This post is dedicated to try and help the people who are stuck in Solo Queue and can’t seem to climb the rankings.

There can be many reasons to why you might be stuck in your division and I will try to cover some common mistakes that I’ve noticed over the years by either making them myself, hearing/reading about them or by seeing other players making them. I will also give a few ideas that might help you start climbing.

What are your intentions when you queue up?

This is something that is very important. Many players jump into ranked without thinking about their intentions. What I mean by this is that many players go in with the mindset of just playing the game without giving it much thought other than “I want to win”. The problem with this is that you are not actively deciding to “think” while playing. If you enter every game with the intention of improving yourself, which then will lead to you becoming a better player much faster, you will eventually climb.

To make it more clear what I mean: Don’t enter a game and just go along for the ride, getting dissapointed when it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. Instead you want to actively think about what you are doing. A good way to start is by asking yourself questions while playing. “What should I do now?” “Where am I most useful?” “What play can I make to get one step closer to the win?” “Are there any roaming possibilities?” “Should I push out or not?” “Which lane has the highest kill potential?” etc. Entering game after game, only playing on “auto-pilot” is one of the most common mistakes players make.

Focus on yourself.

It is called Solo Queue for a reason. You are playing for yourself, not anyone else. You don’t want to spend your time thinking about how bad your teammates are or, even worse, arguing with your teammates. You are there to improve yourself. You are there to make you climb and you can learn as much, if not more, from a loss as you can from a win. Keep focusing on your own play and don’t care about if you’re losing or winning. You always want to gain something from every game and you won’t gain anything if you spend your time getting frustrated or sad cause you lost LP. Keep focusing on YOU. If you lose a game and gain nothing from it, it’s like you are giving away LP. If you improved by playing that lost game, it will translate into you gaining LP further down the road.

Do not backwards rationalize.

This is an example of backwards rationalization: The enemy team is doing baron. Baron is at half health and you decide to go in for a teamfight. You die and lose the fight. After you’ve died you realize that your Twitch wasn’t in the fight. He was too far away to join the engage and if you would’ve waited a few more seconds it would’ve been a 5v5 instead of a 4v5. You justify your play by saying that Twitch was too slow.

Basically what it means is finding a reason to why you made a mistake after you’ve made it or trying to justify what you did by finding a good reason to why you did it.

Backwards rationalization is very dangerous and it is important to look at yourself with honesty and not try to justify your poor play. You want to improve and making mistakes is one way of doing so. It is OK to make mistakes.

I want to end this post by saying that I am going away for 10 days and I wont be able to write during that time so if you are looking for more tips or reads, check out my previous posts:

Things To Think About While Playing Ranked Solo Queue

About Following The Meta

The Benefits Of Taking A Cold Shower

Until next time

– Andjo