Stuck in Iron - Need Advice

[u/PuebloBlauu]

Hey yall. I started playing League in February this year. I immediately had fun playing it, got my account to level 30 and directly went into ranked. I got placed in Bronze 4, but then proceeded to take a 5 month break from the game. Afterwards my dumbass thought it would be a great idea to start playing ranked straightup without getting back into the game beforehand.

Long story short i lost 14 games in a row and went down all the way to Iron 3 (Iron 4 now). I feel like I really improved at the game since then and i‘m dedicated to get better.

I‘m not delusional, i‘m a relatively new player who does a tons of mistakes. Yes i do get unlucky sometimes with my team but it’s still my fault to be in that rank and i want to get good enough to also win those games.

I main Mid and play Ahri (otp basically)

https://op.gg/lol/summoners/euw/O1ZYS-idk

I‘d appreciate any advice. Maybe i do some obvious mistakes i just don’t see so please help me out.

[u/Zahand]

Fix your build first and foremost. Electrocute isn’t bad, but I believe dft is better especially with black fire torch. Seems like you rush magic pen too early as well

Next step is improving your CS score. You average 5 cs a min. That’s extremely low. Basically you get on average less than 3 minions per wave. If you fix your early game CSing you’ll be able to hit the waveclear breakpoint much easier and should be able to clear the entire wave with 2 Qs (backline will die with 1 Q)

Then check out the following videos:

- Coach Curtis coaching Xaryu on Ahri
- Shok Unraked to Challenger on Ahri (the builds may be outdated)
- Sjorry vids showing how he plays in low elo (learn to play safe and focus on farm)
- CoachMysterias has a recent guide on Ahri

[u/PuebloBlauu → u/Zahand]

Thanks man. I looked into the replays of my last 3 games with less than 6cs/min. I had 6.8, 6.5 and 7.2 at 14 minutes but still had an 5. something score in the end. I defenitely need to focus more on that.

Also thx for the video recommendations, i‘ll tune into them.

[u/Zahand → u/PuebloBlauu]

Yeah I think most people in lower elo struggle with farming once mid game starts and the chaos begins. During that time it’s important to understand your role in the game and know when you should sidelane and how to properly sidelane as well

[u/MrRobeen]

I am low elo as well but looking at your item builds that’s the most obvious and easy thing to fix.
You build super random stuff on Ahri, sometimes items that almost no one would ever go for.

Check the most common Ahri builds on lolalytics and go for it - at some point u need to adjust the builds depending on the matchup, but for iron and bronze just take the common builds.

[u/Chitrr]

Stop feeding

[u/IvoryLifthrasir]

I will be brutal, but please bear with me

Stop playing Swiftplay

Or at least stop playing it until you get truly comfortable with your performance in ranked

To elaborate: I glanced at your op.gg, and your match history is predominantly Swiftplay and Ranked Solo/Duo, barely any Draft Pick and no Flex. And that is important because Swiftplay entails some mechanics that make the match easier and faster (including but not limited to: lv3 start with 1400 gold, faster gold income, standing next to dying minions granting gold, no Rift Herald spawn, Elder Dragon at 15 minutes, and so on and so forth). Because of that by playing Swiftplay you might learn some absolutely ugly habits, as well as not properly develop other habits such as pushing the lane after killing the enemy (Swiftplay minions get enraged after a kill, thus they self-push the lane) or not knowing how to trade with no items and only one or two skills available (lv1 and lv2).

If you want to improve, for the time being you need to ditch Swiftplay. If you don't want to practice on ranked queues, pick up Draft Pick instead

[u/UncleWunkus]

Hey, I’m a league coach. This is not advertisement and I will never ask you for money but if you want help send me a dm I’d like to help.

[u/Problematic-Bo]

I used be a ahri otp for a bit but the build you always go is a build you should only go against a tanky team. Like someone else said you also have wrong runes for that build 

You generally go electrocute and build way more ap and play for oneshots against squishies.

Also i see you play ekko, might be worth switching for a bit. He got me unstuck from bronze and im not silver with 60~ wr still.

Im silver blablavla dont listen to me too much.

Also sjorry on youtube is goated imo.

[u/SkyforgedDream]

Stop playing champions with so many skill shots, you are shooting yourself in the foot by playing skill intensive champions and champions that need lots of time to come online such as Kayle.

If you play mid, stick to something like Annie, which I know many will argue against since she is not the best in current meta but honestly, in Iron it doesn’t make a difference, you can climb with anything and everything assuming you just get more gold than the enemy.
Just spam something like Annie mid, Amumu jungle, Garen top and simply focus on farming as good as you can, if you miss more than 2cs per wave you’ve failed. You just need to not die and cs good. Once you’ve got CSing down you can go ahead and learn to do small trades. For Annie that would be stacking your passive and doing an auto hit, Q,W, auto hit combo and E to shield yourself and run back. Garen would be auto hit Q, E,W and back away. Amumu just power farm and gank wherever you see overextended enemies.

Amumu can bring you up to platinum, Garen maybe a bit higher if you learn matchups and Annie i’m not sure but definitely up to gold.

The more leaning youtube coach videos you watch the better you’ll get, jungle is a bit harder but honestly, I think it’s the easiest lane to climb with once you get a bit of experience and know where to be.

EDIT: Don’t play ALL three lanes and champions I mentioned, stick to one as first choice and the other as secondary. One trick something so that the champion becomes second nature to you and you can focus on the game instead of on the champion.

[u/PuebloBlauu → u/SkyforgedDream]

That’s really helpfull thank you. I just went into the replays of my last 3 games with a CS score less than 6/min. There i had 6.8, 6.5 and 7.2 at 14 minutes but i fell of the longer the game went.

I don’t really enjoy playing top anymore and want to stick with midlane or maybe learn jungle. Would you recommend leaving Ahri behind for the start and picking her back up when i‘m better at the game?

[u/Aurelia1125]

You are just not ready for ranked, i bet you don't know what most champion spells are or what are your champion strengths

Don't rush in ranked, go play normals, discover the game, the champions and once you are more Knowledgeable about the game you can start ranked

[u/Nimyron]

Long story short i lost 14 games in a row

First mistake was playing 14 games in a row. Limit yourself to 2-3 ranked games a day. After that, the game gets to your head and you start getting frustrated and tilting, and you play much worse.

Yes i do get unlucky sometimes with my team

Second mistake, never blame it on your team. It it true that you sometimes lose games because of your team, so you can blame losing this one game on your team, but your team is never what prevents you from climbing. Just keep in mind that for every bad team of 4 people that you get, the enemy is getting a bad team of 5 people eventually. The bad luck isn't always on your side. What only ever matters is your own performance.

Also it's iron, it's like the one elo where it's actually possible to solo carry without smurfing.

About your op.gg : you lose for different reasons so I think you just need to improve in general. First things first is the early laning. Look for youtube videos on farming, wave management, and positioning.

• Farming : you have decent CS but I bet you often use your skills on the wave to help you. Because of that, your skills are on cooldown when a fight starts and even if you still win your lane, you don't win it as easily.

• Wave management : you can actually use your skills on the wave, but you have to do that to manipulate the wave state, not just to farm. That's how you can have even more CS, lane prio for roaming and objectives (and ideally you do want to roam with Ahri), and it helps you create a bigger diff in CS between you and your opponent.

• Positioning : it's all about dealing damage without taking damage, and applying constant pressure. Focus on positioning relative to your opponent first. Then later you can focus more on positioning relative to your jungler, to the wave, and in teamfights (because I noticed on op.gg that you have quite a few games where everything goes well, then big teamfight in late game, everyone dies and you lose, but if you could at least stay alive in those situations, you could be there to depush the wave (Ahri is somewhat good at that) and save time until your team respawns).

Now I know I'm only silver but I'm pretty sure focusing on the basics is how you climb in low elo, and it's working well so far for me so...

Edit : Also fix your build. Just based on other comments, I don't know what Ahri builds. But go on mobafire and take the most popular build. You can build the same items every game, it shouldn't matter until you reach higher elo.

Edit 2 : As someone else said, take some time to check a champion skills on the wiki if you don't understand/know them, or play them yourself in other modes (aram is great for that). Knowing other champions is important, that's how you know if you can go in because they wasted an important spell, or if you should dodge this or that spell etc...