Did you Win or Lose Lane??? - Lane Phase Skill Rating - Suggestion
Individual skill is difficult to measure in a team based game. There are a ton of variables to capture, but League does an okay job with the letter grade system. My thought is that, since the start of the game often (not always) determines how things go, given the snowballing nature of gold advantages, how players perform in their lane during the first 10-15 minutes would be a great indicator of INDIVIDUAL skill, even more so than the letter grade, which in my opinion doesn't account for team fights well. (I say this as a kill-stealing, S+ hoarding
slut).
My proposal is as follows-
First - account for the following when balancing this proposed equation: 1- Champ selection, tank vs nontank, melee vs ranged (for example, don't value damage dealt as heavily if its a ranged mage vs a melee tank) 2-Other champions roaming in lane (don't penalize a player for dying to gank 2v1 as much as you would for a 1v1 death... and award player for surviving gank attempts as they are taking pressure off their teammates during this time) 3- Opponent champion LEAVING lane- did your opponent go roam? Did you effectively punish them for it?
Next, with these factors accounted for, assess the player's skill based on the obvious normal stats: -CS vs Opponent -Turret Damage vs Opponent -K/D/A vs Opponent -Damage dealt/taken -Vision score -Points for roaming/ganking other lanes
Then at 10-15 minutes into the game STOP and rate. Did you get ganked for, or against more? This will account for it! At the end of the day this metric would look at how well you did as an individual before the teamfights start - I think it would provide players with a nice sanity check when they keep losing games that are outside of their control. And help kids with fragile egos like myself by letting me point to 1 metric I have complete control over! And in all honesty, I believe the first 15 minutes of the game are the most important... if such a hypothetical metric of individual skill could be implemented effectively, it could help weed out 0-10 players in the low ELOs that sabotage so many games, and allow for more even matchmaking.