People take normals more serious than ranked.

Owlythe·3/24/2016, 11:46:08 PM·110 votes·8,372 views

Hold that downvote. Actually hear what I'm about to say before you say anything.

So, I just started playing ranked this season. I've played since season 5's preseason, but I avoided ranked like the plague. I see the occasional trolls in normals, but it's at most maybe 1/10 games. Most people like they have normally functioning brains. They don't go AP Rengar mid. However, I recently decided I was going to go and do my placements for ranked. And guess what? I'm currently 2/6. Why is that? Because one game we have a top lane Taric who went 0/7 and proceeded to immediately afk after that. Then we have a god damn Rengar who builds runic echos and goes full AP, before selling it all at the end of the game and building a few AD items as if to hide it or something(that game also had a full AP nasus without a single tank item). One game. ONE GAME, out of those six losses, can I say that the team just did better; that we were just outplayed and we all played seriously. Hell even one of my two wins was barely a win considering none of them played seriously at all. This kind of shit happens maybe 1 outta 10 games in normals, and i'm currently 8 games into ranked, and I've had about 2 games that had 4 teammates that went into the game with the full intent of winning, and not the intent of going 0/12 at 15 minutes. Why the hell is this a problem? I thought people were exaggerating when they said how many trolls there were in this game, and how ungodly toxic they were; and that's cause I only played normals, which I would have hoped would've been the place where trolls just ran while, and people took a lot less seriously than ranked. But no. People in ranked are just straight up cancer. The closest thing to a "troll" I see in normals semi-consistantly are people playing things that are maybe slightly anti-meta, but nothing outrageous. People in ranked, just go in there to ruin people's day. I'm usually dead silent in chat 24/7 in all of my games, but after the last couple of ranked games, it's taken everything in my power to just keep my hands on the qwer keys and not flame at these people. I didn't think the problem was as bad as people said, but.. Holy crap.

138 Comments

Glaedr3/25/2016, 12:16:31 AM37 votes

It's pretty astonishing how people play ranked but don't even care about winning. I don't really care that much about what happens in normals, but in ranked it just blows my mind with the amount of trash talking, afking, and intentional feeding. You would think that since it's ranked and your stats are publicly available, you would try as hard as you can while attempting to win every single game, but that's not what happens. When there's more rewards than a skin at gold and the quality of games is noticeably better than normals, I would take it more seriously, but as of right now it's just garbage to me.

Goatfish3/25/2016, 3:29:11 AM12 votes

[deleted]

The Queen Viper3/25/2016, 12:03:21 AM9 votes

Well, what can we say... dynamic queue is a joke. No wonder people don't care.

Troll for Trump3/25/2016, 4:54:10 AM9 votes

A possible explanation is that you have a high "normal MMR", leading you to be paired with higher elo ppl, who take things more seriously. I encounter less trolls in normals than ranked, but also often play with Plats and Diamonds despite being in Gold.

Whereas when I go to ranked I get paired with mostly silvers for my provisionals (haven't finished them yet)

The Deckowner3/25/2016, 12:29:36 AM7 votes

Top lane Taric actually works, taric was designed to be a top jg or support similar to tahm kench, the person is just bad.

CreamPi33/25/2016, 6:10:37 AM6 votes

You should see the people that take ARAM more serious than ranked...

A Basic Island3/24/2016, 11:54:28 PM5 votes

if all you've played is normals since you've started that makes perfect sense

Atm my normal games are more competitive than my ranked games would be (i believe so anyway) because I haven't touched ranked in years and would get placed into paper 7. My normal games ranged anywhere from unranked players to plat players and altho there may be some weird builds/comps every so often, most of the time the game is more of a ranked game than most ranked games I've played

RamboDash153/25/2016, 1:12:20 AM4 votes

I agree completely, I too avoid ranked for fear of making a single innocent mistake and having the rest of the game become the "Yell at me" party. Even then, I've had multiple games where people get super agitated over small things in a game mode that means little to nothing in the grand scheme of things in the game itself. This happens in more than just normals, all for one, urf, hexakill, all of them had people acting like perfectionists. Now, this is not to say everyone is insane here, I've been thirsty as all hell and walked into a full team because I activated my tunnel vision and received a number of "WTF?" comments. Once I apologized for my mistake everyone else was fine with it and we continued to play. In the end it's not the game mode but the people.

crippler383/25/2016, 10:20:50 AM3 votes

just last night a zed threatened to report me for dying a bunch as shaco support and not having a great game, I still got an S- though (he got fed to hell early on and was just one shotting everything and got himself an S) so nuts to him

after that I had a bad game where I wanted to try something different (rush tiamat on olaf) and got dumpstered by a jayce. Every lane was losing and the jayce got fed enough to one shot everyone but the tanks (me) and our kalista was soooo salty about it all. Granted she didn't directly insult anyone more than like 6 times but she was just such a complainer

Mysticman893/24/2016, 11:58:59 PM3 votes

Ap Reng is/was a legit thing for a bit, although theres been a few nerfs to runic echoes so that's probably not as viable as it once was. Well meaning players still sometimes fail to keep up on patch notes though, so they may have thought they could still sprint around doing entirely too much dmg with echoes procs+roar.

Ap nasus is fun but probably not appropriate for a ranked game, and taric is generally outrageous (although various non-support guides for him definitely exist).

I wouldn't say people take normals seriously exactly though, it's much more a casual middle ground. Ranked is seriously tryharding and seriously trolling, depending on what kind of person it is.

Vistha Kai3/25/2016, 3:41:48 PM3 votes

From my experience ranked wasn't like that last season.

With the Dynamic Queue around I feel like playing a psychiatric hospital simulator.

Slaven1523/25/2016, 7:18:33 AM3 votes

Exactly! It's insane. I got 3 of these stories.

1.Our mid laner apologized in the champ select because he's been off the game, and was probably going to do badly. I told him "No worries. It's just a game, and it's normals anyways. This is where you are supposed to get better against other people.". This somehow pissed off out top laner. "Oh? It's just normals? Guess I can swap to ignite then. Good luck then bot". Ironic because every lane did fine except top. Whenever the top laner died he'd either flame our team, or spend his respawn timer spamming pings at me in the bot lane. Not sure why he was so mad but it was really pathetic.

2.Another game before Jhin's (unnecessary) buff's I was getting a toxic response by our to be top laner, and mid laner for picking Jhin because he's "a bad adc" because of his win rate. I explained he hasn't been out long, and win rate doesn't mean much because people generally don't know how to play a champion right away. That game I went 22/3 as Jhin. They left the post-game screen pretty quickly without saying anything. In normals people really need to keep to themselves, and not try to pick everyone elses champions for them.

3.In the latest normals our 5th person (Braum) got flamed because of his ban pick. He banned Darius which apparently one of them wanted to play but didn't highlight, and then proceeded to complain that he left the new champ (Aurelion Sol) open. That Aurelion Sol went 5/9. The Jhin who flamed that 5th person went 8/14 to a Fizz who ended the game 14/5. (This Jhin btw was mid lane, and build AD on a team with all AD)

Conclusion: People take normals way too seriously, and most of the time those people are the one's who feed, and afk.

Chuck Charles3/25/2016, 10:30:47 AM3 votes

people definitely as a whole take ranked more seriously.

you are tilted af because you had a string of trolls.

it happens man. trolls are going to be more prevalent in ranked because ranked actually matters. trolling in a normals wont tilt anyone because it has no impact. if someone trolls in normals you laugh at them. if they troll in ranked you immediately tilt and rage usually. and that is exactly what trolls want.

its why I embrace preemptive trolls by saying shit like "im feeling it man, lets do this". Had a support leblanc in my game today, she fed like a monster early and played like shit. i went 0/3 in lane and still carried the game by late game not letting her trolling get to me.

TotalJerk3/26/2016, 12:19:51 AM2 votes

It gets better once you get through placements. Those first ten games are a fucking shitshow.

Dar Raksada3/25/2016, 12:04:54 PM2 votes

I can explain this. A family member of mine used to troll for fun. People take ranked more seriously, so they rage more, and it's more 'fun' to ruin their games. In normals half the people don't care what you do, and might even try their best to help your anivia jungle (I've seen this, and it carried me). Ranked is also where people tilt easier, causing people to ragefeed, ragequit, etc. Because people take it more seriously they are also more prone to raging, even though raging in chat is self-destructive because it makes people play worse.

Blitzidious3/25/2016, 1:47:14 PM2 votes

So, I agree with most of your post, except where you compare "off-meta" to troll picks. It's not. A lot of trolls hide behind Off-meta picks, but in its entirety, it is not troll. Far from it.

I'm one of those people that will bring Braum top, or Nami mid, and I always go in with the intent of winning.

There's a fine line between a troll pick, and an off-meta pick. If the champion has potential in that role or build, like Braum top, it's off-meta. If it absolutely has no synergy with the champions kit, like ADC Karthus, than it's a troll pick.

Twisted Fate ADC is an Off-meta pick. Nami Mid is an Off-meta pick. Braum Top is an Off-meta pick. Singed Jungle is an Off-meta pick. Alistar top(now) is an Off-meta pick. Zyra Jungle is an Off-meta pick. Karthus Jungle is an Off-meta pick. Garen Jungle is an Off-meta pick.

Full AP Jarvan is a troll pick. ADC Singed is a troll pick. Karthus ADC is a troll pick. Full AD Swain is a troll pick. Full hp regen Heimerdinger is a troll pick(Yes, this happens). ADC Vladimir is a troll pick.

Jakenoff3/25/2016, 2:53:16 PM2 votes

I went 2/8 this season in my placement matches. I honestly could have cared less about the placement matches, simply because I knew I would be able to move up in the rankings afterwards. Most of the toxicity I've seen in ranked is during my placement matches.

The only thing I need to do now is actually make a push for a higher ranking. Unfortunately, Paragon is way to much fun at the moment to play anything else.

Slythion3/24/2016, 11:51:23 PM2 votes

Welp, Imma keep avoiding ranked then. I started in the S5 preseason as well and have barely touched ranked. Gl with your placements though :3

Lord Galvatron3/25/2016, 4:28:49 PM2 votes

This leads to one of the ONLY reasons why dynamic que is better then solo. Dynamic que allows you to bring as many friends as you have on your team to help you in ranked. This is a godsend (for people who are able to do that), because you are far less likely to have trolls on your team if you already have 1 or more people you trust on your team who you can communicate with.

cmd013/25/2016, 4:39:22 PM2 votes

Promos are hard. It only gets better from there. If you play your best you are mathematically guaranteed to climb.

doyenz3/25/2016, 3:30:22 AM1 votes

Me too! I went 0/10 in my placements. Literally. 6/10 times someone fed their laner and AFKed. only 4/10 I gave away one kill to my laner. 1 KILL.
#feelsbadbro