Real elo hell: The "Solo Queue" mindset and how to improve at LoL
 

In solo queue, winning games and increasing your rating relies on the cooperation of 5 separate people, all of whom may have their own ideas and strategies on how to win. This makes it simple to just pass the blame off on someone else: everyone makes mistakes, and it's always easier to look at the mistakes of someone else than your own.
That said, it is possible to improve your own game, and do so effectively. Unfortunately, like everything else, this improvement cannot be rushed through some magical fix, but must be achieved through hard work.

I've put together a series of articles to help people improve at LoL. I'm going to refrain from calling it a guide. It's more like a strategy for self-improvement. These articles are long reads, roughly 1000-2000 words each, and I will be updating this blog with more articles in the future. Reading these articles alone will not make you good at LoL. However, if you read them and start critiquing your own plays and start thinking about LoL in a different manner, it may help speed up your own efforts at self-improvement.

My articles are up on: http://realelohell.wordpress.com

Here are the article topics written about so far (oldest to newest):
Article 1 - Elo Hell
Article 2 - Fundamentals
Article 3 - Map control
Article 4 - Comebacks
Article 5 - Champ selection (part 1)
Article 6 - Champ selection (part 2)
Article 7 - Initiative
Article 8 - Laning/Lane Phase
Article 9 - Team fighting
Article 10 - Decision making
Article 11 - Timing
Article 12 - Counterpicks
Article 13 - Carrying Solo Queue Games
Article 14 - Goal Setting
Article 15 - Risk, Reward, Momentum, Risk Mitigation
Article 16 - Adapting your Playstyle
Article 17 - Theory of Ganking
Article 18 - The Level 1 Fight/Jungle Invasion
Article 19 - Being a Leader / Making Calls and Plays (Newest)

Feel free to offer up any criticisms or suggestions for future articles, and I hope that my blog ends up helping some people out.

edit: I will be writing more articles and going back and updating others.

good articles tbh

nice i was wanting something for champion selection on how to counterpick. I havnt read it, but i see artical 5/6 cover champion selection

edit: your site is added to my favorates, THANK YOU
just finished artical 5, about to read 6, hopefully it goes more indepth with counterpicking. If not please make an artical about counterpicking

i still love the artical 5, will help me in my champion selection greatly so i still cant thank you enough on that.


may you please help me so far with the champions i have and point out when i should select them compared to others in that criteria
i do understand my list (for example like jungle) i should have champions under it (like jarven ive seen jungle), just im a noob i need to learn to jungle better, so if you can point out champions i should have under jungle that i done have listed under it already, please do, so i can learn to jungle with them and be better for the team to be more effective


maybe suggest champions i should buy? explain why also

thank you :)


lol watch artical 6 will help me with this, eitherway i figure i type it now just-in-case. plus i might need help still on understand which champions i need to focus on buying that im lacking

edit: edited to deleted a big load of things i listed

Read the first one so far and I agree with most of that - I even tailored my jungle route/build that I take on my main using the primary assumption that my teammates will be yahoos and won't lend me any assistance at all.

i actually pretty much hate the truth of having to play independently, because it's one example of why solo queue can be a noncompetitive circus. im only 1600 but i find this mindset is still the most valuable, because relying on complete strangers to do something risky and specific has yielded very bad results in the past. this seems to be very destructive to the teamplay aspect of the game and teaches people a mindset that might work against them if they move to premade play.

Sry ur thread got closed on TL, definately a good guide that im showing to friends that suck.

Hi guys, thanks for replies.

@BullzOfSteel: Regarding counterpicks, I kind of made a conscious decision not to go too into detail about it (yet) because I feel like if I do, I am kinda obligated to continue updating it with every champ release. For the moment if you have any questions, feel free to email me, my email is now on the "about" page on the site.

@Venguy: I want to be clear that I'm not saying, "don't rely on your teammates at all", because you're not going to be winning any games 1v5. What I mean is that to be successful in solo queue, you need to adopt a mindset where you should be trying to play as sound as you can, and not relying on your teammates to quickly and effectively help you to make a play work.
For example, if you can't solo dragon quickly enough, don't try to solo dragon, then blame your teammates when the enemy team comes in and kills you since you're taking too long to kill it.
It is definitely not the kind of mindset that you should be using when you're part of a pre-made team, but in solo queue it does work wonders.

Everybody should read up on these, no matter how good of a player you are. You can definately pick up on some new things you didnt know. Great info.

durrhurrderp sucks and i hate him

bumping for him cause i love him

but he really sucks trust me

ye bro