How to Assess Your Skill and Eliminate Your Weaknesses

The most commonly asked question in the entire game, to streamers and friends alike, is "How can I carry solo queue?"  The majority of people seem to just blame their teammates on holding them back from the greatness they were destined to achieve, others are smart enough to understand they are just not good enough.  I say they are smart, because blaming other people for your lack of success does not get you anywhere, ever.   Sure, other people may seem to get lucky with who they get queued with, but by no means does that mean that you are getting unlucky.  Everyone has to deal with raging/AFK/toxic players at some point.   Now, I don't think it is a bad thing to be "not good enough", it is a very general term which could mean a variety of things.  Perhaps you don't have enough time in your day to practice League, or you don't have the champions/runes necessary in order to play.  None of that matters, you need to get your head in the game and get that elo.

Assess Yourself

Now, I'd like to categorize each elo.  Some may argue that you cannot do this due to there being a variety of different personalities/players, but I feel it is fair to generalize the elo brackets.  I'll explain why afterwards.  I will rate each elo bracket out of 20, split into 4 different categories, with a maximum of 5 points per category:

Champion Select: This is where the foundation of each game starts.  This is rated upon how well players are able to cooperate with one another, as well as what heroes they find "broken", necessary to ban, really good, or really weak, etc.  Which in turn leads to what they pick.

Attitude: This game is based off of communication.  Imagine if you didn't have to hear:

"LOL Sona, do u realize u died bcuz not only do u suck, but u lak the extreme knowledge and mekanix that me and aphromoo have?  LOL my input is necssary for u to relize ur obvious mistake every time haha lolxD u suck bitchnerd, lern from the best or stay beneath the dirt"

every single game from at least one of your players.  Things would be a lot better, right?  Attitude defines how well people perceive other players and the plays that they make, good or bad.

Mechanics: How well people last hit, trade, and play team fights.

Decision-Making: How well people decide on things.  Rated upon how much thought people put into each play, which in turn effects how well you make decisions, such as when to dragon or Baron.

Bronze:
Champion Select: 1/5
Attitude: 1/5
Mechanics: 1/5
Decision-Making: 1/5

Score: 4/20(blazeit)

Silver:
Champion Select: 3/5
Attitude: 2/5
Mechanics: 2/5
Decision-Making: 2/5

Score: 9/20

Gold:
Champion Select: 3/5
Attitude: 3/5
Mechanics: 3/5
Decision-Making: 2/5

Score: 11/20

Platinum:
Champion Select: 4/5
Attitude: 4/5
Mechanics: 4/5
Decision-Making: 4/5

Score: 16/20

Diamond:
Champion Select: 5/5
Attitude: 4/5
Mechanics: 5/5
Decision-Making: 4/5

Score: 18/20

Where do you feel you belong?  Reading the above may have felt useless, but it is important to know where you belong (or at least where you think you belong).  Be honest and hard on yourself.  Do you harass others for roles in champ select?  Do you harass people for mistakes in-game and make it a point to show your superiority over these random nerds you will never see again?  Are you a mechanical god who never misses last hits, or are they a second priority.  Do you flash for kills only to be baited in by exhausts and CCs?  All of this really matters.

Once you have totalled up your score, figure out what elo bracket you feel you belong in and compare it to what elo bracket you are currently in.  Figure out what aspect of the game you are lacking, and fix it.  Don't just spam games in hopes you will magically become a god, figure out your problems and FIX them.


See-Think-Do


How Can I Reliably Improve?

Most players will tell you get better, but as I've said in the past, this does nothing.  This is how you can improve, as well as some personal practice routines that I have gone through that have helped me get better.  Some things may be lightly repeated from my last blog post.

Champion Select

Let's keep this short and sweet.  This is the easiest problem to fix.  Be nice to people, not demanding, and be supportive of everyone on your team, even the people who seem 'troubled'.  By singling somebody out, they will feel like a helpless, angry, victim.  This is what loses you games.  You must sympathize with everyone as much as possible, while still trying to obtain your best possible role(s).  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px-2evN6OzE

See this? Analyze this video for what not to do in champion select. This holds comedic value, but not elo.  I have nothing against Robert (in fact I laughed at the video, it was comical), and I am sure I've done similar things in the past, but this is precisely how you piss off your other team mates in champion select.  Lack of communication, blatant ignorance to the discussion going on, etc.  The foundation of a good game starts by being polite and nice.  For example:

*last pick*

xX420BlazerKingXx: im ad dont play other roles

vs.

xX420BlazerKingXx: AD Please!

xX420BlazerKingXx: I know I'm last pick, so I won't complain if someone else wants it, but I play AD carry the best out of all my roles.  I'd appreciate it if you gave me the chance.  

This may not always work, but it doesn't matter at all.  Having someone polite like this on your team is a huge relief for other players.  Somebody who is a higher pick than you can pick whatever they want, you have NO choice in what your team mates pick.  But, if you are polite, they may just help you out.  Again, if they don't, at least you can know that you haven't put any unnecessary pressure on them to perform higher than their skill level, purely out of fear of being harassed and raged at by you.  

Attitude

Again, really simple with the right mindset.  When someone makes a mistake, don't be condescending or tell them something obvious they probably already comprehend, but don't have enough skill to carry out.  Instead, if you see something good happen, reinforce that situation with positive messages.  Also, try not to bottle up anger.  A lot of players will see something they don't like, then wait until they die or make a mistake to say how shitty that thing is.

For example:  You are Twitch, your support picked Blitzcrank vs Sona Draven.  You don't say anything about it or complain, but when you die from their extremely pokey and powerful lane, you instantly complain to blitz about how shitty his pick was and how you're doing fine to justify what happened.  This happened to me the other day, and instead of raging, I thought to myself "I really am playing this lane wrong, I should deny myself very hard vs Sona+Draven, Blitz is completely useless in this situation, so it's practically 1v2, but Blitz could come back midgame where he will return to usefulness." 

Mechanics

Learn to focus on minions, and only minions!

Since you've started League, you've seen montages of people killing people, people making plays on people, people styling on people and outplaying them for days!  You don't see what goes on behind the scenes, the CREEP SCORE (CS), so it is not drilled into most players mind that they need to be prioritizing CS, not harassing shitty champions.

Let's create a hypothetical situation where we can imagine the gold counts of both teams.  You are Vayne on blue side.  You notice at just 5 minutes, your mid has fed their mid+jungle, and your top died right after!  That makes the score 0-2 for you :(.  You may feel pressured to fix this by getting kills, or making plays, or getting dragon, but what you need to do, is take that pressure off your shoulders and start CSing.  Most players at lower elos get so distracted with their sick-nasty kill count, that they disregard CSing.  "Ha! It's okay if I miss this CS.. and this one.. and, you know what? I dont need any of this wave, I'm going B."  But what they don't realize, is that a kill does not give you a gold advantage unless you also have a solid CS count.

What does this have to do with me playing Vayne?

Well, many people in this situation might think that because the enemy team is getting "fed", they will be unable to fight them.  That is far from the truth.  You can singlehandedly even up the gold for yourself and your team just by farming decently!  You may miss some here and there, but if you truly focus on getting every CS, you will even up your gold and be able to carry a situation most players would lose hope in!  I cannot possibly stress how important CS is.  You may see players at the top of solo queue such as XJ9 who are considered greedy as hell for just farming everything, but in the end, that seems to work, doesn't it?  You don't have to be a god at mechanics to practice CSing and get decent/good at it!

How can I become a pro at killing minions?

It's quite simple really.  If you haven't already taken a look at my previous post, go do that and disable your mouse pointer precision.  Once that is done, you can get started.

Practice Farming in Custom Games

Most people take custom games for granted.  "How do I attack move, how does it work?" "How can I get better at CSing?"  The answer is right in front of you all along!  My best advice for you is to take a hero that you like to play or want to learn to play, and go into a custom game.  Take the runes and masteries you normally run, and go down to the lane you normally play that hero in.  Practice CSing as long as you feel it's necessary.  I used to run a drill where I would practice CSing for an hour every morning.  If I missed one, I would restart the game and try again.  This may be very difficult for you at first, especially on an AP, so you don't have to go that hard on yourself.  Just set a time limit instead.  5, 6, 10 minutes, it doesn't matter.  Set a time limit and see how much CS you can get in that time, and do it over and over until it's perfect or near perfect.  These skills will transfer into real games very well, although you will have a lane opponent that you must deal with, you will (hopefully) not miss CS when it is right in front of you, even in high pressure situations.

Using Minigames to Practice Mechanics

Short and sweet, here are a few links you can use to help your mouse accuracy:

http://www.missionred.com/games/reflexte.html

http://www.bigfatarcade.com/swf/discdash.swf

http://osu.ppy.sh/


http://i.imgur.com/avHOY.png

This minigame is special, some might not even consider it a game, but an annoying image designed to piss you off.  The way it works is, you start at any box of your choice, and move your cursor in a straight lane to another nearby box (any of them).  If you overshoot or undershoot the box, try slowing down your mouse movements, and then do it 3 more times.  For each time you mess up on one box->box movement, you do it 3 more times.  Then you move on to the next box, and the next, and so on.

The point of this is to not only increase your accuracy with your mouse, but to understand your weaknesses/strengths in mouse movement.  You may be really good at going from bottom-left to top-right, but really bad at going from top-right to bottom-left.  You may understand how this can massively impact your gameplay.  Practice makes perfect!  It's repetitive, but what other useful stuff are you doing during champion select/queue?

Things You Can Do In Game

These are stupid little things I do in game that I feel help me to warm-up as well as increase my mechanical ability:

As you're moving to a destination, right click the ground in an arch, fast enough so that your hero is basically unhindered and continues moving in a straight line.  Do this as fast as you can.  Increases accuracy, warms up your hand, prepares you to CS better and make plays.

If your team is doing nothing in the first 1:40 seconds, find a point on the ground you cannot forget, place your character on top of it, and right-click in random directions as necessary to make your character stand perfectly on top of that point you started on.  This increases your mouse speed and mechanical reaction time.

Decision-Making

In order to make good decisions, you must be constantly analysing the game.  I touched upon this in my last post in little depth.  A good decision-maker does not randomly uses skills and abilities in the hope that he might get a kill, he/she carefully plans out his next move;  Always considering what he/she can and can't do. This involves knowing everything that's going on in your immediate surroundings, as well as your map.  Many people fall victim to barrier, flash, exhaust, Twisted Fate, Shen, shield, etc baits.  This means how well you do becomes a variable, based upon whether or not the enemy feels like (or is good enough) to bait/kill/outplay you.  You become nothing but an instrument played by the enemy on their way to Diamond, and you plummet down to Rusty Iron XXXVI.

Eliminating the Variable

The way you eliminate the variable, how well you do, is by removing the actual variables in-game.  If you're unsure of what the outcome of a situation will be, do not stick around.  If someone is MIA and could kill you, but you don't know when/where they'll show up, don't stick around.  This is very hard for some players to get past, because they feel as though they have made a mistake if the enemy doesn't end up showing up after all.  But usually the only reason that happens is because they have less map awareness than they could have.  So in the end, you must punish yourself for lack of awareness.  Lack of awareness could mean not noticing someone flying by on a ward, or not carefully studying what the enemy team is doing all while trying to farm/out-trade enemies.  The latter is extremely difficult, sure, but if you continuously lose farm because you didn't look at the map enough, eventually you'll start looking at the damn map more often, and be more sure of your decisions.    

Although map awareness is not the only issue, it is has the biggest impact on your decision-making.  You make your choices based off your current knowledge, it's when you make choices based off of your lack of knowledge that things go wrong.  "Maybe I can kill him, let's go for it.  Maybe this will go on youtube or something,"  "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm dead. Wow that guy does big damage" 

The other things you should probably keep track of in order to improve your decision-making are cooldowns, and the scoreboard.  Cooldowns are simple.  Learn the general cooldowns of commonly used skills, such as TF ult, Shen ult, flash, barrier, exhaust, ignite.  It can be really hard to memorize things like flash because of masteries, but for TF ult it's as simple as making a mental note to play defensively in 3 minutes.  In order to memorize summoners, you might want to compare them to your own.  Often, summoners are used in reaction to someone elses summoners.  If you and the enemy mid fought, and you both used ignite about 10 seconds apart, you know when each cooldown will be up.  

It is also very important to look at the scoreboard as much as you can, because you can see how well your lanes are doing, and buy items accordingly.  If enemy Irelia is getting really ahead of your Malphite, you might need a BOTRK earlier-than-usual in order to survive.  You may not have noticed this if you didn't look at the scoreboard, and you would've been slaughtered with IE and PD in hand.. Over, and over, and over.. Until you farm 3200 more gold.  Good luck mate! It's also good to know what items champions have before you think about fighting.  Or, what items they don't have.  You may want to harass someone and prevent someone from B'ing because you know they will finish a big item soon, or push them in to limit their options entirely.  While doing this, you could also inform your team of the situation and call for an incredibly easy dragon or tower, or tower-dive, etc.  

Small Tip to Help With Map Awareness

This may sound silly to you, but try reducing the size of your chat box and moving it above your minimap, perhaps even cutting half of it off so you can only read important stuff.  This makes it so that every time one of your team-mates says something, you will also subconsciously glance at your minimap.  Something I saw on Chauster's stream a long time ago, and adopted into my game, that I believe has helped me quite a bit.

In conclusion, the best thing to do in order to get better at solo queue is to recognize what is going wrong, and try to improve on it!  Don't expect any of this to get better within minutes, it could be weeks, months, or years, but at least you know your improving, or trying to.

Well, that's it for now, thanks for reading, and if you've read this far, I hope you enjoyed it.  There will be more to come in the future!

- LOD


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How To Prepare Yourself for Solo Queue; Mechanically & Mentally

Hello ladies & gentlemen, my name is LOD.  You may know me from a variety of things that I've done over the past 3 years in LoL.  That is all unimportant for now, as my goal is to help you, the reader.  If you are curious as to my elo, I've been platinum season 1, diamond season 2, and challenger season 3.  I have multiple accounts above diamond 5.  My main is ElOhDe currently.

Almost everyone has hit a brick wall at some point in solo queue.  A point which seems impossible to get past, whether it be due to teammates.  In my opinion, this is the most important part of your entire solo queue career, as most people take everything for granted before they hit this wall.  They take any natural skill they have for granted.  I know I did, as I was stuck at 1600 for over four months in season one.  I didn't understand how to break past this line, as I didn't actually understand things I could do to get better.  Before I hit that line, I just played the game and the elo came naturally.

Everything has been so easy up until this wall, what can you possibly do to break it down and get past it?

There are actually a variety of small improvements you can make that will make you much better in the long run, but although they may seem small in the grand scheme of things, the changes could be quite drastic for you to adjust to, but will give you results.

1.  Disable Mouse Pointer Precision (Mouse acceleration)

If you've ever wondered how someone like Doublelift (or myself) can be so accurate and have such great mechanics, this, along with attack move (which will lead us to our next subject), is what makes him able to do so.

I'm going to make this short and sweet:

1. Press the windows start button, type "Mouse", and click on your Mouse settings.

2. Go to the tab that says Pointer Options

3. Disable "Enhance Pointer Precision" (quite ironic, since it does quite the opposite)

4. Adjust the slider to the 6th notch

5. Go into league and make sure your mouse speed slider is set to the exact middle.
(More precise way of doing this: What you do is go into Riot Games > League of Legends > Config > Game.cfg

Edit the file with notepad

Find GameMouseSpeed=X

Replace X (will be a number) with 10.)

You have now successfully disabled the most useless feature of Windows.  If you feel like your mouse is too slow, rather than adjusting ingame or in your Mouse Properties, opt to download your mouses driver and change the DPI (Mine is set to 1800)! This makes it so that your mouse movement ratio is 1:1 as in, if you move your mouse super fast, it will move at the same speed as if you were moving your mouse super slow.

What this means is that you can get used to the speed of the mouse, it's movement isn't sporadic and unpredictable.  It will make you more accurate at everything you do, and although it may take time to adjust to, it will be 100% worth it.  The other upside is that since not everyone has time to be playing League all the time, this allows you to get better at the game without playing it!  Just aiming for the right bookmark in google chrome 100 times a day or seeing how fast you can get to the X or minimize button will translate over to your gameplay in League!  Crazy, right?

If you would like to read further into this, check this link! http://counterstrikesourcetactics.blogspot.ca/2008/02/css-mouse-optimization-guide.html

Edit: A very clear explanation by Reddit user thepursuitofwhat

The Windows Mouse Pointer Precision is a fancy term for mouse acceleration. Enabling this feature would change the distance your mouse goes from Point A to Point B depending on how fast you move your mouse to point A to Point B. Disabling this feature lets your muscle memory develop over time because you know where your mouse will go when you move X amount EVERY TIME.

Also, keeping your mouse speed setting to 6/11 keeps your mouse movement consistent because anything that's not 6/11 has either negative or positive acceleration.

2. Use of Attack Move

Attack moving, by default, is set to A+Left Click or Shift+Right Click.  The former is the standard use of the skill, while the latter is the smartcasted version.  A+Clicking will give you a target reticle far more accurate than the pointer, while shift+right click is much faster to use.  A lot of top players will make use of both, but not all.  It doesn't matter which one you use, or both, but I highly suggest you at least try to use one of them.

What does it do exactly?

Attack move will hit the closest possible target in range of you, not the closest target to where you click, but the closest target around your character.  If you are in range of an enemy, you will not be able to move your character with this function, ONLY attack.  A couple other things you should know about it is the way it functions with stealth, and jungle camps. It does not automatically hit jungle camps if they are not already aggro'd, and if you are stealthed (this is the most annoying for vayne tumble while ulted) it will not automatically attack the nearest target.

What is the point?

The point of attack moving is so that even when you miss a creep or a champion by a small little bit and hit the terrain, you will not force yourself out of position, you will remain where you are.  Autoattacking the wrong target is much better than running into 5 people and dying, or walking into the support+AD when you didn't mean to.  Attack move gives you a safety net against the faults of your own brain.  Everyone misclicks at times, its up to you to press shift before you attack to prevent those misclicks from having a real negative impact on your gameplay!

3. Whether or Not to Use Smartcast

I don't know where the trend formed where everyone decided to start keybinding everything to smartcast, but personally I don't like it.  There was a point where every pro endorsed smartcasting and how amazing it is, so people thought "Wow, if the pros use it, so should I!"  But the downsides of it must be recognized.

Why would smartcasting possibly be a bad thing?

Smartcasting, although great for using skills in quick succession, it can be terribly inaccurate when compared to regular casting.  The aiming reticle, whether you use the circle or the line-display, really allows your brain to process exactly where the skillshot will go.

A great example of a hero who can benefit from both smartcasting and regular-casting would be Lux.  In order to effectively burst heroes down, she wants to be able to use her skills very quickly.  But at the same time, she needs to make the catch in the first place in order to initiate the combo!  So you can start out with a normal, more accurate cast of Q, into a smartcast of E & R.

Where is the medium, how can I use both?

Well, you can always use shift+Q/W/E/R/D/F to smartcast.  That is personally what works for me, but what about for the people who genuinely enjoy smartcasting almost all the time? Surely they wouldn't want to leave their pinky on shift all the time.  Well, I smartcast about 50% of the time and it works perfectly for me, but there is an alternative for the people who smartcast the majority of the time.  Re-bind your normal casts, put them to use.  Not sure when it was added, but you can now bind normal casts to Shift+Q/W/E/R/D/F, enabling you to use normal casting when you really need it.  This will be extremely useful to you if you are a player who really did benefit from the rebinding of keys to all smartcast, but find yourself inaccurate in certain situations.

I'm already completely comfortable with my accuracy!

I don't care, some situations require normal casts, at least rebind your normal cast as I've shown above.  I guarantee you'll see improvement.

4. Disabling Nameplates

Choking is something that happens to even the best of players, and although this won't apply to the majority, people get stuck in high elo too!  You can prevent yourself from choking by tricking your own brain.  Shift+K gets rid of nameplates, so you will no longer be reminded that you're playing against the mighty HotshotnidaleeGG every time you go in for a CS.

5. Appreciate the Importance of Physical Excerise

Have you ever felt like cold hands have held you back from playing better or reacting a little faster? I sure as hell have, and when I do, I know its time to go get some god damn exercise.

Not only is getting exercise a great way to release stress and anger from solo queue and other various things in real life, but it will make you feel healthier and more positive about yourself; and then on top of that, it increases your blood flow.  Increased blood flow equals two hands and arms that move a lot faster than they did before! Warming up your hands is crucial to being able to CS well and react quickly.  Your brain may be thinking a mile a minute, but if your hands cannot keep up what good is it? That leads us to my next tip.

6. Constantly move your mouse around and right click

Constantly clicking in circles around your character or slightly up and down as you are moving towards a location really helps to get your hands ready for the next big teamfight, the next 10 minutes of CSing, or the next 1v5 pentakill you're about to get.  This is something that most people should utilize, at it is extremely simple, and if you are truly focused on the game, there is no reason not to do it.

To add to this, constantly move around while in lane.  If you are hiding behind a creep wave moving back and forth, and all the sudden you edge yourself out just a tiny bit outside of the creep line, then back in immediately, it can sometimes bait people into wasting skillshots on you.  Or, if they have a skillshot that goes through the creepwave, try to move in an arc motion behind the creepline.

7. How to be a safe, reliable player

May seem very obvious or basic, but is something that people can take for granted.  This is actually one of the hardest things you will accomplish in this game.  Think about everything you do.  When you are just about to CS a creep, think "Can I get this? Will I get this? What position do I need to maneuver into to get this safely? Attack now! Got it"  All of these thoughts must flow through your head for everything you do, and they must be processed lightning fast, until it is just reflex.  This way you are actively thinking about the game at hand, and not on your bad day at work yesterday.  Again, as an example, when you are going to CS a wave at 30 minutes, you might be thinking "Who's on the map? 4 People? Where could Ezreal be? What are his items? If he comes how can I approach this 1v1?  Will I win?"  People like doublelift don't just magically 1v2 because they know what to do no matter what, they are thinking about the game at hand constantly.  Also, consider if everything was or will be worth it in your head.  This will eventually turn you into a safer, better, more reliable player, and is something I think EVERYONE can do.  Being aggressive for no reason should not be your basic go-to playstyle, you start out playing like a pansy, and when they make a mistake you can capitalize on it.

8. Appreciate the importance of differentiating someone elses mistake from your own, while keeping it out of team and all chat

When I play, I am constantly analyzing everyones play.  When someone around me makes a mistake, I think wow that guy completely messed up.  But before I go to type a paragraph about how bad he is and how I can probably 1v1 him and I wouldve done better if I got his role, I think "You know what?  He probably knows that he made a mistake, and feels bad about it."  And if he doesn't?  Who the hell named me the judicator.  If he's not smart enough to see what he did wrong, he's definitely not smart enough to engage in conversation with.  If you saw someone on the street licking the pavement, would you walk up to them and say "Sir, are you aware that your tongue is scraping against the dirty pavement?  People walk on here!"  Hell no, you'd be like "Damn this guy is crazy, lets get the hell out of here."  How about you take that attitude and throw it into your solo queue game.  Stop giving a flying f*** what other people do, merely recognize what they do.

As for your own mistakes?  It's okay to be caught up in the moment and think damn I could've had that if you didn't fuck it all up nerd!  But a few seconds later, reflect on the situation.  What could I have done better in that situation?  A great example was earlier, I was playing Orianna.  I threw a ball onto my friendly Hecarim, and he E'd into the enemy Twisted Fate in midlane.  It was rather close to the tower, and he decided to back out.  I wanted to get the kill, I wasted my ult while the ball was on top of Hecarim.  Hecarim had turned around just as I ulted.  Would this be a great time for me to rage at this Hecarim for being a giant panzy? Yeah, but instead I can recognize the fact that I wasted a skill I didn't need to, not my teammate.  It did take me about 3 minutes to go back and say, man I really did waste my ult, what a stupid move, we couldn't have even gotten that kill!  But the point was that I did.  Ever stop to consider that while other people can be bad at the game, when they do something unfavourable, something in their brain made them think it was the right thing to do?  They might not always be right, but theres always a chance, right?  When you tell them what they did wrong or how bad it was, you are questioning their intelligence.  Not everyone takes that lightly.

9. Accept the responsibility that comes with ranked, or don't play it at all

You think playing a quick ranked game will relieve some stress?  Unless you have a very strong mind, think again mate.  Something as small as a screwed up invade could give a kill to the wrong person and instantly lose you a game, forcing you to sit through 20 minutes of agony, ever consider that?  Ranked games are not going to relieve your stress, they are expected to be taken seriously.  All the ragequits and AFK's you see are from people who have taken their stress from real life and applied it into the game, causing an even more stressful environment for not only themselves but the people on their team.  Either that, or they are just too young to comprehend what they are even doing, and think they are clever.  I started playing the game when I had just turned 13, and I thought it was funny to run around as Twitch with 6 sunfires slowly burning the enemy team, and that my team should take the game more lightly.  Damn, I was wrong.

10. Be overly polite

This one is the simplest and yet can sometimes seem the hardest.  If you truly think you belong at a higher elo than where you are, then why would you bother stooping down to this elo's level of rudeness and disrespect?    Being polite and ignoring insults/harassment shows mental superiority, a trait of a leader.  Ever wonder why when you try to talk to a famous streamer or pro in all chat, they just choose to ignore you?  They're damn well reading everything you write, but they're pretending that you are so unimportant to them, that they won't even acknowledge it.  This may seem like the opposite of being polite (and ignoring fans is rude!), but in solo queue, everything changes.  Filtering out all the disrespectful shit and replacing it with your own "Good job man, thanks!" really adds a positive atmosphere to the team, and will make your team desperate to impress you.  When they fail, they might even feel bad for letting you down.  You let them into your circle, you acknowledged their success, you made them feel good.  Now guess what? They want more than just themselves to get this juicy elo, they want you to join them in their conquest for solo queue dominance.  They might even ask them to duo queue with you, but I wouldn't bother.  Honour them instead!  When they see that +1 Teamwork popup, they know damn well that it was you.  And they feel good about it.  Hell, you might even pass on this contagious behaviour of being polite, and in turn you are making the world a better place.  Give yourself a pat on the shoulder, soldier.



Well, that's it for now, thanks for reading, and if you've read this far, I hope you enjoyed it.  There will be more to come in the future!  I will go into more specific topics later on, but this is a general solo queue survival guide.

- LOD

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