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If you are tired of solo queue, look for a group

Dakkimchi·4/27/2018, 7:31:31 PM·2 votes·2,562 views

Generally, it's not worth it to spam league games unless you are on a win streak. It's easier to lose more games and tilt, so if you are a filthy casual like me, it's not healthy to keep playing. But in my experience, I often find it hard to stop playing. Why? There are a lot of reasons: wanting to redeem myself from the previous loss, the fact that League is like the only game that runs on my mac, and perhaps the notion that solo queue is the only way to improve in a game. However, it isn't, and I think the community will agree. As filthy casuals, the only way we will climb is by maining a small pool of champions. So not only are you just practicing a few solo queue champs (or meta ones) over and over again, you end up making the same mistakes, both mechanically and strategically.

So I ended up asking myself: what's the point of playing solo queue if it doesn't really make you improve at the game? Last season (the time I started playing league), it took me 2000 games to reach Gold 5. I didn't reach there because I was improving, only through a sheer number of games. The reason pros/streamers say that people who spend thousands of games in low elo are stupid is because we are highly inefficient: we don't take the time to improve and just grind blindlessly in hopes of reaching high elo.

But solo queue is highly addictive because the name "ranked" gets me pumped, like it's something competitive (although it's really not in low elo). So we just want to keep playing even if we tilt.

Recently, I joined a group of players because I was looking for a clash group. We ended up playing a lot of 5v5 customs, and for me, I improved a lot. Some of these people were higher ranked than me, so they made a lot of early game timings, vision control, shotcalls, etc. etc. I felt like I improved better playing with a group, more than the thousands of games I spent playing last season.

So if you are a guy burnt out from solo queue but still want to improve at the game to get that elo, maybe it's better to find a group who actively plays together. Solo queue may draw out the worst of this community, but I also feel that there are genuinely good people out there (most of the community imo), and you can improve much faster playing with a group like that.

I discourage playing with your friends if you want to improve though, most of the times I find myself trolling and having fun with my friends in flex, not much improvement lol.

In MMOs, you would have guilds teaching the noobs and casuals like me the ropes. I wish League would be more like that, where "guilds" and stuff form so that players have more interest outside of grinding solo queue and get better at the game. I feel like Clash is one of the stepping stones for that to happen, so I'm excited to see how league develops in the future. :D

4 Comments

Telephone Booth4/27/2018, 9:36:08 PM1 votes

Personally, I've told several "competitive" people on here, when they bitch about bad teammates and people who don't follow direction, that they need to find people to play with then. They're queuing up with strangers, from casuals to try hards, and expecting them to take the game just as seriously as them. If you want a serious, competitive game, find people to play with. Because there are no rules as to why you should play this game and how serious you should take it. It's just dumb to hold strangers up to your expectations and then get mad when they don't meet them.

NekoniClaws4/27/2018, 11:06:42 PM1 votes

It's good advice, but, mostly IF your group is better than you. Playing with better players is the way to get better.

But playing with worse players is a one-way ticket to insanity. =')

Additionally, I see my friends make the same mistakes over and over, and they constantly play the same champions with the same tactics...I can't seem to teach them anything if they chose to lane with me, and the worst thing is they're so confident that I won't rage at them, they're starting to borderline troll me (or LITERALLY troll me, if I'm playing a relic sup and go for cannon). And then there's the amount of trust they put in me- I can go 3 or 4 games with my jungle main friend and he won't gank bot... I can lose lane to two bronzes if their jungler keeps coming bot and blowing my sums. It's not like bot is a strategic lane that needs focus or anything... b-baka.

So my point is- ups and downs.