Found ur channel 2 years ago and ur approach to learning the game rly helped me climb. Over those 2 years I went from plat1 (now emerald 1) to master in season 12 hovering 150lp with a 300lp peak mid season. Due to busyness real life im taking a break from league, but ur focus on playing with high intensity and being aware of ur choices in game have been invaluable to my improvement and even more importantly it made it enjoyable for me to play ranked again, so tyty
If I might offer a perspective on #5: I tend to play control mages. A scenario I'd often come across in mid is I'd be against an assassin, I'd shut them out from interacting with me by pulling and freezing the wave near my turret, then that assassin would go roam because they can't farm. In the back of my mind is always the following scenario: 1. Playing against Katarina (or some other roam-heavy, multi-kill oriented assassin). 2. She roams bot because they're overextended. 3. I ping missing two or three times on mid, then ping caution on bot lane. 4. I stay in lane, crash the wave. 5. Bot lane didn't play carefully enough, gets double killed by Kat. 6. I get spam-pinged and flamed by the bot lane for not pinging miss (I did) and not following the roam (which I can't cuz the Kat would just turn and kill me instead). This has happened more times than I can count and is where the majority of my anxiety about roams comes from: if my lane opponent roams and I don't follow, my team-mates are going to die even if I pinged miss well in advance because they just don't pay attention and then they're going to blame me for not helping (despite the fact that my help probably wouldn't have saved them anyway). It's for this and MANY other reasons that I play League with chat muted. Right or wrong, focusing on my own game helps me play a lot better.
From my experience climbing to high diamond. Low elo don’t listen to pings, they need visual stimulation. Try back pinging IN their lane right on top of their head and then ping missing on/across the river so they understand what’s going on. They can’t say you didn’t ping if you put it infront of their face. And most of the time even I prefer players to back ping me in lane so I know i should be careful. When you’re in the heat of battle sometimes you are blind to others, you can only focus on what’s going on infront of you.
@@RainNT I have actually found this out myself recently as well! Having good quality "missing" pings, where you make sure you get your message across effectively can literally be game winning...It's crazy to think how important little things like ping quality can improve your chances of winning so much...
Well there is a few things here. 1) You typically don't want to freeze verse Katarina post 6 UNLESS you've already taken extremely good trades and they are too low to roam OR you know 100% nothing is happening on the map (which is rare.) A lot of people fall into this trap 2) The best way to deal with katarina post 6 is to actually keep neutral, this way you can take good trades, keep eyes on her and IF she does roam you have more room for counter play. E.g. Counter roaming can sometimes be feasible due to how quickly you can get the wave out. Or you can often take plates. 3) A lot of the time people panic because they don't think LONG TERM. If Kat roams bot, fails and gets nothing but a flash. I'll often have an XP lead/reset above the Kat, I should be then using this strength to beat her in the 1v1. Hope this helps
Here is something that helps to think: if your botlane dies to enemy roam after you have pinged, you can ignore that side of the map completely. However, when you ping missing and back, always ping back in front of them atleast once, but no more than twice. then ping missing in the river or jungle. This usually works. If this does not work, play around top and jungle. As lissandra your cc makes you an enabler of whoever is carrying at the moment. You can use this to your advanmtage to extend the lead
Hey Curtis the reason we like difficult champions is for much the same reason we were drawn to League in the first place: the difficulty of the game. We have more fun when things are not easy, and I personally get bored very quickly with many other games now that I've played League. Same thing goes for champions! Edit: I did learn a lot about the Sylas matchup!
Interesting take! I'd understand this perspective a little more if people were winning a lot with the easy champs, but the thing is, they are still struggling hardcore even ON the simpler champs. League is already so bloody difficult! But I appreciate the perspective mate
This is also about the inability to adapt. Humans are creatures of social approval. Difficult champions can do more than easier champions. So, if a player is looking to one trick something, he is more likely to pick a difficult champion because an extremly good play on Syndra gets more recognition than on someone like Lux or Annie. @@CoachCurtis
@@CoachCurtis Personally I think it's independent of winning or not because if you're a new player then most of your focus is going to be on the champion simply because you don't know enough about the game yet to know what to think about other than that. I've noticed this a lot when playing with friends that are new to the game and when they die they'll say something like "ah if i had just r'd that person instead of that person or did this" or really anything about their champ when there are so many other things going on that could have led to them dying. If you look at it in the kind of way of "they don't know what else to think about" then I think it might be more understandable why complex champs are more interesting for a lot of people, even if they lose on them.
This doesn't explain why champs like Cassiopea or Singed have such a low pick rate despite being hard. The reality is probably that the mechanical part of league is the easiest to improve, so mechanically harder champions are actually easier to make progress onto. Also, they usually have more options, so more outplay potential and more agency, so more fun
Your prospective on the game is beneficial to all roles. I main support and have been listening to you for 8 months and climbed from silver 1 to Platinum 4. I have been steadily climbing on my hard suck silver account that I used to get negative gains. 20 for a win and -27 for a loss. This new season I am getting the opposite. Thank you so much.
I have a friend thats pretty hard stuck in iron to bronze and doesn't like to play simple champions. He says he gets bored playing simple chanpions. I try to tell him he just needs to focus less on the micro interactions while playing those champs. Macro awareness, tracking the jungler, just paying attention to the game as a whole instead of just his character. He always plays better on them and dies far less to gabks but always goes back to playing the higher demand champs. I think the reason the lower elo players are drawn toward those champs is just the whole concept of "you dont know what you dont know" they fail to realize that you can still get complexity out of the game while playing simple champions. Too much focus on what choices their champions have, not enough on the choices they have as a player.
Lmao, hearing Curtis talk about the fumble on Naafiri with black cleaver and Seryldas grudge on the podcast is one thing, actually watching his visible confusion while hovering on the item is another 😂
The way you're speaking about choosing champions reminds me of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, specifically "Get out of your mind and into your life" by Steven Hayes The introduction touches on how we create mental blocks that mirror our goals, and when we set out to do something we are also subconsciously avoiding obvious obstacles (in this case, having to learn another champion later on/down the road), even though it's perfectly logical to just calmly continue.
#3 really hit home. Especially since I don't have time to spam games all day, it's really upsetting because you feel like you just lost and got no further learning, because you didn't know about that particular thing. I was facing Naafiri as Neeko for the first time and got absolutely destroyed by her point & click dash and insane early damage. Just absolutely threw a game because I didn't know what the champ does and its relative strength to my own.
The clip at the end of the Nafari realizing they can not buy black cleaver and Grudge was very relatable. Had basically the exact thing happen to me in the first week of the season.
As a Diana one trick one thing I’d probably highlight in your academy is the importance of hourglass in just about every single game. That item alone allows more forgiveness since you generally don’t have a solid reliable way to get out. A lot of playing Diana is just poking with Qs and being patient. Just because you hit Q on something doesn’t automatically give you the green light to go in esp with no hourglass and not all enemy team accounted for. It’s a lot easier to play Diana in 2v2s than 4v4s etc. Also pulling one champ in with R and hitting any tank champ with it is practically useless. Throw some Qs and be patient. Also I don’t recommend phase rush in low elo. It’s a very high skill cap rune and requires not only good mechanics but solid game knowledge as well. Stick to the stock standard elec most of the time. Low elo is all about keeping things simple and easy to execute. Best of luck to all in his classes. Dude knows his stuff @curtis
I agree that Diana is a mid game champ to me. She spikes the hardest in the mid game with 2-3 items where she can one tap squishies in skirmishes but isn't risking being one shot for it, especially if she lacks the damage to actually one tap which is the case in very late game. Just because her ult has a good team fight utility it doesn't mean she's good in 5v5 situations.
On the topic of learning hard champions and making learning a role harder: Many years ago I used to be a jungle main. Then the reworks of like 5 assassins happened, it was rengar, kha'zix, leblanc, katarina and talon as far as I remember. I tried all of them including the midlaners. Something about Katarina just clicked with me. I absolutely loved and still love playing that champ. So I had to do 2 in one. Learn a hard champ and a new role entirely in one go. Id say people dont look at it as learning the hard way but rather learning what they like to learn. Someone choosing Syndra could just be that they think she is really cool and enjoy her playstyle and its just that.
As someone who played dravin kalista and and then ashe as a main over the few years of playing. I learned I wanted to show my "skill"but in the ends yes I had 1v 9 games but you lose sight of winning those games. Once I moved to Ashe I won more games and it was just a much more reliable champ
About Syndra, I think the reason people gravitate towards Syndra is that she has a fairly good laning phase where she can outrange or match most other midlane mages and can even play a bit of a lane bully if you are good at landing Qs, even though obviously she does not have the same impact she used to have in this regard, she does get very good wave clear with QWE around level 9 and she feels very rewarding to play when you do your combos right. I think she's a bit similar to Jhin because her kit just feels good and smooth/good feel to it.
I enjoyed your analogy on resets with the car. The way I see the need to reset is this: if I don't go spend my gold and upgrade my equipment, my items are going to become out of date and I won't be able to keep up with my opposite number. Its a bit like trying to fight world war 2 with world war 1 weapons & tactics, its very hard. I don't understand why people like the hard champions. I don't like hard champions, I play pretty female marksmen who are beginner & intermediate in skill level: Ashe/Jinx & want to play Zeri.
Not responding to roams and not taking bad roams is big. But it's a mental battle to not do it. It is especially frustrating when you're pinging missing and danger on the lane your opponent is roaming to, but they get a double kill any way and your team starts typing about 'mid gap'.
I enjoy champions with mechanical complexity. I find them more rewarding to execute. I'm aware I'd climb faster if I stuck to simpler champions, but I value my enjoyment of the game more than my rank.
For the Syndra question, I think the kind of person who wants coaching in League, who wants to be as good as possible, is the kind of person who is very driven to overcome challenges.
One trope I fall into often is thinking that I'm doing something well or making the right decisions because I end up ahead, but will make a mistake just like the Vex did 28:56 and just not realize that it was a mistake because the enemy did something similar or worse. Just because you're doing better than your opponent doesn't mean you're doing good or making right decisions! This happens at every rank too.
Returning OG player, sup main normally stuck around S1 with off meta picks like Teemo and shaco sup. I just started playing again, and after 12 norms YOLOed into placement games and placed Bronze2. Over a weekend made it to S4. I sometimes catch myself after a hard loss, thinking... " I am S1... how could I be struggling...." and that is when I take a step back and remind myself that I am relearning this game. I AM WHERE I BELONG. But other games... just feel so out of my control. I had a hard loss streak recently on Saturday, where nothing went right. I hard won lane almost every game. I had some AFK and a lot of lanes just hard feeding. I am taking a learning mindset, but those games just felt so out of my control. It was really demoralizing. It honestly felt like a curse. The next day, I started back up and started crushing games again. On that first win... I stood up, threw my arms up, and shouted, "the curse is broken!" My journey continues.
Personally, I play since season 10 and have been stuck in silver for the past 4 years. I swapped from Support to Jungle only to swap between them depending on meta. This season I sat down to finally actively grind and imrpove. I picked up the mid lane role for a change and specifically Syndra. Now what a lot of people underestimate is how easy Syndra plays when your opponents don't know the matchup. I played about 60 Games with Syndra with a 58% wr. I'm gonna be honest, that wouldn't be possible with Veigar. Veigar might be easier to understand but I feel like in a game with so many dashes, Veigar just feels useless. So even though he is wqy easier than Syndra to pick up, imo it's 10x harder to win as Veigar. Syndra's kit is perfect because she has everything you need in her kit. To finish my point: For the first time in 4 years I hit Gold and if Syndra didn't exist I would've never climbed out of silver this fast
What I find fun is as an opt malz, knowing how the opponent should play against me and seeing and calling out their errors based on the champ they’re playing.
Great video, I'm in saltu currently and the way I see it with people gravitating to the difficult champions is that they're just more "exciting" in terms of all the stuff they can do and give a feel of being high minded when doing well. Not to mention some of the characters people fall in love with as characters just happen to be complicated but they just really like 'em. I personally have a pretty big aversion to difficult champs just because I'm not some league prodigy and practicing simple abilities to an effective level is more rewarding and gets more results than picking someone like kayn and lee sin where theres so many decision points and mixed reference points that I'm too mentally taxed by just the character compared to applying it in the game. Good simple characters also just dont get pick/banned so in jungle queue you can basically guarantee youll always get it. I'm about 150 games on udyr between last split and this split and hes been banned once.
One hypothesis about the difficult champ pick in my mind is them trying to set themselves up for failure intuitively, like if they don’t make it out of bronze in x amount of time on syndra it makes sense since she’s so complex. Gives them an excuse in a way, that’s my take at least.
when it comes to a personal opinion and experience on the first point, I gravitate more towards difficult champions because the easier champs make me subconciously put way less thought into the game, almost like my brain turns completely off
diana is an AP diver. doesn't have the disengage of an assassin nor the survivability of AD divers that can build bruiser items. maybe season 14 item changes made it easier for her but didn't play her yet
So there are probably many subsets of players and you'll notice some of them more than others. Like there will be players that gravitate toward difficult champions, and you'll notice them in coaching because they're a mess, unable to execute their game plan well and unable to focus on the wider game since they're preoccupied with their lack of champion mastery. You'll also have people that gravitate toward a certain type of champion and you might notice them in the same vein if they can't limit themselves to one champion like Viktor but also dip into Syndra, or those that play Rengar and Khazix etc. similar champions that just happen to be difficult to learn and master. On the other hand you'll also get players that just enjoy playing tanks, or bruisers, because they want to play beefy or scrappy champions and they just happen to have easier execution and game plans.
Everything comes down to mechanics till masters. If you have good mechanics you can easily go to diamond. This is why you see a lot of one tricks in diamond. Masters and above what matters besides mechanics is macro, rotations, consistency across your games and VERY IMPORTANT team comp. In diamond you can be shit at macro, but if you play vayne for example and you can outplay mechanicly the enemy team in 1v2 or 1v3 you will win most of the time.
Back in the ye old days of yore, tiot had a refer a friend policy, within that policy i referred a total of 432 people. People picked the champions they played purely off of champion/theme/identity/fantasy. The difficulty of the champion that they chose to play was almost never a factor. The only time that i can rember that it was, was when they had come down to a decision, and were stuck between two or three choices. With that in mind, the reason syndra is a popular choice despite the difficulty is simply because she is seen as cool. Syndra is also a deceptively difficult champion. Save for the times when syndra is overtuned, her champion execution isnt what is hard about her. The hard part is the players ability to play league fundamentally well through the means of proper positioning, well crafted wave states, tethering, etc. Syndra herself is easy to understand as a concept. Place ball down on opponet push ball onto opponet for stun re-throw ball on to them and press r. (I know there's alot more to it than that, but thats what a new player sees of her with a cursory glance.) So for newer players syndra seems to be a far easier champion to play than she really is, especially when compared to the likes of oriana, victor, azir, or cassiopeia.
As an aside, a person who has reached the upper limits of the champion that they have chosen to main, and now has to play around their champion limits and thus becoming a God of league fundamentals specifically to surpass their champions fundamental ceiling is a thing of absolute beauty. Riste on garen, baus on sion/gragas , mango on fizz, azzap on velkoz. Azzap in particular I think shows this off very well.
Don't forget that Syndra was meta for the entirety of last season. She was super popular in competetive as well. That might have increased interest in her.
The biggest issue with roams, no matter how inefficient they are, is simply that you need to do them in order to show your team that you are trying to help so that your team does not go mental boom and just "ff next" it. It doesn't matter if you get far ahead by playing right when your team shuts off mentally, you can't 1v5 a game most of the time. A big part of league is managing the mentals of your team mates, probably even more than trying to do the "right play" sometimes, especially in lower ELO.
@@CoachCurtis In my experience you often will not get to the backend of the game this way :X. There are so many guides out there how to do the right thing in the right situation, but the right thing often gets your team to mentally collapse in lower ELO. I have no experience how it is in higher ELO like high Dia and further up, but at least up to low Dia it was very very painful. Another thing, of course, is that you as one of the best players on your server will not have a hard time playing your way through these lower brackets because you are so good that you maybe can "convince" your team that you are gonna carry them, but that is not true for most players in these brackets, they are not so much better than everyone, otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place for a longer period of time.
@@MrReese I definitely see both sides. I have had this a lot in my experience where I will do the right thing and play macro. Then, my team disagrees, tilts and just mental booms. It's very frustrating. It's a tough position to be in.
This is the kind of thought process that convinces you to not let yourself improve btw. Instead of trying to trust the coach about whether or not he's right, try just accepting the idea that this is a thought process that will hurt you regardless of whether or not it's right. If you can reject this pattern of thought and focus purely on improvement of your own gameplay then you will improve and climb over time no matter what.
@@soul0172 I never had any coaching and I am not playing League anymore by now, but I was playing it for about 11 years. The whole point of my statement is that almost every guide and educational content is from the standpoint of a player who is far beyond the current ability of those who watch and also in a completely different ELO. The next issue is that there is a distinctive difference between trying to get better and trying to win, which is a big problem in itself in the game. You are supposed to ignore your team, ignore their mentals, etc., but that will only get you more losses and it's not fun either.
Please note, curtis makes a lot of good points. However, this is from my experience in playing all these champions as a low elo player. (I stay low elo because of my macro most of the time, but i also cs really badly, it's inconsistent from game to game.) The 1 point version: Syndra: Al about controlling the battlefield. You do not want to burst the enemy. You want to control the battlefield. Movement speed on her is a must, but don't overfocus it. Ekko: I agree: Clear waves, aggressive trades so your opponent can not fight back. Diana: She is a flexpick. She can build bruiser, DPS or AP Assasin. Her safest playstyle is bruiser with more defensive setup. Forget protobelt, this is not needed on her. The less you rely on protobelt for diana, the better you learn to make good engages. Being bruiser, also allows you to survive small risks, that assasin diana will die if engaged wrong. The long versions (Only those I think are good for beginners, but need a different approach): Syndra can be learned in 30 to 50 games, but you need patience. Syndra is all about maintaining control, even her theme is about control. Patience is something that syndra teaches. For newer players I do reccomend maxing W instead of Q. You get better waveclear and you can manipulate your balls much better. I do use glacial augment or phaserush with syndra, all about maintaining control. even when behind. Diana can be learned in 20 games or less. *Don't go phase rush if you don't have to. Her strongest runes are Lethal Tempo with Overgrowth and Conditioning, or Aftershock with Sudden Dash and Ultimate Hunter. In both of those cases, you utilize Overgrowth, as it synergizes extremly well with your W. Take Double Health Scaling shard. It is much more effective on diana. * *In lane, focus on casters. If enemy comes to hit a melee, you auto-w-auto them. Usually that is enough to make any melee back off. You want to farm, get Rod of Ages (AP) or Zhonya (AD), and scale.* * Aggressive laners who have good waveclear require you to delay leveling up your spell and see which spell they pick. If they pick waveclear, you start with Q, as you will need to play defensive instead until level 3.* *Level up Strategies: * *W-E-Q*: Likes of zed and talon, who you can counter easily with shield and some armor. *E-Q-W*: People who don't utilize their waveclear. This allows you to punish them when they throw their abilities half-arsed *Q-E-W*: Aggressive waveclear. You want Q first to help you farm on level 1. Usually E second, since most players with high waveclear are ranged or have mobility of their own. If you go for zhonya, your second item must be an HP item, so thats where protobelt makes sense, but I prefer rilay. More utility, cheaper cost. Protobelt allows for engage and disengage, but it also makes you more prone to making engages or hesitating to engage. Rilay with it's slow makes it easier to stick to your targets once you are on top of them and is cheaper. More wall of text: The main idea is to build on her strengths. Her strength is not her burst. It's her constant DPS and ability to splitpush (Macro). So, as a result, you do not want phase rush on diana. You pick diana into melee matchups first. Try to avoid range matchups for the first 10 games. This is so you can learn to utilize a more defensive oriented playstyle. You want lethal tempo, triumph, Legend Alacrity and Last Stand, with Conditioning and Overgrowth secondary. You start with dorangs ring. Avoid tear, as this will skip the crucial step of diana being very manahungry if used improperly. Your first item should be rod of ages or zhonya. You get seekers against AD midlaners, as the armor paired with your shield, is very effective. Everyone else, amplifying dome into catalyst start is stronger, as you get increase in your shield. You almost always max W, not Q, not E, but W. This allows you to position very aggressively inside the enemy wave. If the enemy contests, you win because your 3 orbs+passive third attack clear the casters in every level of the game. This is why avoiding protobelt is important. You allow the enemy to come to you, instead of going in yourself. Then you use your abilities to counter their engage, by turning on them. Diana is all about counterengage. You can engage first, but that is a risk. In most of the cases, you want the enemy to engage, then turn on them. **The reason diana in that clip hesitated was because he did not have enough defences to survive the engage. He most likely did not have W maxed, because event with protobelt, maxing W makes him capable of ignoring briar and bursting heimer just enough to escape with protobelt. Not engage with protobelt, escape with it. The rest of the team would have been able to clean it up if he followed on noc engage immidietly without hesitation. However, with phase rush, you can not do that, as you almost always take domination or precision tree secondary with that build. This does not give you enough defences to survive, if being turned on. High risk, high reward. If he has AfterShock, Conditioning and Overgrowth here, he would have not hesitated to go in. And he still would have had enough burst to kill the enemy, on top of enough dps to kill briar. First mistake of every diana player in every elo is disregarding her defensive abilities.**
About the ability use: Lux key ability is Q only against divers. Against every other matchup, it's your E. learning to use it well comes from making mistakes. So don't be afraid to make them. But always, always make sure if you land your E, it lands on the enemy champion. Against divers, indeed, hold Q until they engage. About that viktor sylas trade: The enemy had more minions, and there were more coming. Viktor has good waveclear. While your point is excelent, there is one more point to make: never fight sylas in your own wave, as he gets increased healing from it, and you can not clear his wave, thus you will take more damage.
something really OP this season for mid lane is to plan on a reset to be back in lane full hp & mana with some items before Grubs spawn that way you have higher chance of winning the mess that the jungler is going to cause by pinging everyone to get them when without prio junglers should understand that its okay to give a few and just need 2 to not give the enemy the passive from them.
I actually left your below gold program and picked up syndra, still applied the lessens you taught and now i have gone from silver>platnum one tricking her. I think syndra teaches you how to play properly and there are always small things you can do that pay big dividends
Just to add my two cents to the "why play a hard champion", as a chronic main of hard characters in pretty much every game - they're just cooler. From my experience, if I look at a champ with no context and just see *what they do* and think it's cool, it's likely that they're among the hardest characters in their role. It doesn't feel as good to have to play something you don't find cool just cause it's easier, even if it's inevitably gonna be more helpful.
I think ppl enjoy champs based on the champ fantasy primarily, and its climbing potential is only a secondary consideration. Many of the more complex champs in League are just really interesting, conceptually/visually. I think this is why ppl are drawn to such champs.
I did the same thing with top where I started with Riven which was the worst champ to start with. I think most players are drawn to complex champs because they tend to be less repetitive and more fun. + My idea was a lot of complex champs have a higher skill ceiling/More potential so if I spend long enough on it I would benefiting in the long term.
As a OTP Azir I don’t know if it’s the satisfaction of being able to make plays that I wouldn’t have at the beginning of my journey with the champ or what. At this point I have thousands of games though and his kit is just something I always clicked with and allowed me to have fun even if it was difficult for a while.
Something I do automatically at this point is asking myself why something didn't go as I thought it would. A little while ago I played nocturne into briar jungle. I thought I could win the 1v1 as long as I blocked her stun with my spell shield. That was wrong, she almost 1 shot me and I had to blow flash. Some of this may have been because she had ignite, but it honestly wasn't that close. So apparently I cannot outduel briar, even if she plays it badly
I have no idea what I did but I think I'm randomly improving? I've always been a casual league fan, and hovering bronze 3 in EUW/NA. I moved to NA and on my new EUW account got placed PLAT I lmao. I am for sure not plat I, but it gave me a little confidence boost. I now came back to my main, playing smolder mid :3 with a few other picks at an 80% wr and I'm now silver II :)) I think I started thinking more about my positioning and IS WHAT IM DOING ACTUALLY GOOD. I feel like just asking questions to yourself is so helpful. I also try to keep my teams spirits up by being positive and trying to stop them from mental booming and 5min which helps a LOT. Maybe I can hit gold soon :3
How is vex 9 on difficulty scale? I know she has skillshots, but they are pretty easy to land and her kit all around is pretty simple. I climbed to plat from silver with her and qiayana.
Vex is a bit of a controversial one. I think she can be simple to people who intuitively understand the concepts of 'multi threat' and 'fog of war'. Other players who are used to playing more 'front to back' and classic mages struggle.
Currently emerald (actually plat but finished emerald and i havent been playing because im looking to move into my own place let me cope) and i occasionally use your vids to try to tighten up my mental or minor niches about the game and some fundamentals i need to improve on
Personally Syndra is easier than Annie... Annie is flash R stun and I don't like to flash offensively. Syndra is Q poke Q poke (it's aoe dmg so you don't take minion agro) stun death, never pushing forward yourself
The point of Diana should not be to 1 shot the entire team with her ult. It should be to go in while her team is in position to hard punish them while they are in Diana ult. You should think of her more as an engage/enable champ that leans more to damage than tankiness. At least that's how I personally see her, even though she's only getting played when she's so broken that she 1 shots your entire team
I'm dying to know how Syndra got a 10 when her kit and engage style is rather straightforward. Is it knowing how to play around her limitations? Please help me understand because I've played her on and off since s9 and feel there are far more complex mid-lane champions than her. "Small things done well" applies just as readily to Malzahar who likes short trades and prefers to scale hard into the late game (or at least the way I play him does).
Very informative video, especially the initial ranking of mid lane champions ranked on difficulty. Would it be possible to make a similar list for top lane ?
is the roam really that bad in terms of wavemanagement in 27:28? I mean his wave is crashing anyways under his tower. Its really bad from ekko not to snack those. Im not a fan of the flipcoin roam he did all but otherwise he would be just standing in front of the tower and dodging ekko q or e´s maybe
I've seen you talk about Viktor being complicated before. I've never really understood what makes him complicated. I've kinda wanted to pick him up for a while and have played a few games on him, and mechanically he is easy. His abilities are simple and there are no difficult combos that I know of at least. The problem I'm having more so that Viktor just deals less damage than other midlaners, so I'll land everything, but it's not enough to kill a single target and then I have nothing left. So Viktor isn't really working for me, but I don't even understand why he's working for high ranks but not for me, what even is it that is difficult to understand about making him work?
Viktor is all about 'small incremental wins'. You need to take short trade after short trade, it requires patience/poise/discipline. This is what makes him hard for most
Hi, may I ask when will the newest coaching session start? I registered your MLA course and was informed that a new session would be started in early Ferb but I still not get any notification. Did I miss the notification by any chance?
I just dont agree that syndra is as difficult as people say. Im a silver top player, but I still win MOST of my syndra games. Her combo is extremely easy to hit against low elo players, and her range makes spacing very safe and easy. As you get into higher elo is where I believe she becomes difficult, because people can dodge her shit. Its that simple. Of course a high elo player thinks shes difficult, because her kit becomes way harder to use against other good players.
It may be different as support, but in my personal experience, I can only climb playing harder champs like Bard and Vel'koz versus the easier supports. Maybe I have trouble being limited by simplier playstyles? I'm not sure.
Hey Curtis, i recently watched your Yone guide since i started playing him. i rly like your guide cuz its very detailed. But a friend of me told me the Guide is "outdated" since season changed and items changed. But i dont think your whole guide is outdated. maybe the items but even there i dont think is much to change and the Champ identity and laningphase should be the same overall. Would be nice if you could confirm your guide is still fine.
i was really close to hit gold then i lost over and over with super hard games and now im bronze 4 and loose 35 lp and gain 25. what can i do when it feels impossible to win? i only play annie mid and have watched your videos for so long and the hardest part is to get a team comeback.
Syndra is dark, edgy and hot. That might seem like a goofy answer but honestly i wouldn't be surprised if that was the most significant reason she is favored. It gives her massive visual and thematic appeal.
This is very cool. I appreciate the time you put into your videos. I’m relatively new to LoL but love the concept of Twisted Fate. I understand he isn’t the win condition but more of an enabler. With this in mind, is there a better champion to learn to get the fundamentals of the game or is he a good pick because it almost forces him to be aware of the lane states and macro?
A higher level player would have a better response to your question than me but Galio and Pantheon are on curtis's MLS-approved list and have the long distance teleport ult + CC
Hey! Is MLA open for relatively new players as well? Lately i got more free time than i need, and climbing this ladder seems like a great challenge. I can identify my mistakes and i can grow on my own... but there is also a chance that i come to the wrong conclusion, and it would be way better and faster if i learn the right way in the first place. I learned occasionally, but i had little time to actually practice it. For example i can freeze a lane without an issue, but learning to keep an eye on the minimap needs way more time to practice. I wanted to start ranked multiple times before, but i was just too scared. The only thing i knew is that i know nothing; and all of my roommates were yelling at this game, rage quitting, i didn't want to be the cause nor a witness.
The MLS is your best bet if you're a new player, it's primarily focused on the iron --> plat ranked journey. Once you've hit plat, you're eligible to get into the MLA.
I found his analogy at 16:30 pretty funny as an American because a 60 mile (100km) drive (about 1hr 15min of driving) isn't considered a very long time to drive here.
@@garagavia I was in America once, and you honestly can't believe how big US is. My favorite example is that you can literally drive 11 hours in Texas and still be in Texas. In 11 Hours you can get from Hungary to France, which is almost trough Europe. The road infrastructure in the US is the exact opposite of poor, and you can get even better ones if you pay for private ones. EU is extremely dense.
Just a quick question, what if I need to reset (low health and 800+ gold) and I’ve crashed my wave into the enemy tower - BUT my jungler is on their way to wither grubs or dragon . Do I still reset? My experience is jungler goes in for the objective anyway, and then I get flamed when they get collapsed on and die. Might be a dumb question from a silver scrub , but thought I’d ask anyway haha
From a member of Curtis' Mid Lane Academy: Assuming you don't have TP available, at that point it's about damage control. I would ping danger on top of the objective, and type something like "basing, care prio". The alternative is that you stay and either 1) go to the objective or 2) pressure your laner. 1) if you get collapsed on with 30% health, you're just going to give over 300g and lose the objective anyway 2) if you try to pressure with low resources, you make yourself vulnerable to a solo kill or a gank The fundamental issue with both these is: you still need to base and now you don't have a window If your jungler still goes for it and dies, that's not your problem. You need to adapt and keep playing to your champion's identity. I'll add that if you find these situations occuring a lot, it would be good to get into the details in the review. You may find that you're not aware of the objective timer, you missed a previous base window, you didn't ward and got ganked, etc. At this point it's really a case-by-case basis on what the issue is :)
Hi coach Curtis I am kind of new to the game and I also play hard champ, Akali. I understand that she is a hard champ to play and master, I felt it, but the fun of playing such champions comes from their difficulty. Like it is more rewarding, cool and fun when you can land tricky combos and so on. But the tricky part about this is when you play normals you get low scores and KDA 0/5/0 or worse and you just do not improve. In the video just like you explained it is better to know game better when maybe tackle other or those difficult champs, my friend suggested the same. I play Ahri and Akali mid so I kinda only focusing Ahri and adc. But I am not sure if I am improve anymore since kinda my scores stayed the same
It happened the same to me, first champs played Ahri and Akali. I would recommend you to play Akali when you feel like it (in norms obviously) every now and then. Exemple: Play mainly Ahri and every x time do a little session playing Akali. Don't bother the score, try to improve the fluidity of your gameplay, how you conect her abilities and use them to enter and get out of the fight. Are you using her passive well? How I can escape a bad situation? If you focus on learning how to feel comfortable using her kit and moving with her you will be able to die less, focus on other things besides casting q w e or r properly, and you will slowly apply the things you learn when you play with other champs. Is a slow process but it let's you achieve the level to enjoy playing her doing some cool things while knowing there's a lot to improve. As a lot of people say it is also a good thing to watch streamers or youtubers maining her. Hope I didn't bore you too much.😅
Akali as an assassin is difficult to do well (on the scores) if you can't kill. I would recommend to ask yourself what you can do to win in each match. Preparing for dragon/nashor quiting and placing wards? Distracting or zoning the enemy when taking objectives? Diving in teamfight to bait the cc so my team can clean afterwards? Or you can splitpush with liches' bane as you don't give more gold (extreme case, split pushing will give you minion gold plus the experience will be only for you)? It's hard to enjoy playing wile being behind or being a dead weight to the team so is up to you to find something you can do to help the team (besides not dying).
@@znkr53 No its okei, I want to learn its kinda a bit discuraging to play 0/6 games in normals. I was at my first days playing against bots it was hard, but now it what 18/0 with both so I kinda can out play them without any effort. I played it to get used playing as them. I just played 2 games with Ahri and it was quite messy since it was on the red side and I kinda trying to learn camera control, but I weirdly walked everywhere. I tried to help my team but they already dead so yea. I am kinda always nervous so hinders my play a bit and I just focus on farming, but I managed to learn farm and trading so it is a little improvement.
From what I've seen , the fun people get from WINNING and improving with simpler champs is more satisfying/more fun then trying to win with a hard champ (While losing a lot)
Its simple. You earn more prestige by being good on difficult champs and people hunger for that prestige its a common trap of a competition you want to be the absolute best player
Am I just mentally weak Mr. Curtis? I swear I can't pull through 3 blocks these days ngl, if games are easy and smooth or just fast losses then I can, but I just played 1 game today and at the end of it I'm just tapped out. No I didn't flame my team, yeah we had a rough early game but every single player pulled through, we played well, I muted all and tbh I don't think anyone flamed anyone, but at the end of that 40 minutes game I felt every single brain cell just shut off and I just can't go through it anymore. League is just that mentally taxing for me I guess, though to be fair, if my job isn't already stressful I can probably play more, but these days 1 game and I'm done lmao. Normal games don't feel competitive enough that's why I play ranked, I still love the game as I'm going through it, but I just can't play 2+ games anymore. Maybe I'm just old now :(
i hate when nobody pushes lanes. People just refuse to clear waves before rotating to a fight or objectives so we end up losing tempo even though we win the skrimish
Hi new sub and new fan :D i'm learning a lot from you thank you much but i want to ask you : i'm an otp zed but i can't get out from emerlad , even tho i play my games perfectly :( can you please make a video about mid for s14 or zed tips and thank you so much
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Found ur channel 2 years ago and ur approach to learning the game rly helped me climb. Over those 2 years I went from plat1 (now emerald 1) to master in season 12 hovering 150lp with a 300lp peak mid season. Due to busyness real life im taking a break from league, but ur focus on playing with high intensity and being aware of ur choices in game have been invaluable to my improvement and even more importantly it made it enjoyable for me to play ranked again, so tyty
Agreed, best mindset is “I don’t lose, I only win or learn”
If I might offer a perspective on #5:
I tend to play control mages. A scenario I'd often come across in mid is I'd be against an assassin, I'd shut them out from interacting with me by pulling and freezing the wave near my turret, then that assassin would go roam because they can't farm. In the back of my mind is always the following scenario:
1. Playing against Katarina (or some other roam-heavy, multi-kill oriented assassin).
2. She roams bot because they're overextended.
3. I ping missing two or three times on mid, then ping caution on bot lane.
4. I stay in lane, crash the wave.
5. Bot lane didn't play carefully enough, gets double killed by Kat.
6. I get spam-pinged and flamed by the bot lane for not pinging miss (I did) and not following the roam (which I can't cuz the Kat would just turn and kill me instead).
This has happened more times than I can count and is where the majority of my anxiety about roams comes from: if my lane opponent roams and I don't follow, my team-mates are going to die even if I pinged miss well in advance because they just don't pay attention and then they're going to blame me for not helping (despite the fact that my help probably wouldn't have saved them anyway).
It's for this and MANY other reasons that I play League with chat muted. Right or wrong, focusing on my own game helps me play a lot better.
From my experience climbing to high diamond. Low elo don’t listen to pings, they need visual stimulation. Try back pinging IN their lane right on top of their head and then ping missing on/across the river so they understand what’s going on. They can’t say you didn’t ping if you put it infront of their face. And most of the time even I prefer players to back ping me in lane so I know i should be careful. When you’re in the heat of battle sometimes you are blind to others, you can only focus on what’s going on infront of you.
@@RainNT I have actually found this out myself recently as well! Having good quality "missing" pings, where you make sure you get your message across effectively can literally be game winning...It's crazy to think how important little things like ping quality can improve your chances of winning so much...
Well there is a few things here.
1) You typically don't want to freeze verse Katarina post 6 UNLESS you've already taken extremely good trades and they are too low to roam OR you know 100% nothing is happening on the map (which is rare.) A lot of people fall into this trap
2) The best way to deal with katarina post 6 is to actually keep neutral, this way you can take good trades, keep eyes on her and IF she does roam you have more room for counter play. E.g. Counter roaming can sometimes be feasible due to how quickly you can get the wave out. Or you can often take plates.
3) A lot of the time people panic because they don't think LONG TERM. If Kat roams bot, fails and gets nothing but a flash. I'll often have an XP lead/reset above the Kat, I should be then using this strength to beat her in the 1v1.
Hope this helps
Here is something that helps to think: if your botlane dies to enemy roam after you have pinged, you can ignore that side of the map completely. However, when you ping missing and back, always ping back in front of them atleast once, but no more than twice. then ping missing in the river or jungle. This usually works.
If this does not work, play around top and jungle. As lissandra your cc makes you an enabler of whoever is carrying at the moment. You can use this to your advanmtage to extend the lead
most people i know dont play with sound, this is so true@@RainNT
Hey Curtis the reason we like difficult champions is for much the same reason we were drawn to League in the first place: the difficulty of the game. We have more fun when things are not easy, and I personally get bored very quickly with many other games now that I've played League. Same thing goes for champions!
Edit: I did learn a lot about the Sylas matchup!
Interesting take! I'd understand this perspective a little more if people were winning a lot with the easy champs, but the thing is, they are still struggling hardcore even ON the simpler champs. League is already so bloody difficult! But I appreciate the perspective mate
This is also about the inability to adapt. Humans are creatures of social approval. Difficult champions can do more than easier champions. So, if a player is looking to one trick something, he is more likely to pick a difficult champion because an extremly good play on Syndra gets more recognition than on someone like Lux or Annie. @@CoachCurtis
@@CoachCurtis Personally I think it's independent of winning or not because if you're a new player then most of your focus is going to be on the champion simply because you don't know enough about the game yet to know what to think about other than that. I've noticed this a lot when playing with friends that are new to the game and when they die they'll say something like "ah if i had just r'd that person instead of that person or did this" or really anything about their champ when there are so many other things going on that could have led to them dying. If you look at it in the kind of way of "they don't know what else to think about" then I think it might be more understandable why complex champs are more interesting for a lot of people, even if they lose on them.
This doesn't explain why champs like Cassiopea or Singed have such a low pick rate despite being hard. The reality is probably that the mechanical part of league is the easiest to improve, so mechanically harder champions are actually easier to make progress onto. Also, they usually have more options, so more outplay potential and more agency, so more fun
Your prospective on the game is beneficial to all roles. I main support and have been listening to you for 8 months and climbed from silver 1 to Platinum 4. I have been steadily climbing on my hard suck silver account that I used to get negative gains. 20 for a win and -27 for a loss. This new season I am getting the opposite. Thank you so much.
his prospective what
I have a friend thats pretty hard stuck in iron to bronze and doesn't like to play simple champions. He says he gets bored playing simple chanpions.
I try to tell him he just needs to focus less on the micro interactions while playing those champs. Macro awareness, tracking the jungler, just paying attention to the game as a whole instead of just his character. He always plays better on them and dies far less to gabks but always goes back to playing the higher demand champs.
I think the reason the lower elo players are drawn toward those champs is just the whole concept of "you dont know what you dont know" they fail to realize that you can still get complexity out of the game while playing simple champions. Too much focus on what choices their champions have, not enough on the choices they have as a player.
Lmao, hearing Curtis talk about the fumble on Naafiri with black cleaver and Seryldas grudge on the podcast is one thing, actually watching his visible confusion while hovering on the item is another 😂
HAHAHAHA
The way you're speaking about choosing champions reminds me of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, specifically "Get out of your mind and into your life" by Steven Hayes
The introduction touches on how we create mental blocks that mirror our goals, and when we set out to do something we are also subconsciously avoiding obvious obstacles (in this case, having to learn another champion later on/down the road), even though it's perfectly logical to just calmly continue.
Fascinating! Thanks for this insight
#3 really hit home. Especially since I don't have time to spam games all day, it's really upsetting because you feel like you just lost and got no further learning, because you didn't know about that particular thing. I was facing Naafiri as Neeko for the first time and got absolutely destroyed by her point & click dash and insane early damage. Just absolutely threw a game because I didn't know what the champ does and its relative strength to my own.
The clip at the end of the Nafari realizing they can not buy black cleaver and Grudge was very relatable. Had basically the exact thing happen to me in the first week of the season.
🤫
As a Diana one trick one thing I’d probably highlight in your academy is the importance of hourglass in just about every single game. That item alone allows more forgiveness since you generally don’t have a solid reliable way to get out. A lot of playing Diana is just poking with Qs and being patient. Just because you hit Q on something doesn’t automatically give you the green light to go in esp with no hourglass and not all enemy team accounted for. It’s a lot easier to play Diana in 2v2s than 4v4s etc. Also pulling one champ in with R and hitting any tank champ with it is practically useless. Throw some Qs and be patient.
Also I don’t recommend phase rush in low elo. It’s a very high skill cap rune and requires not only good mechanics but solid game knowledge as well. Stick to the stock standard elec most of the time. Low elo is all about keeping things simple and easy to execute. Best of luck to all in his classes. Dude knows his stuff @curtis
I agree that Diana is a mid game champ to me. She spikes the hardest in the mid game with 2-3 items where she can one tap squishies in skirmishes but isn't risking being one shot for it, especially if she lacks the damage to actually one tap which is the case in very late game. Just because her ult has a good team fight utility it doesn't mean she's good in 5v5 situations.
Unless she builds a lot more defensive, sacrificing damage for DPS@@Kamishi845
On the topic of learning hard champions and making learning a role harder:
Many years ago I used to be a jungle main. Then the reworks of like 5 assassins happened, it was rengar, kha'zix, leblanc, katarina and talon as far as I remember. I tried all of them including the midlaners. Something about Katarina just clicked with me. I absolutely loved and still love playing that champ. So I had to do 2 in one. Learn a hard champ and a new role entirely in one go.
Id say people dont look at it as learning the hard way but rather learning what they like to learn. Someone choosing Syndra could just be that they think she is really cool and enjoy her playstyle and its just that.
As someone who played dravin kalista and and then ashe as a main over the few years of playing. I learned I wanted to show my "skill"but in the ends yes I had 1v 9 games but you lose sight of winning those games. Once I moved to Ashe I won more games and it was just a much more reliable champ
About Syndra, I think the reason people gravitate towards Syndra is that she has a fairly good laning phase where she can outrange or match most other midlane mages and can even play a bit of a lane bully if you are good at landing Qs, even though obviously she does not have the same impact she used to have in this regard, she does get very good wave clear with QWE around level 9 and she feels very rewarding to play when you do your combos right. I think she's a bit similar to Jhin because her kit just feels good and smooth/good feel to it.
I enjoyed your analogy on resets with the car. The way I see the need to reset is this: if I don't go spend my gold and upgrade my equipment, my items are going to become out of date and I won't be able to keep up with my opposite number. Its a bit like trying to fight world war 2 with world war 1 weapons & tactics, its very hard.
I don't understand why people like the hard champions. I don't like hard champions, I play pretty female marksmen who are beginner & intermediate in skill level: Ashe/Jinx & want to play Zeri.
Love the metaphor there
Zeri is very beginner unfriendly
Not responding to roams and not taking bad roams is big. But it's a mental battle to not do it. It is especially frustrating when you're pinging missing and danger on the lane your opponent is roaming to, but they get a double kill any way and your team starts typing about 'mid gap'.
You got that right about it being a mental battle
I enjoy champions with mechanical complexity. I find them more rewarding to execute. I'm aware I'd climb faster if I stuck to simpler champions, but I value my enjoyment of the game more than my rank.
For the Syndra question, I think the kind of person who wants coaching in League, who wants to be as good as possible, is the kind of person who is very driven to overcome challenges.
One trope I fall into often is thinking that I'm doing something well or making the right decisions because I end up ahead, but will make a mistake just like the Vex did 28:56 and just not realize that it was a mistake because the enemy did something similar or worse. Just because you're doing better than your opponent doesn't mean you're doing good or making right decisions! This happens at every rank too.
Returning OG player, sup main normally stuck around S1 with off meta picks like Teemo and shaco sup.
I just started playing again, and after 12 norms YOLOed into placement games and placed Bronze2. Over a weekend made it to S4.
I sometimes catch myself after a hard loss, thinking... " I am S1... how could I be struggling...." and that is when I take a step back and remind myself that I am relearning this game. I AM WHERE I BELONG. But other games... just feel so out of my control.
I had a hard loss streak recently on Saturday, where nothing went right. I hard won lane almost every game. I had some AFK and a lot of lanes just hard feeding. I am taking a learning mindset, but those games just felt so out of my control.
It was really demoralizing. It honestly felt like a curse. The next day, I started back up and started crushing games again. On that first win... I stood up, threw my arms up, and shouted, "the curse is broken!"
My journey continues.
Personally, I play since season 10 and have been stuck in silver for the past 4 years. I swapped from Support to Jungle only to swap between them depending on meta.
This season I sat down to finally actively grind and imrpove. I picked up the mid lane role for a change and specifically Syndra. Now what a lot of people underestimate is how easy Syndra plays when your opponents don't know the matchup. I played about 60 Games with Syndra with a 58% wr. I'm gonna be honest, that wouldn't be possible with Veigar. Veigar might be easier to understand but I feel like in a game with so many dashes, Veigar just feels useless. So even though he is wqy easier than Syndra to pick up, imo it's 10x harder to win as Veigar.
Syndra's kit is perfect because she has everything you need in her kit. To finish my point: For the first time in 4 years I hit Gold and if Syndra didn't exist I would've never climbed out of silver this fast
The Diana example was a perfect one I've put in a good 100 to 200 games on Diana a few years ago & had problems climbing for the exact same reason
What I find fun is as an opt malz, knowing how the opponent should play against me and seeing and calling out their errors based on the champ they’re playing.
Great video, I'm in saltu currently and the way I see it with people gravitating to the difficult champions is that they're just more "exciting" in terms of all the stuff they can do and give a feel of being high minded when doing well. Not to mention some of the characters people fall in love with as characters just happen to be complicated but they just really like 'em.
I personally have a pretty big aversion to difficult champs just because I'm not some league prodigy and practicing simple abilities to an effective level is more rewarding and gets more results than picking someone like kayn and lee sin where theres so many decision points and mixed reference points that I'm too mentally taxed by just the character compared to applying it in the game.
Good simple characters also just dont get pick/banned so in jungle queue you can basically guarantee youll always get it. I'm about 150 games on udyr between last split and this split and hes been banned once.
One hypothesis about the difficult champ pick in my mind is them trying to set themselves up for failure intuitively, like if they don’t make it out of bronze in x amount of time on syndra it makes sense since she’s so complex. Gives them an excuse in a way, that’s my take at least.
when it comes to a personal opinion and experience on the first point, I gravitate more towards difficult champions because the easier champs make me subconciously put way less thought into the game, almost like my brain turns completely off
Fair enough!
diana is an AP diver. doesn't have the disengage of an assassin nor the survivability of AD divers that can build bruiser items. maybe season 14 item changes made it easier for her but didn't play her yet
So there are probably many subsets of players and you'll notice some of them more than others. Like there will be players that gravitate toward difficult champions, and you'll notice them in coaching because they're a mess, unable to execute their game plan well and unable to focus on the wider game since they're preoccupied with their lack of champion mastery.
You'll also have people that gravitate toward a certain type of champion and you might notice them in the same vein if they can't limit themselves to one champion like Viktor but also dip into Syndra, or those that play Rengar and Khazix etc. similar champions that just happen to be difficult to learn and master.
On the other hand you'll also get players that just enjoy playing tanks, or bruisers, because they want to play beefy or scrappy champions and they just happen to have easier execution and game plans.
Everything comes down to mechanics till masters.
If you have good mechanics you can easily go to diamond. This is why you see a lot of one tricks in diamond.
Masters and above what matters besides mechanics is macro, rotations, consistency across your games and VERY IMPORTANT team comp.
In diamond you can be shit at macro, but if you play vayne for example and you can outplay mechanicly the enemy team in 1v2 or 1v3 you will win most of the time.
Back in the ye old days of yore, tiot had a refer a friend policy, within that policy i referred a total of 432 people. People picked the champions they played purely off of champion/theme/identity/fantasy. The difficulty of the champion that they chose to play was almost never a factor. The only time that i can rember that it was, was when they had come down to a decision, and were stuck between two or three choices.
With that in mind, the reason syndra is a popular choice despite the difficulty is simply because she is seen as cool.
Syndra is also a deceptively difficult champion. Save for the times when syndra is overtuned, her champion execution isnt what is hard about her. The hard part is the players ability to play league fundamentally well through the means of proper positioning, well crafted wave states, tethering, etc. Syndra herself is easy to understand as a concept. Place ball down on opponet push ball onto opponet for stun re-throw ball on to them and press r. (I know there's alot more to it than that, but thats what a new player sees of her with a cursory glance.)
So for newer players syndra seems to be a far easier champion to play than she really is, especially when compared to the likes of oriana, victor, azir, or cassiopeia.
As an aside, a person who has reached the upper limits of the champion that they have chosen to main, and now has to play around their champion limits and thus becoming a God of league fundamentals specifically to surpass their champions fundamental ceiling is a thing of absolute beauty.
Riste on garen, baus on sion/gragas , mango on fizz, azzap on velkoz. Azzap in particular I think shows this off very well.
Don't forget that Syndra was meta for the entirety of last season. She was super popular in competetive as well. That might have increased interest in her.
Thanks for helping me get better Curtis :)
The biggest issue with roams, no matter how inefficient they are, is simply that you need to do them in order to show your team that you are trying to help so that your team does not go mental boom and just "ff next" it. It doesn't matter if you get far ahead by playing right when your team shuts off mentally, you can't 1v5 a game most of the time. A big part of league is managing the mentals of your team mates, probably even more than trying to do the "right play" sometimes, especially in lower ELO.
Ehhh, yes and no. I see where you are coming from, but if you make up for it on the backend its not really a problem
@@CoachCurtis In my experience you often will not get to the backend of the game this way :X. There are so many guides out there how to do the right thing in the right situation, but the right thing often gets your team to mentally collapse in lower ELO. I have no experience how it is in higher ELO like high Dia and further up, but at least up to low Dia it was very very painful.
Another thing, of course, is that you as one of the best players on your server will not have a hard time playing your way through these lower brackets because you are so good that you maybe can "convince" your team that you are gonna carry them, but that is not true for most players in these brackets, they are not so much better than everyone, otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place for a longer period of time.
@@MrReese I definitely see both sides. I have had this a lot in my experience where I will do the right thing and play macro. Then, my team disagrees, tilts and just mental booms. It's very frustrating. It's a tough position to be in.
This is the kind of thought process that convinces you to not let yourself improve btw. Instead of trying to trust the coach about whether or not he's right, try just accepting the idea that this is a thought process that will hurt you regardless of whether or not it's right. If you can reject this pattern of thought and focus purely on improvement of your own gameplay then you will improve and climb over time no matter what.
@@soul0172 I never had any coaching and I am not playing League anymore by now, but I was playing it for about 11 years.
The whole point of my statement is that almost every guide and educational content is from the standpoint of a player who is far beyond the current ability of those who watch and also in a completely different ELO.
The next issue is that there is a distinctive difference between trying to get better and trying to win, which is a big problem in itself in the game. You are supposed to ignore your team, ignore their mentals, etc., but that will only get you more losses and it's not fun either.
Man you are truly a fantastic teacher, great video
For me, what makes learning champs unappealing is the same reason I pick them (and put them down after a game or two): they're mind numbing to pilot.
Please note, curtis makes a lot of good points. However, this is from my experience in playing all these champions as a low elo player. (I stay low elo because of my macro most of the time, but i also cs really badly, it's inconsistent from game to game.)
The 1 point version:
Syndra: Al about controlling the battlefield. You do not want to burst the enemy. You want to control the battlefield. Movement speed on her is a must, but don't overfocus it.
Ekko: I agree: Clear waves, aggressive trades so your opponent can not fight back.
Diana: She is a flexpick. She can build bruiser, DPS or AP Assasin. Her safest playstyle is bruiser with more defensive setup. Forget protobelt, this is not needed on her. The less you rely on protobelt for diana, the better you learn to make good engages. Being bruiser, also allows you to survive small risks, that assasin diana will die if engaged wrong.
The long versions (Only those I think are good for beginners, but need a different approach):
Syndra can be learned in 30 to 50 games, but you need patience. Syndra is all about maintaining control, even her theme is about control. Patience is something that syndra teaches.
For newer players I do reccomend maxing W instead of Q. You get better waveclear and you can manipulate your balls much better. I do use glacial augment or phaserush with syndra, all about maintaining control. even when behind.
Diana can be learned in 20 games or less.
*Don't go phase rush if you don't have to. Her strongest runes are Lethal Tempo with Overgrowth and Conditioning, or Aftershock with Sudden Dash and Ultimate Hunter. In both of those cases, you utilize Overgrowth, as it synergizes extremly well with your W. Take Double Health Scaling shard. It is much more effective on diana. *
*In lane, focus on casters. If enemy comes to hit a melee, you auto-w-auto them. Usually that is enough to make any melee back off. You want to farm, get Rod of Ages (AP) or Zhonya (AD), and scale.*
* Aggressive laners who have good waveclear require you to delay leveling up your spell and see which spell they pick. If they pick waveclear, you start with Q, as you will need to play defensive instead until level 3.*
*Level up Strategies: *
*W-E-Q*: Likes of zed and talon, who you can counter easily with shield and some armor.
*E-Q-W*: People who don't utilize their waveclear. This allows you to punish them when they throw their abilities half-arsed
*Q-E-W*: Aggressive waveclear. You want Q first to help you farm on level 1. Usually E second, since most players with high waveclear are ranged or have mobility of their own.
If you go for zhonya, your second item must be an HP item, so thats where protobelt makes sense, but I prefer rilay. More utility, cheaper cost. Protobelt allows for engage and disengage, but it also makes you more prone to making engages or hesitating to engage. Rilay with it's slow makes it easier to stick to your targets once you are on top of them and is cheaper.
More wall of text:
The main idea is to build on her strengths. Her strength is not her burst. It's her constant DPS and ability to splitpush (Macro). So, as a result, you do not want phase rush on diana.
You pick diana into melee matchups first. Try to avoid range matchups for the first 10 games. This is so you can learn to utilize a more defensive oriented playstyle. You want lethal tempo, triumph, Legend Alacrity and Last Stand, with Conditioning and Overgrowth secondary. You start with dorangs ring. Avoid tear, as this will skip the crucial step of diana being very manahungry if used improperly.
Your first item should be rod of ages or zhonya. You get seekers against AD midlaners, as the armor paired with your shield, is very effective. Everyone else, amplifying dome into catalyst start is stronger, as you get increase in your shield.
You almost always max W, not Q, not E, but W. This allows you to position very aggressively inside the enemy wave. If the enemy contests, you win because your 3 orbs+passive third attack clear the casters in every level of the game. This is why avoiding protobelt is important. You allow the enemy to come to you, instead of going in yourself. Then you use your abilities to counter their engage, by turning on them.
Diana is all about counterengage. You can engage first, but that is a risk. In most of the cases, you want the enemy to engage, then turn on them.
**The reason diana in that clip hesitated was because he did not have enough defences to survive the engage. He most likely did not have W maxed, because event with protobelt, maxing W makes him capable of ignoring briar and bursting heimer just enough to escape with protobelt. Not engage with protobelt, escape with it. The rest of the team would have been able to clean it up if he followed on noc engage immidietly without hesitation. However, with phase rush, you can not do that, as you almost always take domination or precision tree secondary with that build. This does not give you enough defences to survive, if being turned on. High risk, high reward. If he has AfterShock, Conditioning and Overgrowth here, he would have not hesitated to go in. And he still would have had enough burst to kill the enemy, on top of enough dps to kill briar. First mistake of every diana player in every elo is disregarding her defensive abilities.**
About the ability use:
Lux key ability is Q only against divers. Against every other matchup, it's your E. learning to use it well comes from making mistakes. So don't be afraid to make them. But always, always make sure if you land your E, it lands on the enemy champion. Against divers, indeed, hold Q until they engage.
About that viktor sylas trade: The enemy had more minions, and there were more coming. Viktor has good waveclear. While your point is excelent, there is one more point to make: never fight sylas in your own wave, as he gets increased healing from it, and you can not clear his wave, thus you will take more damage.
something really OP this season for mid lane is to plan on a reset to be back in lane full hp & mana with some items before Grubs spawn that way you have higher chance of winning the mess that the jungler is going to cause by pinging everyone to get them when without prio junglers should understand that its okay to give a few and just need 2 to not give the enemy the passive from them.
I actually left your below gold program and picked up syndra, still applied the lessens you taught and now i have gone from silver>platnum one tricking her. I think syndra teaches you how to play properly and there are always small things you can do that pay big dividends
Just to add my two cents to the "why play a hard champion", as a chronic main of hard characters in pretty much every game - they're just cooler. From my experience, if I look at a champ with no context and just see *what they do* and think it's cool, it's likely that they're among the hardest characters in their role. It doesn't feel as good to have to play something you don't find cool just cause it's easier, even if it's inevitably gonna be more helpful.
Appreciate the perspective mate
I think ppl enjoy champs based on the champ fantasy primarily, and its climbing potential is only a secondary consideration. Many of the more complex champs in League are just really interesting, conceptually/visually. I think this is why ppl are drawn to such champs.
I did the same thing with top where I started with Riven which was the worst champ to start with. I think most players are drawn to complex champs because they tend to be less repetitive and more fun. + My idea was a lot of complex champs have a higher skill ceiling/More potential so if I spend long enough on it I would benefiting in the long term.
I love the fuel/road trip analogy. It's perfect.
As a OTP Azir I don’t know if it’s the satisfaction of being able to make plays that I wouldn’t have at the beginning of my journey with the champ or what. At this point I have thousands of games though and his kit is just something I always clicked with and allowed me to have fun even if it was difficult for a while.
Understandable!
@@CoachCurtis I still enjoy and have definitely learned a lot from all the videos though for sure so thank you!
Something I do automatically at this point is asking myself why something didn't go as I thought it would.
A little while ago I played nocturne into briar jungle. I thought I could win the 1v1 as long as I blocked her stun with my spell shield. That was wrong, she almost 1 shot me and I had to blow flash. Some of this may have been because she had ignite, but it honestly wasn't that close. So apparently I cannot outduel briar, even if she plays it badly
I just hit plat last night, but I'm still watching this video because I'm not that good yet lmao
I have no idea what I did but I think I'm randomly improving? I've always been a casual league fan, and hovering bronze 3 in EUW/NA. I moved to NA and on my new EUW account got placed PLAT I lmao. I am for sure not plat I, but it gave me a little confidence boost. I now came back to my main, playing smolder mid :3 with a few other picks at an 80% wr and I'm now silver II :))
I think I started thinking more about my positioning and IS WHAT IM DOING ACTUALLY GOOD. I feel like just asking questions to yourself is so helpful. I also try to keep my teams spirits up by being positive and trying to stop them from mental booming and 5min which helps a LOT. Maybe I can hit gold soon :3
How is vex 9 on difficulty scale? I know she has skillshots, but they are pretty easy to land and her kit all around is pretty simple.
I climbed to plat from silver with her and qiayana.
Vex is a bit of a controversial one.
I think she can be simple to people who intuitively understand the concepts of 'multi threat' and 'fog of war'. Other players who are used to playing more 'front to back' and classic mages struggle.
everyone picks syndra because she is "hot lady who hits hard"
She surely has a affinity to play with balls
I also think people see the immediate potential of hiting a good E into R
This is it, simple as.
I know you're currently making a Swain guide. But please consider making another Akali guide that would be so cool!!
at 17:41 there's literally a quality recall immediately lol it's slow pushing towards him and the Ziggs has no mana to push the wave
Currently emerald (actually plat but finished emerald and i havent been playing because im looking to move into my own place let me cope) and i occasionally use your vids to try to tighten up my mental or minor niches about the game and some fundamentals i need to improve on
Good stuff as always Mr Curtis
Personally Syndra is easier than Annie... Annie is flash R stun and I don't like to flash offensively. Syndra is Q poke Q poke (it's aoe dmg so you don't take minion agro) stun death, never pushing forward yourself
I mean this guy is a former esports team coach. I’ll trust him over a random in RUclips comments
@@Deezorz If you didn't see part "I don't like Flash offensively" so if you have discomfort with that Annie is not for you and I don't do that
Haha fucking love the “Operazione Dyn-o-mite!” poster in the background! I might have to get myself one of those 😂
I love Ryze, I have played him a lot but i'm still wondering if it's good to try and climb with him.
The point of Diana should not be to 1 shot the entire team with her ult. It should be to go in while her team is in position to hard punish them while they are in Diana ult. You should think of her more as an engage/enable champ that leans more to damage than tankiness. At least that's how I personally see her, even though she's only getting played when she's so broken that she 1 shots your entire team
People feel pressured to roam cause else someone on your team will say " XXX gap, GG" and then they will play careless/soft int.
I'm dying to know how Syndra got a 10 when her kit and engage style is rather straightforward. Is it knowing how to play around her limitations? Please help me understand because I've played her on and off since s9 and feel there are far more complex mid-lane champions than her. "Small things done well" applies just as readily to Malzahar who likes short trades and prefers to scale hard into the late game (or at least the way I play him does).
Very informative video, especially the initial ranking of mid lane champions ranked on difficulty. Would it be possible to make a similar list for top lane ?
is the roam really that bad in terms of wavemanagement in 27:28? I mean his wave is crashing anyways under his tower. Its really bad from ekko not to snack those. Im not a fan of the flipcoin roam he did all but otherwise he would be just standing in front of the tower and dodging ekko q or e´s maybe
I've seen you talk about Viktor being complicated before. I've never really understood what makes him complicated. I've kinda wanted to pick him up for a while and have played a few games on him, and mechanically he is easy. His abilities are simple and there are no difficult combos that I know of at least. The problem I'm having more so that Viktor just deals less damage than other midlaners, so I'll land everything, but it's not enough to kill a single target and then I have nothing left. So Viktor isn't really working for me, but I don't even understand why he's working for high ranks but not for me, what even is it that is difficult to understand about making him work?
Viktor is all about 'small incremental wins'. You need to take short trade after short trade, it requires patience/poise/discipline. This is what makes him hard for most
Coach Catnips uploads such a video, I'm excited to see what you have to say! Keep on keeping on my man 💪
Hi, may I ask when will the newest coaching session start? I registered your MLA course and was informed that a new session would be started in early Ferb but I still not get any notification. Did I miss the notification by any chance?
I just dont agree that syndra is as difficult as people say. Im a silver top player, but I still win MOST of my syndra games. Her combo is extremely easy to hit against low elo players, and her range makes spacing very safe and easy.
As you get into higher elo is where I believe she becomes difficult, because people can dodge her shit. Its that simple. Of course a high elo player thinks shes difficult, because her kit becomes way harder to use against other good players.
glad u helping peeps at a lower level :)
Based off the tier list video with Shok I guess you’ve flipped a bit on Syndra?
My biggest take away from this video is that my brethren in the east believe an hour drive is long
Thoughts on making a video about "smart aggression" ?
It may be different as support, but in my personal experience, I can only climb playing harder champs like Bard and Vel'koz versus the easier supports. Maybe I have trouble being limited by simplier playstyles? I'm not sure.
Hey Curtis, i recently watched your Yone guide since i started playing him. i rly like your guide cuz its very detailed.
But a friend of me told me the Guide is "outdated" since season changed and items changed.
But i dont think your whole guide is outdated. maybe the items but even there i dont think is much to change and the Champ identity and laningphase should be the same overall.
Would be nice if you could confirm your guide is still fine.
where is the naafiri guide?
i was really close to hit gold then i lost over and over with super hard games and now im bronze 4 and loose 35 lp and gain 25. what can i do when it feels impossible to win? i only play annie mid and have watched your videos for so long and the hardest part is to get a team comeback.
Syndra is dark, edgy and hot. That might seem like a goofy answer but honestly i wouldn't be surprised if that was the most significant reason she is favored. It gives her massive visual and thematic appeal.
Just found out you channel i wanna inhale all the knowledge i have here(before joining midlane school) which videos would you advise to watch first
Back and buying is so hard to do because it seems you are missing out on a lot of gold
What makes pantheon and Vex 9s? Is it the global/semi global ults?
As a bronze zed player it’s that if I get use to the champ and better overtime it will be worth it
This is very cool. I appreciate the time you put into your videos.
I’m relatively new to LoL but love the concept of Twisted Fate. I understand he isn’t the win condition but more of an enabler. With this in mind, is there a better champion to learn to get the fundamentals of the game or is he a good pick because it almost forces him to be aware of the lane states and macro?
A higher level player would have a better response to your question than me but Galio and Pantheon are on curtis's MLS-approved list and have the long distance teleport ult + CC
how does one counter level 7 mage perma push?
Hey!
Is MLA open for relatively new players as well?
Lately i got more free time than i need, and climbing this ladder seems like a great challenge.
I can identify my mistakes and i can grow on my own... but there is also a chance that i come to the wrong conclusion, and it would be way better and faster if i learn the right way in the first place.
I learned occasionally, but i had little time to actually practice it. For example i can freeze a lane without an issue, but learning to keep an eye on the minimap needs way more time to practice. I wanted to start ranked multiple times before, but i was just too scared. The only thing i knew is that i know nothing; and all of my roommates were yelling at this game, rage quitting, i didn't want to be the cause nor a witness.
The MLS is your best bet if you're a new player, it's primarily focused on the iron --> plat ranked journey. Once you've hit plat, you're eligible to get into the MLA.
@@TheSlaSh1411 Thanks a lot!
Definitely check out the MLS!
those "difficult" champions are the most fun and relatably the most rewarding to play
why no zed zoe on the list :c?
fuel analogy was crazy
I found his analogy at 16:30 pretty funny as an American because a 60 mile (100km) drive (about 1hr 15min of driving) isn't considered a very long time to drive here.
Would you say that this impression is a sign of poor infrastructure?
@@garagavia it's more than the US is so much bigger than other countries that long car trips are pretty common especially in rural areas.
@@garagavia
I was in America once, and you honestly can't believe how big US is. My favorite example is that you can literally drive 11 hours in Texas and still be in Texas. In 11 Hours you can get from Hungary to France, which is almost trough Europe. The road infrastructure in the US is the exact opposite of poor, and you can get even better ones if you pay for private ones. EU is extremely dense.
Just a quick question, what if I need to reset (low health and 800+ gold) and I’ve crashed my wave into the enemy tower - BUT my jungler is on their way to wither grubs or dragon .
Do I still reset?
My experience is jungler goes in for the objective anyway, and then I get flamed when they get collapsed on and die.
Might be a dumb question from a silver scrub , but thought I’d ask anyway haha
From a member of Curtis' Mid Lane Academy:
Assuming you don't have TP available, at that point it's about damage control. I would ping danger on top of the objective, and type something like "basing, care prio".
The alternative is that you stay and either 1) go to the objective or 2) pressure your laner.
1) if you get collapsed on with 30% health, you're just going to give over 300g and lose the objective anyway
2) if you try to pressure with low resources, you make yourself vulnerable to a solo kill or a gank
The fundamental issue with both these is: you still need to base and now you don't have a window
If your jungler still goes for it and dies, that's not your problem. You need to adapt and keep playing to your champion's identity.
I'll add that if you find these situations occuring a lot, it would be good to get into the details in the review. You may find that you're not aware of the objective timer, you missed a previous base window, you didn't ward and got ganked, etc. At this point it's really a case-by-case basis on what the issue is :)
@@jakedevisser6581 awesome info! Thank you for the reply - I’ll keep these pointers in mind when I do my reviews ☺️
I love simple champs, they make the game much more clear.
Hi coach Curtis I am kind of new to the game and I also play hard champ, Akali. I understand that she is a hard champ to play and master, I felt it, but the fun of playing such champions comes from their difficulty. Like it is more rewarding, cool and fun when you can land tricky combos and so on. But the tricky part about this is when you play normals you get low scores and KDA 0/5/0 or worse and you just do not improve. In the video just like you explained it is better to know game better when maybe tackle other or those difficult champs, my friend suggested the same. I play Ahri and Akali mid so I kinda only focusing Ahri and adc. But I am not sure if I am improve anymore since kinda my scores stayed the same
It happened the same to me, first champs played Ahri and Akali. I would recommend you to play Akali when you feel like it (in norms obviously) every now and then. Exemple: Play mainly Ahri and every x time do a little session playing Akali.
Don't bother the score, try to improve the fluidity of your gameplay, how you conect her abilities and use them to enter and get out of the fight. Are you using her passive well? How I can escape a bad situation? If you focus on learning how to feel comfortable using her kit and moving with her you will be able to die less, focus on other things besides casting q w e or r properly, and you will slowly apply the things you learn when you play with other champs. Is a slow process but it let's you achieve the level to enjoy playing her doing some cool things while knowing there's a lot to improve.
As a lot of people say it is also a good thing to watch streamers or youtubers maining her.
Hope I didn't bore you too much.😅
Akali as an assassin is difficult to do well (on the scores) if you can't kill. I would recommend to ask yourself what you can do to win in each match. Preparing for dragon/nashor quiting and placing wards? Distracting or zoning the enemy when taking objectives? Diving in teamfight to bait the cc so my team can clean afterwards? Or you can splitpush with liches' bane as you don't give more gold (extreme case, split pushing will give you minion gold plus the experience will be only for you)?
It's hard to enjoy playing wile being behind or being a dead weight to the team so is up to you to find something you can do to help the team (besides not dying).
@@znkr53 No its okei, I want to learn its kinda a bit discuraging to play 0/6 games in normals. I was at my first days playing against bots it was hard, but now it what 18/0 with both so I kinda can out play them without any effort. I played it to get used playing as them. I just played 2 games with Ahri and it was quite messy since it was on the red side and I kinda trying to learn camera control, but I weirdly walked everywhere. I tried to help my team but they already dead so yea. I am kinda always nervous so hinders my play a bit and I just focus on farming, but I managed to learn farm and trading so it is a little improvement.
@@laurynas9003 Good luck with your journey playing League
From what I've seen , the fun people get from WINNING and improving with simpler champs is more satisfying/more fun then trying to win with a hard champ (While losing a lot)
Its simple. You earn more prestige by being good on difficult champs and people hunger for that prestige its a common trap of a competition you want to be the absolute best player
Am I just mentally weak Mr. Curtis? I swear I can't pull through 3 blocks these days ngl, if games are easy and smooth or just fast losses then I can, but I just played 1 game today and at the end of it I'm just tapped out. No I didn't flame my team, yeah we had a rough early game but every single player pulled through, we played well, I muted all and tbh I don't think anyone flamed anyone, but at the end of that 40 minutes game I felt every single brain cell just shut off and I just can't go through it anymore. League is just that mentally taxing for me I guess, though to be fair, if my job isn't already stressful I can probably play more, but these days 1 game and I'm done lmao. Normal games don't feel competitive enough that's why I play ranked, I still love the game as I'm going through it, but I just can't play 2+ games anymore.
Maybe I'm just old now :(
i hate when nobody pushes lanes. People just refuse to clear waves before rotating to a fight or objectives so we end up losing tempo even though we win the skrimish
Curtis ty for info, love yo vids soooooo underrated.
Pantheon is a 9 out of 10 Difficulty?
How easy is Janna in your mind?
Watching that Garen style on everyone.
Sylas in low elo is crazy because no mage respects him level 2-3 its crazy
I prefer more difficult champs because I get bored way too quickly of simple champs. If I can only play Annie I rather never play at all.
Can you do one for both or top?
Vel Koz difficult too?
why did my last iron 2 game have a silver1 scripting Hwei mid....can you answer that question bra?
Your website appears to be broken. Nothing is clickable, and it endlessly loads on the main page.
Hi new sub and new fan :D i'm learning a lot from you thank you much but i want to ask you : i'm an otp zed but i can't get out from emerlad , even tho i play my games perfectly :( can you please make a video about mid for s14 or zed tips and thank you so much
thank you for great content !!!!!!!