500 games to hit Diamond in soloQ, 40 in flex LUL

Spent forever in the true elo hell of League... Plat 1 in solo queue. Despite being Diamond every season since season 3, this elo was a huge roadblock due to the absolutely overwhelming amount of trolls and griefers. Any attempt to climb in this elo is met with an inter, afk, or just a general troll/griefer who says "you don't deserve to win", and guess what? hard work goes down the drain.

after hitting diamond, I didn't want to play in this cesspool elo, and normals are almost, if not actually worse, since NOBODY cares about winning there, so I decided to play flex queue for a (possibly) better environment. placed gold after placements, I was going to leave it there, but boredom struck in the following days so I decided to just play flex. took only a few days, and 40 games later I went from gold to diamond. oh and I only play solo so it's not like I actually played with a duo or premades in any of my ranked games in either ladder.

kinda sad how that works, that one ladder can be so infested with the worst players in the game (trolls, griefers, etc) that it becomes more luck than skill to climb out unless you are master/challenger, and that it's at the border to Diamond. even more sad that, year after year, this problem not only does not alleviate, it actually gets significantly worse. these players are almost NEVER banned, despite trolling hundreds of times in some cases. meanwhile, I encountered only ONE troll in flex, some kog who was apparently a Masters smurf (had like 70-80% winrate on a bunch of champs), who fed fb and proceeded to int and afk. but I played against him the next game and destroyed him, so no real big loss there. and without the trolls, it was an EASY sail to diamond.

something really needs to be done about the trolling issue in plat 1 solo queue. every player who has made the climb to Diamond understands how horrifying this elo is. people always complain about their elo but they don't understand this elo until they experience it themselves, literally hundreds of players in this area should be perma'd immediately, that's how bad it is.

this is a serious problem in the game and needs to be addressed, it's affecting thousands of games each week and nothing is being done about it. I really wish this kind of experience I had in flex existed in solo queue, it makes the game actually fun when you don't just immediately get someone inting because they have 0 fear (and rightfully so, since they will NOT be punished, and if you say anything to them you will IMMEDIATELY get a chat restriction so they are protected by Riot in reality)

cheers to the people in the climb, good luck and may you hit your desired rank by season end. (oh and speaking of which, some people actually go out of their way to int at the end of a season to prevent people in series from making it to the next tier lol)