15 Realistic Climbing Tips (Silver to Diamond)

Disagreements seem to break into two main groups. 

1. A few people below are basically saying don’t tell me what to do. They don’t want someone to lolking them and suggest/tell them to play their best role/champ. It is exactly these people who will make you lose. These are the people who you have to work hardest to manipulate. They will be stubborn for the sake of being stubborn instead of trying their best to win by playing their best role/champ. Ranked games are not the place for experimentation and mixing it up.Your #1 goal in ranked is to win, not to try/learn new champs.If you are in game 7 of the NBA finals, are you going to keep LeBron on your bench because you’re bored of him and you want to mix it up with Michael Beasley? No. You are putting Lebron in because you want to win. Every ranked game of LoL is game 7, if you lose not only did you waste ~40 minutes of your time but also the next ~40 minutes on the win that reclaims that ELO/LP. So, try to get people to choose their 70% winrate akali over their 35% mid kog every single time. If you go into a ranked LoL game and winning isn’t your #1 priority, you should play normals. You know at what ratio you blame your teammates for a loss versus blaming yourself for the loss. If it is their fault an incredibly high percent of the time, as is my case, then try to make the game as easy as possible for them by manipulating them onto their best role/champ. 2. People don’t like my champ picks. I find these champs to be easy for many people I know, your experience may be different.My goal is to have you learn 2 champs per role that won’t be picked/banned by the other team every game. I could put lee sin, kha zix, Lucian, etc up there but those champs are almost always picked/banned. I recommend you get really good at a champ or two that you can get 100% of the time. If you get good on them, even though they aren’t OP, you will win. Hence my 61% winrate on Vlad. Play the champ you are best at and most comfortable with, let your winrate speak for itself. (PS. Feral flame Udyr seems easy to me, it is interesting that is not the case.)

A final thought, this practice worked for me as as you can see from my lolking, I'm not the best player out there. If you want to just be nice and best friends with everyone and trust that works, then best of luck to you. For those of you who want to increase their chances at diamond in the sparse remaining time before the season ends, follow these tips.

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When I started this season, I was placed into Silver 2. I have since climbed all the way to Diamond 5. I main Vlad (207 games, average player winrate=48.54%, my winrate=61.4%) and support is my 2nd favorite role. I climbed without playing “OP” champs, you can too. I recommend you learn 2 champs that don’t get banned for 4/5 roles (see bottom).

The tips below are real tips, not the “just be positive and you’ll win” garbage tips that other people post time and time again. If it was as easy as being nice then we would all be diamond, but we’re not. If you are higher skilled than your ranking (and who doesn’t think that), the biggest challenge to you climbing is your teammates. I have found these tips helpful to minimizing the potential for your teammates to cost you the game. If you start incorporating these into your ranked matches, you will gain ELO.

1. If someone declines a match, cancel your search and wait 2 minutes. They may have declined for a perfectly innocent reason (bathroom break, food, w/e) BUT there is a not insignificant chance that they were just in a lobby with a troll who picked Urgot jungle, somebody dodged, and this decliner was unable to cancel their next search in time before the next matchup popped up. He knew he didn’t want to be in the next game, you shouldn’t be in there either. Wait 2 minutes to avoid the potential troll and then start searching again.
2. Manipulate your teammates to play one of their top two roles. Immediately upon loading into lobby, call what roles you can/can’t play. In my case, I type “Not ADC.” This should hopefully get your teammates listing what they can play. Go to lolking.net and open up a tab for every one of your 4 teammates. Click on “Ranked Stats,” then sort by “Wins.” Your new goal in life is to get your teammates to play one of their top 2 roles, you can judge by their wins with champs (if they also have a positive winrate). If they called a role that does not show up at the top of their lolking win list, try to take that role from them yourself or assign it to someone else who is better with more experience. Force your teammates into their best role if at all possible. If someone has a ridiculous winrate for top lane but someone else called that role, try to get the lower winrate person to switch to a different role. Juggle roles to maximize winrate and therefore win chance.
3. Manipulate your teammates to play one of their top two champs. Say someone calls adc and from lolking you see they play Jinx (62% winrate) and Lucian (47% winrate). You want them on Jinx but their recent match history has 3 Lucian games. Try saying things in chat: “Wow, I played a Jinx 2 games ago who destroyed me. She is so OP right now.” OR “I hope they don’t pick Jinx, she would be perfect with our teamcomp.” Get Jinx into your teammate’s head. They can practice and learn new champs on their own time, you need them to play their best to increase your chance to win. I would not suggest asking straight out, most people tend to react negatively to a champ select request and 9 times out of 10 they'll pick lucian.
4. Quell infighting. If someone starts being toxic after someone locks in a questionable champ, simply say “If [questionable champ] starts trolling or failing during the game, yell at him then and report him afterwards. Until then, stop. We got this.” You want to defuse the situation by keeping the questionable player from not tilting/trolling more and placating the angry player by reminding him he can always rage/report later. ---===---EDIT: The important part is that you are telling the angry player to wait to flame the troll, if he must flame, after the troll did something to deserve it. At that point, the angry player is going to rage regardless so your intention is to delay the rage until it is warranted. Spewing toxicity for half the game is better than the entire game. You yourself are not flaming, you are simply trying to delay the angry player from flaming as long as possible. If the troll player does well ingame, you are postponing it indefinitely.---===---EXAMPLE: I had a game 4 days ago where a guy picked Blitz top lane. Our jungler started raging in champ select. By telling him to wait until Blitz actually messed up ingame, it actually delayed his rage (till about 18 min in.) This delay enabled the team to remain calm and believe it or not we won the game.This was in high Plat 1 and we still won with a troll Blitz top.
5. Reminder for stupid teammates. After the last player on your team has locked in their champ, type in the chat “RUNES.” Hit enter. “Masteries.” Hit enter. “Check them.” Hit enter. This gives your teammates at least 30 seconds to check their runes and masteries after they already know what champ and therefore what runes/masteries they will need. If someone is running a questionable summoner spell (Blitz support with teleport), I also add “Summoner spells, right [insert champ name here]?” Calling them out usually works to at least start a conversation about why that summoner is being chosen if not getting them to fix it outright.
6. Purple FB strat. If you are purple side, buy as fast as you can and rush to the enemy botlane tri bush. Ping it and tell your teammates to come. If you are prepared (waiting while loading in and know where your items are in the shop) you can beat the enemy team there. I have gotten many, many first bloods by beating their bot lane to their own bush.
7. Blue FB strat. If you are blue side, rush to the bush to the left of the enemy blue (not the one in river, the one directly next to blue). Their midlaner will 99% of the time walk to that bush to wait for the game to start. If you are prepared (waiting while loading in and know where your items are in the shop) you can beat the enemy team there. I have gotten many, many first bloods by beating their mid laner to their own bush.
8. Jungler help. If you are winning your lane, tell your jungler to go to whichever lane needs help (unless it’s hopelessly lost). You are good at the game, have the jungler help the guy who can’t play.
9. Ping Mia and Danger. If your lane goes mia and you don’t know why (not dead, not recalled), ping mia and ping danger at the relevant part of the adjacent lane. For example, you are top lane and your opponent is mia then ping mia and ping danger on the top side of mid lane. If your opponent has TP then type in chat that he is mia and has TP.
10. Map awareness assistance. If you see the enemy jungler at any point, type in chat “Jungler [location] [health amount].” This helps your teammates by letting them know if they can be aggressive or not. Your teammates most likely don't know that a mini map exists, let alone how to use one-you must help them.
11. Call out your support/teammates incessantly in chat if they are not warding. Especially after 20 minutes, baron and areas of interest should be continuously warded. If your support doesn't have a sightstone, he needs to be verbally encouraged to buy one.
12. Shaming bad play calls. If your team is making a terrible play, try to change their mind before it happens. If unsuccessful, afterwards quickly point out why it was bad and what you guys should do next time. They are already mad from making a bad call, just try to prevent the call from happening again without them going on tilt. Scare them into being too afraid to make another bad call-they will be more likely to agree with your correct call next time.
13. Encountering smurfs. After the game, if you had a challenger smurf or someone who did incredibly, incredibly well, avoid the risk of playing against them. Go to lolnexus.com, type in their name, and continuously hit F5. Do not queue until you see they are in champ select. Many people queue immediately and risk getting the fantastic player on the other team resulting in a loss-be smarter than that.
14. Optimal play time. The later at night you can play, the better. I find that after 11 PM (est) allows for the best quality teammates. You want to minimize the chance of kids being on your team and they are all in bed at this point. Games are of a much higher quality and your chances of winning are improved.
15. Duo queue. If you can find a player to duo with (who is good), do so. This removes one potentially bad player from your team while permanently including a good player. This also improves the chance your ingame calls will be followed as you immediately have one follower to start the herd moving.
16. Losing Streaks. They will happen despite your best intentions. Take a break from the game and come back only when you are calm with a clear head. Thanks to u/OhSoEzee for bringing this up.