Streamers get accounts from bronze to diamond in 24 hours. Hell geranimo is currently doing a Level 1 to Challenger right now and hes doing very well.
I thought that the league community had gotten past this mentality, but it seems like there are still posters who believe that their silver/bronze rank is due to their teammates.
Edit: Getting downvotes for speaking the truth? This is looking like the Old GD!
Lemme tell you a story that I tell many people.
I have a gold friend. And he's pretty chill. And he's a good player and I admire that. We did get on the topic of elo hell since I'm bronze. And he's gold and he questioned why I was in bronze since he new I ain't a total fuck up 85% of the time. I said "elo hell op" he being gold tells me it doesn't exist and we got in a big argument. I said "fine I'll bet you 20 bucks you can't get a smurf account from bronze 5 to silver 4." I might've said silver 3 but I can't remember. He took the bet. So he made a new account and power leveled it to lvl 30 at the start of a new season. Then purposely lost all his promos to get bronze 5. Then playing about at least 3 games a day almost everyday he tried to get outta bronze. He couldn't do it. The closest he got was bronze 2 but ended bronze 3. After that he shut up about elo hell not existing and I'm 20 bucks richer.
Yeah sure the Diamond player got outta bronze but what about all the silver and gold players stuck in it. I ain't sayin it's impossible but it is there. Wether you wanna believe the story or not that's up to you. To me it's true and I guess elo hell is just an idea therefore it's only everyone's opinion wether it exist or not.
A challenger is certainly able to carry in Bronze. But I am really convinced that someone who would hold his rank in a mid-Gold team is not able to carry consistently a mid-Silver team. So he just win or lose "by luck", depending on what team got the worst offender.
If you look at my history, I bet at least half of my games are: a/ I win lane but can't carry my team; or b/ I lose lane but my team carries me nonetheless. As if my skills didn't matter. I am mid-Silver in ranked (averaging Silver 4 over the season) and I never went above Silver 3. I got into Silver 3 three different times, and always bounced back. Yet, when I play with friends, most of them are Gold-level, and I can play with them without costing us the game every time.
So maybe the term "ELO Hell" is not correct. But you can't deny that in lower divisions, you really often feel like you can't influence meaningfully the game.
There is Elo Hell. It is where the majority of the players are less skilled than you, yet not THAT less skilled so you can carry with no problems.
[{quoted}](name=ToiletteOfDoom ,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=3ROvQE7A,comment-id=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-10T16:55:40.516+0000)
this is amazing..you put words in my mouth, then call me out for doing it to you? This is classic. ITS A 5v5 game....how is win loss even a "reasonable" indicator of individual skill? LeBron is arguably the best baskeball player alive in NBA and possibly of all time...he still does not have a championship ring. So tell me again how win/loss is a good indicator of individual skill in a team competition.
[{quoted}](name=Android Cowboy,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EjpOBFyl,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-12-10T16:59:30.977+0000)
DUOs, luck and iffy matchmaking make that kind of advance possible. If you deny ELO hell you ARE fail, however.
How do diamond level players manage to get smurfs to diamond in such a short time then?
DUOs, luck and iffy matchmaking make that kind of advance possible. If you deny ELO hell you ARE fail, however. Oh, also the ones doing that were already diamond and suck to begin with.... why would they NOT advance if they are already way above the norm in gameplay/game familiarity? 
All of diamond is elo hell. I go from unranked to plat 1 super fast and easily with a 60% winrate, rank turns diamond and suddenly I can't win anymore. I guess everyone has their own form of elo hell?
Yea I know there is always something I could have done to improve my game, but if my teammates weren't 0/10 before 10 minutes those things i could have done wouldn't have been a issue... When you are 8 minutes in and the enemy ADC already has 5 kills, enemy Rengar is 9/1, and you have no more Bot turrets there just really isnt much you can do and this always seems to happen when i am in my promos.
Elo hell is ingrained into the elo system and exists across all team games that use the elo system for match making. The basic tenants of why elo hell still exists even today comes from two simple concepts that exist across all mobas:
- the elo system, while the most accurate system in the long run, takes a large number of games to normalize
- most players have a limited number of games they can play during any given time period
To fully understand the elo system, you need to understand the central limit theorem. When running multiple iteration of independent or weakly dependent events, the mean will be approximated by a normal distribution. When applied to league, if you were to run 1.8 million players through the elo system, they would all end up along a bell curve around what their true elo is. This means that while the vast majority of players will be placed at the elo they belong, there will invariably be a small but significant number of players who are placed multiple standard deviations away from their true elo.
In practical terms, there are about 40 thousand players 2 standard deviations below their true elo and 11 thousand players who are 3 standard deviations below their true elo on the NA server. While these numbers are not significant compared to the 1.8 million ranked accounts on NA, they are significant enough that you will get a decently large number of them bitching about the ranked system on the forums.
Now over the course of time, the overall standard deviation (sigma) should decrease. This is because sigma is inverse proportionally related to the number of games played by the player in question. This is why the number of players bitching now is nowhere near the number of players bitching back in season 1 when elo hell was running rampant. However, league does have a steady stream of new players who have a smaller number of ranked games under their belt.
Also, you have to realize that using streamers is a terrible way to model elo hell because streamers on average play far more games than a normal player. As a result, their sigma will be much lower than the general population.
Very nice insight
Well, elo hell isn't defined by any given rank. It is a vertical subset of players which stretch across all ranks and depends more on the number of games a player plays than the mmr that they are at. The majority of players who complain about it are in bronze and silver because bronze and silver make up such a large subset of the general population.
But this is not quite the same thing as ELO Hell. The concept of ELO Hell is that there is an ELO correlated factor that influences games in a negative way. For example, afks have a significant impact on the outcome of games at all ELOs. But players that have more afks will tend to lose games from being afk. This means that although those players may have the skill to play at a higher ELO, they are actually playing in lower ELO and the outcome of the game becomes strongly influenced by whether or not that player afks. You can think about many other examples, but essentially what it amounts to is that in order to maintain a high ELO, you have to be consistent game to game and if you aren't consistent game to game you end up in a lower ELO than what you are capable of. This trend ends up impacting all lower ELO games in a negative way. This is a major factor that contributes to ELO Hell. Sure, if you are Challenger or Diamond or even Platinum perhaps (? well Platinum players often think they are great), then you can do what Leviathan Elite says and just carry out of lower ELO anyways and act like ELO Hell doesn't exist and is just a false concept existing in other player's minds. But if you aren't skilled like that, then you can run into serious difficulties when trying to carry out of Bronze ELOs even if you are a Gold or Silver ELO player.
Denying the existence of ELO Hell won't help the players stuck playing in it. It is better to acknowledge it and start realizing that you have to adapt your play to the ELO you are playing in. For these players you can't just play in lower ELO and pretend that you are a Diamond player and expect to climb ELO. No, in fact, you have to learn to deal with the negative tendencies that keep your more skilled teammates down at your pathetically low ELO. Because even though they are so skilled... they do things that make the lives of their teammates Hell and incidentally straight up lose games such as but by no means limited to going afk, being toxic in chat, and spamming surrender votes. Losing wouldn't be half so bad if these negative tendencies didn't exist, but they do. bummer huh?
Id say "elo hell" is relative to your skill level and how many games you play. You dont ACTUALLY belong there, but you would only get out of there really, really slow due to unlucky teams. Ofc you can still get lucky teams too tho.
Actually Elo Hell does exist. But elo hell isn't in bronze or silver. Elo Hell is in Diamond 1 80+Lp trying to make Master Tier. Shit is so hard to do and the amount of LP you gain per win is laughable.
ELO Hell exists.
It is when you have been placed in the appropriate position for your skill level.
You have been placed right where you should be, so you won't actually climb unless you improve. :P
I do realize it's not solely my teammates faults. And the saying that every bronze games everyone is a fuck up I guess isn't true either. It's false advertising by youtubers for ratings. I'm kinda think about it now and realizing that fuck ups rarely happen in bronze as bad as everyone thinks. Only about 1 in 4 games does my team or the enemy team have trouble grouping. I guess I'm just salty for being bronze for 3 years after taking every bit of advice I can get except elo boosting. I gotta realize that the enemy team is at about the same level I am and are my allies. Though it does feel like a which team is gonna go on tilt first most of the time.
Thanks for this argument, I've realized a few more things about my play style. I'm still on the side of elo hell exist though. But I never solely thought it was my teammates fault. In fact I almost never blamed them. I had always blamed elo hell being a lottery for who's gonna get the hot headed riven main or so and so. Again thanks though.
