Hey, I’m genuinely confused and looking for advice. I recently demoted from Bronze 1 to Iron 4, and I’m trying to understand what I’m doing wrong. I’m not griefing or trolling, I’m playing my best and actively trying to improve.
I also have an alt account that has been in Silver, so I’m familiar with the general level of play across lower ranks. What’s confusing is that many of the Iron top laners I face right now feel surprisingly strong in lane, with decent spacing, wave control, and punish patterns, which makes it hard for me to tell whether the issue is my laning, CS, champion pool, macro, or mental.
If anyone is willing, I’d really appreciate feedback from my profile. I mainly play top lane and want to improve rather than blame teammates or the system. Also, if you think I should stick to one champion, I’d love advice on that too , whether I should focus on one of the champs I’m already playing, drop some picks entirely, or just commit to one-tricking a specific champion.
You played 39 different champs last season and none of them well. Only play two, maybe three at most. Get really good on them and you will learn to easily smash iron players, especially after laning.
i see, i guess champion mastery is whats missing, its just the fact that i get hella discouraged to play a champ when I lose with it, cuz i do no damage, no impact, no sustain, nothing
If you are having those issues with a champ, it is likely because you don’t know how to play it, not the champ itself. Pick something fairly easy and learn how to play it in every situation if you want to climb.
Playing random champs with no mastery is a very bad strategy.
One of the reasons you're getting discouraged, is that there are 100+ champions.
Some of those champions are counters for you, but you probably don't realize it. You have to play differently around those champions.
Some of those champions aren't counters for you, but you haven't played enough to know how to play into them.
I had a great string of wins Sunday night (I'm an Urgot). I could wade into late game teamfights confidently and make a difference. Went back Monday night and played into kayle and sett and irelia, who I hadn't played against in weeks, maybe months. I didn't understand their kit well, felt useless, didn't farm well, died early, and it threw me off completely.
I still haven't figured out if either of them are hard counters. I definitely overestimated my ability to win level 1-2 trades with them. I have to refine my game around them.
Don't get discouraged when you hit a losing streak - League is trying to teach you something.
Easy solution, play more on that champ to win on it. It takes a lot of games played on a champ to really learn them. But once you learn when they're weak, when they're strong, and what fights to pick. You will start winning more.
Literally all of those problems are BECAUSE youre playing the champion once and then giving up because you have weak mental.
You have to WORK to do damage, and have impact. it will never be given to you for free, no matter what champion you are playing. And you learn how to do damage and have an impact by playing more games with high intensity on that champion
People are going to give you all kinds of hyper specific advice and they aren't necessarily wrong but they're (and you are) missing the actual forest for the trees.
League of legends is a skill. EVERYONE starts out not knowing and being bad. That is a fundamental fact of the universe and being human.
If you want to get better, you have to try.
You don't get better at math by taking tests, but by studying. If you keep taking tests but never actually read how to solve the equation how would you even make any progress?
I was bronze V back when that was the lowest rank in the ancient times of 2011/2.
I treated ranked like school, reading from those better than me and playing with intent to LEARN not to win. This meant reviewing myself instead of playing sometimes
I peaked Diamond 4 by 2016.
I also learned competitive pvp isn't actually for me. I play Aram for fun with my wife and friends and that's all I've done for years.
This isn't necessarily a character flaw but you've definitely got what people today call "a weak mental"
League did make me mad a lot then, and I kept playing chasing LP even when I wasn't having any fun. This didn't change even to Diamond.
I'm not saying this is your experience but it could be.
You can absolutely learn to be better at league if you want but it'll not necessarily be something that happens purely in-game
Stick with a certain playstyle and master it over time. And playstyle is synonymous to champion because every single champion in the game plays differently, has different strengths and a weaknesses. Find some that you enjoy. We tend to get better at things we like.
You’re having streaks of playing only one champion, I advise you pick one and stick for it for at least one season. Also, they do seem decent at first in low elo but there are many mistakes to abuse from them. Watch a few guides and stick to one champion and you’ll be fine
You lose lane a lot, as Renekton and in Bronze that shouldn't happen, realistically there are not enough smurfs for you to blame it on that and people on those elos don't know how to play
My advice would be to just play and focus on why are you losing and what your mistakes are as well as watching some high elo guides and content
Where in this post exactly is he blaming smurfs for anything...?
Yeah, i gotta just watch more guides to learn
If you play renekton look up godrektons renekton bible.
It has multiple paragraphs on every single matchup of how to play it, how to itemise etc.
He has videos on specific matchups as well
If you lose you are swapping champion, the opposite needs to be true. If you have weaknesses playing a particular champ you haven’t gained anything by swapping and in fact you’ve stunted your ability to not only develop your skill on one champ but even in the game as a whole which is infinitely important, because you have to focus on (re)learning champs instead.
Lane specific, if you’re in iron and even if you’re bronze you’re lacking in every single skill in the game, which means you can choose to improve in literally anything and you will find major yields in performance.
You won lane in 10/18 of your last 20 (2 remakes) but you lost the majority of your games, this means you are generally quite strong yet you have trouble translating your lead after laning phase ends. This isn’t just because you pick early game champions because Urgot is a champ that spikes at level 9 and when he gets Black Cleaver and you managed to win lane more often than not on him too
My guess is once you take t1 turret you have no idea what to do. Up to even Master ELO you can just focus on getting t2 ASAP especially if you’re winning lane often because players will not properly guard t2/they will lose huge cross map pressure to defend it if they do. Once you get t2 you will be so strong you can do anything, show up for team fights or keep splitting and just 1v2 anyone that comes to answer you, and likely you will still win the game, this strategy you can repeat in every game for many ranks and just focus on refining your laning phase until then.
I think your last paragraph highlights the disconnect between high and low elo. In high elo if you have a 1500 gold lead from taking t2 turret by min 15 you are most likely going to carry. In low elo that’s not “so strong you can do almost anything”. You can still very easily eat two chained CCs and give over a 700g shutdown to an enemy carry. Learning how to play with a lead is definitely a skill that needs to be learned. Even with a 1 item advantage you have to learn opponent kits and what to avoid and the limits of your advantage. You can’t just say “take t2 and carry” because realistically 1 item advantage is not enough to 1v9. You have to continue building the snowball.
IMO it’s fine even in low ELO because while it’s true that some games you will throw, it’s equally true that the enemy team’s ability to play against it and minimise is identically lacking
A lead on a top lane champ is also different from a lead on a bot laner or even mid. Gold adv has 0 bearing on ADC durability but it’s an entirely different story on a Renekton or Urgot. Even if you throw your lead losing a 1v2 in the side lane, you’ve already created an advantageous state for your team. At worst you’ve traded one advantage for another, if you win the 1v2 it’s game winning. Think of the following, even if you die top side with 0 kills:
You’ve pushed wave up to t3, which means someone will stay to collect this wave. To push it back to river they need to lose around 30 seconds of tempo, to crash wave they may need a full minute.
You’ve drawn two players to your shallow side of the map near their base. They may need to recall and they lose further tempo for it. Your team is 4v3 with your top side jg uncontested, you can potentially have their jg top side warded, and you have vision of their top lane which makes playmaking very difficult on that half of the map. And on bot side you have numbers advantage, if your team is not extremely behind that’s also winning game state
Of course what you say is true on occasion, some games 1 item top lane lead can still be too volatile and get thrown. But as an aggregate this will correspond to a strongly positive winrate even if nothing else changes
I don’t want it to sound like I’m disagreeing with you, because obviously everything you’ve said is correct……in higher elo. The counter point is there is no such thing as creating tempo advantages for your teammates. Because here is what is going to happen in iron or bronze in your scenario. Enemy team sends three or four to kill you. Your bot lane has not once looked at their minimap, they’re just going to see a clear path to enemy tower. They’ll push wave and free hit tower with zero vision and zero awareness of where the enemy is. After you win or lose the top 1v3/4 then the same 3 or 4 enemies are going to see your ADC and Supp pushed all the way in and come down and wipe them. Then they’ll flame the jungler. You truly cannot rely on creating tempo for your teammates in low elo because your teammates are most likely not going to capitalize on it. Map awareness is the #1 weakness of low elo IMO
oh.. but if i try to take t2 turret, my team gets 4v5ed and dies , like i feel like i need to help the team or else the enemy will scale harder, and im afraid if the fed mid or bot collapse on me, id give them a huge shutdown.
It’s fine. If your team forces a fight 4v5 while you’re getting t2, your only option is trade something for what they lose. Even if all 4 die with 0 kills, it’s better you get t2 gold for it + multiple waves than you rotate and instead 5 die for 0 kills. If you get t2 you’ve minimised a losing play and you’re the strongest player in the lobby so you still have a chance to come back, if you try to join them you’ve lost the game.
The biggest bait play you can make and the literal worst macro play possible is to be cross map from your team, see them making a losing play, and then wasting time rotating for a play that is already lost by the time you arrive. It’s different if you have tp with a ward available and you are both strong enough and have enough time to actually flip the fight
My suggestion to you is:
1. Pick a champion that is simple to play and have clear power-spikes. Garen is a good call. He likes ignite and gets a free TP in S16 so I think he will be in a good spot.
I recommend starting to OTP him with Conquror and avoid Phase Rush. Phase Rush can be very good in certain match-ups but this is not your focus yet in iron.
Garen is weak from 1-5 and strong post 6 with ult and berserker greaves.
Levels 1-5: You sit back and let your opponent push you in. Take minions low elo usually dont know to punish you - if you lose a trade back-off and let your passive heal you and farm under turret. Slow push the wave back - only LAST HITTING. Dont use E in minion wave!
The big wave will make is so you can win if he tries to go for you in the minion wave.
Post 6. Q him when he tries to go for a minion last hit and run away. Once he is 60 % HP you Q-W-E-R-IGNITE.
Shove the wave under turret and recall. Dont stay for plates. Tempo is better.
Mid-game: Try to push waves and draw pressure top. If you dont see anyone on minimap back off. If you are strong and win lane you can take on two opponents so only push as long as you see 3+ enemies on map.
If you are BEHIND catch waves and only shove to the middle of the map. Rotate to see if you can get picks with your ultimate.
Late-game: Keep applying pressure on sidelane - ping objective on the other side of map. For example, baron is up. You shove bot and fall back/or rotate towards baron and ping the shit out of it trying to force a 4v5 or draw 2 top to make your team 4v3. End with baron
3. Learnings that generate highest value in (my opinion) order
Consistently farming! If you get high farm you will crush low elo. So number one learning!
Trading You typical want to look at YOUR wave and once you see the enemy wants to go for a last hit you can Q him while he is hitting his minion wave
Tempo Understand when a good time to recall is. Everything is a trade-off in League.
For example, grubs is spawning in 1 minute. You fight the other toplane and kill him. You now have 20 % hp in lane and the enemy laner is walking back to lane. You shove the wave and have to recall. They take grubs while you are in base. So you trade 1 kill for grubs.
This is the single most important part of the game to understand. But it is also the hardest.
A rule of thumb is: Dont be greedy and stay for plates it usually not worth it. Minion exp is much more worth than dying because you force taking some where you are unable to.
Weak-side is when your jungler is doing shit on botlane and theirs is on topside.
Look at how far your own jungler is at his clear and assume the opponent is doing the same. If you dont know assume he is topside.
If you see him ganking bot you can assume he started top so the next thing he will want to do is recall and go top again to start his second clear. Understand that 20-30 seconds after he disappears on bot he will be close to you again. If you dont have deep wards - back off.
Sometimes you will have to take a death toplane to shove the wave. Freezing is very bad for you.
Now: No way in hell my short descriptions is enough to help you. But start with 1) go to youtube and find a farm video. You then try to apply it for 30-50 games until you feel its consistent.
After that - do 2) go to youtube again and apply for 30-50 games.
Then do 3) and so forth.
Dont rush trying to understand everything then you will never improve. Get one thing straight and then move on. In the end interconnect them all and see yourself be minimum Emerald
WOW this is an amazing suggestion, im gonna copy this and actually re-read and study about what u said, thanks alot. Also, one more question, is this guide valid for other champs? lets say im willing to put in 50 games to a champ, Id feel bored if my moveset was just the same yk? I thinking a champ like Cho'gath? what do u think?
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yeah man, sux
You're barely playing the game == barely improving/getting worse relative to the playerbase and you're constantly swapping champions.
Also, I'm not sure if this is you, but because this one is fairly low level, and you mention an account "that has been in silver", making new accounts to "fix MMR" is a massive waste of time. To me, your skill level just seems iron. Absolutely no shame in that. Keep playing your main, one role + secondary, 2 champions max for 200 games and I guarantee you'll improve massively.
yeah , I should, I just feel super discouraged to play one champ if he gets outpoked, outdamaged and outsustained and i cant do anything about it, like for example, Illaoi can 1v9 harder than Renekton with the same gold, or a sion can go 0/6 and still somehow beat me in a 1v1
When there's high elo OTPs of literally every champion in the game, the one thing you now for sure is that champ hopping is not required.
If irons feel strong to you then you’re just really bad at everything in league. No hate. Everyone had to start somewhere. Pick one or two champs and try to figure out their trading patterns while learning what all the other champs do and what kind of trading patterns they are looking for.
You’re 100% not taking trades correctly and losing lane.
Yeah I agree, I often get out-traded and outpoked the majority of the time, If you had to recommend one or two champs to stick to for re-learning trades properly, who would u suggest?
Depends what champs you like to play and what role. You play alot of top lane, as do I. Everyone recommends garen as a starter champion because he’s pretty straight forward, no skill shots, a passive that regenerates health out of combat.
I would also recommend mordekaiser. He can play at distance and poke enemy melees with his Q or you can look to all in. He also has a built in anti-gank button in his ultimate that isolates any enemy into a 1v1 duel.
Dr Mundo is a solid pick up also. Looks to poke down the enemy with his Qs, helpful for practicing skill shot mechanics and predicting movement patterns.
Tryndamere is a little more advanced and less safe of a pick but has inbuilt crit and can trade either long or short depending on the matchup and has a safety ultimate if you mess up that either let’s you engage and finish a kill or disengage.
It seems like you're just not good on Renekton. He has a higher skill ceiling, with lots of animation cancels that affect his DPS if not done well. You have performed much better on Vladimir and Volibear, both far simpler champions.
My advice:
Stick with Vladimir and Volibear, though I'd say Vlad is better because of how hard he scales and how long Iron-Silver games tend to go.
Rewatch every game after you play. Focus on yourself and analyze every missed CS, death, and trade and see where you could improve. Concentrate on correcting mistakes rather than making plays and you'll sprint into Gold.
Watch some guides from higher ranked players on the champs you play. What do they do? Why do they do it? Practice any mechanics you can in Practice tool until you've got them down well enough to do it in game. Until you can execute more quickly than you can decide to execute, you don't need to be trying wild plays.
Yeah and about Vlad, i always loved vlad cuz of Elite500, but the issue is, idk if vlad is a staple top laner, like he has no cc, hes not as useful for the team, and his early game is so weak
This may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but you need to not give a single fuck about your team. There are hundreds of one-trick ponies in Diamond+ who only ever play a single champ. Vlad is one of those champs.
If you satisfy your win conditions (farm up and get levels, look for team fights around objectives) then you're a lot more likely to win. You can't care about setting up ganks on Vlad b/c that's not his thing. He's all about those late game team fights where he can get his wet dream 5-player ults into drain tanking everything.
He can nuke the entire enemy team with his ult late game and has a get out of jail free card to survive in lane. He doesn’t have CC because his DMG is insane and it would be broken.
Focus on scaling as fast as possible and showing up to win team fights. Baron starts at 25 minutes and you should be ready to go.
That's a simple one, you have no mastery on the champions you play. You're learning next to nothing if you keep switching champs, you can't have proper macro, understanding of matchups, power spikes, and each champ's game plan because you have minimal experience.
Judging by your comments here, you then get frustrated that you're not immediately proficient, jump on another champ and once again start from 0. Of course the champs feel weak, you're not taking any time to learn them.
It's okay to switch champs around until you figure out what you actually like, but until you get there, you're not going to progress. Only you can tell which champ you like and the playstyle you're looking for, though.
yeah, my goal is to stick to one champ next season
Every time you play a new champ you need to adjust to how they play. If you are constantly focussing on how your champ works, then how can you improve at core macro mechanics of the game?
What i see with people in my elo who pick a random champ (high emerald) is that they can not perform at all because they are struggling to even control their champ. This leads to them being incapable to play beyond their lane, which in turn puts the rest of the team at full disadvantage.
The same applies to you. If you dont know your champ well you cant excel at anything, because you are constantly coping.
So pick 2 champs, get good at them.
yup, thats what the others recommended aswell
I didnt read the other comments. But if we all said it then it must be true. Good luck on the climb.
Well to start off, either don't play swain, or dive deep into guides and play him only, whenever possible. Swain is a very weird champion, I like him myself but I'd never play him on any solo lane, only and exclusively as a support because he can turn laning phase into a clown circus with his early damage on the enemy carry, and you just get free kills most of the time because noone respects his E, especially not in low elo, even though it's like 16 times more threatening than a blitz or thresh hook.
Otherwise as a solo laner, I feel like he's garbage against basically anyone, he feels very squishy and prone to inting if played wrong, and if you're behind, you're basically useless because you get popped like a balloon in a teamfight.
Play easy stuff, main renekton if you like him, he's a good noobstomper, although I don't understand how you lose this many games with him, he's basically free elo in iron if you know his basic combos and a bit of macro, when and what to do. Watch guides on him and abandon swain for now, he's the grand general of noxus and you yourself essentially have to be a fucking grand general 5D chess player to make any meaningful use of him.
Or theoretically you could just play arcane comet malphite since he's been basically perma S+++ premium tier since the inception of league, alongside permabanning mordekaiser since he's the only braindead malphite counter, the other counters actually take some skill, but whatever they pick you scale into oblivion anyway and statcheck people even at level 18, and the ult is always useful and easy to land. Hence the mordekaiser ban by the way, he's the even bigger and badder statchecker, so you don't want to see him.
Others might have told you to play garen, I'd 10/10 wouldn't recommend because while the champion itself requires no skill to execute, what will require skill(and more than that, mental fortitude) is when you get shit on by a Kayle, quinn or a teemo, and become a glorified cannon minion for the rest of the game.
Renekton is actually one of the champs I enjoy, so I’m open to committing to him properly instead of bouncing between picks. I’ll spend some time going through guides and focus on trading patterns and when I should be pushing, freezing, or roaming instead of just playing off feel. I’m also open to dropping Swain entirely for now if that’s the right call.
Between Renekton and something simpler like Malphite, do you think it’s better to stick with one and one-trick it until fundamentals click, or have one main and one backup for bad matchups?
Malphite is basically the frozen pizza you grab out of the freezer whenever you don't feel like cooking. It's ready, it's edible, not the best or most exciting thing ever but you'll live. There are some people who eat frozen pizza every day even. You can do the same for malphite. I don't particularly enjoy him either, just sometimes whip him out for a spin.
He's so easy to play that if you can play any other champion well enough, and know basic single teleport macro, you'll do fine on malphite, good pocket pick. Even better to main, but as I said, frozen pizza, boring as hell after a very short while.
You can also choose to play him full tank with a bami item and tank items, or AP with malignance, or build 1 or 2 ap items and the rest tank, that difference in pizza topping might make it a bit less stale.
I tell this to everyone of all elos but to die less and when you die analyze why you died.
If you'd like to go discord and do a vod review or live game, would probably help alot. Let me know if interested
Lmfao i did that 3 times the last few months now almost b1 again
In iron you can lose every lane and still win the game through macro mechanics. I don’t play top so I can’t give you champ specifics but take teleport and use it to get tiny advantages by pushing a wave quick then backing and teleporting in or if you are winning lane force the other laner to take a bad teleport then bully them under their tower and base trapping them in lane while you get a health and item advantage, if they take a bad base that leads to you getting plates which is a win for you as well!
Ganks work very well in iron, if I was a top laner I would play something like Quinn and roam on good timers to abuse the middle laner. Just hard push a lane ult down and jump on midlane. Get the kill or a flash and get back to lane, no time to dance, this isn’t your lane any advantage you can give them in your window should help but you don’t miss a wave for it! Try to push the wave before you rotate to an objective (this might not be as important in top lane) the idea is you are giving yourself a small advantage because your opponent either is trapped under tower farming or is out fighting and missing CS.
Late game, push the side lane far away from the next objective and use teleport to show up to the objective. If the enemy team isn’t paying attention you can pull someone out of the objective because they don’t have teleport, if one of your teammates get caught before the objective you are pressuring the enemy team which can cause them to rotate poorly and minimizes the effects of objectives like baron where they are chasing waves around instead of pushing while you are down a man. All your split pushing usually means you are one of the strongest players in the game, that midlander can’t blow you up, that junglers cc is wasted on you, that support being forced to peel you off their ADC all buys your team time to win the team fight!
Ive been playing for years and years and years on and off, never grinded out ranked to see how high I could get, get bored after 20 games or so every season, but my aram matches are against plat, emerald, and the occasional diamond.
Riot has me ranked at your tier when I play ranked, might explain the skill level you are seeing.
what is your alt account?
chances are you've been placed higher and the system hasnt had enough sample size to properly judge your real rank
alt account usually has higher MMR at the start
Level 68 on your main account? I'm surprised no one has addressed the underlying problem; you haven't played enough of the game to really get higher than bronze/silver. As others have said, you haven't even developed a consistent or preferred playstyle that would naturally guide you to a smaller champ pool.
I recommend playing more normals and flex, and just have fun and play the game.
he also said he s silver on alt inferring even lower level
chances are that alt account were placed higher on MMR and still doesnt have enough matches for him to settle at correct rank yet
Maybe a bit against the grain but find a champ that's _fun_ to play & fight with and go FULL SEND mode and learn to fight well. People always say to farm but I feel like the advice is not good? The best scaling is winning lane. When you win lane you get more cs naturally anyways, as well as kill gold & turrets. I never lose games because I won lane but oh man, my opponent has good cs!
So fight all the time. Take all the 50-50s you can for practice (not the 10-90s, dont super feed lol). There's so much strategy & macro advice that is good but imo overwhelming, but something that applies to every game is just how good are you at fighting? You can win fights you shouldn't if you just skill check people.
So queue up a game, scrap with them, then play the rest out. Then go into the replay and identify why you won or lost the fight for each fight in the first 10 minutes. You don't need to spend long in the replay, just 2-3 minutes to see why you lost the fight.
Also - find a player to watch on youtube who plays in actual high elo lobbies, make sure to background check whoever you find to make sure they aren't just smurfing in silver. You'll learn a lot about what's possible by watching them. Bonus points if you can see their mouse movements. For jax & darius, RaiderGO is my favorite to watch for example. He's challenger playing in challenger lobbies and I can see his clicks. Super good source.
The one strategy thing I will mention is for now, just *always* slow push. So only ever last hit minions. This is good because if want to avoid just living outside their turret and having no place to fight! You can shove after you win the fight and need to recall. I think trying to learn things like bounces & freezes is just distracting when you should be learning to fight. Just last hit for slow push and look for fights.
If you're interested, we could hop in a practice tool for a bit and just play levels 1-5 and reset. I'm a plat 3 top main on na.
Play a champ in normals/swiftplay to get a hang of the kit. Watch some guides.
Rinse and repeat. Once you start doing well and are comfortable with the champ try it in ranked. But don't spam games.
Watch back your game vods, especially the ones you lose badly.
You got this OP. I always think of this voice line from Pantheon for motivation "The stars are beyond my reach. So i grasp my spear, and take aim."
Good luck
Start with Nasus. Mordekaiser is fine too.
You don't really need to one trick, but your pool needs to be small enough to digest new information and actually apply it in the games. And for a new player that's like 2-3 champions max, with a emphasis of learning one primarily.
I think you are a little too concerned with rank, work on learning/having fun. This new patch is pretty huge, and anytime there is a new patch there is a typically a surge in both boosters and smurfs.
Here comes the liar army to tell you that all the losses are entirely your fault..
That you should be able to win games even if your entire team goes afk..
Don't listen to any of them.
With the season reset tomorrow - the games are littered worn smurfs and hard core trolls That's all