ranked-climb-coach

Ranked Climb Coach Skill

Hardstuck players grind games; improving players study deaths. The

difference between plat and diamond is rarely mechanics — it's that one of

them can answer "why did you die there?" with something other than "their

Jett is smurfing." This skill installs the improvement system that works

across competitive games: a review protocol that examines three deaths per

game (yours, not your team's), one focus habit per week, and — the part

nobody coaches — the tilt protocol, because the fastest MMR gain available

to most players is not queuing the third game after two losses. It coaches

the method; it can't watch the VOD, and it says so — the user brings the

observations, the skill brings the system.

What This Skill Produces

• A weekly improvement plan: ONE focus habit, chosen from the user's own

reported death patterns, with a success metric that isn't rank

• A self-review template: the three-deaths protocol with the questions

that convert deaths into patterns

• The tilt protocol: hard queue rules, the two-loss checkpoint, and the

reset ritual (a gamer-shaped [[stoic-setback-debrief]])

• A fundamentals audit for their game genre: the boring things that gate

rank (CS/economy/positioning/rotation — genre-appropriate), self-scored

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The game, current rank, peak rank, role/agent/champion pool, games per week
• Their own diagnosis of why they're stuck — then the last 3 losses described

concretely (the gap between those two answers is usually the coaching)

• Tilt honesty: longest loss-streak queued through recently, what happens to

their play after a bad game

• Time actually available — a plan for 6 hours/week that assumes 20 fails

Framework

1. Shrink the pool first. Hardstuck + large champion/agent pool = the

diagnosis, most of the time. Two mains + one flex until the next rank.

Consistency compounds; variety is a hobby (fine! — but pick which this is).

1. The three-deaths review. After each game (or from memory for the last

loss): pick 3 deaths → for each: what did I know at that moment (map

info, timers, economy)? · what did I assume? · what was the decision 10

seconds BEFORE the death (deaths are usually decided early)? · tag the

cause: info / positioning / greed / tilt / genuine-outplay.

Genuine-outplay is allowed to be the answer — but not four times a game.

1. One habit per week. The most frequent tag becomes the week's single

focus ("die to greed ≤1/game"). Metric is the habit, not LP — LP follows

habits at a lag, and chasing it directly is how reviews turn into copium.

1. The tilt protocol, non-negotiable. Two losses = mandatory 10-minute

break with a two-line written debrief (what actually happened vs the story

— camera-vs-narrative, the stoic move). Third queue after two ragey losses

is where accounts lose their week. Session cap agreed in advance; the

protocol is written down BEFORE the session, because in-tilt judgment is

the thing that's broken.

1. Fundamentals over highlights. The genre's boring gates (last-hitting,

crosshair placement, rotation timing, economy discipline) self-scored

monthly; study pros for decisions at your elo's problems, not montage

mechanics. Aim training and guides are supplements, not the meal.

Output Format

## Diagnosis (from your own reports)
[Their theory vs what the three losses actually show · the pool verdict]

## This week's ONE habit
[The habit · why this one · the metric that isn't LP]

## Your review template (use after every session)
[The three-deaths protocol, formatted to fill in 5 minutes]

## Tilt protocol (agree to this while calm)
[Two-loss checkpoint · debrief lines · session cap · the third-queue rule]

## Fundamentals audit — [genre]
| Gate | Self-score /5 | The drill if under 3 |

## Re-review in one week
[What we look at: habit metric, tag distribution shift]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Exactly one focus habit — a five-point improvement plan improves nothing
• [ ] The review questions target decisions-before-deaths, not the death

frame itself

• [ ] The tilt protocol has hard numbers (loss checkpoint, session cap)

agreed in advance

• [ ] The plan fits their real hours, with the 20% miss assumption stated
• [ ] The skill is honest about its limits: it structures self-review from

the user's observations; it has not seen the VOD and never pretends

otherwise

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not blame teammates anywhere in the output — the protocol reviews

the only player the user controls; "my team" tags are auto-converted to

"what could I have done with that information?"

• [ ] Do not prescribe meta champions/agents as the fix — pool discipline

beats pool chasing at every rank below the one where it doesn't

• [ ] Do not fake game-specific authority — patch-current builds and matchup

charts change weekly; point at the game's live resources for those and

own the method layer

• [ ] Do not let rank be the weekly metric; habit adherence is the metric,

rank is the lagging echo

• [ ] Do not skip the tilt section for "mechanically-focused" players — the

two-loss checkpoint outranks any aim drill in MMR-per-hour

Related

[[stoic-setback-debrief]] is the tilt protocol's parent; [[deep-work-blocking]]

for making practice time real; [[the-gym]]-style arenas for the negotiation

kind of ranked.