We’ve all seen the countless posts reiterating how to climb elo by ignoring flamers, warding and farming 100cs per 10 minutes. That’s all well and good, but there are many other things you can do to improve at pretty much every elo, and I’ve decided to highlight some of them below:

1 – Multi-champ clear squad You’re defending your base from a 5-man enemy team at mid, there’s a wave of 20 minions moments away from your top tower, your teammate goes to clear it. You then follow him because DAMNNNNNN that farm looks juicy! Oh, wait, your team got dived 3v5 in mid and you lost tower/inhib/maybe even game. But at least you got some of that top farm, right? There’s literally no reason for this, it’s one of the most frustrating things to see in games and it happens more often than you’d care to admit. It’s risky enough when one person leaves to clear a wave, so why would you double that risk by sending two people? If the pressure is heavy enough mid, sometimes it’s not even worth sending 1 person to clear top if your team is going to get dived! Think about your movements and how much freedom it gives the enemy.

This doesn’t just happen when you’re defending the base either. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve gone to a side-lane to clear it, then 2 seconds later a teammate comes and joins in. This not only wastes time, but it shows the enemy where at least 2 of your team are, meaning they can move in on other objectives or your remaining teammates. Another example is if you and a teammate are both roughly the same distance from a wave, and your teammate pings to show they’re going there: just walk away. It’s not worth the wasted time or the possible flame that follows when you ‘steal their farm’.

As a final note on this point, if you’re already next to a wave and a teammate pings from over half a lane away, just take it. You’ve already made the trip to the wave, the amount of time wasted is ridiculous and again, you’ll give vision of 2 of your team to the enemy.

2 – Gank FOR your jungler Let’s say you’re purple side botlane, farming away. There’s a wave of 10 creeps coming into your tower, your jungler is taking his 2nd blue when suddenly, a wild Lee Sin appears and they duke it out. Go and help your jungler! Here’s a best case and worst case scenario (both have happened in my games): Worst Case: You stay in lane and get the majority of the creep wave, losing the rest to tower. Your jungler dies and his blue buff is stolen. The Lee Sin then comes bot and you get dived, giving up a double kill and dragon/tower. Suddenly your team is 3 kills, 1 buff and 1 major objective down.
Best case: You leave the creeps and help your jungler, together you kill the enemy Lee Sin. Their botlane realises what’s going on and comes up to investigate, you dive on them as 3 and pick up a double kill. Now their mid thinks he’s going to clean up and make up for the errors of his team, but your midlaner follows him down and suddenly their mid dies to a 4v1. You pick up dragon just for laughs too. Suddenly you’ve forgotten about those 10 creeps!

Even if you don’t get the best case scenario result, you’ll still pick up a kill/assist on the enemy jungler, boosting the morale of the team and giving your own jungler 30 seconds of free time to do what he wants. If you can set the enemy jungler behind, he’ll struggle and you won’t get so much pressure on your lane!

There’s literally no excuse for not coming to help your jungler. If there’s a 1v1 jungler fight going on and your lane opponent(s) leave to join in, you MUST move with them. Letting your teammates die when you could have saved them/picked up kills just for a wave of creeps is never worth it, ever.

3 – The game isn’t lost This starts in champion select. Someone locks in Jax support, everyone starts spamming ‘GG report troll’. Why? How do you know this guy hasn’t discovered something that you haven’t? There was an AMA recently from a Master tier Shaco support player... Master tier! But stick him on a smurf account with a bunch of Silver and Gold players and they’ll be spamming ‘GG FF @ 20’, without any knowledge as to how this guy plays. I went through a stage of locking in Teemo top, everyone flamed and cursed me straight off the bat... Then suddenly I’m 2/0/0 in lane and picking up every bit of CS available. Then I get a double kill on the jungler and toplaner and suddenly I’m everyone’s favourite player. Next thing you know I’m on a 14-game Teemo-only win streak, and I go up a whole tier.

Next time this comes up is when you’re behind in-game. What you have to do is think about it from a reverse point of view: If you were ahead, you’d still be scared of throwing and you will throw sometimes! The enemy is thinking the same thing, and yes, they will throw through overconfidence! The game is so anti-snowball now that you can come back from anything if you play your cards right. Most recent example for me was playing as a Trist botlane where our Jungler went AFK at level 1. We all just played like normal, and started pretty even. The enemy grouped, we got pushed to base from their 5v4 squad, but they kept diving and getting destroyed by our teamwork. We came back to win and I picked up a quadra for the final push. It’s never over, just play the game out.

I hope these tips are found useful by at least a few of you out there! If you have any other irregular tips (not just ‘don’t flame’) you’d like added to this list, feel free to message me and I’ll give credit where it’s due!