How to Carry Low Elo in Season 16: Iron to Gold (The Honest Guide)

I'm going to tell you something you don't want to hear: if you're stuck in low elo, it's your fault.

Not your jungler's fault for not ganking. Not your support's fault for taking your CS. Not Riot's fault for "rigged matchmaking." Yours. Every Diamond+ player could take your account right now and climb it to Platinum in a week. Not because they get better teammates — they get the same random teammates you do. They climb because they're better at the game.

That's the bad news. The good news? Low elo is the easiest place to improve, because the mistakes are so big and so obvious that fixing even one or two of them will shoot your win rate up immediately.

This isn't a guide about "ward more" and "don't flame." You already know that. This is about the specific, actionable things that separate a Silver player from a Gold player, and a Gold player from a Platinum player.

Rule #1: Stop Playing 15 Champions

This is the single biggest mistake in low elo. You play Yasuo one game, Thresh the next, then Jungle Kayn, then ADC Jinx. You're not learning any of them. You're just cycling through champions you saw on YouTube and losing on all of them equally.

Pick 2-3 champions. That's it. Play them for 100 games straight. You'll get bored. Play them anyway.

Here's what happens when you one-trick: you stop thinking about your champion. Your combos become muscle memory. Your trading patterns become automatic. And when you stop thinking about *how* to play your champion, you start thinking about *how to win the game*. That's when you climb.

The Best Champions to One-Trick in Low Elo

These aren't the "best" champions in the game. These are the best champions for climbing out of low elo specifically — simple kits, strong in uncoordinated solo queue, and they punish the mistakes that low elo players make constantly.

Rule #2: CS Is Free Gold That You're Leaving on the Ground

Here's a stat that should make you uncomfortable: the average Silver player gets about 5 CS per minute. A Diamond player gets 8-9. That's a difference of roughly 60 CS by the 20-minute mark, which is about 1,200 gold — the equivalent of two kills.

You're not behind because the enemy laner killed you. You're behind because they're farming and you're not.

Go into Practice Tool right now. Set a 10-minute timer. Try to hit 80 CS by the 10-minute mark with no opponent. If you can't do it in Practice Tool, you definitely can't do it in a real game. Practice until you can hit 80+ consistently, then try it in normals.

Stop ARAMing at 15 Minutes

This is the low elo special. Laning phase ends, and all 10 players group mid and run at each other for the next 20 minutes. Nobody farms side lanes. Nobody takes jungle camps. Everyone just fights over and over.

While your team is having their 4th pointless mid lane fight, go farm a side lane. Take the wave, take the jungle camps nearby, then rotate back. You'll be 2,000 gold ahead of everyone else because they've been sharing mid lane CS between 4 people.

The exception: if your team is fighting over Baron or Dragon, you need to be there. Objectives matter. Random mid lane skirmishes at 16 minutes do not.

Rule #3: Die Less (Seriously, That's It)

Look at your match history. Count your deaths. If you're averaging more than 5 deaths per game, that's your problem right there.

Every death costs you:

• 300+ gold to the enemy (more if you're on a kill streak)
• 20-50 seconds of game time where you can't farm, fight, or take objectives
• Lane pressure — your tower takes damage, your opponent roams for free
• Mental — yours and your team's

A player who goes 3/1/5 is more valuable than a player who goes 10/8/3. The first player is consistently useful. The second player is a coin flip who feeds as much as they carry.

Rule #4: Objectives Win Games, Kills Don't

You just aced the enemy team. All 5 are dead. 40 seconds of death timers. What do you do?

If you answered "recall and buy items," you're the reason you're in Silver.

After a teamfight win, you take something. Tower. Dragon. Baron. Inhibitor. You convert the kill advantage into an objective advantage. Kills are temporary. Towers are permanent. A 15-kill lead means nothing if you haven't taken any towers — the enemy team is still in the game.

Dragon and Baron Timers

Low elo players treat Dragon like it's optional. It's not. Dragon Soul wins games. Four dragons give your team a permanent buff that can swing fights by itself.

• Dragon spawns at 5:00, then every 5 minutes after it dies
• Baron spawns at 20:00
• Be at the objective 30 seconds before it spawns. Ward the area. Clear enemy wards. Ping your team.

If you're the only person on your team who tracks Dragon timer, you're already ahead of 90% of low elo players.

Rule #5: Your Mental Is Your Biggest Enemy

I saved this for last because it's the one nobody wants to hear.

You will get bad teammates. You will get AFKs. You will get the 0/7 Yasuo who types "jg diff" after dying to a solo kill. This is not unique to your account. This is not "losers queue." This happens to everyone, at every elo, in every region.

The difference between a player who climbs and a player who stays hardstuck is how they respond to it.

Here's the mental framework that actually works:

Play for improvement, not for LP. If you focus on "I need to hit Gold," every loss feels like a disaster. If you focus on "I need to average 7 CS/min this game," every game is a chance to practice regardless of the outcome. The LP follows the improvement. It always does.

Stop playing after 2 losses in a row. Your mental is shot. Your decision-making gets worse. You start forcing plays because you're tilted. Take a 15-minute break. Go outside. Come back fresh. The ranked ladder isn't going anywhere.

Accept that some games are unwinnable. About 30% of your games are free wins (enemy team has the AFK). About 30% are unwinnable (your team has the AFK). The remaining 40% are the games that matter — the ones where YOUR performance decides the outcome. Focus on those.

The Low Elo Climbing Checklist

If you do nothing else from this guide, do these five things:

1. Pick 2-3 champions and play only them for 100 games 2. Average 7+ CS per minute (practice in Practice Tool) 3. Die fewer than 5 times per game 4. Take an objective after every teamfight win 5. /mute all and stop typing in chat

That's it. No fancy macro. No complex wave management. No jungle tracking spreadsheets. Just these five things, consistently, for 100 games. You will climb. The math guarantees it.

If your account's MMR is already tanked from hundreds of losses and you're getting +14/-25, it might be faster to start fresh. Check your current MMR with our free MMR checker to see where you stand. If the numbers are ugly, a fresh smurf with clean MMR lets you skip the grind of fixing a broken rating.

And if you want to make sure your settings aren't holding you back before you start the climb, check out our best settings guide for Season 16.

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