I don't understand what to do anymore.

Niyumi·Oct 16, 2015·5 votes·766 views

So, I started League in mid-June, got to 30, and started ranked in probably August. I placed S2, and did pretty well. Climbed to promo series 9 times in a row (lost every series), then my ELO started to turn into a rollercoaster, dropping to S4, climbing to S1, dropping back to S4, climbing to S2, dropping to S4... I just don't know why I can't have any consistent performance.

In most of my games (like, 95% of them), I perform far better than the majority of my team, and usually have no trouble at all while laning. I'm usually the only one to upgrade my trinket, the only person to go for objectives instead of chasing kills, the only person to split, and so on. A good portion of my games, I absolutely carry.

However, in just about every game I lose (sometimes I do just get outplayed, but not often), my team is made up of just the most idiotic people you can imagine, who can't do anything without someone holding their hand and walking them through it. Even if I win my lane, roam and help others win lane, we eventually end up losing, because they feed the entirety of the game and make stupid decisions, ending up with us losing towers because 4/5 people are dead.

What can I do? I can go 18/3 and end up losing, I can go 26/5 and end up losing, I can go 3/0/25 as a supp and lose... I just don't understand how I can climb at all when my teams are just made up of retards. I can push every lane and down all the towers I can, yet still lose. I can steal baron and dragon, but still lose. Nothing I do makes any difference, and I just don't understand how I can climb at all when my win/loss is determined by luck. : /

What can I do?

15 Comments

MegarraOct 17, 20152 votes

Go to the Team recruitment board and look for other people having the same problem. Maybe you can find some other people as skilled as you and that play together well, and have your own team. Good luck Sciela :)

AmelieOct 17, 20151 votes

Raw damage output works a lot better in low elo. Play Gangplank more often if you can, since you seem to do well with him (also he has tons of damage). You might want to consider a burst mage support rather than Braum/Alistar. Even Lux can work. You want to dominate your lane and keep applying pressure, roam around the map if you have to. It will take time, but you will rise.

NiyumiOct 17, 20151 votes

Well, the thing about supports is that I'm usually the only tank on my team. Every now and then there'll be others, but usually it's just a bruiser top and squishies everywhere else. I have rank 5 on both Lux and Annie (and know how to supp with both), but I try to look out for my team -- would I be better off just going an AP burst supp, and carrying the lane?

Gangplank is fun, but I feel like I'm cheating when I play him. xD I just run around throwing barrels and instakilling people left and right. I do pretty well with Kassadin too, though he has a rougher early game. Thing is though, if I just played one champ over and over, I'd get bored pretty quickly, so I keep adding to my pool and learning/mastering new champs all the time.

AmelieOct 17, 20151 votes

Tanks are not as important because Silver players are generally terrible at teamfights anyway. Of course there's always exceptions, but if you're playing the tank then you're relying on everyone else to do their job properly - so you are leaving it up to luck, as you say.

I can give you an example - when I was climbing through Silver 4 and up, I played a ton of Zyra support to carry the bot lane. When I got higher in Silver and then Gold, I dropped Zyra in favor of other utility supports because the players got generally better.

You definitely don't have to play one champ over and over, but if you keep changing to new champs, you won't rise as fast as when you play the same 1-2 champs in a role.

NiyumiOct 17, 20151 votes

Yeah, I see a lot of ADCs just rush their team, tanks hang out behind everyone else, and so on. So teamfighting definitely isn't a strength in lower silver.

Oh I have 2-3 champs I prefer for each role, but maybe 5-6 I -can- play. But before I ever play a champ in ranked, I spam them to rank 5 in normals to learn them -- so I feel like I have a good grasp on the champs I play.

Baseball3bOct 17, 20151 votes

Usually your situation means that you're better than your current tier, but not good enough to carry.

Generally, I find the best strategy is to focus on champions who can output massive amounts of damage or who have insane objective control. (i.e. Riven, Yi, etc). Many people in silver just don't know how to play around them. Likewise, it's not good enough just to get yourself fed. Try and focus on helping to get the rest of your team fed as well, even if they're bad.

Another alternative strategy is to just take someone like Tryndamere, Gangplank, zed, or udyr and split push. Pretty much a guaranteed win.

PowderToastOct 17, 20151 votes

At least you are in Silver ...I been up and down in B4 pulling hair and teeth.

AyRe CoNteMpTOct 17, 20151 votes

by the way, for everyone who thinks they should win with 18:3 or so stats: you need to destroy the enemy nexus to win. even if you go 100:0, the nexus doesnt actually die from that.

NiyumiOct 17, 20151 votes

No, I'm aware that objectives are what wins. I can push towers as hard as I can, and end up taking a lot, but it's never really enough. I just use the KDA as a measure of how I'm doing in lane and in general.

AyRe CoNteMpTOct 17, 20151 votes

your kda means you are doing pretty poorly because if you regularly get stats as high as these, it means you waste alot of time killing weak noobs instead of being useful. you could be afk and have the same effect.

4ManVotedAgainstOct 17, 20151 votes

I feel ya bro

StoryDuckOct 17, 20151 votes

This....this right here happens to me all the time. I main support so it happens a lot. The thing I have learned is that you just stick with it. I also always look back to see what I could have done differently to win the game. For instance, there has been some games in my past where I lost because I used Soraka ult to save 1 person out of position but then lose the following teamfight because I don't have it up anymore. I learned from making that mistake and switched from using the ult to save one person to always saving it for teamfights and it made a big difference. I've found that every game I play that I lose I can always find something I could have done differently and it has really helped me to improve. I've managed to crawl from silver to Plat as a support main just by finding and correcting these small errors and sticking with it. It is hard to admit I could of done better instead of blaming the team but at the end of the day, the only person I can improve is myself.

RandomoniumOct 17, 20151 votes

I've encountered a lot of the same problems. I don't think there is an easy fix to this. You can't control your allies, only improve your own play. What has helped me is reviewing my replays using software like SkinSpotlights Replay or LoL Replay. You have to be really critical of yourself and not just look at your csing and team fighting but also your decision making. At every point in the game you have to analyze why you did what you did and was it the best play you could have made (not just a good play but the best play.) I also track all of my stats in an excel spreadsheet to ensure that I'm maintaining my standards in all areas, not just KDA.

Kitten of EvilOct 18, 20151 votes

I feel like this a lot, probably because I'm happy to support and as a result I almost always end up supporting. So many games it feels like I make no difference and can't make a difference -- I have my 3 wards up and the map's still dark, I peel as often as I can for an ADC who eats every single Thresh hook to the face... It really feels hopeless sometimes.

I'm also usually our team's only "tanky" character because someone wanted to go Yasuo top or Rengar jungle, which means I feel especially useless because tanking requires a team who will follow up on engages, or at least not get picked off 1 by 1 in the dark.