About to start rated, any advice?

[rijn dael]

Just started lol about a month ago, sitting at about 180/200 win/loss.

I play morg/cass/ahri (mid), and graves/cait/trist/vayne (bot), teemo(top/bot). I have shaco/lee for jungling, but I am not great at either. I tend to play support ryze if I we need support. I don't have any tanks at all.

I will be queuing with a mate who generally plays support / adc, and I play ranged adc / apc - so we can take bottom lane and do it well I guess.

Both my mate and I are relaxed people, losing is fine - and I expect to lose a lot - hopefully less as we improve

Any advice before I jump in? Good heroes to get to know or to start playing?

[Deleted]

Try to learn more jungling champions. Both Shaco and Lee Sin will be banned in most games you go in to so try get at least 2 more. The only other thing is make sure you have runes before trying to do ranked or you are fighting an uphill battle.

[Darkdruidelf]

You need runes. But more importantly if you want to win in ranked winning your lane isn't enough. You need to roam and you need to win everyone elses lanes too. Go into every game expecting total incompetency from every member of your team. Expect 0 ganks from your jungler, if you cant win the lane without ganks then you need to sort something out. Expect mid to always be roaming and so you always need wards.

Ranked is all about carrying, and in order to do that you have to simultaneously win every lane at once, hence picking mid or jungle is easiest as you can roam the best. This is why most people don't like playing bot lane; it's very hard to carry from there. However, if you are really good, you can play something like Vayne and just try to snowball in your own lane, and then get to lategame with Vayne and if you have snowballed you should be able to carry teamfights, especially if you can have your friend pick a support who can peel (because again, expect all the bruisers to be dicking around hitting dragon instead of protecting you).

If you don't have runes don't play ranked. Simple. You will be at too much of a disadvantage and you will let the team down. Get runes first. If you are going to play bot lane a lot learn to position yourself correctly and you should be fine. If you can last hit well that will take you very far (if you autoattack don't play ranked, go and learn last hitting in normals). If your mate plays support he should learn ward placement and learn how to ward and counterward well. A good support bottom who can counterward well will allow the jungler (if he is good) to gank a lot and snowball your lane.

Just learn to carry the retards that you will get. Be polite in chat and try to keep everyone calm - as soon as the team starts arguing it might as well be gg right there. I am serious here, a team arguing is so bad. All that time typing has let the guy in your lane get 30 CS ahead of you.

Never read guides on mobafire. Ever. I had a sivir earlier in ranked following a mobafire build. Rush triforce and 3 BF sword items. She did basically nothing in TFs. Mobafire is too based on people who use a build, get fed by an idiot and go 'Her der must be the build'. Very rarely are they properly tested by high elo players. Solomid is a great place to find guides on champions, because they are all by high level players who actually know what they are doing, instead of the 80% troll builds on mobafire.

[Figoment]

Learn to play a support. If you don't have IP just get soraka or nunu and that should be good enough. If you can't play a support right you really shouldn't be playing this game.

[rijn dael]

I have soraka - just when I play support, my friend is usually AD and on mumble - it is easier to blow people up who overextend with a ryze stun combo than soraka. I don't have sona / lulu / janna yet - ezreal and vladamir will probably be my next 12600 IP.

I have enough runes that I can do each of the standard AP / AD / support recommended runes on solomid (mostly chaox guides for the chars I play) - about 3 full sets with some mix and match combos.

As to carrying, I do that fine with my ap mids, but as AD in a 50 kill game, I typically end up something like 10-5-15 - I don't feed, and very rarely die before the teamfight phase begins, normally getting a few kills in my lane, but it is a far cry from dominating. If someone else fed an AD, I have a very hard time shutting down the other player, and bringing us back.

I do need to work on my AD team fight phase, I seem to miss a lot of the smaller skirmishes because they aren't obvious to me beforehand, and I ducked off to clear bot/top/get red/shop etc while it was quiet.

[Marn]

-Don't feed, even if it costs you CS in the short-term.
-Ward ALL the bushes!
-Stay calm, don't take troll bait, and try and be polite.
-Participate in teamfights.
-Ping stuff A LOT; people never pay attention to chat, and 1 ping doesn't garner peoples' attention.
-Don't build wrong items, equally important as having runes and correct masteries set up beforehand.
-If you're ever far enough ahead in your lane to comfortably leave and gank, do it, or go help with dragon if you have vision of every enemy champ etc.
-If you're vastly ahead on CS and maybe even kills, only destroy your lane's tower when the lane phase is over and you're sufficiently fed to start roaming and help other lanes push towards ending the game.
-Buy more wards.
-Try and get really good bans in draft chat, don't pick your one character and then alt-tab, you may still need to speak to people on your team.

[Fencers]

Advice: Form a premade, use voice comms.

[Blitzc]

Make sure you have a support/tanky champion off hand incase you end up needing to play one for your team to succeed

[Deleted]

To be honest, I think you might be starting ranked a bit early. I have 500 wins and I am still hesitant to play because I know I HAVE to carry the team to succede.

[NotValidAnymore]

To be honest, I think you might be starting ranked a bit early. I have 500 wins and I am still hesitant to play because I know I HAVE to carry the team to succede.

Really? I've barely won around 100 normal matches, done two ranked so far and won both.
Of course, that might have been lucky of me, but I don't think 1200-something elo is too bad of a start.

(For some reason, when my friends invite me to games, my elo already shows despite only playing two matches, while my friend with 4 matches doesn't have his showing yet.)

[Duilliath]

Really? I've barely won around 100 normal matches, done two ranked so far and won both.
Of course, that might have been lucky of me, but I don't think 1200-something elo is too bad of a start.

(For some reason, when my friends invite me to games, my elo already shows despite only playing two matches, while my friend with 4 matches doesn't have his showing yet.)

I don't do ranked for the same reason. I have zero interest in puttering around between 1100-1300 and if I want to get higher, I need to be able to carry.

[Deleted]

Really? I've barely won around 100 normal matches, done two ranked so far and won both.
Of course, that might have been lucky of me, but I don't think 1200-something elo is too bad of a start.

(For some reason, when my friends invite me to games, my elo already shows despite only playing two matches, while my friend with 4 matches doesn't have his showing yet.)

I usually win my lane is most games but you need to win all lanes to make sure you can actually get a victory and that is hard to do if you aren't a jungler or mid. It might just be me being over caution but make sure you can win your lane 90% of the time, even without ganks, before you go in to ranked.

[Burton68Zeppelin]

Your first ten matches have the most impact on your elo. The first ten give you something likke +/- 30-40 rating, and after that each match causes you to gain/lose less rating. After about ~50 matches you will only be gaining or losing 11-15 elo each match. If you dodge a match, you automatically lose 10 elo. Other than that everyone else pretty much summed it up. Mid/Jungle generally have greater influence on whether you win or lose by their ability to assist other lanes easier. Lee Sin is a great jungler for quick ganks and can build very tanky while stilll putting out damage, lately Mundo has been making a strong appearance at lower elos. Your mid champions are good but Morg usually gets banned. Generally I see Morg, Shen, Shaco, Kass banned, followed by whoever the banners think will give them the most grief (Which usually includes Lee Sin).

[Toxigen]

Its good that you already have AD, AP, and jungle/support pages.

If you'll be duoQ with a buddy...you're correct that you should be the support/AD carry. Winning this lane snowballs into dragon and purple side blue control...which can be a huge boost to your team. If you can steal 2-3 of their blue buffs...the AD carry w/ an early blue will clear out bottom lane and allow you to float to middle.

However, Ryze is not a support. Move him to your AP mid choices.

Like everyone else will say...ward, map awareness, communication, pings, CS, don't overextend, battle for dragon, yadda yadda yadda. You'll get all that in due time.

[Deleted]

Yeah, my advice to you is... don't play ryze support... ever... not saying it is so bad, there is just way many better options and you're not really supposed to blow people up when playing support, and also your team will probably flame you for your pick

[Toxigen]

Yeah, my advice to you is... don't play ryze support... ever... not saying it is so bad, there is just way many better options and you're not really supposed to blow people up when playing support, and also your team will probably flame you for your pick

Nunu - x100

[NotValidAnymore]

Also yeah, considering that Alistar, Amumu, Leona, Nunu and Taric now gain magic resist per level, they're even better supports than before.

Though if you like to play tank-support or shield/heal-support is up to you.

[Darkdruidelf]

Funnily enough, speaking of odd supports, yknow what works?

Support Leblanc.

Im not even kidding. Hit lvl 6, blow someone up to about 1 bar of health, let the ad carry get the kill. Keep feeding the ad carry kills, get mejais for all your AP needs, then build full support.

[Toxigen]

Funnily enough, speaking of odd supports, yknow what works?

Support Leblanc.

Im not even kidding. Hit lvl 6, blow someone up to about 1 bar of health, let the ad carry get the kill. Keep feeding the ad carry kills, get mejais for all your AP needs, then build full support.

Anything works in normals / low ELO. When we play normals, we do Fiddle/Sion bottom and shake the Meta so hard it poops itself.

[Burton68Zeppelin]

Anything works in normals / low ELO. When we play normals, we do Fiddle/Sion bottom and shake the Meta so hard it poops itself.

Panth/Leona <--- Dominates the squishy ADs