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System Overlord
2
MONTHS
2 2 MONTHS OF SERVICE
LEVEL 1
200 XP
I am a Gold Tier EuW League player (not related to the people with the identical IGN on the other nine servers).
At the time of writing, there are now 9 days left in Season 5 and I want you to know there is still time for you to get out of whatever division or tier you find yourself stuck in, no matter how hard you try or whatever champion/role/speed of internet connection you use.
The secret is to use the powers of your mind!
What is going on in your mind has an enormous impact on how well you play in a League match, and has a significant influence on whether you will win or lose. My breakdown of a given match is about 80% mindset, 10% Team Composition/Strategy, 5% Tactics and Mechanics, and 5% luck. I have had people baulk at mindset being so high and luck being so low, but in my experience, as I climbed from the depths of Bronze to Gold is that what was going on in my head, even things unrelated to League, has had more impact than my ability to last hit or how lucky I am.
1: YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
Some of the most effective things you can do to improve the quality of your League gameplay have nothing to do with League. A League match, especially in ranked, requires the same level of mental acuity as many other tasks in life, like your job/school work, your relationships to other people, or even physical sports. if you are under-slept, not eating well, haven’t exercised worth shit, and you “should†be doing something else besides League right now (assignment due tomorrow, your girlfriend is angry with you, your mother is shouting at you to take the garbage out, etc.) there is NO way your gameplay is going to be on point. You’ll be tired, stressed, distracted and your reaction time will be dismal. If you SERIOUSLY want to improve at this game, then you need to put the effort in to take care of yourself and your life. So before you sit down to play your next ranked game, have a good night’s sleep, eat a proper meal, go to the gym, and make sure you have your chores/homework done.
I promise you will play better.
2: CHECK YOUR EGO
You are probably going to be stuck in Bronze/Silver/Gold for Season 5.
Repeat that aloud to yourself. Accept it.
This was something I had to tell myself when I was trying to grind myself out of Bronze and Silver. The reason that you need to accept where you are is that if you are overly focussing on trying to get into the next tier, you ARE NOT focussed on improving as a player. I will admit I ran into this problem A LOT in my climb. I would get frustrated because I knew that I had the skill level to be higher, but if I was so focussed on winning a game I would often end up tunnel visioning and generally trying to FORCE a win rather than leaving my mind open to what needed to be done to create ideal win conditions for my team.
As an example - I was bad at warding in Bronze, and it was one of the things that was keeping me down, as I was so worried about trying to win that I was forgetting to ward properly. When I finally realized this, I began reading up on warding (You can Google dozens of guides out there on warding), and ground out a ton of unranked games where all I cared about was warding (it was probably around 50 games). I became a warding boss. I went back to ranked play and used my new warding knowledge to make sure that I knew if there was anything happening on the map, I knew about it. What it translated into was that I gave myself tons of time to see the enemy jungle gank coming, and suddenly I found myself in Silver. To this day, I still ward like a maniac – upwards of 30+ as a support, 20+ as a jungler - it is normal for me eve when I play ADC to drop at least a dozen wards during a match. A ward is 75 or 100 gold of information on what my enemies are doing, where they are weak and strong, what they’re building, what they’re planning, which brings me to my 3rd point…
3: STRATEGIZE!
This point is a little more difficult to quantify, as people have different ways of playing this game. As a jungle main, I need a high degree of strategic awareness of what is happening in the game and have to figure out how to support my lanes to create favourable win conditions. One thing that I always do before a match is look at which side of the map I’m on, what my team composition is, what the enemy composition is, and formulate a plan, so when I start the game, I already know how I can win the game. For example:
Blue Side Support: Thresh Top: Riven ADC: Vayne Jungle: Amumu (ME) Mid: Leblanc
Red Side Support: Blitzcrank Top: Renekton ADC: Jinx Jungle: Vi Mid: Lux
My team has a very strong all-in and is great for team fighting and objective control. My priority as a tank jungler is to get Leblanc snowballing early, along with protecting Vayne so that she can farm up for late game. Top lane is my low priority lane, as while Riven has potential in her own right, she has a stronger capacity for farming and avoiding ganks from the jungle than mid and bot, and lacks the sheer power projection of the other two. I will shift my attention to top lane if she does well and my other two lanes are doing poorly, or if it is convenient for me to do so. My early game is focussed on getting a gank on Lux that Leblanc can capitalize on, because if she gets a gold/XP advantage over Lux, we have strong control in the middle of the map that I can use to draw Vi away from top and bot lane and increase our chance of taking first dragon. After clearing my jungle I go mid and I WARD UP the brush above mid lane. If Vi is there, I have the potential for a counter gank to get Leblanc the first kill. If not, I am looping around behind Lux so I can hold her still for Leblanc to get the first kill. Based on what happens from this point, I always plan what I will doing 2, 3 or even 5 moves ahead, ganking, farming and warding, so that I build momentum and DO NOT WASTE TIME. If I give this enemy team even a little bit of relief because I am hanging or spending too long in one place, they have the potential to out-farm my laners and turn the game around one.
Plans vary from game to game and depend on what my position and role is on a specific team. Sometimes my plans work out perfectly, sometimes, less so. Even if they don’t however, I am always looking ahead, predicting what my opponents will do and capitalize on the advantages that my team has.
4: PATIENCE
This last point brings together everything that I’ve told you so far. You need to be patient with playing League of Legends. It takes time to get good at it and you will lose a lot until you start winning, and THAT IS OK. Often times I see really good players lose games because they are too impatient to make something happen. More often than not, a game of League is decided by which team makes fewer mistakes. So rather than thinking about what you want to do, take a deep breath and wait for your opponent to make a mistake, then pounce of them, and punish them for their error, and then KEEP PUNISHING THEM, every time they repeat that mistake. They will make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes, and Bronze/Silver/(and even Gold players like myself) make a lot of mistakes.
Good Luck!
At the time of writing, there are now 9 days left in Season 5 and I want you to know there is still time for you to get out of whatever division or tier you find yourself stuck in, no matter how hard you try or whatever champion/role/speed of internet connection you use.
The secret is to use the powers of your mind!
What is going on in your mind has an enormous impact on how well you play in a League match, and has a significant influence on whether you will win or lose. My breakdown of a given match is about 80% mindset, 10% Team Composition/Strategy, 5% Tactics and Mechanics, and 5% luck. I have had people baulk at mindset being so high and luck being so low, but in my experience, as I climbed from the depths of Bronze to Gold is that what was going on in my head, even things unrelated to League, has had more impact than my ability to last hit or how lucky I am.
1: YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
Some of the most effective things you can do to improve the quality of your League gameplay have nothing to do with League. A League match, especially in ranked, requires the same level of mental acuity as many other tasks in life, like your job/school work, your relationships to other people, or even physical sports. if you are under-slept, not eating well, haven’t exercised worth shit, and you “should†be doing something else besides League right now (assignment due tomorrow, your girlfriend is angry with you, your mother is shouting at you to take the garbage out, etc.) there is NO way your gameplay is going to be on point. You’ll be tired, stressed, distracted and your reaction time will be dismal. If you SERIOUSLY want to improve at this game, then you need to put the effort in to take care of yourself and your life. So before you sit down to play your next ranked game, have a good night’s sleep, eat a proper meal, go to the gym, and make sure you have your chores/homework done.
I promise you will play better.
2: CHECK YOUR EGO
You are probably going to be stuck in Bronze/Silver/Gold for Season 5.
Repeat that aloud to yourself. Accept it.
This was something I had to tell myself when I was trying to grind myself out of Bronze and Silver. The reason that you need to accept where you are is that if you are overly focussing on trying to get into the next tier, you ARE NOT focussed on improving as a player. I will admit I ran into this problem A LOT in my climb. I would get frustrated because I knew that I had the skill level to be higher, but if I was so focussed on winning a game I would often end up tunnel visioning and generally trying to FORCE a win rather than leaving my mind open to what needed to be done to create ideal win conditions for my team.
As an example - I was bad at warding in Bronze, and it was one of the things that was keeping me down, as I was so worried about trying to win that I was forgetting to ward properly. When I finally realized this, I began reading up on warding (You can Google dozens of guides out there on warding), and ground out a ton of unranked games where all I cared about was warding (it was probably around 50 games). I became a warding boss. I went back to ranked play and used my new warding knowledge to make sure that I knew if there was anything happening on the map, I knew about it. What it translated into was that I gave myself tons of time to see the enemy jungle gank coming, and suddenly I found myself in Silver. To this day, I still ward like a maniac – upwards of 30+ as a support, 20+ as a jungler - it is normal for me eve when I play ADC to drop at least a dozen wards during a match. A ward is 75 or 100 gold of information on what my enemies are doing, where they are weak and strong, what they’re building, what they’re planning, which brings me to my 3rd point…
3: STRATEGIZE!
This point is a little more difficult to quantify, as people have different ways of playing this game. As a jungle main, I need a high degree of strategic awareness of what is happening in the game and have to figure out how to support my lanes to create favourable win conditions. One thing that I always do before a match is look at which side of the map I’m on, what my team composition is, what the enemy composition is, and formulate a plan, so when I start the game, I already know how I can win the game. For example:
Blue Side Support: Thresh Top: Riven ADC: Vayne Jungle: Amumu (ME) Mid: Leblanc
Red Side Support: Blitzcrank Top: Renekton ADC: Jinx Jungle: Vi Mid: Lux
My team has a very strong all-in and is great for team fighting and objective control. My priority as a tank jungler is to get Leblanc snowballing early, along with protecting Vayne so that she can farm up for late game. Top lane is my low priority lane, as while Riven has potential in her own right, she has a stronger capacity for farming and avoiding ganks from the jungle than mid and bot, and lacks the sheer power projection of the other two. I will shift my attention to top lane if she does well and my other two lanes are doing poorly, or if it is convenient for me to do so. My early game is focussed on getting a gank on Lux that Leblanc can capitalize on, because if she gets a gold/XP advantage over Lux, we have strong control in the middle of the map that I can use to draw Vi away from top and bot lane and increase our chance of taking first dragon. After clearing my jungle I go mid and I WARD UP the brush above mid lane. If Vi is there, I have the potential for a counter gank to get Leblanc the first kill. If not, I am looping around behind Lux so I can hold her still for Leblanc to get the first kill. Based on what happens from this point, I always plan what I will doing 2, 3 or even 5 moves ahead, ganking, farming and warding, so that I build momentum and DO NOT WASTE TIME. If I give this enemy team even a little bit of relief because I am hanging or spending too long in one place, they have the potential to out-farm my laners and turn the game around one.
Plans vary from game to game and depend on what my position and role is on a specific team. Sometimes my plans work out perfectly, sometimes, less so. Even if they don’t however, I am always looking ahead, predicting what my opponents will do and capitalize on the advantages that my team has.
4: PATIENCE
This last point brings together everything that I’ve told you so far. You need to be patient with playing League of Legends. It takes time to get good at it and you will lose a lot until you start winning, and THAT IS OK. Often times I see really good players lose games because they are too impatient to make something happen. More often than not, a game of League is decided by which team makes fewer mistakes. So rather than thinking about what you want to do, take a deep breath and wait for your opponent to make a mistake, then pounce of them, and punish them for their error, and then KEEP PUNISHING THEM, every time they repeat that mistake. They will make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes, and Bronze/Silver/(and even Gold players like myself) make a lot of mistakes.
Good Luck!