A common misconception of ranked League of Legends is that if you get stuck down far enough it is near impossible to get your way out. Many people feel the pressure of afkers, feeders, trolls, and bad attitudes.
It Never Gets Better
An issue I often come across is that people get stuck in the mentality of ‘it is always going to be bad.’ If you go into a ranked game looking at it as an inevitable feed team, then you are not being the positive teammate who can help keep morale up and win the game. It is okay to take breaks. I take breaks all the time in ranked; often times a duo partner wants to keep going, but my morale is not there so I stop. The problem is me being off my game inevitably will hurt the team and thusly it is better to stop for the day and start again on a new day.
I Should be Platinum!
Another common misconception is that we as players “deserve” to be higher than we are. The problem with this is that this sets up your mindset so that no mistake is yours and that only your teammates are at fault. This forces your reception to criticism to be less than positive. It also can make it so you feel better than your teammates and project this onto them in one way or another. As a ranked player, I find myself making multiples of mistakes per game regardless of who I am playing with (higher or lower ranked friends). This reception to self-fault allows me to be more receptive to other people making mistakes that hurt the team, but do not stop us from winning ultimately.
Your Attitude Stinks
This brings me to attitudes. Ranked games have a hidden currency that I like to call “morale.” The team that runs out first almost always self-destructs and destroys itself. After 10 minutes of straight “you played wrong,” it is inevitable that your team will not really play cohesively. It has been said that 5 people following a bad call is better than half a team following a good call. This indecisiveness forces people to not work together and a loss is inevitable.
The Climb to Greatness
If you are looking to climb in elo, one suggestion I have is to not think of yourself as “better” than the people you are playing with; you will not climb higher like that. This is because it becomes really easy to simply say, oh it is player A/B/C/not my fault. If you are faultless, most likely you are blaming your team; which is never productive. Empathy is a powerful tool to allow increases in team morale.
Ranked solo/duo queue is all about keeping team cohesion and promoting morale. Almost all of my ranked wins are support, which most would say is the hardest position to carry from, but it is that exact reason that you can carry the hardest from it. Supports have the least overall pressure at any given time so it is a free time to cheer up and revitalize your team. Top just died? “Do not worry guys we can play safe bot and get jungler to come gank for you.” Mid rages at top? “We can hold out for the late game and pull this together in our team fights, guys!” These small actions often lead my team to having a positive morale, so that the next mistake the enemy team makes starts off that chain reaction of self-destruction for them. This can be done from any position, and the 3 to 4 creep kills lost for revitalizing your team is always worth it to me.
A lot of this can be achieved by getting grouped up and getting everyone to agree on something. Asking if the team can group on dragon often achieves this for me. Everyone wants that gold, and it usually creates a team skirmish and if your team is at 5, early odds are the resulting skirmish will turn out in your favor. This often boosts morale. I find that usually the first team to group wins the mid game pretty handily, so giving up some of the lane CS might be worth an overall morale advantage in the mid game.
Don’t Throw It Away Now
Another problem people often have is throwing away advantages. For example, I get my carry fed as support and we take the first tower. But then he keeps pushing and dies. Instead of this though I can recommend we group up and push down mid tower, and this keeps him with me and safe and creates a team objective.
A problem I find many people in my games have is that they quote streams and high level play and that is how they want their team to play. The problem with this mentality is that when you are bronze/silver people are having high kill games. Most high elo games are low kill games. This means that the style of play to get a win is different than at diamond. In bronze you want to be smart aggressive–it is all about punishing people for making mistakes. If you take a kill, go back, buy a ward and zone your opponents, you are using your lead aggressively to mitigate the impact of your opponents. Another thing to do is push up your lane and go gank. Also opponents who make small missteps are easier to take advantage of and kill.
Also if you gank a losing lane and take the kills, it is great to relieve pressure. But if your team has to go back to base and the other team gets back to lane at the same time as your team you have effectively reset the lane, and they are still losing. Now if instead you give them a kill, they are closing the gap and can potentially, with smart play, take over the lane. This applies to more than just the jungler. Mid can roam top/bot fairly easily. Top can roam mid/bot (with TP) decently and invade the enemy jungler to ward red/blue respectively.
Gain Some Perspective
Lastly a point of perspective is important to have. If you go 10/3/2 as the jungler, you did not deserve to win that game. A lot of times a person tries to carry solo and gives nothing but assists to your team. The first few kills of the game do not really matter who they go to. The assist gold for the first 5 or so kills is significant enough at that stage of the game that it is okay to take them as a jungler, for example. But if by taking those 10 kills you deny your carries 10 kills you are significantly weakening their state of play. I am not saying it is impossible or improbably to carry from the jungle, but this often applies when your adc/apc are shining and top/support/jungle take a few kills and can allow the enemy carry to catch up and that is never a desired outcome.
In Short
So keep it positive, boost your teams morale and you will climb higher in time. So I ask you, do you think it is possible to win with morale? Comment below!
