Ranking Up: The Effect it's Had On You

There are countless threads about the difference between the elos and asking for advise about climbing the ranks. To preface what I would like to know: This isn't about that, but about my personal struggle with whether or not to play ranked at all as someone who enjoys playing casually yet having a lot of (4+ years) game experience.

Let me first say that even though playing casually and never playing ranked is still plenty enjoyable to me and I may continue, I also feel like to not play ranked may not be entirely 'healthy'. I have a ton of terrible habits, as an example, especially on certain champions like Lissandra where there is absolutely no backing out from a hasty decision and it will almost always kill you. (That might be why I'm good at long range mages and terrible at assassins.) But the thing is, knowing I'm casual and knowing that I will usually choose something fun over something smart kind of bothers me because I know that if I really tried I could do better, I just sort of 'don't want to'. But fixing yourself is only part of it, and the biggest complaint when trying to win ranked games is "my team sucks".

That is what I'm going to focus on. But not because I feel I'm always with people who necessarily 'suck'; how could I? Not many people really care about anything in unranked and low elo, so it's hard to blame them for not distinguishing themselves.

So here is my question, if you will, that I'm having difficulty working out myself: By ranking up I potentially could have more fun because in addition to being forced to work on myself in earnest, other people may be more coordinated and doesn't it feel good when you win because your team is well-coordinated? I never surrender any game because I've seen amazing comebacks which I'm sure happens very rarely in higher elos, but I think that why it works is because winning is proportionally mostly about luck and if good standalone champions get fed enough that the enemy can't deal with them. Also because I have fun just playing, win or lose. I feel like the fundamental reason I can be OK with any outcome is because I have literally no expectations for my team.

I never tilt for the reasons stated above. Yet, I'm a little frustrated lately. My main is Anivia and always has been but my secondary main is Lissandra and even though I absolutely dominate the lane usually, I literally always lose my lead if my team can't demolish in teamfights, and even if they do I'm often the sacrificial lamb, tanky or not. I don't want to focus the discussion on that champ (even though I feel she could use some help late-game), but over hundreds of games with her I feel I can comfortably say I would do a lot better with coordinated people. I know that's why they say not to use a champ who needs team backup in low elo if you want to climb. I'm thinking that's the dinger: I'm low elo.

I'm perhaps low-gold worthy with my mains and bronzish otherwise. That's my other hookup. Even in unranked I expect to get trashed with champs I'm not good at if I did make it to gold. I might need to make a smurf.

I'm not looking for the meaning of life here despite my verbosity but I'm very interested in opinions because I'm sure others have been hesitant for similar situations. Are you? Were you? How did it go?