A while ago Riot announced that when Season One officially ends, anyone with an ELO above 1495 would receive a special Jarvan skin as a reward. Prior to that announcement I was happily making my way up in ELO, getting as high as 1494. Yes, one ELO point short of said reward. And of course, since I became aware of the reward, I’ve seen my ELO hover around 1480 and even drop to 1448 (as of today). FML and all that.
When I start to care more about each win/loss, I also start to analyze the games a bit more and try to figure out what went wrong. Some games are pretty obvious: Someone on my team going 0-8 and feeding their carry is not hard to understand. Not a whole lot you can do about those games, and over time you will be on the receiving end of a feeder just as often as you will be the victim of one.
The games I think about most are games were either I just played poorly, or games that were close enough that I could have done something to change the result.
Poorly played games are interesting because, technically, I know my skill level and know I’m not as bad as that one bad game showed, so why did it happen? Often, the champ I picked was just a terrible pick based on who the enemy champs where. If I was one of the first picks, not much you can do, but if I was near the bottom in picks, that’s a correctable mistake, but in order to correct it, I have to play enough champs well to feel comfortable switching.
Currently Teemo is by far my best champ, but he gets countered hard by certain combos (CC+burst slaughters him), and he relies on his team to properly setup group fights. I play him like a carry, but not a hard carry like an Ashe or Jax, where if I’m doing well, it’s GG regardless. I’m good with Amumu, but he is banned in every game. Warwick got nerfed, as did Shen, and neither champ is a real strong pick now. My Nunu games are too up/down to really feel comfortable; if I get a good start I roll with him, if things don’t go great in the first 15min, I can’t seem to recover. Basically, if Teemo is not a great pick for a certain game, my level of play drops off, and my odds of winning also drop.
The other situation, close games, is also interesting. In those games, whether I’m doing really well or not, I still believe I could have done more and gotten us the win. The “what” scenarios are too many to fully break down, but analyzing things like my item build, early game lane performance, when to go off and gank vs when to farm/deny, etc; looking at all of these things after a game is what really helps me improve.
What’s nice about LoL ranked play is it’s a pretty clear indicator of how you are doing. If you keep playing games but your ELO stays the same, it means you are not improving. If it drops it’s because you have regressed, or perhaps the champs you play are not as powerful as they once were (whether it’s because they got nerfed or others got buffed). Either way, the game is letting you know it’s time to change if you want to keep climbing.
Now to figure out a sure-fire way to hit 1495+ in time for that skin…
Hardcore Casual 
noob.
MBS
MBS
I love me some shroom salad! Teemo has his issues but that cuddly little yordle is such a nice choice. He is not Tier 1, but a strong Tier2 pick in my opinion. With a good map awareness and a careful minefield in the enemy jungle you can always backdoor and retreat easily.
Personally I go by this build: http://www.solomid.net/guides.php?g=658
You read the rewards wrong bro. You need 1875 for the skin, you get like a silver summoner icon for 1495.
I will carry you if you really want 1495 though.
“You will be on the receiving end of a feeder just as often as you will be the victim of one”
Also, I think this is wrong. There are four people on your team who have the potential to feed assuming you are at an elo below your skill level where as the enemy team has five people who could be the feeder. So as long as you are not the feeder in the long run you should gain elo no problem.
That’s a good point, although I count games where I play terrible as ‘feeding’, so that kinda balances out. But yea, overall the odds of 4 people being bad are lower than 5 being bad.
30 seems to far off…
I’m level 18 in LoL right now and I cant muster the hoorah to keep playing normal asss blind pick to get 20 and buy sex runes
Once I got HoN for 10 bucks I pretty much dove in and I like it much better than LoL
well rest assured that the runes do not make that big of a difference. The only thing that really changes is that jungling becomes viable around lvl20 with the runes.
I haven’t delved into rank play at all, mostly out of ignorance of how the scoring works. If I play solo, will I be thrown up against premades and see my ELO drop? Lot of questions, is there a FAQ site or some such that may answer these questions.
There are different ELO ranks for pre-mades (5 man) and solo queue (the third ELO ranking is for TT 3v3 pre-mades). In the solo queue however, you can queue up with one other person, but the game will still consider it a solo queue game. Can’t play ranked with 3 or 4 friends.
1495 will only get you silver ranked, to get the Jarvan skin you need to be gold ranked. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Indeed, bubble busted. Still going to chase the shiny though.
I’ve always been of the opinion that my ELO directly reflects the state of humanity.
People have been getting worse lately.
A good Teemo is so boss if you can avoid the hard CC teams (or just avoid the hard CC with great positioning). I’m pretty sure Rainman carried himself to 2400 ELO playing Teemo in the vast majority of his matches.
Amumu is amazing, but as you said he’s pretty much permabanned (and for good reason). He’s a great representation of design/balance difficulty imho. The only ways to make him unbanworthy would be to nerf him, which would make him useless, or buff up some other tanks, which might cause even more headaches. If only Leona could jungle… Still, she might be worth learning if you like his playstyle. She’s so powerful when fed.
WW and Shen are still pretty viable I think, Shen maybe less so in solo queue as his teleport-saves are much more powerful in organized bait situations. I feel Tankwick is more viable than DPSwick now due to heal nerf, but it’s so sad to see what little damage you do as Tankwick. :(
Nunu… I love this guy but his late-game scaling is terrible. He’s a very strong early-mid ganker but you can pretty much kiss your contribution to team fights goodbye if you have a rough start. He’s a sweet AD carry buff bot though (e.g., such amazing ganks with Ashe, Xin, Gangplank, Vayne, etc.). I find a tanky-support build works out best in most situations, but you’d better hope you end the game by 40 minutes or that your carries get insanely fed.
As for myself, I’ve had such a brutal streak of normal games lately while trying to learn Nocturne/Fiddle that I’m too afraid to play ranked right now. I haven’t even played well in these games myself, so I can’t blame every loss on leavers/feeders.
I love how streaky this game can be… A month ago I went like 20-5. Lately I’ve gone 3-12.
I should probably bite the bullet and aim for the Bronze medallion though because I’m only +3 wins away from it.
I’ve got about 6 solid champs in my arsenal, and among them 4 are junglers. Hilariously, I find Sona to be one of the most enjoyable champions to play but it’s just so hard to carry bad teams with her. I’ve racked up scores like 1/1/25 and still lost. :(
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