PBE hell, so it could be awhile, there are alternatives)

the other thing i can suggest is to change your perspective a bit. this is a team game after all, you can only do so much. and if you do win. it's often because of a team doing stuff together. i mean i've been on teams where we destroy in the laning phase and then lose later in the game because of a lack of objective control and lack of teamwork. you're right, bronze is definitely a terrible place to be in elo hell

the only other suggestion i can make is to duo queue with someone of equivalent reliability and skill. all the pro's agree, that the best players are the most consistent ones. not necessarily the ones who make flashy plays.

if none of that helps. add me. we'll play a few. maybe see where you can improve.

djump11/4/2013, 5:59:42 PM1 votes

Hey Climax,

I feel your pain. I've played ranked game for 1-1.5 years in the bronze/low silver level and I think I have a few thoughts that could be useful to you.

For a while I've thought of myself as a low silver skill level player and have, like you, found myself frustrated at times as I dip into lower bronze leagues when it feels like my team mates are SO bad. There are a couple key mindsets I've adopted for low skill bronze leagues that have helped me climb back up (in my silver promotion series now!) and maybe they can help you too.

  1. stay positive - surprising comebacks can happen more in low skill games It sounds like you have a good grip on positivity so I won't dwell on it too much. I'll point out that if you keep up a good morale even in badly losing games, you have a much higher chance of turn arounds in late game when teams do the stupid stuff they sometimes do at bronze level. Sure it doesn't always happen, but man, teams can throw REALLY hard some times and give you that one game winning push late game at low skill level. You can't take advantage if your team is raging or quit tho!

  2. learn to play, and choose champs that are suited for bronze skill level. People play with more mistakes/bad positioning at low skill: play champs that can take advantage of this. I'm not a support main, but I've played the most games with leona in ranked and have a 78% win ratio. This is beacuse she is REALLY good at catching people out of position and translating that into a kill. I think this concept will apply for other champs in lanes that have good catch potential and kill power to back it up.

Also, since bronze games tend to be less oriented on coordinated team play late (because people aren't as good at it and don't have the game sense to know what to do all together), champions that are good at winning lane tend to do well. I'm in the process of learning champs that do this well for mid and top. I play top pantheon with a 66% win ratio(even tho panth is famous for a questionable late game) because its so easy to win lane, then you can go help other lanes. Just make sure if you get an advantage, you press it hard!

I'm sure there's all sorts of other good advice for improving your game and climbing rank, but those are the things I've learned to deal with bronze ranks. Especially if you are a support main, I can't speak highly enough about leona. You can catch people so easily! Just get that early sightstone and make vision and catching people for your teammates a priority.

Gangster Kha Zix11/5/2013, 12:32:41 AM1 votes

pro tip: duo queue, 25% less chance of an AFK (assuming you never dc) 25% more people you know (if its someone you know) USUSALLY (!!!!!!!!!) 25% more chance of getting carried

nosafterburn11/4/2013, 1:31:48 AM1 votes

And just like the rest of us that join solo que or don't have time to play with friends; we will forever be stuck in the low brackets. Riot has (and will again) consistantly state that this is a team game, but there are exceptions of people where they don't have that extra friend to que up with. It is an unfortunate but sad truth. We just gotta learn to suck it up and ignore all the bitching and whining and continue to be positive like the OP. Maybe then we will get farther ahead as soloer's in this team game.

LilYonsan11/7/2013, 7:14:57 PM1 votes

Okay, based solely on reading this, I can safely say a couple of things.

Firstly, you're not being selfish enough. I once went through a phase where all I said was "fill" in draft mode. I would usually get support. What I noticed is that I ended up losing more games that way than if I got a different role.

Now don't take this the wrong way. I'm not advocating trolling or flaming or being toxic just to get your way. I'm advocating being vocal with your team about which role you are most confident in. If you don't get that role, oh well better luck next time, try your best. Even so, explaining to the team that you would like mid and that you're the most confident with it is a good way to get what you want. However, if someone else direly wants it, and threatens to do something drastic if they don't get their role, either let them have their role or dodge queue and try again.

Secondly, playing passively in game is not a good attitude to have during the game. Something I've found that really improved my playing while I was in the bronze league was that if I became a shotcaller, that I would win more. This game is not about snowballing, snoballing is only a factor that contributes to the victor, this game is about taking the nexus. Being a support, I've found that I have much more time to focus on the map, and decide when to do certain things. When I figured out a good time to take Dragon, for example, I would tell my team to do just that.

When you play passively, you entreat yourself to your team, and hope to god that the enemy team is just as unorganized as you are. In bronze, this can be the case, but higher up you're gonna have a rough time. Be that person who says "we just aced them, let's get that inhib" or "their adc is bot, let's go baron". This is a skill that I've noticed all professional players have. Instead of just relying on one person to call the shots, they all do it, and they all very quickly decide which option is the best option. If you ever want to be in their league, you have to start acting like them as well.

A couple of other points that I get the feeling of from reading this. I think that you take this game too seriously. If every victory doesn't excite you, or lift your spirits, yet every defeat is soul-crushing, perhaps you've forgotten the simple fact that League of Legends is just a game, and is meant to have fun. Sure, winning is more fun than losing, but losing shouldn't be so awful that it ruins your day, that's just plain silly.

Some things I think you're doing right: You're coordinating with your team in a positive way. If what you say is true, then you are instilling your teammates with moral. Moral can be a make or break situation. Low moral is bad, high moral is good. If you're positive, or as long as you just keep things in the game light, then you keep your team in a much happier mood and a much better position.

Some further tips: Don't surrender unless afk or dc on your team. And don't feel like every game is monumental in your life. Take one game at a time, and if it goes badly, learn from it and move on, if it goes well, learn from it and move on. Take it one step at a time.