How to get out of elo hell in League of Legends in Season 10
Hi guys! I am an ex-professional League of Legends player, my nickname is FIRees (https://lol.gamepedia.com/FIRees). Right now I am a full-time head coach in one coaching service https://skycoach.gg/. As a head coach I analyzed more than 1000 coaching sessions of bronze/silver/gold players and the main reasons why people are stuck:
- Low elo players don’t quite understand their champion. (Weak and strong points of the champion, his playstyle, how to use his combos, when to use spells)
- Runes/masteries
- Items your champion needs in general and in your particular game.
In this post I will explain what low elo players often do wrong and if you’re one of them what you can do better and how.
This post might be obvious for some players, but believe me, I saw many low elo players — it’s crucial information for them :)
We coached 1000+ players from Elo Hell and here are the reasons why they get stuck
How to use your combos properly and overall when you should use your spells.
You must be surprised, but a lot of (80%+) low elo players don’t use their champions correctly. Even if they are a one-trick pony… It means that players use like 50% of champion power. No wonder they’re losing.
Examples.
Not that long ago I coached a gold player, he mained Karma. He played her top, mid and support. But the thing is even though he played many games as Karma (more than 200) he still didn’t know what her Ult + second spell did. But it actually is very useful combination of Karma, it heals you 20% of your missing health twice, sounds pretty useful, doesn’t it? Not knowing this combo, you’re not able to use the champion on 100%.
Next example — Ezreal. Most players don’t know what they can do using his third ability — Arcane Shift. The thing is you can get hooked by blitzcrank’s hook, nautilus’ hook and so on and still get out by using your E half a second before the hook hits you, you will still get to your destination, though you will get the damage.
And the next most common example of how you should use your spells — Thresh. When low elo players play thresh they don’t even think about straight up going or flashing towards enemy adc to flay him, but this is a very easy thing to do. First, you will CC the enemy, it means you will drag him towards you and slow him, and you will activate the aftershock which makes you way tankier than you are. Then you just hook the enemy.
How to learn: You can watch pro players streams or replays of pro players/high elo players. And look closely at how a player uses his champions. If you watch 10 different games and understand what pro players do and why — you will play better 100%!
Btw you can use op.gg to find the best players and type the nickname in your client and download replays and watch them.
Not understanding when your champion is strong.
So many people lose again and again just because of that…
Examples.
Let’s take Lee Sin as an example, even though he is one of the mechanically hardest champions and I wouldn’t recommend you play him being iron/bronze/silver/gold player, I’m sure you all know him pretty well :)
So what is lee sin about? Is it OK if you don’t do anything early game and just wait for your team to scale, maybe you have Kassadin or Мayne? The answer is no.
Lee sin is very strong early game champion and he falls off late game. If you want to have any impact on the game, you need to start making things (ganks) happen since the very beginning of the game. It doesn’t matter which team comp you have, whether your team is good early game and falls off late game or your team scales really well. To be useful as Lee Sin you need to be proactive early game.
Next example is Vayne. If you play Vayne, you need to scale, you’re really strong mid/late game. It means you don’t want to fight early game, you simply don’t need it. Of course there are situations when you can fight: for example enemy bot lane got hit by your turret or your jungler is ganking them and you know that the enemy jungler is on the other side of the map. But overall your goal as Vayne is to farm as well as you can and wait for the mid and late game.
How to learn: Read guides about your champion and find out if he is early game champion or mid/late game champion.
And again watch the best players (highset ranks in the ladder) replays and see when they start fighting or when they try to farm more.
If you tired of reading guides, watching streams and trying to understand how you could play better you should try SkyCoach — the Esporst academy build for League of Legends players. https://skycoach.gg/
Mid and late game are very important but most of the time iron/bronze/silver/gold players struggle with early game and because of that are unable to be relevant at mid or late game.
Examples.
You play Renekton vs Nasus. You need to understand your own matchup, your enemy champion win condition and your champ win condition. If you do nothing early game, you will lose, cause Nasus outscales you mid and late game. So you need to be aggressive early game. You need to punish him by trading, pushing or freezing. Your goal is to kill him or to prevent him from last hitting.
Understanding the jungle matchup will come in handy here. If you have early game jungler in your team and late game jungler enemy team, it means you easily win early game top 2v2 and you can play aggressively and ask your jungler to come and take the free kill to snowball your early game potential and not to let them scale up.
Another matchup — Lucian Braum vs Thresh Vayne. If Lucian and Braum play passively early game, they will 100% lose this game, at least if they don’t get carried by their teammates which is not the best approach if you want to improve or climb on your own. And if you play Vayne and Thresh at this matchup your goal is to farm, you don’t need to fight, you actually don’t even want to fight, however if enemies got hit by your turret or out position, you can do that. But your main goal is to wait for mid game.
How to learn: You can watch professional players, paying attention to their decision making in certain matchups or play on your own analyzing what limits different champions have and what their power spikes are.
Btw I often recommend my students to take strong early game champions and dominate the laning phase and early game. Why? Because in low elo if people lose laning phase they often start tilting and can’t come back.
Misunderstanding or misutilization of Runes.
This is very common for low elo players. Simply not understanding what runes give you and just copy pasting someone’s runes and because of not understanding comes incapability to utilize them properly.
Example. A few weeks ago I coached a bronze adc who played Caitlyn and in the precision tree he took Legend: Alacrity and the second tree was Domination with Taste of blood and Ravenous Hunter.
I asked him why he took Domination. The answer was to get sustain. Ravenous Hunter heals you when you deal damage using your abilities. but the thing is most of the damage that Caitlyn does comes from auto-attacks. Isn’t it better to take in the Precision tree Legend: Bloodline which gives you 12% lifesteal when stuck (works when you auto-attack) instead of Legend: Alacrity which gives you 18% attack speed when stuck? Ofc Bloodline is a lot better if you want to sustain and besides that you can choose Biscuit Delivery at the Inspiration tree to get even more sustain.
How to learn: Read all runes carefully and understand what it gives you. Watch pro players runes and analyze why they take a certain rune. https://www.probuilds.net/ — here you can check what runes pro players use.
Itemization.
Not that long ago I talked to one of my IRL friends and came to know that he played league with his friends for fun. I remember asking him what items he was buying. The answer was “The recommended ones”.
Most of the time what is recommended is wrong. First you need to understand core items of your champion. For example, if you play Kindred jungle how do you know which jungle item you need? The answer is you need to understand what all of them give you. In this case it is Enchantment: Warrior and Enchantment: Bloodrazor. The Warrior gives you flat ad (+60) is good for burst damage, it means it’s good vs squishy champions because they have less hp and you deal more flat damage with Warrior. The Bloodrazor gives you 50% attack speed and unique passive basic attacks deal 4% of the target’s maximum HP in bonus physical damage on hit. It means it is good vs champions that have a lot of HP, it means vs tanks and bruisers. That’s pretty simple once you understand what exactly they give you.
How to learn: Overall look what pro players take and think what the champions get with those items. And analyze team comps because if enemies have 4 ap carries you really want to buy some magic resistance because then you negate the main source of their damage.
It's very very basic things that every player needs to know. And if you like this type of post I will write more about players from different elo and what they do wrong.
Thank you!
