"Solo Q is about your own skill, not the team"

KING ATTILA·Feb 9, 2015·3 votes·773 views

I thought success depended if you were lucky enough to get a good team.
God knows I can play well but the team will cost the victory. Can't carry in this anti snowball meta. Bronze too heavy.

11 Comments

Drunk RummateFeb 9, 20153 votes

Let me explain to you how carrying works in a numerical sense, maybe it will help you understand. Lets pretend there are 5 types of players. To keep it simple we'll just call them 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

1 loses to 2, 2 loses to 3, 3 loses to 4, and 4 loses to 5.

Now ideally, the team with the highest score should win, and both teams draw randomly from the pool of numbers.

The average player should be a 3, so therefore on average the enemy team will score a 15. If everyone on your team is a 3 as well, that means that they score a 12 without you. In order to carry you need to be a 4 or greater (so better than the average). So if you personally are a 4/5 that means that over a long period of time, you will eventually gain ELO until you become a 3.

Now lets compare how this looks in a game where you score a rotten team. They score 4 points alone (1 each). There is no number you can possibly roll that beats a 15. At best your team will score a 9. So you lose, regardless of how good you are. That's just statistics. It happens sometimes. However, in a situation where your team isn't the bottom of the barrel but still proves to be worse, you can make the difference. Example: You have teammates who are worth 3/3/3/2 points and you are personally worth 5. Suddenly you've got a winnable game because your team scored 16 points and the average is 15.

So hopefully that helps explain to you how carrying and climbing ELO works. I'm a math oriented person so that's just how I think of it.

IsajohoffFeb 9, 20152 votes

Beautiful explanation. Just missing the aspect that if you are unlucky the enemy can have more than 15, and also that you can get a team that carries, but your point still stands.

+1 from me

Arch Mage MagnusFeb 9, 20151 votes

"Gold weighs more than Bronze"

Not in Runeterra.

SmokingPuffinFeb 9, 20151 votes

It's like poker. Each game is dependent more on the other players than you. Over many games, the value of the other players averages out and what we're left with is your impact on the game.

If bronze is too heavy, you gotta work on your game until it isn't. Lots of mistakes being made in bronze, easy to exploit them. Heck, if you just get good at farming, you will often be able to carry really heavy teams just with your CS advantage.

S H A Y C 0Feb 9, 20151 votes

Even if you were right, and there was no way a single player could carry a bunch of turds to victory i have no choice but to believe otherwise. If i were to get on board with you that would mean there is literally nothing i can do to change my fate and may as well give up. By taking on the responsibility of win/loss fully on your shoulders, you give yourself power and above all hope. If you continue to believe what you just said...the battle is over and you have already lost.

KING ATTILAFeb 9, 20151 votes

Ok well obviously I've gotten out of Bronze before...and silver. I know what mistakes i made, but do others? How many times do i have to reach my series, get fucked over, fight tooth and nail between bronze one and bronze 2, until I get back to gold 5? hmmm?

KING ATTILAFeb 9, 20151 votes

Before this shit bag of a season came around, i was winning 80% of my normal games and like 52% of ranked games. Seeding games were fucked and now I can have a 6 game losong streak despite my cs or anything. This season fucking sucks.

kureransuFeb 9, 20151 votes

The best advice I got was to play a support. Using the context provided here, if you are a 5 player as a support, then you will automatically bring your adc up in the game. the raising the odds even better. I was told this at the end of last season, and i'm applying it to this season. I started this season b5 coming in 4/6 (i had 6 afks lol). I'm in b2 now sitting at 34/21. I'm maining sona, with a 4.08:1 KDA and a 71% win rate.

Try going with support. One that can sustain and isn't ADC dependent (like leona)

Actually this also applies to being a great jungler as well. (i'm just a better support)

IsajohoffFeb 9, 20151 votes

Obviously the teams are random. However, only 9 people are random, the 10th being you. The chance of a team carrying/throwing are are just as big in either team, except you have the power to change the chance of your own team winning(/losing). Only about 20 out of 100 the outcome of the game depends on you, whilst you win 40 and lose 40 out of a hundred games which is largely out of your control. The trick is to learn from mistakes you make in losses and wins, so that when it comes to you carrying, you carry hard. This is the "growing as a player" stuff everyone always talks about (don't fall into the mindset of "it was all their fault, I had no control"! Always look to see if you could have done smt better).

Of course you're gonna loose some games, just remember that you only need an above 50% win rate and a lot of time to climb the ladder (obviously the higher the win rate the faster).

KING ATTILAFeb 9, 20151 votes

I appreciate the comments.

KING ATTILAFeb 9, 20151 votes

It just doesn't make sense that I raised my skill level to Gold 5 but all of a sudden, ranked resets place me at bronze 2 again, which tells me i simultaneously got better and worse.