League of Legends (Old)

[Bub Bidderskins]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not

It's the truth. I told one of my friends to stay away from ranked when he hit 30. He didn't, and he's in Bronze IV now. You will start in Bronze almost guaranteed if you play ranked as soon as you hit 30. Best case scenario, you hit Silver and struggle there. It took me like 4 months after I started playing ranked to really "get" the game.

In other news, I'm dumb and inactived down to Gold V. Does anyone know how decay works from this point forward? I'd like to keep my 75 LP so I can hit a promo pretty quick, but since I haven't played ranked in a month, I obviously don't want to just jump into it cold either. Am I going to decay further, and if so, how fast?

I think the way it works is that you go down slowly until you play a game, at which point the counter resets.

[quadz08]

I mean, everybody's different. I didn't start doing ranked until well over a year after I hit 30, and I landed in Bronze. (Because I am very mediocre yayy.)

The idea behind waiting until after you hit 30 is that right after hitting level 30, you probably don't have champions for every role, nor do you likely have a reasonable understanding of game concepts and strategies.

[Glork]

TBG, I'd just jump back into ranked play. If you lose the first one and want to get back into things with normals, fine, but one game shouldn't matter all that much in the long run.

[mallowgeno]

Heyas, I don't know if the OP gets updated ever but I play League (just started this year in January so I still kinda suck)

mallowgeno -> Weekswrecker

[Siveure DtTrikyp]

I managed to luck out into silver on eu starting ranked fairly quickly after 30, by mostly playing support/mid lux and not feeding the enemy team much.

Am now about 6-7 games into a losing streak in ranked and stuck at 0 lp constantly.

[notscience]

Neon Strike Vi or Vandal Vlad

Discuss

[AngryPidgeon]

Neon Vi.

[Elmo TeH AzN]

Vi needs a new skin

[BROseidon]

Neon Strike Vi, because Vi is kickass.

Also, to contribute to the "when to start playing ranked" discussion, I started playing ranked right when I hit 30 (May 2011, I had started playing in early February), and I pretty much instantly was around 1300-1320 (which would be roughly Silver 3?). My the end of season 1 (August 2011) I had peaked at 1600 Elo and ended the season at like 1530. I think the decision to jump straight into ranked was a good one for me, but a few things about me that are important here:

1) I came from a strong DotA background, having played it for like 4 years and gotten fairly good.

2) I played a lot with a friend of mine who was 1350-1400 in normals while I leveled up, so I constantly played with "better" players from level 15+ (He also go gold season 1, and then moved to LA after graduating college and hit plat season 2. He's now in like Plat 3 or something).

3) I am a very competitive person. The fact that I can fuck around in normals because my normal MMR isn't very high is not very appealing. I like being challenged, and I like playing to win.

The pieces of advice I would give before going into ranked, though:

1) You need to be able to stay calm and build a team. I hit gold season 1 on the back of weak mechanics, mediocre game sense, and excellent leadership. Simply being able to keep your team calm and working together can go a really long way. The inverse of this is don't be toxic, ever. Someone pointed out how toxic behavior spreads earlier in the thread, and it was on par with what Fruistrike and Status Kwoh said at the Riot panel at GaymerX: toxic behavior starts with one person in a game, and spreads to other players. If you never originate it and are able to nip it in the bud when it's starting to spread, winning will happen much more often.

2) Be willing to compromise in champ select. Most people can't play every role equally, or their options for roles are limited. Communicate this effectively in champ select and try to work with people. Saying "mid pls" is not helpful when everyone and their mother plays mid. Give a spectrum of what you are good at; give your team mates options to work with so you can build a team. Similarly, if you are only able to play a certain champ (or few champs) in a given slot, communicate that. I only play Jayce and GP top (well). I am excellent at both of them, but if we need a top with hard CC, I'm playing something I'm not particularly comfortable with, or doing something janky like running Zyra top >.>

3) Never give up. Comebacks happen. Similarly, don't get cocky: My team last night started 6/1 in one game (from a lvl 1 fight), AND WE LOST BECAUSE OUR THRESH AND ASHE GOT COCKY AND FED THE GRAVES. Always play smart, even if you're way up.

4) Study the game. Watch the pros to understand what sort of decisions they make and why. A huge part of my ability to get gold in season 1 stemmed from me watching pro games a lot. You can't fully substitute watching in for playing, but you should still study the game academically to understand the strategy behind it.

[Ser Arthur Dayne]

Wow

Orianna is so much fun.

[notscience]

Orianna is so much fun.

QFT

[Elmo TeH AzN]

Nothing quite like getting focused in team fights as Zil

[Staeg]

Nothing quite like getting focused in team fights as Zil

It's the right play 99% of the time.

[JDodge]

The thing people don't get re:jumping into solo queue immediately after 30 is that there are two different elements that bring success in the game: mechanical skill and decision-making skill. Mechanical skill refers to the basics - last-hitting, movement, etc. - and comes with increased experience with the game. Decision-making skill refers to the more intangible aspects - proper cd usage, resource management, skill/item builds, etc. - and is increased by simply making an effort to learn more about the game. In other games (Starcraft is the primary one that comes to mind) this is referred to as micro and macro, respectively, although I feel the terms don't really apply to League the way it's structured.

If you are a freshly minted 30, your mechanical skill will almost certainly not be up to par yet (as that increases with experience) although if you're the greatest student of the game there is your decision-making might be. This means that regardless of how intelligent you may be, until you get past that mechanics hill, you won't actually climb the ladder. In solo queue, this is more pronounced - while in a full 5s team you can make up for some lack of mechanical superiority through better tactics, solo queue is at its core an individual thing and your mechanics are much more important there.

The best way to think about the importance of each is to think of each on separate curves - mechanics are significantly more important for climbing ladder at the lower levels of the game, but quickly hit diminishing returns the higher and higher you get. At that point, proper decision-making slowly becomes more and more useful. While the decision-making skills might not help you much down in Asbestos IX, it can and will help you a lot more once you start to hit plat. Likewise, down in Leek XIX, just last-hitting better and having tons more gold than Joe Moron on the other team can pave over the fact that you built rylais into spooky ghosts on Soraka.

While this sounds like an argument to avoid solo queue until your mechanics are completely godlike, that's not actually an intelligent decision. Remember that matchmaking is built to give you players who are a proper match for you. While people may whine about being in elo hell all they wish, the simple fact of the matter is people belong where they are currently ranked as ranking is a measure of

progress

, not necessarily raw skill. Starting out early in ranked lets you sharpen your skills against worse players, plain and simple. As you outshine these guys, you go up in rank and then eventually get challenged again. Not starting out early in ranked lets you spin your wheels in normals for a chance at maybe a higher rating on down the line. Starting out early in ranked is fine as long as your fragile little ego won't get crushed from being placed into Tissue Paper XXIV.

Nothing quite like getting focused in team fights as Zil

And in so doing they successfully made you blow your ult on yourself and removed basically all of your teamfight presence, I'm guessing?

[AngryPidgeon]

your mechanics are much more important there.

I disagree.

Not trying to sound superior here, but I was spectating my friend who is in Silver 2 a bit recently (a little to give him advice, and a little just waiting for him to duo with) and I was SHOCKED at how different his games pan out from mine.

At higher levels, the games are MUCH more oriented around map objectives.

I realize its annoying / difficult to work with people whose mindset is "GOTTA FARM, GOTTA CARRY, FUCK MY TEAM, GOTTA FARM, GOTTA CARRY", but map objectives win games and the gameplay at higher levels is MUCH more oriented around strategic pushes on towers or positioning around dragon to jump on it if the other team missteps.

Learning WHEN to take objectives and when to support your teammates or make a play is HUGE and not as easy to learn as last hitting which just becomes muscle memory after you main zilean and janna for too long.

Lol @ start to hit plat. Map objectives are always critical and making good calls for your team is huge in solo Q. People just write it off because its effort to be a team leader. And sure, it is.

[AngryPidgeon]

Mechanics (last hitting, being able to eyeball if you have an advantage in a fight, hitting skillshots, dodging skillshots, comboing correctly) are all important and all learnable by yourself.

Build order is boring and can be told, not learned.

Positioning, map awareness, and objective awareness, are less intuitive and probably would help to duo with someone to pick those up.

[PJ.]

First, Jungling is terrible Bronze as well as Silver. And it's not really a picnic in Gold either. In short, Jungle is the most infuriating role to play. You're typically a support who is responsible for the whole map so when the whole map loses, the whole map hates you, and your job now becomes run around the entire map and die to fed people instead of sit at bot and let fed people kill you, as it is at Support.

Second, what I noticed when I was during my descent, if you don't feed, and group right after laning phase, you'll have a much better chance of placing higher. So don't focus on getting kills in lane, focus on not dying in lane. Cause A) you might trick someone into being overaggressive and feeding you and B) If some of your teammates win their lanes it'll be easier for them to carry you at 0/0 then it would be to carry you at 0/2.

[AngryPidgeon]

^

Jungling is more effective at lower levels because people are more susceptible to ganks.

Playing strong early gankers well (Lee Sin, Elise, J4, Vi, XZ) will get you where you need to go a lot of the time. Back in S2 I carried myself from silver-ish to gold-ish maining Amumu and moslty just amumu. Although you will get flamed more than most people just for being jungle and not bailing out 0/5 Jax from getting roflstomped by Riven.

I agree that people probably err on the side of playing too aggressive most of the time.

If you are playing support well, you won't ever die. If you are playing support VERY well, your ADC will never die. There is more power in that than people think.

[Brandi]

except at lower levels your team mates are less likely to help you out when someone is fucking up your jungle
at silver when the enemy mid goes to steal your wraiths and you are there fighting them your mid laner will ignore it and keep farming mid
at gold+ your mid laner might actually come to fucking help
A jungler without reactive team mates is a sad jungler

[AngryPidgeon]

Meh, not enjoying it is another thing. I happen to like jungling. It lets me focus less on mechanics and more on making good plays and setting up good plays for my team.

People stealing your jungle will happen, although not super frequently. Just be wary of L1 ganks at blue and be ready to run at the first sight of trouble. People stealing wraiths and whatever is not really that big of a deal now that they respawn quickly.

[xRECKONERx]

That's something I've noticed about jungling at low levels: ganks are the way to win. Counterjungling and the like are bad news, because nobody is competent enough to respond quickly to a situation. I can count three games last week where I said "be alert, I'm going to go kill him at his red" and I would get their jungler low enough, get a kill, but then bot or mid lane would come in and just kill me... and AFTER their lanes responded, our lanes would run in one by one and die.

[BROseidon]

My mechanics are on par with most Silver players. A lot of players are mechanically very good but cannot win because they suck in other areas, and they don't realize that team work and strategy trump mechanics a lot of the time. It's actually why I'm bad at Sona; she is one of the most punishing champs when it comes to mispositioning.

Also jungling sucks at all levels. Everyone feels entitled to constant ganks.

Unrelated, I feel bad for team Coast. I actually have a pretty positive opinion of Elementz.

Although I'm hoping CoL makes it back in for the next split, since they are the gayest pro team (and I mean that literally).

[AngryPidgeon]

^ That. Strong gankers are better in low levels of play.

A good Lee Sin will shit on people in silver if they are actually worth their salt.

At higher levels of play, counterjunglers (udyr, nunu, shyvana) play a bit better as well as niche/farmers (amumu, warwick, skarner)

P-edit: ninjad.

[JDodge]

your mechanics are much more important there.

I disagree.

Not trying to sound superior here, but I was spectating my friend who is in Silver 2 a bit recently (a little to give him advice, and a little just waiting for him to duo with) and I was SHOCKED at how different his games pan out from mine.

At higher levels, the games are MUCH more oriented around map objectives.

I realize its annoying / difficult to work with people whose mindset is "GOTTA FARM, GOTTA CARRY, FUCK MY TEAM, GOTTA FARM, GOTTA CARRY", but map objectives win games and the gameplay at higher levels is MUCH more oriented around strategic pushes on towers or positioning around dragon to jump on it if the other team missteps.

Learning WHEN to take objectives and when to support your teammates or make a play is HUGE and not as easy to learn as last hitting which just becomes muscle memory after you main zilean and janna for too long.

Lol @ start to hit plat. Map objectives are always critical and making good calls for your team is huge in solo Q. People just write it off because its effort to be a team leader. And sure, it is.

are you saying that map objectives get more strategic and rely more on the decision-making of players the higher up you get because its the major difference between individual players up there as opposed to last hitting/basic mechanics which everyone up there already knows?

jesus its like everything i said is true

its a curve, not a "suddenly you must make decisions", the importance of decision-making increases as people you're playing with know how to make decisions/know what decisions it's intelligent to follow up on; the ability to solo carry a game decreases significantly as level goes up, and a lot of that comes off the fact that teams know more how to react appropriately

My mechanics are on par with most Silver players. A lot of players are mechanically very good but cannot win because they suck in other areas, and they don't realize that team work and strategy trump mechanics a lot of the time. It's actually why I'm bad at Sona; she is one of the most punishing champs when it comes to mispositioning.

Also jungling sucks at all levels. Everyone feels entitled to constant ganks.

Unrelated, I feel bad for team Coast. I actually have a pretty positive opinion of Elementz.

Although I'm hoping CoL makes it back in for the next split, since they are the gayest pro team (and I mean that literally).

elementz was the worst support on the pro scene when he was on it (an honor that has now moved to evaniskus), mash is the worst ADC in north american, shiphtur is mediocre, nintendude is only notable for being good at smite-stealing, and zionspartan is the most one-note player in NA LCS

everything that has gone wrong for cst is his own fault

[BROseidon]

its a curve, not a "suddenly you must make decisions", the importance of decision-making increases as people you're playing with know how to make decisions/know what decisions it's intelligent to follow up on; the ability to solo carry a game decreases significantly as level goes up, and a lot of that comes off the fact that teams know more how to react appropriately

I've only ever once "solo carried" a game. It's always a team effort.

And yeah, CST isn't great, but I've been hoping that they'd turn things around.