[crAzerk]

This is an entry for the Hearthstone Beta contest listed here

crAzerk's LoL Solo Queue Guide

Intro
I've always wanted to do this but never got about to doing it. Basically these are my tip and pointers for solo queuing in League of Legends, regardless of league. I'm Asian, this has to be good.

There are three main themes I will cover: Picking the right role, and Picking the right champion, and Having the right attitude

Picking the right role
To progress in solo queue, there are certain roles that allow you to progress faster than other roles by nature of what they contribute to the team. However, they (understandably) also vary in difficulty accordingly.

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From best role to play to worst, in terms of allowing you to progress assuming everyone are retards and you are good at your role:

1) Jungler

Junglers have the most game influence, at least for the early-mid game. Good junglers can help their lanes to build early leads and snowball into the mid-late game. You literally have influence on every single lane the moment the game begins. Depending on which jungler you pick, if you are good you can counterjungle as well, and cripple the opponent's jungler, which will impair how much he can snowball his team's lanes.
Junglers are also the most difficult role to play, in terms of game awareness and understanding. To go into detail about how a good jungler should play is beyond the scope of this guide, but understanding timings, enemy jungler positions, lane positions, and game sense are all essential to be a good jungler.

2) Mid Lane

Mid Lanes have the second highest impact on the game for three reasons:
1) You can roam top and bottom to assist them, as well as to the jungle to help your jungler.
2) (Outer) Mid Tower is the #1 priority tower in the early-mid game. Once it's down, you have huge map control.
3) Many mid-laners, if snowballed, have a devastating effect on the game
If you win your lane well, you can roam down or up to assist (losing) lanes, or even help your jungler to counter-jungle. If your enemy jungler is any decent he won't let his mid tower fall first, but if you can do so then it's a huge advantage for your team in terms of dragon control, jungle control, etc.

As for #3 to #5, I'm really tied as they all have pretty strong pros/cons, so it's hard to rank them. I'll arbitrarily rank them as close to what I believe you should use for solo queue.

3) Support

A good support can win his lane singlehandedly (remember those good Sonas / Thresh you fought?) for his ADC, zoning out the enemy duo with his superior mechanics and decision-making. The only exception is if your ADC sucks and the enemy duo is decent, then it's kind of hard to make things work. I never really liked duo lanes for this reason, as you are only 50% of the picture.

Another reason why I believe Support falls in 3rd place and not lower is because of WARDS. Map vision is extremely important if you want to win a game of LoL, and that's where a Support's game influence comes in, in dewarding, warding, and maintaining vision control over your enemies.
Why I am putting him below Mid/Jungle is because of how little you can do in terms of damage output / active plays. Of course, there are many instances of supports making clutch plays, but it just doesn't feel the same as a Jungler snowballing all 3 lanes and being everywhere on the map or a mid-laner going 5-0 in lane and 100->0 the enemy ADC.

4) ADC

Yes, good mechanics can net you high CS and a decent laning phase, but unless you are Uzi, you will have quite some difficulty in teamfights if your teammates have poor coordination/teamwork, which is quite often in solo queue.

Yes, superior positioning can net you the Top 5 Plays of the Week, but as ADC you don't have the luxury of initiating/peeling, or basically dictating teamfights. All you can do is kite and focus correctly. In solo queue, being able to dictate teamfights is quite essential in winning a game. I generally prefer the above 3 roles to ADC, for solo queue, though I certainly enjoy playing ADC as well.


5) Top Lane

Top laners are usually isolated from the rest of the gameplay for quite some time (with exceptions, such as those with globals). The main problem of playing Top in solo queue is that once you are behind, you can never get back if the opponent is decent and your jungler is stupid. And in solo queue, junglers don't quite have the understanding that you NEED gank/camps once you fall behind in lane.

Of course, on the other side of the coin is when YOU snowball, and you can wreck havoc in the mid-late game usually, or simply shove your top lane all the way to enemy's base before he can scream mercy. But assuming you are climbing in ELO, you are likely to face someone better than you eventually and the games will be difficult. Not to mention the various mismatches in lane.

And to bring in the teamwork expect, top laners are usually diving or initating team fights - if you get a half-assed team who doesn't join you when you jump in... you're screwed.

Picking the right champion
Now, after reading the above, you have weighed the pros and cons against your own personal preferences, decided on your favourite role, and have narrowed down your champion pool to a number of viable champions. Which do you use?

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Hypercarries are generally good

Hypercarries are champions that can snowball pretty hard if you get going early, such as Zed or Jax. Such carries may be good to use with the logic that assuming everyone is bad in solo queue and you're good, you can carry a bad team with your stellar play.
Of course, this may not always happen as champs like Zed require some level of skill to be good at. Plus you may get camped by the enemy jungler, etc.
An exception may be Vayne - I'm not a big advocate of her in solo queue unless you're proficient in her and you outskill your opponent. Otherwise, it's quite likely you'll get shut down by someone like Caitlyn in lane, and in lower level solo queues you won't get lane swaps to help you out.

Crowd Control (CC)

If in doubt whether you should use Champ A or Champ B, choose the one with better CC. In two teams of equal ability, the team that normally wins is the one with more CC (or better usage of CC).

Assuming you're in solo q and your team has little synergy, the easiest thing to react to is a stunned enemy ADC - just jump on him. Being able to catch the enemy with a good snare/stun is like an unspoken signal to initiate for your team.

Don't pick a 'popular' champion for the sake of it

I hate it when champions like Malphite/Shen are left open and someone in my team will be like 'ZOMG SHEN IS OPEN GO'. and ends up not using Stand United for 20 minutes, or getting shat upon in laning phase and has half the CS of the enemy laner.

Don't use a champion if you're not proficient with him/her. Even worse are 'hot' champs based on the latest championships you've been watching (think Fizz, Gragas) which you have no idea how to play.

Having the right attitude

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(There is no such thing as) ELO Hell
One common thing that you hear from many players from varying leagues, even up to Gold league, is this: 'I'm stuck in ELO hell. I am really good, but my teammates always suck/feed/dc!"

The thing is, there is no such thing as ELO hell. If you are as decent as you claim to be, and everyone else who plays in your ELO bracket are retards, by simple mathematics, your team always has one less retard than the opposing team.

Don't blame others
The biggest problem most people have is that they blame others for all of their losses. If only my top lane didn't feed. If only my jungler knew how to gank. If only my ADC didn't go 0-5 and feed the enemy Vayne. It's easy to point fingers at your teammates; it feels better; it's human instinct, it's part of our self-serving bias.

However, doing so does not help you improve at all. You will be stuck in the same ELO bracket forever and think it's because 'I'm always stuck with bad teammates' and perpetuate your own belief of 'ELO Hell'.

Even worse is when you blame your teammates mid-game. This not only distracts them from playing, but also distracts YOU from playing, and it creates conflict which will just make everyone play even worse.
Instead, try to hold your tongue, and if you really have to say something, do so in as polite a manner as possible. If the person replies by flaming you, just immediately mute him and go back to your game. IT'S NOT WORTH IT.

Always ask 'What could I have done better?' 'Could I have CS better?' 'Did I pick the wrong champion/got counterpicked in lane?' 'Did I make good map movements?' 'Did I control my creep wave well?'

Look at yourself for what you are doing wrong / not doing enough, and that's the best way to improve and progress in solo queue.

Accept losses as part of the game
Of course, there will be times when it's really out of your control. Top lane feeds enemy Jax 0-5. Your Support buys zero wards. You have two disconnected players. Your teammate decides to start feeding.

The game IS filled with toxic players at all levels, especially those who don't follow the above two points - they believe they are stuck in ELO hell with all the worst possible players and proceed to flame everyone who makes any slightest mistakes.

Sometimes, you lose. It's part of the matchmaking system. Random matching means you do get toxic/genuinely bad players sometimes. Accept those losses as part of the cycle, evaluate your own gameplay, and just roll with it, and move on to your next game. Don't need to harp too long on a 4v5 game as you can be playing at your peak but you most probably can't win it.

If you follow these tips, you will find yourself making progress and climbing through the leagues (assume you know how to use a mouse and can actually play the game)... up to wherever your innate skill cap takes you.

[MarineKing8661]

I don't really play LOL... but this is a pretty good guide

[Satu]

Good guide for beginners looking where they should delve into with LoL. Theres plenty more to learn from here, such as:

- Item builds & variations
- Efficient runes & masteries
- How to lane effectively
- How to make best use of your champion's abilities
- Map control & vision
- Map awareness & pings
- How to gank and how to survive ganks

And the list goes on. Like SC2, hard to run out of additional things to learn.

I really like jungle at the moment for solo queue because of it being unpopular for teammates to choose in champion select, along with crAzerk's reasons. Although its one of the harder roles, its much more likely you get to play it every game, and thus can improve at it faster than other roles.

[Stallion]

jungle has the most impact early game over all the lanes so is generally the best for getting out of "elo hell" as people term it, im personally stuck at silver 1 cos i suck at being disciplined and go aggressive when i know i shouldn't but getting there. overall good guide I've personally found in soloQ and arranged 5s u want to choose your top lane as late as possible as its the role that can really be hard countered. so be a bit flexible in your role for soloQ goes a long way. aka someone carry me to gold pls :P

[crAzerk]

@ Satu yup totally agree with you that this is only the tip of the iceberg. I chose to keep it as simple as possible as if I were to go into detail it would be even more lengthy than it is. For example, I wanted to add in a portion in 'Picking the Right Champion' about counterpicking/pick order, as when you pick your champion may also determine which champion you should pick, as picking certain champions early leave you vulnerable to many strong counterpicks.


@Stallion I was actually stuck in Silver 1 for the longest time too (on SEA server), as I was using primarily SP/Mid. I decided to pick up Jungle (I already played jg in normals, just not in ranked) and used the then-OP Master Yi (fresh after his rework) and went on an 80% win rate and got to Gold.
Hypercarry Junglers (i.e. pre-nerf Yi, Udyr) tend to do pretty well in solo q too for the reasons I already listed - you get to influence all lanes, PLUS you get to hypercarry a game if you snowball.

[Stallion]

yea i just came to the conclusion hypercarries win soloQ, i should probably just go back to jungle and play nocturne and nasus to gold but want to do it as a top laner for style points :P

[crAzerk]

Nocturne?? Lol I wouldn't go with nocturne purely because his initiate can be hard to follow up with an uncoordinated team. Nasus is fine. I used Nasus when Yi was banned when i climbed to Gold

Nasus top can get pretty ridiculous too if game drags on late. Unkillable, 700 damage Qs. ridiculous.

[Stallion]

I just tyrd vs nasus top, unkillable lane but tyrd gets to just go crush an adc every team fight or solo push like crazy, i dislike playing passive laners like nasus i get bored