Silver Ranked Solo/Duo - Issues/Complaints/Suggestions from a Season 1 player

Not sure if Riot members check these threads but before I quit league after many years of playing and spending tons of cash on RP, I wanted to ask a question in essay form. I write this in hopes that it may help the low end players some day.

I have never made a post before or had any public complaints. Feel free to skip to the last section if you are only interested in the Silver Ranked solo/duo suggestions.

Little backstory - I started playing league back at the end of season 1. Got into ranked play in season 2. Spent season 2 and most of season 3 adjusting to low end competitive play. Since then, I pretty much play league only to get to Gold 5 and then play Normals for fun. I like the gold loading banner and victorious skins. I own Victorious Morgana, Sivir, and Graves. I missed out own Elise and Moakai. Elise because I quit league for most of that year, and Moakai because I simply could not make it to gold no matter how much I played. I only play solo. Occasionally play duo with my brother (who does the same thing I do each year). Do not have enough spare time (work 40+ hours per week) or friends who play the game to get into 5v5 team play.

With that being said...

I rolled out of placements this year into Silver 3 after going 6 wins and 4 losses. Not too bad. I went on a huge win streak and rolled right up to Silver 3 promos. Passed through. My win streak continued. Went right up to Silver 2 promos. And that's where it happened. As soon as i hit those promos, something happened to my match ups that I do not quite understand. It was almost like the League of Legends matchmaker said "We helped you get enough good games, time for you to get some bad ones". I got placed into so many games that had people leaving or raging to the point of no control or picking weird roles (Braum/Morg top, Shaco support, etc) that I lost that promo series and actually got demoted from silver 2, down to silver 3, and eventually into silver 4. Not every single lost was weird. There was definitely some regular losses where no one raged or quit and we just got out played. But those kind of losses are few and far between, when they should be the most common type of loss game.

I went back into Silver 3 once (maybe twice, cannot remember) but alas I am down in Silver 4 again.

After spending the last 2+ weeks in silver 4 (and spending about 2-4 hours every night after work) I have noticed a pattern. Winning games is incredibly easy as long as I am not in a promo series. I win games in a row. Go right up to promo series. Get granted a free win. Then lose my next 2 games incredibly quick. This has happened 4 times in a row. When I get out of the series, I can win again easily. But the promo series are cursed.

The most recent series that I lost, which was just before making this post, went like this :

Game 1 - Just a normal loss. No leavers. No raging teammates. Normal champ picks mostly. We just lost because the enemy zed steamrolled out of control. This is a rarity, and I was perfectly okay with this loss.

Game 2 - Our Malphite top lane cannot handle the enemy trundle. Gets behind in CS. Our jungler Vi gives him a few ganks. Trundle is killed twice. Vi leaves Malph to help other lanes. Malph dies again to trundle, as the extra 2 kills could not cover the CS difference. Then Malph disconnects/leaves. Nothing was said by any teammates or by him. Just leaves. Possibly a router issue. He comes back 5-10 minutes later when the game is too far gone. We might have lost either way, but that was the nail in the coffin here.

And here I am again. Still in Silver 4. Another failed promo series. Gold loading banner, but cannot make it back. Gotta work there again from Silver every season. Can't even get back to the Silver 3 that I began the year in. I am 26 years old and have been playing League for many years. The farthest I have seen is gold 2, which was 2 or 3 years ago. According to my ranked stats for most played champions this season, I have a 52% win rate with Swain. 61% win rate with Ashe. 58% win rate with Leona. 50% win rate with Malphite. 50% win rate with Brand. But my overall record is around 90 wins and 110 losses.

I do not think I am that good at league, hence why i like to play a lot of support, but I do think my experience makes me better than the average player. Even if my reflexes or skill level is not anything special, my age allows me to understand the various concepts within the game. I hardly ever rage or complain in game as I understand that it will only make a teammate play worst and eliminate all chances of a comeback.

I am fully aware that I could play this game in the unranked modes but having a goal is what drives the passion for LoL. I have got to gold 5 many times before. If I cannot stay there when a new season comes around, so be it. But do not make it nearly impossible for me to advance back to gold 5 without spending 100 hours to get there. With another year of experience, I feel that I play better than I did last season but the climb is currently ridiculous and incredibly stressful.

My ask of you Riot is can you please check on how many promo series I have lost so far? In total and specifically in the silver 4 division? If it seems as strange to you as it does to me, please look into fixing the issues plaguing LoL.

Based on my experiences, I have a few suggestions on ways to fix low end ranked solo play.

When in a promo series, if a non-premade teammate leaves the game for longer than 3 minutes, or leaves the game multiple times, the loss should not go against your series. The other team should still get the win as per normal. If not in a series, you can still lose LP, but perhaps cut the amount of LP lost down to the dodging penalty. This should only go into affect if the teammate who leaves does so 5+ minutes before the game ends to prevent this from being used as a safe tactic to avoid normal losses.

If you make it to your promo series for the 5th time in a row, you should automatically be moved ahead. If you can make it to the promo series 5 times in a row (honestly I would prefer 3 times even), then you are clearly proving that your skill level is good enough to move to the next division. Jumping tiers (ex - silver to gold) can be the exception. These games should use the best out of 5 test as this is a bigger accomplishment, but various players and I should not be stuck in silver 4 (or any other division) just because we can make it there with no issues and then get hit with the leaver, shaco jungle fail, braum top lane, lack of a tank/bruiser, etc.

Bans should be more versatile. In the silver area of ranked, champs like Nasus/Darius/Zed/Fizz/Veig/Yasuo/Akali/etc can snowball out of control. Silver players would rather ban whatever champ they had a hard time with in their last game like Jhin/Braum/Teemo/etc. This is just the nature of League so that is fine. Disabling the above champs in bronze/silver would be one solution, but of course that is a too extreme. If a teammate neglects to pick a ban, that ban opportunity should be moved to another teammate at random. They should get an extra 10-15 seconds to choose another ban on behalf of the teammate who neglected the option. I will use an example to show how this can be helpful. Example - I recently lost a game where our mid laner chose not too ban. And the enemy mid laner grabbed Zed. That Zed snowballed out of control. Beat our mid laner and roamed into other lanes. Got 26 kills before we lost. If someone else on the team got to use that pick, we could have banned zed. Whoever got the pick might have banned someone else, but at least that improves the chances of helping with champ selection.

Silver players in general do not seem to understand (or care) about counter picking, or picking to fill team roles. I am convinced that most players in this ranked section do not even know what these concepts are. When picking your champ, it should have a role visible for the rest of the team to see. Similar to a game like Overwatch, Riot should set up a system where recommendations can be given to the player as they are picking to fill out missing team roles. If someone is going to pick a duplicate role, such as picking Master Yi jungle when there is already a Tryndamere top, there should be a warning message saying that the Yi pick would not be the best idea, and that a cc tank that could help Trynd snowball such as Sejuani would be preferred. This of course should not prevent the player from picking Yi, but hopefully this would raise awareness of the topic. There are far too many games where players go all AD or all squishy with no tanks/bruisers.

Riot if you want any more information that might help you improve the low-end ranked community or ranked match-making system, please do not hesitate to reach out. I personally feel that I am at my wit's end with how to keep playing League of Legends as it is. The current issues prevent meaningful investment of time and only instill large amounts of stress. It has become increasingly difficult to justify to my spouse why I use this game as a hobby when I cannot make any progress. If any other players in the bronze/silver/gold divisions have the same experiences that I do, please reinforce these ideas.