I have two level 30 accounts. One in the 1500-1600 elo range (~100 games), and one 1100-1200 (~200 games).

Games that i play in 1500-1600 are more challenging in the sense that I rarely ever dominate my lane. Players generally WANT to win, and listen. I can count on my team mates to know what last hitting is, and know what dragon/baron are. These games are more enjoyable, win or lose. I feel as though I make an impact on these games. I can control the outcome based on my play, for better or for worse.

Games in 1100-1200 range, I always crush my lane, but it is offset by my other lanes feeding relentlessly. Let me define 'relentless feeding' to you for a moment. There's normal feeding, which possibly involves giving first blood, then possible a few more kills, entering mid game having given your opponent 3-4 kills on you. Then there's RELENTLESS feeding. The kind of feeding where the music your listening to while you play get's annoying interrupted by the god **** announcer saying "an ally has been slain". You usually ignore the fact that another lane is losing, trying to dominate your own hard enough that it can snowball. But when somebody on your team feeds relentlessly, you have to turn down the volume of your headset because the god **** ***** keeps interrupting your music every 1 minute and 30 seconds. In this elo range, I feel I win very lopsidedly, and I lose just as hard. It's common to win a game with a team score of 27-3, and then lose the next game 7-30. In this game, there's a very thin line between those who dropped there because they are missing something in their game, and those who are simply passing by because they are in a freefall to sub 1k elo. I find that these games are random in outcome. You increase the odds of getting out immensely with a duo queue partner, but if you're alone... Well you better hope you don't have the relentless feeder on your team.

I know there are many who say that if your true elo is higher, you can carry yourself there. But think about this. If a 1700 player controls a 1400 elo account, do you think he could raise it to 1700 easier than a 1300 player raising a 1000 account to 1300?

I consider myself to be about a 1300 player. Good enough to HANG with the 1500 players, but not good enough to carry the insane baggage of 1100 players. It's not a matter of 'trolls' or 'afkers'. I honestly don't get a lot of that. It's simply, am I able to outcarry another lane that is being RELENTLESSLY FED. The answer is NO. I am NOT good enough to win games like that. I am however able to compete in 1500 games, and stay at that elo for 100 games, and I am not at all overwhelmed by the level of play in those games.

I think there comes a point where 'one does not simply carry'. And that's in the 1100-1200 range. I've never been lower than 1100, so maybe the players are so bad in those games, that i CAN carry the baggage. I can play any role in the game, and I have knowledge of every champion in the game. I can play 3/4ths of the champions, and i have no strongest role, as i think I can play all of them equally.

This was just a rant, there's no real point to it... Just an observation.

Oh and if you feel compelled to check the match history on Graav. Yes, you will find a string of poor games. Why else do you think i feel the need to let out some frustration?

You are just in what we affectionately call ELO hell at the 1100-1200 range. (and much lower of course)

In this range there are tons of different people you will meet and although you would think that 50% of the time you'd get a good team that didn't have at least 4 trolls/failures but you'd probably be wrong. As a team game this rating system suffers a major flaw in that you can find yourself paired with randoms that have their own agenda in mind and refuse to accept blame or learn from their mistakes.

Even one person can ruin an otherwise perfectly good game.

As such I honestly think there should be a blind tribunal for up-voting play. Sort of a "good report".

Names hidden to keep the rating from becoming an all out love fest for people who you just like.... the only problem is that without the video of the match you can't really tell if a player was actually doing well.... then again I guess the same can be said of the true tribunal.



Better yet; why not do away with the ELO system entirely? It's clearly not up to the task of ranking Team games. The question then becomes- How do you rank people?

This is a good question and one that leads to a better one.... Why does the ELO start at 1200 anyway? Why not start at 0? This gives you a chance to keep from falling too far down the ladder if you get a few bad games- so what? You just climb your way out eventually right?

As long as you can keep going down then the hole gets deeper.... to me it feels like every time I play Ranked I pick up a shovel to dig myself out of a hole.

When i first hit 30 i was cautious to play ranked, I won my first one and quickly went into the depths of hell. I have been slowly crawling my way out of 1200, just actually had a good game. I think the biggest issue in the lower elo is the fact that people dont ward (or seems to at least)

when im soraka im like ward this and ward that so they cant ever get a good gank off, but you know what another thing about low elo is they have NO MAP AWARENESS even if you ping it takes them a sec to realize wtf is really going on. gg riot at this broken system of how good players cant get out of elo hell

I'm not claiming that more than half my games I get all the bad players and lose for it. I would agree that it's generally 50/50. But that's the problem, 50% of the games, I feel entirely powerless to control the game. The other 50% are pure stomps.

I feel the same way. I usually play support and I don't think I've ever had an actual good game out of the 46 I've played. Hopefully I'll get out of this elo soon enough.

Your 1500 account will probably drop to 1300 if you continue to play games.

Kuro you seem to be suggesting that the people on the top of the ladder arent the best players in solo queue, what you are saying is that you are better than all of those top players, but the system is broken, thats why you are where you are and they are where they are.

You can't say "well it works at high elos but at low elos it doesnt work." Because they all start at low elos and work there way up

The reality is, the elo system is the best system to determine relative levels of skill, if you drop low enough you will reach a level where you carry a very high percentage of the time like 80-90%, i recently played a game on a smurf around 700 elo and despite every member of my team having 11 deaths(except me) I was able to carry even though everyone else went 4/11, and such

In the other 50% of games, you don't control the outcome either even though it's a complete stomp. I get this all the time, you're the classical perfect-laner who still doesn't understand the game. Learn to direct your team, oh and by the way, head out to gank the lane next door when your lane opponent is dead, that helps too.

Thanks for this post. I agree, one part of my game that is lacking is my commanding teams properly. I don't do any commanding in 1500 games, and it works out just fine. In 1150 games, I have no choice but to command, and I sometimes don't do very well. I have the obvious decisions down, such as dragon and baron timing, and when to push, when to defend, how to defend, but that's about it. I can't command our AD carry to last hit so they have more than 55 minion kills 35 minutes into the game. I also don't have the best attitudes in games. It's easy to get flustered and mentally check a game off as a loss when you've been through the downward spiral of these games over and over.

I'm still convinced that the #1 way to get out of 1100-1200 elo is to duo queue with somebody of the same elo, who is competent. You increase the odds immensely.