Guide to Ranked and Climbing the Ladder

1. What is RANKED? How do you "Rank Up"?

Thinking you need a better challenge than normal 5v5s? Have you played too many normals already?! Then ranked is the place to go.

Ranked is basically playing a normal 5v5 on Summoner’s Rift, however, rather than playing “just for fun” you are playing to make progress by climbing up a “ladder”. Not only that, but you, theoretically, face opponents that are equal in skill to you, thus making a ranked game a little more difficult than a normal game at times.

The way to climb the ladder is winning; the more games you play, the more you should win (hopefully). The one thing you have to remember is that for every win you get, the other team loses. Losing HAPPENS. Sometimes you’ll get terrible losing streaks (example: losing 10 of 12 games) – it happens, it just does. But losing is no reason to give up. I will explain other ways to improve your chances of winning.

What does the ladder consist of? It consists of 5 rankings – Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond and their subdivisions V – I (5 – 1) as well as the highest possible rank, Challenger. To go into more detail about the numbers, V is the lowest subdivision of each rank and I is the highest. Each win you achieve, you gain a certain amount of League Points (LP) based on your MMR. The LP you get will determine how quickly you will climb the ladder.

Challenger is a little bit of a different story. It’s the division that is not separated by groups (Irelia’s Renegades, etc), of the top 200 players on the server.

You start by playing a preliminary 10 games of ranked and depending on your win/loss ratio, you will be placed in a division roughly Bronze V to high Gold with 0 LP. You need to gain 100LP to begin what are called “Promotion Matches”, commonly referred to as “promos”. If you are in subdivision V – II you will need to win 2 of the next 3 games you play in your promotion series. If you are in subdivision I you will need to win 3 out of the next 5 games in order to be promoted from, say, Gold I to Platinum V.

From there, you just repeat the process, and enjoy playing League of Legends!

Tip: I suggest that if it’s your first time playing ranked, you should play your placements on your own, rather than doing (as explained in section 3). It’ll better help determine where you should actually be placed. If you feel you are better than your team after a few games, go ahead and duo.

2. Why do I want to play RANKED?

There are millions of people who play League of Legends and this is one way to set yourself apart from that million. Many professional players started out playing ranked games and getting to the top performing percentage of players. This is your opportunity to find out who you really match up to, skill-wise and show ‘em what you’re made of! You’ll also meet some people along the way that you find to be pretty good at the game and will be your lifelong duo partner or 4 others who you end up making a ranked 5s team with. There are many possibilities! If you’d just prefer to keep League as a hoppy, entertainment, and pastime, it’s still a fun way to challenge yourself.

3. Duo Queue with someone reliable

Remember when I said you’d meet some people you think are good? Yeah, make sure to add them or keep them in mind if you ended up having good chemistry with that person. Having someone you trust and/or like on the team will give you more of a confidence boost for your game. I’d like to say that it gives you an advantage but you’re most likely going to get put against another duo who probably duo queued for the same reasons you two did. The slight possibility of an advantage may come from the fact that maybe your duo is much more skilled than the opposing duo but you’ll only find out when you start playing!

You’ll start by duoing with your partner at least a few times to determine whether or not they consistently perform well. From there, you decide if you want to duo with them or not; if not, find someone else. Find a duo partner who has any type of voice communication on their computer. Communication through voice saves a lot of time rather than typing and it’s so much more fun. You don’t have to, maybe you and your duo don’t talk at all or don’t want to; it’s all personal preference!

4. Dealing with Toxicity in the league community

Alright…so almost every game will have someone who is toxic. That’s just the way the world spins when they’re protected by a computer screen and a few cables. A lot of what might get to you will be when a teammate blames you for losing the entire game and some may even still blame you if your team wins. Honestly, there are some cases where one person may lose the game, but really there are five of you and most of the time it doesn’t happen that way. As long as you are doing your best, there is nothing you should be worrying about. Use the ignore button if needed. I promise it’ll make your experience a little bit more positive after removing the negativity in the chat for a while. Feel free to un-ignore them if you feel they stopped being toxic for whatever reason. Also…be careful if someone is being toxic towards you and you start talking back in some way. You may end up being the toxic one. For example, a Lee Sin told a non-Mundo player to stand between the creep wave to farm and Mundo responded in this manner:

5. Encourage your team to go the extra mile!!!

Alright, if you’ve gotten yourself into a ranked game, this section is the place to be. Sooner or later you’ll find out that not every team will be so peachy in demeanor. In Normal Summoner’s Rift, you may have encountered the “rage'rs” there too – there will always be toxic people! Your experience will be more enjoyable if you just stay positive. If someone wants to rage quit or is getting frustrated, tell them not to! Encourage them to “try again” or “play it safe”. Positive feedback is better than a negative remark, always. When someone gets a kill, say “Good job!” “GJ!”, they’ll most likely feel confident in their future plays (but hopefully not cocky). Not only does it make them feel good, it makes you feel good – if you exude a positive attitude you’ll begin to feel good, yourself.

6. Be as vocal as possible!

When in champ select sometimes it’s hard to get what you want sometimes, especially if you want mid and you’re last pick. Be vocal! Once you get into the lobby, be quick to call what you want! Most people will follow “dibs”/calls. If your computer is too slow and someone already called what you wanted, try adding a “please” if you really want to play that role – some people will give up their role for another.

7. [WARNING] Do not experiment in RANKED

As fun and “practical” as support Ahri may seem in the moment, it’s better than you go for a conventional support in ranked until you feel you are at a rank you want to be (therefore you may just want to “goof off” or play for fun). Though for that, I suggest playing normals so you don’t potentially “ruin” someone else’s ranked game. If it’s something you’ve been practicing like…support Le Blanc and you feel you can pull it off FOR SURE and contribute to the team, you can try for it. But if you’re doing this, beware that if you end up losing your lane, or losing the game, you may take some of the blame.

8. Closing

League is a mental game in so many ways, you just have to relax and try your best. If you gave up first blood or gave your lane a kill, try your best to just farm until your jungler comes to help you or if you feel you can actually kill your opponent 1v1.

There are many sites that will show you who you are playing against, division-wise and I would suggest you don’t use the site because sometimes you get over-confident or you psych yourself out. Just play as if they were the same rank as you are. As this isn’t a guide on how to play your games, necessarily, it’s just a little sense of what ranked games are and what to expect. Some of these games will be easy, some hard, and some just make you want to pull your hair out, but that’s the point – a challenge.

Serina Lane