An open letter to 1300 ELO players and other non-pros
Dear 1300 ELO players and fellow non-pros,
We have a problem. I know, you’ve been trying your hardest. You’ve been picking the champions you see the pros picking. You’ve been begging your last-pick teammates to please just play support. But you’ve also been complaining about your team not having CV. You’ve been complaining that your teammates don’t ward. You’ve been complaining when you see anything that doesn’t look familiar from one of those 2200 ELO streams you watch on a daily basis.
I’m going to give it to you as straight as I possibly can: You are not a pro. I know this is hard to hear. I know it’s just your teammates getting you down. I know it’s the noobs feeding that are keeping you in the 1300s. Nevertheless, you are still not a pro. You are a 1300 ELO player, and that means a few things.
First, you don’t have to do everything the pros do. The pros play the game a certain way because they are experienced, skilled, consistent players. They make very few mistakes. They select team compositions based on their lack of mistake-making. They choose team comps based on their intimate knowledge of one another’s playstyles. Even when they don’t seem to be communicating, they are counting on their teammates based on thousands of games of experience. You don’t have that luxury. You need to go in to every game with the goal of giving your teammates as much information as possible. You need to choose champions you can personally succeed with.
Just so we’re clear, support + ranged AD is not the only combination of champions that can be successful in a lane. Champions with high damage and crowd control can effectively shut out a support and AD. No buts. I don’t care that you only see support + AD on streams. You aren’t a 2200 ELO streamer. You are a 1300 ELO player. You are playing against 1300 ELO players. They will make plenty of mistakes, I promise.
Second, we all need to stop acting like we can pinpoint exactly what went wrong in every game. I’m guilty of this, too. Each game has mountains of data that will lead you to often faulty conclusions about the reasons for winning and losing. Granted, it’s not a good sign if your mid has 50 creep kills at the 20 minute mark, but if you haven’t been controlling dragon, if you haven’t been aggressive in your lanes, if you haven’t been helping out in teamfights, well, it’s not just your mid’s fault. League of Legends is a very fragmented game with several different phases and each champion performs differently at every stage of the game. Giving up two kills at level 1 is not the end of the world. Hopefully it will encourage more careful behavior for the next ten minutes, but the game is still winnable.
Third and lastly, try banning champions that are extremely forgiving over the course of the game, not champions that require a high level of skill. Ban Morgana. Why? Because she gets a free farm for one button press. Ban Irelia. Why? Because she has a crazy kit that allows her to survive her mistakes. Stop banning Fiddlesticks. Very few people play him and even fewer know what they’re doing. Stop banning Kassadin. Most Kass players at our level miss their Force Pulse at least 25 percent of the time. Stop banning Gangplank. He’s extremely soft for the first 12-15 levels of the game. Force your opponents to play champions that suffer when they make mistakes.
I want to repair our relationship, I really do. If we continue down our present course, though, I can’t see a future for you and I.
Sincerely,
The Wiggin Boy
Posted in: Editorial, league of legends
While I agree with the base idea (don’ try to reiterate the pro meta in every single thing), i dislike this part of your letter:
“You’ve been complaining that your teammates don’t ward.”
Wards are actually even more useful on shit elo than on higher elo, where often teams will get in an oracle war trying to pick off each other’s wards.
If you wanna improve your laning phase, buy wards everytime you go back. You should be farming hard (because you want to win), and these wards will pay off for themself when you can countergank their jungle, or just get out of a dangerous situation alive.
My standard buys when going back are “item that helps me build my core”, + 2 wards, 2 health pots, 2 mana pots. Every time, except if i really dont have enough money. And i usually do.
I’m even below 1300, and i have never regretted this. It hardly ever feels like i am sacrificing higher early damage for this. Au contraire, the improved survivability means i will usually do the most damage/cs. This is NOT limited to high elo. WARDS ARE AWESOME.
Freak, I totally agree that players should be warding. My problem is that players complain about their teammates not warding but refuse to do it themselves. Warding isn’t only the job of junglers/supports. Everyone should ward, all the time. Period. 75g for immeasurable benefit.
i fully agree that ppl need to stop thinking they are playing a 2200 elo tournament match. (i once played as janna and ppl told me i couldn’t last hit a single minion, i mean come on..)
im slightly under 1300 mark(i dont have my 10 matches yet), and as much as i dont want to sound like an a*hole im SURE that the 2 loses i have werent my fault at all. (3-0-4 renekton and 6-0-9 janna at 25 min mark) (i know scores are not all, but you get the idea)
so i honestly can’t understand how ppl get so high elo in solo queue. i get a troll in every single match. how can i deal with that? :S
u CANT win if ur top lane fed 10 kills and lose a turret at 15 min. u just cant.(that’s what happend in the janna match)
Everything u’ve said its true, but most players complaining because there is (alot of times) a BIG difference in skill on players on the same team. With 2200 elo games, u know that u get good players on the team and u only loose cause of teamplay mistakes. On 1000-1300 elo games u can get players that r playing ranked for the first time/recently. I have 150 ranked games on both seasons combined and i got players that made basic mistakes simply cause they dont have enough xp. And there r alot of players that have 500+ norml games and 0 rankeds, and, obviously, normal games have nothing to do with ranked, i mean, the level of skill required to win a normal is much lower than the level of skill u need to win ranked.
Excellent Post Jeff. However since I’ve spent the last three weeks between 1300-1450 I thought I’d share my thoughts.
1. Unusual lanes work and you don’t need an AP mid. If the other team has a Talon you can bet they are sending him mid to counter your Brand/Karthus/Annie/other squishy caster. dropping your long range Caitlyn there and playing Taric + Brand bottom lane works quite well. In fact the stun makes landing that pillar + stun quite trivial so you’re not forced into leveling e first. Another great example is a Kassadin mid. Throwing a Pantheon/Talon/ranged AD against him often works quite well.
2. Unusual supports work. IN particular I’ve played a lot of LeBlanc Support with the point being that between e and mimic I have two slow/stuns, a silence and a movement skill which allows me to run exhaust/CV if I’d like. She also has naturally high damage allowing significant advantage in lane.
3. Duo queues should be respected. I duo queue in about 50% of my games and we request either to be mid or top + jungler or to be the duo lane. Often times duo to my partners lower (1300ish to my 1400ish) Elo he will have last pick and after I get Morgana (and no one else says anything) he gets left playing support. The major advantage of duo-queues is communication, if you don’t allow us a setup where we can take advantage of that we’ve just given up the Elo that you forfeit by duo-queueing and gained nothing from it.