AMA about how to get better (Diamond 1)

[quote=ShayanShine][quote=Shuru] here's more of a decision making thing, I get yelled at for this all the time... a lane is beyond winning without your help, but helping that lane runs a bigger chance of feeding that lane, as a jungler, I tend not to gank lanes that are down 2 kills before I'm level 6, UNLESS they got ganked, and still have a decent farm. Now, the other day a tryndamere lost to another trynda and asked to get me reported for not helping. I ganked his lane early game, and the enemy trynda had like 50 HP so I dived, trynda decided to tank the turret and give a kill in the process. I got the kill and lived (would have whether he tanked or not) and then never ganked that lane again. I did what I could for other lanes, and we still lost the game becuase our trynda kept fighting theirs, and eventually their trynda just pushed all the way in. I could have helped his lane, but chances are at this point that with 3 kills down, he would just get more fed if I camped... what do I do in this situation? [/quote] It's situational, but in solo queue, 80% of the time I prefer to gank the lane that has the highest chance of getting a kill, regardless of whether they're winning or not. Also a lot of the time it's better to leave a lane that's losing terribly alone and try to snowball and get someone else on your team. It can be frustrating as a jungler because no matter what someone will come up with some reason to blame you, but you have to learn to ignore people and think for yourself and ask yourself whether the decision you made was correct or not. [quote=YayaFTW] Basics of counterjungling? [/quote] In the current jungle meta, counterjungling is more of a reactionary thing. For example, if you see the enemy jungler gank bot lane, but you're too far to help, the best thing for you to do is hit up his jungle and steal the big minions. You can also learn champion matchups so you can start invading jungles and finding the enemy jungler to 1v1 him. If I'm playing Lee Sin and I know I can beat the enemy jungler 1v1, I'll grab my red buff (or sometimes both buffs) and seek him out to go kill him.[/quote]

[quote=Darealone]A couple questions... 1) When should a team invade? 2) What's the goal of an invade? Sometimes when I play as the jungler and the team decides to invade...I dunno what to do. For example (actually it's a true story)...we invaded blue side's red buff...get into a 5v4 level 1 team fight and we come out on top 3-0. Our ADC has all three kills so they decide to back and grab some items. Everyone else decides to back to...so I'm stuck sitting at my blue buff waiting for them to help me get my blue buff. That's when I started thinking to myself "Why aren't we getting their red?" In the end we lost...partially my fault cuz I fell behind...but I feel like I should have took his red after the fight. So...what would have been the better decision? 3)When I'm playing as the top laner...and I shove my lane all the way to the opponents tower...and I'm wardless...I don't know what to do. I kinda just walk around near the river scared of a gank. This has happened many times in my games. At the start of the game I am 2 levels up on my opponents and am farming better than him...but then I shove my lane up. I want to go near his tower and get cs and even poke his tower...but since I am wardless then I'm really paranoid that I'll get ganked. I then start to get behind on my cs and exp...by the time the minions reach the middle of the lane we're even on everything again. So what should I do? Shoot...that was more than anticipated...[/quote]

[quote=Ninja Trigger]About how many games did it take you before you really started to learn the game, I have played over 300 games and I still suck! I watch streams not to see who I'm going to lock in next, I watch streams to see good players play so I can mimic them and learn from them and it's not getting me anywhere :( So as someone who is trying everything to get better which includes CS Drills, map awareness, ganking, Mia's, WARDS, I ward a lot now, but I still seem to make bad calls, engaging, not engaging, not pushing objectives when ahead, not defending objectives when behind. it's like I can see all the problems with my game play, but as hard as I try I always fail, or I at least have an ass hole on my team and bitch at me the entire game for not trading well enough or being 10 CS behind or they just tell me to go and uninstall. I don't blame my team-mates because I know at least 95% of my deaths can be traced back to a mistake I made. So it's not my junglers fault for not ganking all of the time. It's not his job to win my lane. So as someone who is really trying to get better what advice would you give me? will something magically happen after I play 300 more games is it just time that I need now, or should I just give up. Which I'm not giving up anytime soon I have put to much time to quit now :P Also I can play every-role with my strongest to weakest being 1 support, Most time spent here so I know when, and when not to ward along with where. and at least I can keep my team alive most of the time, but it's a boring role to play 2 mid, okay as long as I get ahri 3 jungle, I can at least get one lane fed 4 top, I just have a hard time winning lane 5 adc, I suck at positioning a lot anyway thanks in advance for any answer or tips also I play mostly normals[/quote]

[quote=Chirika]Good day, ShayanShine. Can you give me some advice? I play support mostly and recently I had really bad time playing with [[lulu]], I cannot say I play poorly with her just I am very unlucky with ADC who lanes with me. Can you give any suggestion – with what ADC pick [[lulu]] and against whom I really should not pick her? (for both ranked and normal games)[/quote]

[quote=ShayanShine][quote=Darealone] A couple questions... 1) When should a team invade? 2) What's the goal of an invade? Sometimes when I play as the jungler and the team decides to invade...I dunno what to do. For example (actually it's a true story)...we invaded blue side's red buff...get into a 5v4 level 1 team fight and we come out on top 3-0. Our ADC has all three kills so they decide to back and grab some items. Everyone else decides to back to...so I'm stuck sitting at my blue buff waiting for them to help me get my blue buff. That's when I started thinking to myself "Why aren't we getting their red?" In the end we lost...partially my fault cuz I fell behind...but I feel like I should have took his red after the fight. So...what would have been the better decision? 3)When I'm playing as the top laner...and I shove my lane all the way to the opponents tower...and I'm wardless...I don't know what to do. I kinda just walk around near the river scared of a gank. This has happened many times in my games. At the start of the game I am 2 levels up on my opponents and am farming better than him...but then I shove my lane up. I want to go near his tower and get cs and even poke his tower...but since I am wardless then I'm really paranoid that I'll get ganked. I then start to get behind on my cs and exp...by the time the minions reach the middle of the lane we're even on everything again. So what should I do? Shoot...that was more than anticipated... [/quote] 1) There are a bunch of reasons you might want to invade, but to keep it simple, if you have the stronger level 1, you can invade and try to get some kills. What decides which team has the strongest level 1? A lot of AoE abilities (Ashe's W, Janna tornado, Soraka's Q) and/or some sort of grab (thresh, blitzcrank) are big factors in the level 1 teamfight, if you have either of those, you have a good level 1. Also, CC like Sion's stun is huge too. 2) There are a couple of goals. The first is of course to try and get a kill or two to give your laners an advantage with a better item/exp start. The second is to get the buff itself. It's fine for the ADC with 3 kills to recall to get items so his laning phase is a lot stronger, but you should definitely ping the rest of your teammates to stay and help you acquire the buff if you feel that it is safe to do so. As long as your team was able to get the buff with no hassle, that is the better decision than everyone recall. Oh, except for your top laner, it's fine for him to recall because he needs to get back to top ASAP. 3) Around ~3-5 minutes into the game it is very very possible for you to get ganked by the enemy jungler with double buffs as a top laner. If you see that your jungler is coming up for a counter gank (happens a lot in high elo, not so much in lower elo) then you can move up with your unwarded lane and try to win the 2v2. Otherwise, its all dependent on the champion you're playing. If you have low escape like Teemo or Ryze then the best option is to just chill by your turret (or recall to buy a few potions/wards) until the minions push back to the center or until you see the enemy jungler somewhere else. Another thing you can try is not to push without a ward, because although it gives you that cs/exp advantage, you end up very vulnerable to ganks. Try all of these things and let me know how it works. Basically it is better to sit around waiting for minions to push to you, than to die when you know you could have avoided it.[/quote]

[quote=ShayanShine][quote=Ninja Trigger] About how many games did it take you before you really started to learn the game, I have played over 300 games and I still suck! I watch streams not to see who I'm going to lock in next, I watch streams to see good players play so I can mimic them and learn from them and it's not getting me anywhere :( So as someone who is trying everything to get better which includes CS Drills, map awareness, ganking, Mia's, WARDS, I ward a lot now, but I still seem to make bad calls, engaging, not engaging, not pushing objectives when ahead, not defending objectives when behind. it's like I can see all the problems with my game play, but as hard as I try I always fail, or I at least have an ass hole on my team and bitch at me the entire game for not trading well enough or being 10 CS behind or they just tell me to go and uninstall. I don't blame my team-mates because I know at least 95% of my deaths can be traced back to a mistake I made. So it's not my junglers fault for not ganking all of the time. It's not his job to win my lane. So as someone who is really trying to get better what advice would you give me? will something magically happen after I play 300 more games is it just time that I need now, or should I just give up. Which I'm not giving up anytime soon I have put to much time to quit now :P Also I can play every-role with my strongest to weakest being 1 support, Most time spent here so I know when, and when not to ward along with where. and at least I can keep my team alive most of the time, but it's a boring role to play 2 mid, okay as long as I get ahri 3 jungle, I can at least get one lane fed 4 top, I just have a hard time winning lane 5 adc, I suck at positioning a lot anyway thanks in advance for any answer or tips also I play mostly normals [/quote] Hey man. When I started playing it was before Season 1, so we didn't have ratings, but at 300 games I was very, very bad. Probably somewhere in the Bronze level. It took me around ~900 normal games, and then some 1500+ ranked games in Season 1 to start playing at the highest level. And this was me constantly trying to be better, looking to improve myself, being very self-critical and having a lack of resources. Nowadays there are a bunch of videos, tutorials, AMAs, etc., that you can glean knowledge from and practice the mechanics by playing over and over. My recommendation is to play and play and play and constantly look for improvement and you WILL get better. Even though everyone learns at a different rate, it will take a little while, so you gotta be patient. My recommendation for you is to play a lot and think a lot. Be very curious. When something works out for you, ask yourself WHY? When something doesn't work out, do the same. Look for different ways to improve. If you get stuck with a certain problem (cant beat a certain matchup, keep getting ganked, always die in teamfights) try different things till you find a solution then ask yourself why that solution worked. This is how you gain game knowledge. Download LoLReplay so you can watch yourself after games and look for places to improve. The physical mechanics (skillshots, kiting, positioning) all comes with experience so you have to play a lot. [quote=Chirika] Good day, ShayanShine. Can you give me some advice? I play support mostly and recently I had really bad time playing with [[lulu]], I cannot say I play poorly with her just I am very unlucky with ADC who lanes with me. Can you give any suggestion – with what ADC pick [[lulu]] and against whom I really should not pick her? (for both ranked and normal games) [/quote] Lulu is good with every ADC. I recommend maxing Q, and learning when to use your abilities. Lulu is really one of the best supports out there right now but she requires a lot of practice. Use your E + W offensively and use Q to poke. In a 2v2 use your W on the enemy ADC, and when it wears off, use your exhaust. This locks them up for a while. Also learn to poke with your Q when the enemy ADC goes for a cs. Little things like that will help your Lulu play.[/quote]

[quote=Shuru]Last night I played a game of malphite top. I completely rocked (ha) the enemy nasus in that lane and picked up several early kills and his tower, but by the time I went to go help my team, it seemed like I was the only one able to deal with the nasus who had decided to split push all day. My team needed my ulti for initiation (all we had otherwise was varus) but it got to the point where we eventually started losing turrets to fast and my team would lose all kinds of 4v4s while I was away to the point where we couldn't win a 4v5. How can I carry this dominance into the mid game and still keep the nasus/tryndamere/obligatory splitpusher at bay? nasus caught up and got his stacks back while I was away, and because of that we eventually lost.[/quote]

[quote=Nighthawk]as a fairly squishy melee carry like fiora, yi, tryn, how do u deal with going up against someone really tanky with sustain like nasus?[/quote]

[quote=ShayanShine][quote=Shuru] Last night I played a game of malphite top. I completely rocked (ha) the enemy nasus in that lane and picked up several early kills and his tower, but by the time I went to go help my team, it seemed like I was the only one able to deal with the nasus who had decided to split push all day. My team needed my ulti for initiation (all we had otherwise was varus) but it got to the point where we eventually started losing turrets to fast and my team would lose all kinds of 4v4s while I was away to the point where we couldn't win a 4v5. How can I carry this dominance into the mid game and still keep the nasus/tryndamere/obligatory splitpusher at bay? nasus caught up and got his stacks back while I was away, and because of that we eventually lost. [/quote] That's a really tough situation in solo queue. The problem here is that your team is losing 4v4, and unless you have teleport, you can't both help them out and have presence vs the splitpusher. My recommendation is to either run teleport, or once you go help your team, initiate ASAP so you can get that 5v4 going, and then after you get low recall with your homeguard boots and head to the lane being pushed by nasus while your team pushes down an inhibitor. The other problem here is that a fed Malphite doesn't necessarily kill Nasus all that quickly, whereas if you were say a fed Jax, you'd be able to kill him in like 5 seconds and then return to your team. So champion choice might be a bit of a problem here too. [quote=Nighthawk] as a fairly squishy melee carry like fiora, yi, tryn, how do u deal with going up against someone really tanky with sustain like nasus? [/quote] During laning phase everyone is pretty squishy so just win the lane like normal and you'll be fine. Later on in the game, your best bet is to avoid the tanky champs like the plague and use all your spells/autos to assassinate the carries.[/quote]

[quote=Bioalchemist]say you are playing jungle. 2 of your lanes are feeding (i know this doesn't happen much in diamond)...the third is doing average. obviously i would be more inclined to snowball the lane doing average...but how much should i look to at least help the other lanes? should i completely write them off? is there a possibility to survive the match if two lanes feed hard during laning phase? seems to be happening a lot to me lately...i went 3/0/4 last night as nasus and helped my mid and top lanes...but bot fed hard and even though i got top two kills he didn't really do shit...naturally i was blamed for the loss.[/quote]