How many wins should I have by 30/before I jump into ranked & What should I expect @ 30/should I do?

Mister Beane·5/6/2015, 2:50:22 PM·2 votes·823 views

Hello Boards,

I recently hit level 21 and noticed I had 79 wins and then saw a sizable portion my friends near my level ( give or take two levels ) had less. It made wonder how many wins I should be shooting for by the time I hit level 30, if I should jump into ranked right away or not. I've never been level 30 before and don't know what to expect, or what to do upon hitting level 30. Any advice the community can offer would be appreciated.

Looking forward to your replies, Mr. Beane.

17 Comments

mvargus5/6/2015, 3:58:49 PM5 votes

Mr. Beane,

There are a number of factors that determine when you are ready to play ranked.

Do you have the minimum 16 champions. (ranked is run in draft mode, but you can't use free champions so you must own at least 16 champions to play ranked. - this is the only requirement other than being level 30 enforced by Riot.)
Do you have a "main role"? - this isn't a requirement, but it has a huge effect. If you concentrate on playing mid lane then you'll have an advantage against someone with the same total number of wins as you, but who splits his time between all 5 roles if you face off midlane.
Do you have 3-4 champs in your "main role." - sometimes your favorite champ gets banned or picked by the other team, or worse your favorite is banned and your backup gets picked. So at a minimum you need 3 champs. Often its not bad to have a 4th so you can be flexible depending on what your team needs. After all if all you play are AD bruisers top lane, but your team has a Xin Zhao jungle and a Zed mid, being able to play an AP champ top will avoid having the other team just stack armor to resist all the AD damage your team has.
Do you have other roles you can play? - The general rule in ranked play is that you choose your lane based on pick order. That means if you are last pick you almost never get the role you want unless you are maining support (as few players prefer support). If you want to main mid/top/jungle you need to be good somewhere else in case you do get last pick. [some people suggest learning a multi-lane champ or two to fix this often saying that Nidalee can in theory play any role except ADC, I'm not a huge fan of this idea.]
Are you comfortable on 8-10 champs. Figure 3 for your "main" role and then 2 each for 3 other roles at a minimum. You might never play those roles, but knowing them helps.
Do you have full rune pages? Are they champ specific or generic? Do you have any for specific roles? Some people start with just generic AD and AP rune pages and slowly expand their collection. Figure that additional rune pages are 6300 IP each (unless you get them on sale. They are only 3150 this week, but you must purchase 2 at a time.) And that filling them will be 14000 each for the first 2 and then 5000-7000 each for the additional ones as you can reuse runes and will usually only be changing some of the runes. After about 7 pages it will be about 2000 IP to replace the runes for each additional page.

At this point if you answered these questions and feel confident in your play you are ready for ranked. There is no specific "win" total you need. I had friends who went into ranked play the instant they hit level 30 and one landed in Silver 2 as a support main. Another who largely mains top landed in bronze 1. I held off until I had over 200 normal wins and barely made it into silver 5 largely as a support, (I planned on maining jungle, but got last pick a few times and was willing to allow others to jungle a few more.)

As for your question about what to expect or when to jump. Honestly that is up to you. Ranked is definitely a lot more intense and the players there tend to be less forgiving of mistakes or deviating from the "Meta". At the same time, you will likely find that the competition in ranked pushes you to improve.

Hope this helped and that you have fun.

warpenguin5555/6/2015, 5:13:49 PM2 votes

idk, but i have seen somebody with 8 normals win in ranked... dont be that guy pls XD

Drunk Rummate5/6/2015, 3:53:10 PM2 votes

I wouldn't worry too much about number of wins. Just make sure you have 2 full, standard rune pages and 2 champions you're comfortable with in every position before you proceed to ranked and you'll be fine.

The Bearded Bard5/6/2015, 5:12:02 PM1 votes

Finish your rune pages, then try ranked out.

Axests5/6/2015, 5:13:39 PM1 votes

I'd say once you feel comfortable in all roles, and have experience versus every champion in the game you're ready. It's okay to do bad, just learn from it and do better next time.

Maximum Zilean5/6/2015, 8:12:06 PM1 votes

Ignore the pros. Sure they make RekSai look OP in the jungle. But thats mostly because they know how to make it work. Its fine to watch them and get a basic idea of whats strong at the moment to know what you'll be up against alot. But don't blindly follow them unless you have experience using said champion.

You don't know how many times I've seen Sejuani picked because of her LCS popularity, and almost all of them miss their ults every fight.

Also NEVER pick a champion your using for the first time in ranked, do a few normals with them first to get a good idea of how they work.

Last bit of advice, in bronze-gold range, counter picking is irrelevant, In silver-ish range it pretty much all skill based. Meaning if your good with Jax , you'll be able to crush Darius more often. (Probably jax's biggest counter in higher level play). Simply because in silver, champions are rarely played to their full strengths, and only then does counter picking really comes into play.

Colgate Gator5/6/2015, 2:53:41 PM1 votes

There isn't a real answer to that, but I'll be completely frank with you.

You won't be ready for Ranked level play as soon as you hit 30, nobody is, even if it takes a good amount of time to get to level 30 it isn't enough to properly know how to play the game, hell, chances are since you have been buying Champions you won't have enough IP to complete your rune pages with Tier 3 runes.

My suggestion is to simply take it easy and enjoy the game, get your bearings, get your runes and get a pool of Champions/Roles that can be called "Your mains", and then you should consider Ranked if that's what you want to play.

Aerothal5/6/2015, 9:50:56 PM1 votes

last season i was in promos to Silver 4 when i got paired with a new level 30, 30 pvp wins who wanted to try out ranked. yeah, silver 5/4 is that 1200 mmr sweetspot where you get paired with all the new ranked players who start off at 1200, no matter if they played bots all 30 levels or not. That guy went XinZhao adc, his end kda 2/13/0 with 20 cs. we did not surrender, just to teach him the valuable lesson not to jump into ranked without pvp experience.

Don't be that guy please!

get some rune pages together, get some champs, play a couple hundred draft games so you get the hang of draft. also practice cs'ing in custom games until you average around 80/10 (practice score) then play ranked.

cheers

Linna Excel5/6/2015, 3:32:29 PM1 votes

Try to have about 30 games on every champ you plan to play in ranked.

HyperZEROXL5/6/2015, 5:04:43 PM1 votes

Practice all the roles is my advice, and practice more to be safe. It isn't the matter of how many wins you should have though, it's more like how much experience you have in situations that you'll see in ranked. Should I pick Talon vs a Diana or Ahri ? Practice counter picking.