How to Solo Carry in League of Legends (2023)

Since League of Legends was released in 2009, many players who aim to reach the highest ranks in the Ranked game mode have struggled to find an answer to the question of how to solo carry in LoL. There have been various takes on the answer over the course of more than a decade, and here’s ours. Here’s how to solo carry in League of Legends.

How to Win in Solo Queue in League of Legends (2023)

We’ll try to keep this as short and concise as possible, so without further ado:

Your Individual Ranked Performance Must Make a Significant Impact On the Team’s Efforts

First of all, you need a role and a champion that has the position to make a significant difference early game for your team. The way we see it is that you should be Jungler > Mid > Top > AD > Support (in that order of priority). It is recommended that you learn to play two or even three roles well with a decent pool of champions because you will not always get the role you want and the champion you want.

Related: League of Legends Ranked Tiers Guide

So, practice, practice, and then some more practice. Last hitting creeps in the lane is crucial to get the gold advantage, assisting other lanes with ganks and objective pushes, and playing safely in order to not die early.

For example, if you manage to help each of the three lanes as a jungler at least once in the first 10 minutes without your teammates dying in the process, you’re on a good route to help your team snowball into the mid and late-game. Of course, you can’t have a 100% win rate, but you are supposed to do everything in your possibility and responsibility to push the team forward.

You should always follow the current meta, and know what champions are strong as a pick on their own, in synergy with something your teammates have already gotten or (most importantly) as a counter pick to something the enemy team has taken. But all in all, we suggest these champions for each class depending on your playstyle, your team composition, what you are facing against, and of course, the current ranked bracket you are in (some Champions work insanely well in Bronze and Silver, while they are being easily countered from Gold and Platinum onward):

Bring your A Game, Positive Mindset, and Maximum Focus

After being mechanically fit to carry, this is the most important thing in this game (or any other ranked game, like CS:GO for example).

If you don’t feel like playing, don’t force it. If you had a bad loss or multiple losses in a row, don’t queue again since there is a great risk of doing bad because of the leftover emotions from the last game. Do something else for 30-60 minutes and then consider coming back. It’s of course known that you cannot win every time but you can try and increase the odds of winning with a few healthy practices you can adopt.

You need to cooperate with your team. It goes without saying that in random matchmaking, you can get a dream team, the worst team, and anything in between. It’s your duty to maintain positive efforts towards the end goal (enemy nexus) and to bring positive spirits into each match. Even though you might never see the same players again, it’s good to be professional and polite and to find a model of functionality that works for everyone in the team. Don’t go around bashing people for doing something bad, use positive language to help them improve, and help them on the battlefield. If someone is overly toxic, you can always block/mute and report that behavior. You should not be distracted by exhibitions of negative behavior.

On the other hand, we’ve seen some underhanded tactics that some players use to lightly “trash-talk” opponents (within the polite communication limitations, of course) in hopes to tilt them more when something goes bad for them – in that case, disabling the “ALL” chat might be a better option.

Know Your Map and Relay Important Information

It’s almost sad that we, humans, don’t have a third eye that we can put on that corner of the screen where the minimap is. Some games allow you to edit the interface and rearrange everything (like SMITE) but LoL is very limited in that sense so we’ll have to roll with it the way it is (it’s the same for you and everyone else in the end).

• You should always report when your lane opponent is missing for more than 2-5 seconds.
• You should always report when you spot an enemy jungler (or anyone else) coming near you.
• You should always ward crucial points on the map. You would be surprised how many games are won based on that. It’s a priceless emotion when you ambush enemies doing Nashor, kill them, and take the buff from them. If you haven’t done this by now, you’ll get the feeling we’re describing when you eventually pull it off. Not to mention, that you should counter enemy wards as well. There’s nothing more annoying than your lane opponent running back to the tower as soon as they see your jungler run through bushes near them. It wastes time and opportunity, loses XP, loses gold, and makes you fall back.
• You should know the timings of jungle respawns in order to better optimize farming and buff obtaining.
• You should (technically speaking) focus more on objectives than on kills. There are countless games that were lost by the team that had 10+ kills more than their opponents. One good team fight around the 20th-30th minute may just decide it all! Speaking of which, know your role, and where your position should be in the team fight. Getting caught off-guard, grappled by Blitzcrank (or something worse) when you’re a mid-player is depriving your team of your burst damage, for example.
• If you see five enemies push a bottom lane, for example, and there’s no way for your team to respond to this successfully on time, just sacrifice that tower, cut your losses, and aim to split push a different lane and snag one of their towers (or perhaps, an Inhibitor, Dragon, or Nashor, depending on what’s happening on the map). Trying desperately to “slow them down” and losing one or two teammates is more costly than just dropping that tower altogether. There have been countless games where one guy’s backdoor finishes the game while all five of his enemies are at his own Nexus in esports matches, let alone ranked or casual matchmaking. So just think of these situations as if they were a chess game. Opponents made their move on one side of the board, leaving themselves open somewhere else.