This was a question that I asked a lot back when I played a ton of Summoner's Rift. What separate a high elo player from a low elo player?

I think the best way to tell you what I mean is an example.

A person who claimed that he was in elo hell made a thread several months ago talking about how he was able to escape elo hell and reach Platinum (1900+ elo). He talked about what separates a high elo player from a low elo player is the ability to win their lane, help the team win their lanes, keeping eyes on objectives (such as buff, dragon, and baron control), and learning how the individual roles comes together in a game.

I understand that I am not a great player. I make tons of newbie mistakes and I sometimes feel that if I didn't bring revive into my games, I couldn't even go toe-to-toe with some people in my games that doesn't even know about the power of Revive.

But when I spectate a high elo game, I see these high elo players and I go "I can do that." Yet, when I'm playing a game, I can do everything a high elo player does but the difference between my skills and say Nekrogen's is lightyears a part.

So, the tl;dr is probably what is Nekrogen doing that I am not doing or doing wrongly and how would someone like me fix those problems and get to his level.

Well, comparing the idea to SR and Dom, I've been in mid-high elo (+40 win) and elo hell (-20 win) and up and down.

Yea, over the 1600ish game i played, its been a roller coaster, and I've played Dom 2 week after its release.

Anyway, let me put in my 2cents.

If you have to use the term elo hell, then elo hell is worst in Dominion in one way, but better in another, compare to SR.

Why its better is how unbalanced some things are in Dominion. Yes you can spam Kassadin all day and after 3 weeks you will definitely escape if you are a "quite good" player. Blind pick is not helping to prevent this (no ban) and draft is pretty much dead (80+ min queue times)

Why is worst on the other hand is if you refuse to play blatantly OP champs, but play a role you are good at, it could not always work out. You can say i am just blaming others, but yes you can carry by bot lane, but sometimes you are in games where you consistently win bot, gets ganked, so top is 4 v 3 most of the game, and yet your team still cannot get windmil, and you get ganked too much and loose bot. Things like this can happen.
Or another example is when you play a tank or initiator but your assassins / bruiser does not commit into fights. At "elo hell" a lot of the time you use garrison and initiate on enemy team, but your team moves away and pokes (imagine Shyvanna for example only using its fire bolt and not dragon in while you taunt the enemy team under a garrison'ed tower)

Any other things I've noticed between elo hell and high elo are these
1) Low to No Revive
2) Revive not used well, For example if your whole team is dead and no one has revive, reviving trying to protect top only to face 4 enemy is bad.
3) Camps windmill and not Jungle.
4) Lack of Map Awarness and sense of Team work
5) Chases down a kill to the ends of Earth and ignores turret capturing etc.
6) Very little understanding to strategy such as blocking, or backdooring when needed (such as the enemy is camping top, take their mid and make them come fight you in the jungle)

These are very essential, and I believe the main reason is because low elo players have no example to look up to. There is little high elo streams and only DD Tourneys. And no ranked gives even less incentive to do so.

Which brings me to the last note, the more i play Dominion, the more you realise is pointless to discuss elo in blind picks, and the more we need and should have Ranked

To me one of the major differences between high elo and low elo is tactical play, you can be the best mechanical player and be stuck in low elo forever, mainly because this game mechanics are very simple, this is considered an MOBARTS after all so tactics are a lot more important than mechanics, specially in Dominion.

With that being said, the main difference I find is, in high elo games, usually things go like this:

Fight for Wind Mill, did you win Wind Mill ?

If yes: Jungle control > defend your mid and watch out for bot ganks.
If No: Jungle control > Try and take their mid or gank bot while making sure your mid is safe.

In low elo it usually goes like this:

Fight for Wind Mill, did you win Wind Mill ?

If yes: Good, camp it all day, make sure it's in plain sight as well so the enemy knows you mean business.
If no: Keep farming minions all day trying to push wind mill, it doesn't matter if there's a Malphite there and Heimer turrets, the enemy should fear your tower dives even after they fail for 10 minutes.


In basic terms. gank bot a lot, don't bang your head against the wall to try and get wind mill all game, look for opportunities to force jungle fights where you are at an advantage ( catching someone out of position while walking back) go and 2-3 cap their mid to force a fight, basically do everything in your power to not let them sit at wind mill all day, communication is key so make sure you tell your team mates to do this, most of the times I find people will cooperate and be open to suggestions, if that fails, gank bot, pick strong jungle champions like Evelynn, Kassadin, Talon to get to high elo, if you are a good player you will stay at high elo regardless as it's mostly about tactics so as long as you read guides, spectate tournaments/streams you will understand those quickly.

The best advice I can give you is don't listen to high elo people in these forums telling you not to play OP champs, if you really want to get out of low elo this is the easiest way. I played a lot of Jax bot and Kassadin to get high, I'm at a point now where I'm basically top EUW and I can still win playing AP Trist or Ashe, Champion picks are VERY important at low elo as no one really knows tactics and most of it comes down to wind mill team fights.

Also, read Saurons super duper guide, not the champion parts, the tactics part as these are super useful and will teach you a lot you would never learn until you get to high elo.


Oh and the most important thing, don't get frustrated in solo que, soloque is not half as bad as people make it sound like, I met most of my favourite players in solo que, usually people are open to suggestions, I find only 1% of soloque is toxic in Dominion and I honestly can only name 2 players from the top of my head that are toxic, and this has been from playing Dominion for at least a year, keep calm, communicate with your team, don't feel demoralised if their team seems a lot stronger than yours, I just 5 capped a kassadin/talon/wukong team with Fiddles/Ashe and Renekton (390-0), where there's will there's always a way, once you start seeing 2-3 revives in your team you have arrived at a good elo, now your biggest problem isn't Kassadin/Jayce/Teemo players, it's 4 man premades who have been playing together for ages and are super organized and win tournaments, these players will basically make your elo climb a living hell, you will get stomped by them but you will learn a lot from them (Tactics), even if they taunt you just ignore them and instead choose to see how they outplayed your team and don't think (Omfg!!my team sucks, bg !!1) , get through this, you probably wont win against these premades but luckily you won't see them very often as it's technically a match making problem, if you play during prime times you probably won't even see them as their elo is a lot higher then yours, once you start seeing 4-5 revives in your team consistently, congratulations, you have arrived at "elo heaven", feel free to pick whatever you feel like and don't give a flying fck, I've mained AD Carries through the Teemo BFT crazyness because that's just how I roll, follow tips, don't rage at your team and read Sauron guides, play strong champions and strong bot laners, I give you 4-6 weeks and you will be out of low-mid elo if you're good enough.

For bottom lane, I think the skill level of the player is a balance of:

1) Knowing when to push the lane and attempt to take the bottom tower vs. when to play conservative and just defend your own tower (usually when your team controls windmill and doesn't need help in the form of forcing the opposing team to commit a 2nd player to bot lane)

2) Map awareness, specifically where the other 4 players are on the opposing team.

3) How to defend when you know the gank is coming and maximizing tower damage on the opposing force before you die (or retreat to shrine) so your teammates can clean up the rest.

It gets even more interesting when the opposing team has someone like Kassadin, Eve or Pantheon -- which basically puts you on gank high alert for the entire game.

Very good tips, another tip I can add to this and I can't stress how important this is.

Please if you know you're going to die from a gank, run directly towards THEIR tower, not yours, make them waste time, hopefully your team mate will be there in time to prevent them from capping so you died but if you holding wind mill then they just wasted their time as well. Also if you know you're going to die, don't go down without a fight, use everything you got on the enemy bot laner so he's forced to go back rather then keep pushing or worse, cap your turret.

There was one main difference that separated the 2 in my experience of playing 800 games
-Teamwork is kinda of key, communication and "Knowing" what to do in situations such as being being 1 point behind in a 2-3 cap is crucial, because teammates will often wander, or panic. Therefore, if you know what to do, don't be afraid to talk in game to ur teammates to work something out (This was noted in Sauron's guide)

-Map awareness, as you get to the higher elo, people will react really fast, and how they do it is by doing something called "looking at the mini map" and "looking at tab"

-With my experience as a member of PECS, if the enemy takes note that 1 person is camping the top point, they will attack every other point except top, so basically the assault is a 5 v 4 situation because the top person is just standing at the top point doing nothing (This strategy worked against us when we were still learning dominion)

-This tactic mainly breaks down a team and forces them to split up as well, thus the whole team starts to panic in a way.

-Another difference is the choices you make. The top teams in Dominion have learned that "Pressure" on both top and bottom points can really stress out enemies. If you know that top is heavily defended, gank bottom, and run back top to force a 4 v 3 (exception of revive). Key thing is to Always be moving, and taking map control and pressuring bottom point when necessary (knowing the right time is just knowing where your enemies are)

-Sauron also taught my team that if your top point is 100% gonna be taken over, just head straight for bot, and pressure it. This pressure will allow your top group to regroup and assault the top point while enemies from the top point will recall and quickly defend bottom point. This STRATEGY IS REALLY STRESSFUL TO COUNTER IF YOUR BOT LANER IS ALREADY LOSING TO YOUR ENEMY BOT LANER

Hope this helps ^.^

The problem is the number of completely clueless people. I get how to play well on any champ, but my team never does. Unlike SR where there is some sort of synergy and understanding, and allies can know how to react to what's going on, what you are doing, or what you mean with your ping, dom players seem clueless. Even when you take the time to type out and explain a better strategy, they generally just blow you off and keep doing whatever they were doing wrong. (I generally report these people for refusing to communicate). I sometimes even take clairvoyance just to point out obvious bushwhacks to my otherwise oblivious teams.

I'm also wondering, do you have separate elo for both modes, or is it 1 shared value? I finally went back to summoner's rift for 1 game and it felt like I was on a new smurf account. Our team had no jungler, yet we proceeded to stomp them with zero effort, frequently catching their jungler at our buffs with cv to gank him. Nobody warded at all, not even sightstone. I remember way back when I hit 30 the play was WAY above that, and I fear my 1000 games in dominion elo hell may have sunk my classic elo down to a level I didn't even know existed in 30s. It's fun enough to stomp, especially when they don't just surrender at 20, but i used to enjoy that high-level unranked play.

First of all, thank you for all replying. And I definitely appreciate the long and detailed answers that you gave.

There is one thing you need to understand about me is that I don't want to become a high elo player by spamming broken champions. This point I have made clear before is I don't mind playing strong and powerful champions, but broken champions like Kass are off-limit. The reason is because I don't want to be a high elo player for the sake of being a high elo player. I want the skills of a high elo player so I can play with the "big boys" like Sauron, Nekrogen, Panzerzs, etc. Players whom I have to become amazingly good to even stand a chance against.

To face these guys and to be able to hold my own is what excites me. If I just spam Kassadin, the players I respect will roll their eyes and tell me to GTFO.

CaptnBuwberry made a nice post on which champions he thinks are just broken. I agree that these champions are broken and I want to avoid using them. The only five champions he considered broken are Evelynn, Jayce, Kass, Kha'zix, and Teemo.

I don't own Jayce, Kass, or Kha'zix.
I love to hate Teemo too much to actually use him.
Which means I only need to avoid using Evelynn. This I am fine with.

As for Jax, I just want to experiment other champions. Jax was my "main" in Dominion for awhile.
I'm playing a lot of Wukong since he is my favorite champion.
I'm also saving my IP to buy Malz since I always wanted to give AD Malz a try.

Oh, and you are all welcome to look at my lolking profile and point out any build errors I may have.

Once again, thank you for replying.

Build errors? Well, Atma's is decent, but you might find it easier to get a lantern or two for cheap AD/armour, they also provide substantial lifesteal. You've been facing a lot of teemos, and the sweep does contribute by helping you take out some shrooms.

I normally prefer SV or Bulwark to Odyn's for MR on a champ without MPen. SV also has CDR, letting you go Mercs which would have helped in some of those games.

Nekrogen always makes mistakes and gets blamed for it because he is to blame for everything (don't make him your role model!).

Hue-ing aside, the thing that separates high elos from low elos are the decisions they make. Lower elos will constantly rush top every single time they die to try to cap the point. You should only do that if they have 1 person on there, is low health, and you know you can kill him and neutralize tower before any of his teamates arrive.
If you want to actually makes plays in the game, you have to put pressure on bot by ganking or put pressure on their jungle area by bunching around there.

Basically if you want to be like Nekrogen, you said, you have to know when to go for top or when to gank bot.