Solo Queue Savior: In depth guide to making it out of your current league

It’s that feeling of overwhelming sadness that drowns out all the senses. Cascading through your being like a waterfall over a steep rock ledge leading to a pit below filled with sharp rocks and broken dreams. One would even compare it to losing your newly bought Vegeta shirt on the subway in San Francisco.

You’ve felt it many times; hitting you like a brick wall when you hit the button to match you with teammates in solo queue. The game begins, you have all your positions perfectly placed; no one has trolled and gone double mid or AD Hiemerdinger, and it appears that you are about to have a wonderful game filled with magic and fun, ending in a boost in LP higher than your self esteem. Then, dispair fills your heart as you watch your hopes melt in front of you like a candle in a bonfire. Your top Malphite gives up 6 kills to Rumble and your mid Karthus decides that Zed needed a handicap to start and feeds the game into oblivion.

As you stare at the screen in disbelief wondering how this happened to you again for the fourth game in a row, you start to tear up as agony splits across your face and you sink into your chair, defeated literally and figuratively. Don’t worry though; queue up again and pick Vayne, hope that your support isn’t an amputee, and prepare yourself for that overwhelming sadness that is likely to run through your soul, because while you have the skill to make it to the next level, you aren’t picking the right character to do it.

Today we will focus on the savior of solo queue, that will bring all you sad and angry ADC’s to the top of your division and into the world beyond: Twitch.

Twitch? Why? He has no escapes besides a stealth that takes forever to apply itself and without peel in team fights he gets disintegrated like an ant under a magnifying glass when targeted. Playing Twitch in solo queue can be an absolute nightmare, one that you keep hoping will end but lo and behold you wake up again and your god forsaken Vegeta shirt is still in the hands of some lowlife riding the subway. This article will be focused on changing a mindset that you have about solo queue and giving you the subtle tips and tricks to working Twitch into your auto lock favorite characters to play list.

Before I can teach you how to play Twitch, you have to understand why you will never make it out of your current league with the mindset you likely have. If you at any point think, “Wow my teammates are feeding again; I’ll never make it out of silver with all these bad kids around me”, then you have already lost. Erase all thoughts of your teammates from your head. What they do is irrelevant from now on. This game is SOLO queue and you will play it as though you are solo. If you truly believe you don’t belong in the league you are in, then you believe that every player in the game, including your opponents, are lesser players than you. The best way to picture this solo game is by imagining that you are going to a LAN party with some friends who have just started playing the game.

At every LAN party there is someone who says, “Well whoever has (your name here) on their team is going to win”, which turns into you suggesting that all the new kids face you. By yourself. Alone. 1v5. It always happens. Of course since you are a total badass and the king of the LAN you don’t stay mid. You get stupidly aggressive, murdering everyone in every lane, turning you into an unstoppable beast that rampages down mid lane slaying players like beginner bots, leaving a trail of dried tears and Cheeto covered Mac books in your wake.

You go into these 1vAll games with the mindset that you are absolutely going to win, you could build 5 Stattik Shivs and still dominate, and no player or lane is off limits. This is how you win Solo queue. In your mind, none of these players on your team are anything but big caster minions that sometimes shoot fire or stuns. Even your support is not there, treat them as if they are a new beginner player who will always make the wrong play and you will be ready for anything. You cannot blame anything on your teammates no matter how badly they play, because they are not there. It is just you vs all.

So at this point you’re thinking, “But Whispers, you’ve told us nothing about Twitch, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing with him to dominate”. Fine. I suppose you are ready for the information I’m about to unveil to you. My true hope is that after this tips and tricks guide you will never see Twitch again because he will be banned every game forever; much like I will never see my Vegeta shirt again because of some scumbag on the San Fran subway car.

For this guide I will assume you know what every one of Twitch’s abilities do, but I won't assume that you know how to use them correctly. I’m going to assume that you have no idea how to play Twitch, but I do recognize that most people reading this guide have a pretty good idea how he works. To start off, max E. E is your best, most unbalance spell and will win you early encounters without fail as long as you play it right. Your first four levels will be the most important for this, you need to order your spells like this - EWEQ. If you don’t have a kill by the time you hit level five, or if you haven’t died trying, you are doing it wrong. Unless you are facing Draven, your damage and range should win you any early trade, especially if you play the way I explain here.

Twitch shouldn’t be played like your average ADC. You are not going to be getting money off of minions; we are not going to be farmers waiting to grow a late game crop. We are going to be ruthless brutal murdering machines bent on slaughtering every weak minded soul in our path. If you have to miss a minion or two to get in a shot at your opponent, then be my guest and go for it. Every time you see their ADC go for a last hit, you should be auto attacking them.

Your range is high enough in most situations to keep you from getting attacked by your opponents minions, and while they are auto attacking the minion they wont be able to get a shot back on you. They probably started Doran's and are down to 75% by level three; this is where you go buck wild if you haven’t already. If they don’t fear going for last hit then they will now, wait for them to go for a last hit and drop W on them as soon as they come in range, then auto once as they run away and pop E. Since you fear nothing and are a killing machine, you are taking Ignite over barrier because barrier is for the meek, and you aren’t meek, you are culling the meek.

Unless the opponent is Draven, you are killing them in lane there is no chance you are losing trades unless their support is playing out of their mind. Now you’ve hit level four. The second you hit four you should be sprinting to a bush, hitting Q and waiting until you are invisible. Once you are invisible you need to get as close to their ADC as possible and drop W to break invis. Ignite after W and just auto; walking in between attacks so that you stay as close to them as possible. Once they flash just end with E. If you haven’t killed them then it isn’t a big deal. You are trying to kill the tower as fast as possible because you don’t want to get in a farming battle.

Any chance you get to auto the tower you should take, because you are going to be playing every lane. No matter what happens after that first major engagement, you should be ahead, which means when you come back to lane you should immediately pop Q when you are out of their vision and go right back to standing next to them and auto attacking. You don’t care about anything but being disgustingly aggressive, because to win a 1v5 you need to be 20-0 by the end of the game.

If you come in with the mindset that you have to be reckless to win the game, then you will always play like you are far behind and have to take risks to win. You may not win your first game, or even your second, but by that third game with Twitch you will start to feel when you need to go crazy, and the mechanics will follow. Twitch is all about playing insane, you need to be ridiculously far ahead when you go into team fights or you will get bullied to no end. If you can keep a game from going to team fights then you played perfectly.

So lets say everything is going to plan, you got the first kill, the tower went down by around level 6-7, now what? You do what every player would do in a 1v5: you go hunting. Minions are great and all, but that’s like hunting rabbits when you could be slaying bears. Channel all that pent up frustration hiding deep inside you from all those nights spent screaming into your pillow, wondering how there could be a god that allows people to steal Vegeta shirts out of subways. How do you use that ulti of yours? There is no wrong way to use it. Don’t ever be afraid to pop it just to do a little damage to an enemy in lane. It doesn’t have to be used in team fights or as an absolute kill shot, harassing is fine if it keeps your opponent behind you.

Mid game you should always be seeking kills, if something looks semi possible, just Q out of vision range then walk up next to them and hope for the best. The late game is the tricky part. In most team fights you don’t even want to show yourself until you see most of the big cooldowns blown from the other team. If you do choose to go in early, make sure you save your Q to escape if you see someone walking towards you.

Distance is your greatest ally. Pop your ulti as soon as the fight has settled to a reasonable pace and most of the ultis have been used; be warned though, if you have AOE snare ultis like Ori’s ball or Amumu’s ulti, ignore everything I just said and go in with your ulti on the clustered enemies. I wish I could walk you through team fights in a more detailed way but they are just something you have to feel out on your own. Just work on your mechanics and time your attacks right; that’s the secret to any ADC in the late game.

So while crippling tragedy and depression can strike you like being robbed of another sunset shared with your Vegeta shirt, just remember that everything can be remedied with better mindset and reckless play. Keep playing with Twitch and let me know how it feels as you backpack everyone around you with your steroid sized shoulders and lofty indifference to the feelings of the weak minded souls around you. I alway love a good comment or story so feel free to tell me what you think about the guide or how it has worked for you.