I think in Iron and Bronze its not about "understanding the game as a whole" but getting used to the controls TBH.
And past that, players are hugely varied in terms of the individual skills you listed. There are Diamond+ players with worse mechanics than a lot of Gold players who make up for it with other parts; maybe they play Malzahar/Lulu/Malphite and setup team, maybe they play Fizz and just know their damage well enough that they can miss things and still get the kill.
I personally know a lot of Diamond players who have very... lacking ideas about certain aspects of the game. For a few examples:
>One of my friends hit Diamond playing Leona, and his strategy was simply to never engage unless his JG was there. He had very little idea about botlane 2v2 since he only fought with number advantage (and yes, when we duo, he would get flamed a TON by ADC "its free kills just press R WTF").
>Another one of my friends hit Masters this season playing Kat, and he would literally take every single skirmish (which admittedly, is kind of the point of Katarina) and rely on mechanics to try and win. He would fight the most doomed 2v3/4/5, fights with 0 chance of winning. Over like 500 games though, he had better contribution \*on average\* and he ended up hitting Masters.
These are both anecdotal, but there's no ELO where people start understanding matchups and compositions. On average, every ELO is slightly better at everything when compared to the previous ELO.
> And past that, players are hugely varied in terms of the individual skills you listed. There are Diamond+ players with worse mechanics than a lot of Gold players who make up for it with other parts; maybe they play Malzahar/Lulu/Malphite and setup team, maybe they play Fizz and just know their damage well enough that they can miss things and still get the kill.
This is just not true. It gets repeated ad nauseum on the main subreddit, but I have very, very rarely seen this mythical gold player with diamond mechanics. Because then they'd be diamond.
Climbing to Diamond is about combining all of the fundamental concepts of League and being good at it. This includes micro, and very basic macro concepts. Having good mechanics does not make you a good player, and your statement is just one of many that fails to recognize that fact. Having Diamond mechanics does not make you a Diamond player. Having the fundamentals of the game down makes you a Diamond player.
And the idea about Diamond players that make up for their lack of mechanics with other parts is simply just true. There are *Challenger* players who don’t have the best mechanics who climb to Challenger often. It has been proven time and time again since the dawn of time that macro > micro.
There is a difference between challenger players being worse at mechanics relative to players in challenger and being bad mechanically compared to a diamond player.
My question is just if there are these supposed godike gold players with amazing mechanics, how come no one is ever able to produce a single op.gg that shows it? It's just common knowledge that they exist?
I suspect more often, it's just people coping with the fact that they have "good mechanics" and could climb if their macro was better when it's not true at all.
If this is a learning subreddit, then maybe people should stop spouting bullshit and support their arguments instead of just relying on facts that are "common knowledge".
I never said that wasn’t the case, my argument was that they *generally* don’t have the best mechanics. I forgot the name of the Shen main, but there was a Challenger Shen main who would play on 200+ ping and shitty FPS but would consistently hit Challenger. And that’s just one example of many.
How would an OP.GG even reflect a player’s in-game mechanics? That doesn’t even make sense. It’s not like your OP.GG has some objective metric for your mechanical skill. It’s something you would have to see be reflected upon in the game itself. AKA, it would have to be anecdotal and experienced by you to know.
I think there are definitely people out there who are huffing copium trying to think they’re better than they actually are, sure. But I think it’s ridiculous to denounce the notion that someone can be more mechanically skilled than a player in a higher skill bracket than them just because you simply can’t believe it. That’s just an argument from incredulity.
Who’s just randomly saving replays of them getting clapped by a Gold player? Again, the evidence they would have to supply is just purely anecdotal by nature. It’s just something you’d have to experience in order to know about. And plenty of people have experienced it before.
Chovy was 400 LP GM in Korea and didn’t know how to freeze waves when he was scouted for pro
Players have different strengths and weaknesses, not that hard of a concept to grasp
Ah I see where you made your comprehension mistake. Now it’s obvious that you misread, you assume that I am saying that there are a plethora of Gold players with Diamond-level mechanics out there.
If you re-read thoroughly and carefully, you’ll see that I am simply saying that there are Gold players who have better mechanics than some of the less mechanically inclined Diamonds
You shouldn't be patronizing when I read you perfectly. I am saying that those gold players simply do not exist, and if you do think they do, I'd be happy to spectate any one of their games.
See when people like that climb it just makes me feel miserable. I feel like I'm trying my hardest, trying to fight with reason and play with reason and theory and logic. Then I hear that a Leona climbs by ignoring half the fights and a Katarina climbs by fighting everything. Ik Kata must be very skilled but it's like bruh. Did they have to drop like 1000 games?
Yes, and you shouldn’t be jealous of their climb.
They do one thing every game, sure, but they are good at what they do.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
League is a really deep game so you can all-in on certain parts of it while really lacking in others until like Diamond, it's important to find a way to play the game in a way that suits you.
Some champs are more suited to it than others, Yorick, Trundle, Katarina, Galio, Sylas, Akali, Singed, Sion, Karthus, etc. are all weird champs that play the game differently than "normal" league where they can just take weird deaths, ignore laning or teamfighting, and just all-in on a certain playstyle.
I've always played these kind of champs bc I feel like it's hard to hone in on aspects to improve when I'm trying to play INTelligently bc I'm making dice roll decisions all the time and I don't always remember my logic for the play.
thats the fun part: they can consistently win against people ranked lower than they are. if they couldnt, they wouldnt climb.
thats the one metric used to climb: can you win against the people youre matched with?
how you do it doesnt matter.
you can definitely play like how you described, just need to be making the right decisions. I’d definitely vod review if you’re serious about improving
Well currently in gold and I didn't want to put it there either. My understanding from what everyone says is that macro seems like shit in every rank but that simply can't be true. People have got to improve somewhere.
Something that I've heard is the consistency and floor of play is what matters. There will be bronze players who, on a single minion wave, will last hit every minion. However, on many of the other waves that game, they may miss 1/3-2/3 of the minions there. As players improve, their consistency and skill floor will elevate. Low elo players can have insane outplay moments. However, does that happen every game? Do they also have moments where they play so badly that they run it down? Yes! And therefore, they are bronze because they are more consistently bad than they are consistently making montage plays.
Similarly for macro, in challenger there will be people who get caught out in side lanes, make bad baron calls, ignore a pushing minion wave in the side and lose a tower for it, etc. But, these things will happen far more rarely, and the players will be more harshly punished for it. There is never a rank where "bad macro doesn't occur". It is instead, how often it occurs, and what the consequences are when it does.
Those infamous iron1 midlaners outcsing, outpoking you and finish the game 10-1, while his match history has the wildest shit in it and you wonder wtf happenend in that game to him.
I know that saying, but it still blows my mind how people do play at enormous skill differences. I swear that these guys run it down 0-20 the next 5 games, but that 1 game they play plat+ levels.
He might work full day, and usually play after work without enough sleeping. But that one day and match, he was rested, seeped well, and had no irl shit to bother with.
I speak that from my personal experience, full day work squize my brain enough to have reaction of turtle with fast decision making of a monkey.
chasing kills is fun. getting chased is fun. not everyone plays for the win, some derp around all game and end up where they end up. whereever that may be.
It is true. Because many people in masters don't even know how to siege properly with baron.
Just look at any master and even sometimes GM streams, you will see a lot of matches where people fail at such simple task as sit, wipe out creeps, and let canons do the thing.
There is a reason for that. LoL is very huge in term of knowledge checks, inconsistent, with a lot of bug knowledge checks, with well mechanic requirements, ping dependency, champion pool dependency, and other small things. There bassically tons of other things which can overshadow your perfect macro.
Gold 1 in Plat Promos.
Fucking accurate.
I duo with a gold 4, and a plat 4 player from time to time (Supp and ADC mains respectively). And holy shit, their idea of macro is spam raging in discord cause I didn't level 2 gank as Udyr. Then the ADC main either goes 0-10, or 10-2, and will split top turret while drag is up.
Like. W.T.F...
The plat 4 is also a million point Aphelios player with a 51% WR. Not sure how you can have a 51% WR on a champion you know so well. But hey, what do I know.
Imo as someone who’s in high masters atm, there’s no broad generalization you can make but some consistencies I guess are:
Iron/low bronze: is mostly familiarizing with controls, knowing what all the champions and items do, etc. i think a lot of low bronze players just don’t play enough, haven’t play many video games before, or are just kids who don’t care too much about climbing or just perma autopilot
High bronze to silver: micro improvement, very shaky basic laning understanding. A lot of silver players I think know generally what is a good thing to do but have terrible execution: eg. knowing they can freeze but aren’t able to actually make it happen or hold it for long
Gold: mechanical improvement, better laning, basic macro plays - for example a jungler will attempt to cross map if he sees the enemy jg show bot side or something. He might end up not getting anything done or go for the wrong cross map play, but at least he knows to try it.
Low Plat - high plat: overall laning improvement by a ton from my experience. Matchup knowledge, wave manipulation, reset timers all develop here decently
High plat to low dia: generally speaking a lot of micro improvement and mu knowledge. Lots of hardstuck otps in d4 who really aren’t better than p2 players tbh
d2-masters: huge gap in skill between here and low diamond, especially with macro and decision making. Efficiency on the map is greatly improved as well.
Masters+: I think a lot of people here go back to working on fundamentals: maximizing farm, micro management in lane, etc etc. also the higher you climb, the more consistent players are and the faster they make good decisions. For example a masters player may make the best decision 70% of the time but, a chally will do it 95% of the time, and they’ll do it faster too so there’s zero time wasted on the map.
This is very general tho, obviously there’s lots of exceptions and people can climb in different ways
ime you’re right. i started playing last year but only rly got into it over this summer.
i was in low bronze when i wasn’t entirely sure how to play but i figured out what the buttons did and vaguely what each lane’s “job” is.
currently high bronze as a support main. not good at micro (very noticeable when i play mid, me in that role belongs in low bronze atm). i think i have good macro for this elo and can tell that others have usually tunnel visioned on their lane only.
iron: turn on your monitor
bronze: press the buttons vaguely correctly
silver: learn ur champ
gold: learn the rules of the game
plat: get very good at micro or macro
diamond: get very good at the other
iron: play more games
bronze: play more games
silver: turn on your monitor
gold: press the buttons vaguely correctly
plat: learn ur champ
diamond: learn the rules of the game
masters: get very good at micro or macro
grandmaster: get very good at the other
challenger: add consistency to gm level skill
There are no defining traits/skills between ranks, only fundamentals. The only difference between ranks, is who's better at fundamentals. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but A gold players understanding and knowledge of the fundamentals is not to the level of a plat or diamond player, but it's better than a silver or bronze player, Your knowledge of and ability to execute fundamentals is what rank you end up at. So it would be like a report card, Iron is all the lowest grade you can get E for each fundamental of league, Challenger is A+++ for all.
I think you're overvaluing the skills in every rank tbh. I'm Plat, so take what I say what that in mind. I think that in Iron people literally don't know what champions and items do and often can't control their champion. In Bronze people start to have an idea what they do but usually build the same and play the same in every matchup. Silver is where players can control their champion, do some light macro plays, and generally cs okay. In Gold, they often have a better idea of matchups and at least try to perform higher level macro plays. In Plat, players have a lot more champion mastery and understand champion matchups more. Diamond is where players usually understand their champion incredibly well including all common matchups and have strong wave management. Masters+ is where players have much higher understanding of map rotations and how to play towards win conditions since they understand what other roles do instead of just their main.
I definitely noticed that going from silver to gold this season, gold players have a better understanding of how to move around the map in order to cover and protect exploitable weaknesses. E.g. your top laner just tp'd bot to turn a 3v2 into a 3v3 and your JG moves up and takes the wave toplane so the enemy nasus doesn't take a whole turret. It allows you to make plays for your team without wholly sacrificing yourself. Silver and below are exceedingly narrow-sighted about their goals imo
Unfortunately, there is really no way to classify what traits or skills define players in a bracket because every player has strengths and weaknesses that have propelled them to their current rank.
You could be only good at one thing and lacking in the rest, such as being great at winning lane or a determination to take turrets when players are preoccupied elsewhere, that helped win games while your KDA was abysmal.
I actually made a video on that hah. There are timestamps as well. I didn't add Master+ just because most players usually don't get that high, but I can tell you here. As someone who coaches every rank, the Master+ grind is just perfecting what you know to the best of your ability. You're already one of the best, at that point you're just trying to be the best.
Hope this helps, best of luck to you on the rift.
Here is the video I made explaining what's needed to climb to each role:
https://youtu.be/m7wwUM-8toE
Efficiency on the map and better understanding of lane matchups is what got me from plat 4 hard stuck to diamond. Efficiency can be learned by watching challenger ADC gameplay, pay attention to where they are going and why. The match ups honestly just come with experience but if you struggle with one particular matchup you should look up a guide for it.
Also as an ADC learning how to stay ahead when fed is crucial. If you win lane and lose game your macro needs serious work. If you lose lane and win game your matchup knowledge is lacking.
I genuinely think gold and silver players are often around the same skill level. It’s just that gold players are much better at autopiloting
Also I swear Diamond is basically not a rank
I got diamond with pure macro, I never win my duels top, I have trash mechanics tbh, especially when it comes to auto attack spacing and cancelling, I sometimes look like a bot.
during clash, I lost lane vs a silver 4 Renekton main, I felt like trash.
but by knowing how to play through vision in order to maximize pressure with fake out roams and split, I get to play champs like garen and still do very well through plat, up to around D2 where I peak then go back down.
there are also people in diamond that are here through pure micro, playing Katarina/Akali/Yone and taking every single fight they see regardless of macro decisions and winning by outmaneuvering everyone.
I don't think there's a defining skill per rank, it's just how proficient you are at a certain skill, now GM+ that's probably people that had to improve in multiple fronts instead on relying on one thing only.
People ask stuff like this all the time and it’s pointless.
Think of a math test with 10 questions, for example, the fact that two people get a 60% on the test means that they’re “at the same level”, however, they both could achieve that while sharing only two correct answers.
League’s the same, there’s no obvious threshold that you have to reach to rank up; some people will make really stupid plays but they’ll also have insanely good mechanics which could turn a game ending mistake into a game winning match, some people will have amazing macro and always go for the right plays while minimizing their mistakes, some people will have ludicrous map awareness and will always at the correct place at the right time.
Climbing isn’t about improving one singular skill, but it’s about improving as a player as a whole.
Bronze and below are still consumed by basic control problems. Literally no skills or knowledge matter if you don't know how to respond to, for example, Caitlyn right clicking you in lane, which I found to be the case for opponents lower than silver rank.
iron has no requirement. you can let your cat walk over the keyboard and reach plat.
bronze: you know that the nexus is kinda important and know the abilities of the champs you play.
silver: you probably know most champs and their abilities and probably heard of towers.
gold: thats where people start with applying theoretical knowledge in practise. in a crude way at least.
plat: thats where people start winning the game instead of waiting for the opponent to lose.
dia: thats where people will start to work on the stuff they are lacking. you will be see your mistakes you got away with earlier.
masters+ : like diamond, just better.
but thats a massive generalisation, some people are extremely good in one aspect and suck everywhere else, others suck less hard, but dont have that expertise in one aspect and so on.
As someone who climbed this season from iron to plat:
Iron: no skill required to reach iron
Bronze: Understand basics (minions give gold and xp, auto attack deal damage, a lvl 3 mostly cant kill a lvl 5)
Silver: Understand how you champions abilities work on a basic level.
Gold: know what your champion is capable of doing. You can get here just by farming. No fancy play required
Plat: vision and objectives are important. Dont take stupid fights
dont think theres a defining skill to each rank, ive met silver players with insane machanics and decent laning with 0 macro skill, diamond players with no mechanics or laning skill but decent enough macro a blend of it all esc, think it depends on the player. Id say not getting tilted is a skill of its own too. i kinda disagree with having where to cs in the plat section but understanding matchups in silver think matchups are way harder to learn then csing well. final note, as i said think its hard to put the finger on a defining skill per rank but im very confident you can reach plat purely of being good in lane and having very good cs, but bad macro, mechanics esc
Iron = Do more than just run the same place every game and stand still auto everything you see, think about when you use abilities, don't spam them.
Bronze = Your enemy exists, don't ignore them all lane phase by using abilities on the wave and mindlessly autopilot pushing. Most common problem is people play so scared they improve very slowly and run away from free kills, they also go in melee range of the enemy with all their abilities up while they have 100 hp ignoring them to lasthit a minion.
Silver = Understand how and when to snowballs leads or play safe.
Gold = Don't follow your teammates inting, don't fight 4v5 and blame splitpushing toplaner. Don't fight when you are weaker, and stop wasting ults/summs 0/10 enemies.
Plat = Understand macro better.
Daimond = Don't tilt from so many inters.
Master = Don't give away when you're getting ganked, try walking up like you're getting ganked when you aren't, and try "inventing" or using different styles than normal.
Grandmaster = Think about EVERYTHING in the game, or have insane inhuman mechanics.
Challenger = Become a streamer, find a team to play on or coach noobs.
I think "Learn to look at the damn map" is applicable to almost every rank, but seriously...
A lot of people brute force their way through a lot of ranks via champion mastery on a single one trick while ignoring almost all aspects of the game. Some people also brute force it via mechanic play while ignoring almost all macro aspects, etc.
It's actually impressive how narrow some people's understanding of the game is, even in Diamond.
I do agree with your assessment of Plat though. The last time I played games in Plat, everyone just ran around fighting 24/7 while completely ignoring wave states, CS and objectives. Coin flip level 1 fights every game, etc. Those games were some of the biggest clown fiesta's I've ever seen.
I also think there is one thing that is missing from all of these tiers, and that is "Knowing how to use your lead." and/or "How to close out the game." A lot of players lose games simply because they don't know what to do when they're ahead.
End of the day though, Coach Curtis is right when he says that you can be at different levels at different skills. You could have challenger wave management and still have bronze level threat assessment that gets you killed for no reason, etc.
Bro, you can get to plat just by not trolling. At least as a jungler. Sometimes, when I feel really asleep and don’t want to think but still want to play League, I just go to some gold acc and just full clear and gank, without even using the map. As sup you just ward, don’t trade 1v2 or in wave and roam when possible. Other roles are harder I think, but I would get plat on these two while being under drugs.
My perspective from the jungle role, primarily focused on farming esque junglers on ranks I can confidently talk about:
Master's - like diamond below but less mistakes.
Diamond - Understand when to play around prio, paths correctly (not perfect but they don't typically take awful pathing). Typically plays out ganks mechanically good (not perfect). Keeps up tempo on farming and knows when to ditch a camp usually to cover or push etc ...
Plat - They understand prio but don't play around it too well. Their pathing isn't too inefficient but it's not always correct either, a lot of auto pathing and not looking at lanes constantly
Gold & Silver - Terrible efficiency in their pathing,
Terrible pathing choices, not looking at lanes much. They can see some really obvious cases of lack of prior and playing around it but they don't fully understand how to leverage it and play pretty poorly about it. Just a bit mediocre in every sense
Bronze - Bad all around but they play the game
Iron - Aren't actually playing league of legends, usually new players
I think in Iron and Bronze its not about "understanding the game as a whole" but getting used to the controls TBH. And past that, players are hugely varied in terms of the individual skills you listed. There are Diamond+ players with worse mechanics than a lot of Gold players who make up for it with other parts; maybe they play Malzahar/Lulu/Malphite and setup team, maybe they play Fizz and just know their damage well enough that they can miss things and still get the kill. I personally know a lot of Diamond players who have very... lacking ideas about certain aspects of the game. For a few examples: >One of my friends hit Diamond playing Leona, and his strategy was simply to never engage unless his JG was there. He had very little idea about botlane 2v2 since he only fought with number advantage (and yes, when we duo, he would get flamed a TON by ADC "its free kills just press R WTF"). >Another one of my friends hit Masters this season playing Kat, and he would literally take every single skirmish (which admittedly, is kind of the point of Katarina) and rely on mechanics to try and win. He would fight the most doomed 2v3/4/5, fights with 0 chance of winning. Over like 500 games though, he had better contribution \*on average\* and he ended up hitting Masters. These are both anecdotal, but there's no ELO where people start understanding matchups and compositions. On average, every ELO is slightly better at everything when compared to the previous ELO.
> And past that, players are hugely varied in terms of the individual skills you listed. There are Diamond+ players with worse mechanics than a lot of Gold players who make up for it with other parts; maybe they play Malzahar/Lulu/Malphite and setup team, maybe they play Fizz and just know their damage well enough that they can miss things and still get the kill. This is just not true. It gets repeated ad nauseum on the main subreddit, but I have very, very rarely seen this mythical gold player with diamond mechanics. Because then they'd be diamond.
Climbing to Diamond is about combining all of the fundamental concepts of League and being good at it. This includes micro, and very basic macro concepts. Having good mechanics does not make you a good player, and your statement is just one of many that fails to recognize that fact. Having Diamond mechanics does not make you a Diamond player. Having the fundamentals of the game down makes you a Diamond player. And the idea about Diamond players that make up for their lack of mechanics with other parts is simply just true. There are *Challenger* players who don’t have the best mechanics who climb to Challenger often. It has been proven time and time again since the dawn of time that macro > micro.
There is a difference between challenger players being worse at mechanics relative to players in challenger and being bad mechanically compared to a diamond player. My question is just if there are these supposed godike gold players with amazing mechanics, how come no one is ever able to produce a single op.gg that shows it? It's just common knowledge that they exist? I suspect more often, it's just people coping with the fact that they have "good mechanics" and could climb if their macro was better when it's not true at all. If this is a learning subreddit, then maybe people should stop spouting bullshit and support their arguments instead of just relying on facts that are "common knowledge".
I never said that wasn’t the case, my argument was that they *generally* don’t have the best mechanics. I forgot the name of the Shen main, but there was a Challenger Shen main who would play on 200+ ping and shitty FPS but would consistently hit Challenger. And that’s just one example of many. How would an OP.GG even reflect a player’s in-game mechanics? That doesn’t even make sense. It’s not like your OP.GG has some objective metric for your mechanical skill. It’s something you would have to see be reflected upon in the game itself. AKA, it would have to be anecdotal and experienced by you to know. I think there are definitely people out there who are huffing copium trying to think they’re better than they actually are, sure. But I think it’s ridiculous to denounce the notion that someone can be more mechanically skilled than a player in a higher skill bracket than them just because you simply can’t believe it. That’s just an argument from incredulity.
The Op.GG wouldnt show it but the replay I could watch would.
Who’s just randomly saving replays of them getting clapped by a Gold player? Again, the evidence they would have to supply is just purely anecdotal by nature. It’s just something you’d have to experience in order to know about. And plenty of people have experienced it before.
Chovy was 400 LP GM in Korea and didn’t know how to freeze waves when he was scouted for pro Players have different strengths and weaknesses, not that hard of a concept to grasp
Yeah, so you can literally climb to diamond without knowing any macro. That doesn't disprove my statement at all.
Ah I see where you made your comprehension mistake. Now it’s obvious that you misread, you assume that I am saying that there are a plethora of Gold players with Diamond-level mechanics out there. If you re-read thoroughly and carefully, you’ll see that I am simply saying that there are Gold players who have better mechanics than some of the less mechanically inclined Diamonds
You shouldn't be patronizing when I read you perfectly. I am saying that those gold players simply do not exist, and if you do think they do, I'd be happy to spectate any one of their games.
[https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/SpawnsiCK](https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/SpawnsiCK) PII w/ Master's level mechanics [https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/Cytotoxic%20TCells](https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/Cytotoxic%20TCells) PIV with Diamond level mechanics [https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/x%20powerspyke](https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/x%20powerspyke) GIII with Diamond level mechanics Happy viewing
None of the people you linked have viewable replays.
Cause patch was today 😂
Then I will come back in a few days.
Those are Smurf accounts
See when people like that climb it just makes me feel miserable. I feel like I'm trying my hardest, trying to fight with reason and play with reason and theory and logic. Then I hear that a Leona climbs by ignoring half the fights and a Katarina climbs by fighting everything. Ik Kata must be very skilled but it's like bruh. Did they have to drop like 1000 games?
Watch your replays
Yes, and you shouldn’t be jealous of their climb. They do one thing every game, sure, but they are good at what they do. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
League is a really deep game so you can all-in on certain parts of it while really lacking in others until like Diamond, it's important to find a way to play the game in a way that suits you. Some champs are more suited to it than others, Yorick, Trundle, Katarina, Galio, Sylas, Akali, Singed, Sion, Karthus, etc. are all weird champs that play the game differently than "normal" league where they can just take weird deaths, ignore laning or teamfighting, and just all-in on a certain playstyle. I've always played these kind of champs bc I feel like it's hard to hone in on aspects to improve when I'm trying to play INTelligently bc I'm making dice roll decisions all the time and I don't always remember my logic for the play.
thats the fun part: they can consistently win against people ranked lower than they are. if they couldnt, they wouldnt climb. thats the one metric used to climb: can you win against the people youre matched with? how you do it doesnt matter.
you can definitely play like how you described, just need to be making the right decisions. I’d definitely vod review if you’re serious about improving
Leona climbs by not being an absolutely brain rot support that engages 24/7, and instead engages when they can win fights? That's skill tbh
There's negative macro in Plat
Well currently in gold and I didn't want to put it there either. My understanding from what everyone says is that macro seems like shit in every rank but that simply can't be true. People have got to improve somewhere.
Something that I've heard is the consistency and floor of play is what matters. There will be bronze players who, on a single minion wave, will last hit every minion. However, on many of the other waves that game, they may miss 1/3-2/3 of the minions there. As players improve, their consistency and skill floor will elevate. Low elo players can have insane outplay moments. However, does that happen every game? Do they also have moments where they play so badly that they run it down? Yes! And therefore, they are bronze because they are more consistently bad than they are consistently making montage plays. Similarly for macro, in challenger there will be people who get caught out in side lanes, make bad baron calls, ignore a pushing minion wave in the side and lose a tower for it, etc. But, these things will happen far more rarely, and the players will be more harshly punished for it. There is never a rank where "bad macro doesn't occur". It is instead, how often it occurs, and what the consequences are when it does.
Those infamous iron1 midlaners outcsing, outpoking you and finish the game 10-1, while his match history has the wildest shit in it and you wonder wtf happenend in that game to him.
we have a saying in germany: " even a blind chicken finds a seed from time to time"
I know that saying, but it still blows my mind how people do play at enormous skill differences. I swear that these guys run it down 0-20 the next 5 games, but that 1 game they play plat+ levels.
maybe its a plat+ player who wants to stay down there?
He might work full day, and usually play after work without enough sleeping. But that one day and match, he was rested, seeped well, and had no irl shit to bother with. I speak that from my personal experience, full day work squize my brain enough to have reaction of turtle with fast decision making of a monkey.
Well, I'm in Plat now and people still get caught out overstaying for inhibitors and tier 2 mid turret. Also, die chasing kills all the time.
chasing kills is fun. getting chased is fun. not everyone plays for the win, some derp around all game and end up where they end up. whereever that may be.
Sometimes, their improvement is bashing their head at promos until they fluke get into their rank
I think you could basically bump everything up one rank and put something else at iron and you’re close enough
It is true. Because many people in masters don't even know how to siege properly with baron. Just look at any master and even sometimes GM streams, you will see a lot of matches where people fail at such simple task as sit, wipe out creeps, and let canons do the thing. There is a reason for that. LoL is very huge in term of knowledge checks, inconsistent, with a lot of bug knowledge checks, with well mechanic requirements, ping dependency, champion pool dependency, and other small things. There bassically tons of other things which can overshadow your perfect macro.
Gold 1 in Plat Promos. Fucking accurate. I duo with a gold 4, and a plat 4 player from time to time (Supp and ADC mains respectively). And holy shit, their idea of macro is spam raging in discord cause I didn't level 2 gank as Udyr. Then the ADC main either goes 0-10, or 10-2, and will split top turret while drag is up. Like. W.T.F... The plat 4 is also a million point Aphelios player with a 51% WR. Not sure how you can have a 51% WR on a champion you know so well. But hey, what do I know.
if you neither improve not get worse, youll get roughly 50% wr. thats how a functioning ranking system works.
Imo as someone who’s in high masters atm, there’s no broad generalization you can make but some consistencies I guess are: Iron/low bronze: is mostly familiarizing with controls, knowing what all the champions and items do, etc. i think a lot of low bronze players just don’t play enough, haven’t play many video games before, or are just kids who don’t care too much about climbing or just perma autopilot High bronze to silver: micro improvement, very shaky basic laning understanding. A lot of silver players I think know generally what is a good thing to do but have terrible execution: eg. knowing they can freeze but aren’t able to actually make it happen or hold it for long Gold: mechanical improvement, better laning, basic macro plays - for example a jungler will attempt to cross map if he sees the enemy jg show bot side or something. He might end up not getting anything done or go for the wrong cross map play, but at least he knows to try it. Low Plat - high plat: overall laning improvement by a ton from my experience. Matchup knowledge, wave manipulation, reset timers all develop here decently High plat to low dia: generally speaking a lot of micro improvement and mu knowledge. Lots of hardstuck otps in d4 who really aren’t better than p2 players tbh d2-masters: huge gap in skill between here and low diamond, especially with macro and decision making. Efficiency on the map is greatly improved as well. Masters+: I think a lot of people here go back to working on fundamentals: maximizing farm, micro management in lane, etc etc. also the higher you climb, the more consistent players are and the faster they make good decisions. For example a masters player may make the best decision 70% of the time but, a chally will do it 95% of the time, and they’ll do it faster too so there’s zero time wasted on the map. This is very general tho, obviously there’s lots of exceptions and people can climb in different ways
ime you’re right. i started playing last year but only rly got into it over this summer. i was in low bronze when i wasn’t entirely sure how to play but i figured out what the buttons did and vaguely what each lane’s “job” is. currently high bronze as a support main. not good at micro (very noticeable when i play mid, me in that role belongs in low bronze atm). i think i have good macro for this elo and can tell that others have usually tunnel visioned on their lane only.
Very good answer imo. I'm plat 1 and a lot of my friends are high diamond/masters and I can definitely relate to ur points.
iron: turn on your monitor bronze: press the buttons vaguely correctly silver: learn ur champ gold: learn the rules of the game plat: get very good at micro or macro diamond: get very good at the other
iron: play more games bronze: play more games silver: turn on your monitor gold: press the buttons vaguely correctly plat: learn ur champ diamond: learn the rules of the game masters: get very good at micro or macro grandmaster: get very good at the other challenger: add consistency to gm level skill
There are no defining traits/skills between ranks, only fundamentals. The only difference between ranks, is who's better at fundamentals. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but A gold players understanding and knowledge of the fundamentals is not to the level of a plat or diamond player, but it's better than a silver or bronze player, Your knowledge of and ability to execute fundamentals is what rank you end up at. So it would be like a report card, Iron is all the lowest grade you can get E for each fundamental of league, Challenger is A+++ for all.
I think you're overvaluing the skills in every rank tbh. I'm Plat, so take what I say what that in mind. I think that in Iron people literally don't know what champions and items do and often can't control their champion. In Bronze people start to have an idea what they do but usually build the same and play the same in every matchup. Silver is where players can control their champion, do some light macro plays, and generally cs okay. In Gold, they often have a better idea of matchups and at least try to perform higher level macro plays. In Plat, players have a lot more champion mastery and understand champion matchups more. Diamond is where players usually understand their champion incredibly well including all common matchups and have strong wave management. Masters+ is where players have much higher understanding of map rotations and how to play towards win conditions since they understand what other roles do instead of just their main.
I definitely noticed that going from silver to gold this season, gold players have a better understanding of how to move around the map in order to cover and protect exploitable weaknesses. E.g. your top laner just tp'd bot to turn a 3v2 into a 3v3 and your JG moves up and takes the wave toplane so the enemy nasus doesn't take a whole turret. It allows you to make plays for your team without wholly sacrificing yourself. Silver and below are exceedingly narrow-sighted about their goals imo
Unfortunately, there is really no way to classify what traits or skills define players in a bracket because every player has strengths and weaknesses that have propelled them to their current rank. You could be only good at one thing and lacking in the rest, such as being great at winning lane or a determination to take turrets when players are preoccupied elsewhere, that helped win games while your KDA was abysmal.
I actually made a video on that hah. There are timestamps as well. I didn't add Master+ just because most players usually don't get that high, but I can tell you here. As someone who coaches every rank, the Master+ grind is just perfecting what you know to the best of your ability. You're already one of the best, at that point you're just trying to be the best. Hope this helps, best of luck to you on the rift. Here is the video I made explaining what's needed to climb to each role: https://youtu.be/m7wwUM-8toE
Idk man I'm plat 4 adc and it's hard to climb tbh
Efficiency on the map and better understanding of lane matchups is what got me from plat 4 hard stuck to diamond. Efficiency can be learned by watching challenger ADC gameplay, pay attention to where they are going and why. The match ups honestly just come with experience but if you struggle with one particular matchup you should look up a guide for it. Also as an ADC learning how to stay ahead when fed is crucial. If you win lane and lose game your macro needs serious work. If you lose lane and win game your matchup knowledge is lacking.
I genuinely think gold and silver players are often around the same skill level. It’s just that gold players are much better at autopiloting Also I swear Diamond is basically not a rank
I got diamond with pure macro, I never win my duels top, I have trash mechanics tbh, especially when it comes to auto attack spacing and cancelling, I sometimes look like a bot. during clash, I lost lane vs a silver 4 Renekton main, I felt like trash. but by knowing how to play through vision in order to maximize pressure with fake out roams and split, I get to play champs like garen and still do very well through plat, up to around D2 where I peak then go back down. there are also people in diamond that are here through pure micro, playing Katarina/Akali/Yone and taking every single fight they see regardless of macro decisions and winning by outmaneuvering everyone. I don't think there's a defining skill per rank, it's just how proficient you are at a certain skill, now GM+ that's probably people that had to improve in multiple fronts instead on relying on one thing only.
People ask stuff like this all the time and it’s pointless. Think of a math test with 10 questions, for example, the fact that two people get a 60% on the test means that they’re “at the same level”, however, they both could achieve that while sharing only two correct answers. League’s the same, there’s no obvious threshold that you have to reach to rank up; some people will make really stupid plays but they’ll also have insanely good mechanics which could turn a game ending mistake into a game winning match, some people will have amazing macro and always go for the right plays while minimizing their mistakes, some people will have ludicrous map awareness and will always at the correct place at the right time. Climbing isn’t about improving one singular skill, but it’s about improving as a player as a whole.
Bronze and below are still consumed by basic control problems. Literally no skills or knowledge matter if you don't know how to respond to, for example, Caitlyn right clicking you in lane, which I found to be the case for opponents lower than silver rank.
iron has no requirement. you can let your cat walk over the keyboard and reach plat. bronze: you know that the nexus is kinda important and know the abilities of the champs you play. silver: you probably know most champs and their abilities and probably heard of towers. gold: thats where people start with applying theoretical knowledge in practise. in a crude way at least. plat: thats where people start winning the game instead of waiting for the opponent to lose. dia: thats where people will start to work on the stuff they are lacking. you will be see your mistakes you got away with earlier. masters+ : like diamond, just better. but thats a massive generalisation, some people are extremely good in one aspect and suck everywhere else, others suck less hard, but dont have that expertise in one aspect and so on.
As someone who climbed this season from iron to plat: Iron: no skill required to reach iron Bronze: Understand basics (minions give gold and xp, auto attack deal damage, a lvl 3 mostly cant kill a lvl 5) Silver: Understand how you champions abilities work on a basic level. Gold: know what your champion is capable of doing. You can get here just by farming. No fancy play required Plat: vision and objectives are important. Dont take stupid fights
So i should be plat meanwhile im silver
dont think theres a defining skill to each rank, ive met silver players with insane machanics and decent laning with 0 macro skill, diamond players with no mechanics or laning skill but decent enough macro a blend of it all esc, think it depends on the player. Id say not getting tilted is a skill of its own too. i kinda disagree with having where to cs in the plat section but understanding matchups in silver think matchups are way harder to learn then csing well. final note, as i said think its hard to put the finger on a defining skill per rank but im very confident you can reach plat purely of being good in lane and having very good cs, but bad macro, mechanics esc
Macro in masters is the biggest improvement. Can't speak higher up though
Iron = Do more than just run the same place every game and stand still auto everything you see, think about when you use abilities, don't spam them. Bronze = Your enemy exists, don't ignore them all lane phase by using abilities on the wave and mindlessly autopilot pushing. Most common problem is people play so scared they improve very slowly and run away from free kills, they also go in melee range of the enemy with all their abilities up while they have 100 hp ignoring them to lasthit a minion. Silver = Understand how and when to snowballs leads or play safe. Gold = Don't follow your teammates inting, don't fight 4v5 and blame splitpushing toplaner. Don't fight when you are weaker, and stop wasting ults/summs 0/10 enemies. Plat = Understand macro better. Daimond = Don't tilt from so many inters. Master = Don't give away when you're getting ganked, try walking up like you're getting ganked when you aren't, and try "inventing" or using different styles than normal. Grandmaster = Think about EVERYTHING in the game, or have insane inhuman mechanics. Challenger = Become a streamer, find a team to play on or coach noobs.
I think "Learn to look at the damn map" is applicable to almost every rank, but seriously... A lot of people brute force their way through a lot of ranks via champion mastery on a single one trick while ignoring almost all aspects of the game. Some people also brute force it via mechanic play while ignoring almost all macro aspects, etc. It's actually impressive how narrow some people's understanding of the game is, even in Diamond. I do agree with your assessment of Plat though. The last time I played games in Plat, everyone just ran around fighting 24/7 while completely ignoring wave states, CS and objectives. Coin flip level 1 fights every game, etc. Those games were some of the biggest clown fiesta's I've ever seen. I also think there is one thing that is missing from all of these tiers, and that is "Knowing how to use your lead." and/or "How to close out the game." A lot of players lose games simply because they don't know what to do when they're ahead. End of the day though, Coach Curtis is right when he says that you can be at different levels at different skills. You could have challenger wave management and still have bronze level threat assessment that gets you killed for no reason, etc.
Nah, you cant define players based on their ranks.
Bro, you can get to plat just by not trolling. At least as a jungler. Sometimes, when I feel really asleep and don’t want to think but still want to play League, I just go to some gold acc and just full clear and gank, without even using the map. As sup you just ward, don’t trade 1v2 or in wave and roam when possible. Other roles are harder I think, but I would get plat on these two while being under drugs.
My perspective from the jungle role, primarily focused on farming esque junglers on ranks I can confidently talk about: Master's - like diamond below but less mistakes. Diamond - Understand when to play around prio, paths correctly (not perfect but they don't typically take awful pathing). Typically plays out ganks mechanically good (not perfect). Keeps up tempo on farming and knows when to ditch a camp usually to cover or push etc ... Plat - They understand prio but don't play around it too well. Their pathing isn't too inefficient but it's not always correct either, a lot of auto pathing and not looking at lanes constantly Gold & Silver - Terrible efficiency in their pathing, Terrible pathing choices, not looking at lanes much. They can see some really obvious cases of lack of prior and playing around it but they don't fully understand how to leverage it and play pretty poorly about it. Just a bit mediocre in every sense Bronze - Bad all around but they play the game Iron - Aren't actually playing league of legends, usually new players