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For people stuck in bronze

Dr Endeavor·11/6/2014, 9:21:33 PM·9 votes·2,878 views

Thanks to the great team mates along the way, it was a fun experience (after bronze 4). So after finally getting to silver (roughly 100 games), I want to reflect on it for the people who say it isn't possible unless you are a diamond smurf.

So never really playing ranked, I decided a while back to do my provisional because I wanted to keep challenging myself in the game... winning 7 games - losing 3... and being placed into bronze 4. I tell you what, if there is a hell, it must be below that place because... whew, it was bad. At first I climbed very slowly, getting used to people losing their lanes/chasing... ad having to try and turn it around. I took a break at one point, because I "used" to think that my team was the problem every single game I lost. After coming back to play league, I had let all my desperation to climb asap go... and realized many things:

Every death you give up, was your fault in some way. You relied on a player to do something and they weren't ready (or willing), you underestimated your opponent, or didn't bother to check the map if people might be nearby. EVERY death is your fault somehow (except when your team hits a monster when you are low health and it kills you... buncha meanies >:[ ). The quicker you realize this, the faster you can analyze the mistake and attempt to not repeat it.

For every winning team, there is a losing team. Sometimes people are not bad, it's just that their opponent is better. What can they do? well whatever they can until either they get a lead, get help, or team fights start. The more you help people rather than flame them, the better your team can come together when its mid game crunch time.

If you are thirsty, go get a cup of your favorite beverage before playing. Too many times I have seen big leads just tossed aside by people trying to chase an Uydr for 4 minutes while zed split pushes top and takes an inhib. Learn to see what is worthwhile, and what is just bloodthirst for another kill... you will get a lot farther taking towers when the enemy is weak, than to hunt down someone and get nothing (sometimes, they even come to you in a desperate attempt to save the tower... and die anyway).

Support the people carrying your team, and try to keep them from making bad decisions. See that Vayne with 20 kills? maybe its Tryn? keep them alive. If they are single handedly wrecking the enemy team, then at some point they will start to get focused. If they go down, sometimes your team doesnt have anything to fall back on. Do what it takes to keep them up: buffs, heals, item activates, peel whatever. If possible, keep an eye on the map for them... see the enemy team going towards him as he is killing someone? warn them.

Last but not least of the big things that helped me get out of bronze... stop spending your time running around. You know who you are, mid game hits and you are going up and down the map like the first elevator in Walmart. Stop it, you need the farm and exp to keep yourself in the game. If the enemy team is pushing, that means they are still getting gold and exp as they are killing the minions..... while you are just running to stop them and maybe getting a few before you start fighting them. If you win you kinda stay in the game, but if you lose not only are you not getting more exp and gold... but you just gave them a bunch more that they already had from pushing. Learn to team fight to take people out that push too far, and make sure you farm in between defending or roaming or you will fall behind.

TL:DR I got out of bronze on my own, mainly as a support turning around several games that my team had already given up on. To all you nay sayers out there, read the post and you might see some of the things I had to learn the hard way. I hope this helps some of you who are having a hard time in bronze. :)

25 Comments

Duke Leto I11/7/2014, 4:40:45 PM3 votes

I'm not even ranked yet and started to pick up on this. If may lane opponent kills me (at least for mid), it doesn't happen again. Why? Because, I've now picked up on the cause of my mistakes and how to counter them. This isn't everything, as I'm not a pro, but here are a few keys I use when analyzing a death:

Who killed you?

Identify your killer and not what role they were playing. If it was your lane opponent, it's vital to keep an eye on the opponent's items. You should do this for everybody, but it's a huge giveaway for identifying your lane opponents strategy. If they are packing on the AP, well counter that with some MR items. That will make it take longer to kill you, which will then through off your opponent's timing.

How were you killed?

Were you killed by immobility, pure attack damage, or maybe you were wombo combo'd? Make sure to take items back to fray that will prevent this. Or to use your spells to counter those measures.

Number of opponents.

You can easily get outnumbered in LoL, especially in mid and bottom lane pushes. Take note of how many they were, and if you identified them, take note whether it was the jungler or the AP mid that came into the battle. If you're on bottom, it probably means they're not watching top lane too well at the moment.

Where were you killed?

As LoL 101 as this sounds, location is important. If the only place you've died is in the bush in the river, then GTFO. If you're roaming and die, take note of the location. The opponent will likely look there again to see if you've made the same mistake twice. This is especially the case for the dragon and buff steals. This time, bring a friend and a surprise.

Wards?

Ward please... This comes over the chat all of the time. A key measure in preventing your next death is to ward. Since you identified the location of your death ward the possible approach areas to get the early warning for pending doom.

[EDIT: Added] Communicate.

I forgot one thing. If you're dying, you might not be the only one not aware of the problem. It may be you're jungler or your top just not being aware of an opportunity. Make sure you communicate to your team when you need a gank. Even if they aren't ready at the time, you can change your strategy to coordinate a easy 2 on 1 attack. Again I'm not ranked, these are just some things I've picked up on. I hope they help and I hope others can expand on what I've mentioned here. See you in the fields.

EDIT: Formatting of numbers.

DrNova11/8/2014, 8:34:28 AM2 votes

This late in the season you arent really going to get out of bronze even if you honestly arent a really bad player. At this point the system has filtered the truly bads all down to bronze. So even if you learned and got better, your still generally stuck there because of the poor teams often surrounded with.

You always hear "Carry your teams if they are bad" but thats not honestly very realistic. Sure it would be nice to be that good, but then why would there be a bronzr or even gold. Some people cant understand there are levels of skill inbetween bad and carry most games good.

Right now just wait till next season and try to do well in placements. I started this season maybe 2 months ago after not playing for about 2 years, and like an idiot I jumped right into ranked without learning what changed and shaking the rust off. So I got put in bronze. I finally goot my groove back and generally am playing pretty well, got my champs down, mechanic s back, ect, but am still often hindered by bad teams. Even alot of games I have had where I'm 15-5 and been pushing hard for objectives have still been impossible to come back sometimes. Especially with the amount of AFKrs and toxic people who bring down teams morale. Point is I'm looking fowards to next season to get placed somewhere better and working up from there with actually skilled players.

dwntwnjulibrwn11/7/2014, 12:15:55 AM2 votes

your a dbag

Dr Endeavor11/8/2014, 9:36:13 AM1 votes

@ Dr Nova

It's understandable to feel the way you do. But there is always something you can do to turn a game around in any position regardless of how your team is doing. When people say to carry the game harder, they are not referring to killing the enemy 1 vs 5, although that is nice when someone can. They mean to adapt to what is going on to change the game, like in my notes above. Some games cannot be won (the whole enemy team is like 8/0/0) , and your team just doesn't have the resources to win unless the enemy team throws.... but the majority of games have the issues stated above and just make matters worse.

Dr Endeavor11/8/2014, 8:11:54 PM1 votes

Last bump :)

Dr Endeavor11/9/2014, 1:21:35 PM1 votes

Sometimes the game will feel heavy, and there are games you can't win like I have said. But I have really surprised myself and how many games I have managed to turn around (even more surprising since I am usually the support).

YerroFever11/9/2014, 10:14:41 PM1 votes

To a certain extent I agree. However, there are some times where losing isn't your fault.

For example, the last game I played... the jungler was CONSTANTLY pushing out lanes. He was coming in and farming minions and then leaving. No gank, no nothing. Just coming in and taking minions and leaving. The enemy took advantage of this and just kept ganking every lane that the jungler pushed and left.

There was no way to stay safe because the enemy team froze the lane. The only thing that you could do was try to reset the lane and then sacrifice minions so that your minions were safe... but unfortunately that's when the jungler would come back and push your lanes. No matter what anyone said, the jungler was set in his ways.

Ultimately when your allies help the enemy team, because they think they know better than you, there's nothing you can do except try to make the best of what you've got and sometimes it just means having to be behind and try to make up for your ally being bad.

Dr Endeavor11/9/2014, 10:57:15 PM1 votes

I think either people are interpreting what I wrote wrong, or I am conveying the wrong message... if that's so I apologize. In what I wrote in my original post, I stated that not all games are winnable. The point I am trying to make is if you are struggling to get out of bronze, there is still a lot you can/need to learn to be able to climb out solo. Yes, the odds will most likely be against you, but you can win some of the harder or even impossible matches if you and you team put your brains to it. Sometimes that doesn't happen though, and there is always next game.

Dr Endeavor11/7/2014, 4:58:46 PM1 votes

@ Duke Leto

Those are more generalized tips towards most mistakes people make in bronze but most people have already read and still can't climb (even though they probably don't correct themselves after reading it). I was trying to aim my tips at things most people don't think about or most people haven't talked about. Thank you for adding in more helpful tips though, all the better to help people out :)

Dr Endeavor11/8/2014, 6:38:41 AM1 votes

Bump