A method and base station for adjusting outer-loop adjustment values used for link adaptation in a wireless communication network is provided. A modulation of a user equipment is determined and a success or failure of a Transport Block (TB) based on a TB feedback message is determined. Based on the TB feedback, one of an acknowledgement counter and a non-acknowledgement counter is incremented corresponding to the determined modulation. An upward step size for the determined modulation is updated based on the respective acknowledgement counter and the non-acknowledgement counter to affect link adaption.