Why elo hell does not exist and why that is good
 

Definition of elo hell: the belief that you cannot raise your elo because of players on your team performing poorly

I am in 800 elo and I find it very difficult to raise it in solo queue, but the fact remains, I belong in the elo that I'm at.

Misconception about elo: Elo should be a measurement of how good person x is at LOL

Reality about elo: Elo measures how well person x plays on a team with 4 other people.

So everyone thinks, that elo hell exists because they get trolls or 10 year olds on their team and no matter how well they play they can't win.
This is true, no matter how good you are, if you get some people on your team that throw the game away you can't possibly carry them all

People seem to understand how probability works when it is explaining their losses, but not their wins.

Rarely do people think they won a game because the other team wasn't good enough (yes I know there are times with the other team is obviously trolling) for the most part the testimony of everyone is that they lose because of trolls and they win because they are good and overcame said trolls.

Think about it this way, let's assign an arbitrary number to the probability of getting a troll.
Let's say 20%. Let's also assume that you "belong" in a higher elo and you yourself are not a troll. You have a 20% chance on each of 4 people to get a troll or a bad player. That sounds terrible, almost like you would get a troll the majority of the time.. and you will with those numbers.

however!

the other team also has a 20% chance of every member being trolls and here is the kicker! they don't have YOU!!!!! you are the only known variable in this situation, they have 5 chances of receiving a troll whereas you only have 4.

Now a less educated person would say.. but Guppers, you can roll a 1 on a die 10 times in a row, i.e. it feels llike I get a troll every game.

Indeed that can happen, roll that die 100000 times instead of 10 times and I promise you will see 1/6 rolls are a 1 over large numbers. So if you play enough games... the other team will receive more trolls than you.

So now you're saying.. but if all that is true, i've played thousands of games and I still can't rise out of elo hell. /cough /cough /ahem

that's because the inevitability of analyzing the math says that over a large number of games you wind up in the ELO you belong in. If you are in 800 elo after that many games then I'm sorry friend, math says you belong there. BUT!!!!!

this is a GOOD thing not a BAD thing because that means if we are the problem then we can fix the problem. Thinking that your losses are the result of other people in a strategy is a viscous poison and it's the real thing holding you back.

Everytime you lose a game, no matter how well you played, you need to look for the little things that you could have still done better (and they exist).

Did you die too early in that team fight and you guys got aced? would wards have helped you? Would a better position have helped you?

Did you get ganked early in your lane? Perhaps could you have chosen a better character if you knew who you were going up aginst?

Did someone die while you were farming? should you have been helping them or maybe it really was just their fault for where they were at.

My point is, in any given situation the fault of failure very well might not be your own. But you should never just dismiss it as such, even if it's the truth, think for 15 seconds if there were any circumstances in that situation where you could have made up for the failings of your team and think of how you can execute that next time. That is called carrying, and that is how you will rise to the elo you want.

TL;DR: assume every bad thing that happens is your fault and think about how you could have made it better

upvote

What is this argument of logic?

Honestly I find most people who complain about being in ELO hell are the guys who play super aggressive and cost their team the game just as often as they carry it. I went 26/4/10 and we still lost. Forgetting to mention the previous 3 games they went 1/8/3 and maybe even won one of those games.

Poker theory, you always remember your bad beats more than your big wins. Gotta look at the whole picture though.

Im sorry but i dont agree with this. I gave up awhile ago on trying to raise my Elo. Now instead of getting pissed at bad teammates and not enjoying the game at all, I just do as well as I can. I focus on winning my lane, and trying to work with what I am given. The thing is, is that at 1200ish elo, some people just flat out suck/leave/troll too much for me to be able to carry myself out.

Congrats to the people that did carry themselves out (almost definitely by duoing), but I play team ranked games with guys that were ranked in the top 5 on the european servers and do as well if not better than them in every game. The system is quite messed up in my opinion, and I'm definitely not the first person to say this.

I didn't duo queue to get to 1500. Everything that you just said is exactly what the OP's argument is refuting. The chances someone on your team freaks out and leaves is lower than the chances that someone on their team freaks out and leaves, assuming that you yourself never do so. The only way that, over a long enough period of time, you would average more leavers on your team than the opponent has is if your own attitude is so abrasive that it is causing people to leave at a higher than average rate.

Very well Put message i completely agree.It is very frustrating being in elo hell.Though i was THAT guy who was raging all the time about not being able to get out of Elo hell.Though i read this guide and with about 15 games of applying that i din't get anywhere.. Eventually i learned to play the champions that im best at and set my mind to play for the team not my own rank.I played what my team needed and i did it well.Good judgement of your team, fair amount of practice, Individual skill, and just plain ol getting along with the team are all factors of wining.Do you think that hotshotGG would stay at 800 rank for long?i think not.If he can..I think anyone can with enough determination.With all the leadership i used i carried form 750 to 958 and counting currently :).

logic in this forum? something must be broken.

Didn't die early. Warded my lane and thus avoided ganks. Won my lane. Didn't matter because the jungler and support decided to throw the game at the 2 minute mark. Support never warded bot lane, so their lane got ganked frequently. Jungler basically fed 0-7 by running into 1v3 before I or the top could get there to help - we saw that there was a fight, he just chose to start alone.

Didn't get ganked. Ganked my own lane and won it. Went to help other lanes that were feeding hard.

Yes, the jungler died while I was farming. He ran into 1v2 and blamed me and the top, instead of waiting the 8 seconds it was going to take for both of us to get there. We saw the fight and we were already on the way, he just dove. But then, he also picked jungle Yi in a ranked game.

There are such things as unwinnable games, and they do happen, and it is possible to do literally everything right and still lose. I took another earlier loss on Anivia after top decided to start trolling and between him, the jungler, and bot, my team fed 14 kills before my first death. I don't expect my teammates to be stellar. I just expect them to not be so unbelievably terrible that there is no way for me to salvage the game.

I am not in the fabled 500-800 nightmare ELO, but if people throw games this hard at 1300, I can easily see someone getting stuck at a lower bracket where teammates may be significantly worse.

Yes, but unless you are the most unlucky person in the world, those teams happen to the enemy just as often as they happen to you. More so because the enemy team has an extra variable to account for. Which is the OP's point.

I don't disagree that it's entirely possible to run into terrible enemy teams (or cases where half their team is afk / trolling). I do disagree with touting that ELO hell is nonsense when I'm seeing, raising ELO around 1300, what people in the 500-800 bracket are saying keeps them from winning games.