Atrocious matchmaking in normal games.

You might think, "But it's only a normal game! Who cares?" or, "It's a good experience! You can learn from players who are better than you!"

I'm deathly ill at the moment. What does this have to do with the post? Well, I worry that it will effect how I play the game. My decision making, my map awareness could be impacted, and I want to be certain I'm playing my 100% when I queue for a ranked game. Especially since the end of the season is drawing closer and closer, and I really want to make that final push for Gold.

So, I'd hop into a normal game and see how it goes.

I check my teammates. I'm Silver 1 for reference.

My midlaner is Plat 4, and the rest of my team is mid Gold, except for my support who is also silver. Interesting. I check out the enemy's ranks.

Their jungler is plat 4. So is their support, who is also a 1 million mastery Blitzcrank main. In normals, I know. The rest of their team is gold, again.

This makes for an insanely unfair game. I'm a silver player, playing against a plat jungler. Despite the fact that the matchup favored me, he simply had far greater game knowledge, macro, mechanics than me. You could argue, "but Plat isn't a good elo!!!" Neither is silver. I don't consider myself good at the game and I'd like to play against people of my own skill level.

The only way I can stop this is by duoing with my bronze friends.

It's extremely demoralising. This has been going on for so long, too. I know that likely absolutely nothing will be done because "it's just normals lol" but honestly there is nothing worse than being smashed by a player that is cleearly much better than you. Both in normal and ranked games.