You don't move up in rank by winning a spectacular game, but by winning a few more games than you lose, over hundreds of games. Ranked rewards consistency: an average player who never makes a big mistake rises faster than a brilliant but irregular player. The rank system details the tiers and what changes from one to the next.
A main role, a backup role
No one masters all five positions. In ranked, the best strategy is simple:
- a main role, the one you play most often and that you understand best;
- a backup role, for games where your position is already taken;
- a playable hero on each other position, to never block the draft.
Positions that few players want, like roam, are a good entry point: you almost always get them, and a good roamer influences the entire map. Each position has its guide: gold lane, exp lane, mid lane, jungle and roam.
A small pool of heroes
Three heroes on his main role are more than enough. Each hero has his duels, his timings and his items: playing fifteen means mastering none of them.
To choose these three heroes:
- a strong hero in the current patch, that the tier list or the tier list of your rank places at the top;
- a hero that you like to play, because it is the one on which you will progress the most;
- a backup hero who responds to the most frequent counters of your first two choices.
A hero who is banned almost every game at your rank should not be your only choice: check his ban rate in the statistics table.
The mentality: play the next game
Ranked wears patience more than reflexes. A few rules protect your points:
- stop after two defeats in a row: the third game is often played angry, and it is the one that costs the most;
- do not reply in the chat: each message written is a second where we do not look at the map;
- a game is never lost before the inhibitor: endgame Lords return situations that seemed lost;
- play rested: hours of fatigue are when small errors accumulate.
Learn from your defeats
A defeat teaches more than a victory, provided you look at it honestly. After a lost game, ask yourself just one question: what decision did I make that I would not make again? Not that of your teammates: yours.
Game replays are the most useful tool for this. Look at the minimap at the time of your death: most of the time, the information that would have prevented it was there.
Measure your progress
Win rate is the only metric that matters over time, and it moves slowly. The win rate calculator says how many wins in a row it takes to reach a goal: useful for setting a realistic goal rather than a number that would require a hundred wins in a row.
Also compare your heroes to their average: a hero with 50% wins in the current patch is a good choice if you play him above this average, a bad one if you play him below.
The most common mistakes
- Change main hero each patch following the last video.
- Continue the games after a series of defeats.
- Take a role you don’t know to “try out” in a ranked format.
- Judge your game by score rather than objectives and gold earned.