How I Quickly Climbed from Gold to Diamond (and how you can too)

This is my story on how I got Diamond. I'm hoping that you can effectively mirror the strategies/logic that I used in my approach to solo que to your own benefit.

---I started playing League of Legends late September of season 3, Getting gold was my goal for season 4. My silver border was a constant reminder and push for me to finish the season in Gold. I finally made it to gold and had my eyes on (not plat, but), diamond by the end of season 4. My pursuit of having two shiny rocks in the corners of my loading screen border was ambitious, but I was confident that I could do it. I hope you are too. In season 5, I hated having my gold border. My excuse for not being plat? The border reminded me too much of , and taric is a stupid champion(no offense in case the 1 taric main out there is reading this, it was just my personal excuse--it was complete BS of course). Taking with me nothing but my golden "anti-taric" border, I began my campaign of storming NA solo que. I went from Gold 3 to Diamond this season in about 180 Ranked games. That's enough about me, the rest is how I got it done.

---I would play about 40 ranked games for 1 week(gaining about 2 divisions per week), then spend 3 weeks practicing in normal games. I would take a realistic look at my current skill level and potential before I started playing ranked games. Knowing that I could out-perform the other top laner and consistently carry games took a lot of solo-que-stress off of my shoulders.

---My theory for gaining elo quickly and effectively was: **Champion stats reset after every game. Champion knowledge and skill doesn't. **

---So instead of spamming whatever was meta, I picked one champion --regardless of whether or not he was meta.

---The biggest thing I had to overcome was my ego. In other words, making my ego non-existent. Admitting imperfections and fixing them was probably the hardest part, but after my week of solo que spamming, I would look at what I was doing poorly and I would fix that. (my first main problem was overextending, so I adapted by upgrading the yellow trinket for vision every time I took down my opponents tower early--I would see the ganks/roams coming and play accordingly).

---I adapted to counter picks such as and by picking defensive masteries and magic resist blues/quints on my rune page. I would build instead of and rushed a as my first completed item. I even had a specific build for when he took . I would go 12/15/3 masteries, taking defensive masteries for armor/crit reduction and 3 in utility for movement speed. I would rush for its insane gold value per stats given, then build on top of my . This gave me optimal stats for facing , a matchup which I struggled in for so long and finally found my own answer to.

---I watched youtube videos on how to climb in solo que(gbay, foxdrop, etc.), the ones that helped me the most were Imls's videos. I also watched pro top laners stream(Dyrus, Marin, Balls, Zion, etc..) and every lane matchup video for Vladimir that I could find on youtube. I even experimented with Vladimir mid, jungle, support, and even as a bot lane carry. I spent a few hours in a custom game with a friend testing a consistent & time efficient way to farm a level 1 camp with Vlad without sacrificing much in terms of masteries, starting items, etc... I found out that coming to lane as with actually gives you huge bullying potential in lane. This was the final part of my Vlad gameplay that I improved before I made the final push to diamond (going on a 17-2 win streak to plow through plat 1 and diamond 5 before I was stopped abruptly due to the return of dc's and trolls in my diamond 4 promos

---After those promos, I took a step back, realizing that I had already achieved my goal for the season. I looked at my cs per minute, which drastically improved over my solo que campaign. I was consistantly getting games with 8-10 cs per minute, as compared to my preseason struggle of 5-7. I even had a few games with 11+cs per minute. All those hours of custom games of just last hitting with vlad for a few minutes, then restarting over and over paid off(I learned this technique to improve cs'ing from watching one of Imls' coaching videos on youtube). I took a realistic point of where I was at in skill level and potential, and decided I was happy with Diamond(not pursuing Master tier--my next goal).

---I hope sharing my personal thought process and strategies through my solo que campaign this season will help you climb and give you hope for getting Diamond, or whatever your goal may be.