Ahri is decent if you win your lane often because you have great mobility on Ahri so you can gank your side lanes (usually bot lane is better). Galio and Poppy are not in a good position at the moment in my opinion. Malphite is good but you rely on your team to do damage to back you up. Kayle is good if you win lane with her.You could continue playing
Malphite and do what you usually do as it seems to work in laning phase but once you have ultimate and if you win lane, try to roam mid or bot whenever you have tp or if you just have the chance to roam without losing tower or lots of cs.I could also add that winning slightly above 50% is still a slight sign of climbing elo but it's still "only" ~52%. Like you need to get to a point where you can comfortably say you win most of your lanes before you should work on carrying your team the 52% times you win lane.
"A person giving you advice isn't perfect and has their own shortcomings but they may give you the piece that you're missing."
Joxuu wrote:
Ahri is decent if you win your lane often because you have great mobility on Ahri so you can gank your side lanes (usually bot lane is better). Galio and Poppy are not in a good position at the moment in my opinion. Malphite is good but you rely on your team to do damage to back you up. Kayle is good if you win lane with her.You could continue playing
Malphite and do what you usually do as it seems to work in laning phase but once you have ultimate and if you win lane, try to roam mid or bot whenever you have tp or if you just have the chance to roam without losing tower or lots of cs.I don't know if I agree with you about
Galio being weak, at least in good matchups for him, though I suppose I should trust you over my limited experience. In any case, it's something of a moot point because he definitely has the same problem as Malphite: he relies on his team (it is soooo frustrating when you ult 3-5 people on the enemy team and then nobody follows up on it...). That basically just leaves me with Ahri, so could you recommend some other mid champs? I'm learning Fizz right now and I seem to be doing alright (too aggressive right now, though it got me an S in one of my first games XD ), so hopefully I'll know him well enough to play him in ranked soon, but he's banned a fair amount so I'd like at least one more choice.
"A person giving you advice isn't perfect and has their own shortcomings but they may give you the piece that you're missing."
Sirhappee wrote:
Thanks for the link, and the reply as a whole. Like in my response above, I'm going to question a few things but that's just because I want to understand better, I'm sure you know what you're talking about much better than I do.
Based on the link, I think I can say more confidently that what I really want to better understand is 1) how to roam early and 2) how to do more to help with objectives in mid-game.
I don't think that I was ulting Nasus during teamfights; even I know that would be really dumb. However, if I remember correctly, I also wasn't always ulting Kindred that game, instead often choosing to ult Zed + at least one other person because Zed seemed more dangerous (and stats show that he did in fact do more damage, though that could be misleading) and because Kindred was often inaccessible (really far back). Is this something I should change, i.e. should I always focus the ADC even if they're not doing nearly as well as a mid-laner (8/12 vs 14/6 at the end, in this case, though in hindsight I see that Kindred had ~80 extra CS to compensate)?
Thank you, actually. I try to focus on getting as much CS as possible and I occasionally run CS drills in custom games, but I tend to still think of my CS as being horrible. It's nice to hear that maybe it isn't :D. Speaking of CS, however, could you comment on balancing roaming vs. getting CS? It's great if you've taken a tower and can just push the lane up really far, of course, but if taking tower is still too difficult (because it would take a long time + risk of ganks, for example), is it still worth roaming (especially if tele is down)?
OK. I average about 47% and the games above are 49%, 74%, 66%, and 58%, respectively, so I guess that shows that I didn't actually do enough in the first game (and perhaps the last) but that the others really may have been fairly hopeless cases.
Could you actually give a couple examples of situations I should go help with? If I'm top and I see my team sieging mid, for example, I don't think I would go mid unless the other top was going mid, I was already pushed up quite far, or it looked like my team was about to lose a teamfight without me, so I'm interested in whether that's a poor decision.
So maybe this is specific to low elos where people don't clear wards, but I often find that I place one pink defensively (usually in a tri-bush) early and then have little incentive to place another until late game (when I might put one in one of the jungles). Should I try to ward more offensively, i.e. warding their jungle instead of my rear/flank?
Sorry, should have explained the
Malphite ult usage better. Some times it is fine to ult Nasus.I would only ult Zed though if I was sure I or my team could one shot him. Because if you don't kill him instantly he is going to either shadow away or ult onto one of your carries if they are close enough.
So you kind of have to look at their team. Easy pick even on the tank? Might be worth the ult, especially Mid game where the tanks peel, damage, or CC is relevant. Late game and all the damage is coming out of their backline (AP Carry and AD Carry) then that is who you want to get into position to ult, but you have to do it near enough to your team where they can follow up. But you have to be thinking about things like Kindred's ult, which will stop his team from dying to the follow up engage from you team. Malphite ult, so simple and yet so complicated. See if you can find a pro game or Master Tier plus game and see when they go in with
Unstoppable Force, but keep in mind that at high level people will actually Flash his ult (which doesn't happen nearly as often in the lower divisions). Sometimes you may even need you ult to counter engage rather than engage, especially when you team is behind. So maybe you hold it until after the Kindred ult expires.Joining your team -
Malphite is a slow pusher and has great ability to change a team fight and he isn't that great of a duelest, so in general you want to group with your team on him.If you were playing
Tryndamere on the other hand. Great at pushing with some items and taking towers, great duelest, fairly meh at team fighting especially if he isn't super fed, then you are probably better off staying in lane and pushing down turrets unless your team keeps losing 4v5s.The last is going to potentially happen when their team has good engage/catch potential. So no matter how careful your teammates are one or more of them keep getting caught, which starts a fight, and your team is out numbered because you are split pushing.
Ideally it is your team's job to not fight when they are outnumbered. That is just simple math. But Solo queue.
So you need to only be split from you team if you have
Teleport, ask them to place wards around where they are going to be. Then you bonk minions, and towers, while watching the mini-map. If you see your team getting engaged on you, then you have to make a decision in the moment to TP in. With Malphite I would probably TP in. With Tryn the calculus is different. If their turret is still up and they are going to be able to easily retreat under their turret when you show up then I may opt not to TP.Decision making is hard. So many variables. Play a lot and try things. Watch your replays. Ask people to review your replays. Little things will show up that will add up to help with an understanding around the variables.
Another scenario - I'm jungling and I am doing my Red buff, and I'm in reasonably good shape health and mana wise. I see their Mid laner roaming on my Bot lane. You stop doing red and head to Bot lane to back up your Bot lane. You may be too late, but you might be able to get some revenge kills and push out the lane after causing the enemy laners to lose out on minions, do some damage to the enemy turret, and reset the minion wave so it will meet back in the middle of the lane which makes your laners no more gank prone than the enemy laners.
Warding - as the game progresses or opportunities arise you will need to move your ward line around. A pink in your Tri bush when you are Red side is great for laning phase. It prevents their junlger from sneaking around behind you and lets your junlger know they have at least one path clear of wards to get into Top lane. But that ward doesn't do you any good when you are banging on their Mid base turret. it is just lighting up a section of the map where no one is and no action is happening. So if you are winning you want to start looking your ward line up. Say drop it next to their Blue Buff (it would get taken our pretty easily if they are winning) but if you and you jungler can own that side of the map then it will be dangerous for them to clear.
I should have said this earlier, but you should try to post replays of your games here. Without a full gameplay we're all just guessing what you might be doing wrong. You can use replay.gg or op.gg's system and then upload a video straight to youtube (not sure what is the best method here though), some of us will be glad to review it.
Back to your answers:
My point is you should aim to get better by focusing in those small "everygame" mistakes, not on those big thrown games. You seem to be doing well in this department, so it might also be a matter of time until you get better (i.e. get more experience in the game).
High elo players know a bunch of mechanics that they learned by playing a lot in higher elos. Sure, you may learn all of Lee Sin's combos in bronze, but you won't know all the ways someone else could counter them, so you will fail from time to time, not expecting a clutch play to throw your combo to the sink.
I think aiming at carrying every game (like some others recommended here) is aiming too high. You might be capable of it but I think it's more sensible to expect climbing with a 60% win rate. It is true though that champions with decent damage tend to be better in lower elos, as hard CC needs a follow up that may be inconsistent even if you initiate properly. You should try more new champions, as sometimes you can get stuck in your elo with some champions. Learning a new champion will sharpen different mechanics and use the ones you learnt from your current mains. I myself climbed up to Gold I in season 4 from Silver I in season 3 when I started playing Volibear and abusing everything I learned from the tanks I was playing before.
Yeah, my bad, it's not very important. It does increase/decrease your chances of winning though. It is a factor with different importance across different elos, but it's nontheless always important to some degree. It also has different impact for different champions. And here is the point. Malphite is a champion that is more affected by matchups than average, since he scales with armor to some extent. This throws down your win rate, even if only a little, but it is something simple you can improve on.
Something else that works in the same way (not essential to climbing, but it might boost your win rate a little) is using meta/OP champions. You shouldn't go out of the way to play an OP champ just because it's OP, but if someone on your pool is OP you should try to play him more.
Slightly more tangential note here: Most champions are "OP" because of a particular playstyle/build. If one day Malphite AP starts being OP (I doubt this happens, it's just an example) and you keep playing him fulltank you're not abusing his "OP-ness". Also some champions see professional play because of how they work within an organised team, so you shouldn't be guided by that. The best ways I found to check OP champions is either tier lists here in mobafire or win rates in champion stats pages (champion.gg I think is good for Plat+ elos, then lolking has some stats that might be useful).
Just killing a Nasus isn't enough. You need to wrap the game up while he farms or force him to teamfight and lose potential stacks. Force 4v5 teamfights and take objectives while he farms. This is why he's a decent counterpick in low elos but suck in higher elos, since people tend to drag out games in low elos (hence late game champions are slightly stronger) but learn to wrap them up around high gold/low plat.
As I said before, Malphite is an easy to counter champion with lots of slight counters and a bunch of really hard counters. You might want to learn a champion with less counter potential for those games where you're first pick top (this is also a small optimisation you can ignore, most people just try to get better and learn to play against their counters). I myself am playing Gnar as firstpick since Irelia is being banned a lot. If you want to try something like that, Renekton is a good champion without many hard counterpicks and he just got some small buffs.
Back to your answers:
Sirhappee wrote:
I generally have a goal of never having truly "bad" games, but being at least ok every (ranked) game (I use normals to learn new champs); it went well for a while but recently I did screw up a few. Usually though I can identify why games went badly (often playing too aggressively and paying for it when ganked), while I've had more trouble understanding lost games were I did well.
Sirhappee wrote:
While I'm sure there are some lost causes, I'm told that high elo players can win %90+ of their games in bronze by having only good games. Obviously I'm nowhere near as capable as them, but this does at least mean that not all of the games I'm talking about are truly impossible, I'm just not doing enough to help my team. As to not just looking at the stat screens, I tried to pick games that I remember actually doing well (to the extent that I can judge that as a Bronze player...), since you're right that there are definitely games where I get carried into a high score (those are usually wins though, it's hard to be carried when losing).
Lee Sin's combos in bronze, but you won't know all the ways someone else could counter them, so you will fail from time to time, not expecting a clutch play to throw your combo to the sink.I think aiming at carrying every game (like some others recommended here) is aiming too high. You might be capable of it but I think it's more sensible to expect climbing with a 60% win rate. It is true though that champions with decent damage tend to be better in lower elos, as hard CC needs a follow up that may be inconsistent even if you initiate properly. You should try more new champions, as sometimes you can get stuck in your elo with some champions. Learning a new champion will sharpen different mechanics and use the ones you learnt from your current mains. I myself climbed up to Gold I in season 4 from Silver I in season 3 when I started playing
Volibear and abusing everything I learned from the tanks I was playing before.Sirhappee wrote:
how important would you say counterpicking is in low elos? All the advice I've had up to now has said to not even try doing it and just play champs I'm better with (though I will counterpick to some extent, e.g. I prefer Kayle over Malph against Darius), though that's mainly been directed at people who play champs they have no idea how to use, which I don't.
Malphite is a champion that is more affected by matchups than average, since he scales with armor to some extent. This throws down your win rate, even if only a little, but it is something simple you can improve on.Something else that works in the same way (not essential to climbing, but it might boost your win rate a little) is using meta/OP champions. You shouldn't go out of the way to play an OP champ just because it's OP, but if someone on your pool is OP you should try to play him more.
Slightly more tangential note here: Most champions are "OP" because of a particular playstyle/build. If one day
Malphite AP starts being OP (I doubt this happens, it's just an example) and you keep playing him fulltank you're not abusing his "OP-ness". Also some champions see professional play because of how they work within an organised team, so you shouldn't be guided by that. The best ways I found to check OP champions is either tier lists here in mobafire or win rates in champion stats pages (champion.gg I think is good for Plat+ elos, then lolking has some stats that might be useful).Sirhappee wrote:
Second, a question somewhat specific to playing against Nasus: in the first game above, we killed the Nasus 6 times in lane but he still got a ton (700-some) stacks by the end of that game (though I don't believe it's why we lost; he didn't even participate in teamfights until we were already really, really far behind). I know that's on me, but I find it really hard to push Nasus out of lane as Malph, who has fairly low kill potential and far less sustain (note: he picked after me). I did my best to keep him under his turret where farming is harder, but that was the best I could do. Any advice on how to better shut him down?
Nasus isn't enough. You need to wrap the game up while he farms or force him to teamfight and lose potential stacks. Force 4v5 teamfights and take objectives while he farms. This is why he's a decent counterpick in low elos but suck in higher elos, since people tend to drag out games in low elos (hence late game champions are slightly stronger) but learn to wrap them up around high gold/low plat.As I said before,
Malphite is an easy to counter champion with lots of slight counters and a bunch of really hard counters. You might want to learn a champion with less counter potential for those games where you're first pick top (this is also a small optimisation you can ignore, most people just try to get better and learn to play against their counters). I myself am playing Gnar as firstpick since Irelia is being banned a lot. If you want to try something like that, Renekton is a good champion without many hard counterpicks and he just got some small buffs.
Ekki wrote:
I should have said this earlier, but you should try to post replays of your games here. Without a full gameplay we're all just guessing what you might be doing wrong. You can use replay.gg or op.gg's system and then upload a video straight to youtube (not sure what is the best method here though), some of us will be glad to review it.
I just made a replay.gg account, and fortunately it had some examples saved already (NOTE: I'm on a computer without LoL on it at the moment so I can't review these right now, so they may be bad examples or have glaring errors; I'll edit this when I've looked at them):
-
http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2249584764
http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2248433222
http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2243881618
http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2243342332
I'll try to post these to YouTube for convenience later as well. I don't expect anyone to look at all of those, but I would appreciate it if somebody looked at one (though you might want to wait until I can check them myself later today).
Ekki wrote:
I think aiming at carrying every game (like some others recommended here) is aiming too high. You might be capable of it but I think it's more sensible to expect climbing with a 60% win rate. It is true though that champions with decent damage tend to be better in lower elos, as hard CC needs a follow up that may be inconsistent even if you initiate properly. You should try more new champions, as sometimes you can get stuck in your elo with some champions. Learning a new champion will sharpen different mechanics and use the ones you learnt from your current mains. I myself climbed up to Gold I in season 4 from Silver I in season 3 when I started playing
Volibear and abusing everything I learned from the tanks I was playing before.Sorry, I didn't explain myself well. I know quite well that I'm nowhere near good enough to carry every game, I just mean that if skilled people can carry virtually all their games, I should be able to carry a larger (than right now) fraction of the games when I get way ahead (which is far from every game).
I'm definitely constantly trying new champions in normals; I seem to be doing well with
Fizz but I won't play him in ranked until I have more experience with different matchups. My next 1-2 buys will probably be top champs, but I'm not sure which ones yet.Ekki wrote:
Something else that works in the same way (not essential to climbing, but it might boost your win rate a little) is using meta/OP champions. You shouldn't go out of the way to play an OP champ just because it's OP, but if someone on your pool is OP you should try to play him more.
Slightly more tangential note here: Most champions are "OP" because of a particular playstyle/build. If one day
Malphite AP starts being OP (I doubt this happens, it's just an example) and you keep playing him fulltank you're not abusing his "OP-ness". Also some champions see professional play because of how they work within an organised team, so you shouldn't be guided by that. The best ways I found to check OP champions is either tier lists here in mobafire or win rates in champion stats pages (champion.gg I think is good for Plat+ elos, then lolking has some stats that might be useful).I watch League of Graphs stats constantly (both for winrate stats and counterpick choices) which is nice because it lets you look at stats for various elos. Since I'm only competent on a few champs per lane though it can only affect my decisions so much. Also, I've found some winrates pretty misleading;
Ahri wins games against Yasuo 51.5% of the time in gold+ right now even though it's a terrible lane for her, probably due to all the bad Yasuos out there.Ekki wrote:
As I said before,
Malphite is an easy to counter champion with lots of slight counters and a bunch of really hard counters. You might want to learn a champion with less counter potential for those games where you're first pick top (this is also a small optimisation you can ignore, most people just try to get better and learn to play against their counters). I myself am playing Gnar as firstpick since Irelia is being banned a lot. If you want to try something like that, Renekton is a good champion without many hard counterpicks and he just got some small buffs.I mentioned above that I'm probably going to buy a top champ next (and I have the IP, I just can't decide on a champ), so thanks, I'll consider those. I like
Malphite partially because, even if you get behind, his ult always lets him stay relevant in teamfights, but he definitely has his weaknesses.Also, speaking of
Irelia: this is pretty unrelated to the thread as a whole, but if you (or someone else) could look at one of my Irelia replays and help me understand why I'm so terrible with her, that would be greatly appreciated. The only example I have at the moment:http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2246819628
Just a quick reply to touch on this:
if skilled people can carry virtually all their games, I should be able to carry a larger fraction of the games when I get way ahead
I've recently ranked my smurf from unranked to diamond and I 'only' managed to average a winrate of 70%. Considering I was diamond 3 at that time and could only win 70% of my games in gold when I solo queued (even though I won my lane virtually every time), I wouldn't expect you to carry more than 55-60% of your games if your skill level is close to your actual rank.
Quoted:
if skilled people can carry virtually all their games, I should be able to carry a larger fraction of the games when I get way ahead
I've recently ranked my smurf from unranked to diamond and I 'only' managed to average a winrate of 70%. Considering I was diamond 3 at that time and could only win 70% of my games in gold when I solo queued (even though I won my lane virtually every time), I wouldn't expect you to carry more than 55-60% of your games if your skill level is close to your actual rank.
Quoted:
I've recently ranked my smurf from unranked to diamond and I 'only' managed to average a winrate of 70%. Considering I was diamond 3 at that time and could only win 70% of my games in gold when I solo queued (even though I won my lane virtually every time), I wouldn't expect you to carry more than 55-60% of your games if your skill level is close to your actual rank.
Huh, interesting, thanks. In that case maybe I'm not doing as terribly out of lane as I thought, since I think (hope?) that I'm winning at least ~55% of games when I start ahead. Still, I'm pretty sure I can do better (so maybe 55 -> 60 for example, though I'm basically pulling these numbers out of a hat right now).
Sirhappee wrote:
I seem to be doing well with Fizz but I won't play him in ranked until I have more experience with different matchups. My next 1-2 buys will probably be top champs, but I'm not sure which ones yet.
Fizz but I won't play him in ranked until I have more experience with different matchups. My next 1-2 buys will probably be top champs, but I'm not sure which ones yet. Fizz is doing sorta well in top lane as an offtank/bruiser too. He is my only level 7 mastery champion and I always have a lot of cheese games with his tank-ish build. I mostly build Sunfire Aegis+ Sheen if I'm behind and Wit's End+ Sheen into tank items if I'm winning lane, but you can build a lot of different stuff on him and it will work. I can help you with that build/playstyle if you're interested.Sirhappee wrote:
Yasuo starts winning a lot of games after you have several games on him, but a lot of people play only a couple of games with him and suck, while Ahri is more straightforward).Sirhappee wrote:
Also, speaking of Irelia: this is pretty unrelated to the thread as a whole, but if you (or someone else) could look at one of my Irelia replays and help me understand why I'm so terrible with her, that would be greatly appreciated. The only example I have at the moment:
http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2246819628
Irelia: this is pretty unrelated to the thread as a whole, but if you (or someone else) could look at one of my Irelia replays and help me understand why I'm so terrible with her, that would be greatly appreciated. The only example I have at the moment:http://www.replay.gg/search/na/Sirhappee#2246819628
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You said you think you win your lane over 50% of the times which means you will climb if you just play if we assume winning lane = winning game. Winning your lane is often not enough but it gives you a lot better chances to win the game than if you had lost your lane.
Alright, I'll keep that in mind. I only really used GP as an example because he's the only high-damage top I'm decent with (I also play Irelia in normals, but I'm absolutely terrible with her... which makes me sad, since people say she should be easy). The main champs I play ranked with though are
As to "winning lane = winning game," that's basically what I'm asking about in this thread: I feel like I'm winning lane more than 50% of the time, but my winrate is slightly under 50% right now (though, perhaps due to MMR, I'm not going down in ranks but just wobbling around the B2-B3 boundary).