Maximizing your chances at winning before the game

Introduction

I'm often asked by people what they can do to raise their elo. Sure enough there has been some writing done on this subject, often pretty decent as well. However most of the time they aren't complete, which is why I decided to write about this myself.

What will follow are a few guidelines you should keep in mind before you hop in the queue, while you're in champ select and during the game. Obviously you won't suddenly gain a 100% win ratio, but your chances should have gone higher if you didn't do these things before.

Runes

It is very important that you are versatile. Assuming you main mid champions, you will want a standard runepage (Red Magic Penetration, Yellow Mana Regen, Blue AP/Level, Quints Flat AP) as a basis.
This is not enough! Here is a list with suggested runepages and the reason why:

- Magic Resist Reds/Blues: countered by AP (Kassadin, Katarina, Akali..)
- Armor Yellows: countered by AD (Talon, Gangplank, Pantheon)
- Movement Speed Quints: champions that rely on going in-and-out (Veigar, Ryze..)
- Gold/10 Yellows/Quints: in case you focus on lategame
- Health/Level Yellows: when playing a champion that doesn't use mana as resource (Mordekaiser, Vladimir, Katarina..)
- Magic Penetration Reds: when you go against a heavy MR champ (Galio) or it goes well with your kit (Brand's DoT)
- Magic Resist/Level blues: when you go against a double AP setup

As you can see there are many different runepages for just one role, and these leave out some very champion specific pages. Therefore it is my advice you buy the runepage bundle at least once and/or add a few ones with IP to make sure you can adapt to situations. Runes have a serious impact during the early stages of the game and optimizing them will certainly give you an advantage. Having these runepages will also allow you pick your mid lane before the opponent while lowering the effect of a counterpick.

This obviously works for every other lane and the jungler as well, you'll need someone else who mains that lane to tell you what runepages to use though.

Choosing a role

You saw me talking earlier about maining AP mid. If you want to become successful in any type of play (solo queue or tournament play), it is strongly advised to focus yourself mainly on one role in specific. By doing so, you will put a lot more of your time into that particular role which obviously leads to a deeper knowledge of that part of the game.

When you have played quite a bit of champions, you will probably find a specific kind that really attracts you. Once you have this, make sure you have a stable base to play with. Depending on the role, this should range between 3 (Support & AD) to 5 (Mid, Top and Jungle) champions. Get a deep knowledge about these champions, play them in different matchups, find out what they counter and who counters them, etc. Having this extensive knowledge over a few specific champions will allow you to fall back on them in case you have an important game coming up or you just want to have the biggest chance to win in soloqueue.

It is very important that you can play other roles as well. In soloqueue you won't have the luxury of the taking your role whenever you want to, meaning you will have to adapt. There is no discussion here: you have to know some champions from every single role. Whether you want to or not: if you play only 4 roles, sooner or later you will be forced in the remaining one and you'll sweat that game. There isn't a lot required: just make sure you can play at least 2 of every other role.

It is worth taking into consideration that having this broad variety of champions at your disposal will help you with your main role as well. If you know how certain junglers work (their cooldowns, routes, approximate damage output etc), you will be able to judge situations more accurately when these junglers gank your lane. This applies to every single role, so make an attempt at trying out every champion once.

Once you have this stable basic repertoire, you can try to expand your main role. The flavor of the month (FOTM) will be the best guideline for you, if you don't have a particular champion in mind. A champion that is FOTM will be discussed frequently on forums and played or banned most of the games. These champions will have a small edge towards winning because the knowledge on how to play against them and the known counters will lack in the community. Therefore a balanced champion (50% win-loss chance ratio) will suddenly have this advantage of being a 'surprise' and suddenly reach a 55% win chance (note: numbers are entirely made up, but represent the idea).

At the time of writing this would include Malphite and Rumble. The interesting thing about this is that they're both coming from the same counter-train. At first Jax was very favored amongst players, so he became FOTM. Jax then had to be countered, and people found out Malphite was the way to go. Riot then nerfed Jax a little to balance him, while players were grunting with the sudden rise of Malphites. As of lately, Rumble has been re-discovered and the nerfs to both Malphite and Rumble are already pending.

It is very important to look at patchnotes and follow discussions online to discover what's hot. A slight, seemingly unimportant buff to any champion in the patchnotes will cause it to be played a lot more. As people play it more often, they will find out certain interesting tricks and the actual value of that champion for the team.

The opposite happens as well: a minor nerf to any champion will cause the champion to lose FOTM status, almost regardless the actual nerf. People will move on and seek a champion that also has this 55% chance, rather than stick with the one that has now been countered and lost a little strength.

When choosing a role, you could either go for the one you like the most or the one that has the most potential. It is my belief that Mid champions and Junglers will have the biggest impact on the game. Since soloqueue is often decided early on in the game and people tend to give up fast, the champions that are strongest early game will snowball this to victory.

If you do not like these two roles, my next suggestion would be Support. I imagine this feels like a surprise to most of you, so let me make a slight adjustment to that statement: My next suggestion would be support IF you are 1600 elo or above. Supports have the biggest impact on botlane due to their ability to zone, add cc, control vision and in some cases add serious early game damage. However: for all this to work out you should have a decent AD carry who manages an acceptable level of lasthitting and manages to follow up when you make a play.

Streams

Streams will provide a valuable source of information from high level players which will help you to get better. You can focus on streamers that have your own role as main (Scarra for mid lane, TheOddOne for jungle, Nhat Nguyen/Spellsy/Xpecial for Support etc) or watch several of them to become more familiar with other roles and champions.

You will see how these professional players handle their roles and matchups, what little tricks they have, how they judge situations and so many more things. It is important you pay attention to the little things and listen to the commentary in which they explain certain choices. By overthinking their remarks, you will understand the logic behind choices and it will be much easier to apply in your own games as well.

Pro tip: use LoL Stream Browser to see who is streaming right now and add those you like to your favorites. This will make sure you receive a notification whenever they come online.

Duoqueue

Duoqueueing is the act of queueing together with someone else. Doing so will mean that there will be only 3 random players on your team instead of 4. This seems like a good idea, right? Not always.

It is my suggestion that you do not duoqueue, unless you're 1500 elo or below. When you look at the displayed level of skill of all elo ranges, you could say that there is relatively very little difference between 1000 elo and 1400 elo compared to 1800 and 2200. This also explains why a big part of the community is clumped up around 1200 elo, give or take a few hundred.

The reason I instate this 1500 elo border is because of the penalty. When you duoqueue, you automatically instate a penalty on your team which causes you to gain higher skilled opponents. When you duoqueue as 1200 players, you will most likely get opponents from 1300 elo as opposed to 1200s should you have gone solo. As I've said earlier: in these lower elo ranges the effect won't be that big, but the higher you get the harder it gets. Due to the extremely smaller amount of players around 1900 elo compared to 1200, duoqueueing as a 1700 elo player will match you against 1800 or 1900 elo players. Once again: since the gap between 1700 and 1800 is bigger than 1200 and 1300, you will need relatively seen more skill to overcome this.

And this is where I reach the biggest disadvantage for you duoqueueing: you might be able to overcome the difference in skill, but your teammates have to do that as well. When you duoqueue as 1700 and you get matched against 1800 players, it is safe to assume that that one person on your team that actually belongs at 1700, will lose.

It is your task as a premade to be able to overcome not only your own lane's disadvantage, but also the ones that you create at other lanes. You can't expect every lane to win when you force them to play against an opponent above their level, which is the most crucial mistake premades make. Sure, you can complain afterwards how every lane lost except your botlane, but you are the direct cause of it.

For this and the previous reasons: do not duoqueue unless you're at a lower elo bracket (-1500 elo) or you have objectively determined that you belong at a much higher elo (for example: a pro player playing on an alt or your ability to win lanes in Ranked Team queue against much stronger opponents, without getting carried). If you apply to these criteria then playing with a friend who does as well and has a positive attitude will increase your chances to win.

Attitude

Last but not least: maintain a positive attitude. Especially in soloqueue, things tend to get heated. Players will behave very toxic once your team falls behind and will dramatically lower your chances at turning the tide. When you encounter people like this, it is key to be the wise man and let it slide. If it's a small outburst (Lux you noob) and nothing else, don't react. If nobody reacts, nobody provokes either. If someone does react, tell them to let it go and focus on the game or similar encouraging messages.

When someone has entered a state of rage (Lux you piece of ****, I'll go **** your *** and troll you ahaha reported for bad skill u ******* noob) they will not escape it before the game has ended. There is not much for you to do, other than put him on ignore and focus on your own game. Doing so will make sure you don't get distracted by people screaming at eachother and might allow you to carry them.

If someone has targetted his rage at you, do not respond to it. Stick to your own game and focus on creating an advantage big enough even trolls can't ruin. In the end you have to ask yourself a simple question: 'Am I here to justify myself and teach others how to play, or am I here to gain elo?'. After the game, nobody cares anymore if you failed that flash at the 16th minute and died to it. What will matter however, is the 11 elo you've lost because you spent the rest of the game argueing and missing objectives because you were pointing out how stupid your jungler is for laughing at you when he can't even pull off a single gank.

If you want to get better at this game, you have to distinguish this: games are for practice, forums are for discussion. You use forums (As in: ways of communication aka The official forums, Reddit, Facebook groups, 3rd party websites etc) to think of strategies, lane matchups, item builds, etc.

Once you've entered the game, you will leave all that behind and focus on playing and possibly adapting your strategy at specific points to counter the enemy playstyle. What you don't do, is spend half the game explaining your jungler how to pull off a gank or complain for 20 minutes how bad that level 1 fight was. How social you might be and how tempting it is to share your knowledge on a specific situation: these things don't get you elo and instead make you lose focus.

Obviously it's not bad to throw in a quick message 'Try to gank trough their jungle next time', but don't go into discussions why frozen heart would be better than randuins omen while you should be busy outcs'ing, zoning and harassing the enemy mid. On top of that advice isn't always that appreciated, so there's a lively chance you provoke a teammates (wtf u think I dont know my champ? fu Lux) so perhaps it's best to let them play along while you take mental notes on situations you'd like to examine after the game.

Other than that you can also throw in a pat on the shoulder from time to time. Congratulating your jungler on that fast dragon or your support for quickly overviewing a situation and suggesting a risky but calculated baron attempt, will make them feel more appreciated and increasing their motivation. Don't overuse it either, nobody wants to read 'gz' every time you manage to lasthit a minion (so to speak).

Bottom line is: stay positive, have a bigger chance to win the game.