Prev #3 challenger vs SoloQ. Plat 5 in 34 games and other facts about the existance of elo hell

So yesterday, a big time streamer (nightblue3) ran an unranked to diamond stream. The biggest difference in what he did than what most LCS/big time players do is that he actually did it SOLO. This is a player who used to be top 10, is currently rank 64, and normally stays in the top 50 on the NA challenger boards. So if anyone should be able to "carry themselves to diamond" it should have been him. *-- Now a few things of note first:

1. This isn't a discussion about if you think nightblue3 is good, bad, or anywhere in-between. The fact is he is currently rank 64 in NA and consistently stays around the < 50 mark. Regardless of if you think he can make it in LCS or not, he is a very, very high level player in soloQ.

2. This isn't even about elo hell. Clearly he can make it back to diamond/challenger as he has also made challenger in EUW and was able to make it to plat 5 in around 24hrs straight playing 34 games. Rather, this is about the interesting things I noticed about his climb to diamond, and why they are often attributed to "elo hell".

3. I don't want to turn this into a witch hunt. There is no need to name-names, it's pretty easy to tell who is a booster/smurf and honestly the who isn't as important as just the "why is it so easily allowed/desired".

*-- That out of the way, here are some things I noticed while checking into his stream throughout the day. Also, here is his op.gg: http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=shrek+failed

1. The high amount of boosters and smurfs he played with/against. All throughout his climb (even from the promo matches) he played with/against numerous smurfs, elo-boosters (someone who lets another player use their account to raise their elo), and duo-boosters (someone who duo's with someone much higher than them to try and gain elo). It was much more prevalent than riot would like to admit and the fact it happened even as quickly as his placement matches really spells trouble for anyone going into ranked trying to find fair games. Sure, he was smurfing as well; so you can argue he probably has a higher probability to get matched against other smurfs (he already gets matched against people a tier above him after placements). But he still met many boosters which you can't always properly identify. Also, considering the amazing streak/win-ratio you have to have to **only **get placed in gold 3 (9-1) it can be hard to tell whether that person is just a good gold 1 player doing ranked for the first time or a high plat/dia/chal smurf.

2. If you take out his placement matches and go from there he had a record of 17-7 (71% win record). This is from a high challenger player, playing against plat 3 (on avg) players at the highest point in his climb and getting his preferred role in 27/34 (80%) games. So yes, even gods bleed, and even high challenger players can not turn every game around even in the lower elo's. This is also in a role that IMO is one of the best to carry from (jungle and mid respectively). You can impact all lanes, during all phases of the game, and also have heavy influence on objectives and decision making (because of smite).

3. He was 13/20 (65%) in matches against players from plat 5 (at the start) to plat 3 at the end (6/10 in his last 10). As a top 50 challenger player. Not exactly what you want to hear when trying to climb out of your own "elo hell" to where you "belong". There is a 2 (you might argue 3) tier difference between his actual elo and the elo he is playing in, and he had a pretty good string of matches were he was going 1 for 1. He even lost his first gold 1 promos just because his 1 for 1's happened during his promos. This is exactly the frustration that players don't look forward to when trying to play ranked. Think of how much harder this would be for someone currently in bronze 5 who plays at a silver 5 level (so for someone much closer, less tier difference, to their "true" elo).

4. He won 4/7 of his "non-main role" games. Most of those wins coming from playing a very snowball-y champ support (rengar), stealing farm, and running rampant across the map. Think of how much worse it would have been if he had to actually plat a meta champ in his non-pref role. If any normal player did it they'd prob have an afk/RQ adc at 10 minutes. He only got away with this because A) he's a big name streamer, B) it was easy to tell he was a smurf, and C) He was high enough elo to pull it off (still only 57% of the time). As a non-big time streamer most players will often find they don't get to play their main-role and get pushed to a sub or less desired role. Even more so when their lolking doesn't say 12-1 on it. Sure, you can say "learn to play more than 1 position" and while i also highly recommend it; at the end of the day, most of us don't have the time to master all 5 positions and 3-4 champs in each of them to stay "competitive/carryable". Heck most of the LCS players can only "main/carry" 1-2 roles and a handful of champs and it's their job.

5. The main point of this whole thread: climbing is hard work. You don't often get your main role, and even when you do get your role you can't always carry a game no matter how well you do. You sometimes get screwed out of promo's with a bad string of games and it often feels like you aren't getting anywhere when you keep going 1 for 1 or 2 for 2. Even the top tier challenger players take 35+ games** just to get to plat 5.** More than anything, climbing is just about playing a whole lot of games and slowly improving. Elo hell doesn't exist, but it sure can feel like it at times.

All that said, there is still much work to be done from riot's end. Smurfs, boosters, dual-boosters, AFKers, DCers, and other toxic elements of ranked really need to be more closely looked into and dealt with. Ranked is where I should want to go to have the most competitive, even playing field in LoL. It's where I want to bring my A game, I expect everyone else to bring their A game, and I expect a decent amount of competitiveness from the match.