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Does Elo Hell Exist?

Cowleague·2/12/2016, 4:52:10 AM·3 votes·624 views

Lets pretend that Rito enjoys placing you in fair games. According to there published matchmaking the average player skill should be equal on both teams. In a perfect word where there are enough players of the same skill rating wanting to play, this seems to work. Let's assume you are better than your teammates. We will assign you a rating of 100 and the average skill goal to be 50. If both teams consisted of 5 50 rated players, no would could argue that it wasn't fair. Comparing Bronze vs Challenger total numbers, there are way more lower skill players than high skill players. So while you attempt to climb the ladder, you will be with more 50's than you will be with 100's. The longer you are in queue, the more likely this will happen. This also means you will have 2 25's on your team. Team #1 50 50 50 50 50 Team #2 100 50 50 25 25

Team #1 has 0%, 50%, 50%, 75% 75% in 1vs1 matchups Team #2 has 100% 50% 50% 25% 25% in 1vs 1 matchups

Does this mean that you being a higher skill lvl decrease your chance of winning? Even if you win your match-up, you have a very high chance of losing 2 other match-ups. Lets take support roles, you dont really have that double skill advantage here if your adc is a 25. It works the same way with adc.

IF you are going to main adc/support, you need to assist those 2 other match-ups that are likely to lose a skill exchange.

Seems to me that an amazing jungle would have the best chance of making sure those 25% won their match ups.

TLDR: If you want to climb elo, play Jungle, If you want to stay in Elo Hell play Support. Group early and pay attention to the members of your team that are struggling. I am currently attempting to use mobile champs to be all over the map to solve this math problem. Teleport is great for this.

7 Comments

Cbq4Eb7Prr2/12/2016, 4:53:40 AM1 votes

It does :P

Goosetard2/12/2016, 6:18:34 AM1 votes

Yes, that's why high elo players have really long queue times: there's a very small window of rating that the algorithm allows you to be matched with. The only way you're going to wind up with that kind of rating disparity is if you intentionally queue with someone who's above/below your rank. I swear you can do exactly what you're saying and actually make someone's climb harder if you try to duo with them and they're worse because everyone besides you on your team is playing into stiffer opposition than usual.

The thing is, I've done some math simulations of an elo system in a 5 man team setup, and I think everyone's mmr varies in a pretty broad range around their intended rating. So although Riot does a good enough job at making sure you get paired with people of your same skill level, they can't actually get a good enough handle on what your skill level is to do it well enough. At that point, it becomes really hard to climb even if you're better, if you aren't better enough. That's why challenjour guys can do an unranked to master in 24 hours stream.

Vicarious1172/12/2016, 7:11:24 AM1 votes

ELO Hell does not exist, to put it simply.

Your math is based on a lot of assumptions, and your skill does not determine your MMR most of the time, your rank alone typically does. So the scenario you offered will almost never actually happen, if you are better then your teammates you will be a 100 and the rest of them will still be 50s, just as the enemy team will be 50s. So if you truly are a 100 in an ELO of all 50s then you WILL climb cause you can beat the enemy team more often then not in more ways then just winning lane.

If you're still losing most your games, then sorry to say you're actually just another 50 as well.