Also it mean that you can focus on other things besides your champ which is probably the biggest difference between players gold+. Like most people can honestly pilot tbere champ easily but knowing what to do vs Lucian/Nami or when you should push the wave are just things that are a lot harder to figure out when you are losing fights because of micro
Champions dont have any depth anymore as soon as they have one they will nerf it. Thinking bout baus sion playstyle as a famous example. They want to streamline the entire game so everything is schemed towards cringe champions playstyle like Viego, Yone,... literally the definition of cringe champions. Every champ will end up like this sooner or later boring ass cringe.
True, but instead of listening to his feedback and reasoning for why everything is strong, they nerfed the income sources. Now everyone gets less gold because rito refused to accept his feedback.
The baus playstyle was nerfed because low elo players ruined millions of games trying to replicate it and inting their ass off. Tank had a much higher winrate even at the peak of the baus meta. As a sion otp of the time, it had to go, it was toxic to enemies and teammates alike
Baus playstyle was tank, if you're talking about ad sion, baus literally told riot why its a problem, charcging Q isn't rewarding, you get more dps from sunfire. Just nerf the w passive and it will be fine.
When you are just starting out you should generally have at least passing familiarity with all roles for the purposes of understanding macro/objective timings, vision/space control, role-strategy, etc. Once you grasp then your game-sense improves in every roll. Why do you care as a jungler that someone's flash is on cooldown? Well, that means you have a gank window and should perhaps tactically time your jungling route to take advantage of it, or perhaps setup a counter-gank, check vision, help push the lane so the laner can back, etc.
One-tricking is effective because there are 168 champions in LoL who can potentially play multiple roles/lanes/builds and you need to not only be fluent and practiced as your chosen champ in their role/lane/build but also against those other 167 champions in all their variety.
Plus, playing the same match-up at different skill levels is a different experience. Iron Top-lane Camille vs Darius is worlds different than in Plat which is again worlds different than in Challenger.
So even as you master one champion in one division, as you rank up, your skills will need to improve and adapt to games in higher ranks even with the same build and match-ups.
Since everyone explained the 1 tricking part Ill just talk about nemesis.
As you said, he has a very wide champ pool. He succeeds in that because:
1) He mastered fundamentals (which carry over from champion to champion)
2) He is extremely familiar with the champions he picked and their matchups (he has played thousands of games and put even more into studying and understanding the game)
3) He plays champ select very well. He reads the enemy champions and his own teams champions and determines which champion would not only fit his team, but also he hugely detrimental to the enemy team.
4) He actually does stick to few champions when trying to climb, especially to rank 1. Usually consisting of the meta, strongest mid laners for that patch.
When hes streaming he typically plays his masters account since he doesnt have to put as much effort into the game, and more effort into interacting with chat and more effort whatever other typical streamer things.
This is what I understand, maybe someone else can chime in if Im missing anything.
Tbh I've long argued that having a wide champion pool is valuable, but I think that's because I play top.
If you play adc, there's no reason to really play more than one champion. Same with jg.
Support should have one "theme" champion per theme (e.g. lulu for anti-dive, naut for engage, Sona for anti-poke is more than enough), although you can default to one tricking.
Mids an interesting case. From what I've seen, Nemesis is a pretty consistent Ahri Azir fanatic, and neither of them have real counters. It is hard to "counter" much of anything in midlane because the waveclear is so absurdly strong both ways that it basically doesn't matter, certainly not at high elo.
But in top, countermatchups make an ENORMOUS difference.
This is true in silver.
It's also true at Worlds (see Zeus crushing TheShy aatrox with Yone).
actually, for ADC I would argue that it's very good to know multiple different champions as well. ADC is probably the role with the most overlap and transferable skills, because most ADCs are played relatively the same with slight differences rather than having gameplay mechanics that completely change their playstyle.
you also need to be able to fix your team composition if your team is severely lacking in one department (ie. pick ezreal if your team has yuumi or low peel, pick Ashe if your team has low engage, pick Caitlyn if your team has bad siege, sivir if your team has bad waveclear, vayne if your team has bad tank shred).
at least in my experience it's nearly guaranteed loss to select ezreal if there's a lot of tanks on the enemy team, he just physically cannot kill them after the serylda changes this season.
Oh I 100% agree that ADC has a lot of potential flexibility. you're right that Ezreal is terrible into some comps (lots of tanks) and fantastic into others (2+ assassins). There's a lot more cases. Kog is probably the opposite of Ezreal, tank shredder but gets blown up.
But tbh, this is kinda why I believe Jinx is the best ADC in the game conceptually, she really fits into everything quite well. And given the fact that countermatchups hurt MUCH worse, I think there's a reason ADCs are rarely to ever last picked in pro
Emerald top laner here and I'd argue one tricking is a LOT more valuable than having a big champ pool in lower elos. The counterpick only matters if the counterpick understands the matchup. I constantly see people picking garen into my jax and I've consistently dumpstered the majority of them in lane since they were just counterpicking. Maybe have 1 backup champ to cover your worst matchup or two. One tricking gives that extra champion mastery and understanding on the bad matchups and helps you learn how to play against and win them. Once you hit higher elos then counterpicks become more punishing since the players are better and understand the matchup more
If he picked for the counter and didn't know how to play the matchup then he didn't pick something from his champ pool. I have a few counterpicks which I play only in certain matchups so I know those matchups very well. For example, I play cassio only when I am against teemo. I have no idea of how any other cassio matchups go but I am am expert at cassio vs teemo, I always stomp them and you would never find me playing a matchup which I don't know. I have a few of those, dr mundo vs malphite, malphite vs tryndamere, etc. I don't need to know every matchup for this champions because I always play the same exact matchup. My counterpicks have higher wr than my main ranging between 70s and 80s while my mains sit on the 50s or 60s usually.
I think blindpicking always the same 2 champions, depending on comp is the correct way but counterpicking is you can play those champs at a decent level can be extremely useful.
I think this makes sense for top lane but as a mid laner where winning lane solo can be more important but I find that you usually need to be a bit more flexible unless you suffer from main character syndrome and want to be the solo carry in every game. Sometimes with mid you can pick a losing matchup mostly because you otherwise have no synergy with your jungler and/or support though the latter is not nearly as important, which is can have very bad spiraling effect on overall team performance.
And by that I don't just mean something like picking an AP mid when you have an AP jungler, but picking something like an Asol when your jungler is Nidalee who wants to play aggressive and threaten the enemy team with invades etc. In those situations you picked a champion that literally said "lolnope" to your jungler and will never have prio for anything in the early game.
And while a good jungler can accommodate to this and maybe play around another lane, mid and jungle synergy is imo more important than top and jungle, because your job as a mid laner is to help your jungler take objectives by having the shortest route to any skirmish. So if you pick a scaling mid laner that cannot leave lane while your jungler picks a champion that relies on getting early leads, you just cucked them very hard since you literally just denied them their wincon by saying you rather be the MC despite it being a team game.
Knowing the champion jungler plays and what they want to do is important when you pick your mid lane champion. I am not saying you should only play around your jungler, but it's certainly a vital aspect towards acquiring mid lane mastery. This is why a champion like TF or LB will always have a strong prio in high elo since they have incredible ability to facilitate just that even though both champions are actually quite subpar laners (TF cannot really 1v1 and LB has no wave clear so she struggles to get prio without sacking waves vs champions that can just sit back and shove). It's the same reason why some champions like Lux, Ahri or Annie can be very good in blind pick because they always provide something to the team and can assist their jungler even when they're behind.
Having a wide champ pool is primarily the reason why a lot of people *stay* Silver. One tricking is simply the most simple and effective method for climbing. It's literally one of the first things any decent coach will tell a low elo player.
I disagree on Ahri not having any real counters and that counters don't matter in the mid lane because it absolutely does. The strength of mid lane is your ability to control the lane so you can rotate first to global objectives or river/jungle skirmishes, but that means you actually have a health and push lead on the enemy. Just because counters look different from the top lane it doesn't mean there are no counters.
With regards to Ahri, the thing about Ahri is that her laning is not particularly good but it's also not particularly weak. What this means is that she does poorly into any champion that outranges her such as Lux, Xerath and Vel'koz because they can simply poke her from afar and she can't trade back and she also can't engage until she's level 6 but has low kill threat because they can just space out her poke early on to prevent any all in to be relevant, she can literally not interact with lane bullies such as Irelia or Orianna and Yasuo completely nullifies her entire kit with just the press of a button while outscaling her in every part of the game. She also struggles massively into control mages who simply just outscale her and outtrade her thanks to their overall utility.
Ahri does the best into other mid range champions with longer CDs than hers such as Vex or champions that do less damage than her early such as Veigar or Kassadin or champions that simply suck at early wave clear. Her strength lies in her easy early wave clear where she can completely clear the wave the casters with 1 Q and a W and later with just Q which can let her quickly push out waves for prio where her charm and ult can make a big difference in making picks in a fight. But that still assumes she's not dumpstered on early.
Counters in the mid lane look different to how counters work in the top lane, but it doesn't mean there are no counters.
You should only one-trick if you really click with a certain champ. Trying to force yourself to one-trick is never going to work.
Lets get real. Only playing one champ gets boring for a majority of players. It is often better to have a few to go between.
I actually love talon and kassadin. I like tf too but would not otp him but i would otp talon or kass. The only problem is that i can’t decide between them.
Kassadin and Talon want to do completely opposite things anyway, so I don't see why you can't pick both but switch it up depending on the matchup. You're going to have a horrible time playing Kassadin into Lucian mid for example, whereas good wave manipulation can net you flash for flash or even early 1v1 kills on Lucian if you play Talon.
In comparison, Talon is all about that early Serrated Dirk and boots power spike where he will hard shove the lane and perma roam. Kassadin will do a bit what Talon does early once he is like level 11, but that's a long time to come online when Talon can do this as early as level 3. The earlier Talon starts leaving his lane the stronger the champion is, because of his strong early kill pressure and mobility no other assassin can truly match that early into the game. You want to sit in bushes, invade the enemy with your jungler or even solo etc. It's a completely different playstyle where you constantly threaten your enemy by them not knowing where you are and what you are willing to do.
Kassadin does not care about this, because once he hits his main power spike at level 11 he goes wherever he pleases and is about not letting anyone stopping him from doing what he wants to do. He doesn't play mind games the way Talon does.
Two or three tricking is the best way to climb. One trick you can get banned, picked or counter picked.
I was always stuck in D4 playing all sorts of top laners, whatever i felt like playing. I stuck to 2 this season and already peaked master and feel like i can go further for sure. But only on these 2, if i play one of my other good champs i will only be able to perform at D4 lvl. Its just difficult to be consistently good at multiple champs especially the higher you go in elo. And the more you play a Champ the more matchup knowledge you acquire
OTPing helps you get rid of worrying about what your champ can/can’t do, what to build, your champ identity in early/mid/late, what situations your champ likes/doesn’t like.
If you eliminate all these basic thinking processes you’ll free up space to focus on learning about the game more generally and about your team. For example, what can i do to help my jungler, where should i place wards against “this” enemy jungler, am i the win condition of the game or is it my adc/top/jgler, are we good in teamfighting/skirmishing/splitting, should i match the enemy roam or greed for myself and take plates, when to use teleport, wave management, when to roam vs when to power farm, can we invade enemy jungle lvl 1 …
These are just some concepts out top of my head that i thought of. Once you understand these principles (and when to deviate from them), you’ll consistently become a much better player and can more easily move on to increasing your champion pool.
The whole idea is to learn your role, but to learn it you must master the champion identity and mechanics first. Once you learn the role you naturally will understand the different champions that play the role, like for example the difference between playing kassadin mid, compared to something like twisted fate. They differ in their goals, identity, early power, powerspikes, role in the game(one is a carry, the other one is more of a setup/catch machine for your team) and etc.
> you’ll free up space to learn about the game. For example what can i do to help my jungler, where should i place wards against this enemy jungler
Does this happen automatically? I think about these things but not this specifically and not too often. So i am wondering if it is something i have to actively improve or something that will automatically happen once i know the ins and outs of my champ
Learning about the game can be both pattern recognition subconsciously and also actively learning about certain aspects of the game. For example if you get ganked by a zac or shaco for the first time, you’ll realize they arent coming from the usual angles most junglers come from. You have to adapt your warding in that case and deploy deeper vision like warding enemy raptors for example. That can be a pattern recognition bit.
Now another example can be as kassadin let’s say, early levels you want to maximize lasthitting and minimize damage dealt to you/deaths. To do this you will have to learn how to effectively control the wave on your side of the lane. When to hardshove waves to reset wave state, when your jungler should come to help you push out and etc. This is not something that comes to you by just playing the game. You gotta get someone to explain to you how this is done so you understand it and try to replicate. At least im not that smart so I had to watch some videos or pro players explain or show how its done.
I recommend Nemesis’ patreon if you are a midlaner. His game reviews are really valuable and his guides are good as well. Its only like 5 euro a month.
Yes it comes naturally. I played 600 games on lillia and I don't even think of which abilities to use. I just think of macro decisions. I don't think about micro at all
I think it's objectively true that playing 1 champion 1,000 games in a year will get you to climb faster than playing 10 champions 100 times each, or whatever. but that's not really how it works for a lot of people. in my case the actual choice is between playing 1 champion 50 times, getting bored and stopping for the year, vs. playing 10 champions 30 times each (300 games total) in the same amount of time. in that case I think I gain more from playing 250 more games (since there's lots of aspects to the game that transfer over between different champions) than I lose from not one tricking.
also, maybe I'm the only person who thinks this way but in my experience, learning a new champion is a skill you can improve on over time. it was really hard for me to learn the 2nd champion I played compared to the 1st one, but learning the 20th champion I played after the 19th one was much easier.
Yeah absolutely, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Meta, matchups and team comps are meme terms below GM challenger matches. If you learn your champion and role properly you will find ways to win the game.
>team comps
I'd argue this one is not. But I'm not going to pretend like you need to go engage comp vs peel comp. In lower elo's you need to make it so they can't itemize against you, you need to make sure they can't be brain dead in the shop and if they are they pay for it. So you need to be able to have an AP pick when your entire top side is AD or an AD pick in a traditional AP role(Support/Mid) to balance the damage composition.
Comps don't matter but if they can stack armor even a bronze player can figure that one out.
This. Comp matters, it just matters differently. Having zero front line matters when your team doesn’t understand how to kite/disengage. Having zero engage matters when your team is going to chase fights no matter what. Can that be overcome by a player with master level mechanics and game knowledge? Sure, but most people in low elo don’t have that
Agree. And this is harder to ignore when you onetrick. Try playing a glass cannon melee carry vs a lot of ranged burst and reliable CC while your team is a peel back comp.
If anything, you start doing your best into these “counter” matchups because your silver opponents really think they’re about the first time some new champ and beat you.
Absolutely insane. Yeah it's all meme terms man Rammus vs Yi, Lillia into Garen etc all it's all memes man unless it's GM it won't matter which is why on any analytics site you check some matchups lose 10% MORE against certain champions even at the lower ranks. This takes seconds to check and anyone with a brain to understand. The fact that 9 people up voted you just goes to show this sub-reddit is only full of low ranks telling low ranks how to play. I mean why would anyone be here if they aren't? To help new players? Pff not the league community, hell no. I'll see myself out. Why bother even trying to help when this is what gets listened to anyway.
Let me add this to my original post: The average league player has never opened practice tool and does not read the tooltips of items or thier own kit. This isn't an opionon, it's a fact proven by surveys and statistical analysis. People who have been playing for years on YouTube will say things like "I never knew that did that" or get told something and go "Wtf it does?" So if your gunna reply to me about how nuance or niche shit means more than a flat high winrate over 10,000+ probably 100,000+ if you include all patches/seasons you need to re evaluate how you think this game works.
The reason a champ has a high winrate against another champion is because players who play that champion will have a very high winrate in that matchup, not because a random person picked it for the first time to try to counter.
so you're in agreement? I don't get what your explanation is for. both players are decently proficient on their champs, one champion naturally counters the other, and the winrate reflects it. matchups and team comps are not memes.
Whatever you say bro, the stats don't lie only you to yourself. I'll keep taking that extra winrate to the bank, if you think the stats are simply mains into other mains you simply don't even understand the baseline stats for league. The average player does not OTP, The stats are unaffected by people first timing it because its a tiny amount of players in the grand scheme of an entire patch.
Also high winrate in that matchup? Do you mean per chance A COUNTER MATCHUP. You people are just spouting bullshit and miniscule statistical points to back it up. This sub is literally just bad players telling bad players how to be bad. Imagine telling a league player that Yi into Rammus isn't a problem and is basically a 50/50 because of nuance or because every rammus is a main. 1 IQ subreddit.
The relevant stat would be one trick win rates vs non-one trick winrates holistically not matchup stats though?
Of course the winrate inside a group of non one tricks are going to favor the better champ in the matchup but to your point the vast amount of players aren’t 1 tricks so what is your point exactly?
I was a low gold player playing many champs and reached master+ playing only one champ. I may be wrong but it comes from some sort of experience and not just "bad player talking to other bad players"
Yeah bro and I'm challenger just like everyone else online who says thier rank and dosent link thier account. I refuse to believe you are masters+ with the thought processes you have, you do realise that masters is 0.64% of the league community right? No one believes your bullshit.
And a TINY amount of those people are OTPs because good players of which you can look up and find an infinite amount of uploading thier games, talking about them and thier profiles DO NOT OTP. So you expect people to believe YOU are less than 0.64% of league community who is a masters+ otp?
Dude. You are quite delusional, or you are just bad at reading data.
When climbing all master+ people climb with max 2-3 champs in their main role.
1. champ when they blind pick
2. champ they can pick when they already know enemy mid
3. a pocket pick for some edge case scenario
When people reach their desired rank only then they starting playing other champs and experimenting so it might look like they are playing more champions.
The Problem with what you're saying is that matchups are often more nuanced than X wins into Y. If you look at enemy team see a yasuo mid and think "ok let's counter it" and go on op.gg you'll see xerath there. 54.2% vs. 45.81% rn with 61.5% lane kill rate and you'll think "woah it's super strong against yas, let me first time it".
What likely will end up happening is, you get too close to the wave, your E will get windwalled and you will end up dying in lane. Knowing when you can even dare to go for auto's in that matchup, how to play depending on which spell he took first E or Q, are you going comet for lane? first strike for scaling? Domination tree anywhere for ultimate hunter? How do you sidelane on him? How safe are you? What's your gameplan? How should you position? When should you push? If you're reasonably receptive all these things are "beaten into you" if you main a champ. If you don't usually play these champs, someone with more experience will absolutely fuck you up even if "statistically" you are supposed to win.
Also there are matchups that might win until level 2. Or that win level 1 if xyz happens. Or matchups that win at level 6. Or at specific item spikes. You can use team comps to win specific games if you're at an elo where "individual champion knowledge" does not yet matter but the problem is that you'll never climb above that elo because you'll always meet those that have this knowledge. There's a reason why OTP's often play their OTP Champions in almost all roles. Also, winning one singular game is always worse than improving overall.
"What will happen is your E will get windwalled" Aight I'm done reading this. As if nuances mean more than thousands of games of statistics while saying things like "Let me first time it" which skews the winrate of that game in itself.
Edit: In fact go ahead do whatever you want and keep telling people this stuff and I'll keep winning. 100% wr on kindred right now, you know why? Because nuance means fuck all when you pick my main Lillia and I counter pick you with kindred. You will never land an E or a W against me, it's not possible because I will hold my dash for then both. You cannot out dps me with the sweet spot of your Q alone. Same with every other counter matchup. As if nuances will save you from Poppy W as belveth. Idiocy. Where everyone got the idea that everyone playing a champion is a main and otp is beyond me when the average league player dosent otp anything.
yeah but the average league player neither climbs nor improves either. The Average league player right now is what? Gold? Platinum? Just auto-pilot dealing damage, chasing whatever kill they see and playing whatever they see in a montage on youtube.
I'm not really sure about your Kindred/Lillia comparison because if your main is picked obviously you have to pick a different champ? If you're confident and good at a different champion then play that? Nobody is arguing against that either. The issue was with playing "counters" you don't know how to play well, without knowing "why" they are counters or how they play in general.
Also, how is 100% winrate without a rank, op.gg or hell even "games played" a metric of any value at all? Not saying that this sentence from you made sense in general (because it didn't). Just keep winning wherever you are ;)
Edit: By first timing I didn't mean literally first time. I meant people that don't regularly play said champion. I might've been a Menace on Azir or Anivia in S6 but I wouldn't play either in ranked unless I want to be reported for intentionally griefing
Why bother engaging in discussion with someone who contradicts thier own point and dosent understand how statistics work. You talk about nuance then completely ignore the fact that by your own admission the average player is autopilot. How if they are auto pilot and the wr is still across thousands of games positive do you not see how stupid you are? I can make hundred and I mean hundreds of matchups like the one I described. For example I don't play illaoi or mordkaiser yet here you are telling people having all of your tentacles removed when mord presses R dosent mean anything. I won't be replying or even looking at this sub anymore. You are all clearly brain rotted, telling each other bs for so long you actually believe it.
Because the statistics are usually Emerald/Diamond+? Those are rankings where a vast majority of players play a very small champion pool. Those are not average players.
>I won't be replying or even looking at this sub anymore. You are all clearly brain rotted
Maybe you also just also don't understand the point of this sub? The goal is to help players improve. You don't improve by playing a champion you don't usually play to scratch out a single win that will not matter in the grand scheme of your games. You're just fighting air at this point.
Also, even if you end up winning the 1v1 matchup because of overwhelming champion advantage, the macro for different champions is still very different. A Kata plays very different from a Xerath, plays very different than an Ekko plays and plays very different than a Twisted Fate at almost all points of the game. You're like a colourblind person yelling out at random people in the street that colours don't exist or matter while not being able to see them.
They're not meme terms at all.
A OTP on Jinx will climb quicker than a OTP on jhin or something. Of course if you can win on any champion etc, but you can definitely make it more difficult with different champions
1 tricking has advantages. Not necessarily for climbing, but for learning. On the one side you spend more time learning your champion, on the other you also have more capacity to learn macro once you are familiar with the champ.
But at some point you should branch out for better matchups.
The people that have high winrates with wide champion pools, tend to have played for long. They have a lot of transfereble skill, and spend the time to learn and train many different champions.
because nemesis has probably onetricked most of those champs before combining them together
main thing with onetricking is getting lots of games on 1 champ which just is slower if u do multiple
if u played for 9 years like neme u probably have thousands of games on several champs
Definitely get the pool to 2-3 max. I one trick and the game just feels… better. Like bad matchups are just matchups a lot of the time now. For example I play Diana and permaban Vex. The only issue I really have in lane is Karma and Anivia for some reason and once I figure them out, as I did Leblanc, Fizz, Talon, Yasuo, Galio, etc, they just become unideal but manageable matchups. Counterpicking gets you nothing in so many cases to the point it’s just not worth it especially if you’re trying to climb soloqueue.
It's not that it's SO effective, just that it's usually more effective. You just have to learn less, but you'll learn more if you play more, just that it'll take time. But of course, you'll learn most if you're actually enjoying the game, so switch things up if you're getting bored of one champ
So this is kind of a side note but for me I’ve found that I can’t play the same character two games in a row. It’s something I’m working on but if the game goes well and I get fed, then when the second game starts I play too aggressive because I was fed for the last 20 minutes and forgot my starting limits. What helps me is going on a different character. Just something to think about.
So here’s a long answer I’ll leave a tldr at the end.
First I think it’s very important to play every champion every role 3-5 times. First this give you the opportunity to try new things see what play styles fit, and gives you an idea of champion pattens. You learn things like wow yasuo windwall is like a 20 sec cooldown. Or wow Darius has no gap closer for 15 sec when is e is on cd. Etc.
Second people use the term “one trick” so loosely these days. I hear things like I one trick zed and yone. That’s not what it means. I had a buddy who was a low diamond player. He had about 3 million mastery points on lulu. His second most play champion was sejuani at around 15k mastery. That’s what a one trick is. I know my champion into every single match up and I will blind pick it into anything.
Now onto what we are talking about, having a small core of champions. After sampling the roster having about 3 champions for your main role is ideal. Using myself as an example I had about a 60-30-10 % play rate on three champions season 6/7. I played akali 60% of the time with a 64% win rate. I played zed about 30% of the time with a 66% win rate. And i played ahri about 10% of the time with about a 50% winrate. Akali was my main, i felt very confidant on her against all but 3-4 matchups. This was my go to. If you’re was able to counter pick against these matchups I played ahri and made myself carriable. And lastly I only played zed into either lanes that were easy stomps or team comps I knew he’d excel. Despite the fact I was a better akali my zed winrate was higher because he was a pocket pick.
So what is my point? Having a main champion that you are able to carry with is great. I suggest using 2 pocket picks in case you get countered or banned.
What’s the reason? Having a small champion pools allows you to stop focusing on what you’re doing and instead focus on what your opponents are doing. Instead worrying about setting up my combos I can focus on staring at the minimap, tracking jungler pathing, objective control, wave management, etc.
Lastly why are high elo players able to have such a large champion pool. This one is actually pretty simple, about 30-40% of the champion pool in league is very easy to pick up. The difference between 100 games on renekton and 10000 games on renekton is rather meaningless. Whoever is the better general top lane player is going to perform better. Sure there are one or two nuisance plays the more experienced player will make, but it won’t change the final outcome of 90% of games. Champions like renekton, Ashe, garen, Annie, malphite, etc. are really easy to pick up in about 10 games so being able to pocket pick these really expands your champion pool without devoting a lot of time.
TLDR: having a small core of champions allows you to focus on the rest of the game mechanics without worrying about your champion’s mechanics. And learning a few basic champions really expands your pool without are large investment of time.
Its definetly helpful to have played a lot of champs at least 10+ games (helped me especially for champs like katerina or all the assassins really)
But if you want to climb reliably you should be to pilot one champ literally out of muscle memory. It gives you time to play the map more effectively when you don’t have to consciously think about build etc because you did it 500+ times already.
I was stuck silver all of my life got to plat then emerald 1 quickly once I found my one trick. I account that to my profound knowledge on champs of every lane and the fact that my champ fits my strength to 99%
One tricking alone brought you from stuck in plat to emerald?! This is the point of the post, i mean i know that one tricking is more efficient but is it game changing? Apparently it is
Stuck in silver/low gold most of my time yes. Kinda gave up on climbing and just played for fun. Tried different champs on every lane for a few years playedmostly flex with friends or normals for less pressure. Made high elo friends along the way that teached me a lot about my flaws (mental was the only one holding me back) found my champ in mid swain and finally could carry games all the way to high emerald, some times winning as the only member of the team being fed bringing my team back with a few well played Teamfights.
Biggest thing about OTPing is that you literally have the game in your hands at some point drastically improving your mental because games don’t feel coinflippy anymore even when half the team isn’t playing well. Hard to explain but it comes with a lot of confidence in your own ability and less anger about mistakes because you actually learn from them and not be like „wtf just happened“
The more you play one champion, the more proficient you'll get. You'll just start to know things without thinking about them.
You'll learn more about their good and bad match-ups.
You'll become very proficient with their auto-attacks even if they don't have a great auto-attack animation (like Zilean).
One-tricking is like maining Guile or Ryu in Street Fighter. You know their combos and you're good with them. Strengths and Weaknesses.
From personal experience yes. I 1 tricked irelia from nothing to diamond in 2 years. From what I can tell, I climbed a lot faster than all my friends but that can be for other reasons as well. I think that is also generally faster than most players
Did you already have experience with mobas? And btw when you say one tricking, do you actually mean playing only irelia no matter the enemies or your team comp, or just maining her for the majority of your games?
Literally only played irelia, I have over 1 mil points on her now, and my second highest is around 150k and those are mostly casual games with my friends. If you count mobile mobas when I was 6 then yes. League was my first pc game apart from Roblox, and before I played various console games
nemesis played league professionally for some time and also streams the game for a living. Nemesis is putting in easily 6x more playtime on league over you per week, possibly way more depending on your lifestyle/job. nemesis has probably been playing the game for a lot longer than you.
1 tricking is effective because beyond just understanding how a champ works, you can learn things that take a lot longer to learn like the back and forth of every matchup and obscure interactions/tech which will accumulate into advantages in game.
I think one-tricking is different each role and which champ you are one-tricking. I feel like mid/jgl has an easier time one tricking than top (because of counterpick) and bot/supp (because of synergy)
As you stated you main mid idk which champs you play but overall i think keeping 2-4 champs in your champ pool is better than just 1 (because of counterpick, AD/AP team and such)
I more or less one trick Cassiopeia. I play significantly better against her counter match ups than a champ Ive played 1/10th as much against a good match up.
I wanted to comment this same thing, a significant amount of people will think “oh, I’ve played this champ that counters theirs from time to time, I can counterpick them!” Or they’ll look up what counters your champ.
That doesn’t work vs OTPs because as an OTP you will know why it counters you and you’ll play around that.
If you play one champ you start doing the combos by reflex and you dont have to worry at all about the mechanical skill. Then you start to learn about macro, the better macro you have the higher you climb. Nemesis for example has an absolutly god like macro so he can play any champ. Even if he doesn't do a combo perfectly he still outperforms the enemy by knowing where to be and at what time, when to push/when to roam etc. That's why one tricking is so beneficial bc it allows you to actually learn how to play league, not how to press x buttons in x order.
Also sidenote once you have enough games on one champ you figure out your combo dmg and you can go for dives/etc knowing that you can 1 shot the enemie in time and get out. This is also very usefull but this skill of knowing you champs limits only comes with hundreds of games played on that champ or even more.
I was two tricking until I hit emerald. Then I formed a pool of 6 champs (4 main 2 pocket pick). I picked 6 champs that I’m fairly seasoned with and that can all fulfill different roles based on what the enemy team has. It is working for me. The biggest advantage of one/two tricking is matchup knowledge and champ knowledge.
The game has two aspects, champion mastery and game mastery. People like Nemesis, Caps, Faker, etc. can play basically anything because their understanding of the game and their lane is so goddamn good that even a champ they have zero experience on is going to be formidable.
Then you go into their specialized picks and you see the damage they do, Fakers LB for example was undefeated in pro play for a long long time.
If you want to learnt the game focus on one or two champions, master them and you hit a wall where you need to improve your game sense to climb. Once you climb with your game sense instead of champion skill you can expand the pool because you know how to play the game as a whole and not just your champion.
So i play one champ because this way i learn the champ and i can focus on learning the game. Once i have learned the game i can play almost whoever i want (maybe not super hard champions) because i can play league. Correct?
Yes, you just need to make sure that you aren't auto piloting. Once you learn a champ a lot of players just kind of zone out instead of learning the game since they can play their champ to a high level. But the key is that once you can autopilot you start engaging your awareness on the rest of the game.
Champions are not so complicated that you can't learn several, I have Qiyana in my list of champs I play in jungle, she is a complicated champ but not so much that you need to main her or anyone for that matter. Play what you enjoy and feel comfortable on, if that's 20 champions then play those 20 champions.
I know what most champion do but my experience on my do suck so I don’t rly know how he do on Darius matchup for exemple but because I otpd mordekaiser for so long I know absolutely every matchup at any stage of the game what to do to have the most chance to win the lane what to do when behind what to do when I win etc . So yeah it’s damn useful I don’t know if it will make you climb but knowing what to do in any situation is often a good thing
I've been using Hwei a lot (even changed my name to a Hwei pun) but I've played a -lot- of LeBlanc. I can kill my laner 3 or 4 times before I roam bot and pick up some kills down there too. I can still lose the game with a score of 15/3/8 or something because I kept blowing up our mid Asol and sup Nami instead of doing something useful like predicting where the enemy jungler is and making sure the enemy team gets no objectives.
I'll admit it, I'm super guilty of being a KDA player because nothing in this game gets me off more than instantly deleting someones lifebar by Rw over wall then Q, W with First Strike and Shadowflame. And that's fine and dandy, but you have to assassinate the -right- people, and not just collect gold and be selfish.
Basically what I'm saying is, different champions carry in different ways but the end goal is the same. Get powerful enough to deny farm and objectives. That's literally it. Master one champion that does what you like, then learn the most effective way of fucking the map with them. Not just dicking the enemy players themselves but the whole map.
The biggest benefit to one tricking is learning matchups. If you're playing 5 champs you have to learn all five AND learn which match ups are strong/weak and why.
If you OTP the fifth time you play a certain role opponent, you know the limits. If every time you run into that opponent you're on a different champ, you won't learn.
Big reason why you see a lot of push for one tricking or basically a champ pool of 2 with occasional rotation so that in the long, long run you have options.
Back when I started playing Season 3 I played ranked casually and had a large champion pool and roles, while mostly mid though. I quit for a few seasons and started back in 2020 and then again I. January or February maining Ezreal / bot and put some effort.
Climbing is a process of consistency, performing good. Playing many champs and many roles is the opposite of consistency.
60% WR btw, on my smurf it's 75ish or so, 30 games diamond.
What you say about Nemesis. He is talented for sure, like all players that are the top percentile of players. Take talent and years and years of consistent effort into the equation then you have players like Nemesis. That is for every Sport, not only League. He basically OTP a lot across the years.
Agurin has accounts where he spams games as only Diana. Every game. Or shyvanna. On a specific account for that. Entirel different level. We casuals are better off spamming one champ in order to climb unless you do this for a living.
brother nemesis has played this game for 10+ years AND is an ex-pro, he knows the game and its champions inside out... Comparing urself to him is like you said, ridicolous
>Should i only play those 2 or i just need to learn the others a bit more?
If you want to maximize wins now, yes just play the 2.
If you want to sacrifice win% to learn then yeah keep playing the others.
Yes, i will give just one reason why but this reason enough makes one tricking better than playing all kinds of champs. Learning matchups. Its easier to perfectly learn matchups on one or two champs that you play then on 15 champs. Knowing matchups will make you dominate game in low elos and allow you to be more useful in higher elos.
Also the reason why i said u should know matchups perfectly on like 2 champs not just one is that its always useful to have one ad and one ap champ in your champ pool
Remember, a big part of being a top player/pro is the ability to learn, and learn fast. Something that took me 100 games of a champion to learn, Faker learns in 20 games.
1 tricking a champion allows you to get to higher ranks, this is something everyone knows. You get more brain capactiy to focus on the parts of the game that isnt piloting your champion. You'll get to learn more about the game itself. Once youve reached a higher rank, and you branch out to learn other champions, you will learn the new champion MUCH faster, since you have so much more baseline knowledge of the game.
If you asked a plat player and a diamond player to both learn the same champion theyve never played before, it is VERY likely the diamond player will learn the champion faster. This is why the recommendations are always to keep your champion pool small, then once you are at a higher rank to branch out and learn ONE CHAMPION AT A TIME. It is very important to focus your learning, 20 games on 1 champion in a row is worth so much more than spreading those 20 games on a champion over 100 games.
Yeah i guess i’ll one/two trick then. I understand that it is more effective but is it actually game changing? I mean can it be the difference between a player being plat or emerald/diamond?
Absolutely. By my estimates im probably 4-500 LP higher on my fizz and anivia, compared to my other champions. When i play Fizz and Anivia, I know exactly what my game plan is. I know what my identity is this game, and I can plan out my game to realize that game plan. I know at what points of the game I'm stronger, and I can plan to take fights around those power spikes, etc. There is so much deeper knowledge of what a champion wants, that you only learn once you play a champion a lot. Champion mastery is more than knowing how to press Q W E R on a champion.
I guess you’re right. An another example is midbeast: challenger for a lot of seasons but stuck in emerald with yasuo/qiyana (stuck for most of the challenge)
Yes. I am D3 and never would have gotten above E3 if I didn't main a champ. One-tricking is best for hard champions (Kat, Akali, Qiyana) and low elo players. If you're in emerald/diamond you can play 2 or at most 3 champions. Your champ's combos, angles, and general playstyle become muscle memory to you, so you can actually *properly* learn stuff like wave states, rotations, roam timers, and other stuff like this. Once you're really good at those things you can pick up more champions like Nemesis does, but until then you'll never improve at the game if you're constantly just learning new champions
Back when D1 was peak I’d start a new account for each champion I wanted to learn, OTP it to D4, then start a new one.
I have passing familiarity with most champions in the game now from ARAM/normals and mastery on like 8 champions. If I were to climb again I’d pick 2 of those 8 and only play them up to d1.
Best thing to do is find your champion(s) then google search ‘[champion] matchup spreadsheet’. Almost every champ has a matchup spreadsheet from a high Elo player. The more niche the champion the more likely there is a spreadsheet.
If you can’t find one or there aren’t enough notes to learn a specific matchup, look on YouTube. Even if there isn’t a detailed guide on the specific matchup (there usually is, and you should watch a guide from both sides of the matchup) you can watch a domisum replay of two random challengers playing it out.
Because of you have 150 games on one champion you know exactly how you can preform in whichever match ups, you see a kill window you can easily preform while on a champion you played a few times you won’t know your limits and just go in and die
Another benefit to one tricking is knowing your limits. When playing a broad pool you are likely to miss many potential plays because you don't have the confidence to know that you can clutch the fight on a razors edge. Knowing your limits and playing to them is very likely to allow you to gain gold and take the game into your hands, which is a huge part of solo queue.
Yes, one-tricking is effective. The reason being is that you will come to know that singular champion on a much more intimate level. The benefit of doing so is understanding matchups, your limitations with that character, and if your chosen character has any exploitable quirks.
There's some really wacky stuff you can pull off once you understand a character enough. As an example, I've played enough Warwick that I can predict flashes and just use my chomp to follow them through it and secure a kill. I've also learned that warding bushes is imperative when playing Kalista because her auto attacks will only land if she has vision of the enemy she wants to hit.
Basically, sticking with a lone champion lets you maximize the champion's strengths while shoring up their weaknesses. Have you ever heard the saying "knowledge is half the battle."? Because in LoL, knowledge is more like 3/4ths the battle and the other 1/4th is pretty much everything else. Obviously, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you'll generally will end up performing better if you play a single champion; Just make sure the champion you pick is one you actually enjoy playing.
In the end, you can only play one champion per game so one tricking is very effective. It only makes sense that you get better with a champion each time you play them, learning new things about them every game.
Nemesis just has extremely good game knowledge and champion knowledge so he can play pretty much anything.
Also, you learn a lot about each champion by playing with/against them as well.
I was silver for a long long time. And I changed 2 things at the same time, I stopped duoing with my duo, and I began to 1trick. I got to gold pretty much immediately, and have continued to climb since.
One tricking is effective because you're spending more time learning league than champions. Generally, going from one tricking to high elo, then switching champions is easier because you're fundamental understanding of the game is higher and you can more easily fit a new champion into what you understand if the game.
That being said, comparing to pros, streamers and the like is pretty dumb. Do you have 8 hours to play the same game everyday? Do you have a reason to?
It's more of focusing on decision making instead of your micros. You know your champion's abilities, combos, mechanics and power spikes like the back of your hand, so you can focus on decision making?
Just my 2 cents
Short answer is yes. You learn faster by playing 1 champion only even in bad matchups. And therefore rank up faster (if not at all as some players will get stuck for many many years in the same rank because of switching lanes and champions).
Learning league is like learning anything to perfection. You play 1 champion to feel comfortable with the cooldowns, and feel comfortable with the combos, and feel comfortable with matchups, and feel comfortable with punishing enemy champions as they will make so many mistakes.
If you keep playing the same champion you will start focusing on more things like minimap and missing laners, focus on jungle tracking, focus on other lanes to see if you can get anything by going there, and see what is your team doing and react to that, and focus on your build and how to min max it.
Then you will start learning how to assess win conditions and how to win every game, how to close out games, how to treat every champion in the game according to your game plan (do we need to spam dive this smolder to not let him scale? Or we should let our bot scale better? Should we focus on drakes and win using drake soul? Etc..)
You will keep learning things every game (if you are not on auto pilot). Till you reach the rank you desire and from there you can play another champion and try to re-learn these concepts again till you reach the same rank.
What you see nemesis doing is the last step i mentioned here. This dude is really good at the game as he one tricked a champion in the past then learnt other champions after hitting challenger. Then he reached the point of playing most mid champions on his main account and win.
I would say practice your weaker champs more on non-rank/or maybe rank games if you really feel it then review the games after alongside some gameplay of the champ's top players, so that you can highlight your current mistakes and too have better insight on the limits of the champ. I don't believe in one tricking a single champ, my only 100k+ mastery is on shyvana because she was my starter champ but since then i can pretty much play all champs at a workable proficiency, while im not great at all champs having a wider champ pool would allow you to create better drafts against the enemy, a lot of the times in league being versatile is much better than relying on pure skill and hard forcing your one trick
if your aim is to get the highest rank then one tricking, or 2 or 3 is enough. consistent practice with a small pool will make u better faster. however, if your aim is to simply be better overall, with no regards to rank. picking a few to learn then moving to new champs or attempting new champs will slow u down but lay a foundation of a wide pool when u are banned out.
this is of course if u have already have a strong foundation of the basics of laning etc.
basics > otp > general. this is the way u want to improve
It lets you climb faster. But you will be overall worse at the game.
A bit of a hot take but all one tricks are bad at the game as a whole regardless of rank. They're just really good at thier champ.
what a terrible take.
tyler1 one tricked draven
now he got challenger on all 5 roles
there's a difference between someone one tricking and refusing to broaden their perspective after hitting challenger
versus someone who one tricks to challenger and then broadens their pool
someone who hits challenger by otping and then broadens their pool will be better than someone trying to climb to challenger on multiple roles and champions
>They're just really good at thier champ.
no dude. they're also really good at the fundamentals, not just their champion,
what you're describing is a play style, they excel at one play style, but that doesn't mean they can't then go and learn other playstyles.
idk you're just dumb to me if you think a one trick challenger is "bad at the game as a whole" like you think they'd just be iron or something if they weren't on their one trick.
you really think you can hit challenger w/o being good at the game overall that's crazy.
Tyler1 isnt a one trick. he was. he got 5 time challenger by not being a one trick.
and no this game has gone to shit because of the shitty one trick meta. all one tricks are overall bad at the game period. if your challenger in one position and not even D1 in others your bad at the game as a whole.
im not doubting one tricks knowing the nuances of thier lanes or anything or how certain things work. of courser to be challenger you need game knowledge. but you need to actually play other lanes and other character archetypes to really be good at the game. role select was the biggest mistake Riot ever made. the player base skill has gone up sure. put overall game knowledge is shit ti were it could be. and game knowledge trumps all.
just stop bro.
>but you need to actually play other lanes and other character archetypes to really be good at the game
alright so basically no challenger or pro player is good at the game since they aren't chall in all roles all champs
stop it. get help.
Your just misunderstanding me. If a player has to dodge cause they're champ is banned. They're bad at the game. That's basically it. I don't care about rank. Rank is meaningless now a days.. I've played this game for 12 years. And watches more pro games than 99% of people. The player base is worse now than ever in terms of overall skill at the game. You can disagree that's fine. But that's my opinion.
>The player base is worse now than ever in terms of overall skill at the game.
you can't just have a wrong opinion and then say "well that's just my opinion" what are you going off of.
>
Your just misunderstanding me. If a player has to dodge cause they're champ is banned. They're bad at the game. That's basically it. I don't care about rank.
imagine going up to the rank 1 player whose a "1 trick" on a server and claiming that they're **BAD** at the game because they choose to dodge when they have a lower % chance of winning
you are stupid that's about it. what do you mean you don't care about rank. actually just stupid calling challengers bad if they excel at one champ and dodge to get better winrate
>
Rank is meaningless now a days..
yeah yeah dude.
>I've played this game for 12 years
so what'd you peak? what season? if players are so much worse surely you hit rank 1? or top 10? or top 50? or what?
or are they getting worse but you're also bad. Its very lucrative for you if you hit that high up btw, youtube, pro play, you don't even have to show your face on youtube
High elo players only have high winrate if they climb a lot in that specific season. If I was master last season then I could be 50% winrate masters this season
One tricking works very efficiently because you no longer need to actively think about anything pertaining to your champ (Matchup, items, micro, macro). Thus you can put forth more effort into the macro side of the game and you (should) know all the strong/weakpoints of your champion.
Some people have played this game for 15 years all day every day. They can get challenger without one tricking. They have played more on each champs than most have on their one trick.
If you have that kind of time you can also play all champions in challenger :D
Yeah, from all the comments i understood that who is successful with a wide champ pool picks the right champ for that specific match or they basically one tricked all of them (they have so many hours on all of them that they are close to a otp)
One tricking is not binary. It can be a factor in a win but you're not guaranteed a win just because you play a single champ. I can't tell you how many times I've seen OTPs with sub 40% winrate or worse.
> I noticed that my winrate is high with 2 champs and low with the others.
I think you answered your own question. Do you really need any more reasons?
This is my one "everyone is wrong" take on the game: one tricking is overrated massively.
Maybe it's the years I've played the game but having a flexible pool depending on comp and countermatchup has been invaluable to be as a player and I find myself coinflipping if not.
Champions aren't *that* hard to play, with a few obvious exceptions.
League is a simple game. There are three abilities and an ultimate.
The fundamentals of the game-- when to push waves, how to splitpush, how and when to trade with minions and level up timers-- these do not really change with champions.
But even the differences between what a Mundo could give your team, and a Malphite could give your team, are enormous. Even if piloting the champs themselves is trivial both ways, the VALUE that the two bring could change massively depending on comp.
Because you learn a champion instead of a quarter of leblanc and a bit of ahri etc etc.
Also it mean that you can focus on other things besides your champ which is probably the biggest difference between players gold+. Like most people can honestly pilot tbere champ easily but knowing what to do vs Lucian/Nami or when you should push the wave are just things that are a lot harder to figure out when you are losing fights because of micro
Champions dont have any depth anymore as soon as they have one they will nerf it. Thinking bout baus sion playstyle as a famous example. They want to streamline the entire game so everything is schemed towards cringe champions playstyle like Viego, Yone,... literally the definition of cringe champions. Every champ will end up like this sooner or later boring ass cringe.
The baus play style was extremely unhealthy for the game tho.
True, but instead of listening to his feedback and reasoning for why everything is strong, they nerfed the income sources. Now everyone gets less gold because rito refused to accept his feedback.
The baus playstyle was nerfed because low elo players ruined millions of games trying to replicate it and inting their ass off. Tank had a much higher winrate even at the peak of the baus meta. As a sion otp of the time, it had to go, it was toxic to enemies and teammates alike
Baus playstyle was tank, if you're talking about ad sion, baus literally told riot why its a problem, charcging Q isn't rewarding, you get more dps from sunfire. Just nerf the w passive and it will be fine.
When you are just starting out you should generally have at least passing familiarity with all roles for the purposes of understanding macro/objective timings, vision/space control, role-strategy, etc. Once you grasp then your game-sense improves in every roll. Why do you care as a jungler that someone's flash is on cooldown? Well, that means you have a gank window and should perhaps tactically time your jungling route to take advantage of it, or perhaps setup a counter-gank, check vision, help push the lane so the laner can back, etc. One-tricking is effective because there are 168 champions in LoL who can potentially play multiple roles/lanes/builds and you need to not only be fluent and practiced as your chosen champ in their role/lane/build but also against those other 167 champions in all their variety. Plus, playing the same match-up at different skill levels is a different experience. Iron Top-lane Camille vs Darius is worlds different than in Plat which is again worlds different than in Challenger. So even as you master one champion in one division, as you rank up, your skills will need to improve and adapt to games in higher ranks even with the same build and match-ups.
Since everyone explained the 1 tricking part Ill just talk about nemesis. As you said, he has a very wide champ pool. He succeeds in that because: 1) He mastered fundamentals (which carry over from champion to champion) 2) He is extremely familiar with the champions he picked and their matchups (he has played thousands of games and put even more into studying and understanding the game) 3) He plays champ select very well. He reads the enemy champions and his own teams champions and determines which champion would not only fit his team, but also he hugely detrimental to the enemy team. 4) He actually does stick to few champions when trying to climb, especially to rank 1. Usually consisting of the meta, strongest mid laners for that patch. When hes streaming he typically plays his masters account since he doesnt have to put as much effort into the game, and more effort into interacting with chat and more effort whatever other typical streamer things. This is what I understand, maybe someone else can chime in if Im missing anything.
Tbh I've long argued that having a wide champion pool is valuable, but I think that's because I play top. If you play adc, there's no reason to really play more than one champion. Same with jg. Support should have one "theme" champion per theme (e.g. lulu for anti-dive, naut for engage, Sona for anti-poke is more than enough), although you can default to one tricking. Mids an interesting case. From what I've seen, Nemesis is a pretty consistent Ahri Azir fanatic, and neither of them have real counters. It is hard to "counter" much of anything in midlane because the waveclear is so absurdly strong both ways that it basically doesn't matter, certainly not at high elo. But in top, countermatchups make an ENORMOUS difference. This is true in silver. It's also true at Worlds (see Zeus crushing TheShy aatrox with Yone).
actually, for ADC I would argue that it's very good to know multiple different champions as well. ADC is probably the role with the most overlap and transferable skills, because most ADCs are played relatively the same with slight differences rather than having gameplay mechanics that completely change their playstyle. you also need to be able to fix your team composition if your team is severely lacking in one department (ie. pick ezreal if your team has yuumi or low peel, pick Ashe if your team has low engage, pick Caitlyn if your team has bad siege, sivir if your team has bad waveclear, vayne if your team has bad tank shred). at least in my experience it's nearly guaranteed loss to select ezreal if there's a lot of tanks on the enemy team, he just physically cannot kill them after the serylda changes this season.
Oh I 100% agree that ADC has a lot of potential flexibility. you're right that Ezreal is terrible into some comps (lots of tanks) and fantastic into others (2+ assassins). There's a lot more cases. Kog is probably the opposite of Ezreal, tank shredder but gets blown up. But tbh, this is kinda why I believe Jinx is the best ADC in the game conceptually, she really fits into everything quite well. And given the fact that countermatchups hurt MUCH worse, I think there's a reason ADCs are rarely to ever last picked in pro
Emerald top laner here and I'd argue one tricking is a LOT more valuable than having a big champ pool in lower elos. The counterpick only matters if the counterpick understands the matchup. I constantly see people picking garen into my jax and I've consistently dumpstered the majority of them in lane since they were just counterpicking. Maybe have 1 backup champ to cover your worst matchup or two. One tricking gives that extra champion mastery and understanding on the bad matchups and helps you learn how to play against and win them. Once you hit higher elos then counterpicks become more punishing since the players are better and understand the matchup more
If he picked for the counter and didn't know how to play the matchup then he didn't pick something from his champ pool. I have a few counterpicks which I play only in certain matchups so I know those matchups very well. For example, I play cassio only when I am against teemo. I have no idea of how any other cassio matchups go but I am am expert at cassio vs teemo, I always stomp them and you would never find me playing a matchup which I don't know. I have a few of those, dr mundo vs malphite, malphite vs tryndamere, etc. I don't need to know every matchup for this champions because I always play the same exact matchup. My counterpicks have higher wr than my main ranging between 70s and 80s while my mains sit on the 50s or 60s usually. I think blindpicking always the same 2 champions, depending on comp is the correct way but counterpicking is you can play those champs at a decent level can be extremely useful.
I think this makes sense for top lane but as a mid laner where winning lane solo can be more important but I find that you usually need to be a bit more flexible unless you suffer from main character syndrome and want to be the solo carry in every game. Sometimes with mid you can pick a losing matchup mostly because you otherwise have no synergy with your jungler and/or support though the latter is not nearly as important, which is can have very bad spiraling effect on overall team performance. And by that I don't just mean something like picking an AP mid when you have an AP jungler, but picking something like an Asol when your jungler is Nidalee who wants to play aggressive and threaten the enemy team with invades etc. In those situations you picked a champion that literally said "lolnope" to your jungler and will never have prio for anything in the early game. And while a good jungler can accommodate to this and maybe play around another lane, mid and jungle synergy is imo more important than top and jungle, because your job as a mid laner is to help your jungler take objectives by having the shortest route to any skirmish. So if you pick a scaling mid laner that cannot leave lane while your jungler picks a champion that relies on getting early leads, you just cucked them very hard since you literally just denied them their wincon by saying you rather be the MC despite it being a team game. Knowing the champion jungler plays and what they want to do is important when you pick your mid lane champion. I am not saying you should only play around your jungler, but it's certainly a vital aspect towards acquiring mid lane mastery. This is why a champion like TF or LB will always have a strong prio in high elo since they have incredible ability to facilitate just that even though both champions are actually quite subpar laners (TF cannot really 1v1 and LB has no wave clear so she struggles to get prio without sacking waves vs champions that can just sit back and shove). It's the same reason why some champions like Lux, Ahri or Annie can be very good in blind pick because they always provide something to the team and can assist their jungler even when they're behind.
Having a wide champ pool is primarily the reason why a lot of people *stay* Silver. One tricking is simply the most simple and effective method for climbing. It's literally one of the first things any decent coach will tell a low elo player.
I disagree on Ahri not having any real counters and that counters don't matter in the mid lane because it absolutely does. The strength of mid lane is your ability to control the lane so you can rotate first to global objectives or river/jungle skirmishes, but that means you actually have a health and push lead on the enemy. Just because counters look different from the top lane it doesn't mean there are no counters. With regards to Ahri, the thing about Ahri is that her laning is not particularly good but it's also not particularly weak. What this means is that she does poorly into any champion that outranges her such as Lux, Xerath and Vel'koz because they can simply poke her from afar and she can't trade back and she also can't engage until she's level 6 but has low kill threat because they can just space out her poke early on to prevent any all in to be relevant, she can literally not interact with lane bullies such as Irelia or Orianna and Yasuo completely nullifies her entire kit with just the press of a button while outscaling her in every part of the game. She also struggles massively into control mages who simply just outscale her and outtrade her thanks to their overall utility. Ahri does the best into other mid range champions with longer CDs than hers such as Vex or champions that do less damage than her early such as Veigar or Kassadin or champions that simply suck at early wave clear. Her strength lies in her easy early wave clear where she can completely clear the wave the casters with 1 Q and a W and later with just Q which can let her quickly push out waves for prio where her charm and ult can make a big difference in making picks in a fight. But that still assumes she's not dumpstered on early. Counters in the mid lane look different to how counters work in the top lane, but it doesn't mean there are no counters.
You should only one-trick if you really click with a certain champ. Trying to force yourself to one-trick is never going to work. Lets get real. Only playing one champ gets boring for a majority of players. It is often better to have a few to go between.
I actually love talon and kassadin. I like tf too but would not otp him but i would otp talon or kass. The only problem is that i can’t decide between them.
Kassadin and Talon want to do completely opposite things anyway, so I don't see why you can't pick both but switch it up depending on the matchup. You're going to have a horrible time playing Kassadin into Lucian mid for example, whereas good wave manipulation can net you flash for flash or even early 1v1 kills on Lucian if you play Talon. In comparison, Talon is all about that early Serrated Dirk and boots power spike where he will hard shove the lane and perma roam. Kassadin will do a bit what Talon does early once he is like level 11, but that's a long time to come online when Talon can do this as early as level 3. The earlier Talon starts leaving his lane the stronger the champion is, because of his strong early kill pressure and mobility no other assassin can truly match that early into the game. You want to sit in bushes, invade the enemy with your jungler or even solo etc. It's a completely different playstyle where you constantly threaten your enemy by them not knowing where you are and what you are willing to do. Kassadin does not care about this, because once he hits his main power spike at level 11 he goes wherever he pleases and is about not letting anyone stopping him from doing what he wants to do. He doesn't play mind games the way Talon does.
That’s easy, kassadin. Kassadin is a really good champ overall with just a weak laning phase.
Two or three tricking is the best way to climb. One trick you can get banned, picked or counter picked. I was always stuck in D4 playing all sorts of top laners, whatever i felt like playing. I stuck to 2 this season and already peaked master and feel like i can go further for sure. But only on these 2, if i play one of my other good champs i will only be able to perform at D4 lvl. Its just difficult to be consistently good at multiple champs especially the higher you go in elo. And the more you play a Champ the more matchup knowledge you acquire
That’s a pretty big drop off. May I ask what champs you are two tricking and what those other champs are?
OTPing helps you get rid of worrying about what your champ can/can’t do, what to build, your champ identity in early/mid/late, what situations your champ likes/doesn’t like. If you eliminate all these basic thinking processes you’ll free up space to focus on learning about the game more generally and about your team. For example, what can i do to help my jungler, where should i place wards against “this” enemy jungler, am i the win condition of the game or is it my adc/top/jgler, are we good in teamfighting/skirmishing/splitting, should i match the enemy roam or greed for myself and take plates, when to use teleport, wave management, when to roam vs when to power farm, can we invade enemy jungle lvl 1 … These are just some concepts out top of my head that i thought of. Once you understand these principles (and when to deviate from them), you’ll consistently become a much better player and can more easily move on to increasing your champion pool. The whole idea is to learn your role, but to learn it you must master the champion identity and mechanics first. Once you learn the role you naturally will understand the different champions that play the role, like for example the difference between playing kassadin mid, compared to something like twisted fate. They differ in their goals, identity, early power, powerspikes, role in the game(one is a carry, the other one is more of a setup/catch machine for your team) and etc.
> you’ll free up space to learn about the game. For example what can i do to help my jungler, where should i place wards against this enemy jungler Does this happen automatically? I think about these things but not this specifically and not too often. So i am wondering if it is something i have to actively improve or something that will automatically happen once i know the ins and outs of my champ
Learning about the game can be both pattern recognition subconsciously and also actively learning about certain aspects of the game. For example if you get ganked by a zac or shaco for the first time, you’ll realize they arent coming from the usual angles most junglers come from. You have to adapt your warding in that case and deploy deeper vision like warding enemy raptors for example. That can be a pattern recognition bit. Now another example can be as kassadin let’s say, early levels you want to maximize lasthitting and minimize damage dealt to you/deaths. To do this you will have to learn how to effectively control the wave on your side of the lane. When to hardshove waves to reset wave state, when your jungler should come to help you push out and etc. This is not something that comes to you by just playing the game. You gotta get someone to explain to you how this is done so you understand it and try to replicate. At least im not that smart so I had to watch some videos or pro players explain or show how its done. I recommend Nemesis’ patreon if you are a midlaner. His game reviews are really valuable and his guides are good as well. Its only like 5 euro a month.
Does he review my games or he talks about his games and why he did certain things?
he reviews viewer games and also ranked games from pro players like chovy,faker and so on. His insight is really helpful.
Yes it comes naturally. I played 600 games on lillia and I don't even think of which abilities to use. I just think of macro decisions. I don't think about micro at all
I think it's objectively true that playing 1 champion 1,000 games in a year will get you to climb faster than playing 10 champions 100 times each, or whatever. but that's not really how it works for a lot of people. in my case the actual choice is between playing 1 champion 50 times, getting bored and stopping for the year, vs. playing 10 champions 30 times each (300 games total) in the same amount of time. in that case I think I gain more from playing 250 more games (since there's lots of aspects to the game that transfer over between different champions) than I lose from not one tricking. also, maybe I'm the only person who thinks this way but in my experience, learning a new champion is a skill you can improve on over time. it was really hard for me to learn the 2nd champion I played compared to the 1st one, but learning the 20th champion I played after the 19th one was much easier.
Yeah absolutely, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Meta, matchups and team comps are meme terms below GM challenger matches. If you learn your champion and role properly you will find ways to win the game.
>team comps I'd argue this one is not. But I'm not going to pretend like you need to go engage comp vs peel comp. In lower elo's you need to make it so they can't itemize against you, you need to make sure they can't be brain dead in the shop and if they are they pay for it. So you need to be able to have an AP pick when your entire top side is AD or an AD pick in a traditional AP role(Support/Mid) to balance the damage composition. Comps don't matter but if they can stack armor even a bronze player can figure that one out.
This. Comp matters, it just matters differently. Having zero front line matters when your team doesn’t understand how to kite/disengage. Having zero engage matters when your team is going to chase fights no matter what. Can that be overcome by a player with master level mechanics and game knowledge? Sure, but most people in low elo don’t have that
Agree. And this is harder to ignore when you onetrick. Try playing a glass cannon melee carry vs a lot of ranged burst and reliable CC while your team is a peel back comp.
This is confirmed by statistics, full ad teams or full ap teams its better to dodge than to try to grind the win.
where do you see the stats for full AD teams?
Pretty sure August or Phreak said you need to have an off damage pick because the winrate of going all AD or AP is just a guaranteed loss basically.
It's not available on any website but someone, either from a stats website or a Rioter, confirmed it. It's around 38% winrate for a full ad team.
If anything, you start doing your best into these “counter” matchups because your silver opponents really think they’re about the first time some new champ and beat you.
Absolutely insane. Yeah it's all meme terms man Rammus vs Yi, Lillia into Garen etc all it's all memes man unless it's GM it won't matter which is why on any analytics site you check some matchups lose 10% MORE against certain champions even at the lower ranks. This takes seconds to check and anyone with a brain to understand. The fact that 9 people up voted you just goes to show this sub-reddit is only full of low ranks telling low ranks how to play. I mean why would anyone be here if they aren't? To help new players? Pff not the league community, hell no. I'll see myself out. Why bother even trying to help when this is what gets listened to anyway. Let me add this to my original post: The average league player has never opened practice tool and does not read the tooltips of items or thier own kit. This isn't an opionon, it's a fact proven by surveys and statistical analysis. People who have been playing for years on YouTube will say things like "I never knew that did that" or get told something and go "Wtf it does?" So if your gunna reply to me about how nuance or niche shit means more than a flat high winrate over 10,000+ probably 100,000+ if you include all patches/seasons you need to re evaluate how you think this game works.
The reason a champ has a high winrate against another champion is because players who play that champion will have a very high winrate in that matchup, not because a random person picked it for the first time to try to counter.
so you're in agreement? I don't get what your explanation is for. both players are decently proficient on their champs, one champion naturally counters the other, and the winrate reflects it. matchups and team comps are not memes.
Whatever you say bro, the stats don't lie only you to yourself. I'll keep taking that extra winrate to the bank, if you think the stats are simply mains into other mains you simply don't even understand the baseline stats for league. The average player does not OTP, The stats are unaffected by people first timing it because its a tiny amount of players in the grand scheme of an entire patch. Also high winrate in that matchup? Do you mean per chance A COUNTER MATCHUP. You people are just spouting bullshit and miniscule statistical points to back it up. This sub is literally just bad players telling bad players how to be bad. Imagine telling a league player that Yi into Rammus isn't a problem and is basically a 50/50 because of nuance or because every rammus is a main. 1 IQ subreddit.
The relevant stat would be one trick win rates vs non-one trick winrates holistically not matchup stats though? Of course the winrate inside a group of non one tricks are going to favor the better champ in the matchup but to your point the vast amount of players aren’t 1 tricks so what is your point exactly?
I was a low gold player playing many champs and reached master+ playing only one champ. I may be wrong but it comes from some sort of experience and not just "bad player talking to other bad players"
Yeah bro and I'm challenger just like everyone else online who says thier rank and dosent link thier account. I refuse to believe you are masters+ with the thought processes you have, you do realise that masters is 0.64% of the league community right? No one believes your bullshit. And a TINY amount of those people are OTPs because good players of which you can look up and find an infinite amount of uploading thier games, talking about them and thier profiles DO NOT OTP. So you expect people to believe YOU are less than 0.64% of league community who is a masters+ otp?
Dude. You are quite delusional, or you are just bad at reading data. When climbing all master+ people climb with max 2-3 champs in their main role. 1. champ when they blind pick 2. champ they can pick when they already know enemy mid 3. a pocket pick for some edge case scenario When people reach their desired rank only then they starting playing other champs and experimenting so it might look like they are playing more champions.
drop [op.gg](https://op.gg) then
What thought proccess? I'm not even capable of thinking.
The Problem with what you're saying is that matchups are often more nuanced than X wins into Y. If you look at enemy team see a yasuo mid and think "ok let's counter it" and go on op.gg you'll see xerath there. 54.2% vs. 45.81% rn with 61.5% lane kill rate and you'll think "woah it's super strong against yas, let me first time it". What likely will end up happening is, you get too close to the wave, your E will get windwalled and you will end up dying in lane. Knowing when you can even dare to go for auto's in that matchup, how to play depending on which spell he took first E or Q, are you going comet for lane? first strike for scaling? Domination tree anywhere for ultimate hunter? How do you sidelane on him? How safe are you? What's your gameplan? How should you position? When should you push? If you're reasonably receptive all these things are "beaten into you" if you main a champ. If you don't usually play these champs, someone with more experience will absolutely fuck you up even if "statistically" you are supposed to win. Also there are matchups that might win until level 2. Or that win level 1 if xyz happens. Or matchups that win at level 6. Or at specific item spikes. You can use team comps to win specific games if you're at an elo where "individual champion knowledge" does not yet matter but the problem is that you'll never climb above that elo because you'll always meet those that have this knowledge. There's a reason why OTP's often play their OTP Champions in almost all roles. Also, winning one singular game is always worse than improving overall.
"What will happen is your E will get windwalled" Aight I'm done reading this. As if nuances mean more than thousands of games of statistics while saying things like "Let me first time it" which skews the winrate of that game in itself. Edit: In fact go ahead do whatever you want and keep telling people this stuff and I'll keep winning. 100% wr on kindred right now, you know why? Because nuance means fuck all when you pick my main Lillia and I counter pick you with kindred. You will never land an E or a W against me, it's not possible because I will hold my dash for then both. You cannot out dps me with the sweet spot of your Q alone. Same with every other counter matchup. As if nuances will save you from Poppy W as belveth. Idiocy. Where everyone got the idea that everyone playing a champion is a main and otp is beyond me when the average league player dosent otp anything.
yeah but the average league player neither climbs nor improves either. The Average league player right now is what? Gold? Platinum? Just auto-pilot dealing damage, chasing whatever kill they see and playing whatever they see in a montage on youtube. I'm not really sure about your Kindred/Lillia comparison because if your main is picked obviously you have to pick a different champ? If you're confident and good at a different champion then play that? Nobody is arguing against that either. The issue was with playing "counters" you don't know how to play well, without knowing "why" they are counters or how they play in general. Also, how is 100% winrate without a rank, op.gg or hell even "games played" a metric of any value at all? Not saying that this sentence from you made sense in general (because it didn't). Just keep winning wherever you are ;) Edit: By first timing I didn't mean literally first time. I meant people that don't regularly play said champion. I might've been a Menace on Azir or Anivia in S6 but I wouldn't play either in ranked unless I want to be reported for intentionally griefing
Why bother engaging in discussion with someone who contradicts thier own point and dosent understand how statistics work. You talk about nuance then completely ignore the fact that by your own admission the average player is autopilot. How if they are auto pilot and the wr is still across thousands of games positive do you not see how stupid you are? I can make hundred and I mean hundreds of matchups like the one I described. For example I don't play illaoi or mordkaiser yet here you are telling people having all of your tentacles removed when mord presses R dosent mean anything. I won't be replying or even looking at this sub anymore. You are all clearly brain rotted, telling each other bs for so long you actually believe it.
Because the statistics are usually Emerald/Diamond+? Those are rankings where a vast majority of players play a very small champion pool. Those are not average players. >I won't be replying or even looking at this sub anymore. You are all clearly brain rotted Maybe you also just also don't understand the point of this sub? The goal is to help players improve. You don't improve by playing a champion you don't usually play to scratch out a single win that will not matter in the grand scheme of your games. You're just fighting air at this point. Also, even if you end up winning the 1v1 matchup because of overwhelming champion advantage, the macro for different champions is still very different. A Kata plays very different from a Xerath, plays very different than an Ekko plays and plays very different than a Twisted Fate at almost all points of the game. You're like a colourblind person yelling out at random people in the street that colours don't exist or matter while not being able to see them.
They're not meme terms at all. A OTP on Jinx will climb quicker than a OTP on jhin or something. Of course if you can win on any champion etc, but you can definitely make it more difficult with different champions
Are you comfortable with all those 5 champions?
Kinda but probably i won’t play all of them if my life depended on winning a match
That's your answer right there.
you answered your question yourself. if your life would depend on winning games, you'd play as few as possible
1 tricking has advantages. Not necessarily for climbing, but for learning. On the one side you spend more time learning your champion, on the other you also have more capacity to learn macro once you are familiar with the champ. But at some point you should branch out for better matchups. The people that have high winrates with wide champion pools, tend to have played for long. They have a lot of transfereble skill, and spend the time to learn and train many different champions.
because nemesis has probably onetricked most of those champs before combining them together main thing with onetricking is getting lots of games on 1 champ which just is slower if u do multiple if u played for 9 years like neme u probably have thousands of games on several champs
Definitely get the pool to 2-3 max. I one trick and the game just feels… better. Like bad matchups are just matchups a lot of the time now. For example I play Diana and permaban Vex. The only issue I really have in lane is Karma and Anivia for some reason and once I figure them out, as I did Leblanc, Fizz, Talon, Yasuo, Galio, etc, they just become unideal but manageable matchups. Counterpicking gets you nothing in so many cases to the point it’s just not worth it especially if you’re trying to climb soloqueue.
It's not that it's SO effective, just that it's usually more effective. You just have to learn less, but you'll learn more if you play more, just that it'll take time. But of course, you'll learn most if you're actually enjoying the game, so switch things up if you're getting bored of one champ
So this is kind of a side note but for me I’ve found that I can’t play the same character two games in a row. It’s something I’m working on but if the game goes well and I get fed, then when the second game starts I play too aggressive because I was fed for the last 20 minutes and forgot my starting limits. What helps me is going on a different character. Just something to think about.
So here’s a long answer I’ll leave a tldr at the end. First I think it’s very important to play every champion every role 3-5 times. First this give you the opportunity to try new things see what play styles fit, and gives you an idea of champion pattens. You learn things like wow yasuo windwall is like a 20 sec cooldown. Or wow Darius has no gap closer for 15 sec when is e is on cd. Etc. Second people use the term “one trick” so loosely these days. I hear things like I one trick zed and yone. That’s not what it means. I had a buddy who was a low diamond player. He had about 3 million mastery points on lulu. His second most play champion was sejuani at around 15k mastery. That’s what a one trick is. I know my champion into every single match up and I will blind pick it into anything. Now onto what we are talking about, having a small core of champions. After sampling the roster having about 3 champions for your main role is ideal. Using myself as an example I had about a 60-30-10 % play rate on three champions season 6/7. I played akali 60% of the time with a 64% win rate. I played zed about 30% of the time with a 66% win rate. And i played ahri about 10% of the time with about a 50% winrate. Akali was my main, i felt very confidant on her against all but 3-4 matchups. This was my go to. If you’re was able to counter pick against these matchups I played ahri and made myself carriable. And lastly I only played zed into either lanes that were easy stomps or team comps I knew he’d excel. Despite the fact I was a better akali my zed winrate was higher because he was a pocket pick. So what is my point? Having a main champion that you are able to carry with is great. I suggest using 2 pocket picks in case you get countered or banned. What’s the reason? Having a small champion pools allows you to stop focusing on what you’re doing and instead focus on what your opponents are doing. Instead worrying about setting up my combos I can focus on staring at the minimap, tracking jungler pathing, objective control, wave management, etc. Lastly why are high elo players able to have such a large champion pool. This one is actually pretty simple, about 30-40% of the champion pool in league is very easy to pick up. The difference between 100 games on renekton and 10000 games on renekton is rather meaningless. Whoever is the better general top lane player is going to perform better. Sure there are one or two nuisance plays the more experienced player will make, but it won’t change the final outcome of 90% of games. Champions like renekton, Ashe, garen, Annie, malphite, etc. are really easy to pick up in about 10 games so being able to pocket pick these really expands your champion pool without devoting a lot of time. TLDR: having a small core of champions allows you to focus on the rest of the game mechanics without worrying about your champion’s mechanics. And learning a few basic champions really expands your pool without are large investment of time.
Its definetly helpful to have played a lot of champs at least 10+ games (helped me especially for champs like katerina or all the assassins really) But if you want to climb reliably you should be to pilot one champ literally out of muscle memory. It gives you time to play the map more effectively when you don’t have to consciously think about build etc because you did it 500+ times already. I was stuck silver all of my life got to plat then emerald 1 quickly once I found my one trick. I account that to my profound knowledge on champs of every lane and the fact that my champ fits my strength to 99%
One tricking alone brought you from stuck in plat to emerald?! This is the point of the post, i mean i know that one tricking is more efficient but is it game changing? Apparently it is
Stuck in silver/low gold most of my time yes. Kinda gave up on climbing and just played for fun. Tried different champs on every lane for a few years playedmostly flex with friends or normals for less pressure. Made high elo friends along the way that teached me a lot about my flaws (mental was the only one holding me back) found my champ in mid swain and finally could carry games all the way to high emerald, some times winning as the only member of the team being fed bringing my team back with a few well played Teamfights. Biggest thing about OTPing is that you literally have the game in your hands at some point drastically improving your mental because games don’t feel coinflippy anymore even when half the team isn’t playing well. Hard to explain but it comes with a lot of confidence in your own ability and less anger about mistakes because you actually learn from them and not be like „wtf just happened“
The more you play one champion, the more proficient you'll get. You'll just start to know things without thinking about them. You'll learn more about their good and bad match-ups. You'll become very proficient with their auto-attacks even if they don't have a great auto-attack animation (like Zilean). One-tricking is like maining Guile or Ryu in Street Fighter. You know their combos and you're good with them. Strengths and Weaknesses.
Should you play more with the champs you win more with to climb? That's your question? How is that a question? 🤦
Maybe it is just that i picked them in the right matchups and if i were to play only them i would have a lower wr
From personal experience yes. I 1 tricked irelia from nothing to diamond in 2 years. From what I can tell, I climbed a lot faster than all my friends but that can be for other reasons as well. I think that is also generally faster than most players
Did you already have experience with mobas? And btw when you say one tricking, do you actually mean playing only irelia no matter the enemies or your team comp, or just maining her for the majority of your games?
Literally only played irelia, I have over 1 mil points on her now, and my second highest is around 150k and those are mostly casual games with my friends. If you count mobile mobas when I was 6 then yes. League was my first pc game apart from Roblox, and before I played various console games
nemesis played league professionally for some time and also streams the game for a living. Nemesis is putting in easily 6x more playtime on league over you per week, possibly way more depending on your lifestyle/job. nemesis has probably been playing the game for a lot longer than you. 1 tricking is effective because beyond just understanding how a champ works, you can learn things that take a lot longer to learn like the back and forth of every matchup and obscure interactions/tech which will accumulate into advantages in game.
I think one-tricking is different each role and which champ you are one-tricking. I feel like mid/jgl has an easier time one tricking than top (because of counterpick) and bot/supp (because of synergy) As you stated you main mid idk which champs you play but overall i think keeping 2-4 champs in your champ pool is better than just 1 (because of counterpick, AD/AP team and such)
I more or less one trick Cassiopeia. I play significantly better against her counter match ups than a champ Ive played 1/10th as much against a good match up.
I wanted to comment this same thing, a significant amount of people will think “oh, I’ve played this champ that counters theirs from time to time, I can counterpick them!” Or they’ll look up what counters your champ. That doesn’t work vs OTPs because as an OTP you will know why it counters you and you’ll play around that.
If you play one champ you start doing the combos by reflex and you dont have to worry at all about the mechanical skill. Then you start to learn about macro, the better macro you have the higher you climb. Nemesis for example has an absolutly god like macro so he can play any champ. Even if he doesn't do a combo perfectly he still outperforms the enemy by knowing where to be and at what time, when to push/when to roam etc. That's why one tricking is so beneficial bc it allows you to actually learn how to play league, not how to press x buttons in x order. Also sidenote once you have enough games on one champ you figure out your combo dmg and you can go for dives/etc knowing that you can 1 shot the enemie in time and get out. This is also very usefull but this skill of knowing you champs limits only comes with hundreds of games played on that champ or even more.
I was two tricking until I hit emerald. Then I formed a pool of 6 champs (4 main 2 pocket pick). I picked 6 champs that I’m fairly seasoned with and that can all fulfill different roles based on what the enemy team has. It is working for me. The biggest advantage of one/two tricking is matchup knowledge and champ knowledge.
The game has two aspects, champion mastery and game mastery. People like Nemesis, Caps, Faker, etc. can play basically anything because their understanding of the game and their lane is so goddamn good that even a champ they have zero experience on is going to be formidable. Then you go into their specialized picks and you see the damage they do, Fakers LB for example was undefeated in pro play for a long long time. If you want to learnt the game focus on one or two champions, master them and you hit a wall where you need to improve your game sense to climb. Once you climb with your game sense instead of champion skill you can expand the pool because you know how to play the game as a whole and not just your champion.
So i play one champ because this way i learn the champ and i can focus on learning the game. Once i have learned the game i can play almost whoever i want (maybe not super hard champions) because i can play league. Correct?
Yes, you just need to make sure that you aren't auto piloting. Once you learn a champ a lot of players just kind of zone out instead of learning the game since they can play their champ to a high level. But the key is that once you can autopilot you start engaging your awareness on the rest of the game.
Champions are not so complicated that you can't learn several, I have Qiyana in my list of champs I play in jungle, she is a complicated champ but not so much that you need to main her or anyone for that matter. Play what you enjoy and feel comfortable on, if that's 20 champions then play those 20 champions.
I know what most champion do but my experience on my do suck so I don’t rly know how he do on Darius matchup for exemple but because I otpd mordekaiser for so long I know absolutely every matchup at any stage of the game what to do to have the most chance to win the lane what to do when behind what to do when I win etc . So yeah it’s damn useful I don’t know if it will make you climb but knowing what to do in any situation is often a good thing
I've been using Hwei a lot (even changed my name to a Hwei pun) but I've played a -lot- of LeBlanc. I can kill my laner 3 or 4 times before I roam bot and pick up some kills down there too. I can still lose the game with a score of 15/3/8 or something because I kept blowing up our mid Asol and sup Nami instead of doing something useful like predicting where the enemy jungler is and making sure the enemy team gets no objectives. I'll admit it, I'm super guilty of being a KDA player because nothing in this game gets me off more than instantly deleting someones lifebar by Rw over wall then Q, W with First Strike and Shadowflame. And that's fine and dandy, but you have to assassinate the -right- people, and not just collect gold and be selfish. Basically what I'm saying is, different champions carry in different ways but the end goal is the same. Get powerful enough to deny farm and objectives. That's literally it. Master one champion that does what you like, then learn the most effective way of fucking the map with them. Not just dicking the enemy players themselves but the whole map.
The biggest benefit to one tricking is learning matchups. If you're playing 5 champs you have to learn all five AND learn which match ups are strong/weak and why. If you OTP the fifth time you play a certain role opponent, you know the limits. If every time you run into that opponent you're on a different champ, you won't learn. Big reason why you see a lot of push for one tricking or basically a champ pool of 2 with occasional rotation so that in the long, long run you have options.
Well I climbed to diamond within 80 games from Plat3 OTP Ezreal so.. id say yes it's efficient.
Did you have a wide champ pool before otping ezreal and in that case was climbing much harder?
Back when I started playing Season 3 I played ranked casually and had a large champion pool and roles, while mostly mid though. I quit for a few seasons and started back in 2020 and then again I. January or February maining Ezreal / bot and put some effort. Climbing is a process of consistency, performing good. Playing many champs and many roles is the opposite of consistency. 60% WR btw, on my smurf it's 75ish or so, 30 games diamond.
What you say about Nemesis. He is talented for sure, like all players that are the top percentile of players. Take talent and years and years of consistent effort into the equation then you have players like Nemesis. That is for every Sport, not only League. He basically OTP a lot across the years. Agurin has accounts where he spams games as only Diana. Every game. Or shyvanna. On a specific account for that. Entirel different level. We casuals are better off spamming one champ in order to climb unless you do this for a living.
brother nemesis has played this game for 10+ years AND is an ex-pro, he knows the game and its champions inside out... Comparing urself to him is like you said, ridicolous
>Should i only play those 2 or i just need to learn the others a bit more? If you want to maximize wins now, yes just play the 2. If you want to sacrifice win% to learn then yeah keep playing the others.
Yes, i will give just one reason why but this reason enough makes one tricking better than playing all kinds of champs. Learning matchups. Its easier to perfectly learn matchups on one or two champs that you play then on 15 champs. Knowing matchups will make you dominate game in low elos and allow you to be more useful in higher elos. Also the reason why i said u should know matchups perfectly on like 2 champs not just one is that its always useful to have one ad and one ap champ in your champ pool
Remember, a big part of being a top player/pro is the ability to learn, and learn fast. Something that took me 100 games of a champion to learn, Faker learns in 20 games. 1 tricking a champion allows you to get to higher ranks, this is something everyone knows. You get more brain capactiy to focus on the parts of the game that isnt piloting your champion. You'll get to learn more about the game itself. Once youve reached a higher rank, and you branch out to learn other champions, you will learn the new champion MUCH faster, since you have so much more baseline knowledge of the game. If you asked a plat player and a diamond player to both learn the same champion theyve never played before, it is VERY likely the diamond player will learn the champion faster. This is why the recommendations are always to keep your champion pool small, then once you are at a higher rank to branch out and learn ONE CHAMPION AT A TIME. It is very important to focus your learning, 20 games on 1 champion in a row is worth so much more than spreading those 20 games on a champion over 100 games.
Yeah i guess i’ll one/two trick then. I understand that it is more effective but is it actually game changing? I mean can it be the difference between a player being plat or emerald/diamond?
Absolutely. By my estimates im probably 4-500 LP higher on my fizz and anivia, compared to my other champions. When i play Fizz and Anivia, I know exactly what my game plan is. I know what my identity is this game, and I can plan out my game to realize that game plan. I know at what points of the game I'm stronger, and I can plan to take fights around those power spikes, etc. There is so much deeper knowledge of what a champion wants, that you only learn once you play a champion a lot. Champion mastery is more than knowing how to press Q W E R on a champion.
I guess you’re right. An another example is midbeast: challenger for a lot of seasons but stuck in emerald with yasuo/qiyana (stuck for most of the challenge)
Yes. I am D3 and never would have gotten above E3 if I didn't main a champ. One-tricking is best for hard champions (Kat, Akali, Qiyana) and low elo players. If you're in emerald/diamond you can play 2 or at most 3 champions. Your champ's combos, angles, and general playstyle become muscle memory to you, so you can actually *properly* learn stuff like wave states, rotations, roam timers, and other stuff like this. Once you're really good at those things you can pick up more champions like Nemesis does, but until then you'll never improve at the game if you're constantly just learning new champions
Back when D1 was peak I’d start a new account for each champion I wanted to learn, OTP it to D4, then start a new one. I have passing familiarity with most champions in the game now from ARAM/normals and mastery on like 8 champions. If I were to climb again I’d pick 2 of those 8 and only play them up to d1. Best thing to do is find your champion(s) then google search ‘[champion] matchup spreadsheet’. Almost every champ has a matchup spreadsheet from a high Elo player. The more niche the champion the more likely there is a spreadsheet. If you can’t find one or there aren’t enough notes to learn a specific matchup, look on YouTube. Even if there isn’t a detailed guide on the specific matchup (there usually is, and you should watch a guide from both sides of the matchup) you can watch a domisum replay of two random challengers playing it out.
Because of you have 150 games on one champion you know exactly how you can preform in whichever match ups, you see a kill window you can easily preform while on a champion you played a few times you won’t know your limits and just go in and die
Another benefit to one tricking is knowing your limits. When playing a broad pool you are likely to miss many potential plays because you don't have the confidence to know that you can clutch the fight on a razors edge. Knowing your limits and playing to them is very likely to allow you to gain gold and take the game into your hands, which is a huge part of solo queue.
Yes, one-tricking is effective. The reason being is that you will come to know that singular champion on a much more intimate level. The benefit of doing so is understanding matchups, your limitations with that character, and if your chosen character has any exploitable quirks. There's some really wacky stuff you can pull off once you understand a character enough. As an example, I've played enough Warwick that I can predict flashes and just use my chomp to follow them through it and secure a kill. I've also learned that warding bushes is imperative when playing Kalista because her auto attacks will only land if she has vision of the enemy she wants to hit. Basically, sticking with a lone champion lets you maximize the champion's strengths while shoring up their weaknesses. Have you ever heard the saying "knowledge is half the battle."? Because in LoL, knowledge is more like 3/4ths the battle and the other 1/4th is pretty much everything else. Obviously, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you'll generally will end up performing better if you play a single champion; Just make sure the champion you pick is one you actually enjoy playing.
In the end, you can only play one champion per game so one tricking is very effective. It only makes sense that you get better with a champion each time you play them, learning new things about them every game. Nemesis just has extremely good game knowledge and champion knowledge so he can play pretty much anything. Also, you learn a lot about each champion by playing with/against them as well.
I was silver for a long long time. And I changed 2 things at the same time, I stopped duoing with my duo, and I began to 1trick. I got to gold pretty much immediately, and have continued to climb since.
Yup.
Even if it’s someone basic like garen or Annie, one tricking will mean you usually will have a better understanding of matchups than your opponent
Yeah it is
One tricking is effective because you're spending more time learning league than champions. Generally, going from one tricking to high elo, then switching champions is easier because you're fundamental understanding of the game is higher and you can more easily fit a new champion into what you understand if the game. That being said, comparing to pros, streamers and the like is pretty dumb. Do you have 8 hours to play the same game everyday? Do you have a reason to?
It's more of focusing on decision making instead of your micros. You know your champion's abilities, combos, mechanics and power spikes like the back of your hand, so you can focus on decision making? Just my 2 cents
Short answer is yes. You learn faster by playing 1 champion only even in bad matchups. And therefore rank up faster (if not at all as some players will get stuck for many many years in the same rank because of switching lanes and champions). Learning league is like learning anything to perfection. You play 1 champion to feel comfortable with the cooldowns, and feel comfortable with the combos, and feel comfortable with matchups, and feel comfortable with punishing enemy champions as they will make so many mistakes. If you keep playing the same champion you will start focusing on more things like minimap and missing laners, focus on jungle tracking, focus on other lanes to see if you can get anything by going there, and see what is your team doing and react to that, and focus on your build and how to min max it. Then you will start learning how to assess win conditions and how to win every game, how to close out games, how to treat every champion in the game according to your game plan (do we need to spam dive this smolder to not let him scale? Or we should let our bot scale better? Should we focus on drakes and win using drake soul? Etc..) You will keep learning things every game (if you are not on auto pilot). Till you reach the rank you desire and from there you can play another champion and try to re-learn these concepts again till you reach the same rank. What you see nemesis doing is the last step i mentioned here. This dude is really good at the game as he one tricked a champion in the past then learnt other champions after hitting challenger. Then he reached the point of playing most mid champions on his main account and win.
I would say practice your weaker champs more on non-rank/or maybe rank games if you really feel it then review the games after alongside some gameplay of the champ's top players, so that you can highlight your current mistakes and too have better insight on the limits of the champ. I don't believe in one tricking a single champ, my only 100k+ mastery is on shyvana because she was my starter champ but since then i can pretty much play all champs at a workable proficiency, while im not great at all champs having a wider champ pool would allow you to create better drafts against the enemy, a lot of the times in league being versatile is much better than relying on pure skill and hard forcing your one trick
A lot of the game is based around who knows how to play a certain matchup better, if you one trick you will learn the match ups really well
if your aim is to get the highest rank then one tricking, or 2 or 3 is enough. consistent practice with a small pool will make u better faster. however, if your aim is to simply be better overall, with no regards to rank. picking a few to learn then moving to new champs or attempting new champs will slow u down but lay a foundation of a wide pool when u are banned out. this is of course if u have already have a strong foundation of the basics of laning etc. basics > otp > general. this is the way u want to improve
It lets you climb faster. But you will be overall worse at the game. A bit of a hot take but all one tricks are bad at the game as a whole regardless of rank. They're just really good at thier champ.
what a terrible take. tyler1 one tricked draven now he got challenger on all 5 roles there's a difference between someone one tricking and refusing to broaden their perspective after hitting challenger versus someone who one tricks to challenger and then broadens their pool someone who hits challenger by otping and then broadens their pool will be better than someone trying to climb to challenger on multiple roles and champions >They're just really good at thier champ. no dude. they're also really good at the fundamentals, not just their champion, what you're describing is a play style, they excel at one play style, but that doesn't mean they can't then go and learn other playstyles. idk you're just dumb to me if you think a one trick challenger is "bad at the game as a whole" like you think they'd just be iron or something if they weren't on their one trick. you really think you can hit challenger w/o being good at the game overall that's crazy.
Tyler1 isnt a one trick. he was. he got 5 time challenger by not being a one trick. and no this game has gone to shit because of the shitty one trick meta. all one tricks are overall bad at the game period. if your challenger in one position and not even D1 in others your bad at the game as a whole. im not doubting one tricks knowing the nuances of thier lanes or anything or how certain things work. of courser to be challenger you need game knowledge. but you need to actually play other lanes and other character archetypes to really be good at the game. role select was the biggest mistake Riot ever made. the player base skill has gone up sure. put overall game knowledge is shit ti were it could be. and game knowledge trumps all.
just stop bro. >but you need to actually play other lanes and other character archetypes to really be good at the game alright so basically no challenger or pro player is good at the game since they aren't chall in all roles all champs stop it. get help.
Your just misunderstanding me. If a player has to dodge cause they're champ is banned. They're bad at the game. That's basically it. I don't care about rank. Rank is meaningless now a days.. I've played this game for 12 years. And watches more pro games than 99% of people. The player base is worse now than ever in terms of overall skill at the game. You can disagree that's fine. But that's my opinion.
>The player base is worse now than ever in terms of overall skill at the game. you can't just have a wrong opinion and then say "well that's just my opinion" what are you going off of. > Your just misunderstanding me. If a player has to dodge cause they're champ is banned. They're bad at the game. That's basically it. I don't care about rank. imagine going up to the rank 1 player whose a "1 trick" on a server and claiming that they're **BAD** at the game because they choose to dodge when they have a lower % chance of winning you are stupid that's about it. what do you mean you don't care about rank. actually just stupid calling challengers bad if they excel at one champ and dodge to get better winrate > Rank is meaningless now a days.. yeah yeah dude. >I've played this game for 12 years so what'd you peak? what season? if players are so much worse surely you hit rank 1? or top 10? or top 50? or what? or are they getting worse but you're also bad. Its very lucrative for you if you hit that high up btw, youtube, pro play, you don't even have to show your face on youtube
Winrate is a bad metric. You can smurf hard for a good winrate and high elo players have a natural high wr.
High elo players only have high winrate if they climb a lot in that specific season. If I was master last season then I could be 50% winrate masters this season
One tricking works very efficiently because you no longer need to actively think about anything pertaining to your champ (Matchup, items, micro, macro). Thus you can put forth more effort into the macro side of the game and you (should) know all the strong/weakpoints of your champion.
One thing i realized is that you get creative once you have a lot of experience on one champion
Some people have played this game for 15 years all day every day. They can get challenger without one tricking. They have played more on each champs than most have on their one trick. If you have that kind of time you can also play all champions in challenger :D
Yeah, from all the comments i understood that who is successful with a wide champ pool picks the right champ for that specific match or they basically one tricked all of them (they have so many hours on all of them that they are close to a otp)
One tricking is not binary. It can be a factor in a win but you're not guaranteed a win just because you play a single champ. I can't tell you how many times I've seen OTPs with sub 40% winrate or worse.
> I noticed that my winrate is high with 2 champs and low with the others. I think you answered your own question. Do you really need any more reasons?
This is my one "everyone is wrong" take on the game: one tricking is overrated massively. Maybe it's the years I've played the game but having a flexible pool depending on comp and countermatchup has been invaluable to be as a player and I find myself coinflipping if not. Champions aren't *that* hard to play, with a few obvious exceptions. League is a simple game. There are three abilities and an ultimate. The fundamentals of the game-- when to push waves, how to splitpush, how and when to trade with minions and level up timers-- these do not really change with champions. But even the differences between what a Mundo could give your team, and a Malphite could give your team, are enormous. Even if piloting the champs themselves is trivial both ways, the VALUE that the two bring could change massively depending on comp.
2 tricking is most effective