Introduction
If you have been exposed to any sort of League community, you have most likely heard people complain about being stuck in elo hell and how they should be platinum/diamond/challenger tier and their teams are always so bad. Recently, Sky released a video about being those that complain about elo hell, which I think touches on some of the more obvious reasons why people are stuck at their level. Today, I wanted to look at some mindsets you can get into in order to improve with some of my own personal experience.
Mindsets
1) You are the worst player on your team.
This is a mindset I held for a very long time, starting when I first started playing DotA on WC3 and carrying over into League for quite a while as well. What this means is that regardless of skill level, you are the worst player on your team and you need to play your damn hardest to show your team that you are not a liability. The feeling is similiar to getting a popular streamer or professional player in your game and you have to prove yourself as a capable League player to them. The beauty of this mindset is that you will always be playing at your absolute best, you won't be getting lazy because you feel like you must carry your team or that your team has a better comp.
2) Every game should be played like a promotion series game
Back in my Super Smash Brothers Melee days, I attended a local tournament and was playing friendlies against this extremely technical Fox. I knew that I was a better player than him, but for some reason my Jigglypuff was getting stomped left and right while his friends watched on. The tournament finally began and my confidence disappeared as I found my first match was against the Fox. So what was the outcome?
I stomped the hell out of him, 2-0 with both matches being a 3-4 stock. The guy was furious after, accusing me of going easy on him in friendlies and letting him win. That certainly wasn't the case and it took me a while to figure out why the sudden turn of events. In friendlies, I had an underlying thought that I was not gaining anything by playing against this person as there was nothing on the line. I wasn't gaining any sort of skill since I was a better player than him and I wasn't going any further in a bracket because it was just a friendly. Then once the tournament started, my mindset had shifted without me realizing it. I had a lot to lose (being sent to loser bracket, reputation for losing to someone worse than me) and a bracket advancement to gain.
So what does this mean in League? I don't know about the general populace, but I know that my mindset is very poor in solo queue. I've become so accustomed to being a gold player that I don't feel like I have any pressure to push myself higher. If I am not playing during my promotion series or when I have 0 LP, there's a severe lack of motivation since there is no immediate reward or punishment, just a number that goes up and down. So with regards to myself, I need to find some outside motivation to make myself work harder in those games in between promotion series. Desire to reach challenger tier, wanting to be higher rated than a rival, etc.
3) Place blame in yourself instead of others
Everyone has been in a game where you are performing well while the rest of your team performs poorly. It could be in the form of being outplayed or someone trolling, but it comes down to things that are out of your control. In this situation, it's very easy to believe that you would've won if your team was good and go on to verbally abuse your team, blaming people, that sort of stuff. This is probably the biggest reason why people never improve; they see their teammates as inhibiting their rise to the top rather than their own skill.
If you want to get a higher elo, you need to rely on yourself to get up there. You can't just win your lane and expect your team to be competent, you need to completely outplay the other team and demonstrate you deserve much more. The best way to improve is watch replays of yourself via LOLreplay and perfect your play. If someone on your team dies, look at ways that you might have been able to change that. Search for common things your opponents do and find a way to exploit them. When I was first doing ranked, I found that mid lanes almost always follow their opponent if they disappear into the river. So I took advantage of that and baited them into nearby bushes and destroyed them.
I feel like jungling is a great way to gain elo. The whole map is your playground and if you learn how to counter jungle at your elo, you remove their presence from other lanes. Learn jungling paths, look at situations in which you can counter gank, etc etc. If you are just farming and ganking normally, I guarantee there is more you could be doing to impact the game.
4) Play like you are tutoring / someone is shoutcasting you
This is something every player can start doing immediately. When you play, talk about everything you are doing, even if it's just to yourself. While in champion select, look at the team compositions and talk about why you are choosing X champion and how it helps your team or does well against the other team. In game, talk about what item paths you will be going for and why, commentate on your play and the thought process behind it, and your role in team fights. Or if you don't want to talk about yourself in first person, imagine that someone is shoutcasting your match and they are following only you.
The idea behind this is that it makes you play smarter. If you are speaking aloud, it keeps you from doing stupid things such as overextending with no wards or diving someone on a tower. When about to make a play, think about someone like Phreak commentating about what's going to happen. Is he going to be super hype about your play or is he going to be scratching your head and wondering why you did that? Speaking aloud can also help break tunnel vision and focus on the game as a whole rather than just one goal.
Conclusions
If you are playing perfectly, then you should be winning way more games. Taking something new from a game is way more important than just winning/losing and not learning anything. Watch streams and look at things pro players might do and try to apply them to your own playstyle. Play a single champion constantly rather than whomever might be OP at the moment and learn all their strengths and weaknesses. Once you play them enough, you can focus on your own general playstyle rather than how to play a champion well.
No comments:
Post a Comment