Intermediate guide to get to Gold or Higher

To get to Gold you need to know the mechanics and the decision making. Those are the two main concepts. Here I write about the concepts that comprises the mechanics, and the core concepts for your decision making. These rules will take you to Gold.

So priorities first: The 5 main priorities at the highest elos, which applied get you to silver even if you suck at eveything else.

1. Not dying.
2. Farm.
3. Experience (exp).
4. Objectives .
5. Kills.

Thast the priority list from up to bottom. Most people dont understand but league aint call of duty, or halo. Dying gives gold. And gold becomes items, and items win fights.

Mechanics

-Csing: People dont get to gold, plat or diamond without good farm. To get to gold u need to improve ur farm. 115 farm is the perfect number by 10:30 into the game. 90 is average gold elo farm by 10:30 mins into the game. Practice this in custom games with no pressure against you, just you and the minions, so it becomes mechanical and you dont think about it while you play in ranked. Also because different champs have different auto attack speeds. Might be boring but the pros do it. Farming is an art on itself and there different advanced stuff you can learn like freezing.

Ward: If you are warding you are not dying, or your team anyways. If you are bot or top its an easy job, you get yellow trinket for river bush and pinks for tribush first, pink since first recall. Priority in warding is, until level 6 the lane river bush, after 6 drag and the central river bushes, and from mid to late game the baron, dragon, blue and red buffs, or their nearby areas depending on the nature of that game, if you are winning into enemy territory and if losing on your own territory, this should cut ur deaths by half. yours and your teams deaths btw.

Map awareness, there are several ways, the best tbh watch the minimap every time u last hit, or when ur opponent goes for a trade, or a hard all in, respect ur opponent, if they go in hard or for some reason what they doing is wierd and doesnt make sense in damage trading, either they are getting a gank, or they are baiting you, most players aint complete morons, but also remember to play with a level of risk in your game (silver aint the LCS). You can mix some risk in, and you can recover if behind. Here the warding helps you, as you will avoid ganks, help your teammates survive because you will most often stop the ganks coming into their lanes, and help you win objectives.

Combos and champ usage: You need to learn what your spells do, what they are used for. Learn the correct way of leveling them up, and the combos (how to use 2, or more spells) to maximize your damage output, and/or make a fight the most favourable to you as possible. Learn to use smart cast, and learn to spam your spells. Also learn your powerspikes, and the advantages or pro and cons of your champion. You can see this in many websites. Use your champ according to his role, and according to what your current game needs.

Decision making, regarding roles and champions. You will do good consistent plays, if you do the plays for your role. How do you play ur card? Here's hows you make plays.

-Roles: The meta, which in itself is the all encompassing strategy by which what works is assesed, which is tried over and over by koreans and you know, people good at math, has established the roles and the type of champs used in them.

1. Tops, they normally are tanks in the current meta, or fighters which is hybrid, a combination of tank and dmg items. Mages are also used but in average or higher elos as it takes skill in trading, all ins, kiting, etc to pull them off. The role of a top laner is usually being the frontline, and zoning and or killing enemy carries, and personally, which I do if the fight allows it, provide peel for your backline while you do this.
2. Junglers, usually tanks, fighters or assasins, also can be adcs like graves but require good kiting skills. Mages under the same condition. The jungler's role is to gank according to his powerspikes, which are moments in the game your champ gets a strong boost in dmg or abilities which allow dmg do be dealt, through his spells, or also through itemization. Ex: Warwick level 6 powerspike, a second powerspike after he finishes the jungle item, a third powerspike after he finishes wits end, then again when he has his botrk, and also in between this if hes snowballing. On teamfights the jungler is also usually into the frontline providing peel for his team and zoning or killing the enemy carries, which are usually the enemy mage and adc.
3. Mid, usually mages , fighters or assasins. They do damage over time (doe) or burst dmg as mages, ex: Ryze, Annie, Anivia, Malzahar. Asassins, which do all ins and get the kills by hypertrading and snowballing. Ex: Zed. Leblanc, Katarina, Akali. Here and in adc we see hypercarries. The main mid hypercarries are Zed, Leblanc, Katarina, Akali. A hypercarry is a champ designed by the Rito gods as a champ that can snowball so hard it could beat the crap of Dwanye Johnson (The Rock) if fed xD . However due to their need to snowball they are usually weaker than other more stable champs, like Annie or Malzahar if they dont get their kills. Midlaners are meant to do damage in the mid game and late game, but dont reach the damage output of adcs, however they are close. Adc: Adcs are usually marksmen champs, you have hypercarries like jinx, draven, and more stable champs under more balanced conditions and adverse games like miss fortune, ashe and caitlyn. They are the persistent best damage output dealers on their teams and must always stay behind people under tank roles or other champs with more hp**. This rule of positioning should only be broken if the risk taken by mispositioning is really low. Kiting is necesarry, Kiting is basically a distance you keep, where you hit and move back and hit as soon as you can without getting hit. Sometimes you need to run more sometimes less. Depends on your attack speed, and mvoement speed, and also your spells, as adc your spells are there to help you do some cc and kite , the less mobilie you are the more cc the game gives you. Example: Jinx. Adcs are hard to carry with as being squishy means a mistake in positioning or trading can get you killed fast. Supports: usually tanks or mages, they provide the utility , damage, peel (disengange) initiation (engage) and ward for their teams. Example in champs : Utility - thresh, sona, soraka.... Damage- Lux, annie peel-- Janna, Alistar..... Initation- Leona, Blitz, Braum, Thresh, Alistar. Supports should ward the river and tribush during laning, then the objectives or the enemy jungle for counter ganks and starvation tactics into the enemy side of the map. Their job, making plays (engage or disengage), warding and providing help for their team.

Core concepts for decision making

Powerspikes: All champs hit spikes in their damage and spell output at certain levels. Examples: Morgana, Diana and Lux at level 6. Wukong level 2, 6, 8. Vladimir level 9 etc. Aside from that treat your core items as powerspikes too. The more fed you are the more distance you cut between your own powerspikes and the more windows of opportunity you can use to win.

-Who Is Their Carry?: Every time you go back to base, and there has been some action in the map (which usually means one or some of the baddies in your team died, or sometimes when the Rito gods do justice, your team got kills) ask yourself : What do I build and why? Is the enemy adc fed? Or is the mage enemy player fed? (Fed meaning they won lane having a 2 or more kill advantage to your own teammate in that role in botlane or mid even if the first tower hasnt gone down) What items do I need to build to win lane? How do I counter my enemy laner through items? What do the team needs? In that order mostly, it works. Remember you are playing a team game and lets say if you are top get that tele to help your team on a battle if you can. Winning lane is just the first part of the game.

-Item builds: This is extremely important, if you dont know how to use the gold you get, you cant make an advantage out of it. You should have a core build, but remember to build with a certain level of adaptation in your item decision making, because believe me, a simple full item choice can make the difference between u not getting rekt by a zed becauseus u got zhonyas instead of rabadons, and then quadrakilled the enemy team including zed, or you getting rekt in 3 seconds by zed who got a quadra kill later pn that fight through clean up. Itemization always depends on whats going on in your current game, and you should consider either the offensive or defensive aspect of your build.

-Early Game, Mid game, Late game:

+Early game: revolves aroud the lanes, try to win in farm and force the enemy back or kill him, take care to ward and watch the minimap, try to boost morale going into the game. Gank if you are the jungler. Mid game starts when one of the two teams has lost two towers, roaming begins and the first fights around objectives take place, on early game dying is hardly punished so dont feel bad if you die once or twice, you still have a long way to fight, but every time you die you are conceding gold so you need to play safer, each fight you lose against the same enemy makes it harder for you to win, because he made that gold into an item which lets him do from 20% to 80% or more dmg to you in a straight all in fight between you both so just play safer.

+Mid game: dying is still punished but lets u have time to defend. Usually u lose one objective if you die. This stage of the game is about starting to win as a team, starting to work on momentum, pressure and getting your team ahead in all ways possible to try and close or force a favourable late game.

+Late game: the priority is staying alive, and normally on bronze or silver if it got that far, the team on whom someone dies first, loses the game. Thats why positioning is so important. You see their ezreal using his e and trying to poke your team while his teammates are so far they need to text him to let him know something? Dive that baddie and rekt him up, he probably costed them the game. You see the mage and adc in frontline ? Initiate, you very likely will win on the first two or three seconds of the fight when they die. Baron and dragons are really important on late game and the timers punish you very hard for deaths. A death possibly costs you either two towers and a inhibitor, a drag or a baron or both, and/or the game.

Targeting or focusing: On fights focus the enemy carries. Or carry. Remember the carry means the one who deals the most dmg . Its not always the adc. Believe me a 8-1 annie by 20 mins does Waaay more dmg than a 1-3 jinx on his team, who lost lane. So always prioritize the champ on their team who deals the most dmg and is squishy. The trick here is that fights are not always the utopia u want. Sometimes you cant do what you want. Sometimes you need to peel, or cc, or kill their tanks first. The key here is to remember to use your damage in the most eficient way possible. And remember to secure them kills, even if its the enemy alistar, as long as you can get your cooldowns mostly back up before you get to the high priority targets. Focusing normally should take this this priority.

1. Adc 2. mage 3. jungler or support if mage supp 4. tanks. Be efficient remember u dont have infinite dmg. This is called correct focusing.

-Kiting: Learn to kite not only as adc but as all roles. Believe me its better to run back for 4 or 5 seconds and keep the right distance so they chase you and yo take 0 dmg, to get your 450 dmg spellout of cooldown then going back in, than doing 220 dmg with 3 autos and taking 500 dmg. You need to avoid trading dmg deficits. Always try to have a surplus. This is called good trading or hypertrading. Avoid deficits. 500-0 positive better than 220-500 negative. Learn to dance and dodge things like you were Mohammad Ali or Roberto Duran or even Floyd Mayweather. Remember that if you are not an autoattack relying champ, bro your dmg comes from your spells, so avoid getting hit or taking hits if you cant hit back harder.

-Dodging: Dodging as many spells and hits as you can creates something called windows. It could be all the diference between getting a quadra kill or dying 10 secs prior to that, because

1. you dodged that morgana q
2. you helped your teammtes with cleanup,
3. then you dodged an annie w or r with ur flash, and survived with 200 hp. If you watch pro level games they usually win the first fights in lane or teamfights with low hp. So learn to dodge hard, believe me the game treats You very differently if you take hits like Rocky Balboa in Rocky 1, than if you dodge things like Neo in The Matrix.

-Trading: You need to learn as much you can about how much dmg spells and items give your champ, and the cooldown on your spells, your enemy spells, and as many spells and actives there are you can learn. This takes forever and you will never fully know them all, but you can know atleast your own cooldowns and damages through the game atleast on your main champs. And the patterns on supports, mages, tanks etc. The more you can keep this math on your head every game, the more windows of opportunity you can utilize in your favour. Counting matters, the better you count, well it starts in Gold2 or Plat, and ends in Challenger. Enough said.

Pressure: When you get kills snowball, then focus on snowballling them objectives in. Try to win as fast as you can, kill them over and over every time closer to their nexus, take their gold, their farm, everything. Snowball, then get ever bigger objectives until they die. Be efficient, dont lag around, close the game fast if possible.

Morale: You are not perfect and I understand it. But this is not about being a nice guy, or treating everyone like you were Ghandi. I understand you are selfish so here is the thing. Morale is a resource. Morale is as valuable as those shiny little coins in your summoners purse called gold. Its an asset in your 20-60 minute war. And the difference between that noob in the botlane tilting, muting everyone, splitting and dying, going afk, or just trolling around while he screams at his pc 3 out of every 5 seconds .... OR him being there on every fight, helping u get the objectives, you know that dragon fight that made the enemy go into tilt, and their lee sin saying "My team is not a real team" "They all suck" and starting their own chat fight. And even surprising you on that 30 min baron fight/enemy steal attempt, in which he got a triple. Windows of opportunity. A baddie or not a baddie? That is the question. That is the coin with two sides. And you my friend, sometimes its you who tosses the coin. So be positive because it pays off, if a fight starts mute the toxic dude. And remember to compliment people when they do their job. Or excell at it. This will reduce the trolls and afks in your games. Just give them a hug with your words. You are the rock in your team. You are here to win. And You will win. Thats the thinking you and your team needs. "When there was doubt I ate it all and spit it out, I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way"-- Frank Sinatra, My Way

-Positioning: Positioning, being the meaning of it, the place where you stand in the map and in fights. If you are on the advantage an offensive standoff in a fight would be.. the tanks in front with the jungler, adc the side near them, then the mage and support behind. If defensive, The tanks on front, adc on the second line and the mages behind . Adcs are squishy and aside from kiting, you need to keep your spot in the fight, which means if your tank moves back, you move back as well, that way u place teammates between u and your enemies. This takes some practice. For it doesnt matter how good at kiting you are, if stand in the front of your team, believe me you will die. Roots, cc, gap closers, something will get you.

-Counters: You can counter the spell composition, and mechanical role of a champ through another champ. Every champ in league of legends has a counter through a champ that has strenghts against that champ. And viceversa. But always remember that items are also counters , as are certain high level plays you can make in LoL. What to do if countered? Remember that you win lane if you dont die, and if you get to your powerspikes, without dying. And to proper itemize to counter or at least be able to survive a fight as long as possible against the enemy champ.

There are other factors as , but here you have some info as to what to improve. League is a fun, easy to learn, but complicated to fully master game, yet the more you learn the easier it is to get to high elo. Believe me. I used to be bronze 5, now im gold 5. Goodluck, and may the ass kicking be plentiful.

-SpearofAdun