EUW Grandmaster Midlaner + Jungler AMA

[strong fiber]

Hey guys, I recently hit Grandmaster playing midlane and almost reached Challenger playing jungle in s12 (rank 310).
I'm here to answer league related questions (mostly midlane + jungle) so feel free to ask my anything.
proof: https://gyazo.com/0d5bd7ceebd5184471c9322f2376065e / https://gyazo.com/f57f6dd7e2bdaf87296251204229896d
opgg: https://www.op.gg/summoners/euw/YAGAOFAKERCHOVY

[tepid prism]

Good job!

[dire tundra]

What three things did you do to that massively helped you climb?

[wet nexus]

what are the champions you hate the most to play against?

[strong fiber]

Only playing when I get enough sleep, fixing my mentality about the game (no tilt and always looking at your own mistakes) and focusing on only a few champions (3-5)

[strong fiber]

Thank you

[strong fiber]

Rengar, Leblanc and Veigar

[cursive oak]

Do you ever lose track of the enemy jungler and if so how do you get back to tracking them?

[tepid prism]

Who was your top 3 champs for climbing and why

[elfin glacier]

Who were ur best midlane champs?

[strong fiber]

Viktor Qiyana Lb

[elfin glacier]

thx

[strong fiber]

Viktor as control mage, good blind, rather easy to pick up and fairly consistent, Qiyana since I used to play her a lot in jungle and also studied her laning a lot, also having an ad option for mid is always good, Leblanc as more aggressive AP option, not a good blind but a good counter pick, sometimes Cassio as situational counter

[tepid prism]

What motivated you to climb

[strong fiber]

rarely, usually I go for a ward on raptors if possible, to regain tracking just focus on the mapstate, this should help you a lot. Example: There is a play topside where the enemy jungler doesnt participate -> they are likely botside. In lower elos there is unfortunately more randomness when it comes to junglers so it can be hard. To avoid jungle ganks try to either hover on the side you warded or hover towards where your jungler is, this makes it way harder for you to get ganked. If you have wave control you can also walk into the enemy jungle and place a ward or use the vision plant to try to spot the jungler or see what camps are gone.

[strong fiber]

hard to say, I wasnt really overly motivated to be fair, I swapped from jungle to mid because the jungle gameplay got boring and frustrating. I realized quickly I'm pretty good at mid so I decided to push my limit in soloq and see how far I can go on a new role

[tepid prism]

When are good roam timers for mid

[cursive oak]

thanks!

[turbid remnant]

Any tips to track enemy jungler?

[strong fiber]

when the enemy mid is base or you get to crash a cannon wave so you have enough time to get back to mid

[strong fiber]

try to look if they get a leash (if a laner is late/used mana you will know), if you get prio try to ward raptors, use the vision plants in the jungle, try to pay attention to how the map plays out and try to use basic reasoning to figure out where they could be -> entire bot camps gone means they are very likely topside etc

hard to explain in full depth via text, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjXxRn5sQiQ this guide could be of interest to you tho

[near condor]

i’m not a midlaner but i sometimes have to flex it when i play with friends

what do you feel are the main differences in play style between mid and bot, and the differences in objectives from early-mid game

[dire tundra]

Shok fan 🤝

[strong fiber]

Midlane is basically just respecting enemy cooldowns, outside from a few all in champs like irelia it's mostly just poking each other down, wave state isn't as important as botlane and wave manipulation tacticts aren't commonly used until high elo

Botlane is a lot more about controlling the wave and much less about poking the enemy down (outside of a few champions)

You usually don't end up looking for all ins on lane as mid

And you play for the jungler whereas botlane has the jungler playing for them

So you enable the jungler and the jungler enables the botlane

[viral saddle]

do you think heartsteel volibear is a good idea in lower elo?

if no then why not

[strong fiber]

if you are in low elo items shouldnt matter too much

still probably not optimal as the item isnt that good rn

I personally dont play voli but iceborn seems like the more well rounded option (decent tankiness + dmg + sheen to shred turrets)

[worldly saddle]

what would you say are the most underrated scaling mid champs? i love to play scaling champs and have otpd vlad for the past 4-5 years but want to find other champs to play

[true canyon]

play taliyah copege

[viral saddle]

but if i have heartsteel i can 1v1 the adc

if i have iceborne the adc just surives for 10 years and kills me

[neat schooner]

Voilbear's base damage is quite good, so the sticking power of IbG's passive should, if anything, make it easier to run down and kill an enemy ADC...and it's armor should also mean it does more for your survivability too.

[viral saddle]

ay, i wanted the opinion of the grandmaster midlaner / jungler 🥲

[viral saddle]

but to answer the question. yeah in theory you'd think that would be the case but no. ibg offers nothing in terms of damage it's just stickiness. which means the adc can just ignore me and walk away unless they're dumb

[viral saddle]

• i'm pretty sure volibear has hp ratio so if u manage to stack hearthsteel a lot it will do bigger damage i guess despite having 10k hp

[cursive oak]

i dont like heartsteel on Voli (jungle) because there isnt often 3-4 melee enemies. If there are 3-4 melee enemies, granted they dont all have 10000000000 dashes you can go heartsteel. IBG is good against more range or dashes, you can catch up to them

[viral saddle]

tbh iceborn seems so op anyway u probably try to get it most games

[dry gate]

so i can win a lot of games as veigar but early game feels too coinflippy

the last two games our inhib was taken before my roa was even fully stacked and i got it around 10-12 minutes

[solar patio]

@strong fiber what are your favorite tricks against Fiora (one of my favorite matchups by the way) disregarding E fakeouts and what not. How do you like to play your wave

[warm sable]

What are the best low elo junglers

[strong fiber]

Not nessecarily underrated but my favorites are ekko, kassadin and viktor

[strong fiber]

Veigar is the weakest early on so that makes sense, can't really say what is going wrong in your games without actually seeing them sadly

[strong fiber]

general tips or a specific matchup?

generally my favorite (not very practical) is the stealth champion hugging the tower so when fiora q's the tower she takes aggro and damage

other useful tricks are hugging the wall so avoid her hitting all 4 vitals and leaving her vital range to reset the vital

[strong fiber]

imo nunu and amumu but depends on what you consider low elo to be

something like kayn/vi/j4 can be good for a gold+ player

[warm sable]

I mean around bronze-gold

[strong fiber]

yeah basically the junglers that dont require mechanics or have a unique kit

something like amumu etc

[warm sable]

Why is amumu better bronze-gold than plat+

Isn't it better to not be a cc tank in low elo

[strong fiber]

depends on what your goal is

amumu is good for a lower elo player since he allows you to learn the game without focusing too much on your champ since he is mechanically easy

[warm sable]

For context I had a rengar otp tell me that rengar's better in low elo than high elo especially cause cc tanks suck below platinum and you can get free kills early and snowball with high damage champions

He was masters btw

[cursive oak]

Difficult champions have an advantage in low elo that no one plays them and they don’t understand how they work so there’s that but simple cc tanks are way better cause u can catch people

[warm sable]

To expand on his point of cc tanks being bad, you need teammates to follow up on your engages and teammates to do everything cause you're just allowing them to make a play that they might not make

Or in short, low elo players grief their team

@strong fiber what's your opinion on this take

[strong fiber]

the take is somewhat valid, however champs like rengar are way harder to pilot for someone not as good at the game, in high elo he is a menace and there are many rengar otps in grandmaster+ since once mastered the champ is insane

Id simply stick to easier champs, doesnt always have to be tanks and main engage champs if that is your worry

[warm sable]

Then what simple champ would you recommend other than nunu and amumu since they're both just tanks with cc

[strong fiber]

xin,udyr, hecarim

[inner steppe]

for the love of god, how do you do this? i feel like my mechanical skill is above my current elo but my mental is literally bronze and i go into tilt as soon as my lane is 0/2 down or something or someone starts talking shit

especially the looking at your own mistakes, how do you even identify them? if you knew they were mistakes you wouldnt do them in the first place

[neat schooner]

@inner steppeMental fortitude takes practice. Gotta learn to not let what has already happened affect you. What matters is the present and eminent future, nothing else. Identifying mistakes is easy (where did things go badly, and then why did that play out that way, what could I have done instead?) What's much harder is learning to recognize missed opportunities (because how would you even know that you could've done that instead of whatever you actually did?)