League of Legends is not only a game of mechanics and skill, but it’s also a mental game too.

Players with a good mentality and patience will generally win more in the long run compared to someone who likes to give up and flame their teammates.

In this Mobalytics guide, we will discuss four mental barriers that you must overcome in League of Legends to climb the ladder and win more games.

If you’re able to work on these and improve, you will see a significant increase in wins headed your way.

This article is brought to you in partnership with our friends from ONE Esports, check them out for more awesome LoL content!

Mental Barriers You Must Overcome in LoL to Climb

1. Avoid Blaming Your Allies
2. Don’t Tunnel Vision
3. Avoid the Victim Mentality
4. Don’t Be Greedy and Play Respectfully

1. Avoid Blaming Your Allies

It’s impossible to win every game and it’s impossible to lose every game. Things happen, and you’ll often find yourself losing the game without you doing wrong anything at all. For instance, you may be chilling farming in the top lane and scaling while your bot lane is 0-10 combined.

Now, this isn’t exactly your fault when you’re in the top lane during the laning phase, as you’re putting yourself at a severe disadvantage if you try to roam. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t look for TP plays after the 14-minute mark when your Teleport changes.

When other factors heavily influence the outcome of a victory, such as someone on your team leaving, deliberately trolling the game or refusing to play, going 0-5 by the 10-minute mark, or feeding the enemy, the bigger picture tells you that they were at fault for the outcome of the game. But that doesn’t mean you played perfectly either.

Instead of blaming your team for every loss, look at your own gameplay and see what you could’ve done instead. For instance, did you die by invading the enemy Jungler and were they able to capitalize on that? Did you die solo at level 6 because you didn’t respect the enemy to get the level up?

Picture this – you pick Yasuo when your team lacks major knock-ups. It’s going to be hard for you to get kills. You can’t blame your team for lack of knock-ups and your ability to kill the enemy when you’re limited to just your Tornado. Then again, it’s not their fault if you last pick Yasuo into a team that doesn’t empower you.

2. Don’t Tunnel Vision

Tunnel vision is something we all suffer from time to time. It’s natural to sometimes fixate on certain things. Often, you’ll find people tunnel visioning on getting kills, fighting, or farming, and they may miss out on other things happening on the map.

For instance, you may be so focused on farming minions that you don’t see that you’re mispositioned, which could allow the enemy to land a cheeky skill shot on you. Or, you’re so focused on chasing someone trying to kill them, that you don’t see the enemy’s teammates collapsing on you and trying to take you down.

Fighting and securing kills is a big one. Sometimes it’s better to let the enemy live for now and try to kill them further down the line or be happy that you blew the enemy’s Summoner Spells or forced them out of the lane. While 300 gold is lovely, it sometimes is better to let them free.

Before chasing the enemy into their jungle, look at the minimap and see where the enemy team is. Are they on the map, or are they missing? If they’re missing, think twice and be prepared to back off.

3. Avoid the Victim Mentality

Don’t get me wrong, we all complain about certain things in League, whether it be our teammates, matchmaking, or just unfortunate BS Riot throws our way. The thing is, everyone has to deal with the same things that you do in League.

We all get people trolling our games, we all get AFKs, and we all get unfair matchmaking. It’s part and parcel of typical League of Legends gameplay.

Often, you’ll find people complaining on Reddit or Twitter and even on Discord about unfair things that happened in their games. While I get it, and it’s super frustrating to deal with, it’s something that happens to everyone. You’re not being targetted, it’s just tough luck, and these things happen in a free game.

I will come across as a little harsh, but no one really cares about that unlucky games you’ve had. Suck it up and do what everyone else does. Continue playing or quit for a while, stop the tilt and prevent yourself from losing more by just taking a step back from the game before you start flaming your teammates.

4. Don’t Be Greedy and Play Respectfully

This one slightly overlaps with a previous tip we talked about. However, you need to stop being so greedy about every aspect of the game. The levels of greed depend from person to person, but generally speaking; we can all be less greedy and hot-headed.

Players greed for different things, but some of the most common forms of being greedy are overstaying your welcome or playing too aggressive when there is no need to.

One of the most common ways someone dies is by staying too long in the lane waiting for gold. For instance, the enemy may have backed, but you didn’t because you needed a certain amount of gold. Alternatively, you may have waited in the lane for too long, and the enemy Jungler was able to gank and kill you.

Another thing that is very, very common is greeding for minions and gold. In some games, we walk a little too far forward in attempts to secure minions but what happens is the enemy all-ins us when we walk up to the farm.

For example, a Malphite early may want to last hit a minion in the wave, but the enemy Darius is in a position where he can chase the Malphite down and kill him if he walks up. You need to recognize what could happen before it happens- and prevent those things from happening.

Some other things we all do that are greedy:

• Pushing one more wave. It often leaves us overextended, which allows the enemy to rotate in time to kill you. This is very common in the mid-game.
• Staying for gold after getting a kill (especially when you’re low) is a big mistake. The enemy Jungler might just come and kill you if they’re nearby. This could’ve been prevented by just recalling.
• Not recalling when you have enough gold. If you back and get your item, you could play aggressively and get kills. But if you have 2000 gold and are doing nothing with it, it’s a bit of a waste.
• Jungler such as Hecarim or Lee Sin often run around with lots of gold by accident after getting a couple of kills.

In the future, if you’ve got enough gold, or if you’re unsure if the enemy can kill you, just recall and stop overstaying your welcome in the lane otherwise, the enemy will probably kill you. Play respectfully, and don’t overstay your welcome. It’s not worth staying in lane, dying and then falling behind in gold and XP.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading our latest article! We hope you enjoyed and found some of these things useful. Do you think you do any of these things? Cutting them out or reducing how often you make these mistakes will make it easier to climb. Remember to check out our friends at ONE Esports for more awesome League content.

The post 4 Mental Barriers You Must Overcome in LoL to Climb appeared first on Mobalytics.

Hey all! To help prepare you and your teammates for Clash, we’re recommending team comps dominate your bracket.

The team comps have varying playstyles so you can find the best fit for your squad.

The recommendations are made by our experts, Flaress, Aux, and Moriarty who have spent time as pro players, coaches, and commentators.

For each team comp, we’ll have a set of five ideal champions along with alternatives in case some of the champs get banned or picked by the enemy team.

Best Clash Comps (Updated Mid-Season 12)

1. Single Target Shutdown

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Camille/Tahm Kench
• Jungle: Trundle/Viego
• Mid: Twisted Fate/Syndra
• ADC: Ezreal/Ashe
• Support: Braum/Thresh

This comp is very effective at effectively playing teamfights by dispatching one target at a time with their high amount of single target CC and damage.

It’s also a very effective composition at invading due to the strong level one provided by Braum and Twisted Fate. Your early game is dictated by Trundle’s early dueling paired with Twisted Fate’s roaming ability to spread pressure to the side lanes.

When it comes to teamfighting, your goal is to kite backwards and lockdown and burst anyone who steps too close.

How to Counter

To beat a teamfight comp that excels in single target lock down, try a poke comp that uses its range to kite and keep the enemy comp at a distance.

Lux and Sona can provide shield utility and Lee Sin provides additional peel.

The longer you’re able to skirmish and poke, the harder it will be for the lockdown comp to find an opening.

2. Hard Engage Wombo

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Kennen/Camille
• Jungle: Jarvan IV/Nocturne
• Mid: Lissandra/Galio
• ADC: Ashe/Ziggs
• Support: Leona/Rell

This comp does not give the enemy team any space to breathe.

Heavy engage across the board combined with some really strong AoE power will make it incredibly difficult to play against if your enemies have an immobile carry and often even if they don’t.

If you like big high-impact teamfights then this is the comp for you.

How to Counter

Against a team that relies on strong wombo engages, pick a team that has high mobility and disengage.

Wombo/AoE abilities tend to have longer cooldowns so if they don’t get a lot of value out of them, such as only hitting 1-2 members, you can often win out in the long term.

Your carries should have enough tools to stay at a safe distance while still being able to output damage.

3. Buff Bruisers

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Wukong/Sett
• Jungle: Xin Zhao/Jarvan IV
• Mid: Irelia/Graves
• ADC: Seraphine/Karma
• Support: Sona/Lux

This comp revolves around strong skirmishing champions who do well in tight-knit fights and supporting them with the powerful shielding/sustain/CC from a double enchanter bot lane.

With the amount of self-healing and sustained damage available to the bruisers combined with the enchanter healing, it becomes extremely difficult to deal with this composition if you don’t take someone down as they’ll quickly heal back up again.

How to Counter

Here’s an example of an anti-bruiser comp.

Bruisers want to get into the thick of things and these five champs excel at short to mid ranges.

You have many ways to swing fights in your favor and control space with AoE spells.

Cassiopeia and Taric ultimates can each singlehandedly deter the enemy from thinking about engaging.

Season 11 Clash Comps

Hey everyone! We’ve got a batch of brand new team comp recommendations to give you and your Clashmates more options heading into Season 11.

Although these are more in line with the latest meta, if your team is used to playing a certain way, feel free to use an older team comp recommendation from Season 10.

After all, Clash is heavily reliant on coordination and synergy, it’s better to use a non-meta comp that your team is good at over a meta comp that your team needs more practice with.

1. Double AD lanes + AP Jungler

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Camille/Renekton/Fiora
• Jungle: Lillia/Evelynn/Karthus
• Mid: Lucian/Yasuo/Zed
• Bot: Senna/Caitlyn/Ashe
• Support: Thresh/Lux/Morgana

This was a staple in pro play toward the end of 2020 and it’s a great choice if your team doesn’t really have tank players.

It allows your AD laners to play aggressively while your AP junglers scale to 6 quickly and makes it easy to contest early Dragons and Rift Heralds.

If all goes according to plan, the enemy team will have difficulty itemizing since your team will have a balanced attack of AP/AD.

Note that Lucian can effectively act as a triple flex, so make sure your top, mid, and ADC can all play him proficiently to maximize that perk.

How to Counter

To defeat the two AD carry + AP jungler comp, your goal is to stop the AD carries from snowballing by recognizing that you need to play for farm pre-6.

Another key is to try to invade the AP jungler as most are squishy.

Malphite shuts down ADs, Kha’Zix has good invade and snipes squishies, Twisted Fate helps to prevent snowballing lanes, and Ezreal + Yuumi can easily play to scale.

2. Scaling Teamfight

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Ornn/Malphite/Sion
• Jungle: Kindred/Graves
• Mid: Orianna/Azir
• Bot: Ashe/Kog’maw/Twitch
• Support: Nautilus/Lulu/Yuumi

This team comp may be better suited for lower skill levels due to its easy execution.

It uses a basic front to back set up to protect your carries and it offers many ways to engage and find picks.

The gameplan is very simple but effective.

How to Counter

Scaling teamfighting gets defeated by early aggression, so if you want to beat it, the double AD + AP jungler comp is a great choice.

The teamfighting comp is great in 5v5 situations but will struggle against the more early-mid game comps that excel in smaller engagements.

3. Delivery System

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Camille/Shen/Akali
• Jungle: Lillia/Hecarim
• Mid: Galio
• Bot: Caitlyn/Kog’Maw/Twitch
• Support: Lux/Lulu/Yuumi

If you’re looking for a versatile choice that has satisfying wombo payoffs, try out this version of the Galio delivery system.

It shines most in the mid game, but its other win conditions include teamfighting and split-pushing.

How to Counter

To defeat the delivery stystem, TF + jungler need to take over the early game.

TF and Senna can help nullify Galio’s roams to prevent engages that favor the enemy team.

You also have options to match any late game split pushes you may face.

4. Anti-Dive

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Gangplank/Ornn
• Jungle: Lee Sin/Kindred
• Mid: Azir/Cassiopeia
• Bot: Cait/Ezreal
• Support: Thresh/Rakan

If your Clash team hates playing against dive comps, this is the comp for you!

Your strong backline carries work in tandem with a healthy helping of peel to handle divers with ease.

The comp provides incredible scaling while still offering respectable early agency.

Look to front-to-back and keep your flanks under control to maximize your effectiveness.

How to Counter

Early pressure champs like Galio can cause issues for the comp by speeding up the tempo of the game with roams.

This is especially devastating with scaling split pushers like Camille since the comp wants to be grouped and a strong side lane threat prevents that.

5. 1-3-1

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Camille/Jax
• Jungle: Kha’Zix/Karthus
• Mid: Galio/Twisted Fate
• Bot: Senna/Ezreal
• Support: Thresh/Rakan

If your team has strong individual players or doesn’t like to teamfight, this may be for you.

By combining a top lane duelist with a global mid laner, you can play the map wide and force the enemy team into uncomfortable positions.

Your safe bot lane can transition to hold mid while your sidelaners are pushing.

The jungler looks to attack sidelanes to help find a pick – in the case of Karthus, this can be as easy as pressing R!

How to Counter

Strong engage options make it difficult for the enemy team to successfully set up their 1-3-1 without getting picked.

It’s important that your top laner isn’t the only engage option in case they’re forced to defend.

Graves and Cassiopeia offer high DPS to burn through neutrals which can force enemy sidelaners to teleport in and then you can find a favorable teamfight.

Older Comps (added Patch 10.9)

It’s your Jungle expert Flaress back yet again and it’s been far too long since our last Clash Comps rundown. The meta has definitely shifted over the last couple of months so we’ve got some new comps for you and your Clash-mates.

Before I start you should keep in mind a few things:

• If any of these picks got picked or banned away from you, consider picking up our recommended alternative picks that should round out the comp similar to what was taken away.
• The draft doesn’t usually go the same way every time and especially doesn’t compare to what you’d see in LCK, LPL, LEC, or LCS. So taking things earlier or later really depends on who you’re facing and can be decided on during your scouting phase.

1. Teamfighting with strong solo laners

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Aatrox/Sett
• Jungle: Morgana/Taliyah
• Mid: Pantheon/Renekton
• ADC: Ezreal/Varus
• Support: Yuumi/Nautilus

Starting off, we have a well-rounded teamfight comp that utilizes the strength of the solo laners early and falls back onto a strong scaling ADC as a contingency plan.

Can you just picture a fed Aatrox getting reset after reset with a Black Shield and a Yummi attached to him?

And surely you remember the ease of execution of the Taliyah + Pantheon combo that was popularized not too long ago.

Well, if you take that one step further you got Morgana Jungle subbing in for Tal.

Morg’s definitely going to throw a wrench in your opponent’s draft strategies as she can be flexed mid and support and if you’re unsure of how to play her in the Jungle, I conveniently made a video covering it not too long ago *cough * cough*.

Look to use the priority and kill pressure from the mid + jungle duo to impact and snowball your top and bot lanes.

Morg can negate CC from her Black Shield and enable the team to go HAM.

Ezreal and Yummi have a safe, yet strong laning phase that ascends past God Tier of brokeness.

And you have Aatrox who’s going to pump out loads of damage and be unkillable thanks to the 2 supports on your team.

Overall, your win condition is to play around your mid & top side early while your bot lane looks to play it cool and scale.

It’s alright to forfeit the first Dragon if it means you secure Rift Herald for your mid or topside for platings.

Use the leads from top and mid to then bring your bot lane up to speed while you force team fights around neutral objectives.

How to Counter

Fiora has better mobility and skirmishing in the 1v1 than Aatrox.

Olaf will just run Morgana over like a bug on the side of the highway thanks to his R.

Anivia will never let Pantheon get on top of her once she’s 6.

Finally, Kalista + Blitz combo punishes the Yummi/Ezreal combo much harder than other bot lane duos thanks to their gap closing and lockdown.

2. Lockdown + Scaling

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Garen/Camille
• Jungle: Karthus/Shyvana
• Mid: Lissandra/Galio
• ADC: Senna/Ashe
• Support: Maokai/Nautilus

Next up is an amazing scaling + lockdown comp that remains strong in the early and mid-game.

A minus ten movement speed nerf isn’t gonna put the nail in the coffin with Karthus Jungle. Your clear is still going to be exceptional and when you have the likes of Lissandra and Maokai to root your targets for free Q’s, it’s night time for your enemies.

Lissandra recently got a nice buff to her waveclear which will help her have more favorable roam timers and priority in lane to assist Karthus for scuttles and neutral objectives.

In the bot lane, you have fasting Senna paired with Maokai who is a great counter to the many melee champions in the game at the moment.

Lastly, does Garen really need an explanation? Press Q, Spin-to-win, yell DEMACIA, make the enemy top laner rage in all chat. EZPZ.

Your win condition revolves around not allow your Karthus to be invaded with this comp.

As long as your team can collapse when needed on the time you’re pretty much set for the game.

You’ve got a great lockdown from your Maokai and Lissandra for your Karthus and Senna to dish out plenty of damage while also having good tankiness from Garen and Maokai.

Just play safe, scale, and fight on item spikes or when Karthus Ult is available.

So pretty much if you don’t hiccup in the early game and go even at 15min you’ve won.

How to Counter

Darius is favored in the Garen matchup and can look to derail the solo power of top lane by countering it with even more solo power.

AP Shyvana clears brilliantly and has burst to boot thanks to her slinging Fireballs that’ll 1-2 shot Karthus – she also provides better Dragon pressure.

Kassadin will look to take the free passive lane and scale to level 16 easier thanks to the noninteractive matchup.

Finally for bot lane, Yasuo/Taric will look to punish the low mobility of Senna/Maokai to get uncomfortably close for easy kills.

3. Front-to-back Teamfighting

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Sett/Fiora
• Jungle: Trundle/Sejuani
• Mid: Azir/Cassiopeia
• ADC: Xayah/Kai’Sa
• Support: Rakan/Nautilus

Despite Trundle getting a slight nerf he’s still excellent for countering the many melee picks in the current meta.

You’ll be able to set up great ganks from your pillar and allow for your Sett to have an easier time to feed your foes a couple of knuckle sandwiches.

Xayah isn’t the best ADC in the game alone, but when slotted into team play and paired with Rakan she easily is on par with God Tier. The Lovers duo’s early power and priority are great.

At mid lane, you’ll have an Azir to scale up and add even more obstacles for your opponents to deal with thanks to his Emperor’s Divide.

Your main win condition going to want to play out the first 10 minutes through mid and top side. As long as you secure Rift Herald for tower plating gold it’s okay to lose out on the first Dragon.

After the first ten minutes of a match, if your team properly sets up your mid and top to succeed, refocus on your bot laners and be sure to pummel your opponents with 4 man ganks.

Afterward, you should be in a great position to control the flow of the game through pressuring Dragon Soul, Rift Heralds, and Barons.

How to Counter

Despite Wukong’s nerfs, his stats still beat out Sett’s early and he has a kit to avoid a lot of Sett’s damage.

Trundle may be able to disrupt Nunu with his Pillar but it doesn’t stop the utility and objective control Nunu brings that outshines him.

Ekko thrives to get in the face of Azir and can easily get out of his Sand Soldiers and get on top of Azir.

Ashe + Morgana look to abuse the aggressive nature of the Xayah/Rakan matchup and by having multiple forms of hard CC, it’s easier to chain them together especially because Morgana R will remain tethered on Xayah if she ults.

4. Wombo Combo Teamfighting (Delivery system variant)

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Maokai/Malphite
• Jungle: Jarvan IV/Zac
• Mid: Orianna/Galio
• ADC: Varus/Kog’Maw
• Support: Lulu/Nami

It’s always hard to not put some iteration of the ball delivery wombo combo when recommending comps for coordinated 5v5.

It’s a tried and true ol’ reliable method that never ceases to stay relevant.

Add the extra tankiness and peeling that you get from Maokai as well as the sheer utility that Lulu brings to the table.

She can not only protect her carries but can also use her ult to layer on top of the wombo to keep the J4 alive.

The Varus brings a little extra added bonus thanks to his ultimate but please be sure to build him on hit and not the lethality build that has been more popular recently.

Otherwise, you’re going to lack consistent damage in teamfights.

With this comp, it’s sink or swim when it comes to your bot lane.

You need to play mid + bot with this comp and remember you have a Maokai when he groups for team fights.

If you can make it to Blade of the Ruined King and Rageblade on Varus, everything else will fall into place.

How to Counter

Morde already has some penetration in his kit and generally rushes Liandry’s for the % health burn which is convenient against tanks like Maokai.

Graves offers good mobility and kiting against Jarvan and just outclasses him in many other aspects of the game at the moment.

Talon will have mid priority all early game and be able to roam and influence other lanes while also having great kill pressure on Orianna as well.

Lastly, the MF/Bard combo packs a big punch at the moment and can easily punish micro mistakes from Varus/Lulu.

5. Wombo Combo Teamfighting (Scaling variant)

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Wukong/Kled
• Jungle: Fiddlesticks/Shyvana
• Mid: Yasuo/Renekton
• ADC: Miss Fortune/Kai’Sa
• Support: Leona/Nocturne

If you aren’t feeling like playing the delivery system variant but still want to have a potent wombo comp, this may be up your alley.

This comp is honestly pretty foolproof if you just don’t feed early.

The insane scaling and damage output this comp pumps out is surely NSFW.

It’s hard to put a timer on this comp when it really activates, but when most of your team (except your support) is all on 2 item power spikes generally you’re golden from here on out.

Look to force neutral objectives until you eventually get Dragon Soul or a Baron and be sure to play off of Fiddle ultimates to capitalize off his fears.

Overall, you’ve got the knockup synergy with the Wukong and Yasuo, the AoE monstrosity that is Fiddlesticks that covers your AP damage, and MF + Leona which add some CC and wombobility (yes I just made that word up) to make this comp quite frightening.

How to Counter

Singed can quite literally glue Ornn’s feet to the ground and stop him from using the second cast of his ultimate.

Zac is able to disrupt Fiddle’s drain, as well as itemize for magic resist (such as Spirit Visage) to keep him alive and not get burst down as easily.

Pantheon is a great counter to Yasuo as he has point-click CC and an ability to block his damage.

The Jhin + Bard pack in a lot of bursts and some utility of their own that’ll hold the line vs the MF/Leona.

6. Dive Comp

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Ornn/Sion
• Jungle: Graves/Kindred
• Mid: Diana/Kassadin
• ADC: Kalista/Caitlyn
• Support: Taric/Rakan

Your win condition for this comp is definitely reliant on your team’s coordination to pull the trigger on engaging fights. And not just every fight you see, but the right ones.

It’s also important to play around item spikes and play the neutral objectives game to sway the tempo of the game in your favor.

By doing this you can easily dive towers with ease since you’ll likely have the item advantage.

Speaking of item advantages, you have Ornn upgrades available to boost your late-game power.

If you can stay afloat for about 15 minutes of the game and really, really drive the nail in the coffin in the mid-game this comp will do you wonders.

Just be sure to close out around 30 minutes otherwise you may be outscaled by certain teams.

With this comp, you’ll be wanting to play very riskily by diving your opponents. This should be made easy thanks to the long-range engagement from Ornn and survivability from Taric’s ultimate.

Your 2 AD carries are primed and ready as well with great damage to round the comp out.

How to Counter

Your reason for choosing Mordekaiser here is the same as the anti-Maokai explanation we gave earlier.

Trundle is able to steal valuable AD from Graves and be able to stick onto him and run him down.

Any armor Graves has will just be stolen by the Troll King and just make graves a caster minion.

Galio fits in perfectly with the anti-dive comp as well as the anti-melee/anti-magic damage that makes him a natural enemy to Diana.

Finally, Vayne + Janna just get a free non-interactive lane phase to allow for harder scaling in the mid-late game.

Feature Recommendation: Team Comparison

We strongly recommend using the Team Comparison feature within the Live Companion on our platform for your Clash matches.

The Live Companion gives you a ton of analysis before your match with player scouting, imported builds and more.

The Team Comparison allows you to see how you stack up against the enemy team with helpful average stats and power spikes.

To learn more about all the other tools the feature has, check out our Mobalytics Live Companion guide.

Older Comps (added Patch 10.4)

The game has changed quite a bit since we last added these comps but we decided to include them in case your Clash team found success with them or in case the meta eventually returns for these comps to be good again.

If they worked well with you in the past, be sure to be aware of what’s changed in terms of buffs/nerfs and discuss with your team how you’ll be adapting to those changes if necessary.

1. “Game Over” – Pick + Teamfight

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Ornn/Gnar
• Jungle: Rek’Sai/Elise
• Mid: Cassiopeia/Viktor
• ADC: Caitlyn/Jinx
• Support: Leona/Nautilus

For this first team composition and my personal favorite, we have a well-rounded pick & teamfight comp that is consistently strong in the early, mid, and late game.

Going into draft be sure to get your hands on Ornn immediately if left open, then follow that up with Cassiopeia. Ornn provides massive stats thanks to his upgradeable items and Cassio will help secure and lockdown kills thanks to the many synergies the team provides such as Rek’Sai Unburrow or Leona CC.

Rek’Sai will allow the team to get rolling early thanks to her favorable early game in the current meta. Caitlyn and Leona will have lockdown synergy thanks to Leona’s lockdown and Caitlyn’s traps.

Also, due to the nature of the bot lane, Caitlyn will be able to maintain lane dominance and help provide priority for the Dragon Soul win condition.

Your win conditions are simple. Let your jungler set up plays and accumulate a small lead and make it unscathed until 10 minutes. After that, group up and fight over neutral objectives until you blast their Nexus into oblivion.

How to Counter

Yasuo can Windwall an essential Ornn engage. Elise is a natural hard counter to Rek’Sai thanks to her Rappel. Orianna keeps Cassiopeia at bay and doesn’t allow her to walk up to use her Twin Fangs.

Tristana can use Rocket Jump resets and her early snowball potential to throw a wrench in bot lanes scaling. And lastly, Morgana, is the bane of every engage player’s existence. Her Black Shield will stuff any playmaking potential as well as snaring you until your hair turns gray or you’re done pulling all of it out.

2. “The Wombo” – AoE

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Kennen/Vladimir
• Jungle: Jarvan IV/Zac
• Mid: Orianna/Viktor
• ADC: Miss Fortune/Kalista
• Support: Nautilus/Taric

Rolling into team comp #2, we have a hard engage style team that excels when grouped and feels oh-so-good when you wombo-combo in sync.

Be sure to utilize your team’s strength of forcing engages and layering ultimates. The best part about this comp is that you have multiple engage tools from Kennen, Nautilus, and Jarvan IV with deadly followup from Orianna & Miss Fortune.

Try to focus more on Rift Herald over Dragons early as you want to transition Shelly for tower platings to reach your item spikes quicker. With this team, as long as you do not run it down pre-10 minutes, you will shine in the mid-to-late game portion of the match.

Pick this comp if you are a team who prides themselves on their synergy and chains ultimates so well the enemy team has no other choice but to give you props.

How to Counter

Beware of picks like Cho’Gath who will silence you and one-shot you as you blink in the late game. Kindred can single-handedly save a teamfight and kite thanks to her Lamb’s Respite. Veigar who seems like it would easily be abused, can actually confine you and dismantle your dive/engage comp thanks to his Cage.

Senna & Morgana scale well and stifle ganks thanks to Black Shield and the Sustain from Senna Q. Senna’s ultimate can also provide shields to dilute your AoE damage in teamfights.

3. “We’re better than you” – Strong Early/Mid Game + Dive

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Kled/Jayce
• Jungle: Elise/Pantheon
• Mid: Qiyana/Taliyah
• ADC: Draven/Lucian
• Support: Alistar/Thresh

Moving forward to comp #3, we have an aggressive early-to-mid game team that you will absolutely love to use against teams you’re certain you’ll have them FF’ing in 15 minutes.

Your win-condition is to outplay your opponents early during laning phase and to close out the game pre 30 minutes. Use the aggressive nature of the comp to snowball and dive with Elise since she has synergies to gank and dive in every lane.

You will need to prioritize Rift Heralds for income and to bait teams to defend their structures before you all in them under the tower.

This is a high-risk high-reward playstyle that requires a good amount of synergy between teammates, so be sure to practice this one a couple of times in your scrims before gameday.

How to Counter

Despite the nerfs on Singed, Singed’s Sticky Glue patch inhibits Kled, Elise, Qiyana & Alistar from playmaking thanks to the grounding effect. Olaf would also ignore everybody and go 10-0 before your team can even say “200 Years Experience.”

Lissandra stalls and locks down your comp fairly easily while Ashe and Morgana slow, snare, stun your champions, as well as your mentals as they deny your strong, aggressive early game.

4. “The Icebreaker” – Scaling + Teamfighting

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Sett/Ornn
• Jungle: Sejuani/Skarner
• Mid: Sylas/Irelia
• ADC: Jinx/Vayne
• Support: Braum/Tahm Kench

Continuing forward with comp #4, I wanted to throw in a slick lockdown scaling teamfight composition that’ll reward those of you who like to play reserved and calculated to slowly choke out your opponents.

What allows for this comp to synergize so well is the insane crowd control you get just from Sejuani and Braum which is supplemented by the Sett and Sylas picks to help proc the on-hit effects.

This comp strives to get to the mid and late game so try to play safe early and wait for your team’s item spikes. If all else fails, you have Jinx as a hyper carry to rely on in the late game with plenty of peel to boot.

How to Counter

Sett may seem like he may counter Maokai, but Maokai can really disrupt and avoid a lot of Sett’s damage thanks to his Q and W. Trundle will absolutely tear Sejuani to shreds thanks to his stat stealing abilities thanks to his Q and R.

Mordekaiser will be able to death realm anybody on your team and stand on you with Conqueror and his passive as he emotes over your grave.

Miss Fortune and Taric can sustain and poke in the lane as well as peel and have amazing stalling potential in the later stages of the game thanks to Miss Fortune R and Taric’s invulnerability from Cosmic Radiance.

5. “Secretly OP” – Skirmish

We will take skill expression to a whole new level and help make your hook champions lives easier in the form of Trundle’s Pillar since it will slow and make hooks easier to land. Be prepared to laugh uncontrollably as Pyke will single-handedly purchase your team Rolex’s & Loui Vitton thanks to his insane gold share from “Your Cut” on his ultimate.

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Mordekaiser/Gnar
• Jungle: Trundle/Karthus
• Mid: Pyke/Qiyana
• ADC: Vayne/Kog’Maw
• Support: Thresh/Braum

This comp may seem a little wonky at first, but believe me, people have forgotten the sheer power and gold Pyke mid provides. Pyke synergizes really well with Hail of Blades which conveniently got buffed recently. The Pyke pick will roam and help kickstart the Vayne train to snowball for late-game.

Picks are essential to this comp so be sure to use Trundle Pillar to narrow their chances of dodging skill shots and if all else fails your team is equipped with above-average peeling tools for your Vayne to get you across the finish line.

How to Counter

Be wary as Tryndamere can steal the game from under your noses as he can cancel Pyke R as well as be a consistent threat in the later parts of the game due to his strong split pushing potential. Trynd will force two or more players to deal with him and if he pulls Mordekaiser away from team fights then he already has done his job.

Nunu & Willump will be able to secure neutrals far better than Trundle can while Diana will be able to keep Pyke honest in lane phase with decent kill pressure.

Kog’Maw and Morgana will be able to scale exceptionally due to the fact Vayne is looking for a passive lane to farm as well – and in my opinion, I’d be more worried about a Kog’Maw free hitting with Blackshield than a Vayne who’ll likely be spotted and executed on sight

6. “Poke Me on Facebook’ – Poke + Siege

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Rumble/Gnar
• Jungle: Jarvan IV/Nidalee
• Mid: Zoe/Corki
• ADC: Ezreal (Varus)
• Support: Thresh (Yuumi)

Alrighty y’all are you still with me? With comp #6 we will shift from the primarily teamfight comps that we have covered so far to a more poke based composition, that at the end of the day, will still accomplish what a purebred teamfight comp could achieve if not better.

If you’re looking to annoy and watch as your enemies mentals deteriorates the more you land skillshots, this composition is right up your alley.

How to Counter

Be on the lookout for Sett as he can chase down your Rumble thanks to his Q which negates Rumbles movespeed on his W. Amumu can strip Magic Resist from off your team as well as provide a decent AoE lockdown ultimate if he manages to land a Bandage Toss.

Heimerdinger would prove challenging thanks to his turrets being able to block Zoe and Ezreal poke. And finally, Twitch and Taric would be able to stealth stun you in lane phase and outscale you harder in the mid-game.

7. “The Submarine” – Globals + Dive

Ideal Champs and Substitutions:

• Top: Shen/Gangplank
• Jungle: Nocturne/Gragas
• Mid: Twisted Fate/Oriana
• ADC: Jhin/Varus
• Support: Leona/Nautilus

For the last and final comp, we have a comp that’ll have your enemies barking in all chat for how much you were willing to commit to picking off a player. To me, this is the true one and only submarine comp.

I suggest playing this comp if you’re confident in your split pushing and 1-3-1 abilities as a team. Not only that, but you would also have some very decent team fighting as well.

Look for opportunities to dive with Nocturne + Shen R as your Twisted Fate would be able to ultimate and teleport without being noticed to follow up.

You’ll have another great initiation tool from the Jhin & Leona combo to make picks all the more easier for your Nocturne and Twisted Fate.

Be sure to play safe and farm until level 6, and make plays around your TF or Nocturne and prioritize Rift Heralds early so that you can get to your item spikes much quicker.

How to Counter

Dr. Mundo will truly go where he pleases all over your team as your team lacks steady damage. His tenacity and healing regeneration will surely prove a problem if he is left open versus this team.

Trundle counters Nocturne by Pillaring him away and separating him from his fear target while Ziggs will never allow TF to roam thanks to the amazing wave clear Ziggs provides.

Xayah and Taric will prove difficult thanks to the kiting, sustain, disengage, and invulnerability, and can deny any chance of your team to burst or lockdown any of their fellow teammates.

Conclusion

That’s all from me folks! Good luck with your Clash brackets and be sure to let me know down in the comments how these team comps worked out for you and if you’d like to see more Clash content in the future.

The post Best Clash Team Comps and Counters (Updated for Season 12) appeared first on Mobalytics.

This article was written in collaboration with our Challenger Coach, “Morïarty“, and analyst “prohibit” These are techniques that they’ve taught to students during the coaching careers and techniques that they use themselves when playing high level Solo Queue.

A Meditation on Mentality

You can have all the talent and potential in the world, but if your emotions and thought processes are unstable, your path will be rocky and volatile. The common thread that ties together the best of the best in the world is their ability to use their mind as a strength. It’s a source of power they can harness in order to rise in the face of challenges and perform well while their peers crack under pressure.

We often hear about athletes “being in the zone” – a sort of mental state in which they are able to elevate their performances to almost inhuman levels. But what is the zone? How can we recognize it and try to find it ourselves?

A Case Study: Kobe Bryant
Take a listen to the Laker legend describe what its like to be in the zone (excuse the dramatic ambient music).

He explains being in the zone as having “supreme confidence”, where things “slow down”. A state of being locked in a super-focus, “oblivious” to external factors like thousands of spectators.

Kobe Bryant is a paragon of mental strength and fortitude. He built a career hitting clutch shots under immense pressure and against the best defenders in the NBA (often double or triple-teamed at that!). Teammates and rivals alike credited Kobe for his relentless work ethic and unquenchable thirst for improving.

However, Kobe wasn’t always the mental master that he ended his career as. Building this was a journey – a gradual process. Entering the league as a high schooler, Kobe as a rookie was known for being brash and cocky. Everyone knew he had an incredible amount of potential, he just needed a bit of discipline and focus.

In Kobe’s fourth year, Phil Jackson, known as the “Zen Master“, became his coach. Jackson was Michael Jordan’s former coach, a virtuoso of bringing together players of different personalities and temperaments. He became the ultimate mentor for Kobe in his youth – as his Kobe’s career went, on he became less known for feuding with teammates, and eventually picked up meditation as part of his daily routine. Together, Jackson and Kobe won five championships over their eleven years as player and coach.

How this applies to you and League
Like Kobe, you should strive to build a mental discipline that will help facilitate your improvement as a player. The right mindset may be the most influential factor in becoming the best player you can be. Nearly every factor is affected by it. Your focus, your decision-making, your Consistency. It increases your potential to improve, helps you stay composed in good and bad times, and makes you a better decision-maker.

If you establish this as your fundamental base, your climb will become more steady and inevitable. By the end of this article, we hope to equip you with some techniques to strengthen your mind and mental approach.

Probably not to this extent though

Establish a routine

Create a rhythm
Stick to a routine, this will allow you to find a rhythm and limit the factors that affect your play. If you keep changing what you’re doing, it can negatively affect your consistency and make it hard to isolate what’s causing you to play well or worse.

Find what works for you
Players have different personalities and play styles. What works for a pro or your friends may not work for you. If you find yourself improving (in your GPI and rank) try to understand what you can personally do to help keep at it.

Play at ideal times
Give yourself the best shot by playing when you’re the most active and alert. This depends from person to person, but for the most part it’s done earlier in the day (perhaps in the afternoon). You should also try to play in between meals, but not on an empty stomach. This sweet spot will help you avoid being distracted by hunger but also help you stay away from a food coma.

We all know that feeling after a big meal

Achieving a healthy mindset

Have a clear mind
Play when you have a clear and fresh mind. If you play after a tough college final or after staying up all night, you likely won’t be able to play at your best.

Stay in the moment
Give all your attention to the task at hand. Try to take care of business ahead of time so you don’t get distracted during your match and allow you to really focus on what you need to do in-game.

Expect the unexpected
Be prepared for the unexpected, have contingencies and situational builds (Versatility). The more prepared for the different situations you can face, the less it will throw you off your game.

It’s about your journey

We say this often at Mobalytics – it’s not about the result, it’s about improving. You can maintain a centered mentality if you focus on yourself and your improvement instead of wins and losses.

This is because there will be games where you play terribly and still win, and games that you play better than you ever have and still lose.

Know yourself

Being honest with yourself goes a long way
Be honest with yourself, your results. it will help you stay realistic. allows you to know your limits, what you can and can’t do. The more in line your decision-making is with your actual abilities, the closer you’ll be to truly contributing the best that you can.

Be confident, but humble
Throughout your journey, remember that there will always be players worse than you and players better than you. Be kind to those that are at a lower rank, you were once in their shoes. At the same time, don’t fear those that are ahead of you – soon you’ll have what it takes to meet or surpass them!

Stick to your guns
Save your experimentation for Normals, avoid experimenting in Ranked. Use champs you’re comfortable with. You’ll have more success on a champion you’ve played tens of times instead of one you just began learning.

Avoiding tilt

Should you really hit that button again?

In general, tilt is when your emotions negatively affect your game. This could be in the form of tunnel visioning, typing more than playing, or playing to end on a win. Prohibit says that tilt is like cancer, it needs to be cut off before it spreads and becomes uncontrollable. Here are some techniques that you can use to prevent tilt, deal with it when it’s happening, and use after it happens.

Preemptive-measures

• Establishing a game limit
  • Setting a game limit such as only 3 ranked games a day, will not only build a consistent routine, but also stop you from salty re-queues.
• Don’t use ranked as a destresser
  • If real life is stressing you out, avoid playing ranked. The external factors may have a negative effect on your thought processes.

In-game techniques

• Pretend your teammates are bots
  • When you’re playing with bots, typing in chat doesn’t make a difference, no matter what you say. If a teammate makes a silly mistake, pretend they’re a bot. If an enemy is talking trash about something you did, pretend they’re a bot.
  • This technique can help you avoid engaging in potentially toxic situations.
• Everyone makes mistakes
  • From Bronze to the pros, every player will inevitably mistakes from time to time.
  • Calling out a teammate for a bad play will likely cause them to play even worse and cause yourself to lose focus on your own game. Instead, stay centered on what you can control.
• Consider muting the chat
  • If you get easily distracted by chat, it may be beneficial to tune it out entirely before the game begins.
  • By communicating with pings, you can avoid typing and reading toxic messages from teammates/enemies.

Post-game evaluations
After a tough loss or dealing with a particularly toxic player take a deep breath. Here are some rule of thumb checks to understand if you’re tilted.

• Are you responding to toxicity?
  • If you cant stop yourself from responding to someone, you’re tilted.
• Will you be able to still have fun if you lose your next match?
  • If you cant envision yourself having fun, you’re tilted.
• How to deal with it
  • Take a break. Walk your dogs, grab a glass of water. If you come back and still feel the salt, just do something else until you clear your mind.

Ranked anxiety

There are two ends of the spectrum: people who keep spamming Ranked when they’re tilted, and those that become scared of queueing entirely. Ranked anxiety usually stems from either being scared of either not performing well or losing the rank you’ve earned. Here are some tips if this applies to you.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint
Climbing the ladder is a gradual journey over a long period of time. You aren’t going to become a Diamond player immediately starting as a Gold level player. Likewise, you aren’t going to fall to Bronze after a few bad games.

Embrace the process
To truly be considered a ranking (being Platinum for example), you need to perform at that level on a consistent basis. The only true way to maintain your rank is to play games. Otherwise your skills may get rusty and your true ability may not reflect where you’re at.

Judge yourself by your average play
Your peak play does not dictate your skill level – nor does your lowest. To stay centered, judge yourself by your average play and long term trends.

A parting reflection

“Mental bearing, not skill, is the sign of a matured samurai.” — Tsukahara Bokuden

Thanks for reading! We hope you found this article helpful. If you have any questions about building a strong mindset or want to find other player’s trying to improve, join our Discord community!

The post How to Maintain the Optimal Mindset for Climbing the Ranked Ladder in League of Legends appeared first on Mobalytics.

Burnout in League of Legends is something everyone suffers with in one way or another. Sometimes, it’s due to how many games we play in a sitting, or it may just be a string of bad games that get us frustrated.

In this Mobalytics guide, we will list several things you can do to reduce your chances of burning out from League of Legends.

As someone who can grind game after game and unfortunately play 20+ games over 2 days when trying to grind, I know first hand how easy it is to burn out and keep queuing up game after game.

This guide isn’t intended to take the moral high ground but to offer some first-hand advice.

For more tips and tricks to help you get better and win more, sign up for your free Mobalytics account!

5 Tips to Reduce Burnout in League of Legends

1. Reduce your time spent playing
2. Don’t just play ranked
3. Play easier champions
4. Widen your champion pool
5. Stop playing the game

1) Reduce your time spent playing

League of Legends can be addicting. It’s not uncommon to see someone on your friend list constantly online or in a game. When trying to climb, and after a poor streak of games, we always say “just one more game” or “I can’t end on a loss”. While I experience both of these feelings, I always end up going for that one more game and pretty much regretting it.

To prevent burnout, you need to reduce how many games you’re playing every day and avoid playing 10+ ranked games a day. You should be limiting how many games you play per day to around five ranked matches and stopping if you lose multiple games in a row. The more games you play, the more fatigued you will become. By playing fewer games, you should reduce burnout and the number of mistakes you make.

Recent activity- Ranked Queue.

It is also good to not play (ranked) every day. Skipping some days here and there is beneficial and allows you to mentally reset. Resetting in League is very helpful and will make you play better in the long run.

Instead of grinding game after game, and grinding the game every day, limit how many games you play per day and don’t play ranked every day. Do something else with your time like reading, studying or working out.

2) Don’t just play ranked

Optimal climbing in ranked requires you to practice in normals too. Don’t just play the ranked queue as you will always be playing for LP. In my opinion, playing normals alone or with friends is a good way of relieving some stress and having some fun.

Recent activity- all games

When you play normals, you can practice and learn new things such as combos or new champions. Practicing these in normals is much safer compared to trying them in ranked. You could focus on learning a combo for your champion and eventually taking it into ranked when you’re ready. You can perfect this combo and try it over and over again in normals games, ARAM’s or in the Practice Tool.

A good way of finding good combos for your main is by checking out your champions champion page and then looking at their combos. You can learn more about how to practice combos by checking out our combo guide.

3) Play easier champions

When playing mechanically difficult champions, it’s very easy for you to make a mistake that costs you the lane. If you’re always playing hard champions, you will eventually start to burn out if you keep losing on them.

Playing easier champions (in theory) is better because you have less risk of making a mechanical mistake and get frustrated. If you make a mechanical mistake, you may start to tilt. So if you can reduce your chances of tilting, you will (in theory) reduce your chances of burning out.

Some champions you could play are:

• Annie
• Amumu
• Janna
• Alistar
• Ashe
• Soraka

On the other hand, it’s also very tilting to get outplayed by someone because they’re playing an easy champion and just run you down with auto-attacks. If you can’t beat them- join them!

4) Widen your champion pool

I often get asked if it’s better to one trick a champion or have multiple champions in your pool. In my opinion, one tricking is good, but if you start to no longer enjoy that champion, or if they get heavily nerfed- you’re going to stop enjoying the game.

My advice would be to play a few champions, so you’re able to switch it up and play something different when you start to have less fun on your main champion. Playing a few champions will make the game more fun for you as a whole, in my opinion too. Furthermore, when you start to learn a new champion, it brings a new aspect to the game which can make the game more enjoyable for many.

If you’re struggling to know which champion you should play, may I suggest checking out our League of Legends tier list? Picking an S tier pick champion means they’re good in the current meta. Pick one of those and someone you like the looks of. Hey- winning is fun, right? Play the OP champions to win more games!!!

5) Stop playing the game

I’m going to keep it short and sweet. Uninstall the game or quit if you stop enjoying the game. It is really not worth grinding the game and keep playing it if you’re no longer enjoying it. It is not worth doing something you don’t enjoy every single day. Try and find a new game to play in the meantime, or swap game modes to ARAM, which is way much more fun.

Even if you don’t uninstall the game, it’s not a bad idea to take a step back from the game after a bad sequence of games and take some time off from playing. This will allow you to reset and come back stronger. If you have struggles and want to keep playing, you need to uninstall and go completely cold turkey, so you don’t open up the game and queue back up.

League can get very addicting, and if it is coming between you and work, friends, education or anything else, it is important that you take a step back for a while.

Conclusion

Preventing burnout is pretty straightforward, but we are often so tilted and refuse to accept it. Stop grinding ranked, take a step back and limit how much time you spend playing the game to help reduce burnout!

Want more tips to help you climb? Check out Mobalytics!

If you have any questions or want to learn more, check out PicklePants’s stream.

Watch live video from PicklePantsLOL on www.twitch.tv

The post 5 Tips to Reduce Burnout in League of Legends appeared first on Mobalytics.

Playing with a bad, tilted or auto-filled ADC is something us Support mains dread. When they have little to no impact in lane, you feel helpless and unable to do what you would like. It can often feel like you have to take additional measures to try and get them into the game which often backfires.

In this Mobalytics guide, we will discuss what to do when you’re laning with a bad ADC.

We have made a separate guide in the past for ADC’s on how to lane with a bad Support! Check it out if you want to learn more.

How to Play Support with a Bad ADC

1. Lower your expectations
2. Communicate via pings
3. Mute them
4. Leave lane and help your allies
5. Don’t forget about XP
6. Ward for your ADC
7. Don’t flame them
8. Remember your win condition

1. Lower your expectations

When playing with somebody who isn’t very good, especially in the higher ELO’s, you need to drastically lower your expectations of what the ADC will do. This includes following up when you engage, understand (or partake in) trading stance and playing around advantages.

Adjusting your mindset and understanding that under no circumstances you can trust them is key. At the end of the day, if you go in and they don’t follow up, it’s both of your fault and not just the ADC’s.

2. Communicate via pings

Pings are very undervalued in League of Legends. It is vital that you communicate via pings so your ADC and your other teammates know what you want to do. For example, pinging when you want to go in, pinging when there is danger and pinging key cooldowns like Ultimates or Summoner Spells can help you and your ADC lane better together.

If you want to go in, spam ping your ADC the target you wish to focus and then wait for them to be in a position to follow up before initiating a trade with the enemy.

Here’s a separate guide on how to improve your communication in League of Legends. It has a range of tips to help you improve your communication.

3. Mute them

I’ll keep it short and sweet. Mute your ADC if they start to flame you or if they are making mistakes and blaming anyone but themselves. If you listen or read what they type, you may start to tilt, making you play worse and not be able to do some of the other things I’m going to talk about in this guide.

Players will like to “cry” in chat or flame you if you’re roaming, so it’s better just to mute them so you can focus on getting leads elsewhere on the map. Which conveniently moves us to our next point.

4. Leave lane and help your allies

If you’re not going to get anything done in the bottom lane, you may as well team up with someone else on your team to try and help them secure kills and objectives. When you’re playing in the bottom lane and not doing anything but dying, you’re giving the enemy a CS, gold and XP lead. By leaving your ADC alone, they can farm while you try to do stuff elsewhere.

Potential roaming routes from the bot lane. This image is taken from our everything you need to know about roaming guide.

For example, you may rotate to the mid-lane with your Jungler, or follow your Jungler around the map and help them secure objectives like the Rift Herald or Dragon. While you may be missing out on XP in the bottom lane, you could be helping gain leads elsewhere on the map.

5. Don’t forget about XP

While we suggest leaving your ADC alone, you need to be careful with your movements around the map. If you stay in the mid-lane, you’re going to soak up your Mid laners XP which means they will fall behind in XP and levels because it’s 2v1 in the lane. When there are more champions around, the less XP each champion gets. If you hug the Mid laner for a long period of time, they could significantly fall behind if they don’t get any kills.

Similarly, you need to be careful if you’re running around with your Jungler because you will not be picking up XP from nearby minions. If the enemy Support stays in lane and you’re constantly roaming and not getting any kills out of it, they will gain a XP and level lead which will be hard to catch up on.

So, while you may want to leave your ADC alone at all times, you need to head back to the bottom lane occasionally and stay there for a while so you can get free XP and stacks for your warding quest.

6. Ward for your ADC

While you’re roaming, make sure you place vision for your ADC so they can stay alive while you’re moving around the map. Vision will, in theory, keep them alive for longer as they should spot the enemy Jungler or any enemy approaching them while they’re left alone in the bottom lane.

This image is taken from our in-depth warding guide.

If you want to learn more about warding in League of Legends, check out our in-depth warding guide which breaks down everything you need to know about warding in League of Legends.

As you can see, there are multiple areas on the map where you can place wards for your ADC. After the tier 1 tower has been destroyed, placing wards in these locations should offer them some more survivability while you roam around the map and help your allies.

As you can see, there are multiple areas on the map where you can place wards for your ADC. After the tier 1 tower has been destroyed, placing wards in these locations should offer them some more survivability while you roam around the map and help your allies.

7. Don’t flame them

It’s very easy for things to get heated in League of Legends, but there is no point flaming in League of Legends. 1 it doesn’t help anyone, 2 it’s not going to help them play any better, and 3, just don’t be that person.

Keeping a cool and level head will make the game more enjoyable even under the worse circumstances. Having a level head will increase your chances of winning the game too.

If you struggle with keeping your toxicity levels down, mute everyone like we’ve said and check out this guide on how to stop being toxic in League of Legends.

8. Remember your win condition

Each champion has a certain play style and you should try to adapt to the situation when you’re not able to do anything with your ADC in the bottom lane. For example, Leona Support will want to play around her Ultimate to get kills. If you cannot really use your Ultimate in the bottom lane, you could roam and try to help your Mid laner instead.

This image is taken from the LOL Wiki page.

Learn your win conditions and learn how to adapt your game plan by checking out your favourite champions champion page on the Mobalytics site. It will tell you when your power spikes are (so you can play around them) and tell you what your goals are during the early, mid and late game.

Conclusion

Playing with a bad teammate is going to be hard, but you need to remain positive and try to do whatever you can to keep yourself in the game to increase your chances of winning. Even if you lose, keeping your mental strong will be very beneficial.

For more tips and tricks, check out Mobalytics!

If you have any questions or want to learn more, check out PicklePants’s stream.

Watch live video from PicklePantsLOL on www.twitch.tv

The post 8 Tips to Play Support with a Bad ADC appeared first on Mobalytics.

With the season ending very soon, it’s important that you try your hardest to get as much LP as fast as possible. For you to achieve your end of season goals, you need to play smart, not hard, and in this guide, we will help you optimize your climb to ensure you hit that rank milestone.

Whether your goal is to hit Silver, Gold, Platinum, or Diamond, the information in this guide will apply to every player, rank, and role, so make sure you use everything we suggest to your advantage to get one over the enemy.

When does Season 10 end?

Season 10 ends on the 10th of November 2020. The rank you end on at the end that day will count as your end of season rank. During the offseason, you can continue to play ranked if you wish, but your previous rewards will not change.

For example, if you ended the season in Silver, you will not get Gold rewards if you’re able to get gold in the offseason.

You can, however, increase/decrease your MMR during the offseason by continuing to play ranked if you wish.

If you want to learn how to get rewards or if you need to know any more about when the season ends, check out this article by Riot Support.

1. Ban Seraphine and Samira

The latest champions, Seraphine and Samira are really strong and can be difficult to play against. Even though they’ve both been out for a period of time, players still struggle to play against them.

In October 2020, Samira was sitting as the most banned champion on our tier list.

My recommendation would be for your team to ban both so the enemy cannot pick them. In particular, Samira can be really challenging to play against, and if she gets a small lead as she can run down her opponents over and over again.

Unless you need to ban something else like Pyke or Evelynn, I would recommend that you always ban one of these two champions to increase your chances of winning the game.

If you ban one of these champions and the other one makes it through and gets picked by the enemy, you need to learn how to play against them. Luckily, we have individual guides on how to counter Seraphine and how to counter Samira. Give them a read so you know how to handle them just in case you find one or both of them in your game.

Similarly, banning both of these champions will prevent your team from playing them. Seraphine hasn’t been out long and while Samira has been out for some time, players may still be trying to learn her. Having both of them banned prevents your team from first timing any one of these champions.

2. Solidify your champion picks

When there are over 150+ champions in the game with tons of different play styles and gameplay, it’s easy for us to want to play lots of different champions. When it comes to winning more games, however, you need to restrict your choice of champions.

Pick your most comfortable champions and then stick to just playing them in ranked. Create a form of tier list of your best champions- your main being S tier, and then several champions being in A and B tier. Limit how many champions you add to this list. 3 to 5 champions is more than enough, but be prepared to go to 10 if you struggle to play the same champions over and over again or get bored easily.

The champions you play should generally be easier rather than mechanically difficult like Camille or Irelia. The reason for this is that those champions require more skill compared to a lot of other champions, and if you go wrong once on them, it can be difficult for you to get back into the game.

Additionally, you’ll be playing better and more consistently when your champion pool is small, which allows you to win more games overall as you will have more experience on the champions you play. Let’s say you spend 100 games on 3 champions- you’re going to be better than someone who has 100 games on 50 different champions, which will naturally give you an edge.

If you’re struggling to create a champion pool or stick to a select few champions, check out our S tier recommendations on Mobalytics Tier List and pick a few of them to play.

Remember that this tip also applies for the role you play too. Stick to one main role and have a back up as your second choice just in case you don’t get your main role. Make sure you have a solid pool in each. Don’t play if you’re autofilled- just dodge and take the minus 3 LP (trust me, it’ll be better in the long run).

3. Optimize your runes and builds

One thing we often talk about here at Mobalytics is optimal runes and builds. Fortunately, builds do not change drastically every patch, but there are occasions where a new build becomes favoured or a set of runes is no longer the best option.

We have 2 builds for Ahri on our champion pages.

It is incredibly important that you keep your runes updated and you are playing with the latest build and rune setup in every game. If you’re a few patches behind, you might not be playing optimally compared to somebody who is up to date. Furthermore, there have been some slight rune changes in previous patches, so it’s a good idea to just double check your runes and update them if necessary.

You can find optimal and updated builds with ease by checking out our Mobalytics champion pages and seeing what we recommend you pick, and yes, they’re updated every week! You can also use our pre-game app and get the builds and runes we recommend straight into your client too so they’re always updated and ready for every game regardless of the champion you’re playing.

Building situational items is also incredibly important and knowing what items you should build in different scenarios is key to improving your build path and subsequently your ability to win the game. As champions with heals and shields are prevalent, items that reduce healing like Executioner’s Calling, Morellonomicon, Bramble Vest and some other items will all reduce the enemies ability to heal.

Whilst picking up situational items depends on the champion you’re playing, who you’re against and the scenario you’re in, a good basis to go by is if you’re against Senna, Soraka or Nami in the bottom lane as an ADC, you should go for an Executioner’s Calling to increase your chances of killing the enemy in lane.

If you want to learn what situational items there are and when to buy them, check out our item guides.

For ADCs: ADC itemization

For AP champions: AP champion itemization 

For Top laners and Junglers: Bruisers and Fighters itemization

For tanks in the Top lane and JungleTank itemization

For Supports: Support itemization

For everyone: Situational item guide

4. Focus the number games you’re playing a day

I know how much you want to get to the next rank before the season ends and there’s only a limited period of time in which you can do it in. Usually, doing something as quickly and as often as you can make the overall job get done quicker like reading a book or doing homework.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the same for League of Legends. You should only be playing when you’re ready and you shouldn’t be grinding 10 plus games a day trying to get into Gold.

There are lots of side effects to playing 10 plus games a day which include:

• You’re never going to be playing consistently for 10 games in a row.
• If you play badly in one game, it will continue over into the next few games.
• You’re going to fall behind in work and in life.
• You’ll be ignoring other things outside of League of Legends.
• You’re going to be on autopilot for almost every game after the first few.

You might be reading some of those and think “well that ain’t gonna happen to me”. Sorry to break it to you, but all of those things will happen if you decide to grind League of Legends non-stop to try and get a better rank.

Instead of playing tons of games, limit how many games you play a day to 3-5 and take a break after every loss. The less games you play, the more of a chance you’ll win as you’ll be less likely to autopilot and you shouldn’t be tired either.

Similarly, be prepared to play fewer games if things aren’t going your way either so you don’t lose more LP. For example, if you perform badly 2 games in a row, call it a day.

At the end of the day, if you grind 70 games a week, you’re not going to play as good as someone who is playing 30-35 games a week. Even then, it’s possible that those amount of games can be too much for some people, so you may want to go for fewer games and only play 5 days out of the 7: avoiding weekends as that’s when players are off work and school.

5. One last word of advice…

I’ve played this game for a very long time and I can always tell you that the grind is never worth it once you’ve hit your peak. While it does offer a lot of satisfaction to be a certain rank, it’s not worth putting in tons of effort in a short amount of time to attempt to get to the next level. It’s also way easier said than done.

Be prepared to call it quits if things aren’t going your way. No one will judge or care if you don’t hit your goal at the end of the season. There’s always time in the pre-season to learn and improve ready for the start of the next season 11.

Conclusion

We hope that you’re able to reach your end of season goals and smash them like the like button on your favorite youtube channel. Remember, if you want to get a Victorious skin, you’ll need to get at least Gold in any of the ranked queues and be honor level 2 in order to get your rewards. The rewards will start to be given out on November 11th and will be fully sent by December 10th.

Watch live video from PicklePantsLOL on www.twitch.tv

The post How to Get Diamond Before Season 10 Ends (5 Tips) appeared first on Mobalytics.

We get it. It’s not always your fault that you lose lane as an ADC. Sometimes it’s the Support that costs you the game. Whether they’re auto-filled, tilted or countered, it’s up to you to make the best of a bad situation to win the game.

In this Mobalytics guide by PicklePants, I’m going to give you some tips and tricks to help you play with bad Supports in lane. We will make a followup post down the line to help Supports play with bad ADC’s too.

Before we begin, there may be a reason your Support cannot do too much in lane. For example, they might be having a bad day, they might be tilted, or they might be playing in a countered matchup which results in them having a hard time in lane.

While we can’t really help you too much in the first two instances, if they’re in a tough matchup, you shouldn’t expect them to be able to get too much done. For example, Blitzcrank vs Morgana can be a difficult matchup for the Blitzcrank, so you shouldn’t expect them to go for Hooks every time their Q is up.

Basically, lower your expectations of the Support in matchups where they’re countered as it will be unlikely that they can achieve what they’d normally be able to do unless the enemy makes a mistake. With this in mind, let’s get on to our first tip.

Watch the Supports positioning

In order for you to get kills, pick up minions and win lane, you need to keep a constant eye on the Supports positioning. If you do not look at where they are before you move forward, the enemy will focus you down, and force you to either blow Summoner Spells or maybe even kill you.

If the Support is really far behind you, they will be unable to impact the skirmish which leaves you in a situation where you are 1 vs 2. This is why it’s incredibly important that you always check where your Support is positioned before initiating a trade.

Fight the enemy, or look for a skirmish when your Support is ahead, in line or slightly behind you. Never initiate a trade if they are too far behind you of if they’re unable to impact the fight.

If your Support is positioned like this, you could look to play aggressive.

You cannot force the Support to position differently, so you need to play accordingly to their positioning to increase your safety and sanity in lane. If you know where to expect the Support to be positioned, you can play accordingly. For example, if they’re a tank, you should be positioned behind them. If they’re a mage or utility Support, stand in line with them.

There’s more detail in this guide on how to position as a Support, but it is of course, mostly focused on helping Supports. Some of the advice will help when playing as an ADC though, so give it a read.

Zone the enemy ADC

In many occasions, you have to do things that usually the Support would do themselves. In particular, zoning the enemy AD Carry away from farm when the enemy Support has left lane or has died.

In higher ELOs, Supports usually position themselves in front of the minion wave to zone the enemy AD Carry away from farm (they usually initiate this movement). But when you are playing with a bad Support, they probably won’t do this. In these situations, you will need to position aggressively to zone the enemy ADC away from farm and initiate this type of gameplay.

To do this, you need to put yourself in a position of aggression and force the enemy ADC to walk backward. If they walk backward and out of XP range, congratulations, you’ve zoned them away from the minion wave. If they stay forwards, you can look to play aggressively with the help of the Support. Usually, if you walk forward and try to zone, the Support will help you and walk forward too. This is one way of “forcing” the Support to reposition.

Your ability to zone the enemy ADC will depend on many factors such as how strong you are early and the range of your basic attacks or abilities (lower ranges will reduce your potential to zone). While this image isn’t for an ADC,  it will help demonstrate your ability zoning range as the longer the range you have, the easier it will be for you to zone someone.

Fizz’ Ultimate range allows his zoning ability to be much larger. Champions like Lucian and Caitlyn will have large areas to thanks to Lucian’s Ultimate and Caitlyn’s auto attack range.

You can zone the enemy when the Support is dead and when you have the advantage. A good place to start zoning the enemy ADC is when the minion wave is closer to your side of the map as they have to overextend to farm- which you can capitalize on to either kill them or force them to miss out on CS and XP. It can be harder to zone when the minion wave is closer to their tower (unless you’re ahead).

Depending on the game status and the matchup you’re in, you may be able to zone the enemy ADC away from their tower if you’re ahead by running behind the tower and putting yourself in a position of aggression.

Whenever you’re zoning the enemy, you need to keep in mind a couple of things.

• When will the enemy Support be back?

Avoid zoning for too long unless you’re ahead as the enemy Support may capitalize on your over aggression in order to get a kill.

• Keep an eye out for the enemy Jungler.

When you’re too far forward, the enemy Jungler may pay a visit to your lane, so keep an eye on the minimap at all times in order to survive.

• You do not need to kill the enemy.

Zoning them and forcing them to miss out on a wave or more of minions is more than enough. You do not need to commit to killing them.

We’ve made a separate guide on zone in lane, give it a read if you want to learn more.

Buy Control Wards

Regardless of how good or bad your Support is, you need to get vision in your lane by buying and placing Control Wards throughout the laning phase.

After your first back, try and get a Control Ward and place it in a bush in your lane to scout for vision. Throughout the laning phase, make sure you buy and place Control Wards when you need too.

I cannot tell you how many ADC’s never buy Control Wards or only buy 1 throughout the game. Regardless of how highly you speak of your Support, there is no reason for you to never buy Control Wards during the laning phase or throughout the game.

Example warding locations for the red side in the bottom lane.

In this image, you can see some potential good warding locations in the bottom lane. Make sure you place Control Wards and vision according to the situation. If you’re ahead, place wards more forward, and when you’re behind, place defensive wards.

This image was taken from our in-depth-everything warding guide, check it out!

While you should never rely on just your Support to buy wards in the first place, there is increased emphasis on you buying and placing wards throughout the laning phase so you can spot the enemy Jungler before they show up in your lane.

Play less aggressive

In many cases, playing aggressive with a Support who is not very good will often backfire and cost you the lane. Trying to get them to commit to trades when they don’t want to will often leave you in a worse position. So the thing you need to focus on is trading when it’s less likely to backfire.

For example, when playing against a champion who has a hook like Blitzcrank or Thresh, moving forward and trying to trade when their hooks are down is probably safer as most players know that a good time to trade is when the enemy wastes a hook.

It’s not ideal, but if your Support really is unable to trade, then you could default to playing really safe and never trying to trade. You should take this route as your last resort, but you may need to default to this when your Support is “afk” in lane.

Instead of trying to fight heavily and get kills, you could play relaxed and try to go even: only playing aggressively when your Jungler is there to assist you.

What you could also do is wait for the Support to make the first move or communicate via pings so you’re both on the same page. For example, focusing on farming until your allied Alistar gets a good engage off, or waiting for Leona to get her Ultimate before playing aggressive again.

Miscellaneous

There are some other things you can do to get your Support to play better in lane. In this section, we will discuss a few non-toxic ways you can get them to be more impactful.

Communicate via pings

If you ping “on my way” when you want to go in, the Support may react to it and start to play aggressive and follow up. Be prepared to ping multiple times to ensure they go in with you.

Alternatively, you can ping your Support away to tell them you don’t want to engage or fight at this time. Do not be afraid to ping often, just don’t be too oppressive with pinging as they’ll end up not doing anything you want them too. Try and find a mix of being friendly and forceful.

Here’s a guide how to improve your communication (via pings and more). Give it a read if you want to improve your boost your comms skills!

Ask nicely

Generally speaking, some people don’t know they’re being annoying, so if you give them a gentle nudge and just say something like “hey, can you stand in line with me?” or something on those lines, they might react to it and start playing in line with you.

There is no need to be toxic when asking your Support to position themselves more aggressively or asking them to do something like warding, they may genuinely not know what they should be doing.

Are you the type of person who is toxic or is passive-aggressive but doesn’t mean to be? You might be able to improve on that with our guide on how to be less toxic.

Lower your expectations

We touched on it previously, but when you’re playing with someone who isn’t very good, you should lower your expectations on what they can do. For example, land skill shots or protect you.

Adjusting your mindset that you have to play differently will help you in the long run when you’re playing with somebody who isn’t very good. Expecting the bare minimum in lane and expecting them not to help you much will stop you from getting killed and falling behind and getting frustrated.

Conclusion

In the bottom lane, there are two champions who have shared responsibilities. When you’re playing with a Support that you’d rather see on the enemy team, you will need to pick up the slack so you have a better chance of winning the game. If you play as you would normally without thinking twice, you’ll fall behind and struggle to win as you’ll be unable to rely on them to help you.

All-in-all, it will be down to both of you performing badly if you do not adapt to how your Support plays.

If you have any questions or want to learn more, check out PicklePants stream.

Watch live video from PicklePantsLOL on www.twitch.tv

The post How to Lane With a Bad Support (As an ADC) appeared first on Mobalytics.

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Good to Know You!

I have been playing League of Legends since Season 3. My highest rank was Plat I in Season 6, which I achieved basically solely by playing Ahri mid lane or support.

In 2018 however I took a break of LoL since my work schedule was so demanding I couldn’t put in the hours anymore to improve, so I lost a lot of games and got frustrated, so I gave up.

This League journey might sound familiar to some of you…

However, in 2020 I got fully back into the game and it was heartbreaking to see how bad I had gotten in both micro and macromechanics.

I decided to pick streaming back up and playing a bunch of support since the role had evolved so much I never got bored of it.

At this moment I am trying to rank up again and do my research to get back up to date with the game. We also hold tournaments in which every one of the community may join and I cast them!

Every Sunday, I also invite a Master or Challenger player on my stream to coach me and teach us some essential things that regular lower rank players might not think about!

Since support is my primary role AND I am a girl I stand right now for the challenging task to write an unbiased article about this subject! Have a good read summoner!

Support throughout the years in League Of Legends

League of Legends is a dynamic game. Over the years, the game has gone through a lot of changes and this seems to be a trend Riot Games will be continuing in the future.

However just like in the real world, no matter how evolved the surroundings are, there are still some things that seem to never change.

The argument surrounding the toxicity of players, ongoing client issues, and questionable matchmaking in normal games are things that casually come to mind when thinking of ‘problems’ that Riot Games didn’t find a clear cut answer to yet.

However, within the community itself, there are multiple misconceptions that survived the 10 years of League of Legends’s existence and one of them is the unpopularity of the role as Support.

Throughout the different seasons, no other role in League of Legends has gone through as many changes as support has.

Slowly but surely with the rise of esports and online streaming, the negative mindset around support is slightly changing for the better. Players are starting to see the potential supports have to influence the game to a victory.

Thresh, the playmaking carry support: A snapshot of one of the games played on the subwars on ItsAmarantha’s channel.

Why is Support perceived as the most “unpopular” role?

Some of the most common arguments are that supports have a “low” impact in the game and that they are therefore dependent on their teammates performing well.

Support seems to also be defined as one of the least challenging roles in League of Legends by the community. A part of players will argue that toxic AD-carries refrain them from playing support.

Another argument is that players sense they are “slaves” to the wishes and needs of AD-carries and that this gets them frustrated and therefore aren’t eager to pick support as a main role in any queue.

Some of these arguments might have had some truth in them during the early days of League of Legends where you had champions that mainly dealt damage such as AP or AD-carries, tanks, and champions based on shielding and healing the carries.

However today with over 30 viable supports to choose from, and the state of the game in Season 10, the game overall got more strategic and complex, and playing a solid game of support only got harder, and frankly, more fun over the years.

A typical support build back in the day, think Season 2-4, consisted basically of full wards and a bit of extra health. However 10 years down the road a lot has changed and completely counters all of the previously mentioned arguments.

Support used to be picking Janna or Sona, building a Sightstone and Shurelyas, and warding every possible dark spot on the map. With every season, more and more changes were made to support items and gold income, putting this role really on the mini-map and giving it playmaking and game changing possibilities.

Support players are not just resigned to being a passive participant in the game waiting to press heal or shield whenever your carries are in danger of being damaged anymore. To be honest, the META is completely open these last couple of seasons where even AP-carry champions such as Vel’koz can thrive in the bot lane.

Saying that you can’t carry as support, but you can as a mid or top laner also is not true in the current state of the game. The days where you can pick a random AD- or AP carry champion and 1v5 are really over.

League of Legends today is more of a team player based game and as support you have together with the jungler the biggest impact in securing objectives and leading a team to victory.

The way to play Thresh and carry your team to victory: snapshot out of the subwars of ItsAmarantha.

Why are supports strong?

Opinions differ on this matter. Players have been frustrated about the changing meta where tanks and AP-mages are dominating the bot lane and therefore punishing players who enjoy to play a traditional AD-carry and healer or shielder as support.

On the other hand supports like Nautilus, Leona, Thresh, Lulu, Morgana, and Senna can provide more value, adequate peel for the carries and game-changing CC that can secure kills and lead a team to victory.

Overall, the consensus is that most supports in the current season are strong when played correctly. So is it just a matter of skill that determines whether a support carries a team to a win or not? Partly yes, however mechanics alone won’t guarantee you a spot in Diamond or higher elo.

A huge part of being a successful support is hidden within game knowledge and a sense for strategic ward placements and supporting the right team members at the right time.

When the better support makes the better play for their team:

Is it hard to climb in ranked as a support main in League of Legends?

For this article, a survey was conducted amongst over 250 volunteering players (of which the majority play on the EUW server) to shed some light on how they perceive playing supports in the current season. 57% of participants were support mains.

This survey showed some interesting results, where roughly 70% of all participants agree that supports are considered strong in the current meta.

Players that weren’t support mains found it overall harder to climb ranked as support and deemed the role not strong more often than support mains did.

The most popular type supports overall are off-tank hook-engaging supports like Thresh, followed by traditional tanky supports such as Leona and Nautilus.

Even though with the many changes League Of Legends has made where supports have better gold-income and therefore have more variety in switching up potential builds according to match-ups, in combination with a hugely increased champion pool, 63% of the participating support mains find it hard to climb in solo or duo queue.

According to the responses on the survey, players in Iron or Bronze tend to play more AP-carry type supports. Almost all respondents of this rank category answered that the role of a support is to “feed the AD-carry”.

Players in Silver to Gold however seem to perceive to be struggling the most in terms of carrying as a support. Around 60% of these players agree there is more to the role of support than simply helping out the AD-carry but don’t know how to carry a team to victory when they do not win the lane.

Platinum and high diamond players seem to perceive it to be easier to climb as a support.

Some respondents have mentioned that duo queue has helped tremendously in carrying games more easily as support, that is of course if the communication with your duo queue partner is optimal and if both parties have some game knowledge and are willing to improve equally in the game.

Most of the time, this isn’t the case and one player improves more quickly than the other and then duo queue might actually cost you LP instead of gaining you some.

Competitive play modes such as Ranked or Clash will always be frustrating and losses will fall harder upon players than when they are chilling with friends in Normal queue.

Climbing in ranked regardless of your elo is first of all a mental game where the team that plays together for objectives and tilts less easily than the other team will be more likely to secure a win.

Mostly a lack of willingness to learn macro and micromechanics in combination with a bad mindset will generally make it hard to climb as any role in solo queue. Losing games in Ranked as support are mainly due to:

• Not knowing your match-up and not being able to pair your support to your AD-carry or team
• Buying the wrong support item and not being able to build properly for the needs of your AD-carry and team
• Playing too passive and not initiating, poking, not actively providing strategic vision and/or not helping securing objectives

You might be able to pick up some wins as a solo lane carry, but overall climbing if you don’t have game knowledge will be impossible, even for you Zed and Yasuo mains…

How to carry as support in solo queue

The real reason why it might feel hard to carry as support is because players simply don’t know how to play a good and solid game in this role.

Regardless of the type of champion you are playing in the bot lane and yes, also regardless of your KDA, there are some key points to master to be a decent support and make a difference in the game.

A bad support indeed won’t be able to carry a team to victory because they still play with the mindset of heal, shield, and CC and then question why there is no GG in chat after the game.

Winning a game starts as early as champ select where you have to question your pick according to the ADC you are paired with.

Does it make sense to pick an engage type support like Leona with an ADC that has a really weak early game against a lane that has a stronger early game? Of course not… but do you think about it?

You will have to think strategically about your item build to provide the best possible stats to help your teammates into victory, this starts as early as thinking about which warding item to buy since this depends on the match-up and not on the champion.

Consider buying Relic Shield for traditional healers instead of Spellthief’s Edge in match-ups where poking the enemy might get you in a lot of trouble. Just avoid losing to Boris guys!

A support player is someone who knows how to (ab)use the utility of his champion to help their AD-carries secure kills, stay safe, and farm up. Level 2 plays a very important part in gaining lane-control and will make your laning phase a whole lot more relaxed when executed well.

Simultaneously with helping the AD-carry during laning phase, supports also enable gank opportunities for the Jungler by having ward control over the enemy bot lane.

Knowing the position of the enemy jungler and conscious placements of vision on the map can save your teammates at all times. A good support always has a good eye out for the map and helps set up and execute objectives around the map.

Vision will always be a cornerstone of a good support, however, since the changes to wards back in Season 6, you have to be a lot more strategic about their placements and coordinate with your team to apply optimal vision for every different stage of the game.

This also means that as the game progresses, supports can roam the map and help secure objectives or set-up kills for other team members. This also means your AD-carry sometimes just has to learn to farm up alone.

Just make sure to communicate where you are going and what your plan is using smart pings.

Also, one tip that people too often forget is…stop playing ranked when you are losing 2 or 3 games in a row. There is no way you aren’t in a bad mindset after losing 3 games in a row. Playing League whilst being tilted will not benefit your playstyle and definitely not your rank. Take a break, tomorrow is another day!

An important note to hit is that the strategy towards victory stays kind of the same regardless of your support pick… Yes, even when you are playing AP-carry champions such as Vel’koz and Lux 😉.

Criticism and misconceptions that support mains face

A last point to briefly touch upon concerning support mains is the criticism support mains face by the community. Not only are support mains being degraded to have no skill, but toxic players will also go as far as calling support players ‘girls’, ‘e-girl support’, ‘e-thot support’ regardless of the gender of the player.

According to common perception ‘almost’ all girls that play League of Legends only play support. This has caused males to refrain from playing it, since they are afraid for being called out on it. We conducted a Twitter poll to see how many girls actually main support.

The results show that the majority of responding girls do not main support. 115 out of 213 participants say to be maining other roles than support. This amounts to 54.4% of participating girls.

Here’s a link to the survey.

In our survey, 60% of support mains report having been mocked by other players for maining this role. All players stating they are a girl in the survey have been mocked for playing this role.

Some of the most common criticisms support mains face according to our survey are the following:

• You are a support main because you can’t carry games on your own and you need others to do it for you
• Males are being mocked for being girls when they choose to pick champions like Soraka, Nami or Lulu
• Female supports are being called out for being boosted when they achieve a certain rank being a support main.

Concluding Thoughts

I hope my article has changed your mind towards support mains and will make you realize that all the previously mentioned quotes are uncalled for and have no truth behind them.

League of Legends has luckily started taking steps into punishing and banning toxic players more consistently, in the end, it is the player’s responsibility to look at their own behavior and adjust it according to the situation.

Everyone plays this game to win, every player is another human being, so stay kind and hop on the elo grind.

If you like this article and you like to discuss points more in-depth don’t be afraid to follow me on my Twitch channel! We have a nice community of very knowledgeable people always willing to help out or give advice!

The post The Importance of a Good Support in LoL: Why Not Just Anyone Can Play the Role by ItsAmarantha appeared first on Mobalytics.

Let’s give him a warm welcome! Be sure to follow Grimlockt on Youtube, Twitter, and Discord. You can catch him live on Twitch from Friday through Tuesday from 7 PM to midnight CST.

Part I: The Article I Almost Wrote

I was initially going to write an article titled “Why Riot Needs to Change Their Design Philosophy.” I wanted to explore the topic of criticizing Riot’s design philosophy as a game designer myself, but I wanted to be respectful and honest with my criticisms.

It was going to be several kind suggestions, supported by statistics I found with champion releases to suggest, maybe it was time to make some changes.

And then, Riot did the unthinkable in the corporate world…they changed their design philosophy (read about it in their /dev post!).

It’s one thing to talk though and another thing entirely to back that up with action.

Enter Lillia and Yone – and now, the Riot superfan in me is so happy to report that I’m delighted with the Yone and Lillia releases. Lillia is still my go-to ban, but that’s more personal preference and less out of necessity.

Today, I had to play Darius into Yone and Yasuo in the top lane during a game with friends (they did not have a Jungler), and I ended up going 16/10/8 by the end. Yone feels great!

He has a lot of damage, but I also feel like there’s a lot of counterplay in his kit, and that is just a massive sigh of relief for me. It felt intuitive to play against him, and I did not feel cheated when he got away.

And that left me in a pickle because I was fully ready with a ton of statistics, history of champion releases, and research to back up an already solid hypothesis that Riot really needed to evaluate their way of releasing champions.

After all, it was toxic to the player base…and how dare they take full responsibility for their mistakes and take steps toward areas of opportunity when I was fully ready to go to war! (I am joking around, and if it isn’t apparent yet, I hope it is now).

No, but seriously. I am incredibly happy with Riot’s most recent champion releases. They said they were going to take steps to do the right thing for their player base, and they delivered. That is awesome! Keep up the excellent work, Riot! *High five* You earned it!

So this article will now focus on what Riot can do in the future to further improve champion releases. Things I do not see them doing at the moment, but in my professional experience, are a good idea and can benefit them in the future.

I have broken this up into three parts.

The first section (which you have already read), the second section where I will try to shed some light on why we should be more understanding of Riot during new champion releases, and finally, the third section, where I offer my suggestions on how to approach making the game even better, based on my professional experience.

But without further adieu, I will present Part II, in defense of Riot, on why champion releases will never go as planned.

Part II: Why Champion Releases Will Never Go Perfectly

A little background about me, I worked on the production side of the game industry for a big label for about six years as a specialist, consultant, and other odd jobs.

As a result, I participated in 150+ game launches? I’ve seen Murphy’s Law at work in real-time.

I learned that no plan ever survives the battlefield, and it is better to have a general outline of what to do, rather than a set list of requirements that need to be met.

And additionally, it does not matter how many Quality Assurance testers you have, players will find a way to break your game, and they’ll put it on Youtube.

In 2009, I was fortunate enough to hear Rob Pardo, the Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard speak at GDC (Game Developers Conference).

This quote from him has stuck with me, ever since:

“You could have 200 of the best QA people working on your game round the clock. The moment you release your game to a million+ players, those players will find more bugs in one day than your team of 200 QA testers found over the entire life cycle of development.”

That sounds a bit outlandish, but it’s not so out there if you think about it in terms of man-hours worked.

I want to drill into that a bit here and deep dive it for this article because I believe it can provide a perspective that we as players badly need from the developer’s point of view.

We know that Riot spends between one to two months testing champions out before they release them from an interview that August Browning did with PC Gamer a while back.

Browning stated: “We usually start balancing a champion up to a month or two before release. To be fair, we balance all the way through the process, because it’s hard to playtest a character when they’re doing 5,000 true damage on every basic attack. We really start drilling down at about the one to two month mark before they come out.”

So, let’s do a bit of math here, shall we? If we can assume 200 QA testers (with a company of Riot’s size, 200 is reasonable in my experience). They may have more QA testers.

Still, I’d bet Darius’s ultimate that they don’t have less, and assuming their QA testers are not being abused to work more than 40 hour work weeks, 40 hours a week, for roughly 4 weeks per month.

That means approximately 64,000 man-hours of testing go into testing a new champion.

40 (hour work week) x 4 (weeks) x 2(months) x 200(people) = 64,000.

Well, that’s a lot of hours! But, let’s compare that to the amount that the players of League of Legends will play said champion in a single day. Not months, not weeks, in a single day.

On release, Lillia was picked in roughly 6.33 percent of games.

Currently (as of writing this article), according to PlayerCounter, there are 2,367,864 active players. This number obviously fluctuates up and down, and if you click on the link, the amount will be different for you than it was for me, but for the purposes of the math I’m about to do, there are precisely 2,367,864 players active at any given time.

This means we can assume there will always be 2,367,864 players playing League of Legends, no matter what time it is.

2,367,864/10 (ten players per game) means 236,786 active games at one time.

If Lillia is being played in precisely 6.33% of these 236,786 games actively being played, Lillia would be being played at any one time in 14,988 games.

According to LeagueOfGraphs, excluding Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger, which account for a small portion of the League of Legends community, the average game time across all ranks is around 28:46 (or 28.77 minutes).

That means at the moment of Lillia’s release, she was played in the first games ever of Lillia for 35 minutes into her release, for a cumulative total of 7,187 hours.

It would take 200 people 35 hours to do the same amount of work. But it gets better.

If we assume time-wise, that there are also 3 minutes for champion select, two minutes to load into the game, five minutes for after the game (loading out of the game, plus chatting in the post-match screen) and an additional 5 minutes between games for bathroom breaks, etc.

This comes out to, on average, about 45 minutes per game, which means that the average player base could get 32 games per online capita over a day.

32 games x 7,187 hours of playtime gives us 229,984 hours played in-game on Lillia on the first day alone of her release, which is three times what a group of 200 QA professionals could manage over two months.

So maybe, we should cut Riot some slack, huh? They are doing a pretty darn great job, considering they have such a hungry user base for their product.

Part III: What Can Riot Improve On?

Having gone out of my way to defend them, I think I’ve earned a bit of time to speak on how I think they can work toward positive change going forward in the future.

One, it does seem like they have a good handle on champion releases and not releasing champions in overpowered states. But, I think it bears repeating.

Win rates don’t equate to champion quality. I believe that Riot needs to have more faith in their players and their product in some ways.

Coming from a creative standpoint, I know how hard it can be to release an innovative product and wonder if it succeeds, but you just gotta have faith sometimes.

However, there are safe ways to ensure champion releases go better, and that is by utilizing their most valuable resource more, their players. Here are things I think they should do:

1. Extend PBE testing phases

PBE testing phases for games tend to be almost an afterthought. It is my opinion that those phases should be twice as long as they currently are. Leverage the player base more and reward players who actively participate with incentives that players like, such as skins, chromas, and currency.

2. Increase in-house player testing

I already know that Riot does in house player testing, but I encourage them to do bigger and more sessions, before releasing to the PBE servers. The more players get involved in the process, the better it will be.

3. Send out more surveys to the players that are actively participating and gather end-user thoughts

This collects an incredibly valuable metric for analytics that can’t be gleaned from server statistics called “Overall User Satisfaction.” What if during the Yummi release Yummi had a 30% win rate, but an overwhelming 80% approval rate? That would have a massive impact on how Riot was to approach balancing that champion. Because the core philosophy was on target, but her numbers need work. Whereas, what if a champion had a 54% win rate, but a 20% user satisfaction? That also would directly shape approach, because it would be easy to tell that the champion missed the mark.

4. Have more faith in the champions they make

I think one thing that really strikes home for me while reading the article was the underlying apology between the lines. There was something there that hit home for me, and that was an underlying feeling that it was not the developers’ actual intent to release OP champions, but that they were made to do that. And though, they did not outright say that they were made to do the thing, that can only happen if big brother, a publisher steps in and makes them by exerting their muscle. When that happens, it is up to management to use one of the most powerful words in their arsenal, no.

Thanks for reading!

I will end the article on that note because I feel like League is heading in the right direction. There is a bright spot on the horizon for us. And I hope that my thoughts can have a lasting and positive impact in one way or another. As always, stay classy, summoners! DEMACIA!!!!!

Be sure to follow Grimlockt on Twitch, Twitter, and Discord. You can catch him on his Twitch from Friday through Tuesday from 7 PM to midnight CST.

The post How Riot Can Continue to Improve Their Design Philosophy by Grimlockt appeared first on Mobalytics.

Toxicity in League of Legends is a hot topic right now with content creators speaking out on how it is affecting the quality of their games and their streams. While toxicity is not the only problem that they’re facing, it has an impact on their games- as well as everyone else’s. I feel that we can all agree that League of Legends has become very toxic as of late.

If you’re somebody who has recently been chat restricted, find yourself getting heated in-game or want to reform and be an exemplary citizen of the League of Legends community, then you’re in luck. In this Mobalytics guide by PicklePants, we will discuss some ways you can reform and stop being toxic in League of Legends.

Before we begin, I sympathize with you. I really do. It can be hard to keep your cool when someone is “running it down”, “trolling” or “soft inting” and unfortunately, while I can’t tell you how to stop them from doing it, it’s a horrible situation to be in regardless.

However, it is important that you do not type to them or speak out as it’s not going to help the situation, and realistically- it’s only going to work against you.

Stop watching toxic or negative streamers

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of streamers around who are very entertaining, educational, motivational, and friendly. I’m not here to tell you who you should watch and shouldn’t- that’s nothing to do with me. But if you want to stop being toxic, you need to stop watching players who are toxic and like to flame.

Whether they’re flaming over voice coms or are typing in-game. As a viewer- you’re going to naturally pick up what they’re saying and repeat it: consciously or subconsciously, you’re going to start repeating some of the things that they say. For example, the use of the word “dog” has been used and abused lately.

It’s like with children or animals, they start to pick up on actions they are exposed to. For example, parrots will repeat something if they hear it often.

Dogs will learn to sit if they’re trained to do so, and babies’ first word will be something they hear a lot too. It doesn’t matter what word the players use, if you hear it a lot- you’ll start picking it up and saying it too.

Even if you physically don’t say it out loud or type it in chat, you’ll probably find yourself associating a bad word with a poor action that’s happened in-game.

For example, if your ally dies your immediate action may be to call them something bad.

By limiting your time spent watching streamers that are toxic, you will prevent yourself from picking up the words or phrases they use. This will make you less toxic and less negative when things are not going your way.

A very common thing that toxic streamers will do is make a risky play and underestimate or disrespect the enemy in lane which causes them to fall behind. This will normally result in some toxic behavior and discussion within their stream.

If you happen to make a risky play and it backfires and you fall behind; check out these guides to help you play from behind as a Top laner, Jungler, Mid laner or even in the bottom lane.

Disable all chat

When it comes to competing, people will do whatever they can to get an advantage and that often involves being toxic. One way they do this is by making remarks that are meant to tilt you.

Things that are commonly said are “?” or “lol?”. While these words are not toxic, they’re meant to cause a reaction to make you play worse or speak out.

If you are easily triggered by people typing these things in-game, I would recommend that you disable all chat so you cannot see the enemy speaking to you. Not only will this result in you not speaking back to them, but it will also prevent you from tilting if they say something about the play you made.

You can disable all chat by going to your settings, choose the Interface, and then scroll down until you find chat. Disable the “Show [all] chat”- remove the marker and you’re ready to go.

Honestly, disabling all chat is one of the best things you can do in-game as it not only prevents you from seeing things that might trigger you, but it directly prevents you from being able to spread toxic behavior and flame the enemy.

Disable the entire chat

Just like some real-life disorders, going cold turkey can be your best way to stop flaming as a whole. For example, addictions, like smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol or gambling, can all be stopped (or at least heavily reduced) if you take away the ability to consume them. While these comparisons are very extreme, the same action can- in this case, stop the reaction.

By disabling the chat as a whole, you cannot type to the enemy, you cannot type to your allies and you cannot read your allies say. While this is an extreme action to take, it might be the most important for players who are toxic and want to type bad things to their teammates.

I personally wouldn’t recommend doing this, but if you are really struggling and are serious about becoming honor 5 and not being toxic anymore, it might be a necessary step in the meantime.

Instead, I would recommend that you mute your teammates or make the chat very small, but I understand this isn’t an option for those with low self-control. You can disable this the exact same way as removing all chat.

Because you’re not going to be talking to your teammates, here’s a guide to help you improve your communication.

Remove emotes

Similarly to our previous points, I would highly recommend that you disable the enemies emotes so they cannot spam them and make you tilt. While not many players actually spam them or use them maliciously, they might be thrown up after a bad play or when the enemy outplays you.

Your first reaction after seeing an emote might be to lash out, but if you can never see them- you shouldn’t get tilted and want to flame.

You can disable enemy emotes by going into your settings, choosing the interface settings, and then scrolling down until you find emotes. Click the “mute enemy emotes”.

Once again, disabling or removing things that can trigger you or make you tilt is important to reduce your toxicity in-game.

Disable names

This doesn’t honestly make much of a difference, but it can be a trigger for some people. Especially if they die to someone named something so stupid or childish like PicklePants :).

From experience, I have removed the naming on champions and in the leaderboard itself.

Now I don’t really know who I play against and I do not see some of the toxic or INTeresting names people give themselves.

While I’m not personally toxic, I have received my fair share of comments when killing the enemy regarding my name. And I would honestly recommend that you disable names if you’re going to talk or flame because of someone’s name.

If you want to disable names on the leaderboard and in-game, you can do so by going to Interface, scroll to “Health and resource bars” and then disable the “Show Summoner Names”.

Limit your game time

When things are not going your way, it’s important to stop before it becomes unbearable.

While we have given you a ton of tips already, sometimes there are things that are out of your control that might make you want to flame such as someone else flaming, some unfortunate RNG, or if you get constantly ganked.

By noticing when you’re getting fed up or becoming angry, it’s important that you do not play any more games afterward if you feel yourself starting to think negatively or becoming toxic.

You’ll not only start playing worse, but you’ll also find your self chatting in-game or flaming your team.

The best thing you can do is to limit how many games you play once you start feeling annoyed. By not hitting the queue button, your frustration towards the game should drop and you shouldn’t start flaming your teammates in future games

One more thing. We all know someone who grinds League all day every day. That’s not for us to judge, but if you’re trying to be less toxic, you should stop playing League so much. If you limit yourself to only playing 5 games a day or something of that nature, you will find yourself being less toxic and less fed up when you play.

It’s easy to get burned out by playing tons of games, and getting burned out will cause you to flame. So if you don’t get burned out, you shouldn’t be as toxic.

If all else fails, taking a long break from the game or not playing for the weekend can help clear your mind and help with a mental reset: allowing you to reduce your toxicity in-game.

Play easier champions

There are over 140 champions in the game with varying levels of difficulty. Some champions take only a few games to learn while overs can take hundreds if not thousands. If you’re somebody who is easily frustrated and will take it out on their teammates, I would recommend you play champions who are easier and less likely to make you flame.

For example, mechanically difficult champions like Rengar, Camille, Riven, and Lee Sin require lots of skill to master. It is also very easy for you to perform poorly on those champions and it’s also easy to mess up. If you mess up and die, you might want to flame the enemy for outplaying you or your Jungler for not ganking.

Additionally, these champions require a lot more skill and have a lot more pressure associated with them.

For example, Riven is a mechanically challenging champion and requires animation canceling, etc. These champions especially have a lot of stress-related to them and if you misplay- you’re going to take it out on anything you can.

I would recommend that you play somebody less difficult and someone whose gameplay is a bit more relaxed. The chances of you becoming tilted, stressed, or wanting to call your allies every name under the sun will be reduced if your chances of misplaying in the early game are reduced too.

Check out our tier list and guide for how to build your champion pool and you’ll be able to our ratings for different champions and find the right balance of difficulty and effectiveness for your playstyle.

Listen to relaxing music

There is a huge variety of artists out there with tons of different music styles that pride themselves in inducing different feelings or emotions.

Some music styles will cause you to be aggressive and make you aggressive in-game. For some players, this can be a good thing and effectively help them play better.

If you want to stop being toxic, do not listen to this type of music. Instead, listen to relaxing music or other music genres that will help you keep your cool.

There are plenty of good playlists on Spotify or Youtube that will help you relax and chill out. I would recommend listening to them while you play so you do not get any urges to flame your allies. Here’s a good live stream if you want to chill out and play.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to change and we cannot do the hard work for you. Try your hardest to chill out in-game and stop flame your teammates. Given time, you can change and will stop being toxic, but it all starts with and ends with you.

If you have any questions or want to learn more, check out PicklePants stream.

Watch live video from PicklePantsLOL on www.twitch.tv

The post How to Stop Being Toxic in League of Legends appeared first on Mobalytics.