The Only Climbing Guide You Will Need For Season 11
A step-by-step checklist to reach your ranked goal this season.
If you are looking for a step-by-step ranked climbing guide that will help you reach your goal rank in League of Legends, you have just found it.
I have put together the ultimate climbing strategy you need to use to get to your goal rank in season 11. This is the exact same strategy I have used with hundreds of summoners.
From the basics, to the unknown strategies that the top 1% use to climb, this strategy covers everything you need to know to stop being hard stuck and turn climbing from a coinflip chance to a systematic strategy in six comprehensive but achievable steps.
The beauty of this strategy is that it isn’t about whether or not it works, it’s about whether or not you are willing to put in the effort to change your rank using the strategy laid out step by step for you.
This strategy requires effort, just like it requires effort to climb in League of Legends: if it was easy, everyone would do it.
This guide isn’t rocket science, it’s simple strategies that have been completed successfully by hundreds of summoners before you, all you have to do is complete the exercises and stick to them.
Here are the main categories I will cover in this guide.
PLEASE NOTE: For some of these sections, there will also be videos attached to explain the concepts in greater detail as well as provide more in-depth instructions for building out your strategy for each section.
How to Use This League of Legends Climbing Strategy
If you do every exercise in this article, by the time you finish reading this, you will have developed your very own climbing guide for the rest of season 11. If you can’t be bothered to put the effort in, I wish you the best of luck climbing.
There is a chance that your climbing strategy already covers some of the steps outlined in this guide, and if it does, great! You are already on your way to reaching your ranked goal.
I also know that everyone can always improve their strategy and that 99% of players don’t stick to their strategy consistently, one of the biggest causes of rank plateau, becoming ‘hard stuck’ and feeling lost when playing ranked solo-queue.
This step-by-step ranked climbing guide aims to deliver you a single source of truth that you can personalise, build and stick to no matter what your ranked goal is.
Trialed and tested with over 800 summoners, this is arguably the most comprehensive and proven strategy to climb to your ranked goal in season 11 on the internet!
Prepare yourself for a long read!
1. Define WHY You Play League of Legends
Why do you play League of Legends? This is the fundamental question you need to answer truthfully if you’re serious about climbing. Your answer to this question doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s honest. What matters is how your answers aligns with how you are playing the game right now. Do they match up correctly?
For most players, there is usually a disconnect between WHY they play League of Legends and the goal they expect to reach while playing.
For example, the average Gold player plays 20-30 champions a season, averages an overall win rate of 51% and has 3-5 champions in their top 7 most played with below 50% win rates, but has the goal of reaching Diamond. It’s virtually impossible to climb from Gold to Diamond with a 51% win rate, but many players when asked have a ranked goal out of their reach with how they are currently playing the game. This is where your ‘WHY’ you play the game becomes important. It will define whether or not you can change your playstyle.
The majority of players who struggle to climb, plateau or become ‘hard stuck’ have either forgotten along the way, or never taken a second to pause and reflect on WHY they play League of Legends. It’s easy to get swept up into the grind, competitive scene and beating our friends, but sometimes this can create a disconnect between WHAT we enjoy about the game and HOW we play it.
This is what I call the solo-queue dilemma. From coaching over 800 summoners over 10 years, 95% of these summoners have a direct conflict between WHY they play League of Legends and HOW they play League of Legends. This disconnect is causing the inability to climb consistently.
Having fun and climbing in League of Legends are not always the same thing. While both can happen at the same time, one does not necessarily cause the other.
“Remember WHY you first started
playing League of Legends”
A great example of this is players who have champions with 55%+ win rates, yet play other champions which they perform considerably worse on (49% and below) in solo-queue because they are simply “bored” of the champions they have success on. Before I bring this up to them, the majority of players have never given this counterintuitive playstyle a second thought.
Just because we are good at winning with a champion in solo-queue doesn’t mean we enjoy playing that champion all the time, and that’s okay – as long as we realise that this will greatly affect how high we can climb in a season and we adjust our goals accordingly to avoid disappointment and frustration.
If you are a player that wants to one-trick, you have an easy time. All you have to do is choose the champion you perform best on and grind out the season with them. As long as you have a 53%+ win rate over the season, you will climb.
For players who get bored, you need to reconnect WHY you play League of Legends with HOW you play League of Legends and readjust your ranked goal.
For example, if you want to climb from Gold to Diamond, but less than 80% of your games are on champions you have a 51% or below winrate on, it’s very unlikely that you will reach your goal.
For these players, you need to make a choice. Either you grind out ranked solo-queue games, playing only the champions you have a 53%+ win rate on, OR you readjust your ranked goal from reaching Diamond to something more realistic because you aren’t willing to change your champion pool.
Remember, it’s okay to change your goal if it means you can enjoy the game more and not set yourself up for failure.
Remember, it’s okay to change your goal if it means you can enjoy the game more and not set yourself up for failure.
The majority of players I’ve coached want to get to Diamond or above, but then when I tell them exactly what they need to do to get there, they don’t want to put in the work or think they can get the results they want doing the same thing that got them to their current rank.
EXERCISE: WHY DO YOU PLAY LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
For this exercise, please open the spreadsheet linked HERE, make a copy of the file and then write down WHY you play League of Legends in the first sheet after reading the below text.
Use the CURRENT template below to define why you play league of legends, how you play league of legends and your current goal currently.
You will notice in the CURRENT template example that there is a strong disconnect between the current win rate % and goal rank (it’s almost impossible to climb from Gold to Diamond with a 51% win rate). This is because HOW the majority of players play League of Legends is currently not helping them climb.
PLEASE NOTE: If you do not currently have any champions with a win rate equal to or above 53% in your top 7 most played champions in solo-queue on your main account, refer to the section “set up how you play League of Legends’’ and then come back to this.
If you’d like myself to set up your champion pool and develop a strategy for you based on your current statistics and ranked situation, please click HERE.
Once you have done this, use the FUTURE template to define why and how you are going to play league of legends for the rest of the season. Remember, you want to stick to this for at least 2-3 months at a time before adjusting, so make sure you are comfortable with what you’ve written and are not going to give up half way through. (these templates are all written out for you in the spreadsheet linked HERE.)
CURRENT TEMPLATE
“I currently play ranked solo-queue in League of Legends because I want to have fun. I currently play the majority of my games between 2 roles and 7 champions. My overall win rate because of this is 51%. My ranked goal is to get from Gold 3 to Diamond by the end of season 11.”
FUTURE TEMPLATE
“I want to play ranked solo-queue in League of Legends because I want to have fun and perform at my best. I want to focus on one role and 1-4 champions for 90%+ of my games. My goal win rate is to 53% or higher overall. My ranked goal is to get from Gold 3 to Diamond by the end of season 11.”
TEMPLATE RESULTS
If there is a disconnect between your current template and your future template, you need to do one of the following depending on your personal situation and desire to achieve your goal:
- For players who want to do whatever it takes to reach their ranked goal, you will need to make the commitment to redefining HOW you play League of Legends to change your current win-rate to your goal win-rate. This will involve redefining your champion pool and focusing only on champions you have a 53%+ winrate on.
- For players who aren’t willing to change the way they play the game, you will need to redefine your ranked goal based on HOW you want to play the game, or be comfortable with the fact that it’s going to be very hard to achieve your ranked goal if it’s more than one tier about your current tier (aka Silver to Platinum). For example, if you currently sit at a 50% win rate with your current champion pool, but do not want to put in the time to improve or change your champion pool, you are mostly likely going to continue to get the same results for the rest of the season. Don’t assume you are the exception to the rule because you are only setting yourself up for failure and dissapointment.
- For players stuck in the middle, you will need to adjust HOW you play League of Legends and your ranked goal based on how much effort you are willing to put in to change the way you currently play the game. For example, are you willing to stop playing some of your below 53% win rate champions? Are you willing to pinpoint exactly what you’re doing wrong when you play and fix these areas one by one? Answering these questions truthfully will be the biggest long term benefit to your rank and improvement.
Once you have written your current and future template, you now need to identify your current ranked identity based on this and craft your goal ranked identity.
2. Create Your Ranked Identity
For the majority of players, your current ranked identity is based on WHY and HOW you play League of Legends. While most people associate their ranked goal with their current ranked identity, the majority of players will never reach their ranked goal with their current ranked identity because it doesn’t align with HOW to climb in League of Legends.
The exception to this rule are players whose ranked solo-queue meet the following criteria. These are also also the goals you should be striving for if you currently don’t meet these:
- 53%+ overall win rate
- At least 100 games played
If you meet these two criteria, the only variable you need to focus on to hit your ranked goal is HOW many games you are able to play a season. For example, you can have a 60% win rate, but if you only play 50 games a season, you won’t climb as high as someone with a 53% win rate over 200 games.
Similar to the template from the last step, you now need to create your current and future ranked identity using the spreadsheet linked HERE (I’ve included examples to get you started). However, this time you need to focus on your weaknesses and WHY you believe you are stuck at your current rank. Remember you need to be honest. What you put into this exercise will directly correlate to how much value you get out of it.
PLEASE NOTE: For this exercise, you MUST focus on only areas you can self-improve on. You CANNOT use “bad team-mates” “match making” or any other reasons that you cannot self-improve as these are out of your control and always will be.
If you’re unsure what areas you need to improve on, I’d suggest booking a game review with me HERE.
Once you’ve completed the ranked identity exercise to your best ability, it’s time to move onto the next section.
3. Define Success Using Statistics
Stats don’t lie, but our mind does.
A lot of the time, players come to me complaining they are stuck at a certain rank and they don’t know what to do. I take a quick look at their op.gg and mobaytics and quickly see a few alarming statistics that immediately stand out.
It can often be very hard to figure out what you’re doing wrong and be self-critical in a toxic game such as League of Legends because you are getting more than enough criticism from everyone else. Adding more to this feels and can be painful, but, when done right, it helps players reach their ranked goals and break climbing plateaus.
While statistics don’t tell the whole story, there are a few key ones that can help you identify areas you need to improve straight away to see the best results. This is what this section’s exercise is all about.
For this section, you will need to complete the exercise in the spreadsheet in order to set up your ranked statistical tracking. This is an essential component for your climbing and a must do for players who are serious about hitting their ranked goal.
If you’re unsure about the tracking or would prefer me to do it for you, please click HERE.
Once you’ve completed the “statistics tracker” spreadsheet exercise HERE, it’s time to start building your untitlable mindset that will let you push through setbacks, loss streaks and demotions to ultimately keep you on the path to hitting your ranked goal and prevent you from giving up on all your hard work.
4. Set Up Your Mentality
Goals, statistics and champion pools are all useless if you cannot fix your mentality. League of Legends is one of the most toxic competitive environments you will ever find yourself in.
Particularly for young men, the League of Legends ranked community is a terrible place to grow up in and spend time in. Most players don’t survive the toxicity and usually become infected by it. If you’ve ever rage typed, spam pinged, written abusive chat messages, AFK’d int’d or rage quit, you have been infected and it’s one of the biggest reasons you are struggling to climb.
The single biggest piece of advice I can give to you is to mute chat and focus on your own performance, not anyone else’s.
If you cannot change the beliefs you have when it comes to climbing and League of Legends, no amount of goal tracking will be able to help you because you won’t believe in the process of improvement. In order to believe in the process of improvement, you need to believe that you are the only person in control of how high you climb.
You can choose to be the victim and always blame external factors, or you can choose to be the main character and take the responsibility of your performance.
It’s not impossible to change your mindset, but it isn’t easy. This is the single biggest hurdle you will face when trying to climb. Your biggest enemy is your own mind and how it reacts to what happens in the game.
The most foundational point you need to remember is that you are in control of your emotions and how you react to whatever life throws at you. You cannot blame others, use their actions as an excuse, or simply give up and expect to climb higher than you’ve ever climbed before.
The people who are always blaming others and finding excuses, are the ones that fail and never succeed. If you want to win and reach your goals, you need to make yourself the main character, not some NPC whose life revolves around everyone else.
Mindset isn’t about being perfect or striving for perfection, it’s about building a healthy relationship with yourself, your emotions and your actions.
Before moving onto the next section, please complete the “mindset” tab in the attached spreadsheet HERE.
5. Set Up HOW You Play League of Legends
HOW you play League of Legends is vital because of one main reason: Not everyone can perform at the same level on every champion and in every role. This is mainly due to our experience and enjoyment of champions and roles. For example, a Diamond one-trick who only plays Yasuo would most likely have a very hard time climbing to Diamond playing another role or another champion.
While there is a one trick in Challenger for every champion, not every Challenger can play every champion at a Challenger standard – remember this.
Now, most people know this, yet the average League of Legends player plays 30-50 different champions in ranked every season – this is counterproductive to climbing and is a major factor as to why you struggle to climb.
Fixing this issue is quite simple. All you have to do is develop a strategy inline with the two most effective ways to climb in League of Legends: Play the champions you enjoy playing and that you are ALSO good at playing. These are the two most important keys. For enjoyment, define that based on your own experiences. For determining if you’re good at them, use the at least 53% win rate over 30 games principle and you can never go wrong.
Now, there are four categories we can place champions into in relation to ourselves.
- Champions we enjoy playing but aren’t good at.
- Champions we don’t enjoy playing but are good at.
- Champions we enjoy playing and we are good at.
- Champions we don’t enjoy playing and aren’t good at.
Category three are the champions you want to be playing in League of Legends ranked solo queue. The other three categories can still be played to learn and try new things, BUT they should be done in flex-queue, normal games or on an alternative account.
The rule with category three is generally speaking. Choose 1-4 champions in one role that you have at least a 53% win rate on over 30+ games and enjoy playing.
If you follow this simple rule, all you need to do is play the volume game.
Please go to the ‘HOW YOU PLAY’ Tab in the spreadsheet HERE to fill out your champion pool before moving onto the next section.
6. Review Your Own Gameplay
Watching your own performance is arguably the most important improvement strategy once you have developed your climbing strategy for season 11. Developing a regular habit of reviewing your gameplay is paramount to improving as a player. Sheer volume and grinding of the game alone is not enough to improve after a certain point. In order to be the best, you need to do what the best do.
The majority of GM+ and all pro league players consistently review their gameplay as part of their training and improvement. If you’re serious about climbing, you should too.
I’d suggest starting off with a small session per review. For example, when you first start reviewing your gameplay, aim for just 10-15 minutes a week and focus on one particular phase of the game, I’d generally recommend starting off with analysing your early game as this is the easiest and most important phase of gameplay.
The below videos will tell you exactly what you need to be focusing on and HOW to self-review your games.
Please also see the spreadsheet attached.
If you’re unsure how to get started with reviewing games, or want a coach to review your games with you to get started, please click HERE.
Congratulations, you have now developed yourself a climbing strategy that will get you to your ranked goal in League of Legends no matter what it is. All you have to do is be consistent, dedicated and follow it through to the end. Don’t be afraid to adjust goals, statistics and champions pools when things start going wrong.
If you have any questions, are unsure about anything I said or want to have a discussion about your climbing strategy, please add me on Discord: Dylan-LCA#0129 or join my Discord: https://discord.gg/Z5hwEdeqD7