How to progress in Ranked?

StabbedYa·12/5/2014, 5:13:58 PM·1 votes·2,134 views

So I've been playing for about 8 months. When I started playing, I was terrible, and placed into S4. I know that I am WAY better now than when I started, but am still stuck in S4. How the heck do you get out of here?

Is this a matchmaking issue, because I keep having game after game where I'm the only one with a positive KDR. Everyone always emphasized that this is a team game, but doesn't it make sense that I should be able to progress as I get better? Feeling like this is all a waste of my time really. Is there a trick, like should I be interrogating people in champion select and dodging more?

18 Comments

M4nTiCoR312/5/2014, 5:46:41 PM5 votes

Kills are not a metric that measures your skill or ability in the major scheme of things. Wins are. If you are not winning despite having kills then it's because of your choices in game. Granted there will always be games that are lost no matter what you do...but you can affect the outcome in more games than you think if you focus on key objectives and smart play. Here are just a few areas to focus on.

Get more last hits. All those kills mean little if your not also getting a lot of last hits in lane and jungle on creeps. Something like 5-10 creeps = 1 kill. If you have 5 kills but your opponent has 0 and 50 more creeps than you...you are EQUAL. Hard to swallow but it's true.
Learn about XP/gold denial. There are times to push waves and times to freeze them. If you learn these 2 concepts it can lead to huge advantages early game.
Vision and objective control. Learn to buy wards and place them on key points of the map no matter what role you are. They lead to awareness and team opportunities to contest and take key objectives, and avoid ganks.
Die less. Every time you die in this game it's generally 90% bad decisions on your part 10% great play by your opponent. Really try and step back and look at your choices objectively when you die and see what you might have done differently to stay alive.
Combo kills into wins...even time you kill you get a window to apply pressure on objectives for a limited time while they are down teammates. Learn to take advantage of this as smartly and safely as possible so you can snowball a win.

Good luck. See you on the fields.

QuantumLight12/8/2014, 9:14:24 PM2 votes

if your playing a lot, and not rising in lp, then your where u should be. Your missing something to improve your game. post replays or something and have ppl help u.

OhBoyItsaMegaman12/5/2014, 8:59:29 PM1 votes

Is this a matchmaking issue, because I keep having game after game where I'm the only one with a positive KDR.

Not really. If you take a look back through your recent games, there are plenty where you didn't have a very good KDA, and plenty where 1 or more teammates had a great KDA (even in losses). Looking back over your history and rewatching your games can give you some perspective. Don't let yourself make excuses like "I got countered" or "I got camped" for the games where you didn't do so hot.

It's strange that you haven't moved up at all since you started ranked if you know you have improved, but you might have initially placed higher than you should have. There are a lot of people who go about 5 - 5 in placements and then spend the rest of the season in "Silver 5" (but actually Bronze 3 in terms of MMR). So maybe you worked your way up from that point to the Silver 4 where you seemed to start.

Poptart Evelynn12/5/2014, 9:03:06 PM1 votes

My advice is don't play during preseason. Some don't take it serious, others have no idea how to play with the changes, and the team with the jungler that knows the jungle better will have a much higher win chance.

Focus on improving yourself but IMO do not play during preseason.

Bresn12/6/2014, 1:06:34 AM1 votes

I was placed in B2. Climbed to B1 and failed promo by one loss.

Then I just kept on dropping. All the way back down to B2, then I was stuck in 0 IP for two games until Mid carried my team and push me into 20 IP Bronze 2.

Played in Normal afterwards, I kept pushing myself. Champions I'm good with, champions I bought but never really used and new champions. Loss. Loss. Feed. Feed. I had games where I did great but couldn't carry failing team.

I was tense, frustrated with bad teams and/or bad personal scores. I got mad at every little mistake and even builds when I thought it was a "troll build".

I simply had to quit my main afterwards. Made a account, did some duoing with my Lvl30 friend so I can relax and steamroll people (Lvl20ish, harder than Lvl5s)

After couple days of relaxing steamrolling, I went back on my main, won some games and lost my games. Did more games on my smurf and some normal games on my Main.

I went on a win streak, then I riskly tried my lovely Warwick with item 3710 for my first ever Pre-S5 jungle and carried. Played some more SR games, kept on winning and then all of a sudden I have a beautiful three/two Ranked victory streaks and a 9 Summoner's Rift win streak.

The point is, play with friends, make a smurf and play relaxed, steamrolly games and most important, TAKE A BREAK. My downfall was being too tense and yelling at teamates in Ranked over everything.

ujf2qEqxi912/6/2014, 4:15:37 AM1 votes

Have two accounts and learn when to dodge.

Outside of being a pro, it is the ONLY way to progress. Especially since you'll get trolled the most in your promos.

Grimspeake12/6/2014, 4:20:42 AM1 votes

i went on pretty much a 20 loss streak and got demoted to b1, i gave up, there was a few times were i did legitly play bad but the majority i always came out on top during laning, then teamfights and groupin and i just dont know id have 5 people in my lane and maybe just the support with me trying to hold objectives while my team was doing god knows what, mostly feeding and tryiing to catch up, it was a rough patch of games man. i cant carry but i sure as hell hold my own when faced with even odds. i think in lower elos maybe u have to risk giving up 3-4 deaths so u can snowball when u trade kills in lane... maybe im just to passive and perfer to play safe with a good cs lead and up a kill or two. i feel the struggle though man but maybe then again its cuz i was in silver 5 and had a bad streak with team-mates who didnt belong there. to be honest i just dont know.

MattAkhavan12/6/2014, 7:32:50 AM1 votes

personally i think you should always only focus on yourself, while it's a team game your performance should be able to prevail most of the time. This is what i would suggest

Dont die. If you die you are giving them gold and every death that you give could be the reason you lose
If you are always playing perfectly you will mostly win. for example you really don't lose many games where you are 20-2. You lose some, rarely.
don't be toxic or even negative to people who aren't doing well. personally i dont even defend people because it just leads to more problems
If you lose a game really badly take like a 30-40 minute break. wash your face watch some vidoes and come in to ranked again with a clear mind
really focus on your performance. no matter what rank you are or deserve to be in you can carry yourself.

Raith Alghul12/6/2014, 9:32:25 PM1 votes

Ignore kills, focus objectives and roaming. I had a few Riven games the other day where I ended up falling behind either due to matchups or just messing up a combo(lvl 1 all in with ignite tends to work better if ignite goes off). Riven is considered pretty useless if she gets behind, but I was able to roam and pick up a tripple as well as an assist on the enemy mid the first game, helping 2 lanes that were also behind and allowing the team to make a comeback and win, the second game I just out rotated the enemy and pushed down 2 towers to expose the inhib, we won that game as well, my KDA was negative both games but I took most of the towers on my team and led the enemy on a chase all over the map while my team got Drake/Baron(mobility is awesome). next time you kill your lane opponent and you are either at relatively high health or can regen consider what objectives you can get or if you can roam, even if you can put pressure on the enemy jungler, I gank mid as a support quite often it it almost always catches the opponent off guard, usually the enemy doesn't even think to ping an MIA support. If you're jungling focus less on ganks and more on counter ganks, quite often enemies will over commit resources without accounting for the possibility of a counter gank, leading to some easy double, triple or even quadra kills with good coordination.

Developing good report with your team before a match is also a good way to improve your win rate, since other players will be more likely to follow advice or trust you on a risky play if you are friendly, it also helps if you are winning your lane and if you've helped them with theirs, but it isn't always needed.

As far as dodging is concerned you should definitely dodge if you think the cahces of a win are slim or if you think you might have a troll, during placements on NA I had a last pick lock in MF despite us already having an ADC, we ended up with Ashe top and our top lane wukong going jungle, the MF gave first blood before everyone even got to lane and proceeded to feed not only bot lane, but also roamed mid and fed the enemy mid as well. If it's obvious someone on your team is not a team player, dodge. Also if you see a user called smokedogg I would recommend avoiding them.

Bronze Shaco12/8/2014, 5:43:47 PM1 votes

I started out at bronze 3 in the beginning of season 4. By the end of season 4 i was silver 5 and still really bad. So i started playing normal games and everytime i would make a mistake i would stop right there and go okay, this is what i did wrong, this is why it was wrong, and i tried not to make that mistake again. Within 2 days of doing ranked again im in my promo's for silver 3 and i am destroying most of my games. Granted im playing ADC and if you play it right you literally carry games. Now im not saying im good, because i know im still a low elo and still, in my own opinion, bad. What i am saying is that this game is all about not making mistakes. The team or person that makes the least mistakes and capitalizes on the mistakes the enemies make are the ones that win. So to wrap it all up, play some normal's and whenever you make a mistake stop and admit it and figure out why it was a mistake and make sure not to do it again.

PS: And when you do good tell yourself you did good. When a team member does good, TELL THEM. If they make a mistake dont go " Jesus Leblanc why the fuck did you feed a zed". Give them some constructive tips and even help them if you are ahead. Literally the most important thing is THIS IS JUST A GAME. PLAY IT TO HAVE FUN AND WIN.

GundayMonday12/8/2014, 9:20:19 PM1 votes

Best advice is to watch some high level streams where the player explains what's going on and answers questions in the chat. Scarra or Nightblue3 are pretty good for that. You're probably not focusing on objectives (towers, dragons, inhibitors) or farming poorly if I had to guess (Standard silver problems). Post a few replays and we'll be happy to take a look and offer advice.

soh1gh212/5/2014, 5:29:25 PM1 votes

just gotta keep grinding bro eventually you'll hit a good streak and get promoted good luck

temp 12xx3112/8/2014, 9:54:41 PM1 votes

Shameless promotion: would you like to know where you stand relative to your teammates?

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/PtKqIIXG-a-good-metric-for-measuring-in-game-performance

Leti the Yeti12/5/2014, 7:04:06 PM1 votes

die less, farm more ever seen da k0r34ns? iirc in that famous xpeke backdoor game.. there was a total of 28 deaths in a 60 minute game people up there are more careful and significantly more selective on when to aggressive and just farms alot more

dont worry about the kda, your team can criticize you all ya want for having so little kills... but you also died less than them and have higher cs so you are actually not behind on gold and best of all... you did not give the enemy team 300g from deaths so they can suck it ;l