5 Crucial Tips You Will Need to Know to Climb From Low ELO
When you find yourself stuck in low ELO rankings, climbing can begin to feel hopeless. The truth is, climbing from low ELO is all about learning the fundamentals and building them into habits. With some discipline, patience, and a commitment to learning, you can find your way climbing the ELO ladder to your dream rank. In this guide, we’ll be giving you a head start on your climb with 5 crucial tips that will help you find your way out of the depths of low ELO.
Limit Your Champ Pool (One Tricking)
Limiting your champion pool, or one tricking as it’s commonly known, is one of the easiest changes you can make in order to climb. Before we dive into the benefits of being a one trick, we’ll talk about the kinds of champions you should attempt this with.
First, we want to establish that climbing with a single champion, in spite of the benefits, can become exhausting and repetitive. Keeping this in mind, it is extremely important that you pick a champion that you enjoy and can spend hours playing. As a starter, identify what playstyle you prefer or find enjoyable as that can help narrow down which champion you will ultimately pick. Though it seems like a no-brainer to suggest playing an easy champ, you may be a player that thrives on mechanics and needs a more challenging champion to stay engaged, so we will not discourage you from that.
The important task here is to figure out which champ will fit well and keep you in the zone as you play. It is worth noting that the harder the champion you pick is to play, the more difficult your climb may be, and that extends to weaker-tier champions too. That’s not to say that Morgana and Skarner mains can’t ever climb, but there may be superior champions out there that would speed up that climb.
Now that you’ve picked out one or two champions, we’ll talk about why one tricking is such a powerful strategy for climbing. League is an incredibly complex game that merely appears simple at a glance. Ultimately, your goal is to take the enemy’s base before they take yours. The depth comes into play when you consider that League is broken up into multiple phases, matchups, itemization options, team compositions, macro strategies and so much more. This is the core of our one trick suggestion, as limiting the amount of information you are required to process can help streamline your gameplay experience and allow you to focus on one effort.
Over time, you will develop muscle memory for your selected champ, and you will know more about their combos, their laning phase, how they handle in team fights, what items they can build, and which match-ups they excel at. All of these factors, with enough time and practice, can be worked into muscle memory.
For example, if you’re playing Samira against Draven, you’re likely constantly reminding yourself about your all-in combo. While you’re doing that, you are also thinking about the range of your attacks so you can take proper trades. You also need to consider that to win that 1vs1, he can’t have his stand aside. Alongside these match-up specifics, you are still looking at the map to watch for roams, keeping track of your wave management, and more.
If you’re a Samira one trick, you can easily eliminate most of these issues with muscle memory which gives you more time and space to watch the rest of the map and plan ahead accordingly. First, you’ll know that you need D-Blade in this match-up, and you will know that you have to Q or auto first before you can dive in. Next, you’ll know that your W will eat his axes, but you need to wait out his E, or you’ll die. Finally, you will know that once everything lines up, and he missteps, you can auto, Q, auto, W, E, auto, and ult for the kill.
Rather than having to consider all of this, your brain power can be focused on the other aspects of the game, planning ahead, watching the map, and calling for plays. Knowing the ins and outs of your champion as well as their match-ups and itemization options is really what makes being a one trick so powerful.
Learn Basic Wave Management
Consider this a big reminder to everyone to learn basic wave management. While you will not need to master wave control to climb out of low ELO, you at least need a solid grasp of the basics. This includes the junglers and supports out there as well, as being able to understand wave states is a critical tool in League of Legends. It allows you to plan ahead and decide if you need to fix the wave or leave it as is.
If you’re a laner, you can simply crash a wave and let your jungler know that in one minute, the enemy will be close enough to your turret for a gank. Speaking of ganks, junglers can watch wave states as they clear so they can plan out an upcoming gank on their own.
Now, we’re going to cover a few concepts that you should get familiar with on a basic level, at least. If you’re looking to climb, learning to freeze waves is a game changer as it will let you punish the enemy and potentially keep yourself safe. This is often accomplished by having more minions than the enemy depending on how close you are to the turret you want to freeze. It’s usually no minions in the middle, one minion a third of the way, and two to three minions if you want it as close to your tower as possible.
Next, you will want to learn how to fast push. This one is somewhat self-explanatory, but you just look to crash the wave as quickly as possible, usually by way of using your abilities and attacks to hit the entire wave. When you’re fast pushing, you’re often looking to get a reset or you’re looking to rotate to a fight.
Finally, the last absolute basic you should learn is how to slow push. Slow pushing requires you to consistently have more minions than the enemy, and you’ll have to stop them from attacking the minions. This will build up a massive wave that can be used to dive, poke under the turret, or you can crash it before an objective so that the enemy is forced to stay rather than rotate.
Play With Meaning
On paper, it may seem like a very basic concept, but you would be surprised how often people fail to play with meaning. It’s as simple as playing League with the intent of wanting to improve. This means you’re focusing on improving at something in each game and that is your goal every time you queue up. Players will often slip into autopilot and queue for 10 games a day where they mindlessly trade wins and losses until they’re either 5-0 or 0-5.
It’s much more beneficial to play about 3 tryhard games where you’re completely focused on winning and trying your best. After that, you can use any excess games to practice specific concepts or strategies that you want to focus on. This is often done in normals or on an alt account.
If you’re trying to improve at CSing, set a goal for yourself to hit 10 CS per minute every single game. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, what matters is that you’re playing specifically to accomplish that goal. Over time, you will build these practices into habits, and you can continue to move on to a new target to focus on.
When you are focused on climbing, you should avoid spamming pointless games and playing for the sake of playing. Start your League sessions with a goal in mind, focus on it, then work towards achieving it. Staying focused like this may be difficult initially, but if you come up with some ways to help you stay on task, you’ll find it easier to accomplish. You could try asking a friend or teammate to help you out, seek out coaching, or even utilize sticky notes on your monitor as reminders. Whatever it takes, as long as you play with the purpose of improving and stick to it, you will climb with time.
Practice and Taking Notes
This one is going to feel like a trip back to school and studying for an exam, but this is about personal improvement. If you’re here reading this article, you have already committed to some level of growth, right? Look, practice is rarely fun. It can be one of the hardest things to get used to, but it pays off tremendously. Sure, League isn’t the same as traditional sports with certain hardcore drills, scrimmages, and practice tools, but it still has great practice potential.
In the old days, if you wanted to practice Riven combos you would have to join a custom game, buy your items by farming for 15 minutes, then play around with the combo. If you screwed up, you would have to sit and wait out the cooldowns.
Thankfully, Riot has finally taken the time a few years ago to add a proper practice tool, so you should take advantage of that. Now, you can endlessly practice combos until they are perfected and become muscle memory. If you’re experimenting with new builds, you can test out damage to know when they clear waves so you can rotate faster. You can even run CSing drills in order to improve your CS during the laning phase. Do not make the mistake of underestimating the power of the practice tool.
Now, as for taking notes, you don’t necessarily have to sit with a notepad at your desk or anything of that nature. Some players do use notebooks, some use sticky notes or a private discord server, and some players don’t use notes at all outside of making a mental note of something. You should work with whatever system works best for you, as long as you are making a note of things that you are working on. If you’re learning how to manage waves, which wave state are you focusing on, and how do you create that wave state? What are the pros and cons of that wave state?
If you’re learning how to navigate a difficult match-up, you can experiment and see what needs to be done. Do you win early or do you have to gradually scale? Is there a specific item choice that can turn the tides in your favor? How do you need to play through the early levels? Are your runes the same or do they need to be adjusted? There are a number of different notes you could take to improve your gameplay, so embrace the information.
Be Patient and Trust the Process
The final tip on the list is to remind you to be patient and trust the process. Improving at anything in life is often difficult, and most things that are worth it require a bit of work. You’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to doubt yourself. There will be times when it all feels like a waste if you’re not seeing immediate progress. The important thing is to remember that you are human and that you WILL improve as time passes.
If you put the work in and give yourself the time and space to make mistakes while also learning from them, you will get better. Low ELO or not, you’ve taken the first step on the path toward improvement, so don’t sell yourself short. This is just the beginning of the journey to your dream rank.
