What separates a silver from a bronze?

BluePolarizer·10/1/2015, 10:02:18 AM·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

Budupops10/1/2015, 11:24:20 AM2 votes

The only thing that separates bronze and silver is luck

TouchpadExpert10/1/2015, 10:45:34 AM1 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 Helped10/1/2015, 11:11:22 AM1 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 Morde10/1/2015, 11:29:26 AM1 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 Monster10/1/2015, 11:49:14 AM1 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.

illogik10/1/2015, 2:02:07 PM1 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.

Hiryuu1610/1/2015, 2:10:37 PM1 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.

BattleOxe10/1/2015, 10:18:30 AM1 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

CKwoka2694710/2/2015, 11:21:21 PM1 votes

Bronzes feed like they are hosting a buffet. Silvers feed less.