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Ranked Solo Que: My Experience, and how to possibly improve your own.

TormeyKitsune·10/14/2014, 3:41:46 PM·3 votes·638 views

I'm sure these kinds of posts litter the board, and they most likely won't stop. However I felt like putting in my own opinions and experiences to maybe try and help improve the community. Chances are I might get some hate for how I feel or what I think, but seeing how much rage can appear in a game, I think I'm prepared for that.

So, to begin with, if you're starting ranked, read the summoner's code. I can't even begin to list off how many times I've seen people "quote" the thing and be wrong about it. If someone tells you that its "part of the summoner's code" that you play a certain way, they are wrong.

The summoner's code is a set of behavioral guidelines, made by Riot. Be nice to each other, don't hate on someone's play style, so on and so forth. Now, if someone does the "Top or I feed" line, that DOES break the summoner's code. League of Legends is a TEAM game. We are all supposed to work together towards a victory.

I've been playing ranked for almost a year, and I'm stuck in what people would call ELO Hell. If there's something I can say with some certainty its that a very high number of bronze players are guilty of lacking team awareness. Tryndamere's will push a lane by themselves and die, then blame their team. Bot lane duo's will cry about losing lane due to not getting ganks. The list could go on forever.

This brings me to something that I feel a lot of people need. Its ranked solo/duo que. You're going into a game with people you have no idea about. Its not a constructed pre-made team that knows each other's weaknesses. For those in lane, you CAN NOT rely on your jungler to bail you out of trouble.

The times I've jungled and had to try and juggle three suffering lanes at the same time is painful to remember. Jungle is only one person, not three. If you're losing your lane, blaming the jungler is not a good thing to do. Take responsibility for how you attempt to control your lane. Check your minimap every 5 seconds at least so you know where your team is, and where the enemy is. If you can't see the enemy jungler, chances are you should play safe and not push too far as you don't know when or how they will appear.

Every time I've died its been because of me, not the jungler not ganking me. Ganks help sure, and I appreciate them, but you're much better off playing for yourself, than for your team. The rules I abide by that seem to improve my own performance, are these: limit your deaths. Seriously. Towers are important strategic points, I grant you this, but... they grant around 100 gold to the entire team. That's worth a total of around 2 champion kills but its spread between 5 people. Whereas if you die, its 300 gold to your lane opponent speciffically.

In short, sacrifice your tower rather than yourself if you find yourself outnumbered and outgunned. Starving the oponents of kills makes them desperate and dumb a lot of the time. Countless times I've gotten yelled at for this decision but I've found that in the long run it pays off.

Speaking of towers, its a good idea to use them to help you get kills when you know you're having a weak start. Too often I've seen people complain of being countered. Well guess what, let them push you, and try to focus on getting the minions out of the way so the turret can agro onto the person attempting to dive you. Turrets do progressive damage, so... if you can try to bait the fight out around your tower and as long as you do a little damage, the turret kill nets you the gold. I grant that some champs have good dive abilities such as Vladimir, Fizz, and Alistar. However if you know you're up against them, you should be smart enough to know what you'll have to deal with and try to play to survive it.

So yeah, simply put. Play for yourself more than for your team. This does not mean ignore the team, or pick your position regardless of team composition. What it means is, prioritize your survival. If you see an opportunity to help, then go for it, but pretend as if you're actually personally on the Fields of Justice. Would you like the feeling of dying over and over again? Probably not.

Another priority I can think of for players, is minion control. I have seen creep waves obliterate towers and push lanes when champs are mia trying to help a team fight. Team Fights are important but the entire team needs to be aware of their respective army. If your team has better minion control even though you might be lacking in kills? Then you'll likely win.

I'll probably add some things to this every once in awhile, respond to people I feel are actually curious about my opinions. Who knows, maybe I'll make a couple friends.

3 Comments

ValyrianBlade10/14/2014, 4:07:08 PM2 votes

Seems legit.

That jungle example is the worst. "Gg lost Lane no jungle pressure this jungler sucks". Stuff like that. It's almost always the guy that's 0-5 in Lane who says it too. When jungling you can only camp 1 Lane, or play normally and do your jungle and show up in each Lane infrequently. You can't be at every Lane all the time. If your lanes all suck, you're useless as a jungler. I'll also note that if your teammate takes your level 1 buff kill and you get no xp you're pretty much screwed until the 20 min mark since it's so much harder to clear the rest of the jungle at 1 instead of 2.

I'd add the importance of cs. No joke, I had a game where 3 times I landed charm on zed and went all in, each time their jungle showed up from the side I didn't have warded, zed escaped with under 10hp (my mistakes as I should have finished him and let the jg kill me instead of trying to get away) and I died all 3 times to the jungle. After the second I apologized to my team. After the third I complained aloud, but then checked cs. I was 68cs ahead of zed despite those deaths. Thus, even though he had a kill and 2 assists and I was 0/3/0 I had more gold. So the next time I dueled him the jungler didn't show up and I got the kill (and when I said finally no jungler my whole team laughed) and then the zed rage quit (I'm guessing since he was up 3 kills in Lane and I still outdueled a dueling specialist). We won the game 5v4, and all of this was presumably because I dominated in cs (even 5v5 I think we still would have won).

15-20 cs = 1 kill. Every cs you miss is huge, and out cs' ing your Lane opponent can win the game. I had another game where I went 7-0-0 off the start and was way ahead, at 20 min we had a 20k gold lead and I had just taken an inhibitor. We ended up losing. I was shocked. I looked at the match history (seeing the 20k gold lead) and realized what it was. We couldn't down turrets when they turtled because we had no one to take them down. I should have built lich bane earlier but I didn't realize it. At the end of the game (around 46 min) our adc had only 150cs (theirs had 302). Our top and jungle were both ap. They stacked magic resist (2 spirit visage, one banshees veil plus negatron cloak, one spectres cowl) and our adc was doing basically 0 damage despite them having no armour. It's easy to blame the loss on a junk adc, but I should be blaming it on myself for not grabbing lich about 20 minutes earlier. There's always something you can do.