Hey Arena of Valor community, we’re bad at this game. We miss Riktor dash and ult minions with Zill all the time. Our Murad and Wukong are under 50% winrate. To top it off, we rarely have the most kills or gold in high diamond. But somehow we climbed to Master in solo queue. If you don’t have Faker’s reflexes and skill, you can still use the strategies/tactics we used to climb to Diamond and beyond!
Bronze to Gold Guide – Arena of Valor
Individual PvP power is king in this elo because players’ skill vary drastically: if you don’t control the game, the quality of your teammates does. You can maximize your power by employing some strategy:
1) Have more gold/levels by staying alive, last hitting, and farming. Mechanics can only take you so far if you don’t have the raw stats.
2) Learn from the best. We don’t know many AoV channels but League of Legends has some amazing tutorials. Highly recommend this video for junglers.
To play specific heroes better, watch players in your game and copy their build. E.g. We didn’t start stutter stepping and building War Boots on Murad until we got solokilled 3 times by an enemy playing him.
3) Play a solocarry hero. No matter what you do, Zanis can solocarry a game better than Krixi. Zanis can push into the deep lane and build tanky enough to survive assassins/CC; Krixi is useless without a team.
Even though Rourke was nerfed, he’s still an amazing solocarry because of his early damage and tankiness. Build Scorching Wind -> War Boots -> Omni Arms -> Spear o’ Longonus -> Rankbreaker -> Eternity. If you play slayer lane, swap the jungle item for Fafnir’s Talon.
Now AFK split push and ping your team to not follow you. You should be able to 1v2 easily. Hide in a bush when there’s more people. Reddit user ElKarnito wrote a great guide to open the gates.
4) Don’t talk. We highly recommend disabling text and voice chat and just communicate with pings. Pings are fast and clear. We think they also get translated to localized languages.
5) Towers > Kills and objectives. This is controversial and situational but imo, teamfights are risky and Abyssal Dragon is a waste of time. Both depend on your team to do something right.
Platinum
Congrats! You’ll have to deal with pretty decent players now. Their tanks will block you and ADCs will kite you. Now you must start evolving to play for the team.
1) Do everything you’re supposed to do. If the enemy laner likes to roam, shove that wave in 24/7 and kill vision dragon. Also spam “Enemies Missing”. If you’re a jungler, stay on the Abyssal Dragon side. Gank/roam overextended enemies. There’s a lot of specifics we don’t want to get into but always keep in mind how you can benefit your team.
2) Don’t die. Tell us if this sounds familiar: you have a superb start, e.g. 5 killstreak, then you lose a teamfight. When you get back to lane, you die again to a gank. Now the enemy has more gold than you.
Shutdowns are insane in AoV and the early full build means that your lead is always in jeopardy. The easiest way to not lose your lead is to play safe. Don’t greed for the last minion or landing an ability. 1000 poke damage is never worth dying.
3) Convert gold lead into tower lead. Gold lead only matters in the middle-early game but a tower lead lasts the entire game. It lets you push farther, secure buffs, sneak Slayer, ambush, etc.. You can outplay the enemy on the map instead of in combat by catching waves before they hit tower and constantly shoving your waves into their tower.
Arthur with Mantel of Ra is really good in this elo because he can run around the map to instantly clear waves. Then he rushes to the teamfight to dunk the carry. If Arthur wins the teamfight, his team destroys potentially 3 towers. If he loses, the enemy gains nothing but a gold lead because their waves are dead.
Diamond/Master
We didn’t start getting consistently outplayed until we hit mid diamond. 100 hp Tel’Annas flickering away then kiting you to death. Murad perfectly timing every dodge. Good luck landing Grakk hook on someone who doesn’t want to get hooked!
In this elo, we couldn’t rely on our individual skill to carry. We had to offer power in other ways. Here’s how to maximize your worth to the team beyond fighting power:
1) Win the draft. In high diamond, we played support in ~30% of our games because nobody else was good at it. In general, you can trust the Diamond 1 legendary Nak’Roth jungle so don’t hesitate to enable your team’s strengths by patching its weaknesses. If you look at our recent heroes, they’re Thane, Zill, and Arthur because we literally play every role.
2) Protect the carry! As an assassin, we sometimes don’t even go for a flank because we sit 5 paces behind our fed carry. As soon as Batman shows himself, we go ape on him with our stuns/damage. It’s kind of like counter-espionage.
If you are the carry, take Flicker and don’t die. Please look at this guide. It will bring you from Plat ADC to Diamond ADC instantly.
3) Lose lane gracefully. Some heroes are impossible to solokill (e.g. Ybneth). It’s possible to come out with 0 deaths and roughly equal gold by neutralizing the lane. Invest in waveclear items and boots. Ping your jungler to go away. You have 3 objectives in lost lanes: don’t die, don’t lose tower, and don’t let the enemy leave the lane.
Stall during the laning phase so you can make an impact later.
4) Vision vision vision. Since there aren’t wards in AoV, we like to use ourself as a mobile ward when we’re a tank or assassin. Clear the wave then go sit in a bush between lanes. If the enemy tries to roam, you can go for a solokill or retreat and ping.
As support, maximize map awareness for your team. Don’t get surrounded but also try to be aggressive for vision of jungle camps and gank routes.
5) Predict and mind game. One of our favorite tactics is to look for a roaming mid laner then immediately hide in a bush between lanes. The mid laner has to take the long way around and lose minions or die to our ambush.
We also like to “gank our own lane” as support. While we’re roaming for vision, the enemy shoves our ADC into tower. We come with our jungler to gank the overextended enemies. Because we got vision of camps, etc., we know that the enemy jungler and mid probably won’t be there.
Final Thoughts
This is Cliché but at a certain point, Arena of Valor becomes a game of chess. At lower elos, we could win with raw combat power. Eventually we had to start benefiting our team and outplaying the map. Enemies wouldn’t take bad fights so we needed predictive tactics to gain advantages.
The biggest takeaway is that every elo is different. Keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone by learning new heroes, roles, and playstyles. Don’t get stuck in the meta of your current rank; always seek to improve!
Feel free to pop in some comments and give us feedback for this guide for Arena of Valor. If you’re looking for more, check out our guide-section.
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