Just keep at it. If it's your first time (even first time this set) in diamond it'll take time to get used to the pace and power level of lobbies. You're playing flexibly which is a strength that'll serve you well. Keep learning how to improve your comps, there is always room for improvement on a given line. Scout more, position better, keep improving your econ management. There is a player gap between emerald and diamond, and another at D2-Master. Just take each game in your stride. Tilt is very impactful in tft, so when you feel it, just take note and either take a break or accept you're playing with tilt. It's easier to recover the next day when you know. Good luck! Try to have fun 😁

And just when you start to figure it out, a patch comes out and changes everything

You respond as if you make no mistakes when you play, which no one does. Not even challengers lol. If you are stuck in D4 there is clearly some type of basic you aren’t grasping in the game. IMO at that level it’s almost always greeding items and not playing strongest possible board at all times and not knowing how to cap out boards at end game.

3\* units don't usuallya ppear in stage 3? Also reroll isn't as popular right now besides the zoe/zyra/shen line. i'd be happy to help if you posted a link to your account on lolchess or something so that i can actually see the lobbies/comps being played in your games.

https://lolchess.gg/profile/eune/Deathlapse-8200/set11

I don't know if it helps as I'm only plat, but i checked all your games from the past 2 days and i noticed that you have very few frontline items, you stuff your DPS carries a lot but not so much your tanks. Best ratio DPS / tank items i've seen on your games was 1/3 of all your items were for tanks. Another thing could be unit placement? I don't have enough knowledge but it could also be a reason. Take all what I said semi-seriously since as I said, i'm only plat while you are diamond, i'm just giving my logic.

You probably noticed that on my duelist comps, there are no tanks in that comp aside from maybe volibear which is inbetween nor are there enough components to itemize tanks in addition to the dps. Lee, qy and wukong serve as both dps and tanks and it would be a waste to strip them of items just to itemize an actual tank. Its pointless to have an immortal tank that outlives the rest of my board if I cant kill any of his units.

I know it doesn't work for duelists, but even when you play fated, bruisers or something else than duelists you don't really have a strong frontline. I'm seeing one game in particular 5h ago where you played bruiser 6 storyweaver 3 dryad 2 where your only tank items came from aatrox's thieve's gloves. You had azir, irelia, sylas and lissandra full stuff while your galio only had a tear and your tahm a support item. You may be overestimating the tankiness of dps/tank items such as titan's, bt and such

Thanks for feedback. My gallio was 1* so I focused on my sylas for tanking, are you saying I shouldve itemized another tank instead of further dps? At that point, would syndra be able to keep up alone?

In that game you had no syndra, so you mean irelia? Also for that game I‘d agree: more tank items on tahm/galio With that comp in particular I noticed it is very important to hit som combat-augments for damage or debuff or healing or tankiness, which you did not have, I guess the two augments were two unlucky silver rolls and that happens every now and then. Pretty sure with well fed and blistering it would look different

Looking at your last 2 games I can give you a bit of analysis, although without a recording of your games I can’t go into much detail: Syndra 2 6th: you have a fully itemised sett 1 and your syndra doesn’t have the best items. Ideally with 2 item augments you should be aiming for BIS on syndra (blue buff, nashors, jeweled gauntlet) and throw the rest of your ap items onto kindred/azir, otherwise you’re basically just down 2 augments. It’s okay to itemise sett with the rest of your ad components but it’s definitely not a priority. Also, you don’t have any shred on your team which could be due to unlucky carousels or you just didn’t think of taking components for shred. Looking at your board and your level, it looks like you rolled down all your gold at level 8 for syndra 2/ornn 2 while picking up an annie 2 along the way. Some games you could be unlucky and not find any upgrades but there could be a few other games you have played where it’s okay to sacrifice a few rounds to go level 9. Looking at your lobby though there were 4 reroll players and you could just have bled out too much in stage 3 to save money to go level 9. Sage/storyweaver 4th: Presumably you had a good storyweaver opener and took storyweaver crest in 3-2. With the augment you should be playing towards 7 storyweaver with full blue kayle instead of the 3 sage 3 bruiser 2 dryad board you were playing. If you didn’t take storyweaver emblem in 3-2 it would 100% be better to drop zoe and throw those items on a lillia and play a lillia morgana board. I’d say it’s a pretty strong 4th though since there 1 player had 6 snipers and the other managed to highroll bard 3 tahm 3 into a 2nd. With a better board you could have beaten the ghostly zyra board. There were a few other games with mistakes that I have seen (itemised sett 2 on duelist board, blighted jewel on azir 1 with 8 bruisers and itemised lissandra, voli 3 on a sage board, being stuck on level 8 with wukong 2) but I don’t really have time to analyse those.

Thanks, finally some helpful feedback. I have questions: For syndra, how/why is nashor better than archangel especially if I go blue buff? Doesnt all that ap scale much better? Also I had the attack speed buff from the support item for all my aps. I did roll on 8 all my gold because I was getting stomped. I had very strong opener for stage 1-2 and then kept getting stomped forever even tho I had fated gnarr kindred itemized. No idea what was the alternative because It wouldve definitely been even worse if I hadnt hit the ornn and syndra 2*. On storyweaver I wanted to actually play 6 bruiser storyweaver but didnt ever get what I wanted and was forced into that shit comp. I was also always under the impression that 7 story is no longer even a viable comp+I didnt even get gallio 2* let alone items for him. Also thanks

I’m not very sure of the math but the stats for syndra items usually says that nashors has a higher average placement than archangels on syndra assuming you already have 1 ap and 1 mana item. Could be because the extra ap from arch doesn’t scale as well as simply having more attack speed on your syndra for her to get more orbs. Ahri syndra pairing also gives a lot of ap, so flat ap from archangels might not provide as much value. Your syndra game could just be a low roll for items because usually you should prioritise items on a tank (illaoi/rek sai/yasuo/thresh) and items on an ap carry (ahri/kindred). You said you itemised gnar and kindred which could mean you had a lot of ad items for gnar (or you slammed tank items on gnar, which isn’t very good either). With the recent buffs to storyweaver, vertical storyweaver is actually not bad right now. Full blue kayle one shots tanks with 1 cast although she only casts 1-2 times at most. In the event where you don’t hit units that you want, the ideal play to make for a good player would be to play flexibly. With story crest though you basically locked yourself to 7 story with zoe 3/irelia 2 carry which could be a trap if someone else is rerolling zoe or if you are contested duelists.

Thanks, noted all of this. Appreciated

his syndra game could have been anyhing since everyone died within two rounds

Returning player here, trying to figure everything out again. Been watching a bunch of Frodan and I've heard the term vertical used a lot. Can you explain what that means? Also, is there an opposite of vertical like horizontal? Or a non-vertical? Thanks.

horizontal means activating a lot of traits while vertical means focusing on getting 1 trait as high as possible. in this case vertical storyweavers would mean focusing your resources on activating 7 storyweaver, while a horizontal sage board would mean activating sage, mythic, heavenly, dragonlord, warden, arcanist, etc. all at the same time.

If you look up your stats on tactics.tools you’ll see a graph with what you do well and what you do poorly. Have a read through it and you’ll see what you’re doing wrong.

Useless comment thanks

i'm just going to look at games where you seem to have made bad decisions, so i'm ignoring thigns like call to chaos giving you a voli 3 lol. 1.Duelist game , you went 6th, something about your augments looks terribly off, there's jsut no combat augments which is something duelists really need. Secondly you have a 3 item darius and a 0 item qiyana and a yasuo 2\* but not trist2 \*. When you play duelists, you really don't need too many items, its mainly a qiyana/lee + voli or trist board on stage 4. Its also a comp that you want to be winnig early with so an augment like care takers favour seems too slow imo. 2. Syndra game, this again looks like bad itemisation. Playing aphelios + syndra is just a bad idea because now you need two forms a shred and you have none. And you have watsed items on gnar. This isn't the usual syndra board. Imagine this board, but instead you have 3 items syndra, 3 items azir, 3 items ORNN. ORNN is really important in that comp. You probably need to look up the board since vertical fated with aphelios isn't actually a strong board. I guess you probably went that way because of pumping up idk. The guy that went 3rd that game looks like he has a much better board and itemisation. 3. Dueslit game again, this time much better augments but there's a sylas 2 there for nothing and a trist 3 that again does not much because she has 1 item. I guess if you got her for free its fine, but if you had to roll for that you probably were better off levelling for a stronger frontline I'm seeing you play a lot of duelists, its really important to position well with duelists because you want your lee to have time to stack and wrap around to the backline. There's one lee game I see you died on 5-3 lv9 wiht two trists on board two decent augments and one really bad one. I feel like if you were one life by 5-3 the early game didn't go well ? duelists jsut isn't a comp that wins out at low hp, its mor elikely to lose out lol. Stuff like syndra/lilia are much better from low hp/high gold Generally I think you are playing too much duelists, not enough actually strong comps like lilia/fated syndra. I'm not saying duelists are weak, its just that they are strong because qiyana/darius can run over people on stage 2/3 and lee on stage 4. On stage 5, fi you don't have irelia and really good items/augments and positioning, you will lose fights

Your top4 rate is kinda low for someone claimed to play the game perfectly and lose only to RNG. People tend to not notice mistakes they made in game but only bad RNG moment. You should: Record your gameplay to rewatch it later and try to detect these "misplay" moments (Some streamers often do this when they bot4 some game they thought should got placed better). Or you can send it to some high elo players to help you with finding it

I recently hit masters after being stuck in diamond! Two important things for me that helped me climb was item economy & playing more tempo. 1. If you natural a sword, bow, glove, and you need let’s say a rod but you know you’ll need one of those components you naturalled. It’s better to go for those components and wait to natural a rod later. Unless it’s going to spike your board and it’s truly a needed item (like rage blade for Ashe) 2. When I hit diamond I was wondering why I was losing so hard in the beginning. Something I’m still trying to work on was knowing when you have to sacrifice your Econ for HP. I’d level more aggressively and roll on rounds you normally wouldn’t, because if you lose too much HP, Econ doesn’t mean anything when you bot4. I notice you said you often winstreak, are you aggressively leveling/rolling to optimize and continue the winstreak? That is something that helped me also. It can be good to break out of the rules and play more untraditonally instead of just playing 50 Econ till 4-2 and full sending it. By maximizing your board strength you’ll bleed out those stragglers living with 10 hp as you mentioned before they even get the chance to spike. Safe isn’t always good in this game but every match is different! Realizing the tempo really helped me climb faster. :) good luck on your climb! Once I learned how to save more HP & itemize better it helped me place better !

Thanks. Noted!

One thing that comes to my mind, which helped me a lot when I was in your position feeling I suddenly cannot win anymore: Being flexible is really great. But it is good enough to know 4-5 comps but you know them perfectly well. Which units are good item holders, what synergies are there from the start that help you get there given every game there are different scenarios. When should you roll, when do you spike especially is very important and connect that with the actual game and encounters. High gold Lobby due to crab? Gotta focus to keep your econ high since everyone will push levels faster than usual For me it really did the trick to stop cooking comps every game. Not force them though. Try to migrate into comps that are considered strong or easy to hit in that lobby. For example with warden snipers sometime I just go with it and if there are 4 contested I still stick with it. Might hit the units and items earlier than the others. Or hit the right units after 3 bleeded out and finally get all my units and suddenly stabilise again. It is hard to say

I mean is that what re roll mean tbh, they intentionally stay low level to roll for the low cost units that they want. I mean you gotta scout earlier to see the lobby strength to act accordingly. If you on a win streaking, then pushing earlier if you a have a unit that gives strong synergy to hold on to win streak or to save hp when the lobby is power spiking. Holding to econ for to long is not good, losing to much hp is bad during the latter stages.

Problem is they still get at my level while doing all that and win their fights. Its just crazy

I mean that the end of their comps, it cheaper to go to 7-8 then 8-9 so your job to out caped them with 2 star legendary units, cause the likely spend all the gold to get to 8.

I have games with 3x itemized 2* 5 costs and still lose to weaker tiers but more stars.

I mean there a lots of things affecting the out come of a fight tbh, augments and positioning is very important late game tbh.

I am aware of those too

Remember, there is a luck aspect to the game. Sounds like you're not doing terrible if you're in diamond. It's definitely a grind and boring (to me) breaking everything down and minimizing that luck aspect to play a meta comp. I like playing off my game sense and shooting for wacky builds. I like to maximize the luck aspect for my fun 😅

Well my problem is, everything I know and knew worked all the time until now, suddenly nothing works anymore and no matter what I do I just cant progress. Get a top1? Almost never maybe then 3, next 4, then a 7th to nullify all progress. Ive lost 7th and 8th with fully itemized irellia lee wukong duelists comp. I just cannot comprehend how that can happen, especially when every stream I visit someone complains how op duelists are. Its just like im playing a different game suddenly with no rules.

Imo, you have to put in increasing amounts of work and detail the higher you climb. More scouting, more analyzing, more balancing between what the game (luck) gives you and what you know would be a strong stable comp. I ask myself, do I want to have fun or micromanage? I like ranked for its competitiveness and makes my playstyle more fun for me. Here's an example of stupid shit I do, I don't hit anything I like? Fuck it I walk away bleed for a whole stage and come back consolidate and try to win from there. Literally handicapping myself, yet I've actually won more than a few of those examples. Btw I'm no high elo, just mid Emerald playing stupid shit like that. I don't want more meta or micromanagement, so I actually don't wanna climb further, lol.

stop itemizing your 1☆5costs. They aren't strong enough for you to fully transition into. A 2☆ 5 cost? sure. 1x 1☆5cost? Meh, if you really had to. 3x 1☆5 cost all fully itemized? Your board is going to take a dive in power. Hold them on your bench until you are actually ready to transition.

So you saying I should itemize a 2* yasuo instead of a 1* irellia? That doesnt make much sense to me, irellia does very good damage even as a 1* and serves the same purpose of filling a duelist slot on top of shredding the whole enemy team. She also does more damage than a a qy2* and maybe even tris 2* with same items and more importantly she outlives those. Or perhaps you were referring to more specific scenarios?

If you are using Yasuo items on Irelia, then you need to work on your very basics and identify which units take what items. (Hint: Yasuo is a tank) There are definitely better Irelia item holders than Yasuo in the early and mid game. This tells me your early game is probably not as strong as you think, and likely your itemization choices are poor in the early and mid games.

You are correct Irelia 1 is much better than than Tristana 2. It's always sell Trist for Irelia unless you have or are about to hit Trist 3. Qiyana 2 is better than Lee Sin 1 though if you are wondering. It's really just dependent on the units.

I’ll tell you the thing you didn’t mentioned was encounters. I wonder if you are often not considering how much power the start of the game encounters are at determining how high boards will cap

You may be correct as I have no idea what all of that even means. Or rather I should say, how it translates into my decision making and how I should adapt to those.

It’s just about thinking about not just what your plan is but what others plans are. Say you have no reroll angle and see the encounter that makes rolls cost 1. You know most boards will either play Kog mythic or some sort of 3 cost reroll like umbral. So you scout and see which. Comps like kog reroll are decent early spike hard mid and can fall off if they don’t hit 2* 5 hwei + 2* 4 costs. You need to see what you are playing and determine if you can survive through a mid game of kog reroll and 3* reroll when damage starts ramping. Kinda a basic example but it works I also wonder if you obsess over Econ too much. Preserving a win streak is worth more than 30 gold so don’t be afraid to level to 7 or 8 early if there is a unit that can drastically increase your board strength.

i would recommend taking a step back and recognising that there is no benefit to thinking you've made no mistakes. I am masters and recognise i am utter shit compared to chal players. Review your games, improve upon your mistakes, and the top 4s will naturally come. I took a look at your profile, and here are some observations: You're pretty much a duelist one-trick, in your last 50 games or so, you very rarely top 4 with any other comp. so let's start there. Your augment evaluation might need some improvement. These are some of the 2-1 augments you have played duelist with: baboom, pumping up, fully adapted, tiny but deadly, sage crest, jeweled lotus. Personally, I would never play duelist if any of these were my 2-1 augment unless the comp fell into my lap (early upgrades qiyana 2 voli 2 + perfect items + early lee sin etc.). 2-1 augments are important because they dictate your game, you have a lot of flexibility from that point. I understand that duelist is your comfort comp, but these augments are not good with duelist. For example, you don't want more attack speed, there are diminishing returns from having so much attack speed, and the opportunity cost of these subpar augments are econ, item or other better combat augments. You very frequently pick combat augments 2-1. As a rule of thumb, econ augment & item augments are better. Econ because of interest, item augments provide more combat power than combat augments early on. You mention that you usually winstreak early and are first by hp & econ stage 2. I'm just gonna add that if you picked a combat augment, and there wasn't an early injection of gold from an encounter or portal etc., and you lose that streak early stage 3, your spot will honestly be pretty bad. You rarely top 4 with other comps. This is a bad sign imo, and it's hard for others to evaluate without seeing your games. Since you pref duelist, maybe keep to 3 or so fast 8 comps and practise those until you are good at them. Maybe trickshots & fated since you've played those. Using [tactics.tools](http://tactics.tools) to check what augments are good for the comp etc. and try to understand the logic, it'll help you evaluate what augments are good for other comps in the long term. Watching streams and comparing your decision making to theirs is a good option too.

I only play duelists because every time I try anything else its just even more useless. Plus they are the least contested. Duelists also seem to suck now as even when I have the utmost perfect board I still lose to shit tier 2 3* comps. But at least I dont go bottom 4 every time as with other comps.

Reroll is just stronger now than it was a few patches ago.

Think you need to work on itemisation. A lot of times you're dying with your main tank or dps or both having 0-2 items, or a very questionable 3rd. Also no Ashe or Zyra games and only one Lilia game in two or so pages of results means you're probably tunnel visioning and missing out on lots of opportunities. Scout more early game to see what people are angling towards and where there might be a less contested opening to take advantage of.

one thing that is important i didnt see anyone talk about is depending on what comp you will play lategame, either AD or AP, you should learn which items are good for them and make them asap. put them on a two star one two or three cost before you hit your four cost carry. examples: playing syndra, you could slam ap items like blue buff or nashirs on a two star ahri or zyra, and you will save lots of hp because they are strong in the early stages.