A redditor named Mijakko compiled a list of 10 most common mistakes that Bronze players make. Even though he’s Bronze rated himself with his way of thinking I can see him rise to Silver and beyond quickly, so read his insight and apply it in your own matches.
I have played a few games in Bronze and am working on climbing out of it. I am not here to claim that I am significantly better than my fellow Bronzers, or I am stuck in ELO Hell, or that the League system is broken. I am here to call out some of the awful habits, terrible decisions, and just outright stupidity that I see every single game down here in the slums. In watching streams I see some of these made but they are once in a blue moon and I think these are the major reasons for people being stuck in low leagues.
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Constant, outright, thoughtless aggression: KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL I CAN DO IT I CAN KILL IT KILL IT WITH FIRE IGNITE FLASH ULT TOWER DIVE KILL IT. Stop. This is the reason that you die 7 times in lane. The best way to win a lane is with calculated, cautious aggression. Are your summoners down and you don’t know if the other guy has his? Don’t all-in him. Do you have no wards and haven’t seen the jungler in 10 minutes? Do not hyper push and blow all your mana harrassing. And this is just the lane phase. But more to come on chases and team fights later.
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Complete disregard for jungle presence: Is your jungle showing bottom and the enemy jungler hasn’t counter-ganked there? Then you should not feel safe. In fact, shit your pants and run away. Because chances are you are going to get ganked. Buy a ward and play SAFE. I cannot emphasize enough that Bronze people would get so much further if they would just play safely. Additionally, pay attention to where your jungler is. He may need help if he is near you and Nunu just buttfucked his red buff and has his yeti dick pointed directly at your jungle’s asshole next. This is a good way to prevent deaths and possibly even secure a kill. but again, CALCULATED AGGRESSION.
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Chasing: DO NOT. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. CHASE ANYONE VERY FAR. If you are chasing someone from top down to their blue or red you will find the jungle and possibly the mid lane and you will die. And you will of course blame mid for not coming. So please for the love of all that is holy stop chasing. Stay in lane and free farm. You get experience and gold without the stress of laning against someone while they are gone. It’s wonderful you should try it.
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Team fighting: The number of 4v5 and 3v5 engages that I have seen makes me want to cry. If you have even the slightest numbers disadvantage or you are a level behind, do not engage. You don’t have to fight every fight just because you can. In fact please don’t. A good disengage beats a questionable engage every time. Now, if you appear to see a 3v5 in your favor, and you want to engage, take a moment to think about something. Do you see any of the members of their team that they are missing? If the answer is no, don’t fight it. Easy. If you see someone two lanes away, by all means let your engage engage. This brings me to my next point.
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Engages: Caitlyn cannot initiate. Kassadin should not initiate. In fact, almost no carry can engage well. So communicate with your team to find out who the inintiator should be. Do you have Blitz and Malphite (unlikely because they are permabanned down here in the sewers)? Do not Rift Walk into 5 of them. Just think about the implications. Just learn the general idea of every champion, it’s that easy. If you know some one is an excellent initiator simply type into chat “Let’s let Leona initiate then follow up on whoever she stuns”.
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Priority targets in team fights: Here’s a scenario: The game is tied in kills 20-20. Vayne has 18 of their team’s kills while your kills are relatively well spaced-out. Their Nautilus runs at you to initiate (because he read my post and knows that Naut is an excellent initiator) with Vayne close behind. Naut is fairly tanky but does negligible damage and he is definitely killable. What do you do? If you answered “KILL NAUT KILL IT KILL HIM FUCKING DEAD FUCK SCUBA STEVE KILL” then this post is almost exclusively for you. You need to prioritize your targets. If Naut is initiating and then ignores peeling for Vayne, jump the fuck on Vayne and kill that shit because everyone else is less important. Period. Barring excellent peel (which is unlikely because we are in ELO Hell) there is no reason an ADC should leave a fight. EDIT: I don’t play a ton of ADC so I left out an important point. As an ADC you have to hit what you can. If Vayne is out of your range for the moment and completely un-CC’d by all means hit whatever you can. But when you get the opportunity (hopefully through positioning and proper peeling) go balls deep on the squishiest person you can reach.
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Peeling: On the flip side, your ADC is the most important person on the team late game. There’s a reason Doublelift is famous for his late game. It’s because ADC’s win games. And you need to protect them. This is called peeling. If you are anything but the AP carry or an assassin your goal is to make sure that your ADC lives as long as possible to put as much damage as possible. That’s why it is called DPS. Burst champs don’t need to live long (it is nice if they do but they normally need 1-3 seconds to unload their damage). DPS means that there needs to be a time component to output damage. And this time component cannot happen if they blow up your ADC. So watch the enemy team. If Rengar is invisible and gonna jump on your ADC you STAY THE FUCK NEXT TO HIM AND MAKE SURE THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN. You will get exponentially better results from keeping your ADC alive than chasing their support for a pointless kill.
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Warding: I have seen more people die after saying “They’re doing Baron, I’m gonna get vision on it”. DO NOT DO THIS. IF THEY ARE AT BARON WE DON’T NEED VISION. WE SHOULD HAVE HAD IT LONG BEFORE THEY WERE AT BARON. When the entire team is out of sight, it is not a good time to deep ward their blue. So please don’t. It is more important to stay as a team than to get that deep ward I promise.
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One final point: This is in response to one specific case that I began noticing a lot. If they are 5 pushing a tower that already has half health do not stay there. Do not do it. Please just let it go and run away. Do not say “I was defending tower” or “I was trying to stall them so they didn’t get tower until you guys came” because you will die and instead of just getting a tower they get a tower and a kill. How is that at all a good thing? Additionally how is it my fault?
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Accountability: Every time you die it’s because you didn’t do something right. It may also be because someone else made a mistake but in the end there’s something you could have done to not die. Don’t blindly follow someone into the jungle when you know for a fact that the enemy team is in there. Whoever you were supposed to follow will bitch and moan but in the end you prevented them from getting a double kill in favor of killing the moron who ran in like Rambo.
So in summary the major issue is that people just don’t seem to understand the fundamentals of the game. Cautious play will beat over-aggressive play every time and will often beat aggressive play, especially at low ELO. Stonewall put it really well recently, just look for the team to make mistakes and make sure you capitalize on those. I hope someone in Bronze league reads this and makes it to Challenger because of it. That would make me feel wonderful. If not I just got out a lot of pent up aggression and I feel better anyways. So raise your dongers, hail Lord Fabbbyyy, and please try to play more intelligently. Thank you.
Sincerely, A concerned Bronze Leaguer
