Just finished my daily ranked game.

Was playing as vs . Completely stomped my lane phase, but we lost control midgame and the other team sailed to victory. What cost us the game? Map awareness and not working together effectively. I want to focus on the latter.

This is a reoccurring theme in almost everygame I play to both teams I am on and teams i'm not. Ultimately I feel that when i lose it's because my team lacks synergy in comp and/or playstyle. I've had some mechanically incredible players that refused to work as part of a team. Like a lee sin who builds all damage and is constantly out of position. It works great until the other team wards(Of course he was a smurf).

The point of this isn't to start a QQ thread though, just simply to give you a background from where I'm coming from. All balance changes aside I feel like one thing riot has managed to accomplish is to make this a team game. And I'm beginning to wonder if smurfing is contributing to ELO hell.

This feeling that if you are good enough that you can carry anything is holding players back. Yes some games you get carried by the D5 smurf playing trynda, but the only reason he is doing that well is because the other team hasn't coordinated a response. Relying on other players to be uncoordinated is not skill. Skill is predicting a coordinated teams response. Just as many games are lost because a mechanically skilled player is unwilling to work with and/or teach his team. Likewise some games are uncarriable. Some teams will never function. But the goal of the smurfing player should not be to carry by beating up on noobs. It should be to improve his skills as a shot caller and a leader and to teach less skilled players how to work together. This behavior my friends will win you more games than maining riven.