Climbing The Ladder To Challenger

[Raptorsin7]

i'm trying to hit challenger in league of legends and I want to start a journal to track my progress.

I'll track my progress, issues, goals etc on here.

The goal is challenger, but the sub goal is to hit masters rank and then start writing content for my website.

If anyone has experience in competitive gaming and can offer insights for my improvement I would appreciate it.

[Raptorsin7]

Current rank: Gold 2. Goal rank is challenger. 

I have a lot of resistance towards playing ranked. Idk I just get anxious and would rather play non ranked, but I know that playing ranked consistently is how i'm going to improve.

 

[Raptorsin7]

Terrible day of games. I got over some anxiety about playing ranked, but the games were a mess.

I'm fucking so bad it hurts. I was toxic af raging at my teammates. Not a good day of playing at all. 

I'm just lost in a lot of these games. No idea what I should be doing, or how to make stuff happen. I fall behind in some games, and i'm basically just hoping my team carries me or something. It's a fucking mess.

I want to actually have fun. I WANT to like playing, today was a fucking grind and not really enjoyable at all.

[Raptorsin7]

Today i'm taking a break from the game. Yesterday was rough. I'm hoping that taking a break from the game will help me perform better in the long run. 

Burn out is real, and i've been over doing it lately. 

I'm also unsure whether i should stick to a narrow champ pool, or should i just pick a bunch of different champs based on what my team needs from me. Being a one trick is based on my insecurity that i need to do this to climb, but maybe i can be a jack of all trades and still climb.

I was having fun playing adc the other day, and while i still think TOP will be my main role, if i'm having more fun playing adc then i will switch to that.

[Raptorsin7]

Today I didn't play at all. I'm going to take a break for near future until I make improvements in my well being and how I feel and operate.

Hopefully the break serves me well and allows me to come back even better,

I'm going to focus on improving my meditation technique. I'm following a youtube channel by Forrest Knutson where he gives interesting pointers on improving meditation. He's a modern day yogi and he seems very trust worthy so i'm hoping this works for me. 

The main thing i'm going to improve is focus on my breathe and the way I breathe. Apparently it's a good idea to breathe less than 7 breaths per minute while meditating. I never even thought about this before I watched this guys' videos.

Everything I do will affect my performance in league of legends, so as my meditation improves so will my league of legends performance.

[Raptorsin7]

Still taking a break from playing. I'm planning to do a few tabs of LSD tmrw so i'm hoping to have a break through with how I've been feeling. Most of the tension is carried in my head, between the eyes, so i'm expecting to release that tension tmrw with the drugs.

I'll likely play some league during the peak of the high, but I also want to spend some time contemplating in the elevated state. 

The plan is, and has been, to embody the heightened the state while playing. Hopefully all goes well tmrw and I have a good experience on the drugs.

Until I feel a noticeable improvement in my health, I will likely keep taking a break from playing. 

[Raptorsin7]

Today I played again from a few days break. 

The games were pretty good, I went on a 4 game win streak where I dominated every game. Then I paired up with one of my junglers and had some success, but then we lost 2 in a row and I saw that my jungle really wasn't very good. I also played bad, and overall it wasn't a great last 2 games. 

I'm currently gold 2 0LP, and my next loss is likely a demote.

A major thing i'm trying to improve right now is my attitude towards climbing. I want to be detached and just do my best no matter what's going on. One problem I have is I get too emotional and raddled form losses or when i'm not playing well, and it creates anxiety and tension when I play. I want to just have fun and do my best in everygame, no matter if i'm winning or losing. 

Playing to have fun, not to tilt, and not caring about wins or losses is the best path forward imo for climbing. 

I'm not even really worried about my performance, because I know as I play more and watch more videos and replays I will just naturally improve. But my attitude and mindset will have the biggest impact on my ability to climb no doubt. 

 

[Artiekee]

Hey Raptor,

You seem to be struggling a bit recently with some emotions around gaming. Anxiety, anger, tilt, feeling lost.

This made me wonder, is there any high quality material for serious gamers to improve their mental game?

I used to play poker professionally, and it always surprised me how little effort poker players put into their mental game. Poker is a game where a lot of emotions are in play, and many players are very poor at dealing with them.

With gamers the same is going on. Gamers spend a lot of time playing and studying the game, but dont spend a lot of time in improving their mental game. And since emotions can affect the quality of play drastically (and also the joy of playing), it seems like spending time in the mental game is by far the best investment of time for many gamers. Is this the area you want to focus more on in the future? with your writing?

Im really interested in these topics, and gaming and poker have a lot of similarities, and before poker I was a dedicated gamer. So maybe I can offer some insights to help you improve on some areas of your competitive gaming.

 

 

[Raptorsin7]

@Artiekee  Hey man I appreciate you reaching out.

No i'm really aware of anything specific for gamers, i'm actually playing LOL with the intent of addressing that specific issue though so I hope to address this in the future,

You are bang on in your assessment. I'm definitely feeling lost with my growth in the game rn. Like i'm getting better slowly, but I don't even really have a system as to how to improve or what I can do to make the game more fun.

I honestly don't really have a lot of fun playing right now. It feels more like work, and relief when the games go my away.

Any insights or tips are greatly appreciated.

[Artiekee]

Oke, let me go back to poker for a bit, since most mechanisms are the same with gaming.

So with poker I've seen a lot of people struggle with the motivation part, including myself. It was supposed to be a fun game at all times, and I hear people complain it feels like a grind, like work, just playing hour after hour. And yes, this is sometimes gonna be the case.

But then I'd like to ask the question; why are you playing? What is your drive, your motivation? Often the answer will be money. So then the next question, why do you want money? what do you want to do with it? Because this is eventually their motivation, money itself is worth nothing, its about what you can do with it. And then they realise what poker brings them; freedom, opportunities, control. 

Often they lose track on the bigger picture, the reason why they decided to take this path. They focus too much on the short term results, and when the results are not going their way, they get de-motivated. So for them it's really important to have a clear vision and keep this vision in mind. 

So for your situation; Why are you playing? what is your motivation? how much do you care about short term results?

So you want to become challenger, why? You also say that your subgoal is to hit masters rank first and then you start to write content for your site, why are you waiting with the writing? If you want to write content, start writing it right away. You don't have to post it yet.

Then about getting better at the game. The way most poker players study the game is like this: they watch a couple hours of videos on training sites in a passive way. And that's just all they do. And this way of studying is simply not productive at all. I'm not sure how you are currently trying to improve your game, but if you're interested I can share some productive ways to study, just let me know.

Edited May 24, 2020 by Artiekee

[Raptorsin7]

@Artiekee

I'd love to hear ways to improve. Honestly, right now i'm just playing the game over and over but tbh it's not really effective. I feel stagnant in my performance, and it's getting really frustrating with me spending so much time on the game but not really seeing noticeable improvement.

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by Raptorsin7

[Raptorsin7]

19 hours ago, Artiekee said:

so you want to become challenger, why? You also say that your subgoal is to hit masters rank first and then you start to write content for your site, why are you waiting with the writing? If you want to write content, start writing it right away. You don't have to post it yet.

I want to test myself on the game. I want to hit a high rank so I have credibility to an audience and myself. If this meditation stuff, and positive mindsets etc really work then I should be able to hit a high rank in this game. Virtually no one is taking these meditation insights and applying them in competitive video games. 

It means a lot to me to be able to hit a high rank before I start writing because i'd feel like a hypocrite telling people that meditation can help so much with gaming, but here I am stuck and frustrated playing the game. Before I start writing on how to game in a more mindful way, I have to show that it works on me first.

[Average Investor]

When I quit playing a few years back I was on a 14 game win streak that put me into gold. A few things that really helped get me winning so much was to not worry at all about the teammates. Barron plays were huge and control over that would win games easily at that rank. I ran a razor naga 6 button mouse and that made a massive difference in playing for me with the 6 buttons there. Following a lot of guides and keeping up with the meta was really important for me to move upward. A lot of it is just mindset. I would not worry so much about losing and instead just focus on the little bits where you can improve. I am not sure how high I would have ranked when I stopped because I was doing so good and just quit. 

Mastery mindset is huge with that game and that was my real first taste of it. It is much different than other games in the fact that mastery is so highly regarded within the community. 

[Raptorsin7]

20 minutes ago, Average Investor said:

Mastery mindset is huge with that game and that was my real first taste of it. It is much different than other games in the fact that mastery is so highly regarded within the community. 

Yeah I've noticed that I get tilted easily when I focus on what my teammates are doing.

What you wrote is the reason i'm doing my LP this way. The credibility gained from being a high rank in league of legends is incredible. I was very high rank in overwatch and I remember the way people would just idolize my rank, the same is true but even more so on league.

I just love the potential impact I could have as someone who has the respect of the majority of the community, competitive and non competitive gamers, and how far my word will go within the community. Especially given how so much of this self actualization work has direct impact on performance in any given domain in life.

I just don't feel comfortable telling people why meditation, being kind etc is so beneficial when I can't even make it work on the game yet. There's no reason I can't be world class at this fucking game, it's just frustrating.

[Average Investor]

@Raptorsin7 You have to consider though even being in gold is like the top 30% of a US players as it is. The more you narrow that down the harder and longer it will be until your progress. You're already good at the game and better than the average player. It will take some years to grow and develop the skill set required to climb that high. That's what makes it so valuable though. 

Why not show your journey on the way up there? To follow your progress as you build and progress in the game and in life. No one starts as just a master and I think you're missing an opportunity to grow that audience that is interested in those techniques to advance now. 

I give people "good" advice on how to run a business and it's not like I am a millionaire or something. I have helped people make more money than I do though and sometimes that is part of how it goes. Someone watching you might get that bit of extra edge that puts them to the next rank. from your tips. 

Tilt is the main thing that will keep you in gold in my opinion. I mean you can be really good to make up for it, but it throws your game off so much. If you can focus that energy on taking every little bit to win you will start seeing more wins. Take every little advancement and stall out games. I had won games that were 4v5 from that start in that win streak with my team only having 4. I would boost up as much the best teammates that I could and use them to lead us to victory. Can't win every game and I have to admit even at the time I would research some of my teams stats and stuff and I would literally have people on my team sometimes who were doing their first ranked games ever and had just reached level 30. 

[Artiekee]

3 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Artiekee

I'd love to hear ways to improve. Honestly, right now i'm just playing the game over and over but tbh it's not really effective. I feel stagnant in my performance, and it's getting really frustrating with me spending so much time on the game but not really seeing noticeable improvement.

 

First I would start with approaching the study part much more serious. What is your current playing/study ratio? If you are really serious about getting better it's not weird to have this ratio close to 1:1.

For the study itself, you want to create structure. You want to create sort of a framework, a blueprint of your game

• Break the game down in all the fundamentals, all the required skills
• Rate yourself on each skill
• Value the importance of each skill (some skills are required all the time and generate high value, some skills are rarely used and dont generate high value)

So this process might take some time, but will defintely be worth it. This gives you the bigger picture of your game.

What you want to do with this framework is ask yourself the question: What can i study today that will earn me the greatest value over the long run? Study is an investment of your time  to become better, so you want to spend your time as effective as possible.

To answer this question you want to compare the importance of each skill with your current level of that skill. And with this information decide what will generate the highest amount of value for you on the time spend on this skill. 

And keep in mind that most learning processes have a logarithmic growth, meaning that for example it will take you 10 hours to bring a skill from 0% to 80%, but it will take 50 hours to bring it from 80% to 90%, and to get it from 90% to 95% will cost you a couple of hundred hours.

So this process is the first step.

Let me know if you want me to go on haha 

 

 

[Raptorsin7]

@Artiekee  Okay i'll give that a shot. There is a pretty detailed post where a guy broke the game down into many different categories.

Right now i'm thinking the most growth will come form thoroughly analyzing my games and seeing where i'm making mistakes. What do you think?

It's really overwhelming with all the information, and how complex the game is. I want to improve so badly, but it's kinda paralyzing just thinking of all the potential stuff to focus on, I don't want to take 10 years and have that wasted "learning" when there could have been a better route.

@Average Investor @Artiekee I also have an ace up my sleeve lol. When I do LSD and I do a break through dose, for whatever reason, I play way better at league. Like i'm more focused, the game feels smoother, it's really incredible the effects of the drug on my performance. I haven't done lsd in a few months due to procrastination, but honestly I'm expecting a ton of improvement when I start doing it consistently again. 

[Artiekee]

8 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Artiekee  Okay i'll give that a shot. There is a pretty detailed post where a guy broke the game down into many different categories.

Oke that sounds like a nice guidance.

 

8 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

It's really overwhelming with all the information, and how complex the game is. I want to improve so badly, but it's kinda paralyzing just thinking of all the potential stuff to focus on, I don't want to take 10 years and have that wasted "learning" when there could have been a better route.

That's exactly why you want to create a framework and find structure in your approach. You want to have clarity in your mind, and now its just a chaotic mess of possibilities, without a clear plan. This lack of clarity also makes you procrastinate much faster by the way. If you know what you can do, you will do it much faster.

8 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Right now i'm thinking the most growth will come form thoroughly analyzing my games and seeing where i'm making mistakes. What do you think?

Yeah that sounds about right. But when you do, keep in mind the question: What can i study today that will earn me the greatest value over the long run? Analysing and seeing your mistakes is only the first part, the next step is to improve on those areas. 

Have you read the book Talent is Overrated from Geoff Colvin? In this book he discusses the concept of deliberate practice. If you haven't read it yet I highly recommend to read it right away and really apply this idea of deliberate practice.

8 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Average Investor @Artiekee I also have an ace up my sleeve lol. When I do LSD and I do a break through dose, for whatever reason, I play way better at league. Like i'm more focused, the game feels smoother, it's really incredible the effects of the drug on my performance. I haven't done lsd in a few months due to procrastination, but honestly I'm expecting a ton of improvement when I start doing it consistently again. 

Do you play better during the LSD trip or after? 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Artiekee

[Raptorsin7]

On 2020-05-26 at 1:08 AM, Artiekee said:

Do you play better during the LSD trip or after? 

Sorry for the delay. I play better on the trip. When i'm more conscious the game moves slower and i'm just more aware of how everything is occurring. I haven't been able to channel the state, but there's definitely a difference in my performance on and off the drugs.

 

I have a pretty big update. I was going through a bit of a crisis because I wasn't getting any better and I was stuck at a medium rank. 

In the past 7 days I'm 23-9 on my main champion, and I just hit Plat 4 which is a new max rank for me. I've been playing very well and I think I can climb even higher just by playing and focusing well each game.

I've found that meditation right before I play, or playing right when I wake up actually increases my performance. I think it's because I have more mental clarity In the mornings.

I'm back in full swing on the game, and I expect to be Diamond 4 very soon.

[Average Investor]

@Raptorsin7 Great progress! Sounds like you found a few hacks to step up your game for sure.