The elo system riot is currently using is without a doubt in my mind broken. First off, season 3 was many people chances to get out of a place called "elo hell." I played my 10 games and won 6 and lost 4. i was placed at 1270 which is fine. What makes no sense is how my friend (sweet n nasty) won 3 games and lost 7 and got put at 1330 to start. The true definition of elo hell isnt just terrible players in every game(although this is often the case) elo hell is where you have an afk or a troll in your team in every single game. SINCE THE ELO SYSTEM IS BASED PURELY ON WIN/LOSS AND NOT SKILL PEOPLE CANNOT GET THEMSELVES OUT. If you want to get out of elo hell in solo queue you have to hope you get a good team. Thats the end of the story. You can carry, get 10000 kills and 0 deaths but you cant win a 1v5. Its that simple. "Well then play duo dude" 2v5 still cant win games. I currently gain 20 elo for a win and lose 30 for a loss(on average.) So im just dropping elo with no hope of getting up. And since the beginning of the season was broken somehow i never had a chance to play at my level. Solo queue is consists of afks, trolls, and me losing elo. Normal queue consists of afks, trolls, and frustration. Ranked games are much more fun since people take them seriously, but you cant have fun when our team is being negative, afk, or outright dumb. ELO SHOULD NOT BE BASED ON WINS AND LOSSES BUT SKILL. I could talk allllll day about this but i wont. Someone get a riot employee to read this and reply so we can all play at our own level

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MTO2a7ZFcc

And you are on a sample size of 10 games, nice try kid, now shut up and play.

<3 Ken.

Thread Hell is real though, and it consists of these same posts, every day. Posts saying "I played 1-10 games! I lost cause of my Team. ELO HELL IS REAL!!!!!!!
Complete with clutter text, and 0 paragraphs.

There's no good way to quantify skill.

The only real problems with ranked-
1: Riot throws you under the bus when someone disconnects or leaves, and simply never returns. You're out a fifth person, a fifth champion, and all gold they've amassed. You're penalized (because lets face it, no one sits through a 4v5 you weren't already going to win) the same ELO as the guy who left. You still have to pass a surrender vote.

2: People outside your region shouldn't be able to play ranked. Or, alternatively, if you cannot, on average, stay below ~200 ping, you shouldn't be able to play ranked. The average gets sampled from X of your most recent normal games. Doesn't matter how good a player you are, if you lag excessively, even the worst players won't lose to you simply because you can't dodge, and they won't have to try. I shouldn't have to get seated with a team where three people are over 200 ping on my team, of those three, two are above 300 average ping, and the fourth person on my team was still averaging 150 ms.

3: Riot punishes you when you have to deal with griefers. You either sit through what is, in all likelihood, going to be a bad game, or you take a half hour penalty. Why isn't there a vote kick system? Doesn't even need to hand out a penalty. If three or four people on a team feel that one of the players isn't there to play the game why should they be punished for it?

4: ELO weighing. Why are your first five matches worth more than the five matches you played after racking up 50 total matches? Why are older matches inherently more valuable than your most recent? Unless you weigh the system so that your most recent matches are worth more than older matches, you shouldn't weigh matches at all. Instead you **** people over when they get a string of bad matches when they first start a season, and can reasonably lock them in a bad ELO because the system is, by its own nature, designed to give you about a 50/50 win / loss ratio. And unlike other DOTA varients, its genuinely difficult to truly carry your team IE: one person virtually destroying the entire enemy team.

As a whole the elo system works well enough. It'd be better if people didn't try to glaze over things with statistics, but at it's core, the elo system wants you to be winning about as often as you lose. I could talk about how and when games are actually lost (most don't actually get lost until around the 20 minute mark) but that's another can of worms.

Its a five person team game. While this means you're insulated from the blame, it also gives you opportunity to play beyond your means.

It depends quite largely on luck during the earlier part of the season, but as many has prooven before--you can climb out of elo hell.

If you're super serious with your rank, don't play random pickup.

If you're not, don't worry too much. You WILL climb out, even if it is a bit paintful.

It's luck based. You can have a week's hard work undone in a day by back-to-back-to-back games that are lost for reasons that are entirely outside your control.

And again, there's absolutely no good reason for your first ten games to be worth five times as much as your 100th game to your 110th game. The implication there is that you're a better player the less you play.

And there's the whole thing where leavers and chronic laggers almost always decide games.

Note: If you have enough skill and happen to be on a carry role, you can often 4v5 if your true elo is 300+

I saw a thread stating "proof" and expected large quantities of mathematics. I am disappoint.

I... I don't get it. I didn't really do much ranked last season because of the "Elo horror stories". Just play normals. It's a chill atmosphere while still being competitive. And I haven't seen a legit troll for like my last... 20 games? Maybe more?

Cant be a carry every game.