What separates a silver from a bronze?

BluePolarizer·Oct 1, 2015·1 votes·984 views

I'm coaching a friend of mine who has been stuck in bronze 5 for a long time. I taught him animation cancelling, and talked to him about the theory of jungling, bot lane (support heavy) and controlling objectives. He rose up quickly to silver 5, but then lost 10 in a row and went back to bronze 1. This has me thinking: was teaching him animation cancelling and talking to him about the theory of jungling not enough? This has me thinking: so why is my friend still bronze, but people that in my opinion are worse than him are in silver or gold? There seems to be a key concept or strategy that he is not getting.

18 Comments

BudupopsOct 1, 20152 votes

The only thing that separates bronze and silver is luck

BattleOxeOct 1, 20151 votes

Well, most people are in bronze because they rush too much, eun for kills, don‘t take objectives, priority kills over farm. Atleast that‘s what I think

TouchpadExpertOct 1, 20151 votes

If he's fairly new it could just be that he is unfamiliar with the matchups he is facing. And a majority of the stuff you taught him deals with the laning phase. Perhaps teaching him some mid game or late game strategies will help him in the long run. Stuff like roaming, how to siege a turret, proper team fight formation/positioning, how to freeze a lane and when to do it, peeling, warding techniques and proper objective prioritization.

And l HelpedOct 1, 20151 votes

Can't really teach mechanics, but you can give pointers. Get it through his head how important warding, CONSTANTLY watching the minimap, roaming and not forcing ganks is. And ESPECIALLY how to play safe.

Maximum MordeOct 1, 20151 votes

Decision making, mechanical skill, perception(map awareness), and game knowledge.

The same thing that separates all tiers from each other. Generally mechanical skill is the easiest to improve, but decision making has a larger impact on the game. To make good decisions you need good perception and game knowledge as well as some intuition about what is gonna happen. Then you need the mechanical skill to actually carry out your decisions. All the mechanical skill in the world won't save you if you do stupid shit.

Teaching him to do certain things will only help so much. He needs to know and more importantly understand WHY he is doing those things and be able to apply it on his own as the match progresses to new situations. As he gets better at that his rank will climb.

Angry MonsterOct 1, 20151 votes

so it sounds like you went over a lot of theory craft. Have you watched him in game and talked about what he is doing wrong? If you have the bandwidth record a spectator game and review it with him. Cover what he is doing wrong, Odds are he is taking risks that he does not understand that he is doing. being able to see both sides at the same time may open his eyes.

so here is my teir list of what each division is

bronze is clueless, 0 understanding of the game in real time silver understands/able to do concepts, but tend to be thirsty and over extend gold better at just take advantage of others mistakes. solid base plats beyond the basics, tend to over extend to push the limits. Hit and miss not consisant but planned hyper agression diamond consistent mechanical skill and decision making. when they know their champ they KNOW the champ. Makes high calculated plays that look risky Masters+ every little mistake is game changing. you give and inch they take your head.

BluePolarizerOct 1, 20151 votes

I watched multiple games of him as well as duoed with him in normals. I thought he played awful (typical of B5) but I could not distinguish why he was so much worse than silver junglers. I'm plat and I get fed 17-3 as first time Volibear playing against golds in teambuilder, so to me, a silver is just so awful and makes so many mistakes, that I cannot distinguish them from B5.

Angry MonsterOct 1, 20151 votes

not to be mean it sounds like you do not know what you are doing then and you are just mechanically better than your friend. If you are strong in theory craft you should be able to see what he is doing wrong, the claim they are just all so bad does not cut it, when helping a friend.

i have coached quite a few bronze & unranked into silver. Their flaws (while many) are easy to spot. The over extending/chasing, not understand kill/death potential, wave management, correct warding, bush checks, how/what objective to take after a fight and lastly win conditions or how to close a game.

Identify what his actual weaknesses and do not worry about his team. IF he is a X main worry about that more than anything else. A laner does not need to worry about jungle pathing as much as times when the jungler should be around. Theoretically you should know where the enemy jungler is in route for the first 5 minutes, if you know where he started. His route will not change unless he ganks mid early and you should be able to play with that.

example if support or adc main.

you know cause of a ward that the jungler started bottom side of the jungle. that means after 4 minutes you are safe 95% on the botlane from ganks. A either he cleared his jungle and back and went top side, or quick cleared and is preparing to gank top or mid since he quick double buffed. Know this you can apply more pressure and ward correctly, while taking aggressive trades.

The conditionals for this statement is X class of junglers and understanding the camps that are in the bot lane.

BluePolarizerOct 2, 20151 votes

Chasing too much, facechecking and being bad at decision making extends all the way into low gold so I'm not sure how that means that I'm just mechanically better.

The #1 problem I see of his is that he makes the wrong judgment of objective values, and I tell him that, but that's not a good way to help because objective values change in every game and every situation within a game. Silvers misjudge that all the time too so I'm not sure how that is a distinguishing factor.

Angry MonsterOct 2, 20151 votes

Chasing too much, facechecking and being bad at decision making extends all the way into low gold so I'm not sure how that means that I'm just mechanically better.

........... k

The #1 problem I see of his is that he makes the wrong judgment of objective values, and I tell him that, but that's not a good way to help because objective values change in every game and every situation within a game. Silvers misjudge that all the time too so I'm not sure how that is a distinguishing factor.

you play normals with him and correct his behavior as it happens. odds are he is taking higher risks, without understanding the dangers. When you review a game with him ask why X was wrong thing to do, So he has to think why instead of you saying no.

AyRe CoNteMpTOct 6, 20151 votes

man, you are making sense. a very rare thing on the boards. you got my respect ; )

and @ BluePolarizer: the higher the elo, the less mistakes people make and gameplay changes. for example, everything you do can be wrong in diamond. like, you dont make "more mistakes" but your basic gameplan can allready be considered a mistake.

everything you can teach him from your own experience is only correct until a certain elo and then falls apart, so the most important skill in league is the skill to learn by yourself.

for example, my favorite lesson i always give people i coach: in every situation, make a simple decision of what you will do and then follow it 100%.

for example, you get ganked and you have the choice to flash and survive or not flash and bet everything on you being able to dodge that lee sin Q.

both of these decisions are viable and which one is better depends on the situation and your experience so its absolutely okay to make any of them.

now what many people do is they decide not to "waste" flash but do try and dodge. now they get hit by the Q and then flash, or flash after the second Q, let lee sin W to them and kill them so they now truly wasted flash.

another example of a thing many people do: i call it "fucking around". stop "fucking around" ever. you know this situation where you waste time, be it two seconds, to fire another skillshot at a jungler who just failed a gank on you or shooting that extra auto attack at the enemy laner who is farming under his tower or having a slow dance around a jungle camp with the enemy jungler in his jungle.

those are examples of situations where people are "fucking around": they are not doing some specific thing like attacking or running away but they are instead switching between different possible actions and in the end doing nothing.

you all experienced that: rengar ganks you, fails and you walk away while he tries to chase you but you get to safety while he turns around to walk away. now you turn around too to fire that auto attack at him and he just happened to have stepped into a brush warded by you (because you had vision, you kinda didnt mind), turns around, jumps you and kills you. there are millions of situations like that and you all have them plenty times every single game. watch any replay of yourself and see where you fuck around and how you accomplish nothing with it.

if you analyze every single action of yours and think about the potential benefit versus the risk versus the potential punishment, fucking around always includes the risk of dying in some way, even if 3 people have to simultaneously flash at you to accomplish that, while at the same time you have no realistic way to kill 2 or more people or objectives.

mostly, this is the difference between dealing 100 damage to rengar and dying to him for free.

NEVER fuck around ever. make clear decisions on what you gonna do. you decide not to flash and die for it? cool, well played. i respect that. you flash instantly and live? nice. honored.

you see an enemy jungler on a ward and instantly run? an ally just pinged red pings near your location 3 times? better run instantly. getting that one minion or hitting that one zap is not worth it.

if a player manages to stop fucking around ever, he will be on at least diamond level. THEN you can start teaching him stuff like animation canceling and other bullshit.

illogikOct 1, 20151 votes

Lol possibly hardware difference, I'm not even joking.

I think they did a survey back then and lower elos tend to have higher ping. and I've seen a few bronze players with like 20-30 fps.

In terms of gameplay.. Maybe just having the mental capacity 50% of the time to know when to execute a skill at that moment lol.

BluePolarizerOct 1, 20151 votes

I play on 30 FPS and I'm plat lol. I first climbed to plat playing on 25 FPS. Does it really make a difference?

illogikOct 2, 20151 votes

are you really asking if 30 compared to 60 fps makes a difference? Ab-so-fucking-lutely.

BluePolarizerOct 2, 20151 votes

I guess I'm being held back by my toaster then lol.

illogikOct 6, 20151 votes

It makes a difference, but I'm not saying it's holding you back.

People get use to shitty situations. But once you hit 60 fps, you will wonder why you haven't done it sooner.

Hiryuu16Oct 1, 20151 votes

Without access to any match history or game replays, we're all just tossing generic ideas at the wall.

If he was stuck in Bronze 5 for awhile, I hope you went through his rune and mastery pages. From seeing previous posts here, just a decent rune page and functioning limbs will get you to B4.

The rest of Bronze is just getting comfortable with the champions you play and knowing what you can get out of them. To be clear, I don't mean what that champion is capable of, which is a whole different issue. To get back into Silver, narrow his roles and champion pool so he knows the matchups he'll face. Learn what trades you can win, what combos you can manage, roughly how much damage that will do and how much mana it will cost. Factor in the CC your opponent can land and what other opponents could join the fight. Learn what items work well on that champion against the threats he faces that game.

Objective control seem like a good thing to teach, but it may lead him to contest dragon 1v5 because "look at how hurt they all are." Silvers will just stand in mid and fight over literally nothing, but they're still not Bronze. That's not the problem.