6 Mistakes that low elo players make in League of Legends

Introduction

Today we are going to discuss about the 6 mistakes low elo players make in league of legends in (late 2021). We will focus on some specific topics I have found over the years to be a cause for you to lose the game and prevent you from climbing successfully. Please take these with a grain of salt and try to understand that we all fall into those categories. What makes the difference is to what extent we make these mistakes and how much we let them take control of our games. By that I mean try to minimize them, if it happens it happens just try not to repeat. If you find yourself doing it over and over in a game then it’s time to take the back seat and get a break. Usually a repeat of any of the 6 items mentioned below is a good sign of a tilting behavior and as we all know tilting is the fastest way to lose your precious elo.

Before going into any details and start analyzing the items I’d like to mention that I personally have a system of recognizing when I’m about to tilt. I call it the 6 indicator method. As you guessed by now yes these 6 items are my key performance indicator map. This does not limit it to how many of those happen but also how often they happen in a single day of gaming. If I observe that behavior then I immediately stop playing ranked or stop playing the game all together for the day. As I got more busy with real life stuff in the last few years I actually just stop playing the game all together. I suggest you setup some kpi’s for yourself to start recognizing a tilting behavior and preserve your hard gained lp.

 

 

A bit about my background on the game, I have been playing League of Legends Summoners rift since season 7. During that time I have played all roles of the game with particular focus mid, top and adc. I have been able to easily reach high gold elo since the beginning of playing the game and have
peaked to Platinum in several seasons. I have played in NA, EUW and EUNE servers but mainly EUW.

Not farming properly in League of Legends

Yes you have probably heard of this many times in the past but farming is a very important part of the game, if not the most important when you are lowered ranked. If you can’t master farming you simply won’t climb as fast as you’d like even if you have perfect micro plays and understand the macro strategy of the game. Farming is your main source of income which essentially translates on getting items faster than your opponents. But before we mumble too much lets do some math and see how this translates into the gameplay. I think this is often overlooked by lower elo players as they believe getting kills is the main source of income in the game. While the latter could be true if you are much better than your opponents this tends to diminish once you hit higher ratings of the game.

To break it down we need to see things in detail, there’s basically four type of minions in the game and each of them gives you a different amount of income.

• Melee: 21 gold
• Caster: 14 gold
• Cannon: 60-90 gold
• Super: not very relevant for most of the game

• Cannon wave: 3 casters, 3 melee, 1 cannon
• Normal wave: 3 casters, 3 melee

So considering the numbers above lets take early game for example where cannon minions are only worth 60 gold this is what it adds up too if you successfully manage to last hit all of the minions:

Cannon wave: 3 * 21 + 3 * 14 + 90 = 195 gold

Minion wave: 3 * 21 + 3 * 14 = 105 gold

This means in 2 waves you basically get the equivalent of 1 kill!! Yes this means that the kill you so much chase for which is usually worth 300 if the champion has no bounty or hasn’t been killed before is not really worth as much as farming properly. Considering most of you are in the 50% of the game which is approximate mid – silver this means you are lacking proper farming! So the bottom line without trying to exhaust you so much with the numbers and going over boring details of the game, is learn how to farm well do it and you will see you are getting power spikes in your game simply as an item advantage over your opponents.

Not paying attention to the map in League of Legends

It is an often overlooked item but it greatly affects how well you perform in the game. I’m going to try and list some reasons of why I think paying attention to the mini-map can affect your chances of winning or losing the game:

• 

  Contest the river crab and help your jungler. This started happening a lot since season 10 since they re-worked the map layout and jungle monsters. Junglers generally fight for dominance and vision, being able to rotate fast as a laner (mid, top, bot) when your jungler is fighting is important and the only way you can see this is by paying attention to the mini-map, especially if your jungler does not ping for help.

• Secure dragons/baron/herald. It’s very common to have to rotate as a bot or mid laner to help your jungler secure dragons. If you are paying attention to the minimap you can see them clearly pathing towards it before it happens so that can give you time to push your lane and gain an advantage for a fast rotation if necessary. A pushed lane means you won’t have to lose a lot of experience and lane minions/gold to go there fast.
• Join team fights fast. If you are in the mid to late game team fights are about to break out at any instance. This can be provoked or unprovoked however if you are paying attention to your mini-map you can tell quickly if your allies are preparing to fight with the enemies to gain an advantage. Furthermore you can see if their positioning is good and they are not being setup by a trap that they are all about to die so you can quickly ping them back. Having map awareness gives you a huge advantage.

As you can see there’s a lot of factors that come into play that will most definitely affect the game outcome it’s your responsibility to keep paying attention to the mini-map the sooner you get familiar with that process the better for you and the faster you will be climbing!

Chasing kills without vision in League of Legends

Well this is a silly one but I thought I will bring it up here as I see it happening so often in lower elo’s such as bronze, iron and in low silver. It’s human nature to want to kill an enemy that it’s in low health and has just managed to escape from you. Unfortunately the temptation to go after him in the jungle or wherever he seeks too is just not a good idea. If you have vision in the peripheral area it may help but it’s still a bad idea because he will most likely be heading towards his allies. Furthermore his allies may notice and rotate towards him, which is bad for you because if it’s deeper into enemy territory you will not be able to get any help from yours.

So next time you try to do this think of it from a logical point of view and consider the above scenarios. As a summary I list them here for you:

• The enemy could get faster to him than you
• Having vision does not mean much because of the above
• Not having vision of course is a horrible idea you are walking like a headless chicken
• You are wasting time where you could be farming and making more gold
• His gold worth may be low so even if you end up killing him and you die it may not be worth it as you may be giving out a bounty to the enemy team
• You may be costing your team an objective such as a tower, baron/dragon/herald if they notice you out of position
• Finally you may have to sacrifice some of your summoners such as flash to get the kill which may not make it worth it unless the enemy has a big bounty on him

Using the chat too much in League of Legends

Chatting is part of what makes a game fun. Off course we are social beings and we love interacting with each other. However in a competitive game such as league of legends this may end up being harmful for your psychology and consequentially winning the game. As you already know it’s unpredictable what kind of allies you are grouped with. Even if they are the best human beings on earth they may be having a bad day in real life. The anonymity of the game does not allow you to predict or know that.

 

So if you are playing the game and say something wrong or you strike upon someone toxic that just wants to vent this will end up badly. In my opinion it’s wise to say less during the game. At the end of the day you are there to play and have fun not to start a lengthy chat conversation about your life. If you have a buddy or you are in a team of people you know this does not hold true. In that case go ahead and call each other names all you want since you know each other the possibility of something going south is very low.

 

As a side note Riot finally introduced an option in the game where you can turn off chat. I find that particularly useful as I’m personally not a very chatty person and I don’t think there’s too much to gain from having it on.

Giving up too easily in League of Legends

Needless to say that I’ve seen very difficult games that were almost impossible to win being turned around. Below I will try to list several reasons on why I think giving up too easily can be a mistake you are making and is holding you back from climbing elo.

• The enemy may get someone that disconnects. Yes this happens a lot more frequently that you may think off and even if they don’t completely disconnect from the game they may disconnect long enough that their competitive advantage will become yours, especially if the person disconnecting is their carry.
• Your team composition outscales the enemy ones. If you manage to hold back and keep at it sometimes even being at a severe disadvantage you may end up winning simply because your allies scale better than them. Ever heard of this late game Kayle or Jax completely taking over the game and 1v5ing after level 16? No? well it exists and yes it happens frequently.
• Their team composition does not scale. The opposite of above some champions are designed to have an early game spike such as Lee Sin and Renekton. While those two may create huge advantages for their team they may not be enough to win them the game. As the time ticks they also get at a severe disadvantage as their scalability lowers so by being persistent and defending you may end up winning.
• One of your allies may be lagging and then have his connection restored. I’m sure we have all experienced in game lag spikes or frame problems that hold us back from unleashing our full potential. As you know this may get restored later in the game and we will be able to perform better. The once useless player we were now we may end up being the carry. So always keep this in mind before giving up.
• Fighting in the enemy team. This has also happened to me countless of times we will be winning a game easily closing in the objectives and then all of a sudden two or more of my allies will start fighting internally. This could lead to some of them giving up and wanting to surrender despite the easy win we may be having due to ego or other reasons. So while you are behind don’t discount that the enemy team may collapse due to internal problems.

While most of the reasons above could be and are outside your control there’s one thing you can do on your end that you control and that is stay cool and keep fighting especially if it’s a ranked game. You owe it to yourself and to your allies that are spending time playing with you, out of respect try and don’t give up especially if you are the one trying to surrender. If it’s a normal game and you are not feeling it that day try to surrender but also respect the wishes of your allies. If you are still into surrendering you can find out more information here on how to initiate the surrender vote.

Ignoring pings in League of Legends

Closing on the list of 6 Mistakes that low elo players make in League of Legends we will talk about an often overlooked or joked around problem.

There’s been countless of times that I have ping’d my team and it has gotten ignored. The result? Double kill in bot lane. I think we all know the feeling where you are a mid-laner, you see the enemy mid-laner roaming bot in wards you ping your team and what do they do? Completely ignore you! As frustrating as this may be it’s a sad reality of the game and in general human nature. I’m not going to analyze the later but I will mention a few things here on the first item.

 

If you are one of those people ignoring pings and no I’m not talking about the enemy missing ping when you die, that’s clearly your allies trolling you I’m talking about legitimate pings then I would say you are probably the sole reason why you are not climbing. Pings are so important in the game that it’s basically your allies giving you free information while at it. Is it always correct? No, but if it is then you ought to be doing something about it. If you are smurfing and playing with lower elo players then sure go ahead and ignore them, your game knowledge is greater than theirs and you can clearly make more educated decisions.

However if you are into the same elo as they are or lower then please do yourself a favor and try to at least validate them a few times. If they are always wrong then you can safely ignore them, if they are not you are basically coming on top of things at the end of the day. And who knows you may have a smurf or a higher elo player telling you what to do and calling the shots, trust me most of the times it’s a win-win situation. If you would like to learn more about smart pings you can visit Riots official page here.

Conclusion

I tried to analyze the top reasons of what I think low elo players make as mistakes. My favorite one that as soon as I changed I started climbing very fast was paying attention more in the mini-map. I think the mini-map is like a gold mine which shows you the intentions of your allies and enemies at the same time. If you observe their movement, their actions etc you will start seeing patterns. Out of these patterns you will start making predictions that will lead on you getting small advantages and eventually win the game easier. Whatever you do please hold yourself accountable to some sort of kpi system even if it’s not the one I mentioned above. Today we discussed about 6 Mistakes that low elo players make in League of Legends use those to your advantage to go up in ranks or try to improve on them!

If you found this article useful and you think it may have helped you please drop me a cheer below I would appreciate it.

If you have any questions, comments below I check periodically and try to answer them in the priority they come in.
Also if you have any corrections please do let me know and I’ll update the article with new updates or mistakes I did.

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Which mistake do you think is common in low elo?