Before you ask why is this low-mid ELO player blogging on SoloMid among top ELO players, who obviously know hell of a lot more about LoL than I do, I can assure you that I’ve been in ELO hell a lot longer than they did (this I am not proud of). I’ve seen the changing meta and mindset of low-mid ELO from the start of season 1 until today. Therefore, when it comes to discussing the low-mid ELO environment, I believe that I am qualified to post here. Furthermore, many of the SoloMid viewers are in the low-mid ELO range, so I have a sizable audience. First, I will talk a bit about my journey in ranked games. When I first started playing ranked games, I didn’t know about LoL streams (or who HotshotGG was, if he was a “somebody” back then) or any other forms of playing guides. All I knew was that if Amumu and Shen doesn’t get banned, someone is gona get f*ed over. All I had was my trusty pre-nerf Anivia, who carried me on her wings to the 1300 ELO. But the damn bird was always too lazy to carry me a bit further than that, so I stalled around the 1300 ELO mark. The common notion new ranked players had back then was, if a team had a nice mix of tank/AD/AP (not even support), assuming all the “game-breaking champions” were banned, it was instant “GG” at pick. If someone insta-locked a lesser known hero like Alistar, the player will be “reported” for being an asshole (not that anyone actually reports, people just say that in chat to release some rage). Only able to play one heavily situational champion with zero knowledge of strategy, I did not do very well. Eventually, the negativity of the LoL community in ranked games got the better of me, so I went on an indefinite hiatus. The reason I returned to LoL was for my Anivia guide. The sheer number of appreciations I’ve received from new Anivia players, who told me how they would have never picked up and sticked with Anivia if it wasn’t for my guide, rekindled my passion for writing guides, and perhaps, playing LoL. Of course, somethings never change. To this day, players in low-mid ELO still follow the very simple rule of ban the OP champs, and pick a team consisting of Tank/AD/AP. Instead of banning Amumu and Shen as their first priority (but still very important), Evelyn and Alistar are now “must bans”. Other champions are also favorited. Corki? I hope he can’t carry. Irelia? Oh god OP! And of course, Mord es #1! I have now switched to Shaco as my main. And I get trolled every other game for playing Shaco. Of course, I ignored the haters cause I know what I can do. I’ve been playing ranked games long enough to know what wins a game and what doesn’t, at least in my ELO. My point is this, there are some truly important factors for winning ranked games in low-mid ELO, while other factors are just a load of shit. I will list everything that I know. I hope by reading this, you will see ranked games differently. Again, this is for low-mid ELO mostly, but it may help any ELO players. 1. The team that creates the most early game pressure will go on to win the game Early game pressure is created by 1. junglers 2. performance of each lane. Why did I put junglers first? Because junglers indirectly determine the performance of ALL LANES AND THE ENEMY JUNGLER. When I first started jungling as Shaco, I often QQ’ed at the solo-lanes that feed like mad without even getting ganked by the enemy jungler. I do gank the lanes a few times at level 4, so I don’t know what I did wrong. It was later on when I started ganking very early at level 2-3 did I realized my mistake as a jungler. Ganking creates pressure, but as each second passes by, the pressure created is reduced. Other than the fact that higher level champions can survive ganks a lot better than level 1s, it has a lot to do with player mindset and “comfort zones”. When you first start playing a match, you have to ease into the gaming environment, most of the time without you realizing it. Your brain is picking up the movement of your controlled champions, studying the playing field, your allies, and your enemies. During this very short warm-up phase, which is at around level 1-2, low-mid ELO players are very vulnerable to ganks because they are more worried about their laning opponents than a fast jungle gank. It is during this time that victories can be sealed. Of course, not all the junglers are like Shaco and can gank at level 2, 3 or 4. Of course, ganking creates different amount of pressure depending on the lane. To put this very simply, you gank a lane when and where it needs to be pressured. For example, if you had a choice between ganking a carry like Twisted Fate, or ganking a tank lane who can just stack GP/5, and most of the time laugh at your fail ganking attempts, you would go for the obvious one. If your solo-mid Ryze is getting facerolled by a Corki (true story), then you should try to gank the Corki. Forcing him to use his summoners and play safer, so your Ryze won’t be exploited for his noob overextending mistakes. Of course, repeatedly getting double-kills in a tank lane gank will make the other team rage against each other, and if the other team start calling each other “noobs”, the game is a quarter-won. Counter-jungling also creates tons of pressure. I absolutely love counter-jungling vs. champions with no escapes, and Olaf (oh god I love f*ing up Olaf). You don’t need to get a kill to be successful at counter-jungling. Taking the enemy jungler’s buffs and Wraiths is also great. Smiting the big Wraith and leave is “a good strategy” in higher ELOs; in lower ELOs, it is understood as “trolling”. If you successfully counter-jungle the enemy jungler, for example taking a Master Yi’s Red, then he can’t gank your lanes very effectively. The lesson is, jungler is arguably the most important role in a low-mid ELO team. And that’s why Shaco is perfectly viable at this ELO range, if not higher. 2. Amumu doesn’t mean instant win, but still ban that Evelyn! As much as I like challenges as a jungler, I still don’t want to play against an Eve that stalks me 24/7, stun/ignite the second I am low on HP. Some champions need to banned in ranked games. Even if you can handle it, your teammates might not have a good time playing. The last thing I want to do is allow a roaming Alistar tearing my noob solo-lanes to shreds because they refuse buy wards. And as a jungling Shaco, I cannot protect my teammates all the time. Of course, a team with Evelyn doesn’t mean instant win, but from my experience, Evelyn wins a hell lot in this ELO. However, champions like Amumu are definitely not game sealers. This Amumu free week, for example, tons of players in ranked picked Amumu for the easy “press ‘R’ to win”. Unlike Eve, none of the Amumu teams won against me, but my team with an Amumu won very easily. Therefore, next time someone rage at you for not picking Amumu or Alistar as first pick (other than trading), even though you don’t play these champions, simply ignore them. 3. Team composition is secondary in this ELO Believe it or not, I had absolute shit team comps that stomped the other team consisting of almost perfect picks because we are simply a lot better than they are. By shit comps, I mean all squishies carries and zero bulky champions or tanks. I also had perfect teams that got stomped by all squishie teams. In this ELO range, players’ skill levels vary drastically. You have the new level 30 ranked players who got lucky in their qualifying matches and players that fell off from 1500 ELO for whatever reason. If a team full of squishies feeds off the other team early, team composition means jack. But, a good jungler can pressure the lanes, thereby evening up the playing field for your noob teammates. That’s the reason I play a jungler. 4. You are a good player, but are you a good leader? Players in this ELO range are clueless about overall strategies, even if they watch streams and read guides. This very, very sad. In order to help your team win, you need to lead by pinging and telling them what to do. If you have to scream in caps and spam ping, do it nicely with a smiley face =). I will list examples of leadership in some important scenarios: a) The Dragon We all know that warding dragon and getting dragon is important. But believe me, most players in this ELO checks the dragon every now and then, and shoves the responsibility to the jungler. They will be busy “winning” their lanes. If they see the other team doing dragon, they might go there. If there is no ward at dragon, then who the hell cares? As a jungler, I ward the dragon as quick as I can (when it spawns of course), and make sure no ward is being placed over there. I tell my team to look for ward placement in case I miss it. If there is a ward there, I wait until I know we can outnumber them at dragon so they can’t contest it, and then proceed to ping the dragon pit 100 times , so even the dumbest kid will get his ass over there (this worked for me, surprisingly with a decent amount of rage towards me). Remember, people won’t hate you for being persistent if you make good decisions, but if you f*k up, they won’t listen to you a second time. In low-mid ELO, most of the time, teams don’t contest dragon. They follow the first-come-first-serve rule. When they do contest, they go in one by one and get picked off like idiots. Of course, not all the time. b) Baron Players in all ELOs can be dumb when it comes to Baron (I watch high ELO streams). In low-mid ELOs, Barons are usually deemed impossible until a large team fight is won, or towers are pushed down in “mid-late game”. Other team is alive and on the other side of the map? Mid game Baron? Other team coming to us even though we can win a teamfight at Baron? HUEHUEHUE NO WE TOO SCARED KTHXBYE. Same with dragon, lead your team when the time is right, explain a bit if you have to. c) Pushing towers Most players in this ELO knows how to push towers, but they don’t know when is safe to do so. But this I mean they don’t look at the mini-map and process the data that happened in the previous 5 minutes in their brain. I’ve seen so many players that run away when they push a considerable distance into the enemy territory. It’s good to be cautious, but if you just saw the enemy team in other lanes and are busy doing things, they probably won’t map hack right beside you and gank you. This can be solved by pinging towers and explaining a bit. d) Ending games Most of the players in this ELO are clueless when it comes to ending games. They need a leader to tell them that, ok, you probably shouldn’t be doing Wraiths with your Baron buff when we can just end this game. e) Oracles Oracles can detect invisible champions, but it can take out wards too! Wow, I never knew that! Most players that I met in this ELO range do not run oracles to counter wards. They know vision wards, but they never touch oracles. You can tell the tanks to buy oracles, but they may or may not listen to you. Oracles seal games. If you take out wards everywhere, you take out the one thing that protect zero-map awareness noobs from overextending. And you also get uncontested dragon and Baron! Beautiful thing, isn’t it? Buy it, you are the leader! Don’t die though, seriously. 5. Keep your opinions to yourself This is an attitude problem. Players in this ELO talk too much. If one lane screws up, there will be trolls that post in /all chat “omg noob feeder report plox” non-stop. Even worse, some players express their discontent during champion picks because they believe a champion is not worth playing. Those players are often the baddies who ruins the team synergy and concentration. Please, for everyone’s sake, including yours, keep your opinions to yourself. An extra phrase of “you suck noob” might be the reason that you lost this game. I hope this has been an interesting read for all of you. Treat ranked games seriously, and you will be rewarded for it. I will see you next time.So you are in low-mid ELO…
Well, so am I.
I realize that 1800 to some people might not seem like a big accomplishment. For myself and many others it seems/seemed impossible to reach because of ELO hell/trolls/noobs. What I realized after many frustrating ranked games was that during each ELO bracket[(1300-1450)(1450-1550)(etc.)], you must use a different strategy to achieve victory.
For example when i started playing ranked, I really liked ezreal and nidalee(they are still my favorite champs) so I practiced them non-stop and eventually became most experienced with them. So whenever I played ranked, I would always choose either one of those. Not only did it hurt my team comp, but playing them only created an endless cycle of always choosing them( I need to play ez because I don’t know any other champs because I play ez all the time.) Since I went 26-2-13 some games I thought he was my best way into higher ELO. What I failed to realize, is that practicing only AD, or only AP doesn’t create a well rounded experienced player. The best way to get into higher ELO is to be really experienced with 2 APs/ADs/Junglers/Supports. This allows you to be a very flexible player, and when you are forced to play something you weren’t expecting you will be confident in your choice.
Riot consistently patches LoL and sometimes does a good job, sometimes not so much. There have been many “eras” for certain champs that got too much of a buff. Your best bet for ranked play is to capitalize on this mistake. When you see that a champ is blantenly OP, practice that champ and take advantage of him/her in ranked games. It sounds a little cheap, but I promise if the champ isn’t banned you will regret him/her not being on your team. Make sure you know how to use the “broken” champs just in case no one else on your team does.
Other guides stress this and I know no one likes to hear this, but if you want to win games you MUST purchase wards. Not just 4, like 4 every 5 mins. This is the most invaluable item in the game. It can undo any early, middle, even late game mistake your team has made. It doesn’t even matter where you put them, just buy wards. The higher your ELO gets, the more you will understand how important they are.
Onto my personal experience with ranked games and ELO climbing/dropping. I started the same place as anyone else, and I quickly climbed to 1200 and never dropped below there. I had mostly played ezreal/nid/mundo and had a one win-one loss ratio. I gradually got to 1300/1400 doing the same thing. Then I began using Vladimir/Sivir/ez/nid to try and reach 1500. 1500 came very slowly. I actually got to 1492 ELO then dropped down to 1298. Very depressing couple of weeks of LoL. After my comeback to 1400, I found out about own3d.tv and started watching streams. I saw Guardsman Bob’s solo midwick and fell in love. I practiced that and began using ww in ranked. This came as a suprise to my opponents, and I began steamrolling my way through 1400-1550 pretty much with WW. At 1550+ most players had either seen midwick, or were good enough in general to not lose to it. But midwick had gotten me this far so I was very happy. If you know of a champ you are good with and a build/strategy that throws off the other team, using this at low ELOs happens to be super effective. After this, I laid off that and began to focus on jungling. I mastered udyr and became very experienced with him. (Udyr remains my top jungler, but is not near as good as other junglers) Even though Udyr is one of the worst junglers, I became good enough with him to carry mid skilled 1500 games. So having about 10 champions mastered and confident enough with them to play in ranked, I strived for 1600. Some days I would lose a lot, some days I would win 5 in a row. One day I hit 1600 and was super excited. At this point I thought to myself, I reached 1600 I can definitely reach 1700. I began massing games and got absolutely nowhere. I would drop 30 ELO then gain it back.
This is the point in time where I had to think super hard about my playstyle, and how it had to change for me to improve. The reason I had been winning all these games weren’t because I was good at LoL, it was because I had 4 years of DOTA. I had map awareness, used hotkeys, could click fast because of good micro skills, etc. I realized that LoL is a much different game than DOTA. Most of the champs in my Ranked Stats have an average of 5+ deaths. I realized this comes from my aggressive playstyle I picked up while playing DOTA. In dota you can deny your own minions, (like gangplank used to be able to do) so playing aggressive (trying to kill them) in the laning phase puts them way way behind. In LoL you cannot deny, so I realized that last hitting is the best route to take while laning instead of balls to the wall diving the opponent every game, and 50% of the time coming out on top while the other 50% dying and feeding (Winning 50% of the time in that situation is not very good odds). Realizing I had to change my playstyle was a major step towards improvement for me. If you can, compare yourself to high skilled players and realize what do they do that is different from your playstyle. Watch what they do and try to picture yourself in that situation and see if you would do the same thing or something different. When you notice these differences, take mental notes on the things you need to change about your playstyle.
Once I went lame mode and just last hit in the laning phase, I realized that everygame even if the opponent had the same amount of farm as I did, I could outskill him middle/late game during teamfights. This was a much better option than diving him during the laning phase to try and deny him experience and sometimes die or get ganked. After this, I realized a FOR-SURE method of winning games. All that it takes to win games is to gank bottom lane with your jungle around level 6-7. After a successful gank, you can take the tower with 3 champs, and then take dragon. Once this is accomplished, you ward their jungle and gank them to the point where they are forced to tower hug. You pink ward baron, take baron around levels 13+, then push a lane and get an Inhib. Unless your team feeds too much early game, this is a for sure method to getting to ~1650 ELO.
I will continue with Part II soon, and explain the importance of team composition in high ELO. The easiest way to win low ELO games is to learn tanky DPS champs so that if it comes to it, you will be able to 5v1 the enemy team. To improve your game in general, watch streams and tune in to important league matches. TSM/CLG have blogs on their opinions on the game and guides to improve specific aspects of LoL.
Just don’t get frustrated and try your hardest to carry your bad teammates no matter how much they feed. Good luck!
-Hxyz
Summer has started and is looking like it does every summer (consisting of going to my dad’s place two states away and playing video games everyday). Except this time I actually have plans. Two weeks ago I realized that I am pretty good at a video game called League of Legends, and am now playing with professionals.
I’ll continue to address my future plans for the next two-three months, and I still have to decide what I’m going to do about college/airforce. As of now, my summer will consist of:
-Getting my LoL ELO to 2.2k
-Developing a consistent workout for everyday
-Start Streaming LoL on own3d.tv
-Write blogs/guides on how to improve your overall skill in MOBA type games. (reviewing what I brought from Dota to LoL, and how I achieved High skill ELO in the 6 months I have been playing)
-Convincing everyone that I am somewhat of a nice guy outside of being a competitive rager/Ahole
Hxyz