Thoughts on starting ranked - Akali and champions alike

I recently started playing ranked for the first time, after clocking in over 1k games for a while now, i took one of my accounts and decided to try to help my friend duo and raise elo. Considering myself a medium high elo player (estimating from 16-1800 elo), i felt that i would have no problem dealing with 1200s. I was wrong.

After thinking about it, i realized a few core concepts of climbing the ranked ladder, at least for those players who honestly, and without ego, feel they are a consistently better player than what their elo claims.

Bans- Darius. Darius is a complete god in low elo, if you can pick him up, consider the game won. He probably solo carries harder than anything else up to 1400 elo and players below gold simply dont know how to play against him. I also see alot of high elo bans like alistar shen but ive yet to see one alistar than can do the WQ combo or a shen that dominates lane and splitpushes well. Not being able to play powerful champions at their strongest level makes it a weaker ban pick- i suggest focusing on banning out specific counters, snowballing solo lane champions and just the most annoying champions you can think of in general (shaco, leblanc).

Jungling- Starting from the first game, i saw people leashing for the jungler and i feel like this is something people pick up from streams, but honestly nobody knows how to deal with a jungle invade. If you have a strong invade team, do it. As mid, buy wards to ward enemy neut buffs, its a really easy thing that you cant do often in your higher elo games. Junglers are the second most imfluential roles in ranked imo, as both mid and jungler have the best map coverage to assist other lanes. And nobody at that elo cooperatively values dragon kills, if you can solo it, do it every time and if you can get a team to contest it, that will help alot.

Teamplay- It doesnt exist. when i expect other lanes to help contest jungle buffs or invades, i realized it doesnt happen. Neither does proper teamfighting. This is why i feel that assasins are the best choice of champion to carry solo que, because they can 1v1 well, get the kill and get out after.

What ive concluded after finishing my preliminaries, is that the best way to play solo que is summed up in the common phrase "win lane win game". This makes sense because although its not true in professional play all the time, it is in solo que because simply, there is no 5 team communication going on at all.

So heres the deal. Akali is a generally safe laner in low elo, she can farm from a distance and has underrated burst, not many gankers can really deal with shroud, but the most important reason i picked her is because of what i consider the ideal to solo que carrying: snowbaling high mobility focus burst assasin mids.

These champions like fizz, ahri, akali, leblanc and to a lesser extent talon, tf are all strong snowballing champions, good at early game and highly mobile. Katarina is a champions that has some of these qualities but her snowballing is extreme and her lack of others is easily covered by her teamfight dmg (use allies as bait!)

If you are able to ensure winning lane, ganking other lanes is the real key to winning the game. Many times, when you perform well, a loss is always attributed to another lane or two feeding far too much to an extent that a single champion demolishes the game.

When you start off at 1200, most players only know the meta, but they dont understand anything else so stomping midlane is half of the game already. If however, you are able to win and pressure your own lane hard enough, it leaves you free to gank another, and if you can secure an advantage, and then after another one, that lane will also be strong to the point that even in bad trades, they might come out ahead due to an item or level advantage. In a sense, i found that this form of teamplay- feeding the other lanes is the best way to win.

I decided to play akali exclusively in ranked for this reason, so far with 4 wins 1 loss and a 7:1 kdr ratio, even playing her as bot lane carry one game. The reason i find her the best is because of her potential to assasinate carries much better than other mids. When a botlane goes bad, ganking is not something to expect from a 1200 elo jungler who usually just farm jungle all game. To counter other lanes from snowballing, the only way you can assist another lane is to first snowball yourself, and then cut the enemy snowballing short. Having a targetted ulti with 3 dashes, huge nuke damage and shroud allows her to dive into teamfights and focus burst the most important target, allowing for better teamfights because honestly, nobody else knows who to target except yourself.

Insofar, i have played a few other champions in ranked but they all lacked the factors that mid had. Bot lane did not get strong enough before mid or top could feed to completely blown out proportions. Toplane is good but it doesnt have the ability to gank bot as often, unless you play shen. Jungler too i feel is just not as good because you cant dominate a lane, and if your team performs poorly its difficult to gank for them.

My average kdr is 9:4:7 but my akali kdr is currently 11:2:4 with 4 wins 1 loss and i expect to easily climb with her (the account name i play on is called Cyszin). This is open to discussion, if anyone has questions or input or wants to tell me im wrong.

TLDR; to carry solo que, play mid, snowball the lane, then snowball your ally lanes asap. play champions who can burst really hard and are able to focus on important targets. Whenver you get to an elo that you stop out-peforming yourteammates every game, then this becomes less applicable.