Monday, January 16, 2012

I.10b - Method and Discipline - promotions

10. By METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the graduations of rank among the officers.

Acknowledging your teammate's success is critical to supporting your team's improvement. Take time to acknowledge your teammates achievements, particularly during losses. One practice I've tried is to ask my teammates to list one thing they did well when we lose, and what they can improve on after a win. This prevents the team from getting down after a loss. Taking a break and keeping the environment lighthearted after a loss can give everyone a chance to relax and reset their focus. The worst thing you can do when your team is down after a loss is to requeue. In his excellent post on improving your elo without improving your skill, a platinum player named Pat the Power advises you to introduce a stop loss, meaning that you stop queueing ranked after two losses in a row. You won't lose 300 elo in a day if you follow this very valuable advice.

Promotions may also mean giving your teammates a chance to play a different role. Having a flexible team can give you a lot more freedom during champ select, so if a player wants to try something new, support that. Give him a clear goal (master two champions at that role well enough to play them in solo queue) then give them a chance to try out the role with a team. Feedback is critical so you need to encourage your teammate to ask for feedback. If he's not interested in hearing from the team how he can improve then you can do little to help him grow. One example of where this principle should have been applied was Elementz on CLG. He's a very strong player but the team wasn't happy with his support role. Instead of giving him feedback, they kept silent about it until they chose to bench him out of the blue. They could have given him a chance to play another role or grow in his existing role but instead they let the problem fester until it meant breaking up the team.

Supporting your teammates applies to solo queue as well. Make sure you always tell your teammates gj after successful ganks or kills. When they mess up, encourage them to keep trying, offer a lane switch, buy them a ward. Rage loses more games than any other factor in solo queue. Often the players who are the angriest accuse their teammates of being trolls while they drag everybody down. Mute these players, you'll be more relaxed and better able to focus on the game. Unfortunately you can't communicate with that player but it's better than spending half of your game typing responses to the guy.

Pat the Power on Improving your ELO

I.10a - Method and Discipline - marshaling your troops

10. By METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions
(because each aspect of this verse has so much depth, I'll be covering this in four parts).


Marshaling the army in proper subdivisions means running a competitive composition. Start with a standard high level comp until you've mastered it and understand why it's successful. The dominate meta gets established during big tournaments when thousands of dollars are at stake, so they have been proven at the highest level of play. Once you've mastered it start experimenting and try to break it.

The current standard meta consists of a bruiser top, an ap carry mid, an ad carry with a support bot, and a jungler.

  • The bruiser tends to be a tank or a tanky dps. Their job is to farm as hard as possible and provide some meat to the team comp. Depending on the champ a bruiser might chase down squishies in a teamfight or protect his carries. Examples include irelia, rumble, nidalee, udyr and many others. A top lane champ must be able to escape ganks because the towers are far apart.
  • The ap mid is also responsible for farming hard, but has more opportunity to snowball because of his proximity to all the action. Slower champs with fewer escapes are safest mid because the towers are close together. The jungler and support should take care of wards for the mid. Casters need a solo lane because their damage is dependent on leveling spells.
  • The ad carry deals damage with auto attacks so levels aren't quite as important, while items are critical. The support's job is to ward and babysit the ad carry while he farms the lane as if he were a solo. A support should ward, heal, and potentially harass lane opponents to give his carry the best chance to succeed.
  • The jungler's job is complex, though generally he should try to help his teammates win their lanes. He does this by warding, ganking, and crippling the enemy jungler. Do not take xp/gold from your solo while the enemy is in lane; this will put your teammate behind (unless you are saintvicious in which case farming is your only goal).
There are many nuances and plenty of variation inside this meta system, and a few teams like dignitas and goose have had some success running non-standard comps. Other factors a team should consider are damage, tankiness, range, poke, sustain, aoe, cc, damage type, zooms. I'll give an example for each of these factors, note that the 'bad' examples are only bad for the factor I'm covering, they might represent a perfectly suitable comp depending on your opponent. Similarly, good examples exhibit the trait well and may not represent a good overall comp.

Total Damage: Your team needs to put out enough damage throughout the game. Carrying too many tanks or champs that fall off late game will cause you to fail.
Good example: Irelia, Annie, Skarner, Tristana, Taric. (trist has amazing late game and nobody falls off too hard).
Bad example: Cho Goth, Leblanc, Malphite, Cait, Janna (cho and malph have no damage, lb and cait fall off).

Tankiness: Without a tank you will not be able to commit to a fight. I audited 15 tournament games from Dreamhack S1 Championships and IEM Germany, 14 out of 15 winning teams had a 'true' tank, and the one exception had three heavier than average champs. Don't get too tanky or you won't have any damage.
Good example: Sion, Kassadin, Skarner, Tristana, Janna. (skarner tanks it up, sion is naturally big)
Bad example: Nidalee, Brand, Nocturne, Corki, Sona. (even warmog/atma nid isn't enough tank for a team).


Range: Range keeps your opponent at a distance and allows you to harass, without range you have to go all in which can force you into some bad spots. Ranged champs also stay safer when they commit their damage; Vayne has insane damage but puts herself at risk, white Cait does a lot of damage from a much safer distance.
Good example: Udyr, Karthus, Nocturne, Tristana, Taric.
Bad example: Rumble, Ryze, Malphite, Vayne, Alistar.

Poke: Similar to range but specifically about dealing damage from range while preventing the enemy team from committing. A poke comp is meant to prevent Dyrus' tank tank tank tank mordekaiser comp from reaching you, rendering their beefy champs useless.
Good example: Nidalee, Karthus, Lee Sin, Caitlyn, Soraka. (Tons of ranged damage and with Karthus wall, Cait's traps and Nid's escape it's very difficult to pin this team down).
Bad example: Nidalee, Annie, Amumu, Miss Fortune, Taric (Not much sustain, only nidalee has ranged harass)

Sustain: Soraka is op. Sona is very strong.

AoE: If you have Kennen a 4v5 ain't no thang. Amumu makes all their squishies belong to him.

Crowd Control: Get some. Otherwise your friendly neighborhood Yi will come knocking on your (back) door.
Good example: Irelia, Morgana, Udyr, Graves. Soraka (3 out of 5 with hard cc, Soraka has silence, Graves slow).
Bad Example: Nidalee, Kassadin, Shyvana, Graves, Soraka (ouch).

Damage Type: Try to carry at least two champs with each damage type.
Good example: Yorick, Brand, Amumu, Tristana, Sona. (Amu does a lot of ambient magic damage and sona can put out some also).
Bad example: Riven, Leblanc, Pirate, Vayne, Alistar. (buy armor and kill Leblanc first).

Zooms: Champions with zooms/blinks give your team a lot of utility. You can assassinate squishies, escape ganks, and generally frustrate your opponents. The increase in champions with these abilities have made champions like Ashe effectively unviable because they can't avoid getting nom'd.
Good example: Jax, Ahri, Pirate, Ezreal, Alistar.
Bad example: Pirate, Malz, Amumu, Miss Fortune, Sona.

With all of these variables it's very difficult to come up with an ideal comp. That's okay however, because in competitive play you need to adjust your comp based upon your opponent's picks. Counter picking champions often has a big impact on the outcome of the game, regardless of whether your comp is perfectly balanced or not. This topic is extremely deep and I hope this provides a good general starting place.

Dyrus' tank tank tank tank mordekaiser