1) Getting in the reps matters.
The more reps, the faster you will improve and climb. The difference between playing 5x three-blocks and 8× three-blocks a week is night and day. Does this mean you need to spam games to climb? NO. But the effort will be rewarded.
2) Embrace the suck.
Everyone’s League journey is filled with setbacks, hardships, and confusion. Be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and asking questions geared towards long-term improvement.
3) Focus on one champion with one setup at a time.
Champion mastery is the bedrock of climbing and improving. You will ALWAYS be rewarded for putting time and effort into developing mastery on your main champion.
4) Keep the reviews simple.
Champion mastery concepts come first and then fundamentals. No review should go for more than 5 minutes in the MLS. Reviews allow us to see the reality of what actually is occurring, not what we THINK is occurring. Emphasizing your main learning objective/focus point in the reviews is also very helpful.
5) League of Legends at its core is a pattern recognition game.
The more situations we put ourselves in, the more muscle memory we will develop. Once our muscle memory is developed in a specific area, we can then allocate our mental stack to other areas of our play.
6) It’s important to have fun!
If you are feeling burnt out on a champion, don’t be afraid to swap them out. If you want to relax and play normals, do so! The key is listening to yourself and not smashing your head against the solo queue summoners rift in a bad mood.
7) Be curious and ask for help.
Never be afraid to ask basic questions, the more basic the more important it probably is.
8) You don’t need to ‘carry’ to climb in Solo Queue.
At any time within a game, all you have to do is YOUR JOB, nothing more, nothing less. Your job is defined by your champion’s kit, role in the game based off of both team compositions and the ever changing game state based off of what is occurring in real time. The ‘carry’ narrative has been pushed for years through toxic league content creators & smurfs, it is unrealistic and detrimental to your relationship with the game. The toxic ‘carry’ mindset is a big reason people cannot climb by influencing you to make poor-quality decisions.
9) League is a game of details.
One small thing can have a drastic effect on the outcome of a game. For example, not having to use flash in one fight might allow you to win a future game winning fight. An even better example: landing that extra Lux E in lane might be the difference between you winning or losing that mid+jg 2v2.
10) Climbing is the by-product of improvement.
The more we can emphasize our learnings from a game, the faster we will climb. ‘FOCUSING’ on climbing doesn’t actually do anything practically for you.
11) /Muting all is your best friend.
Chat is not necessary; don’t pretend the toxicity doesn’t affect you.
12) Disregard the stats.
Win rates, KDA’s, OPGG scores and other stats are not indicative of one’s performance in a game nor skill of a player.
13) Playing ranked should not be a spectacle.
It is your dojo, your training arena. Ranked solo queue is not the culmination of your life’s work, not a game 5 of a grand final or anything like that. You have to be willing to queue up consistently and get into the ‘thick of it’. Yes, you must be high intensity, but it must be the norm for you to queue up, play, review and move onto the next game.
14) Losing is part of the game.
One win or loss does not matter in the grand scheme of your climb, the skills we develop over 100s of games is what matters. It takes time to reach a goal, we can’t think in time spans of weeks in League, we must think in time spans of MONTHS.
15) You are the only consistent factor across your games.
There is one of you, 4 random teammates and 5 random enemies. The statistics are in your favour.
16) Nothing can be a replacement for RANKED SOLO QUEUE.
Normals and arams and flex are all inferior to ranked soloq in regards to improving at the game.
17) Focus on the first 8 minutes.
The reason we focus on the first 8 minutes isn’t because its the most impactful, it’s because it has the least amount of variables therefore we can control the outcome. Mid game often involves so many variables that are out of our control.