Vainglory Forums

I've been trying to figure this out lately. In my guild everyone is obsessed with getting a higher rank, however most of them keep bouncing back and forth at midlevel tiers. They progress pretty quickly up to the mid levels, but then people seem to stall out and you suddenly start hearing all these complaints about getting paired up with 'stupid' players 'who don't get it', etc.

Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but it makes me think that there's a critical difference in how you play the game strategically that differentiates mid-tier skill levels versus higher tier levels, and I'm wondering if anyone else has insight into that?

My current hunch is that you can get to mid-tier status pretty easily as you simply master playing some heroes well individually. For example, maybe I play a great Ringo and Krul, and am pretty decent at Arden and Catherine. That's enough to win at a high enough rate to get you to mid-tier. Once you get a bunch of Worthy Foe's or Got Swagger or whatever the next level is playing against each other, most of them simply trade wins back and forth. No one progresses. So my hunch is that perhaps the next level is really understanding entire team synergies/weaknesses, so you're no longer playing from the point of view of just being good at your character and staying true to your role, but you're playing and building with a clear picture of exactly how you're going to exploit the other team's weaknesses and block their likely build paths.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Yes, the first few tiers are passed mainly through improved mechanics, but after that it becomes much harder to advance for some people because it takes better desision making, teamwork, etc, which is normally harder and takes actual talent to advance

One of the best ways to progress from tier 5-6 onwards is by partying with people you trust because at these tiers you will see, as you said, ******s who only master one hero and are not flexible in playing other positions.

As a player who has been playing mobas for quite some time, the main thing that separate the lower and mid tier elo is mechanics. Simple understanding of how the character they are playing works and execute what they do correctly will easily get you to tier 5 or so. Playing what your comfortable with and constantly improving mistakes. After that from tier 6 onward the game becomes a lot more about the mental game rather than mechanics because everyone generally has pretty good mechanics to get them where they are. General knowledge is huge because you can use that to figure out good and bad match ups, general power spikes of certain characters and play around that. A simple knowledge of 'i have a lane vox who isnt very strong earlier game. I should try to avoid fights even 2v2 fights that are not in my favor because there laners rotation is going to be way stronger than ours.' Map awareness is huge especially from a laner perspective because rotations are so pivotal is early fights and as a jungler to take note of the lane to see if the laner is even able to come down to help. With the implementation of draft mode having a vast understanding of match up knowledge is game changing. Blind picking a character that has clear cut weaknesses early on is just asking for a smart player to counter pick something that does incredible well against you. Match up knowledge alone can win you countless amount of games as long as you are comfortable and proficient in playing a wide variety of heros. One-trick ponies aren't what you see in high elo. Granted having a main is fine but you need to have a handfull of other heros to pull out when your main isn't the best option. General knowledge translates into decision making. Bad general knowledge will lead to bad decisions and vice versa. The biggest thing I can say is study up and play constantly. Make notes about matchups and heros to constantly improve your decision making whether it's when to rotate or what hero to pick or even when to be agressive or not.

I hope that helped shed some light on the subject and good luck ranking up. If you do want some sort of coaching or just general practice just hit me up on the NA servers. IGN: ChainedUp

Thanks ChainedUp! This is extremely helpful. Have definitely realized, via watching the recent championships on Twitch and seeing what the pro's do with their builds and whatnot (not like they have some super strength there), that the difference limiting me right now is that I definitely don't get how to engage and disengage in team fights. Like you said - understanding a character's weakness and exploiting that, but also understanding how to play with the strengths/weaknesses of my teammates.

It's like you get to a certain point in VG where you have to start all over again in learning the game because it's no longer just rushing in a mashing or getting lucky with random ganks. Looks like I've got some practicing to do.