Elo Hell (and why it exists) from a diamond perspective
Ever since at least season 2, a theory of 'elo hell' [which if you don't know is when teammates bottleneck you and hold you back from achieveing your real rank] has come up time and time again.
I've personally been on both sides of the argument, first believing it does exist when I was bronze 1, to believing it doesn't exist when I climbed up to diamond. Now after a few seasons being diamond, Ive done some thinking and believe that elo hell does exist. I'll try and explain why.
Firstly, I'll need to explain where elo hell doesn't exist.
- When you're substantially higher rank (3+ divisions then where you currently are).
- That statistics are 80%+ of the time against you [saying: i always have the afk's feeders and trolls].
- When you've played over 1000 games of ranked.
Elo hell doesn't apply to you if you believe/exist in any of the above cases. I'm sorry. The best thing to do here is to look at how you can personally improve. Maybe get together with some mates and play some flex. Take constructive criticism.
Where elo hell DOES exist:
- When you're only marginally better then your current rank [i.e you're silver 1, but belong in gold 5]
- When you get easily tilted [i personally fall in this camp].
- When you play a 'primary' role.
Here's the thing, if you're only marginally better than your current rank, it's actually really possible to get stuck in the tier below where you belong. I believe a lot of people who are silver 1 deserve gold and a lot of gold 5's deserve silver. Unfortunately at this spot, it's really hard to push up without a bit of luck.
When you play a primary role [like mid], but aren't significantly better than your opponent, you're unlikely to climb. The fact is, a random stranger who you get paired with, is likely to be just as good as you at mid lane, but may be terrible as support. Denying them their role and forcing them support might just lose you the game then and there.
If you get easily tilted, my advice is to take a break after every loss. This is something I had to do while climbing through platinum 1. I would get so tilted that my team would throw the game [and being a support main there isn't much I could do] that if I played another game, I would lose it instantly. It took me a week to climb from p3-p1 and then a month to finally get diamond. Then it took me like 3 days to get to diamond 4. Just take it slow- you have the whole season to climb.
My advice is to main the weakest role at your elo. When I climbed from bronze 1 to gold 1, I exclusively used support. It was the weakest role in that elo. That may or may not be the case anymore, but this is something you'll have to research through your games.
And lastly, something that severely impacts low elo [and specifically bronze] is attitude. The amount of times low elo players give up before the game is over, insult each other and tilt is incredible. This is such a big reason of why bronze players lose games [however over the last 2 seasons this attitude is climbing up the ladder]. Never give up. Encourage your team. Play to your strengths.
Good luck out there!
