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Understanding What a Summoner Needs to Climb in Ranked

FlayToYourGod·11/23/2016, 1:52:03 PM·1 votes·565 views

Generally speaking, the League community is avid about the exploration and growth of mechanical skill when it comes to playing champions, how you play them, where you play them, and the like. A vast majority of players that are skilled at the game, even those in lower rankings, tend to be fairly adamant that the game takes time and dedication to climb. However, a decent question has been asked time and time again, both my myself, and the people who I play League of Legends with, and that is: "How fast should a player be climbing?"

I myself do not feel exceptional at the game. I started sometime during late season 5, and the entirety of that season was a horror story of trying to understand what roles were, and why I shouldn't use Bard to ult turrets for no reason. After half a year or so of playing, I went into my placements, excited and determined to get at least somewhere in the game in terms of ranking. I won only 2 of my 10 placement games, and was placed into Bronze II. I was actually quite pleased, as I expected IV or V, and so I simply began climbing. Now, I never made it out of Bronze II, and at first I had blamed it stubbornly upon my teams, my internet, or Riot's match-making algorithm (However, the game in which I was against a team with 10x as many normal wins, and 2x as many ranked wins, was completely ridiculous). As of now, however, I've accepted that my lack of ability to climb out of Bronze is due to my lack of skill, and general champion knowledge. Half a year later, and I never bothered to play enough ranked to climb out of Bronze II, and I bounced back from III to II at least four times before just giving up and focusing on improving my skill with the game itself, and with champion's I wasn't used to.

Now that it's been a bit over a year, and I've begun to feel as though my growth is stagnating, I'd like to ask the community as a whole, how long SHOULD it take someone to climb? I've heard of odd cases where someone manages to make it into Silver in their first year, and other cases where people stay in Bronze for three years or some bizarre number like that, and it simply appears to have no consistency. Now of course, everyone is different, and some people play more or less than others, and try harder to learn and grow as summoners and as people, but IN GENERAL, how long should it take someone to climb from ranking to ranking?

I've become so bored of feeling like my growth is stagnating, that I've encouraged several friends of mine to allow me to teach them the basics of the game, as I've heard that teaching someone something gives you a deeper insight into it. I've had "Students" that only manage to play for a month or two before giving up, and others that somehow win 30-50 normal games within their first month, only to believe themselves too bad at the game to keep hope for the future. I've taught them to strive for greatness, but to accept that the game requires time and dedication to be truly good at, and that everyone grows and develops differently, and at a different rate. Of course, some are not so easily persuaded of that, and I'm often asked "How long should it take me to climb from _______ to _______."

I've always believed that if you play the game on average three times a day, perhaps you'll get to Silver in your first year. That's 365 days a year, 3 times a day, and so you'd have played roughly 1095 games. Believe it or not, I've played a little more than that, as I think that's a decent average number of games played daily. Now, currently I'm averaging around 6 or 7 games a day, but that's largely because I have no life, and I have people to teach how to play now. I believe I'm at the same level as a low Silver player, but lack the drive to actually make it there. Am I doing something wrong, or should I just play ranked more, and see what I can do?

Furthermore, to extend upon the topic of people learning to play the game, I've noticed that successful climbing is often associated with how many different champions you can play well, and whether you're willing to extend your comfort zone. Of course, item knowledge, basic decision making, and mechanical skill are all extremely important, but how many DIFFERENT champions should a player learn to play WELL before they should consider playing ranked, and being placed? I've taught my students to simply learn as many as possible and delve into the ones that they find to be enjoyable or interesting to them. I've taught them to play champions they struggle against, (Except Fizz Fizz , he's just broken, kappa), and to try and understand that some champions are currently better than others in the meta. A vast majority of my students struggle to try new champions, as they prefer to learn one champion at a time. This is how I've noticed a lot of players start out, including myself.

I learned to play support as often as possible in the beginning, as a majority of players simply don't like it (Which never made sense to me, as I find it to be fun and challenging, given you're playing the right champions). I learned Taric Taric first. Keep in mind, this was in 2015. I was playing pre-reworked Taric, and for those of you who aren't familiar, I'll just sum it up like this:

I used my E under my turret, ulted waves of minions, and somehow managed to win, despite everyone around me telling me my champion was trash. From this, I learned that you don't HAVE to play a "Good" or "Meta" champion to win games, and that your skill on that champion can still make up for their shortcomings in the meta. Of course, some of us get tired of losing, so we decide to try something different.

From there, I think I played about 50 games as Master Yi MasterYi , a decent amount of which I won. Then I moved on to Jax Jax , then Soraka Soraka , then back to non-meta picks such as the good old days of Leona Leona (Before her buff), and Sion Sion . These champions were how I opened up my mind to playing other, diverse roles and champions, and from there my mastery score exploded with level 1 mastery champions, usually my ADC's, as I used to think I sucked at the role.

Turns out, I can pretty much fill anywhere, though I still struggle with ADC because I tend to think of things more as a support, and because of that I sometimes assume I'm tanky enough to escape situations I simply can't do so with given my current amount of skill. As of now, I've played 68 different champions, around 25-30 of which I can play well for my current skill level. I'm a mastery 7 Thresh Thresh and Morgana Morgana (Cause 3.0 second stuns, c'mon Rito), with others on the way. I've earned 167 mastery points, and won 559 "Normal" games (This includes game modes like URF, and Ascension and the like), 44 ranked games, and taught around 10 people to play League of Legends competently enough to where they don't feed when they play with me in a normal queue. After all this time and work, should I still consider myself a "Bronzie?" I've played against Silver III players that creamed me, and others that fed me, and I feel like I struggle only when the rest of the team struggles with me, or I'm simply having a bad game.

Of course, as I put Support as my primary, and Fill as my secondary role in every ranked game I play, you can guess where I always end up playing.

"It is hard to carry yourself out of Bronze as a support main." -GentlemanlyJacob, 2016

Now that I've expanded my roles and champion pool, should I try to climb into Silver and out of Bronze, or should I continue practicing in normals? Also, what should I be telling my students? Should I tell them a year to get Silver is normal, exceptional, or unheard of? I've got friends asking how I either "Got so good at the game?" or "How are you still Bronze?" To which I simply reply "Time and dedication."

"But HOW MUCH time?" -Every player ever

I've been so confused on what is normal for a summoner, and I've just about lost all sense of care for figuring it out on my own, and so I'm hoping that if you read through all of this, or even if you just skimmed, that you'll fill out the poll below, and maybe leave a comment to go in-depth into the topic.

As always, thanks to everyone who took the time out of their day to read, think about, and care about what I've written here, I really do appreciate it. Thanks to Riot Games for making the game fun and accessible to all sorts of players, and allowing me to find something I'm truly passionate about. Please participate in the poll and/or comment below! Thanks!

6 Comments

RageQ211/23/2016, 2:27:48 PM2 votes

Well, I read over all this. Silver 2 here that actually climbed here at the very end of the season, I.e. My first season of ranked. I have a few things I learned that could pass onto you. So, like you I went supp in my placements and just got a little more lucky than yourself winning 5/10 games and got placed in Bronze 1. Here's a tip I'll give you which you can teach your friends as well.

"successful climbing is often associated with how many different champions you can play well, and whether you're willing to extend your comfort zone."

This I'm sorry to say is not very true. What you should be doing is create a champion pool consisting of 2-3 champions you know you can play well. For example my champion pool in bronze was Zed, Anivia (now added Viktor) and jg was Skarner, Khazix, (Now added Zac). The idea is that the more strength and experience you can get into one champ, the better it is. This means no matter what you're going into a game where you can carry hard and know how to hold and/or push that lead further.

Now in your writing you also state the off-meta picks, now I won't say it's bad because as long as you're mechanically sound with that champ, you can climb, but the chances of you winning with meta and strong picks is a little better, this is because their basically the best characters in the game. (My friend actually climbed to Plat using off-meta picks heh)

I'll tell you how I climbed, basically all I did was find a good champion that has the ability to either engage and or punish someone's mistake. I remember playing hexakill and found Skarner, he's a fairly strong pick and someone who I like. Next thing I did was spend around 50 games with him learning him and practicing and after that I then headed into ranked and spammed Skarner, simple as that. About 70 games after I was in Silver 2.

Final thing to say, to be honest support is probably the worst role to play if you feel as if you have the skill to get into a higher division/tier. I myself went from Support to Mid and Jungle because I found its a little too hard to carry and I knew I could carry with other laners.

TL: DR

  1. Get a small champion pool with champs you know how to play well.
  2. You can play off-meta, but meta is generally a better pick overall.
  3. Spam those champs you know well.
  4. Don't stay in roles you can't carry if you feel as if you can carry.
IPinPC11/23/2016, 5:59:16 PM1 votes

206 games with Zilean as "support" - in fact I play him tanky AP, 55% win ratio and today I got Gold V. It took me a while to get comfortable and realize strengths and weaknesses, the builds suitable for my game play and synergy with other champs. I still enjoy my champ, the only one currently I play and I still see areas what I have to improve in my game play.

My suggestion - pick one champ, love it and see areas you have to improve. Make notes (mental or not) when you die and why you die (low leaguers usually have irresistible LOVE to suicide). Before leaving shop think - what are my objectives, for example: objectives I want to accomplish until I will return to the shop again and how much money I need until return, how not to die until my planned return.

"to extend upon the topic of people learning to play the game, I've noticed that successful climbing is often associated with how many different champions you can play well" - I think that's absolutely wrong. Number of champs won't help to climb if you have poor judgment on the field or poor game play mechanics.

As for low leaguer I strongly disagree with the idea of learning champ like Jax, Xin or Tristana - these champs are extremely sensitive to decision making and understanding of cons and pros. They are straight up suicidal champs in low leagues.