League of Legends: 5 tips to climb ranked before the end of Season 9

The League of Legends 2019 ranked season ends on November 19th! Here are our top five tips to reaching your desired elo before the deadline!

Months of blood, sweat, and salt have all been poured into your keyboard building up to this moment. Your League of Legends record is about to be stamped with your Season 9 rank for eternity, to be forever judged by teammates and opponents in solo queue.

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November 19th. Mark the date on your calendar, for you have just over two weeks left to grind up to your desired rank and enjoy your Victorious Aatrox and all the glory that comes with it. Are you struggling to ascend to elo heaven with such a short time remaining? Of course you are. We all are.

Don’t fret, we’re here to help. Here is our guide to everyone trapped in the depths of elo hell. Follow these words, and you may finally reach the promised land of Gold IV, claiming your shiny new skin, and avoiding a year of flame directed at your S9 Silver rank. Here are our top five tips to climb ranked before Season 9 ends:

Small Champion Pool

Our list of tips begins in champion select. Say goodbye to rolling dice during pick and bans to select your champion, say hello to a smaller champion pool designed to increase your LP exponentially between now and the 19th.

Get out a notepad, write down your main role and select your THREE strongest champions in that role. Then, write down one familiar champion from each of the remaining four roles, and there you have it – your champion pool for the remainder of Season 9.

“But that’s boring!” Well, it’s only for two weeks, I’m sure you’ll survive.

By doing this, you refine your skills on a small number of champions by playing multiple games with them over a short period of time, rather than playing dozens of different champions without much thought. Also, if you play the same champion in consecutive games, you no longer have to focus on adapting to your own champion, and instead just have to focus on other elements of the game, such as opponent compositions.

This is by far the most important tip for climbing from lower elos and can have a huge impact on your gameplay and win rate in a short amount of time.

Play Safe / Focus on Farming

Two words that we see spammed in chat every time the enemy picks up First Blood. “Play safe” your mid laner begs, as you’re tower dived 3v1 and have no way out. “Just farm” he pleads, as you’re zoned away from a minion wave and an easy target for a Blitzcrank grab or Pyke hook. It might not be what you want to hear, but the mid laner is right for the most part.

In the early game your only focus should be to farm up, build a gold lead through minions, and wait until your jungler arrives in your lane. Obviously if an opportunity presents itself you can take an advantageous fight, but unless you know that the enemy jungler can’t get involved, why risk it? Wait until you get support from your team to make plays, and simply out farm your opponent in the first 5-10 minutes.

Spread your advantage around the map

Picked up a kill or two in the bot lane? Caught out the opposition jungler for a free First Blood? Immediately look for opportunities to spread that gold lead around the map, whether it be through ganks or roams to other lanes.

The most obvious and easily executed method of spreading an advantage is through the bottom lane using their pressure to take down an early dragon. Pick up a kill in the 2v2, then ping your jungler down to bot to either push for more kills, tower plates, or a free neutral objective.

On top of that, when the enemy tower is eventually destroyed, be sure to move to either the mid or top lane to press your advantage and capitalize on more tower plates to extend your gold lead. This applies to every lane! Don’t blindly push your own lane when there’s no objective to be taken, instead rotate around the map and try to force fights with a numbers advantage.

Use Pings (especially in team fights)

In lower elos especially, pings are one of the most effective, but least utilized tools in League of Legends. Nowadays, players have been trained to constantly be aware of the map state and check their mini-map every few seconds, but they haven’t yet learned how to utilize pings to help their team.

For instance, in the early game, you could spot the enemy jungler on a ward and instead of doing nothing, throw a few pings down on his location to make your absent-minded teammates aware of his position on the map. Or you could help your jungler out by pinging every enemy ward that’s placed around your lane to prevent the opposition from becoming aware of your teammate’s pathing.

Pings are also important in the late game, not just for making plays around the map and picking the next key objective, but also in team fights. Low elo players will blindly auto-attack and spam spells on the closest enemy, but you can prevent this and improve their team fight focus by spam pinging an enemy carry and shutting them down early in a fight, increasing your chances of winning.

Don’t Tilt

Easier said than done, “Don’t Tilt” is perhaps the most overused piece of advice any player gives when offering tips on how to climb the ranked ladder. In fact, it’s so overstated, that it’s pointless going into details on the final of our five tips, we’ll just give you three separate bullet points and leave the rest to you!

• /mute all
• Take regular breaks
• Have fun!

We wish you the best of luck on your ranked climb before November 19th and hope you reach your desired elo before the ranked season ends! Have fun on the Rift, Summoners!