Bronze Mentality: The Land of Confusion

I don't really know where this goes, so I'm sticking it in miscellaneous. This thread is a series of points I'd like to cover and some personal issues I'd like to get off my chest. If you aren't interested in speculation and in-depth discussion, I don't recommend you read any further.

The Bronze Mentality

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I don't fully grasp all of what it is, but it's definitely a factor which anchors players to bronze who are actively trying to climb. Sometimes it's a combination of stubbornness and unwillingness to listen to those clearly playing a little if not substantially better in a current game, maybe you're just having a bad day and want to just kill something, maybe what you've been doing in the past few games in your match history has been working for you, but I assure you, having a "Go-to item build" and even "Using recommended items" is just a bad idea. There is a plethora of information available to anyone willing to research it on any champion you can think of, and even guides from high-tier players explaining why the "Situational Items" area in their guides are in fact, "Situational." I have pored over match history pages from players who have been a large contributor to games I've lost because they've done poorly that game, but I wanted to see why - and the answer is almost always their item build.

These players are mostly junglers, mids, and tops who build "what they like" rather than "what they need" based on the current game's state of momentum. I recently raged quite an unnecessary bit at a Swain who rushed Lich Bane against a Lux who was getting fed through roaming, and Master Yi on the enemy team was 5/0 when he finished the Lich Bane. When the enemy team began to push mid, Swain was simply pushed back and couldn't do much because he knew he couldn't survive being focused down, so he simply didn't allow anything resembling a full team fight to break out. Swain doesn't do well building squishy - that's a known fact. There are players who can make it happen, but those are niche cases and basically the stars have to align for everything to fall within their favor. When a player sees Swain, they are supposed to think of items like

• Rod of Ages
• Ryalai's Crystal Scepter
• Morellonomicon
• Zhonya's Hourglass.

Part of being a good laner is knowing what to build, why, and what justifies those reasons. Mechanics can only get you so far in a losing game where every skirmish is an uphill battle just to survive it. Being Bronze myself, I am not nor do I claim to be an expert on itemization, but something my teammates seem to actively avoid is pressing tab to update their mind on the information it shows - what your enemy team is building.

This issue persists as a thread throughout basically all of my losing games, in addition to mistakes I've made myself, but the largest perpetrator is Top. It's basically the same process and I'm not sure what fuels it, but it goes like this:

• Ally top gets ganked 1 time.
• All top disregards the jungler's presence and buys more AD items.
• Top tower falls to Top player's inability to defend due to poor itemization choices, lacking health, magic resistance, and armor to have any staying power whatsoever.
• Top does their best to contribute to teamfights and feeds the rest of the game for their inability to understand why they immediately die to focus, or...
• Top abstains from teamfights while enemy fed top dominates teamfights for lack of numbers.
• During this issue, Ally top will push top lane and get ganked continuously, trying to be "useful."

If you don't understand why you're losing your lane, again, it's probably a large itemization factor. Yes, enemy Garen destroys you very quickly because you have Trinity Force and he has Black Cleaver and Randuins. That's basic math.

Another large factor is the inability to understand who you should fight and who you shouldn't fight. One game I saw a level 4 Kindred with no buffs try to 1v1 a level 5 Yi with Red and Blue buffs to defend his blue buff from being stolen. I had to watch this fight in tiny bits because I had to last hit as the ADC. I did take the time to give Kindred, at 30% HP by this point a BACK! Ping and told him to just "run you cant duel him." Instead, he got him very low, but didn't use his stun during Yi's meditate, so Yi was able to catch up to him with Q even after Kindred flashed away. Some encounters just aren't yours to contest. He couldn't even get Swain's help because Swain wasn't paying attention.

It's the "I'm going to overcome the issue that I'm losing my lane to damage by building more damage and trying to win duels through mechanics" is most of what makes up, from what my experience is, the Bronze Mentality.

Here's my attempt at a TL;DR version:

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Despite what you believe as a top laner, jungler, or ap carry, building pure damage turns you into a glass cannon that will only shatter in teamfights almost too soon for the enemy to make a mistake bad enough for you to take advantage of your burst or physical damage capabilities. When you're top and dying, you are pressed to build defensively and try to let your team carry you. Alternatively, if you're a jungler, don't try to win fights you've no business even contesting at an early stage of the game, you really aren't supposed to be depending on neighboring laners to come to your rescue at the drop of a hat. It's too difficult to get out of their laner's tunnel vision. When you're behind as the jungler, don't try to 1v1 a fed jungler as that's just going to feed them more and frustrate you to tilting.