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How to get good enough to succeed at ranked

AhmCha·9/29/2015, 8:12:01 PM·1 votes·739 views

Hi everyone and thanks for reading my post. So to cut to the chase, I've decided to take a break from ranked because I just don't think I'm skilled enough for it yet, but I'm having trouble deciding criteria for when I will be skilled enough to go back in. My story is that I got placed is S5 (probably too high for me) and in my attempts to climb, ended up diving to B4, where I currently stand. I've played 69 ranked games and won only 19 of them, so safe to say, my record is pretty abysmal. To top it all off, my teams are often not very helpful, or just straight up toxic, and it started to rub off on me last night which is why I'm taking a break.

I've set up some personal goals for myself to get better at the game so that I can be more of a help than a hinderance in ranked games, and I would just like to run them by more skilled members of the community to see if these will be helpful or not.

-Win 500 games in normals (currently at 225) -Get to max mastery with 20 champs, preferably 4 in each role (Currently at 7: 2 supports, 2 junglers, 1 adc, 1 top laner, and one mid laner.) -Master at least one champion in every role to the point where I can be confident in my ability to carry with that champ (Currently don't have any that apply to this)

What do you guys think? Do you think this will help at all? Or do you think I should just go back into ranked, let myself fall to B5 if I have to and learn from there? I know generally what I have to improve on: map awareness, positioning, taking cues to go in or back off, establishing vision control. The reason I'm hesitant to practice in ranked games themselves is both that when people start flaming me I react poorly and do worse as a result, and I don't want to be the cause of someone losing LP or failing their promos or whatever. Anyway, feedback is appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read my post.

6 Comments

RiotRiot Bearly Leah9/30/2015, 12:11:42 AM3 votes

It's honestly fine to not practice in ranked.

It's good to have goals like you have, but I personally think you're aiming a little high.

If you really want to climb:

  • Master one - two champs REALLY well. If you master one champion really well you don't have to worry about your mechanics and can worry more about your map awareness. You only need about 1-2 champs per role, which is 5-10 champs as opposed to your 20. That's a high bar and even many higher skilled players have a smaller champion pool that they ranked with.
  • Work on your CSing, aim for about 80 at 10 minutes. You'll be amazed how much this can help you.
  • Try buying/placing more wards per game, the extended match history will give you these stats so you can track it
  • If you're playing resource champions (especially mana as a resource) try keeping a habit of always having enough for a FULL spell rotation. This will help you manage your mana in lane.
  • Start trying to keep track of their jungler, if you see them in another lane, you're safe to push up, otherwise stay back.

If you're interested in more tips I can post an extended version.

Serevas9/29/2015, 8:42:54 PM1 votes

Setting goals like that is definitely a good way to go about it. What I've done recently is I've started to keep track of my games.

I created a couple spread sheets, one is just for champions and how I perform on champions, tracking basic win rates and such on them so I can see the overview of my best champions.

The other spreadsheet is for details, I take down what champion I play, where I played them, what the result was (win/loss), notes on the game; being what happened in the game, then a section for areas where I could improve. I typically fill this spread sheet out from a recorded game so I can watch from start to finish and see what goes on without trying to perform in game simultaneously. It's hard to say, my warding has been really poor up to this point while trying to insec the enemy ADC through their team and into my own for a kill.

4ManVotedAgainst9/30/2015, 12:23:27 AM1 votes

Honestly, you should practice against the most-broken scenarios possible, and if you are able to win consistently, even against all odds, then you are ready to do ranked. Here is a Puzzle for you to solve that I have been failing at despite my current skill-level being enough to have reached Promos in Silver-I for Gold (although I did not actually DO those Promos last season FML).

Try playing Caitlyn (Caitlyn) in a 1v5 versus the Bots on Intermediate-Level in Custom-Mode. Give the enemy composition a team of exactly Taric Leona Kayle KogMaw Ezreal (Ezreal can also be replaced with Sivir ). Don't forget to set them ALL to Intermediate, you will One-Versus-Five as Caitlyn, against INTERMEDIATE-Level Bots in Custom-Mode. I can win them with my main champions, due to the fact that most of my mains all have team-destroying AoE-Ultimates available if fed, but even I cannot win yet for some reason with this scenario. I know it can probably be won easily with Twitch by a Twitch-Main though, due to that long-ranged AoE-Ulti, but as Caitlyn is Single-Target only, simply picking her makes things a hell of a lot more difficult.

Innately, with enough practice of doing 1v5's in Custom-Mode, setting everything to Random/Random/Random/Random (you click on Random-Button to select your Champion & give all of the bots Intermediate-Level Settings), you will have an idea which champions work better against which champions/compositions, for example, you can still learn with this method, because when I was practicing Yasuo (Yasuo) the other day, thinking that Yasuo (Yasuo) is/was broken as all hell (because he actually is in many ways), the bots ended up teaching me a real lesson, that bruisers are able to shit all over Yasuo (Yasuo), such as Garen Irelia JarvanIV and also being chain-CC'd by Leona(Léona) whilst the rest of her team proceeds to shit all over Yasuo(Yasuo) during the stun-locks lol.

Good luck with solving the puzzle that I've yet succeed with as above-mentioned. Screen-shot your success if you win in that difficult 1v5 Scenario (and make SURE that those bots are INTERMEDIATE and NOT merely Beginner).

Android Cowboy10/1/2015, 3:13:29 PM1 votes

Get good enough to carry your team, even when they are stinking up the joint and should definitely NOT even be in ranked. Gnar