First I'm a low diamond (terrible Akali OTP) player who played a lot of SQ and DQ and I know what I'm talking about.

I have read 10+ threads from all these solo que fanboys. The arguments they made about DQ being bad boil down to:

1. Ranked is not your individual skill anymore
2. Premades are toxic to the solo player
3. Wait times are huge on higher elo.
4. Premade Voice chat is an unfair advantage.

(Please note that 1 and 4 are separate issues and will be discussed)

_**

Now lets break them down:

1st => League of Legends is a team game. There is no **INDIVIDUAL **in a true team! Get that in your heads finally! Ranked 5s was ever the only true ranked mode. SQ (yolo que) was a lottery ticket with 3 or 4 random players and it was more about how well you win lanes. It was purely measuring your lane skills and in a very small degree your shot calling and teamwork.

(because people wanted to do their own thing and no one listened to your calls unless you were 5/0/9)

Winning lane left you with enough power to control your team and crush games against uncoordinated teams.

But if you got unlucky your team were feeding a lot worse than your opponent laner and you would get crushed yourself.

Teamwork is more essential than how well you CS, skill shot and dodge skills in my opinion.

(unless you manage to miss every single last hit and can't land a Lux slow on a Cho gath or dodge a Thresh hook with Janna.)

All 5 members need to do their duty to climb the elo.

_**

#Story Example:

First imagine you are bronze player. You are still in school but play league for fun. You just reached level 30 and finished promos into bronze. (You are still very, very bad, to the point you build essence reaver on Ahri.)

You live in Korea and because your brother (also a league player) was busy with work, he gives you tickets to go watch the LCK (Korean LCS).

You go to the event to watch it and maybe make some friends cause you are free. You don't understand much of the games as they talk about META, complicated stuff like the best possible defensive itemization, lane swaps and other stuff you didn't bother with or even see in normals or your promos.

You still enjoy seeing the event and are impressed when you see **Faker **dunk some "scrubs" with a Darius mid.

Then as you are about to go home and you are in front of the hall where the LCK was you see Faker walking near a construction site and that there are metal pipes secured on a triangle pile some stories above but some construction worker fcks up and the pipes are no longer secured in place!

They start rolling to the edge of the platform! The worker turns around at the sound he heard but the street down is busy and it goes unheard. You realize they will fall from 20+ meters above right on top of Faker and most likely kill him.

Time slows and you start running towards Faker. His security looks you over and is about to try to stop you but you scream "Faker skillshot from above! Dodge!"

At the world "skillshot" Fakers reflexes kick in and he performs a masterful IRL dash to position himself behind a nearby wide pillar of a building on pure instinct.

The metal pipes fall on his previous location fraction of a second later with a lot of clatter but he is unharmed.

Faker is so thankful for your timely warning ping that he swears eternal friendship and elo boosting to you.

_** Fast forward:

You brag to your friends (also bad bronze players), they don't believe you and then you say "ok lets play together with Faker".

_**

Now you a bronzie + 3 of your bronze player friends in real life + Faker on a smurf account are playing ranked together.

Faker carries you and your bronze friends to silver by snowballing the crap out of newbs.

Fast forward:

Now you and your +3 (who are still bronze mentally) play against silvers who win lanes against you but not always and not by much. Faker continues to carry the games for you guys.

Fast foward:

You & +3 (who are still mentally bronze) and Faker reach gold.

Now you lose a game for the first time with Faker in your team. He is still friendly with you but he is a bit unhappy that you got essence reaver on Ahri Top and went 0/9.

He will gently give you some advice on what you should actually buy and how to play because he is your friend and doesn't mind you being bad but Faker does not like losing either.

Now these are the opposite scenarios:

Scenario 1: You improve and start going even in lane against other golds then plats and eventually Faker carries you to Diamond by teaching you how to be pro at the game.

================ Scenario 2: You don't improve and Faker is no longer able to hard carry you. He stops trying to teach you as you wouldn't learn and just plays to his best ability but for fun (internally giving up on you as a worthy student and feeling like an Asian father when his son becomes a nurse but telling himself: "it's just a smurf account" and "he saved my life, who cares if he is bad" when you go 0/8 in lane),

however he does not carry you out of gold.

_** #The point of the story is:

Unless the 4 bronze tiers improve they will start losing lanes horribly and feeding like hell. Even Faker won't carry alone against 4 fed gold players. It doesn't matter that he is 100 times better than an individual gold player since this is a team game and his team will suck.

** 3rd scenario** where the 4 bronze friends improve to the skills and mindset of a silver level summoners as they play with Faker and he gets them in plat exists, but they HAVE improved! Even if not by much compared to their rank. However after you get in plat 5 no one man or even god can carry you to diamond unless you play at least mid plat level skill.

_**

Also Faker is a busy man being a pro player and everything so he will not always play together with the bronzies.

Then bronzies will play without him and eventually they are meant to end up where they belong with a stable MMR.

Yes, it will be frustrating for solo players to get them in their team when Faker boosted them but the difference in skill at the lower Elo is not all that big.

Sure they will have 40-45% winrate of the games until they get back to bronze (if they did not improve) but I don't see any difference from the old SQ here.

It was always more luck and less skill so you people are overreacting to the current situation.

_**

The more likely thing to happen in the story I made up is that the bronzies will actually learn quickly from Faker and acquire mechanical skills of at least a high silver and the mindset of gold players.

So even if they drop by playing without him it won't be that big of a drop because they learned from a better player and improved.

There is also a 4th scenario where Faker taught them how to play so well that they are now mentally diamonds and win more games than they lose even if he is busy playing in tournaments. The bronzies from last season reach plat or even diamond in 1 season. Because if their game knowledge and teamwork (which are major part of League) are on point they will eventually be climbing once they get their mechanics down for the champions they play.

#TL;DR1:

True someone who plays exceptionally well can give the "boosted monkeys" an edge to climb higher but ultimately no one can carry you all the way to his elo if you don't play on at least a close level to the Elo you want to enter.

Now before someone makes a ridiculous argument like: "but you put just Faker with the bronze players" lets break it down further:

First of all just Faker is no simple force of human nature that us mortals should question. Also lower elo being what it is remains a lot more snow bally so anyone who is truly good at the game can carry 4 people but they will need to improve because of the limitation of 6 item slots we have. (The only thing that prevents elo boosting becoming a major problem)

However lets say you didn't save just Faker you saved the entire SKT + coach from getting killed and they swore to make you into a chalenjour and let you earn eternal fame and glory for your korean parents. (By also giving you opportunity to study and become a doctor)

You will play with 4 of them Four monsters that will crush every elo bellow diamond => sure they will get you in diamond, because even if you win 0% of the lanes and somehow fail to learn any mechanics and meta (and continue to contribute 0% to win rate.) all of them will contribute more than 10% win rate because they are far better than the enemy. You, can probably even go AFK (and not risk feeding a single lane) and still get to be a Diamond.

But you can never go challenger even if the gods of league swore to boost you there. The 6 items and lvl 18 limitations are greater than even the best 4 players. Unless you start playing on a Diamond 2-3 level (and contribute at least 8% to win rate) you won't reach into the highest tiers.

Frankly, after a 300 frustrating games SKT will get tired of your crap and resign by each of them performing a hara-kiri (ritual suicide) for not keeping their promise and dishonoring their clan by not making you a chalenjour.

*Every player is responsible for 20% of your chances to win!

It is a five man team game and when one of the players contributes 0% and the rest play against their equals (where they contribute 10% win chances) your team will get 40% win rate chance. Everyone needs to pull their weight or there can be no climbing in the long term.

Meaning that the entire point about boosted monkeys and individual skill is invalid.

Boosting has always existed but it's not all that bad because bad players improve after you crush them in lane. From every time an Irelia or Jax destroyed me in lane as Akali i learned a bit about the match up and how not to feed their ass off the next time i face them.

_**

#TL;DR1 end

_**

It's not the victories that make us better players.

It's not the salty defeats where you did almost everything you could but it did not matter because your entire team failed where you succeeded.

It's the games where you personally fail the team that you can learn the most from.

Players learn far, far more from playing with and against stronger summoners and they will improve faster than by playing yolo que themselves like we did. (refereeing to plat + players from Season 5 who read this)

Dynamic que simply made the learning experience very fast paced and the Elos seemingly unbalanced because it stirred skill growth in players. I am not even talking about mechanics. Those are very hard to teach and learn even if you play with better players. I am talking about the very skills that were extremely low on all tiers below Challenger:

Teamwork & game knowledge. The best skills in a team game with deeply strategic and changing meta.

Every gold is teaching his silver friends how to get to gold with him. He is not teaching them how to flash out of Gragas Ults that would get them killed. That is learned by playing a lot of games and having reflexes.

But he would warn them: "John(Ashe) If you see gragas is about to throw the ult try to flash away before it connects because it will put you in the middle of the enemy team and we can't save you"

And Jhon listens and learns or gets ULT + body slammed into a gray screen later that game.

He is not teaching them how to land hooks with Thresh. That also takes a lot of games.

But he can teach them proper support positioning and peel:

"Steve if you play Thresh and you are trying to save Jhon from the 3 man gank run away after you throw the lantern near him instead of walking closer to them to try and hook someone. Then if they try to tower dive you 2 E and Hook the Lee."

And Steve listens and grows to be a support anyone on his team likes because no one likes to die.

I am far more grateful to a single good lantern that saves me than landing 2 hooks that give me kills.

Does it require more mechanics? Hardly but it wins more games and i keep seeing thresh players even in my elo who make this dumb mistake.

What he mentors them on is how to build properly. "Hey Sam buying hurricane is better than statik shyv on Caitlyn. Your passive headshot stacks faster."

When taking an objective is good call: "Yo team 3 people are top go and take the drag I will lose my first tower"

and when is it bad:

"Guys don't start the baron. We have no pink and Azir, Reksai and Maokai are still alive"

and other general knowledge that you need in order to play League of Legends the strategic metagame sport and not League of Lanes the game of just mechanics.

This golden boy most likely has his own mentors in the face of his IRL friends who are plats.

He will not however 100% surely boost the silvers into gold unless they improve and he won't climb into plat unless he listens to his friends and improves.

_**

#That is all i will say on that (wall of text OP) now lets go on 2nd point:

** Premades can be toxic to the solo.**

This will happen and i won't lie.

Especially if the solo is having a bad game, however this changes nothing from solo que days.

1-1-1-1 were as likely to all blame you for losing if you were doing bad (even if they are also doing bad) as a 4 is when you play like crap.

Even if the 4 play like crap and try to dump all the blame game on you, be a man and suck it up or flat out hit the ignore button and focus on the game. If you don't respond to them it won't be an argument and they will stop typing and start playing.

The only difference is that the 4 will probably be a lot less toxic to each other meaning that there will be no arguments in your team even if someone screws up, unless you want to start them.

HOW IS THIS NOT BETTER?

If for every time I heard my teammates flaming each other, instead of typing killed 1 minion all of them would have full builds by 20 minutes in. This in team flame has reduced 10 times since the season started. True a lot of it is because of role selection. These are separate things but you can't deny you will not tell your IRL friend (or even LoL friend) to go kill his mother for the sin of giving birth to him if he goes 0/6 in lane but have flamed random teammates for much smaller things.

_**

#Moving onto the 3rd:

Waiting times.....

This one is not DQ boys. You complain that people mix up DQ and new champ select but you are doing the same.

Wait times are big because of role selection. DQ actually helps lessen the times as I'm sure a lot of players don't mind playing support when in a premade with friends that they know to be capable of carrying the game. I hate to solo que support but don't mind doing it in premade myself.

_**

#4th and truly the only REAL issue with DQ at the moment:

**Voice coms... **

#Riot should make voice chat part of the client.

This is hands down the issue at the moment.

• The "boosted monkeys" suffer from missing voice coms when they play alone. (because they climbed with teamwork and advice from better players and not solely mechanical skills)
• The solo players themselves suffer from having to type, instead of talking to their teammates and being ignored because people react more to voices than little letters (damn i should have recorded myself talking through this.... then again I have terrible accent even if my English is decent)

Coordination and co-operation of premades is a lot better because of voice coms and this is where the frustration comes from. The unfair advantage is here and not in playing with your friends.

• Adding the voice chat as part of the client will NOT however magically get strangers to co-operate!

Watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=66&v=Xgqjiw-wN1o

It is not even made to prove my point but it does.

Simply because team 1 is the picture of premades who play to win the game with their best shot caller taking the lead and team 2 is yolo que toxic players(without annie).

You will most likely find the middle ground between that more often than not but the 2 extremes are there to show you something:

• Flamers and trolls will continue to exist in your team and stay in your elo until you let them.
• The only way to get rid of them is to invite good players to your friend list and block the toxic ones.

For the first time in the history of LoL you get to influence your win rate by more than 20% by simply selecting good players who have synergy with your play style. The even better thing is that we can reform the toxic players because if they remain as they are, no one will play with them.

• adding someone takes 5 sec after game. If you had a good game then just add a note to them in your friend list "invite when in need of...":
• If you want to play a carry top you need friends who are willing to play Tank junglers or you won't win against Equal opponents with better draft.
• if you want to play an assassin mid you will need wave clear marksman or top.

and so on. You decide the meta for real, and not by troll picking your random teammates with something that won't work because you didn't draft a proper team composition for it to work. Even if someone you previously invited to buddy list is not actually a good soul. (he breaks the summoner code the next time you guys play) then simply block him and stop inviting him.

#IF YOU ARE TRULY A PLAY TO WIN HARDCORE GAMER. You should have no issue with DQ once it gets Voice coms because it will seed out toxic players as well as the weaker players.

If you had zero teamwork last season then bro, learn to adapt. Teamwork is huge and if you don't have it then you belong with the weaker players.

If you a hardcore gamer who plays to win and team up with 4 more randomly met solos who are also hardcore gamers who play to win and all 5 of you follow the summoner code. You will even have an insane advantage over the enemy team if they are 5 friends (casuals) and 1 or more of them are a weak link.

This will eventually seed out bad from good, flamers and trolls will lose more games until they adapt and start following the SUMMONER CODE! I advise you all to read it if you have not and then start posting hate threads here.

#How it works broken down:

None of you 5 will have to type so you can coordinate and the unfair advantage will disappear. You will have communication just as fast as the enemy but it will still require trust and teamwork.

Things the filthy casuals will have more than you as they will probably have an established shot caller (the best one among them) and follow him.

However if these friends truly have a bad players (boosted monkeys) among them it will be their demise and you need to exploit it. The same way the exploit their trust and unity.

I believe this will solve all the hate but it will take a few hundred games for everyone across the board to drop in their proper League of Legends Elo and not League of Lanes Elo. (maybe the entire season)

It's a team game and even back in Solo que if you managed to get some form of coordination and earned the trust of your team it led to victory way more often than not.

Adding voice coms I am sure will make everything right but then the boards will have hundreds of threads like:

"I qued and 4 people talked spanish all game and refused to communicate. Rito ban them please."

Please don't post these whines here. Just hit report in end game screen => refusing to communicate and there say they spoke a different language and refused to acknowledge you.

I'm sure Riot can implement a healthy ban from ranked for 10 games as a counter to people who want to speak their own language or abuse voice chat in some way and make you feel useless.

_** _**

In general any problems that are left were present in SQ as well so just suck it up! Some games are lost if you leave them to luck and gamble on a random team.

Meanwhile now you can get your none toxic teammates even if they are not your friends IRL or enjoy your drop down to hell. When all the none stubborn players decide that draft is important and team up while following the summoner code.

#Riot gave you a choice.

If voice coms are added and you are losing more than you are winning continuously it's going to be because you didn't take the sword their offered you

(choosing who you play with and learning the essential team-working skills )

and instead decided to go and brawl bare handed

(hope on lucky selection of randoms who are better mechanically than the enemy team so you guys somehow win even with inferior teamwork)

in the Colosseum that is the Summoner Rift.

_**

_

P.S. Sensible players like me went from 20 buddies to 100 this season.

This was not some magical influx of real life friends into league. 90% of them are not my friends but they were not toxic in a game and played something well. The only thing i want now are voice coms because not all my teammates want to skype it out.

League has evolved to a point where you can now play the way SKT does and all that without saving their lives.

Superior drafts, coordination and ultimately less toxicity.

DQ is the best possible thing for this game but it needs voice coms

_**

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#TL:DR2; Solution: Add voice coms to the client and weather the storm until everyone gets in their proper Elo.