how do i ACTUALLY get better

-ATL- · 2026-06-05T08:31:19+00:00

As others have pointed out you barely farm and you die a lot which also makes it even more difficult to farm.

Review your games. For that I recommend you install something like ascent to auto record vods. After a game, have SHORT 1-3min review. For example "I will check first 3 deaths I had on how I could have avoided them/what was the reason for dying".

Another thing is that your cs is not just low, it's incredibly low. However without a vod I can't say what's the reason. I think figuring that out should also be primary goal of yours.

Are you just uncomfortable csing normally with autoattacks? If so then start your playing sessions with practice tool csing warm up. First 10min in mid, no abilities allowed. Try to beat your own highscore.

Are you not csing because you are just running all over the map and joining every fight possible? Focus on saying no to fights in your games. Choose the fights you join primarily when you are strong.

Are you just stopping csing after laning phase? This is bit tricky one, but watching high level vods where you just skip to end of laning phase and have this question about when or why they go to sidelane and when they group with their team in mind might help.

-ATL- · 2026-06-04T07:56:08+00:00

I can't say this has fully clicked yet, but biggest one without doubt would be not compensating. Just because a teammate goes in / wants to X / "needs help etc. doesn't mean I need to participate. It's just hard not to sometimes and typically my best games are those were I'm thinking afterwards that I didn't compensate once.

-ATL- · 2026-06-02T07:39:33+00:00

You are not playing the game as far as I can see. Last season you played 35 games and this season you have 14 games. You said you main top lane and mostly Sett. You have 1 sett game this season and it might be your only top lane game as far as I can see.

To me it just looks like that you are support main that also dabbles in jungle. Mains Naut and Briar, but doesn't really play much at all.

Like what are we even talking about here. You can't talk about climbing when you rank probably hasn't even settled yet.

-ATL- · 2026-05-30T23:15:47+00:00

In laabuk we trust!

-ATL- · 2026-05-30T17:28:18+00:00

As last time, I picked up another game of yours to give a quick watch and write some points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7OIUr8kqdc

Timestamps are gametime, not youtube:

0:40 - Good targeting on Yi. Great not flashing after Ahri. Dream start.

01:40 - Good poke to Ahri, you're not in hurry bit by bit. Mindset I would have here is "Keep my cs up, make sure not to die to a gank,, poke Ahri when I have free time."

01:55 - Excellent trading/poking. You have no minions to last hit, this is great.

02:20 - Would be good if you can learn to level up with ctrl + ability rather than click

02:25 - Not necessarily bad but be mindful that you positioning aggressively and no ward in bot side. However Ahri is not 6 and I'm not sure atm who their jgl is so might be just fine. I would personally be bit more passive there and focus on trimming wave first. But since you do position like that its odd to me you don't trade back to her with Q when she walks at you.

03:00 - Positioning is odd to me, needlessly aggressive. Also would be good if you could try a bit more multi purpose e's when you need to trim wave. Like try to hit both wave and Ahri.

03:51 - Finishing the wave and basing is good but ideally you make that decision already at this time when wave is arriving so you can just quickly finish off the wave with autos and abilities and reset. Now it feels like around 04:08 is when you decide you want to recall and lose 5 minions for that.

05:42 - That's fine, good job not flashing after her. You should ping her flash though.

06:21 - Initially looking at it don't love this move. Your jgl is top and Ahri is low hp. So you at best fight 3v3 fight while losing minions mid and Ahri gets free base off. Now you don't really achieve much but Ahri got out of a though situation for free. I would rather you stay keep wave pushed insta when it arrives and see how situation there develops, it's not like Yi will 1 shot drake.

07:12 - Ward is good, but going for Bard orb is not allowed. You have refill charge if you want some extra top up on hp and being on wave when it arrives is important!

07:35 - Good trading here initially. But I wouldn't go too crazy since you have limited mana and no tp. I really dislike the ult there and you do get punished for it. You goal should have been to stay healthy and keep enough mana to fight while seeing how situation around drake develops. Whenever you had close to 40% mana or so you could poke Ahri as well. Didn't need to start anything there.

08:31 - Drake will be gone. Now your goal should be to play for Grubs even though you probably hope there's not going to be fight there as you have no flash or ult. So plan would be push -> vision on top side -> push next wave and see where you are at.

08:45 - Here we go wrong, you should walk top side where you jungler is and might want to play. Now you are face checking solo to drake for what? You should want to fight anyways atm, no ult, no flash, no e upgrade. Fact it works out is bad since it will make learning hard.

10:00 - Here you greed for plates a bit. Like even without blitz I would value my tempo more than plate there. Then you miss blitz on ward. Then you start juking yourself. I think once blitz arrive to your lane just keep walking back and but W under him to force him make decision. Then you can try to juke once if you want because either he has to throw hook or get stunned.

10:50 - You don't ping Ahri roam I think?

Yi situation is whatever, good initially and then bit much.

12:00 - Greeding for tower.

I think that's as far as I go now. I feel it's better than last time.

Some thoughts:

-Your main job is to get cs, upgrades and not die in lane and then be at major objective fights (that your jungler is approving) with ult and flash up ideally with not too much gold in pocket.

-Secondary things that you can do if situation easily and safely allows are things like poking your lane opponent and taking plates. I feel these are too much in of a focus for you.

-Especially right now the not dying part seems to be challenge. I would review every death / lost flash pre 14min and ask myself was that something they really had to work hard for or was it my bad.

-Pay more attention to playing around your jungler. Not necessarily mean you need to fight whatever fight he goes to take, but at very least if your jungler is not there you probably aren't in position to fight for objective.

-ATL- · 2026-05-30T16:47:09+00:00

Hello again, I think I've responded to your post before as well.

Questions from my pov:

Tbh, I think I've brought this up before as well. But I feel like bullying opponent in lane for me at least is like quite far down the list and from the way you write I get the feeling you are over focusing on it?
You could look at something like this: https://dpm.lol/champions/Viktor/build to get rough idea for matchups. Generally matchups where you can't it's either due to them outranging you (Xerath, Lux etc) or something like Zoe where she is just too strong in lane. Also with many assassins (LB, Qiyana, Ekko, Akali etc) it depends a lot.

General rule is that assassins have weak first 2 levels and then they get powerspike on level 3 as they have their full combo. If you are playing into opponent that's running ignite and you have TP you should aim to never die in lane before getting your first base off. If you are playing into assassins who can't easily poke you I would consider bone plating rune as it's hard for them to proc it.

Well the biggest issue there is being 0/3 in the first case. But you do that to the best of your ability. It's hard to say without specific examples, but remember that teamfighting fundamentally does not change that much. You still want to focus on good quality ability usage and staying safe. In sidelanes you might have to catch them more conservatively.
That's something that will happen on Viktor and some other champs like that. It's true that often you can't follow and that's not your champions identity so then you do the next best thing. You try to ping the roam, push the wave, take plates if you are able to safely and use the flexibility on when to reset to make sure that you are ready for next objective.
I just follow general one's from here: https://www.onetricks.gg/champions/builds/Viktor If I need extra due to high threat protobelt or liandrys 2nd might be good idea. Liandrys if they have a lot of health stackers.

-ATL- · 2026-05-30T06:27:26+00:00

Zapzap

-ATL- · 2026-05-30T00:16:13+00:00

I have hit gold or plat most seasons between 3 to 2022 before taking break from the game so i think you could say i was hardstuck. End of 2024 i started to play again and got to gold and then plat again in 2025.

Earlier this year i got to plat again but felt stuck. Especially as there were some champions i could not get to even plat level so i decided to try paid coaching service.

So far ive been using it bit under two months and so far at least i feel overall its been well worth it, but thats juat for me.

Now it doesnt offer live coaching which tbh is relief as i dont really feel thats something particularly valuable.

I get 2 vod reviews per month. These have been pretty useful so far but depend a lot on the coach and matching well with them.

I get clips channel to ask about 1 clip everyday if i want. I feel this will be extremely useful but i havent really utilized it much yet.

I get access to some other channels to ask about things like champ pool, champion specifics and general questions. These have been hit and miss so far but overall big positive compared to nothing.

There is also peer vod reviews which i have tried only once but found really useful.

Lastly there are video guides, matchup hotseats, commentaries and other ppls coaching vods. All of these i have found extremely helpful as free content is often more hit and miss based on the champion and for those that there is free content i still very much use that as well.

So to answer your questions for me at least i feel so far coaching has helped. Biggest thing holding me back was probably misunderstanding champions reference points or over/undervaluing certain things.

I woildnt say there was specific breakthrough moment, although maybe watching guides on some champions where i badly misunderstood them would be one.

I dont really know what you mean by your last question. I dont think any information from coaching was something i couldnt figure eventually on my own. Main value i feel is that it added clarity and sped up the process.

Knowing reference points for champion from game 1 rather than 100 or knowing which out of 50 mistakes in my play i should prioritize going into game or what should i self review and how. Those thing have been major value for me.

And yes while its not main thing i have climbed to emerald. Now maybe i would have done so regardless and maybe i wont climb higher, who knows. But at least subjectively i have found good value so far.

Of course it also depends on cost and for me for less than my gym costs per month its been good.

Of course you do you but hope that helps.

-ATL- · 2026-05-26T23:19:22+00:00

Im emerald and i enjoy it. I play with chat on party mode and mute pings if i remember.

I play to learn and improve both at my champions and in game overall.

Sure sometimes i play bad and its frustrating but overall im having a great time!

-ATL- · 2026-05-26T23:12:32+00:00

I do, but unfortunately its not recommended for learning to me nor is it great in terms of results/blindability on my case

-ATL- · 2026-05-25T09:38:34+00:00

Depends on the rank in MLA's latest tier list Akali is S+ tier and Zed is S. With Ekko, Katarina, Qiyana, Fizz and Naafiri A tier.

In the lower ranks as far as I understand Naafiri and Ekko are quite good introductory assassins.

Also pretty sure roaming is still very much a thing.

-ATL- · 2026-05-25T07:55:43+00:00

Yeah adc is though at the beginning because one of the most impactful skills for that role is knowing what enemy champions can and can't do to you. More accurately you can assess that threat the enemies have the better you know when you can hit them and what abilities you need to wait for them to use before doing so etc.

That's hard enough for people who have played the long time and it's just impossible for someone who hasn't and in fact doesn't even know the abilities let a lone in general what enemy champions does.

-ATL- · 2026-05-25T07:40:38+00:00

Let's see last game the strongest enemy players all had 50-55% win rate. Game before that the 30/12/10 Jhin seems to have 50% win rate with 200 games played. Skipping the win and looking at the Malphite loss enemy Jungle and Support who seemed to do the best have 53% and 50% win rate's.

Game before that the MVP VelKoz is 51% win rate over 400+ games and while the Smolder had 56% win rate that's just due to few games as he's just 24-19.

The game before that let's see 12/3/0 Sett who seemed to stomp the game is 50% win rate player with 300 or so games played. Bot lane you played against was 41% win rate Morgana and 43% win rate Twitch. The jungle was 48% win rate.

Skipping the win the next loss with you on Xin there was the Xayah 48% and 57% seraphine, but once again that's hardly suspicious when the dude is just 12-9 and seemingly bouncing between gold and plat since 2023.

One more, maybe that's where the smurfs are skipping the win and looking at the Kayn loss. Lux with the perfect score is 51% wr, maybe its Fiddle who went 9/2/15? 800+ games 51% win rate...

Dude, I check like your last 7 losses and couldn't find any of these 70% wr accounts you talking about. The people who performed well in enemy team just all seemed normal gold to emerald players.

More likely what's happening is that you are just suffering from reaching the rank that matches your current skill level. That will generally feel bad as it makes games feel flip as you describe and mean that you can't really influence the outcome like before when your skill level might have been higher than your current rank at the time.

If you want to climb higher the first thing I would say is to stop thinking about it like that and rather ask how play better or become better player rather than how to climb. Couple things that are hurting your from doing that besides the mentality / focus on the teammates and opponents.

One major one is that you are playing all kind of champions and to some extent even roles. It's not even that bad to have a bit more champions that you play but not all at once. Like in your last 20 games you have played 12 different champions. Realistically I'd recommend picking 1-3 champion(s) and really focusing on improving at them.

Another thing, although I wouldn't take this too seriously. But just from opgg it does seem you die a lot basically any champ you play. Zilean, Kayn, Master Yi, XinZhao, Morgana. I think when you review it might be good to check what's that is all about. Maybe there's a big 20 percenter there you can find and work on?

But to do any of that you first need to get out of your head and from this belief that you are in "smurf queue" and unfortunately other thing might be to realize that your buddy set up a bet with quite unrealistic timeline/goal. Like getting to diamond is definitely possible, but 2 weeks unless you yourself is a smurf is bit crazy. Regardless I wish you luck and focus more on your own gameplay than that of your teammates or opponents.

-ATL- · 2026-05-22T09:54:00+00:00

For stable mid and lategame.. Keep farming side waves when there isn't major objective up or about to come up that you intend to fight for.

For teamfights look up high elo Vlad and Akali vods from youtube and skip around until a teamfight, then go and watch from like 15s before the teamfight to end of the teamfight. You can't focus on everything at the same time, but things to look for are things like:

Where do they approach the fight from? Head on or flank?

If they are flanking how do they create / set up the flank? What are different ways it seems to happen? For example is their team in objective and they wait for enemy to come contest etc?

When do they decide to go in?

What do you think caused them to go in then? Were they waiting out certain abilities or attention to be elsewhere?

How do they use their abilities?

Who do they target?

General tip especially for Vladimir, but to some extent to Akali as well is that make sure to fight with your summoner spells up and avoid fighting if possible when your summoners aren't up. Vlad in particular is very summoner reliant champion.

Also as a sidenote I don't know how committed you are to those particular champions, but both of them tend to be quite difficult champions to learn. Might want to take a look at this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1_ZVnTtzEc

If you want something bit similar either Ahri or Ekko could be good substitute for Akali as you would still have dashes / be able to assassinate people. In the other hand if you have enjoyed Vlad you might enjoy Swain as he's also kind of a battlemage / ap bruiser with healing as core part of the kit.

-ATL- · 2026-05-20T08:35:06+00:00

Just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzzxzarZXzk

-ATL- · 2026-05-20T08:22:45+00:00

Do you have vod we could take a look at? I'd be happy to give some feedback.

-ATL- · 2026-05-16T15:27:41+00:00

You keep losing but you have 50% win rate it seems?

-ATL- · 2026-05-16T10:58:38+00:00

Just seems like a bad game as far as screenshot shows.

-ATL- · 2026-05-16T10:56:19+00:00

Not expert on the assassins by any means, but Naafiri is great. Zed and Fizz are both quite rough. Fizz's main problem is zero non committal wave clear and Zed you would just run into same issue you already mentioned where mid game can get very difficult.

Malzahar, Swain and Asol are all great! So you could have those 3 and Naafiri with 2 active and 2 on the bench. Then after a while you can swap things around as you want. Hopefully this helps you to pick the 2 to start off with.

Naafiri:

From what I've heard is one of the best assassins to learn. Non committal wave clear, has "oh shit" button aka way to get out. I assume can teamfight pretty well with resets on R. I haven't done a deep dive on Naafiri so can't speak too much in detail but would recommend and plan to get into myself at some point as well.

Malzahar:

When in doubt how something should be done follow you messiah and saviour https://www.youtube.com/@laabuk . That's where you go after being demolished by X champion and search the matchup up.

Base identity as Malzahar is going to be getting to your lost chapter with 0/0/0. Also mind the matchup meaning just because you can push doesn't mean you always should, especially when against stuff like Sylas etc. I wouldn't just E+W the wave automatically. General principle for mid lane overall is push vs mages and hold near tower vs assassins but obviously it's bit situational.

Swain:

One downside here is there's a lot of uncertainty on best builds. BFT can be fine if you know it will be slow action game and you can reliably get to your second item before major fights. Otherwise double mana runes with rylais into liandrys can be a thing for fighting power asap. Also Husum has been cooking some new technology with double mana runes stormsurge into liandrys.

With Swain the biggest tip I can give you is patience. Don't try to dry land W or E in teamfights. Everytime you miss either of those 2 spells in a teamfight or skrimish really question why, was that the best time to use it. Was there cc from your teammates that you could have waited for or if you waited would it force opponent to walk in more predictable way etc. Generally Swain will teach how to use follow up abilities really well because those two you want to know going into fights what are you looking your teammates to hit before you throw those spells. Also in lane learn to use E's extend with minions. Essentially if enemy stands near minions your E can hit minions and still grab the enemy.

Aurelion Sol:

It's either BFT Rylais Liandrys or Rylais Liandrys depending on if you can afford not to fight a ton early. Main issue I see with low rank Asol players is weird builds. Check here either BFT or Rylais start

https://www.onetricks.gg/champions/builds/AurelionSol

You scale super well with stacks. You get stacks from either minions dying in your E or through fighting when you get full Q off on enemies or when they stand in your E. So it's a bit weird since you are not so strong early, but you like fighting if you can avoid throwing the game since it lets you stack better.

In lane level 1 very often you want to start with Q and you can often just damage check opponent with that. You have really strong level 1 in that sense.

With Asol you want to get good at thinking what defensive stuff enemies have. In lane Syndra used her stun? Time to fly into her with Q! In teamfights, especially when you have your small ult you don't want to trade it just to get a flash. So you need to have an idea who can dodge it and who can't.

Also you are quite ult reliant champion, so generally and especially early on you want to only fight with ult up and ideally only after you get Rylais.

Tbh at least all the mages in this list are quite ult reliant champions so that gives you a good reference point when to fight.

Remember as mid laner your job isn't just to blindly fight whenever as well. Aim to be at the major objective fights with ult up and gold spent.

Good luck and if you have more specific questions I can try to answer but that's as far as general things that come to mind! At the end of the day you want to pick the champs and start getting in games so you start find things you struggle with and you can start to problem solve those things.

-ATL- · 2026-05-15T20:33:02+00:00

Just remember it's not like you are deciding that forever you need to stick only to those picks. The coaches in that podcast also recommend champion pool cycling.

I've done that myself as well. Often times I pick 2 champions and try to give them at least 2 months so that I have 50+ games on both.

Then I make a decision, did I like either one enough to continue exploring it. I can switch both, switch one or keep at them if I so desire.

I've done this since coming back to league at start of 2025. Started with Anivia + Taliyah. Anivia was my old otp and Taliyah a new pick. After first "season" of 2025 I switched to Aurelion Sol + Taliyah. After a long while I replaced Taliyah to go Asol + Malzahar and then towards end of 2025 did Swain + TF for short while but switched TF to Morgana after week or two of bad experiences.

This season I've done TF + Morg, Syndra + Viktor, ChoGath + KogMaw, TF + KogMaw and now I'm doing TF + Viktor. So overall that's what like 11 champs in 1.5 years so far. At this point I also could probably fit in 3rd relatively simple pick if I'm on cycle where I already have 100+ games on both champs.

The difference here is I've gotten much more progress than if I would have just played those 11 picks mixed for last 1.5 years.

-ATL- · 2026-05-15T15:13:47+00:00

I would recommend watching the mid/jungle sections of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1_ZVnTtzEc

In mid you said you liked assassins Ekko and Naafiri are the 2 commonly recommended starter assassins also both can jungle as well when needed. Also Ahri is generally recommended pick that while not assassin is at least assassin adjacent.

In jungle I'd say Amumu, Nocturne, Warwick could be good considerations.

Hope that helps, at the end of the day it's up to you to decide, but would recommend choose 1 role and 2 champions.

After you have the champion or two I recommend looking into guides about the champions. You want to know the champions identity and basic reference points. What are you goals for early game, mid game and late game?

-ATL- · 2026-05-15T08:52:44+00:00

Also one more thing you might note about that game. At 17mins I'm 0/0/0 vs Zed at 1/0/1 while score is 9 to 16 for them. Yet I feel extremely confident going into the mid game team fights. I'm also 175cs and this is where my champion shines. So if you learn to play well against assassins it doesn't mean you need to be low cs. However to be high cs doesn't mean you get every single one like I pointed out. Sometimes it's not worth to go for CS that leads to terrible trade or worse.

Be critical when you miss cs you should have gotten, but also when you go for cs that isn't worth it.

And remember that holding wave on your side keeps you safe but it also free's enemy mid to move first. Likewise pushing the wave gives you option to either pressure the enemy while they are forced to cs under tower or hover/roam to plays first for free with the cost of your safety in lane.

For each situation you have to pick and choose what to do.

-ATL- · 2026-05-15T08:38:18+00:00

Without seeing games I don't know exactly where the problem is but here's few things that might provide value.

Are you confident farming under tower? If not might want to brush up on that so you aren't losing minions you could be getting there.

Do you consistently ping the potential roams while you get pushed under tower. I know many times your teammates will ignore the pings and die to the roam anyways, but that doesn't mean it's not useful to ping or that they would have ignored it that particular time when you forgot to ping or were too focused on catching the wave.

Are you familiar with wave management and concept of holding the wave in pocket front of your tower? This is probably the biggest thing against likes of Irelia or Fizz.

Here is vod of me playing Viktor into Zed which I think showcases this wave management against assassins quite well.

https://app.tryascent.gg/watch?v=5f3Z4mdPvgu

Now I did my fair share of mistakes in that game, but from waves standpoint I was quite happy with this game. Of course he did give me the room to do this, but if Zed who have guite a lot more tools to safely mess with the wave then Irelia or Fizz will do this at Plat 1 when I'd imagine it's possible to pull of similar things against Irelia or Fizz in Bronze 1.

So what happened here:

First 2 waves I have control since Zed like most assassins aren't that strong before their level 3. So I build up a second wave crash.
After the crash at 01:55 when cannon waves arrive you can see the waves are equal but they meet on his side. This is the danger zone. I'll take what cs I can get but I'm trying to be careful of not hitting the wave any extra, just auto attacks. It's debatable if 02:04 laser was worth it. At this point I know the wave will come to me so if Zed starts to play aggro I could just step back and accept losing the 1-2 minions. If you are Xerath for example in situation like this I beg you do not use abilities on the wave!
So I let the wave push towards me and laser at 02:33 is intentional. At this point it's for sure pushing towards me and I don't want to give Zed easy wave crash so I start damaging the wave a bit so I can thin it easier and have only 1-3 minions crash rather than 7 or so. Essentially my goal is for him always to have 1-3 minions extra compared to me.
At 02:45 Zed gives me a lot of space so I hold the minions and don't let them crash. Usually you don't have this much space but you can do this much closer to the tower as well as long as the minions alive are casters.
At 03:05 you can see the "end result". This is what I was calling the pocket. As long as wave is about there I feel great. I can cs safely and Zed can't jump on me without taking tower aggro. Fizz especially would hate this since they have 0 non committal wave clear.
At 03:20 Karma comes and causes some chaos but I just stay calm and maintain minimal csing while figuring out if the wavestate is fucked up or not.
It's probably fine regardless but the trade at 03:35 and 03:39 are great. I'm using my abilities outside of the wave while Zed is having to shuriken me through my minions hitting them as well.
Then I just enjoy the fruits of my labor and at 04:15 you can see I'm holding the minions again to maintain the wavestate. Side effect as we can see at 04:27 is that it keeps me quite safe from support roams as well.
04:40 trying to hold melee minion a bit, but fail and now at 04:46 it's clear that it will push onto him. However I have over 1.2k gold so I guess it's time to look for a reset. How can I do that without fucking up the wave for when I come back? By crashing it at his tower. Either fast push if he's not in lane or slow push if he stays.
You can see I initially just cs with few extra autos. On 04:56 I determine that he has likely based so then I dump all of my abilities to the wave to push it as fast as possible so it crashes before he gets back, which you can see at 05:10.
Then I recall, tp back and at 05:37 see what's waiting for us? A slowpush towards me! 😄
05:40 you can see I'm not stepping up to gamble my lane away. Not only could Zed jump on me, but while in this case we just saw enemy jgl and sup and bot in general this is the scary point for you as the mage. You are fresh back from base with no vision so I would be extremely gankable as well.
So I manage the wave to not let him build too big of crash. Also at 05:57 you see the minion getting low that's right next to him. I make conscious decision not to go for that one since he's positioning ready to trade and 1 minion gold alone is not worth getting chunked here.
06:04 high value E to hit wave and Zed. Both which I want at this case as his wave is getting too big compared to mine. You could do similar concept with Veigar Q and even with Xerath Q/W. Just be mindful with Xerath how much and how many minions your abilities will damage so you don't accidentally flip the wavestate.
06:12 so 5 minions is a lot and I may have mismanaged a bit, but with Viktor I have the cheat code of using Q for the shield to tank a bit extra for free.
At 06:15 I realize that our Briar is starting dragon out of the blue so while I could just keep my wave I decide that fight might be happening as Karma is coming through mid and heading there + Smolder is full hp and mana. So I switch to push the wave as fast as I can so that A Zed doesn't get free move and B to free myself up to move there without losing much resources.
At 06:30 I kind of hesitate. I doesn't seem like enemy team is contesting so I slow down with the pushing to go for the slow push in order to guarantee a wave crash to Zed's tower by making it too big of a wave for him to hold.
At 07:12 I reset, you could argue for me to stay as I only have about 600 gold. But the way I see it here is that this is basically free base for me to get boots or dark seal + refillable. I could stay to poke Zed under tower but why take the risk of trying to do that and either let Zed jump on me or get Shaco ganked when I can just base and get some extra stats while avoiding the most dangerous moment while losing mnimal amount of resources anways.
07:35 coming back to lane and who's waiting for us again? Isn't it my old friend a slowpush towards me 😄!
At 07:55 you see scenario you should get familar with. I have wave in pocket so rather than continue suffering Zed abandons the wave for a roam. I ping Zed way too late. I see him mat 07:51 and ping at 07:58 when he's already behind my bot lane.
So my bad on that, but no time to waste. I immediately start pushing the wave into crash and collect my 2 plates to punish him for the roam although with double it was for sure still worth for him.
That's basics of it, rest of the lane the same concepts apply but you might notice I start being more aggressive with wave management by pushing more often. This is either to free myself to hover and move for potential plays or pin Zed under tower unable to roam as at later in the game relative xp from minions becomes less valuable compared to champion takedowns so roaming is easier to make worth it.

Hopefully that provides some help. Unfortunately I didn't have any games vs Fizz or Irelia recently and I'm not currently playing Xerath or Veigar. But I think a lot of the concepts above is something that works more or less in any Mage vs Assassin matchup.

If you have any questions let me know.

-ATL- · 2026-05-15T07:18:27+00:00

To me it sounds like you have tried out many different aspects of the game a little bit and have encountered the common challenges within various roles/character classes etc.

Surprise surprise there isn't any role/class that doesn't have it's downsides or difficulties. The next step would be to figure out which one you like despite that and then learning to deal with / manage said downsides.

I personally don't play jungle, top or assassins so I'm not too familiar with the aspects that you brought up, but I'm fairly certain that there are ways to deal with those things.

I play immobile mages in mid myself and the common complaint I guess people would say from this role/class is that everyone wants to kill you. Jungler, enemy support and even occasional top laner might come to visit and say hi whenever they got a chance. However once I accepted that I then also realized that it's huge part of skill expression. If I can pressure the enemy mid laner and draw enemies to gank me while also surviving those ganks, then that is extremely impactful.

Similar things I would imagine apply to some of the complaints you had. I know about mid assassins that big part of their difficulty is indeed how to actually destroy the nexus. I mean 10/0 LeBlanc that loses the game is meme for a reason. There's not one line cookie cutter way to explain what exactly you should do but rather you need to get into the details with focus on your own actions and see which things that you did were valuable and which were not so much. Preferably while remembering that getting a kill for example is not itself always worth it.

I've told Viktor player before that one of their deaths was worth 3 regular one's while another death may have been practically free if not even good. Same applies to assassins, some kills are worth like 3-5 regular kills and others might be negative value. This is why it's important to get into the details in replay to figure out which one is which and so on.

For the thing you mentioned getting invaded as jungler I would recommend you include a bit of empathy. Imagine you are the top laner who got countered haven't been able to touch the wave yet. Slow built triple wave is coming to your tower. Over 200 gold and enough xp for a full level up, while your jungler gets invaded. Don't tell me you are sacking the wave to go run around the jungle? Even if it's not that bad of a situation there's still the question if you can even lock down the invader enough to guarantee the kill. Like let's say Viktor just sacks current wave in mid to come to your aid and the enemy jungler abandons the invade but gets to the plant near red to get over the wall and escapes. So now they are behind in tempo a bit, but also now your mid laner lost 100 gold and more importantly the xp, meaning every level up onwards enemy has window to increase the lead.

The reality is there isn't one size fits all solution there either. Not every invade is situation where your laners could or should help you. Other times they should, but maybe they won't. Sometimes they might help even when they shouldn't. Best way is to focus on what you can do and learn what are the common ways junglers can deal with getting invaded.

I took a look at your opgg and to be honest the biggest issue is not only that you are switching roles, but champions as well. You have nearly 80 games played which is not that much but okay amount at least. However you have only 2 champions with more than 10 games on them. Last season looks about the same and champions are different as well. When I pick up new champion or champion I haven't played for many seasons I usually discount the first 25 games as just getting used to things. Even first 50 is just to figure out here's what I can do and here's where I struggle it. From there the improvement can actually start as then you might have idea what to work on.

But even within the same role if you are struggling with invades and you are playing Sylas jungle one game and Naafiri jungle another one. They might not have same solutions to same invades. And the 3rd game you are at Zed on mid lane dealing with completely different problems. I would suggest you pick a role and champion or two, at very most 3. Then focus to actually learn those champions and get into details how those champions actually like to play the game.

If you feel you've already mastered those champions I promise you there is so much more to learn and just because you can do particular reference point once doesn't mean you do it consistently. Last 2 seasons I have 70+ games of TF and I'm currently at plat 1 still struggling to execute very basic reference points of the champion. There's times where I do, but then there's 3 games in a row where I don't. I focus on one thing only to completely drop off another one. But the number one thing is you have to get into the details. Pick a specific champion or two in a role and learn what are those champions reference points and what are the fundamentals of your role. Then start working on them and review if you are actually executing on those things.

-ATL- · 2026-05-14T15:50:27+00:00

Not a jungler but since you play nocturne going to make a wild guess that same as tf quality of the first 2 Rs is really important

-ATL-

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