How To Climb Out Of Gold
League of Legends | Season 13 | FREE GUIDE
Climbing out of Gold in League of Legends puts you roughly in the top 9.7% of League of Legends players globally. If you make it to Diamond? You will be better than 98.3% of League of Legends players globally.
To tell you the truth, it’s hard to climb out of Gold in League of Legends. 90.3% of players (that’s 90 out of every 100) WILL NEVER climb out of Gold. So, HOW DO YOU climb out of Gold?
In this article (and in the video below), I will teach you, step by step, everything I’ve learnt from coaching over 300 Gold (and below) players on how to climb to climb out of Gold and reach the top 1% of players globally.
FOUR AND A HALF THINGS YOU NEED TO CLIMB OUT OF GOLD
To get into the top 10% of players (Plat+), you need the following:
1. Main role & a small champion pool (most important)
2. Consistent gameplay
3. Strong mentality
4. List of personal focus areas for improvement
The first thing I asked the 300+ players I’ve helped climb out of gold since 2015 is: “why do you play League of Legends?”
Out of over 300 responses, there were five categories that everyone’s answers fell under.
1. To have fun
2. To climb to X rank
3. To beat my friends
4. To go pro
5. To stream
6. A combination of the above
Now, I want you to answer this question.
Now, surprisingly (or not), the answers of the most successful players out of the 300+ I’ve asked this question to always contained one of the above categories. I want to play League of Legends to have fun.
Having fun when trying to climb in League of Legends is important because when humans are enjoying themselves they are more willing to learn, less likely to give up, less likely to get angry/frustrated (tilt), can concentrate for longer and are more likely to improve at whatever it is they are doing.
If your answer didn’t include ‘because you want to have fun’ somewhere in it, your chances of climbing out of gold become less likely, but not impossible. However, I would highly recommend you rethink how you play League of Legends if you aren’t enjoying the way you currently play. I guarantee it will help you climb in the long run.
If you want to climb out of Gold in League of Legends, you always need to go back to rule #1 – make sure you are having fun. While having fun isn’t the only thing you need, it makes the other requirements easier to accomplish and stick to.
If you aren’t having fun in League of Legends or your answer to my earlier question didn’t include fun (and you don’t think you need to have fun in order to climb out of Gold), you need to reset the way you play League of Legends, go back to basics and discover the role, playstyle and champions that you enjoy the most.
TIP: to figure out what makes you enjoy League of Legends, use (or start) a smurf/second account and play what you enjoy WITHOUT focusing too much on winning or improving. Simply focus on enjoying the game (without trolling).
HOW TO CLIMB OUT OF GOLD (VIDEO)
1. Main role & small champion pool
After having fun, one of the single most effective ways to climb faster, higher and escape elo hell is to main one role and have a small champion pool. Ideally, the smaller the better. One-tricking has been statistically proven over and over again as the fastest way to climb in League of Legends.
Almost every player in D1+ got there by one-tricking. The only exception to this are pro players and even a lot of them climbed to their highest ranks for the first time just maining a single champion.
TIP: Every player needs to find their personal balance between a small champion pool and not getting bored. This is key to: having fun AND maximising your chances of climbing.
How to find your main role & small champion pool?
Firstly, this step relies on having fun. If you don’t have fun playing the role you choose, or the champions you play, you quill quickly get bored, play too many champions and ruin your MMR.
Step One: Choose a role
While this goes against what a lot of solo-queue players believe, there is no role that is easier to climb with for every League of Legends player compared to other roles.
The role you choose to climb out of gold with should be the role you have:
1. Fun with
2. Highest win-rate with (at least above 52%)
Depending on how high you want to climb verse how much you want to enjoy the game influences the role you want to play.
For example, some players may enjoy playing Mid the most, but Support is actually their highest winrate role. Depending on the player’s goals and requirements for enjoyment and climbing, they may choose Mid lane (if they treat having fun as the most important priority) OR they may choose Support (if they treat climbing faster as the most important priority).
TIP: If you aren’t willing to play JUST ONE role, consider splitting your ranked climbing into two accounts. Have one account (your main) where you only play your highest win-rate role and your other account (secondary/smurf) for the role you have the most fun on.
Step Two: Choose your champion pool
Once you’ve selected the role you want to main, you now need to choose the champions using the same two key factors (fun and win-rate).
The easiest way I’ve found to do this is to use a combination of current champions (1-2) you have a proven track record on (win-rate of at least 53% over 20+ games) AND a site such as U.GG to find a new champion to learn that has a high win-rate in the current meta.
This combination is great as it gives you a strong base with high win-rate champions, plus the chance to explore new champions while not destroying your win-rate or MMR.
Again, I would NEVER recommend learning a new champion for ranked on your main account. I personally recommend at least 20-30 games minimum on a smurf account with at least a 55% win-rate before using that champion on your main account.
TIP: The smaller your champion pool the better. Personally, I recommend 99% of players to have a champion pool of 1-3 champions. This allows you to master them faster, climb quicker and improve your consistency.
2. Consistency
Consistency is essential to climbing out of Gold as it allows you to take more control over the game.
In League of Legends, you are 1 in 10 people. You won’t win every game. In fact, the average League of Legends player loses 50% of their games. The average Challenger player loses around 42-45% of their games.
What makes the difference between a 48% winrate player and a 55% winrate player is consistency. When you are only 1 in 10 people, you are limited in the variables you control.
That is why the role you queue up with, the champion you choose and your mentality (see point 4) are so important. They are all variables you control and they all directly affect your performance. The player who stay hardstuck are the players who cannot play consistently League of Legends.
Consistency isn’t about getting 20 kills or 1v9’ing. Consistency isn’t sexy. Consistency isn’t the YouTube highlight reels you watch every week. Consistency is about playing better than the average player at your rank. Consistency is about being 1% better than you were yesterday. Consistency is about controlling every variable you can.
TIP: It’s extremely hard to control every variable 100% of the time. Focus on the variables with the biggest impact that are the easiest to control. The top three variables for this are: Role, champion pool, mentality & deaths.
Looking to climb out of Gold? Not sure where to start? Book your free profile review with our head coach and learn everything you need to know.
3. Strong Mentality
Your mentality is the key to you climbing out of gold. A good mentality allows you to ensure you enjoy the game, stick to your champion pool and play consistent League of Legends.
When players mental goes boom, so does there rank, MMR and elo. Even just 10 bad games in a row can severely ruin your chances of climbing and make your climb much harder for the rest of the season.
While fixing your mentality in League of Legends isn’t an overnight process nor can it be fixed by just reading this article, you have to be willing to change your mindset and stop being toxic and getting tilted in order to actually fix your mentality. Until you do that, it’s going to be extremely hard to climb out of gold.
The two most important tips to fixing your mentality in League of Legends are:
1. Identify what makes you angry.
Think about why it makes you angry. Write it down and then look for solutions and rationalise the anger. Most of the time, we get angry in League of Legends for minor things like “my jungle died in my lane” therefore the game is lost. That is the mentality of a loser. The mentality of a winner is “my jungle just died in my lane”, this game just got harder but it’s not over.
2. Focus on only what you can change.
You cannot change the fact your mid laner went 0-6, just like you can’t change the weather. The only thing you can change is how you react to it. Just like someone getting upset over it raining, getting upset over a feeding team-mate doesn’t help you win the game, nor does it solve the problem. It only makes it worse. Instead, focus on what you need to now do differently because of the harder game conditions.
Tip: Poor mentality usually stems from outside of League of Legends. Therefore, the root cause of your poor mentality usually isn’t League of Legens itself, rather your attitude towards life in general. Ensure you don’t play tired, never play more than two losses in a row and never queue up again if you are already tilted.
4. List of focus areas for improvement
No-one plays League of Legends perfectly. Not even Faker. But in order to climb out of gold, or to climb out of any rank, you need to improve. You need to be playing better than you were yesterday. You don’t have to play like a god all of a sudden, hard stomp or carry every game. You need need to focus on beating your yesterday’s self. Even just a 1% improvement every day will result you in being a completely different player by the end of the season.
The biggest problem area I see with players looking to climb out of Gold is laning phase. The main areas of weakness in laning phase are: ganking, wave management, jungle tracking, recalling, trading, positioning and dying.
The next biggest problem area I see is grouping. League of Legends is a team-game. You are 1 in 10 players. The game is designed to be won by the team who plays better together. Therefore ALWAYS group. Gold players are almost never grouping early or often enough in League of Legends. Make sure whenever your team is grouping, you are at least there, even if it feels like an ARAM or a fiesta, your presence means you get influence over the outcome.
The third biggest problem I see for League of Legends players to improve is dying. Gold players die way too much, for no reason and without knowing why. The easiest way to die less is to watch back your replays and just look at the 30-60 seconds of gameplay before you die everytime. If you can do this, you will be able to identify and then stop the cause of your deaths.
As you can see, Climbing out of Gold is hard. 90% of League of Legends players aren’t willing to do it. However, it’s not impossible. If you are able to do even 50% of the things I’ve written out in this article, you will be able to climb out of Gold.
Looking to climb out of Gold? Not sure where to start? Book your free profile review with our head coach and learn everything you need to know.
HOW TO CLIMB OUT OF GOLD FAQ
There is no right answer here.
In the current meta, you can climb with every role in League of Legends.
The best strategy to go with when choosing which lane to climb with is to pick the lane you are most comfortable OR the lane you have the most success with. If you’re unsure about what role/champions you’re most successful on, go to op.gg and look at your statistics.
The most important tip to remember when trying to climb out of gold is to try to just stick to one role and master it. It’s much easier to become a god at one role rather than constantly switching roles and being indecisive when trying to climb.
There are three ways to approach choosing a champion pool when trying to climb in League of Legends.
- Play the champions you have fun on – this is best recommended for players who want to make sure they always enjoy the game. Usually, if a player enjoys a champion they will also perform better on them, will learn faster and climb quicker.
- Play the champions you are good at. Go to op.gg and look at your most played champions. Look at your wr%, games played and KDA. The champions with the best numbers across these three metrics are usually the champions you are best at playing. Generally, any champion above a 53% winrate over at least 30+ games is a good champion for you to focus on mastering and playing to climb.
- Play the meta/OP champions. This is the hardest option as it generally requires you learning a new champion which can be very difficult and actually detrimental to your climbing, particularly if you’re a new player or haven’t played the champion before. If you use this approach, make sure to practice the champion in flex-queue, on your alt. account or in normal games before bringing it into your solo-queue games on your main.
In my experience, having coached hundred of players in gold, the best strategy is to choose a small champion pool that focuses on a balance between the champion you’re good at and the champions yo enjoy playing.
There is always a synergy between high performance and champion enjoyment, so make sure you keep your champion pool small (3-5 champions) on your primary role, make sure you enjoy playing those champions, and make sure you can actually win games with them!
This is a question that almost no-one asks themselves yet one I ask to all my silver players.
Goal setting when aiming for a higher rank is critical because it makes you start to get specific and focus on areas of your gameplay that aren’t up to a gold elo standard. See the following goals as a general guide for a silver player wanting to become a gold player.
- Have a wr of 53%+ across your most played champions.
- Have a cs/min of at least 5 for junglers and a cs/min of 6 for top, mid and jungle. This should be across all your most played champions.
- Have a KDA of at least 3 across your most played champions
- Have a KP% of 50-55% as a jungler, 40-45% as a top laner, 48-52% as a mid laner and 55-60% as a support.
Now, just because you have these statistics, it won’t necessarily mean you will reach gold, HOWEVER, if you are achieving these statistics in silver, it proves that you are in fact playing better than the average silver player and therefore if you keep that level of performance, you will eventually climb out of gold, whether it’s in the next 10 games, 50 games or 100+ games depdning on your rank, MRR and consistency.
Climbing out of Gold is hard in League of Legends for three main reasons.
- Most Gold players do not have a ranked climbing strategy. Most plat players do. If you don’t have a “strategy” for how to climb out of gold and stick to it, for example, I am going to one-trick Yasuo in the midlane to climb out of Gold, you will most likely ruin your MMR and destroy you win rate by playing too many roles and champions.
- Most Gold players don’t know what to focus on to improve their gameplay. The biggest areas holding most Gold players back are their CS/min, laning phase and dying too much. Focus on these three things for in-game improvement.
- Tilting and mentality. It’s easy to get frustrated in League of Legends, but it’s easier to climb when you don’t get tilted. Mute all and ally chat in system settings to stop other players tilting you. Never play more than 2 losses in a row in one sitting. If you are tilted, switch from ranked to normals or go on your smurf account.
It is easy to climb out of Gold, once you have the right strategy. The problem is, 95% of players don’t have a strategy to climb out of Gold.
Once you create a strategy that allows you to have fun, play the champions you want and maintain a 55% winrate, it’s only a matter of time before you climb out of Gold.
The easiest way to create this strategy is to pick your most enjoyed role, and pick 1-3 champions with a 50%+ win rate. Once you have this pool of champions, you now need to focus on mastering them and continue to play only those champions until you climb out.
Yes, you can drop out of Gold in League of Legends if you lose enough games in a row. However, you cannot decay out of Gold. League of Legends rank decay does not occur when you are Gold. Ranked decay only occurs in Diamond players and up.
Looking to climb out of Gold? Not sure where to start? Book your free profile review with our head coach now.
Can’t be bothered reading? Check out our Season 13 Online Course on how to climb out of Gold.