Introduction
Today I will talk on how to climb from Iron to Gold in league of legends. I have been playing league of legends summoners rift since season 7 and I have easily been able to reach Gold Elo. This is typically the top 25-30% of the population playing the game. I usually go a bit higher depending on how much effort I put into the game such as Platinum elo. But in this article I want to outline how I have been able to easily reach Gold over and over in every season without much problems. I do have to say that I have played the game in 3 different locations EUNE, EUW and NA. If I had to rank them in terms of how easy or hard it is to reach gold in each of them it would be in the following order:
- NA: North America is probably the easiest and most chill server to play at. I have played here for the most part of my experience and it’s where I’ve learned the game. I played here for 3 years from season 7-10 and I have to admit it was an enjoyable experience I reached Gold in all 3 seasons initially as ad carry and then playing jungle. I peaked at Plat 4.
- EUNE: Europe North East this is probably the worst player experience out of all of them in terms of having fun. On the other hand in terms of climbing this was as easy as NA in terms of difficulty. I had no problem reaching Gold here in fact I peaked at Gold 1 but that was mainly because I didn’t play too many games.
- EUW: Europe West this is the hardest server I had to play in terms of difficulty. It actually took me longer to reach Gold here than the other two despite having played more games I found it harder to go up in the ranks. I got stuck for some reason in Silver 4 for a prolonged period of time. I’m not sure if this was because I was out of shape or there were issues with the ranked system at the time but you can say that I was hard stuck for a few weeks post my placement games. Once I got past Silver 3 it was a breeze to reach Gold the quality of the games vastly improved and I was able to climb faster. I peaked Gold 2 in this server playing mainly mid and top lane. I generally prefer mages for mid lane and fighters in the top lane. More on that in the tips and tricks to follow to reach Gold.
How to farm in League of Legends
If you want to know how to climb from Iron to Gold in League of Legends you need to learn how to farm properly. 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
So now lets see the numbers there’s basically two types of waves:
- 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.
How experience works in Legue of Legends
Another often overlooked part of the game is that players do not understand very well how experience works and why it’s so important to know if you want to climb the ranks. Let me be clear here this isn’t something that serious if you want to go from Iron to Bronze or Bronze to Silver if you however go from Silver to Gold you need to understand some basics of how player experience works and how it affects the dynamics. The first part we will be addressing here is how this affects a player in fights particularly in a 1v1 fight. You can think of this as one of the many factors in the game but it’s very important in the early stages of the game. For example if you are Level 1 and fighting a Level 2 champion unless you are a tank or a really good early champ you are simply going to lose this. Why? Because levels increase the base stats of a player and in the early game in the stats makes a massive difference in a fight. So lets say the same champions are fighting jax vs jax the jax that is level 1 is at a severe disadvantage compared to the level 2 jax for the following reasons:
- Higher health
- Higher mana
- Higher damage (ap/ad)
- Higher base armor/magic resist
- An extra skill to use (this is a major improvement)
It’s evident that in a fight even if you misplay it the level 2 jax wins. Lets transition for a bit on how you turn the tides and get the early level advantage. At the early levels it’s as simple as killing the minions first and advancing to the next level. This offcourse excludes the jungle role which in that case you get your experience from jungle monsters instead of lane minions (unless offcourse you steal from your allies minions in their lane which I do not suggest doing as you will set them back in a severe way which will make them in turn to lose the lane). Having said that there’s always a trade off if you decide to kill the minions faster the lane will be pushing towards your enemy laner and that offcourse will create a whole lot of problems for you and make you more vulnerable to ganks among other things which I’m going to break down in a separate article as it’s a big discussion. Just learn to control your experience properly to use it to your advantage and you will be climbing the ranks faster than you think as it’s an item often overlooked by low elo players.
How to do more damage in League of Legends
When looking at the overall stats depending on what role you are playing damage is one of the most critical factors of winning or losing a game. This however goes both ways, based on what type of champion you are playing this alters between damage you do to others or damage you receive from others.
Champions that are more on the tanky/bruiser side or hybrid will benefit from more damage taken which means in team fights you are fronting your ability for your team to sit back and stay protected while you act as a human shield for them. Dying or not is a separate discussion a good tank knows how to do good rotations in the team fight and allow his regen/shields/heals to take into place and then front again for his allies.
On the other hand if you are more on the damage side of things such as an ad carry or mid lane mage you want to aim for doing a lot of sustained damage. Your total damage is much more important than your burst unless you are an assassin. This is where things get complicated and often debated and I really dont want to go into a break down of this right now so I’ll simply say even for an assassin doing more damage is more important than doing a burst of damage and one shoting an enemy unless that enemy is the carrying person of their team.
So overall without trying to complicate your life try to sit back and throw out as much damage as possible before you die if you can be the last person standing in a team fight as an ad carry or a mage this is a very positive thing for your team trust me on this I have followed my personal and a lot of other high elo ranked player stats and it’s always the case.
Conclusion
There’s a lot of other topics that can be covered here but I want to limit this to the absoloutely mandatory things you need to get good at so you can climb up to Gold elo. Going from Gold to Platinum is a bit more involved and there are other things that come into play such as securing objectives around the map, controlling your lane etc. I will cover those in a separate topic. Please drop me a line if you think I forgot to include something and you believe is important for a low elo player to learn in order to reach Gold elo. If you want to learn more about Riot’s elo system please visit their official website.
Closing please ask yourself if you really want to play competitive play and if it’s really worth to do the above because once you are doing competitive gameplay you naturally push yourself more and the game becomes less enjoyable. I personally enjoy playing more games in draft lately as I think it’s a more relaxed experienced and people are not super serious about it. Other than that I hope you reach Gold elo soon if this is your wish.
If you are a beginner and want to climb in top, mid or support please check my articles below on the 3 easiest champions suitable for each role: