Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Gameplay

Getting better faster than everyone else in the game is the only way to permanently increase your division. Luck helps, but a lucky streak can only bring you so far. There's only one way to ensure you don't lose your ranking, and that's to IMPROVE. Easier said than done right? With trolls and feeders at every corner, let's check out some real ways to get better at the game without relying on Riot's mercy.

Introduction

Getting better faster than everyone else in the game is the only way to permanently increase your division. Luck helps, but a lucky streak can only bring you so far. There's only one way to ensure you don't lose your ranking, and that's to IMPROVE.

Easier said than done right? With trolls and feeders at every corner, let's check out some real ways to get better at the game without relying on Riot's mercy.

Increase Your Creep Scores

Improving your creep score is one of the simplest ways to win your lane, and yet it's the one skill that most people spend the least time specifically working on. If you watch any professional level player, you'll notice they miss almost nothing. That's not because they happen to be gifted with god-like last-hitting from birth, but because they actually dedicate time out of their day to practice last-hitting in custom games to perfect their skills.

Weave Harass Into Laning Phase

After you practice last-hitting and ONLY after, start practicing weaving in harass in between your last-hits. It's important to practice last-hitting first, since that allows you to get a sense of when you can harass without losing creep score. While a kill in lane is nice, it's usually easier to out-CS your opponent, especially if you've practiced and your enemy hasn't.

Get In a Jungler Mindset

Knowing where a jungler is going to gank is less about simple guesswork than it is just common sense. If you were the jungler and saw two people pushed to their own turret on the enemy team while one person was pushed all the way to your allied turret, who would you want to gank? Similarly, if you saw someone that blew all their summoners, killed their opponent, and  is pushing to tower, would you rather do golems for 30 seconds or pick up a free kill? By staying in a jungler mindset, you can avoid getting ganked and giving up free gold to the enemy team.

Build the right items/runes/masteries

This one should be a no-brainer. There's definitely some room for improvisation once you get used to a champion's kit and power, but there's no reason to be running Courage of the Colossus on Nunu. Even at what should be considered a decent division, people still do ridiculous things. Make sure you look at your masteries and understand what they do. If you're not sure, just look it up or ask around.

Improve Positioning

Positioning in lane and in team fights is something that's difficult to practice, but comes with experience. However, if you concentrate on trying to improve your positioning, it will get better faster than if you aren't aware of it. Do you take a lot of poke in lane? You shouldn't take free poke unless you're either going for a last hit or trading for harass. Even then, you can still avoid it. Meanwhile, in team fights, how many skill shots are you getting hit by? Try playing some ARAM and focusing on dodging.

Skillshot Practice

Similarly, how many skill shots are you actually hitting? Try playing an ARAM with the mindset that you want to hit all your skill shots. Don't use your skill shots for zoning, use them for damaging the enemy champion. This isn't a free resource game, and missing skill shots is costly in terms of mana/energy and cooldowns.

Combo Practice

Once the sandbox mode is available to the public, practicing your combos will become extremely important for climbing. If you chain your slow skills together with your fast skills, you can effectively deal all your damage much faster. This reduces the time your opponents have to flash out and can catch them off guard with the amount of burst possible. Key champions that this works well on are ones like Corki, Jayce, Xerath, Riven, etc.

Learn the metagame - Watch tournaments

It's not to say that everything you see in professional level game play can be used in your solo queue games, but make sure to understand why teams do certain things. Do they rotate mid after taking bot turret? Do they push multiple lanes? See how teams move around the map and when and where they take objectives. Specific details may vary, but reasons are always good to understand.

Reduce Toxicity

Toxicity really does lose games. While it might not lose you every game, toxic behavior will eventually cause one of your teammates to rage and AFK for a a quick 4v5 loss. Even if nobody leaves, time spent typing random inflammatory comments is time that could have been spent thinking of ways to win the game.

Expand your champion pool - who counters the champions that counter you

If you're a one-trick pony that's not necessarily a bad thing. However, figure out which champions counter your one-trick the hardest, and at least prepare a counterpick to that champion if you can't figure out how to beat it with your one-trick. This will save you pain in the long run, especially if you play inhouses where your champion always gets banned.

Conclusions

Sometimes you feel like you've hit a ceiling and can't seem to improve. However, the ten things above are certainly not difficult to work on, and can compound incremental changes into massive LP gains.

Do you have more tips? Which tip is your favorite? Comment below!