User blog comment:TheTobarMethod/I Wanna Find More Gaps In My Playing/@comment-169.232.92.125-20130207042617

Imagine a perfectly played game. Not a nearly perfect game, but a PERFECT game. PERFECT CS (literally not missing a single creep from the wave while also taking nearby jungle camps whenever possible), 0 deaths, converting every kill possible (this is debatable on some, but the obvious ones means you should've easily gotten a kill), and denying your opponent to 0 CS.

All of this is next to impossible, but THIS is how you want to play. If you belong in a higher tier of ELO, you WILL shit on everyone SO HARD in lane, they literally can't get together to fight. And it literally doesn't matter what role you play (though obviously some are far harder than others).

Say you played perfectly. It is next to impossible to lose the game (the only scenaios where it's possible are where you disconnect or your allies are literally intentionally feeding kills right as they spawn).

When you get to a high enough level, the difference in skill isn't determined by gaping holes in anybody's play, it's who can do the little things better. At gold or silver, you get a basic sense of how to lane. At high plat, you get a more developed map awareness and tend to build properly. At diamond, all of your mechanics are solid and your decision-making and game knowledge will be the deciding factor of who wins and who loses (as well as a bit of luck).

No matter what, you can ALWAYS play at a higher tier. Voyboy struggled to get to Challenger tier, but when he goes full tryhard mode with Akali, he carries the game so hard that he makes his 2k+ ELO opponents look like 500 ELO players. That means there's a tier of skill above that of even challenger and diamond tier. Wickd is the same as well. When he goes full tryhard for ELO, he can rake in 200-300 ELO in a day.

It's both practice and a discovery process, as you practice your mechanics and learn what the most efficient builds are and what the best decisions in every situation is. One thing to keep in mind is never be afraid to fail, as long as you can learn from it. Voyboy will put knowingly put himself in tought situations and learn from it. If it costs you 1 game, which is like 11-14 ELO, and ~20 league points, who cares? You'll earn it all back when you go full tryhard mode.

You can't be satisfied with simply being even. You need to always strive for more.

And if you know what to do when you have a premade team, then you should know what to do in solo queue. It's the same thing, except you don't know these people and it's a little harder to communicate with them effectively. Honestly, if you're ahead, take globals (dragon, towers, buffs, baron) and snowball the lead. But don't overgreed for them. Games can be turned around instantly because you overgreeded for their red buff or for the dragon. Also, it can be hard to tear people away from their lane when they are winning by a lot, because they'll want to just keep farming. Convince them the global money will be worth it, and it will make it easier to finish the game faster. Also, a team with 0 outer/innter towers vs a team with all their towers up has very little map control and has to ward the crap out of their own jungle just to be safe. The difference in map control is huge, and gives your opponents plenty of opportunities to throw the game by getting caught facechecking a bush.

It all comes down to mentality and striving to play perfectly. And if you can't carry every single game, you really don't deserve the higher ELO. If we're talking like 10-20 ELO, yeah sure, you may or may not deserve it. But if we're talking 100-200, especially more than that, you don't deserve it if you can't carry all of your games prior to getting there.

And as Archonell said, you can't really carry against a team of the same skill level (except if your lane opponent fucked up HARD, which does happen occasionally). But you can always carry to a higher ELO if you deserve it, because nobody plays perfectly, so there is always room to outplay your opponents by a fairly large margin. It's all about snowballing all the little advantages you can gain (trades, CS, exp, towers, kills, dragons, etc).