Help moving out of Silver into Gold.

ZombieNinja War·5/18/2015, 2:15:36 PM·1 votes·922 views

So i usually Jung. im a solid S4-S3 player but im stuck there i have a hard time getting past S3 and it feels like a huge gap between me and them. i know my farm needs to be better. i feel like if i get a little behind i cant get back into the game but if i get a lead ill take the game with it. i almost never loose a smite fight. i focus on ganks and taking towers and putting pressure on the team. all in all this game style that i play isn't getting me to gold so i need help on what i should work on i know i have a lot of places to improve on but what would help the most... where do i start. I play Jung if that matters. Thanks for the help

10 Comments

Frank3275/19/2015, 8:24:27 AM2 votes

I play quite a bit of Xin myself and there were a few things I noticed (aside from the fact that you don't get item 3361 ):

Your early game isn't the greatest. Now maybe you're getting a lot of assists in the early game that don't show up in the match history, but your ratio of kills/deaths should probably be better before 6 mins. Xin is really strong at level 3 and if you've got a volatile lane you can usually pick up a free kill or two. Just don't try to force ganks that are too difficult. Look at lanes where there's lots of damage trades and lots of CC, preferably with an enemy without escapes.

More importantly though, if there's no opportunity -> farm up! Not getting a successful gank early feels bad when playing xin, but if you get behind on levels in the early-midgame it's even worse. Then you'll be an easy kill if you try to get back into the game. Whatever you do, use your time efficiently. If you can keep a rythm of farming and successfully ganking without pause you win every time.

You build Cinderhulk but then you often don't build any additional health until late in the game. The strongest part of the cinderhulk enchantment is the +25% bonus health. So if you do build it, always build a health item immediately after to make it cost efficient. The new black cleaver is a great item for Xin. From what I see in the match history your low jungle farm combined with the early BOTRK you end up having a cinderhulk enchantment that's not efficient until 30 minutes into the game.
On that note, pick an item build to fit your playstyle. If you want to gank and pressure lanes early, get the warrior enchantment. It adds a lot of power to your midgame. From there you can get some tanky items and finally a BOTRK to make sure you still do damage in the late game.
You say that you focus on ganking, taking towers and putting pressure on the enemy team. I'm hoping that by that last one you mean counterjungling. There are some people (who don't play jungle) that think turning up in a lane as the jungler without any chance of a successful gank is a good thing. It isn't. If you do that, your team is losing on jungle xp (you're not farming), you lose out on Xin's strength (you're not ganking) and all the other lanes can overextend however much they want because they know where you are.

Firu5/18/2015, 2:48:33 PM1 votes

Hi Zombie,

I've run the gamut from Bronze 3 to Silver 1 this season (currently S4). That's my way of saying I'm just about average at this game, statistically. However, I do think I can help point you in a few directions that might improve your play. Nothing on specifics but more relying on macro information that I've gotten about you from op.gg.

The one major issue (data wise) I notice is that your KDA is fairly low. It's only above 3.0 on one of your 7 most played champions (Amumu). You should focus on improving this, more so on reducing your deaths. As obvious as it seems, each time you die you give the enemy team gold. If you are dying more than you are killing (which is the case for each of your top 7 most played champions), you are putting your team at a disadvantage. This is because the net gold is still in favor of the enemy team. Further, deaths matter a lot early game because it helps the enemy team build those items which will snowball them later. Thus if you die in ganking a lane then that laning enemy still gets gold to buy an item, even if you killed them. At best, they are now on par with your own laner, at worse they are ahead if you got the kill and your laner got the assist.

In short, reducing your deaths might be a worthwhile step. How you do this is up to you. Perhaps just avoid situations where you may die (e.g., gank less). Because even though you say you are focusing on ganks, you may still be dying more often than not during those ganks.