Win Lane; Lose Game: Intermediate League Strategy [Part 2]

The worst part about solo-queue is that you can own your lane but lose the game. You can totally outplay your opponent and demonstrate to everyone watching that you are better than him and that you deserve to win, but you can still lose. Because the system is plagued by one of the worst diseases to ever contaminate competitive gaming – the undeniable fact that sometimes, your own skill is taken out of the equation. Face it: if your teammates suck, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose a game you deserved to win. That’s the worst part about solo-queue.

Or, at least, it seems that way. In 36 of my last 40 games, at least one person – and usually more than one – on the losing team said something to the effect of “bg”, or “this team”, or some other bullshit. Some implication that they had played well and indeed would certainly have won the game, if only they hadn’t had the shitty luck to be paired up with a group of idiots.

This blog is for those people.

Remember that it is not simply enough to be better than average to deserve a promotion. In every tier, in every division, players vary in skill level. It is perfectly normal skill variation for you to win your lane most of the time, but still lose often enough to keep you from getting promoted. Ok? Sure – maybe you’re better than the average Silver IV player, but that fact alone does not make you good enough for promotion.

You know what does? Abnormal skill variation. You’ve got to be so good compared to the rest of your division that you just dominate every game so hard that your win rate is absurdly high. You’ve got to be so good that the game is less fun for your opponents because of how hard you shit on them. You’ve got to be so good that people would whine endlessly about how it was unfair for them to have to face someone like you, and that Riot should develop some sort of ranking system so that you don’t get matched up against – oh wait.

But hey. I don’t blame anyone – and this is a strategy blog, right? I’m here to help you! But if you can’t get over that oh-so-common mindset that winning your lane means you should win the game, or that being better than average means you deserve a promotion, than you are probably not open to any sort of learning at all and should never click on a link like this again.

So let’s get started. You’re shitting on your lane opponent, you’ve got a great early lead. The game is winnable. How do you ensure victory? How do you make yourself so abnormally good for your division that you need to be promoted out? You’ve got to push your advantange, and two easy ways to start doing that is learning how to deny and how to roam. I’ll cover pushing your advantage with words (it’s more of a general mental framework than a technical or mechanical gameplay decision) and then link to two great guides on Roaming and Denying.



On pushing your advantage

Champions power curves vary. Consider Vayne and Miss Fortune: We’re not quite at the level of knowing who “should” win at specific levels, so we’ve got to speak in generalities. Now, in general, MF should stomp on Vayne early. Vayne should scale better than MF. But eventually, both Champions are going to hit a hard cap of effectiveness. Remember that the longer the game goes on, the closer everyone is going to get to that cap.

That means that even though you’re snowballing hard, if the game goes on long enough, your early lead isn’t going to mean a damn thing. This should be obvious, and we know it is intuitively – would you rather be down 30 to 50 or 0 to 20 – but most players don’t actively put this sort of knowledge into play.

You’ve got to put as much distance as possible between your power level and your opponents, as fast as you safely can, and then take advantage of that difference to secure game winning objectives (see part 1).

Anyways. Here is an excellent guide to roaming (though dated, the core concepts are still very relevant) and here is one for denying (also dated, also good).

When you’re able to do consistently put these things into play, you won’t need intermediate league strategeries no more! :)

