What Ranked Comes Down To

I don't even think I want to finish my second season's placements. I placed Silver 3 last season spamming Jax, a cheese pick, only to be demoted to Silver 4 after 4 afk games in a row. Currently I am 1-3 I believe into placements. My last game went a little something like this:

>>Spend 20 minutes going through various champion selects where people don't lock in so the Queue disbands >>Get into queue, get troll bans from teammates >>First pick Riven hoping to be the carry you have to be in order to get out of silver or bronze >>Get counter-picked by Garen (fine, I was still even if not winning in lane, because he was bad and I could bait his Q silence) >>Teammate picks Karthus (very immobile, squishy mage) INTO Leblanc (very mobile, assassin mage) >>Karthus loses lane, Leblanc camps my lane so I cannot snowball (good strategy on her part) >>Our Jinx dies then begins to play poorly and feed despite no inter-team conflict >>I cannot do anything because they were now all fed and could easily dive me under turret with Amumu stun or Garen Silence, and they remained grouped >>Surrender vote comes 4-1

It seems to me the only way to rank up in this system is: -Get lucky and snowball the game (impossible if teammates lose and they camp your lane with someone like a fed Leblanc) -Get the cheesier picks that nobody in this elo knows how to pick against or fight -Be a high-ranked smurf and get lucky with your team and enemy picks (seriously, try killing a fed Leblanc with a flash every 8 seconds and no hard CC unless she is stupid and W's to you [which she did not]) -Have the better smurf on your team (more luck)

I've read threads of high-ranked players who struggled hard in bronze/silver. It is a luck based game at this level, granted your chances of winning go up with skill at the game (and of course, if you get good with cheesy picks that nobody at this level knows how to counter and/or very hard to counter in general).