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As a Silver I LOVE getting matched with Plat+

Eedat··21 votes·1,520 views

------------> IN NORMS <-----------

No, seriously. I'm not joking.

When I'm playing normals, I really do love when i get matched against Plat+. It's a challenge and a learning experience. It's one thing watching the highlight reels of unranked-to-Diamond and Pros to see how they play, but its not nearly as informative as actually being in the game. It's like the difference between reading a textbook and actually going out into the field for hands-on experience. I don't play much ranked, but I always end up in Silver. My Norms MMR consistently matches me up against a few gold-plat players and an occasional Diamond (probably because he/she is in a group.... but hey! I'm not complaining) and I can honestly say it has made me a better player. Playing against other Bronze/Silver teaches you bad habits.

Let me give you an example:

  1. You are playing mid. A Silver Lee Sin walks out of the bush and throws his Q at you. You easily side step it and the Silver Lee turns around and walks back into the jungle. But lets say in this instance it connects. The Silver Lee follows up, then you flash away to safety. Lee turns around and leaves.

  2. Now, the same scenario against a Plat/Diamond Lee Sin. The Plat/Diamond Lee Sin walks out of one of the middle lane alleys (anyone know the actual name for the 4 alleys in mid lane?) behind you. He doesn't use his Q. Instead, he literally just walks up to you to auto attack and apply his red buff. You now use your flash/escape to get away. Knowing that you have no way of running and are slowed from red buff, the Plat/Diamond Lee NOW uses his Q. He kites ahead of you while continuously slowing you with red buff long enough to outright kill you or for the enemy mid laner to catch up and you die. Even if you somehow manage to escape, you better believe that Diamond/Plat Lee Sin knows your flash is down and will come running if you ever extend too far.

Playing against the Plat/Diamond Lee has taught me how to anticipate what people are going to do and to better understand the mechanics of champions. I find myself quickly assessing situations instead of just reacting. Instead of panic flashing, I find myself thinking "Yeah, I'm dead. No need to burn my flash too for no reason". Or waiting for a key ability to be used then flashing. I find myself applying my experience vs the higher ELO players to my own gameplay. Now, instead of the Plat/Diamond Lee Sin saving his gap closer to just walk up and apply red buff, I am.

You aren't going to rise in the ranks if you program yourself to play against the ELO you are already at. Sure, you might get dominated a few games, but you still learn more. Pay attention to what they do and why. What you could have done better. How could I have baited that cooldown? Which direction should I have pathed? Should I have even bothered using my flash? Why or why not? Keep playing and things will start to click.Eventually, you will find yourself laning against a plat and you will win.

And let me tell you, it feels great knowing that for at least that game, you played at a Plat+ level.

So to all the people that complain about matchmaking in norms, I don't get you. What you see as unfair, I see as a challenge.

21 Comments

Mysticman893 votes

Normals are sometimes fun match ups with people of vastly different skill levels, but sometimes frustrating when you're not actually involved in the match up until mid/late.

One of my favourite experiences (as a high gold/low plat ish player) was as a support janna versus a diamond 1 rengar, since I actually felt like it was on me to protect my adc from that jungle through proper warding and nado interrupts and so on, and so my warding/peel game had to be on point. (And I'm quite proud of successfully thwarting a number of those ganks and ultimately winning that match..)

I've also adc'd versus a diamond something adc (and I'm probably only really like low gold-ish level as an adc), and that was a welcome challenge where even staying even with them in cs felt like an accomplishment.

On the other end though sometimes the shiny person is in a different lane, and they end up facing off against the lowest rank member of your own team, and all you can do is feel helpless as laning phase ends and theres suddenly a 21/0/5 assassin who can legitimately one shot you. Learning to play around that is a skill to be learned I suppose, but being stuck unable to go anywhere without wards, and being unable to even safely ward without vision of the fed person can sometimes be very frustrating, as it loosely translates to being unable to actually play for the rest of the match.

I rather hope to someday interact with a master+ player to see how thoroughly they ruin me, but I feel like most players at that level don't play many normals.

Eedat1 votes

but I feel like most players at that level don't play many normals.

tbh they could probably play a norm in the time it takes their ranked queue to pop at that ELO

Mysticman891 votes

Incidentally, it's really good for morale if you actually win (or go even) with higher rank people, since it makes rank far less intimidating then it probably is at first for most people. I remember for a long time golds were terrifying to me, but now I won't even bat an eye at plats, and while diamonds make me put on my tryhard pants, I'm not necessarily writing off the lane as a lost cause. Part of me hopes that a match against a master+ would actually just show me that they are human and I can conceivably keep up...but that may not be realistic.

(To be fair though, I expect most plat+ [and really almost everyone] playing norms with lower ranked people aren't necessarily trying very hard, and/or are playing champs/roles they don't main.)

BluePolarizer1 votes

When I just started ranked, I played a normals with friends and we went against a plat 2 TF.

We got absolutely destroyed by his ganks.

That taught me that lane isn't all that.

It's all about macro and strategy.

It's not about the twitch mechanics.

I'm glad I learned that early, because some people even in plat really never learned it.

GayFluffyUnicorn1 votes

I can confirm your last sentence. And it's really cringeworthy when the enemy silver/bronze starts flaming me "boosted plat", " so bad u lose 1v1 against me blabla". Yeah sorry for playing a champ the first time without actually tryharding xD

Terchio3 votes

To each his own, I guess, but I'm not personally fond of Being stomped or stomping in a game where the general purpose of any game is meant to be fair matches. I mean, when you feed your lane, It's certainly a learning experience, but I don't think your teammate is flaming to show their envy of what you have learned.

It's also quite imposing to face someone that much better. Facing a grandmaster, like in Chess or other games, doesn't give much benefit if you are that far behind in basic mechanics. It's a nice Silver Lining of a bad scenario, I guess, but it rarely works out in a positive fashion, as would be the case for a new player in a Grandmaster Chess Tournament. The whole experience just blows past you too fast to soak it in.

And the other part of the problem (sorry for droning on), is that when you build MMR in normals, you'd better hope you don't hit these "grandmaster players", or else all you do face is grandmasters, with few exceptions. What good is it to learn "heavy chunks" when those heavy chunks never actually cover your skill gap? If you had a temporary major tourney or something, maybe, but to be placed in it on a minorly adjusting queue that is indefinitely overpowered? It's just not how a game is meant to be played.

Incognonymous2 votes

You're in the minority.

I was Silver 2 last season. I want to play high Silver- low Gold. I learn absolutely nothing getting my shit pushed in by someone with a dozen tiers on me, thousands of more games, tens of thousands more hours, and hundreds of thousands more IP.

Matchmaking is not okay. Not in Ranked, not in Normals, and especially not in the Rotating Game Modes. I could forgive every last one of Riot's bad decisions if they would fix this one thing, but be honest with me. How many of you have seen games with +300 MMR difference? How many of you have seen Diamonds vs. Silver? How many of you have seen where literally every last player on the enemy team was a higher rank than literally every player on your team?

Aazzlano2 votes

I don't mean to be rude, but if you aren't learning anything from playing with higher level players (even if they crush you) then you don't have the adaptability to actually improve in this game... literally the entire game is about having diff champions/comps/matchups/situations every single game and adapting to overcome it.

You should learn a lot from it. Why were you losing so badly? Were they punishing you for being too close to them? Then learn to respect their threat range. Did they punish you for lasthitting a creep which is in their threat range? Okay then you should be able to learn to do that to other people when they go for a lasthit. Did they punish you for having a spell on CD (or missing) and staying relatively close despite that? Then you should learn to back up when your spells are on CD.

There are tons of things that you can learn from these situations, if you want to. Identify what they did to beat you and how you could have changed what you did to at least LESSEN that punishment. If you learn nothing from their higher level play then you should try recording the games and replaying them. Check out what happened when you made a mistake and try not to do that again. You won't get better unless you start playing at a higher level, and you won't play at a higher level unless you evaluate your mistakes and adapt. And facing a higher level player is a good opportunity (even if it might not be fun at that moment) to have first-hand experience of higher level play.

Punkkee2 votes

as a plat i LOVE getting matched with silver teams

pikkkkolo1 votes

yea im only gold 4 but my norm mmr is legit like 900 so whenever i go back into rank after playing norms i tend to feed and tilt like no tomorrow lol

Valor Bot1 votes

I agree to an extent, because I too have played against Plat+ players and learned the hard way that there are certain things that I should not do if I want to be successful in my games.

That being said, not everyone who is matched against these players know how to make it a learning experience for themselves, exactly -- reason being that they are unable to identify what's wrong with their own play, so once the enemy's snowballed out of control, they don't really know what they could've done better.

Eedat1 votes

once the enemy's snowballed out of control, they don't really know what they could've done better.

I mean that by itself is a learning experience. In Silver/Bronze games, people throw leads left and right. You can observe what the higher ELO players did with their lead to keep them ahead.

Valor Bot2 votes

Right, but they may not know to look for the things that help establish and preserve a lead, is what I'm trying to say. If a player doesn't understand the importance of CSing, roaming, positioning, and so on, then they won't know to look for those things in a replay and improve upon them -- it doesn't matter how many times they rewatch their gameplay.

Also, getting matched against a Plat+ enemy as a low elo player can be an incredibly frustrating experience, moreso if the Plat+ in question is sitting in another lane and taking advantage of the upperhand they have against your relatively lower-skill teammates (because, unless you're roaming to the best of your ability and keeping these people from snowballing, you're going to have a tough time -- and even then, good players like those in Plat+ will know how to stay safe from your ganks).

I think that whatever can be learned from a lop-sided game, be it Normal or Ranked, can, too, be learned from one that is more evenly matched.

LatetotheRace1 votes

As a platinum I love being matched up with bronze/silver in normals. Can I not play with people who know what they're doing please? It's not fair for me, and it's certainly not fair for them...

SaltyKracka1 votes

This is, as a matter of fact, exactly how I feel.

And yes, part of it is because there's so much I can learn. But the other part of it is that it lets me know that I have not plateaued. I can keep climbing, if I don't let the pressure and toxicity of Ranked play get to me. And a victory in those games...well, that's just about as sweet as it gets.

Reaper Soraka1 votes

Sometimes I wish they'd remove the matchmaking rating from normals. Since winning and losing doesn't really matter, it'd be fun to learn new tricks from better players. They'll get a good laugh at how bad I am, but it's just a normals game. :P

In turn, I'm sure bronze could learn a lot from silvers and golds.

Pika Fox1 votes

The only real issue i have with it is when im playing for fun, and we get me on brand and our ADC is draven.... against a plat janna and lucian.

There was no real coming out of that. Especially when youre trying to have fun and dont know that theyre a plat, so you dont take it seriously enough.

Project omen1 votes

I'm low plat and I often get matched with high diamonds and masters in norms. Sure, I like a challenge but sometimes it can get frustrating.

MLDzXnRRR1 votes

I once played with 3 high diamonds premades that were all boosted and belonged to bronze 3-4... I've never seen such tragic game.

R E1 votes

thats true.i used to duo with my platfriend alot and it actually made me better

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