Hello everyone, it's Miura.

I started the challenge of reaching master tier a couple of months ago. At the time I was a plat peaker (I think) but platinum games never felt difficult: my real elo was probably high emerald but I wasn't really playing ranked. Diamond 4 was probably too close to my level to feel the challenge so I decided to aim for master.

What's the motivation beneath all of this?

It's full of content of streamers doing "unranked to challenger" climbs. To be honest I always thought these "challenges" were complete bullshit: these people are way better than the rest of their lobbies and as a result they win without much effort. While this might be fun to watch, it is very far from what a real climb looks like and I think the educational value is non-existent. This brings us back to the challenge: I am reaching master for the first time (and you can too).

How can you benefit from this?

I decided to record every game and upload it on youtube. For the most part you will find ADC gameplay, in particular Aphelios games. Although some recordings got lost, you will find the great majority of games on a channel named "Miura The Journey" https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGz9iwCMZpvfBIbCG2c79cw

Also here's my OPgg: https://op.gg/it/lol/summoners/euw/M%C3%AF%CE%BCra-EUW Sidenote: the videos you'll find are without commentary (if they are not reviews).

I only have one rule wihch is to play solo (duo players are boosted, in my humble opinion). Wether that it is true or not, I believe that having to adapt every game with a random supp will make you a way better player.

Few tips:

1. you already know it. Mute the chat, your teammates don't have anything intelligent to say.
2. playing while listening to music does hurt your performance.

Other tips I use no one talks about:

1. you should be a "squeezer". It's easier to explain with an example: imagine I'm playing aphelios against a draven. Everyone knows that draven's autos deal more damage than aphelios'. For this very reason many people accept that they outscale and will play the matchup in the most passive way possible. Instead, you should try to abuse your range advantage every time you can (squeeze every auto you can). The fact is: if you are like me and you are not challenger, eventually you will mess up the spacing and get blasted in the face. You will lose games playing aggro, but the games you lose trying to outmechanic your opponent are worth losing. This is in my opinion why I won almost every lane in emerald: I was better at laning than my opponent.
2. Instead of viewing the games as a win or a loss, view them as "did I outperform my counterpart". If the answer is yes, it's all good; if the answer is no, there's a problem.

Last thing: it took me some time to decide if I wanted to write this post or not, beacuse this is infact a side project. Being a top student, playing the piano and seeing my friends are all above playing LoL in the priority list. For this reason the challenge will be suspended if needed.

I can imagine this post won't get that many views, but at the end of the day if it can help one person it's already good enough. That's all.

Greetings,

Miura