I’ve played with a duo partner since the start of comp but later got a 3rd guy to play and for atc 1 and 2, I consistently placed in bronze/silver and every time, I would climb to gold 1 with my teammates consistently being at silver 3 and gold 2/3.

This act, I placed bronze as usual and started climbing to silver 1 and then 2 but I got hard stuck at there and I couldn’t rank up. I was frustrated that I couldn’t even maintain silver 3 when I got there and was alternating between s2 - s3 for what seemed to be 2 weeks until I decided to solo queue

My teammates didn’t play all the time and I would usually only do when they were online because I was afraid of deranking so deciding to play on my own was a difficult choice to make but I was determined to rank up so I forced myself to click the start button every game and took a break every time I felt like I couldn’t and queued later.

At the time when I started solo queueing, I was obsessed with aim training and spent at least 2 hours a day and it helped me improve but not by much, I was still missing shots and dying because I got out aimed. I was also flamed a lot by teammates and getting dc’s which made me more reluctant to solo queue but I continued to anyway, doing my best to learn and improve.

I realised the aim training thing wasn’t doing me much so I dropped it. At that time I was also obsessed with watching pros play to improve and watching tutorials and anything just to get better and it was working to and definitely helped me more than when I was aim training.

One day, I realised that there were a lot of “iron to immortal aim in one month” and “how to get to diamond FAST”(not saying all those videos are necessarily bad,there were videos that did help) kinda videos and I watched some wondering why I couldn’t imrove like these people going from silver to immortal and whatnot which made me upset for a while.

About a week had past since I started solo queueing and I finally ranked up to gold 2 after a match with my friends and continued soloing when they were online.

For the first time, my act rank wasn’t gold 1 but became gold 2 and I was absolutely ecstatic because of that.

However, in terms of skill at the time, I realised I didn’t improve much at all and I had to play a lot of matches just to maintain my skill and even more just to improve which was annoying but I remembered that at the end of the day, it was just a game and I should be having fun so I did which did help my performance and honestly I should have realised that earlier and more people do need to remember this.

A week before now, I learned that watching every how to improve guide didn’t help me much and that I had to find my own way to improve. I stopped solo queueing and decided to again play almost exclusively play with my friends and got to gold 3 and got my first ever gold 3 dorito and deranked back to gold 2 soon after but by then I got thicker skin from the grinding and accepted that it was okay because it was an improvement from the start of the act compared to now.

Even if it was my idea to solo grind, I didn’t improve by myself, my friends queued with me whenever they were online, helpful videos that guided me to the right path and of course the people I got queued with when I solo’d helped me get better at the game.

Like I said, I learned that I had to find my own way to get better and to stop depending so much on the many videos I watched. I also learned that if you’re like me and you improve really slowly, you need to learn to be patient, accept that progress won’t come smoothly and in fact may be really hard to even improve by a hair. Take your time and remember that taking breaks IS part of the grind. And again, it’s a game, don’t get too wrapped around it. :)

Recently when I reached plat, it was a game with my friends and I’m really happy to have them by my side to improve this whole time.