What I've Done
I've been keeping track of my League of Legends journey for the past three months. I've documented my progress and gave tips on how to improve. I tried new strategies every game to see what was most successful and reported my results. I shared cool tips and tricks that I learned.
My best post
My best post would probably be this one. I did everything I had done in my previous posts: gave an update on my progress then gave out general tips, but this was the post I began expanding my material. I started giving champion overviews, cool tricks, and tips on how to improve.''
What I'd like to Improve on
I'd like to post on time more often. I usually write my blog posts very inconsistently, usually a week after they are due. I also want to make my blogs more understandable for non League of legends players so I can hopefully get people into the game.
What I've learned about myself as a learner
I learned that its hard for me to start something, but when I finally do start it, it's easy for me to finish. If I can find the motivation to start things early, I would probably be better off in school, and my blog would be much better.
Where I'd like to go
I want to start streaming my matches online and posting them on my blog so my followers can have a direct interaction with me and I can explain my though process when I play. This would make my content better, and more versatile.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
Post # (Cloud) 9
This is my 9th post on my blog. The thing says we were supposed to have 10, so I missed one somewhere. Also, this blog is super late. I don't have internet access at my house right now, so I have to write this post during the 10 minutes I have left in the computer lab. I haven't been playing as much as I'd like to, unfortunately.
I'm at 64 points right now. I've fallen a little, but nothing unrepairable. As I'm climbing and playing with the best players in the nation, I'm starting to realize that I can still improve A LOT at the game. I recently laned against Scarra, one of the most well known mid laners in North America. I played my second best champion and was confident I would at least keep up with him. I was getting absolutely destroyed. His positioning was incredible, even for a Diamond 1 player. But then I won the game and ended up with a good score because the rest of my team did well.
This should tell you how much luck is involved in climbing, at least in Diamond 1. In other elos, you'll generally find it easier to carry than to get carried, so your skill is very indicative of your skill. However, in Diamond 1, once you hit 50 points, you're playing with people with as few as 0 points, and people that are #1 on the ladder.
This is why my points are fluctuating so much. I've been as high as 80 and as low as 30 points within one week. My 10 minutes are almost over, so I'm gonna end this post here.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
I'm at 64 points right now. I've fallen a little, but nothing unrepairable. As I'm climbing and playing with the best players in the nation, I'm starting to realize that I can still improve A LOT at the game. I recently laned against Scarra, one of the most well known mid laners in North America. I played my second best champion and was confident I would at least keep up with him. I was getting absolutely destroyed. His positioning was incredible, even for a Diamond 1 player. But then I won the game and ended up with a good score because the rest of my team did well.
This should tell you how much luck is involved in climbing, at least in Diamond 1. In other elos, you'll generally find it easier to carry than to get carried, so your skill is very indicative of your skill. However, in Diamond 1, once you hit 50 points, you're playing with people with as few as 0 points, and people that are #1 on the ladder.
This is why my points are fluctuating so much. I've been as high as 80 and as low as 30 points within one week. My 10 minutes are almost over, so I'm gonna end this post here.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
I'm Going Pro
Well, not really. But I have been playing with a lot of pros recently; including WildTurtle, who holds the #1 spot in Challenger. Basically, he's the best Solo Q player in the NA region. I peaked at 80 points, but have fallen to the low 70s since. I haven't yet been able to get my name out there, but people are beginning to recognize me as "the guy with the slow computer". Yes, I've been playing on the same, old laptop since I began playing this game one year ago. Once you begin playing in the high ranks of Diamond 1/Challenger, the game becomes a lot more enjoyable. Everyone at that level understands that winning isn't everything, but improving is. They aren't so concerned with winning that they flame, but they aren't bad enough that they make many mistakes. Some of the games do get troll, which makes it a lot more fun to play.
Orianna Reveck, the Lady of Clockwork
I've been playing a lot of Orianna recently. She's an incredibly strong champ, with a unique kit that is very potent if used correctly. She is one of the higher skill cap champions, with a very high skill ceiling. The plays you can make with her are endless. If you want to improve your mechanics, I'd highly recommend learning Orianna. She's also a very good champion to carry with, so she's great for climbing as well. She proves high damage, utility, and a strong AOE ultimate.
Here's a cool trick I learned with Orianna after watching Bischu, a Challenger mid player. If you ult with the ball on top of you, you can flash while the animation is going off. This catches most people off guard, and is nearly impossible to react to. The typical ball-on self -> Flash -> ult is still hard to dodge, but at a high level of play, people will flash this almost instinctively. With this trick, the animation for her ultimate will start before you flash, so it appears that the ultimate will miss, until a split-second later, when they've gotten hit by a suicide-bomber Ori ult. I don't have any footage unfortunately, but I've done this a few times when I was ahead. Again, it's not very practical, as it basically is a suicide if you do it during a team fight, but it's very fun and the reactions are hysterical.
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| Paint skills op. |
Solo Q Tip: You know those sites that give you stats of other players? I'm talking about Lolking, LolNexus, and others. Don't use them. Sure, they might give you a preview of both teams, and you'll be better prepared. But you'll play differently because of it. Even though you might not think it affects your play, it does. If you see someone has only 5 wins, but incredibly good stats, you'll know they're a smurf. If you have to lane against them, chances are you'll play more scared, and be afraid to make bold plays. If you see someone on your team has bad stats on a champ, you might be compelled not to gank for them. You'll never improve if you don't try new things. I used to use a site like these for nearly every game I played. Sure, it was helpful, but it made me play in a game-specific manner. It might help me win those single games, but it didn't help me improve overall as a player. It's like a coach teaching repeatedly teaching a single play and nothing else. The players would be able to execute this play perfectly, and there will be times where the play will work. However, if there's no variety, the opposing team will quickly catch on and be able to defend against it. I stopped using those sites when I had just hit Platinum, and I climbed through Platinum faster than any other Tier.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift.
The Wild Roller Coaster that is Diamond 1
I'm now sitting comfortably at 40 points. Of all the times I've heard of elo hell, Diamond 1 just might be it. Even though it's one of the smallest tiers, it's got the widest variety of players. You have the I'm-not-getting-challenger-so-I-can-mess-around people. These are basically the people that try new champions, builds, and do crazy things because they know they're already at the highest rank they'll ever achieve. I'm one of these people. Then, you have the arrogant flamers, who think they're better than everyone else because they're Diamond 1. Newsflash to those people: so is everyone else on the team. The next kind are my favorite to play with. They take the game really seriously. They communicate exceptionally well, and losing isn't an option for them (except 50% of the time). These are the I'm-getting-to-challenger-and-nothing's-holding-me-back players. They're the ones that will ping ten times for one thing. They will fill the chat with multiple sequences of words to express one idea. They will time every thing they can: summoner spells, objectives, inhibs, even wraiths and wolves.
Here's some cool tricks I've recently learned with Riven.
1. You can shoot her ult during your E animation. Her E is a short dash that also provides a shield. During the animation of the dash, you can fire the second part of her ult without interrupting the dash.
2. When in her ult, Riven gains extra range on all her abilities. With her ult active, Riven can hit blue buff over its wall, without actually having to go over. It's not very practical, but I did see it happen once in a Challenger Korean ranked game.
3. You can perform Riven's Q-AA-Q-AA-Q-AA combo around twice as fast by moving slightly after each AA (auto-attack). This is very similar to attack-animation cancelling, commonly performed by marksmen.
Here's a video of an avid Riven player showing the trick
And here is my tip for climbing. Watch streams! You can learn so much by watching good streamers. There are some streamers that mess around and rarely give advice, but even with them, you can still try and notice what they do well and imitate it. Some streamers that are very informative, as well as being incredibly good players, are Cadburry, Voyboy, WildTurtle, and dayladavid. You can find their streams on twitch.tv.
I'll probably post on my blog in this format now. I'll give an update on how my personal league experience is going, followed by a cool trick or something I've learned recently, then a tip for climbing.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
Riven, The Exile
Here's some cool tricks I've recently learned with Riven.
1. You can shoot her ult during your E animation. Her E is a short dash that also provides a shield. During the animation of the dash, you can fire the second part of her ult without interrupting the dash.
2. When in her ult, Riven gains extra range on all her abilities. With her ult active, Riven can hit blue buff over its wall, without actually having to go over. It's not very practical, but I did see it happen once in a Challenger Korean ranked game.
3. You can perform Riven's Q-AA-Q-AA-Q-AA combo around twice as fast by moving slightly after each AA (auto-attack). This is very similar to attack-animation cancelling, commonly performed by marksmen.
Here's a video of an avid Riven player showing the trick
And here is my tip for climbing. Watch streams! You can learn so much by watching good streamers. There are some streamers that mess around and rarely give advice, but even with them, you can still try and notice what they do well and imitate it. Some streamers that are very informative, as well as being incredibly good players, are Cadburry, Voyboy, WildTurtle, and dayladavid. You can find their streams on twitch.tv.
I'll probably post on my blog in this format now. I'll give an update on how my personal league experience is going, followed by a cool trick or something I've learned recently, then a tip for climbing.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
Monday, October 28, 2013
Back where I belong.
After a hard fought week, I was able to make it back to Diamond 1. I'm sitting at 18 points right now. I'm gaining and losing 3-5 points per game. So far, I've already played with 2 pro players that I've recognized, so I'm in good company.
A Challenger Series awaits me once I hit 100 points. If I win 3/5 games in the series, I will be promoted to Challenger, accompanied by 49 of the best players in the nation. I've also started streaming, but I've only been messing around, playing normal games (games that don't affect your ranking). You can check out my stream here! Basically, you can watch me play video games live.
But you guys probably don't care about my journey. So here's some tips that will help yours!
LoL Replay
If you don't mind downloading another program, and it doesn't affect your computer's performance, I highly recommend downloading LoL Replay. It allows you to watch every game you've played with the program on. This makes it incredibly easy to go back and see how you and your team performed. You can find what your team did right (or wrong), and it's very easy to find individual mistakes.
Admit your mistakes!
I'm sure I've said it several times since I started this blog. In fact, I mentioned it in the paragraph before this. But it's so important. No matter how good you are, you can always improve. This is an excuse I've heard across all rankings, from Bronze to Diamond: I would be higher ranked, but I always get bad teammates.
Sure, you'll have games where your team is absolutely useless. But you're teamed up with people around your MMR (match maker rating), so they're just as good as you. Next time you have bad team mates, think about all those times where you had bad games or just an off day. In the long run, you'll end up where you belong.
I wanted to find actual in-game aspects, but that's very difficult due to how dynamic each game can be. Every game is so unique and unstable that anything can happen. When a team is extremely far ahead and ends up losing, the term to describe the occasion is "throwing". If you threw a game, you lost it despite a huge advantage. I had a game a couple days ago where I played extremely well for the first 34 minutes of the game. However, the 35-minute game was decided by one poor decision by me in which I thought I could take their whole team alone. In my defense, I had previously 1v4'd and came out with 4 kills, so I was getting cocky (look at my last post!).
There's no exact strategy or method to winning games, as every situation is different. Sometimes, you just have to play consistently and make few mistakes. Other games can be won by making one big play, regardless of how poorly you were playing the rest of the game.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
A Challenger Series awaits me once I hit 100 points. If I win 3/5 games in the series, I will be promoted to Challenger, accompanied by 49 of the best players in the nation. I've also started streaming, but I've only been messing around, playing normal games (games that don't affect your ranking). You can check out my stream here! Basically, you can watch me play video games live.
But you guys probably don't care about my journey. So here's some tips that will help yours!
LoL Replay
If you don't mind downloading another program, and it doesn't affect your computer's performance, I highly recommend downloading LoL Replay. It allows you to watch every game you've played with the program on. This makes it incredibly easy to go back and see how you and your team performed. You can find what your team did right (or wrong), and it's very easy to find individual mistakes.
Admit your mistakes!
I'm sure I've said it several times since I started this blog. In fact, I mentioned it in the paragraph before this. But it's so important. No matter how good you are, you can always improve. This is an excuse I've heard across all rankings, from Bronze to Diamond: I would be higher ranked, but I always get bad teammates.
Sure, you'll have games where your team is absolutely useless. But you're teamed up with people around your MMR (match maker rating), so they're just as good as you. Next time you have bad team mates, think about all those times where you had bad games or just an off day. In the long run, you'll end up where you belong.
I wanted to find actual in-game aspects, but that's very difficult due to how dynamic each game can be. Every game is so unique and unstable that anything can happen. When a team is extremely far ahead and ends up losing, the term to describe the occasion is "throwing". If you threw a game, you lost it despite a huge advantage. I had a game a couple days ago where I played extremely well for the first 34 minutes of the game. However, the 35-minute game was decided by one poor decision by me in which I thought I could take their whole team alone. In my defense, I had previously 1v4'd and came out with 4 kills, so I was getting cocky (look at my last post!).
There's no exact strategy or method to winning games, as every situation is different. Sometimes, you just have to play consistently and make few mistakes. Other games can be won by making one big play, regardless of how poorly you were playing the rest of the game.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
How to Not Stay in Diamond 1
My time in Diamond 1 was short-lived. Six losses in a row sent me back to Diamond 2, where I stayed for a bit, before I was demoted, again, to Diamond 3. Why should you be listening to my tips if I'm getting demoted? Well, you shouldn't.
BUT, I can tell you what I did to get demoted, so you can avoid making the same mistakes
Arrogance
-Remember how I was talking about myself being a top tier diamond 1 player? Well, cockiness killed the cat. No matter how well you are playing or how big of a winning streak you are on, always look to improve, and look for mistakes to improve on every single game.
Tilting
-Often times I would lose 5 games in a row and I'd just keep playing, annoyed and frustrated. This would lead me to go on tilt, and have no motivation to win, causing me to play poorly. When you're on a losing streak or having a bad day, take a break from league. Being mad won't make you play any better. Relax a little!
I'll apply these tips and continue finding new ones, and I'll be back in Diamond 1 before I know it. I've recently downloaded a program that allows me to replay all my games so I can look back and watch for certain things, which will definitely help me (and you) improve.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift.
BUT, I can tell you what I did to get demoted, so you can avoid making the same mistakes
Arrogance
-Remember how I was talking about myself being a top tier diamond 1 player? Well, cockiness killed the cat. No matter how well you are playing or how big of a winning streak you are on, always look to improve, and look for mistakes to improve on every single game.
Tilting
-Often times I would lose 5 games in a row and I'd just keep playing, annoyed and frustrated. This would lead me to go on tilt, and have no motivation to win, causing me to play poorly. When you're on a losing streak or having a bad day, take a break from league. Being mad won't make you play any better. Relax a little!
I'll apply these tips and continue finding new ones, and I'll be back in Diamond 1 before I know it. I've recently downloaded a program that allows me to replay all my games so I can look back and watch for certain things, which will definitely help me (and you) improve.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift.
Friday, October 18, 2013
I'm Diamond 1
I've procrastinated updating this blog for a while now (a couple weeks). Last time I posted, I was Diamond 5. While Diamond 5 is very impressive, it doesn't even compare to my current rank. I'm on a whole other level. Diamond 1. To compare the two is like sending Little Leaguers against the Yankees (Breaking Bad, anyone?). Diamond 1 is the second highest ranking, only behind Challenger, which only 50 people in the North America region can have at one time. I started this blog at Platinum 1, and have gotten to Diamond 1 in the time since. So when I finally do start giving tips and tricks, they're sure to be good.
But I feel like you still don't understand exactly how good Diamond 1 is. There's several hundred competitive League of Legends players. There are only 50 Challengers. Assuming everyone in Challenger plays competitively/professionally, there's still a couple hundred pros that are Diamond 1. Yeah sure, there are varying skill levels among Diamond 1, just as there are professional athletes that are much better than others. However, I believe I am a top tier Diamond 1 player, and will prove that between now and my next blog post. (I know, I'm getting a little arrogant here.)
I know the point of this blog post was to give tips to improve, but it's also to document my journey in improving, and at the rate I'm improving, my journey takes priority.
Here's my first tip. It's definitely one of the hardest, but most effective things to apply to your League experience:
Admit you're bad at the game.
I have a friend who is Silver 5, and he refuses to look at his mistakes. After three years of playing, he hasn't improved at all, except for the natural improvement that comes with doing something for a while.
Admit you make mistakes every game, analyze those mistakes, and look to improve.
My second tip that would apply to MANY players is to not rage or get angry, or at least don't make it known to your team. When my team is behind or someone is playing poorly, there will inevitably be one player that wants to demonstrate their lexicon of profanity. If you are that person, stop. If you play with that person, there's a nice "Mute Player" function that works wonders. I have never won a game off yelling at or harassing my team mates. Everyone will make mistakes; they don't need them to be pointed out in a demeaning manner.
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| Notice my score. 4/0/16. With such an amazing performance, I truly deserve Diamond 1. |
But I feel like you still don't understand exactly how good Diamond 1 is. There's several hundred competitive League of Legends players. There are only 50 Challengers. Assuming everyone in Challenger plays competitively/professionally, there's still a couple hundred pros that are Diamond 1. Yeah sure, there are varying skill levels among Diamond 1, just as there are professional athletes that are much better than others. However, I believe I am a top tier Diamond 1 player, and will prove that between now and my next blog post. (I know, I'm getting a little arrogant here.)
I know the point of this blog post was to give tips to improve, but it's also to document my journey in improving, and at the rate I'm improving, my journey takes priority.
Here's my first tip. It's definitely one of the hardest, but most effective things to apply to your League experience:
Admit you're bad at the game.
I have a friend who is Silver 5, and he refuses to look at his mistakes. After three years of playing, he hasn't improved at all, except for the natural improvement that comes with doing something for a while.
Admit you make mistakes every game, analyze those mistakes, and look to improve.
My second tip that would apply to MANY players is to not rage or get angry, or at least don't make it known to your team. When my team is behind or someone is playing poorly, there will inevitably be one player that wants to demonstrate their lexicon of profanity. If you are that person, stop. If you play with that person, there's a nice "Mute Player" function that works wonders. I have never won a game off yelling at or harassing my team mates. Everyone will make mistakes; they don't need them to be pointed out in a demeaning manner.
Good luck on your journey through Summoner's Rift!
Monday, September 30, 2013
Late Post
I didn't make a post last week, so I'll post two this week. Last time I posted, I was Platinum 1, with 30 points. Now I'm Diamond 5, with 81 points, so I've improved a lot. You get around 20 points per win, so I'm about 10 wins up in the past two weeks. I was able to climb a substantial amount, despite an 8 loss streak, with 13 losses in 15 games at one point. Many people claim that they are stuck in "elo hell", a ranking where they can't improve due to bad team mates. This is something I believe is an excuse, and I will try to disprove it. Here are my stats (Kills/Deaths/Assists) of my last 10 games. Kills and assists are good, and deaths are bad.
These were my KDA's in my losses.
3/10/19
3/6/7
0/5/3
4/9/4
My average KDA(Kills and assists divided by deaths) in these games was 1.367. Now here are my stats in my wins.
8/1/18
12/3/8
12/5/12
12/7/5
7/2/6
5/3/8
My average KDA in my wins was 5.476. Basically, if you do well, you'll win more, regardless of what team mates you have. The claim of "elo hell" is similar to an athlete saying he would win more if he didn't have such a bad team. Sure, there are finite cases of this; however generally in team games, your performance has a large impact on the outcome of the game.
I posted this to prove that if you're good enough, you will improve and climb. Sure you'll get bad teams every once in a while, but in the long run, they won't hold you back very much.
These were my KDA's in my losses.
3/10/19
3/6/7
0/5/3
4/9/4
My average KDA(Kills and assists divided by deaths) in these games was 1.367. Now here are my stats in my wins.
8/1/18
12/3/8
12/5/12
12/7/5
7/2/6
5/3/8
I posted this to prove that if you're good enough, you will improve and climb. Sure you'll get bad teams every once in a while, but in the long run, they won't hold you back very much.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
2nd post
For most of my classmates, this won't interest you very much...or at all. But I still think this blog holds some value, because League of Legends is the most popular online game in the world. There are ~50 million active monthly players and over 100 million accounts. So basically, one in a thousand people play this game. I stated before that my goal was to become a pro in this game. The world championship for League of Legends, in which pros from all around the world compete, started on September 15, and the first game had over 1 million people worldwide watching it. So basically, this game is pretty popular. You wouldn't be in a small minority if you decided to start playing.
Back to my goal with this blog. I said I would document myself playing and improving on a new account, but it's taking too long to progress, so I'm going to play with my original account. Currently, I'm Platinum 1 with 30-something points. The ranking system goes (from lowest to highest)
Bronze V-Bronze I
Silver V-Silver 1
Gold....
Platinum..
Diamond..
Challenger, with only one challenger tier.
Here is a recent chart that shows the player distribution in North America.
Player Distribution Chart:
Once I rank up (by getting to 100 points, then winning 3/5 placement matches), I will be put in Diamond 5. I'll play a couple games a day and provide stats and info from the game and whether or not is was a win or loss. Hopefully over hundreds of games, I will find common trends in wins or losses so I'll know what aspects are most important to improve on. My end goal is that microscopic bar that indicates Challenger.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
What is this?
My name is Voqueasy, and I'm going to document and analyze my League of Legends journey. If you want to join me on my climb through the ladder and learn with me, follow this blog. I will focus on certain aspects of the game, and find a connection between those aspects and winning. My goal is to be "Challenger": a top 50 player in my region (North America). However far I get, I will try to figure out specific in-game and outside factors that contributed to winning.
I've played this game for almost a year, and have managed to be in the top 1% of players. I'm addicted to the game, and I'm proud of that fact. This game has consumed much of my life since October 2012, and my goal has always been to climb the ladder (get a better ranking). I have made a new account and will start my climb anew, putting me in the position of all new players. Although I have some previous skill and game knowledge, there's always things I can improve on. I will consistently stream or record my games so I can go back and analyze them.
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