PSA: High elo strategy is inefficient in low elo
This essay is listed in my "Master List of Essay Threads" under the title "On Strategizing For Your Elo"
It's not that 'elo hell' is a thing where 'good players can't make a difference in low elo', it's that the optimal strategy for winning a match has to take the skill level of your teamates and opponents into account. LCS strategies don't work in low elo, and low elo strategies don't work in LCS. So if they skillset that a person uses to be successful in say platinum or diamond mostly revolve around higher level strategies as opposed to raw mechanics and punishing mistakes, they will have a harder time trying to carry low elo where those strategies just aren't effective.
It's not just a league thing. If you're playing poker, you have to play differently vs an experienced player than against a novice. You can potentially read an experienced player because they have logic and plans behind their actions. Since you and the opponent both understand the odds and are making decisions based on calculation and knowing your enemy, you can make more informed decisions and you alter your play to take advantage of subtleties. A novice really does't understand the difference between good and bad hands, or when it makes sense to bet or call or fold. They don't take relevant data from one hand to the next. The strategies that are effective against an experienced player are not effective against a novice because the novice is immune to bluffs and manipulation and calculation by virtue of ignorance.
Ofc an experienced poker player can crush a novice, but they have to adjust the way they play since the higher level tactics are both ineffective and inefficient. The same goes for league. You have to play against the enemies you're facing that game and take into account the teammates you have that game. Know thyself and know thy enemy and all that.
No, the take away is that the strategies that work in gold+ are designed to fight skilled players, and rely on everyone on the team having a certain baseline skill and knowledge of the game.
These strategies fall apart in low elo games because unskilled players don't know how to capitalize on high elo strategy's. A higher elo strategy executed successfully will FORCE a SMALL and TEMPORARY advantage that can be exploited QUICKLY to build a lead and eventually break into the enemy base and win. These strategies work will in a skilled vs skill environment because skilled players don't make as many mistakes as unskilled players.
However, low skilled players make mistakes constantly. They make them so often that high elo strategies designed to force an temporary advantage are INEFFICIENT. Trying to do a complicated rotation to bait and pick an enemy off so you can siege a tower 5v4 is good in high elo because without forcing the enemy into making a mistake, they won't make one with enough frequency to reliably close a game out. In low elo, 3 guys have been caught farming a side lane or chased someone into an ambush in the time you were taking to set up a guaranteed catch from a rotation. Which means even if you consistently pull of higher level plays, you can easily end up falling behind as a team due to the team death match / lack of map awareness of the rest of the players.
So you have to adapt. You have to play the game on their level. If you have high elo mechanics, accept that its a team death match and be better at it then the other players so that you end up winning more games on average.
