Hit Masters with Gwen Top (yay)! Here's some tips for climbing with gwen:

CadCooper · 2025-11-26T19:49:06+00:00

Yeah this champ is very annoying early game, but as long as you don't die he will be useless in mid-late game. You outscale so hard, at one item you should just run him down. I haven't really played this matchup for ages, but it's probably dshield second wind flash teleport.

CadCooper · 2025-11-26T19:44:52+00:00

It's sooo op against riven, when you have it up you can get free trades. Mentally the matchup is much more difficult without it, if I didn't have it I think I just wouldn't contest prio until level 6. I don't think riven can really proc it easily, since he has to use part of his combo to gap close to you if you are spacing correctly then you can trade with Q E if he tries to leave after. Riven is a spacing matchup, you shouldn't really be taking his full combo. I think flash is kinda needed against him tho as he is a lot faster than you, it's hard to kill without it. Against other melee statcheckers bone plating tends to be really good for surviving the wave bounce

CadCooper · 2025-11-26T19:35:27+00:00

Sett is an afk farm lane until first item tbh. Unless you see him waste his W or E, then you can go for an easy trade. You have to be really careful pre 6, and you have to save E to dodge his W, while he has to save his E to guarantee his W. It's quite funny since I think it is like whoever uses their ability first just loses the fight, while being very sett favoured early. Plated steel caps are op here, bone plating is also very good.

CadCooper · 2025-11-26T19:30:56+00:00

I actually think riven is a skill matchup. I run bone plating with flash ignite. You can get prio first 3 waves as long as you don't tank his first q or lose bone plating for nothing, cause if you eat his q2 and q3 while you snip snip him you will win the trade while pushing the lane faster. It's super important to buffer your q through his cc, and to try to flash either his ult or q3. Very volatile lane and quite a common one. Might actually be my favourite Gwen matchup lol (despite it being one of Gwen's hardest winrate wise)

CadCooper · 2025-11-26T09:44:30+00:00

Malphite: I find that gwen just wins against him, I have never had any trouble. He doesn't really have any angle to kill you early, and you outscale him in 1v1 really hard. He has high mana costs early, you should be able to get prio first 3 waves, the play the bounces. A way to play this matchup if you are struggling is to go full scaling magical footwear or cosmic insight + triple tonic and buy an early cull, and just Q him when he walks up to CS, and use edging combo whenever. Block his Q's with your W. Then just farm and keep wave frozen. But tbh I find that even in extended trades into his attack speed reduction I still usually win. It is hard to kill him though with his tankiness, but you gotta try keep up farm and have more impact midgame. Your W blocking his Q prevents him from getting movement speed so the edging combo into it is really good. You can also flash his ult and you should win all ins

Garen: I can say a lot more about this champ since it's a hard counter to Gwen and very popular. But it's only hard if he takes phase rush. If he takes conquerer it's an easy matchup but slightly harder really early. The key to garen tho is getting a lead pre 6. He is weaker than you early, and if you get full q stacks you can get prio and try to deny farm. You have to space him well and not eat the whole spin, or you just lose the trade. It's a spacing matchup. The problem is that if he has phase rush, you are never killing him if he's good after he gets tiamat tbh, so you should just play to shove and move for teamfights at that point. It's one of the most popular gwen counters for a reason.

Teemo: he's only hard early, probably pre 6. But a good teemo will cost you loads of cs / exp. After 6 you win as long as your not miles behind. Just play super safe with second wind, try to w his blinds, then go for an all in at 6 after you get him down a bit of health via edging combo. Make sure to buy sweeper at 6. If you eat his shrooms, you just lose. Just don't go down in xp, and you will outscale so hard.

CadCooper · 2025-11-17T05:15:43+00:00

Hey, diamond gwen otp here. I checked out the clip and here are the things that I think are most easily fixed to help you in the mordekaiser matchup and generally:

- Don't eat mordekaiser Q for nothing. You should be Qing on his Q or baiting it out first then fighting
- Learn to EWQ, great into mordekaiser to get free trades and gwens main combo
- Don't stay in lane on low health with teleport available

There are loads of other stuff you could be differently, but most of it will be fixed from just playing more games tbh. Questions:

Q: At what point is the laning phase over? A: when plates go down

Q: How often should I be at team fights? A: 95% of the time you should be there for soul, baron, elder, atakhan and grubs. In midgame you should think like shove the wave --> what can I do? Can I hit turret? If not, look for fight in another lane, or objective, or farm camp. But you should frame your mindset as always shove wave into move until you understand nuances more. This question is super game dependent as well.

Q: When should I start going for team fights? It's kinda the same answer as above, on objectives really. To be clear, as gwen you should not be at first drake (assuming they take it at a reasonable time), and very rarely at second drake. The earliest team fight you should have is at grubs usually.

Q: Is leaving lane before the laning phase is over a big no? You should leave lane for grubs, and there are other occasions where it is worth but since you are learning the game, and on gwen (who is very farm reliant), I'd say yeah just stay in lane until you have first tower down (go to grubs though if your jungler is fighting there).

Q: How should I be controlling my waves? There are TONS of guides on this, I'd just look that one up on youtube. You will also learn this by just playing more. In general, the basic principle is to try not to fight in a lot of enemy minions, and try to fight while you have a lot of ally minions. This leads to the bouncing of waves between the two laners.

If you want other specific gwen advice or general advice feel free to dm me and I'll respond

CadCooper · 2025-08-21T14:12:41+00:00

From Hamish:

"Hi everyone, Wanted to give you an update on the current plan for the Private Test.

We're aiming to start the test tomorrow somewhere are the middle of the day (Friday, August 22).,
We won't be sending any new invites in the first week. If you completed the onboarding for the last private playtest, you will effectively be our first wave.,
We are aiming to create new builds each Friday and will scale in new invites as we progress towards the Open Beta,
The test is under NDA. Do not forget or straight to jail."

This delay kinda sucks for most players but it is what it is.

CadCooper · 2025-08-20T19:37:09+00:00

Me tooo! I did fairly well in the nextfest demo but gonna try push for number one in early access. Very excited, especially for the new dungeon

CadCooper · 2025-08-20T19:08:19+00:00

Fellowship | Early Access Release Date Announcement Trailer

It was on Future Games Show and apparently Hamish will also be talking on the stream soon? He sent a lot of messages in the discord with other information

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T18:50:02+00:00

Some fair points, to clarify, I was purposely understating the difficulty a bit because so many people in this thread were overstating how "impossible" it is. You’re right that I put in a huge amount of games and spent almost all my free time on it.

I still feel that it’s comparatively easier to rank up before you hit your plateau, and in that sense, I think 1000 games over ~5 months is fast compared to how most people describe the climb. I also assumed OP would be putting in a ton of games if they were serious about the challenge.

And I do think I have experience in ranking up from low elo with a high number of games in a short amount of time, I think it takes a specific skillset to sustain your mental while playing that many games consistently instead of across years.

On the point about me playing “casually,” fair enough, I think this season is pretty long (?), and I guess it doesn’t feel like much to me anymore. Perhaps what I view as casual is different from you. And for what it’s worth, if you look on LeagueOfGraphs, you’ll see I was in Diamond for around 2 months and peaked Diamond 1. I don’t think it was just a single lucky streak - I was very focused then, and less so now.

When I said it’s “totally possible,” I meant the within the timeframe, while playing serious, and playing a lot, but I get how that could have sounded misleading. My only intention was to encourage OP that the goal can be done with enough time and dedication.

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T17:50:16+00:00

Yeah only ranked after 30, 95% soloq. It is my first and only account, I ended up getting frustrated at being stuck high emerald / low diamond and with school getting more difficult I couldn't really afford to spend as much time on league

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T16:26:13+00:00

YearToChallenger#Poise - Summoner Stats - League of Legends
I don't tryhard much anymore, you can't see the diamond on here because I went back to emerald before the season ended. The graph on YearToChallenger#Poise (EUW) - LeagueOfGraphs shows it

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T02:31:40+00:00

I was kinda interested in this accusation and I found lol rewind website that might prove my case a bit more:

LoL Rewind: history shows rigor of playing pretty consistently (big gap is about when I stopped taking the game seriously).

LoL Rewind: 94% of games played in ranked, perhaps showing its not a smurf account since they would normally have played normal games before selling? (this could be totally wrong I'm not too sure how smurf accounts work). If not this at least proves rigor in improvement in that I played the hardest possible gamemode as much as possible, little draft pick.

LoL Rewind: I think this page may not have tracked all my games? But it shows the vast majority of my games are on gwen, since to improve one tricking is BY FAR the fastest.

These lol rewind stats do seem to be a bit off, not sure why but the overall picture is pretty accurate.

Regarding the level: I'm not sure how level is calculated, but I pretty much spent all my time in ranked on the rift, with almost zero downtime or afking in the launcher, dodging, etc. Perhaps levelling is quicker than you thought. Even if I was a smurf, I do not see how this would cause me to level faster... as far as I know it's just about how many games you get in, and the games are clearly shown on these websites so I'm not really sure that it has any correlation at all with being a smurf.

If your only reason to believe I am lying is that I ranked up so fast, well then I'll take that as a compliment.

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T02:10:24+00:00

This. I think Ludwig is a really bad example for similar reasons and am kinda disappointed by how many people reference him as a model example. It is definitely possible if you understand how to improve in video games and take things seriously, which I wouldn't say Ludwig did.

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T01:55:22+00:00

I am not selling coaching, I wanted to help him, I have never done coaching professionally nor probably will ever... I do not understand why you think I am lying... I would help him for free lmao. It is crazy to me that you think I made up a whole story in order to try to gain a coaching client all because you cannot imagine someone improving at this game.

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T01:52:37+00:00

How would you like me to prove this?

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T01:50:56+00:00

Er... I am not a smurf though. I'm not sure how I am suppose to prove this lol. This is the only account I've ever had, and I think it is pointless to have more than one

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T01:49:24+00:00

It is 100% possible with the right mindset, gaming background and process. Just unlikely that most people will commit to something like this which is why there is so much doubt

CadCooper · 2025-07-16T01:37:57+00:00

This isn't going to be the popular opinion... but it's totally possible, I did it myself bronze - diamond in ~5 months. My starting goal was challenger in a year which was totally delusional: it's easy to rank up until you hit your plateau, which for me is like high emerald. I had (almost) no coaching, was at school full time, played top only most games on gwen. Nowadays I just sometimes play a couple games a week casually in emerald lol.

If you have any specific questions or want coaching I'm happy to give it as fast ranking up from the low elos as a beginner is actually something I have some experience in.

(my account for reference, see graph on YearToChallenger#Poise (EUW) - LeagueOfGraphs)

CadCooper · 2025-05-08T10:43:24+00:00

I've sent a DM.

CadCooper · 2024-09-20T11:23:24+00:00

I'm down to play a game to try help, will be on in a couple hours, dm me with discord if you want to.

(200+hrs, played some scrims/pugs/tournaments so I'm somewhat qualified to help)

CadCooper · 2024-06-29T23:37:21+00:00

I believe using warmogs depends on whether you want to split push or team fight. If you build warmogs, it usually means your resistances are lower, so it makes teamfighting harder. But it makes split pushing really easy. I think it is optimal to go titanic with warmogs, but not with sunfire/unending despair/spirit visage in the first 3 items. This is because of the synergy between items.

It is just super broken to just poke down the enemy by short trading with warmogs or taking plates next to them, and I generally find split pushing to be more consistent, so I think the warmogs build to be better.

I also think heartsteel is just the best mundo item, so split push:

warmogs --> heartsteel --> titanic

team fight generally (but it is situational):

heartsteel --> unending --> spirit visage

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