How to climb solo q ladder

An Analysis of champion efficiency and choices based on your elo.

Heya folks, Taenshi here (just kidding <3 Studio)

I’m a 2k+ player, I tend to bounce around 2000-2150 and I have been teaching 3 of my friends how to climb up the elo ranks lately and thought I would write some of this down and see if it helps anyone. (they all went from about 1400 to 1700s)

I see a LOT of posts from people who struggle to raise their Elo but say they are playing the right champions, and have the concepts of the game down correctly. I think a big part of this issue is simply that very few people take into consideration the champion they pick based on the Elo they are at.

What does this mean?

Well have you ever stopped to consider why champions like Shy, Mundo, or Kogmaw do so well in tournaments? The key thing is that these champions take advantage of the player attitude at that level of play, which is very few mistakes, high farm, low aggression.

A player can pick a farm/late game champion because they know that the enemy team is going to have few openings and rarely over-extend or put themselves in bad spots.

So this means you should learn Shy, Kogmaw, Mundo, Ashe, Karthus, Poppy, Singed and every other champion that you see played in streams right? Actually no, the champions you see streamed at high levels of solo queue and tournament level play often flat out don’t work at certain levels of the Elo ladder.

_Let’s section off the different Elo stages so we have an idea where we stand

0-1100 Elo – Mostly trolls, ragers, afkers, dcers. A lot of games are decided based on who has the afker. Commonly called “Elo Hell” Troll saturation is 50% (troll saturation refers to odds of having 1 troll on your team)

1200-1450 Elo – People are starting to figure out how to play, you have brand new players, aspiring higher level players who try complex things, watch tournaments, and generally want to get better. I would say troll saturation is about 15-30%

1500-1800 Elo – Players tend to have 1-2 roles they play and don’t know much beyond that, you see a heavy mix of good and bad in here. Map awareness isn’t very good but it’s improving and most people try to copy things they saw pros do, but have poor execution. 5-15% troll saturation

1900-2200 Elo – Honestly my favorite elo. Everyone can do 3-4 roles, they have their preferences but don’t really care if they have to do something else too badly. You rarely ever see a blatant troll and if you do it tends to be more a grudge thing (you always play with the same people at this point) Troll saturation 1-5%

2200+ Elo – This is what you see streamed, these are the games people take to heart, and honestly everyone knows this one. Games aren’t taken very seriously, things degenerate badly as people get bored of long queues and play whatever they want and often half the players don’t care if they lose. Famous players are your worst nightmare at this point as they care the least and will just dick around the whole game. Troll saturation 30-40%

So what does all of that mean to you? Well each Elo is an entirely different game as far as what is good or bad.

Lets Get down to it, What should be your strategy?

0-1100 Elo - Elo hell you have to player hyper carries who can 1v5 the enemy team and farm based champions are nearly useless since the game will often be swinging in the favor of one team by a factor of 10-30 kills by the 20 minute mark. At this point champions like Leblanc, Morgana, Twitch, Xin, Renekton, Graves, Vayne, Yi, Fiora, Lee Sin etc, are the strongest. You have to basically never farm minions and always farm champions because if you don’t you risk your team getting killed constantly. Also you will have to learn how to 1v2 in a lane well.

TLDR: Gank a lot, don’t pick farm champions

1200-1450: Ok, so you can go back to farming your lane but you still need gank heavy champions. Things like Teleport Morgana, Sion, Kassadin, Ahri or anyone else that can go between lanes and get kills is a good choice. This is because your enemies have enough intelligence to not let you kill them that easily when you are laning versus them, but they also lack the map awareness to call MIAs and watch other lanes. Thus if you teleport behind a pushing bot as Morgana….Double kills all day on CD. Champions to avoid are those who are heavy late game or have poor escapes.

TDLR: Learn to cross lane gank, farm inbetween you need an even mix of CS/Kills to win.

1500-1800:Ok so people are starting to make sure you can’t just walk from top to bot killing everything in your path just because you aren’t their “Lane enemy” and they didn’t expect you to come. I still recommend you try things like Morgana/Sion but be prepared for counter picks and it to start failing. At this point you want to gank often but you more so want to start controlling the enemy jungle, level 1 invading, and winning 5v5s instead of relying on 20 minute surrenders. Morgana is still good, Sion will start to fall off, Renekton, Olaf, WW will beat most top lanes, Nocturne/Skarner/Mundo are good jungles as they have speed and can pressure lanes heavily (people at this point get extremely paranoid about ganks if you hit them once at level 2 or 3 and just terrorize them). Bot lane you want to stick with aggressive supports/AD and be careful about picking Ashe or Kogmaw unless you are duo queueing with your friend on support.

TLDR: People are getting smarter, still avoid farm to win champions, and focus on winning team fights, dragons, barons, and learn how to counter jungle some

1900-2200: Games are won and lost based on counters. Everyone knows what beats what and it gets really tough here. The easiest way to win now is to focus on speed junglers, whatever support counters their bot lane, and whatever mid counters their mid. The best way to get high Elo here is to learn a weird champion as nobody will know what to counter it with. Lulu top, poppy, Fizz jungle, Jarvan top, Urgot bot, Fiora mid. Anything and everything that makes people scratch their heads (provided it works, don’t go too crazy and put Leona top or anything ridiculous) Another great thing to do is learn champions with multiple roles as they won’t feel comfortable 100% counter-picking if you pick Jarvan or Lulu (Is that a jungle jarvan or a top, is that mid top or support lulu!?!)

TLDR: Learn weird shit, play consistently, get elo

2200+: Get a magic eight ball that’s going to give you a fairly accurate indicator of win or lose each game, unless you’re one of the best players in the game you are going to go up and down like crazy.

TLDR: GL that’s how most players get past this (unless you’re chauster or something)

TLDRTLDR of whole thing Know if a champion is good against noobs or good against pros. Don’t try to force Shyvana low elo (great you counter jungled them but now you’re entire team is dying in lane because their jungler is ganking them constantly) and don’t try to force Sion at higher elo (people know how to shut him down)

Every champion has their place and you need to think about what you need to do. Early kills/early game win, or play for the long term.

Hope that helped you guys and sorry for any poor grammar or spelling. If you have any questions regarding counters, how to do better, or how to get better feel free to ask me on Reddit (my in-game friend list is mostly full)

Edit: Keep in mind this isn't a very long or accurate list of what to play at each Elo (as that would be pages long of what to use when) It's more an attempt to help you think about what champion would do best and how you should pick based on where you are)

Copied and pasted for you joe and also incase in disappears from reddit