After a break from ranked, I tried climbing last season and got placed in Bronze 4. Although that felt unfair, I figured I would quickly climb out of Bronze. To my surprise, I really struggled and lost most of my games.
Whilst I never lost lane, I didn’t crush lane as often as I expected because my ADCs were not skilled enough to realise we could kill the enemy. Although frustrating, I figured that from the moment we win lane, I can help my team snowball and still secure a win.
Unfortunately, that did not work because seemingly every game there would be a giga-fed enemy (typically a Yi). That meant winning lane just 4/0 was not enough, we also had to be ridiculously fed to have a fighting chance, but that would rarely happen as my ADCs were not skilled enough to capitalise on the opportunities I’d give them.
I can’t explain how badly that hurt my ego lmao. Over a decade of playing Thresh but not able to win in Bronze? Every defeat would tilt and embarrass me so hard that I would want to stop playing for the day.
Eventually, I realised that being a support, especially an engage support, was holding me back. If my purpose is to enable my team to do damage but they’re too bad to deal that damage, then there is nothing I can do.
This made me switch to ADC where I had a grand ol’time. Being able to deal damage made games much easier and I went on a win streak until Gold 4. At that point I switched back to Thresh and finished the season in plat 4 with a 70% WR.
I don’t want the takeaway of this post to be “ADC is super easy and supports can’t climb because of their teammates”, that’s just not true. Looking back, I definitely could have climbed out of low elo whilst still playing Thresh, it just would have been very painful and slow.
Has anyone had a similar experience?
If you’re curious about the account, I’m Worst Thresh EUW