If you play League of Legends with a bunch of friends, then you've probably played on a few ranked teams where the individual players boasted a variety of personal ratings. Ask yourself honestly, how much more mechanically skilled are the Platinum players than the Silver players? There is a gap, to be sure, but it's narrower than some people think. A few of my own Silver friends like to taunt their opponents with insults of the "How much did your account cost?" nature when they win a lane against someone with a higher rating, which is nonsense. It's not as if mid-Silver is to mid-Platinum as mid-Platinum is to Faker. The spectrum of mechanical ability correlates to rank more like this:

A Platinum player is certainly the heavy favorite in a lane versus a Silver player, but it's just not a guaranteed, absolutely-no-effort-necessary kind of situation in the same way that a high-Diamond player can make a Platinum player look like a complete fool. Still, Platinum games look fairly different than Silver games. I recently watched a number of mid-Silver games and I've come to believe that the majority of that difference stems from a greater understanding of the game rather than the players' raw ability to control their champions. Compiled here are some of the most egregious mistakes I witnessed.

1. Tower Dives

Don't do dumb tower dives. Low elo players tend to have a good idea of when they can successfully pull off a safe solo dive; the deceptive thing is when they have teammates around, giving them false confidence. Only commit to a group dive if you're certain you or one of your teammates could almost do it by themselves. If it's necessary for a group dive to be 100% concerted to be successful, you will fail. Even pro players like those on CLG are capable of fumbling a dive, resulting in this 1v4 Quadrakill for Kim "FeniX" Jae-hun:

WP

2. Understanding Team Composition

I'm not a huge advocate of fretting over team comp in champ select. It's best that people play what they know; the bare essentials of solo queue are engage (not even necessarily a tank) or a catching mechanism to force fights when you're ahead, and a balance of damage types in case the game goes late. That's it, and not even those are absolutes. The important thing is to understand what each team's advantages are once you're in the game. The three things I'm going to discuss are things pretty much everyone knows, but I wasn't seeing them heeded in every game.

Firstly, AoE. Stop grouping up against AoE. Please, just stop. If the enemy team has an Annie or Malphite, treat your teammates like they have Ebola and the flu. It's OK to contest objectives as a team, just don't stand where they can land their ultimates on more than one person, especially, especially if you are a carry. If you're an ADC or APC and you stand next to literally anyone else, you become a very appealing target. Malphite should have to flash and ult to reach you, and even then he should be hitting only you. And please, don't group up to walk through dark jungle corridors. AoE loves the jungle.

TIP gets wombo'd thinking they've caught Piglet's Vayne.

The second item is poke. Poke is oppressive when ahead, but I find that teams are often willing to concede objectives to poke even when they're even or ahead. The thing about poke champions is that they tend to be much weaker once you get up in their faces, but people become discouraged when their support takes one Jayce E+Q and gets chunked. Either force the fight or trade objectives. Just don't sit and wait. An enemy team with poke demands you be decisive.

The last thing is scaling. This has become a bit of a joke, and it is true, people like to say "we have late game" to cheer up their teammates in losing situations even when they might not have late game. But there is some truth to it – sometimes you do have late game! If you have hard-scaling champs on your team like Jax or Vayne, encourage your teammates to play patiently. If you fall behind, the burden is not on you to get kills and catch up – the burden is on them to close the game before you scale. Farming is winning. Conversely, you must be wary of the opposite situation. If your Leblanc is picking up kills all over the map, focus on objectives. Kills alone don't close games; you haven't begun to put the game away until at least an inhibitor is down.

3. Making the most out of your abilities

Basic abilities that have no utility except to do damage can usually be kept on cooldown. Other abilities demand more attention, but there are a number of people out there who press all their buttons right at the outset of combat, often forfeiting valuable escapes. The best part of Lucian's E, for instance, is that you dash – not that it activates your passive! If you're using Ahri's ultimate for its damage alone, you'd be better off playing Annie! Sometimes, people just aren't making the most of their key abilities. Check out this famous example of a great Orianna ult by Carl "ForellenLord" Lückmann, a full 10 seconds into combat:

The famous "3k elo" Ori ult.

4. Focus

Focusing particular enemies is an important part of teamfights in League of Legends, but it is a very nuanced concept. The misconception that I saw in lower elo is this: people must have erred if not all five members of your team attacked a single person. I was under the impression that this idea had melted away over the years as the League of Legends community improved as a whole, but alas, there it was. Immediately eliminating the most dangerous carry on the enemy team is an ideal scenario, but it is always the result of poor positioning on the part of the enemy carry. If the enemy carry is playing defensively, as they ought to be, they will be much harder to reach. You should always attack the most valuable target, but be governed by this maxim: Do Not Die. Yes, there are some situations where you can make yourself a worthy sacrifice, but I am speaking generally. As soon as you die, you cease to have influence in the fight. If you can only attack their support because of some grotesque AoE between you and the carries, do that. If you realize you will be peeled to death before you can reach their ADC, turn back and peel for yours. As a tank, you have greater flexibility because you are inherently survivable. As an ADC, you have fewer options, and so I arrive at my ultimate point: it is OK to attack tanks.

If you complain when ADC's attack tanks, then you aren’t understanding why the meta is what it is. ADC's are picked for 2 main reasons: objective destruction and the fact that only they pose a serious threat to tanks. AP carries tend to bring a lot of up-front damage but their overall DPS is quite low as they don't do much while their abilities are on cooldown. AD carries, on the other hand, do the most consistent damage – enough to kills tanks eventually. If the game had no AD carries, there would be little incentive not to play very tanky team comps. That's why, with ADC's in a relatively weak state right now (along with the removal of Deathfire Grasp and addition of Cinderhulk,) full-tank is the flavor of jungle and top in competitive play. Back in Season 2 when ADC's were at their strongest, Jax, Irelia and Jayce were all common picks for top.

Your ADC's first job is to stay alive. If they can safely attack a valuable target, great, but being in range of the enemy carries frequently means your ADC has overextended and is already dead.

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