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Promotion Series and what Riot has decided about them.

Illabethe··7 votes·4,155 views

I talked to a Rioter recently on forums about the lopsidedness of Promotional series'.

Here's what he said:

> Promos will always be hard to win - the point of promos is to prove that you deserve to be in a higher tier/division. You aren't going to get matched with the best teammates against crappy enemies. You'll be matched with people around your skill, and matched against people of the skill you're trying to promote into (at least that's the idea).

> Further, you cannot take the rank of a player to correlate to their MMR. There's plenty of Gold 5 that have a MMR that equates to mid-silver, but haven't played enough games to be demoted from Gold 5. Further, there's plenty of high silver who have MMR higher than that of gold 5s.

That's Chermog's belief.

Let me show you what 2 sets of promotions gave me:

My Teams Round 1:

ADC 1: Rank 474,637, 40% Win rate. Mid 1: Rank 472,243, 49% Win rate. Jungle 1: Rank 413, 541 39% Win rate. Top 1: 502, 753 48% Win rate.

Other Team: ADC 1: 467,149 51% Win rate. Support: 333, 757 52% Win rate. Mid 1: 428, 242 55% Win rate. Jungle 1: 426, 068 51% Win rate. Top 1: 494, 036, 52% Win rate.

Result: Average KDA on my team: Between .83 and 2. (Me)

Other team: Between 4.67 to 17.

What happened?

Our Jungle afk farmed on a Rammus, ended the game 0/6/6. Adc didn't know how to pull a trigger on Jhin. ended game 2/3/3. Mid Talon went Cleanse, Did mediocre. Our Riven top turret dived several times, resulting in her death several times.

I ended 1/3/5, and out TEAM ended 11/24/18. We got 2 drakes. They got 11 turrets unopposed, We got 0 Turrets.

Round 2:

(I'm not going to into as many details, but:)

My Team:

Adc: 49% win, rank in the 519k's. Mid: 39% Win rate, rank in the 527k's. Jungler: 45% Win rate. rank in the 512k's Top: Win rate 49%, rank in the 475k's.

Ashe trolled from onset. Because no one would autolock in Queue She as first pick adc went summoner 4 summoner 12 Proceeded to int feed bot twice, and then went mid and began griefing mid. They after he was done feeding mid, went top, to feed more.

I was Zyra 1v2ing vs Twitch Thresh

Eventually Mid quit and went Fountain to adc until game was over. Sold all items and bought 6 item 3070

Team spent entire game more focused on Ashe, even during team fights. The'd dive a 4v5, They'd face tank aoes, and just.... die in 2 seconds while typing. It was so bad that the OTHER team started to promise to give reports.

I did more damage as Zyra than the rest of the team COMBINED.

These teams aren't just hard to win. They are so lopsided that you literally have to 1v5. Most of the players we were vs are 1 trick players, and literally every game a good game (like regular appearance of 24/4/6 Scores) My team had full pages of red games lost, low KDAs)

And this happened twice. 2 games put me back in the series, only to get my first game of my second series:

I queued Janna , and I literally had the best score on out team when it ended:

4/5/2.

11/31/14 is the entire game's score.

Had a team feed item 3147 to Zed in 8 minutes, and my team was just hyper feeding him. Actually had 0/10 Illaoi , and our Jax fed Zed hard, going in on him over and over. Zed was popping 1400 HP and ~400 Barrier space in 1 combo by level 8.

14 Comments

Sukishoo2 votes

It's why I'd like it if Riot did away with them like SMITE did and just let you rank up when you hit over 100 points. It'd be a much better system and show that people can climb and belong there if they can get there. Series don't show anything other than an annoyance of having to push through multiple more matches. If you can reach 100 points, you already deserve to be there.

Ifneth1 votes

Wow, that sounds awful. It also sounds like bad luck because I haven’t had or personally heard of such problems in my promos.

Illabethe1 votes

Here's a little update: Promotion attempt #3! (I never lose tiered games)

Other team:

http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=gdshippo http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=bonilicious http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=attackdamagecarr http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=samyliberman http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=rickmaaa (Only Sona has less than a 53% win rate, and they mostly average 12-20 kill average games EVERY GAME).

My team:

http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=umbreonv2 http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=anormalfisting http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=xkatdaddyx http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=mayhemzz

All less than 49% win rate, a cluster randomness of performance, and WW is clear down at 45% win rate,

The entire team was told level 1:

Tristana averages about 20 kills a game, so RESPECT HER. Sion, Urgot, both are also smurfish scores. Kha is a Kha 1 trick who is 68% win + on every champ he plays, including Kha.

Warwick chooses level 1 to troll because we couldn't leash him at red while he was invaded. So he went to Kha's jungle, waited to give him First Blood at his Red.

After that, game was mostly 4v5, and by 4v5, I mean 4 camping bot, and I and Jhin holding off 2v4 while Katarina pretty much dived and died. We actually didn't lose lane. Any time they went underneath our turret, I Snared them, autoed a few times, spell shielded etc.

I left lane with something like 5/1/10 as Morgana support. I was pretty much soloing Kha Zix, Soloing Sion, and Catching Sona enough that she just died.

But Vlad top hyper fed Urgot, and the rest more or less didn't respect Tristana at all, so they just fed her all day long. They were too busy raging at each other, or trying to blame Warwick for no ganks for late game decisions that turned a 18/8 game into a friggin 32/46 game. Warwick built pure AD, while Vlad also went full Offensive, while jhin was full offensive, and Katarina just died every time she went in alone.

That's Promos in a nutshell; Your team will be sub 50% while the opponents have win rates that are proportionate to someone 3 ranks above where you are.

Ironically; that's League now in a nutshell: every game has one person in a Series, so every game has 1 team that is 50%+ and one team that is 50% minus. And the team that is 50%+ isn't just a team that wins; it's a team consisting of players who routinely ALL 12+ kill and are not in the right elo. During the ladders, I'm usually on the 50%+ Team. on Series, I'm on the supar team, and I'm the only decent player on it.

Oh. The game before, that made the 3rd promo a failure:

Anivia mid was int feeding. Would actually Frost wall himself in, and stand still until dead. Did this 5 times, then left the game. 20 minute game where I was 1/0/0 as Lux Support, Varus 1/3/0, Rammus Jungler didn't exist and had a Korean name, As soon as Anivia left, the other 3 just fed down mid to "expediate the game."

Here's the real fun thing:

In the game with Morgana Support: I had 107 Crowd Control, and I didn't even have a item 3116 Most wards, most wards destroyed, 22k damage vs WW's 10k.

Yeah. I just love the algorithm Riot is using for Series.

So no. This is not a 50% game. This is a game where it's 50% until you hit the Series, and then it slams you with 5 people who don't belong anywhere near your elo. Winning is almost always a fluke, unless you belong 7 tiers about those people who don't belong.

Zone of Endless1 votes

"You'll be matched with people around your skill, and matched against people of the skill you're trying to promote into (at least that's the idea)."

How does this make any sense at all?

Illabethe1 votes

That's what Chermog told me. And tbh it does make sense.

However, 55% average players are NOT in their right elo, and are often artificially low (They pull 80% win rates on the champs they carry with, but sometimes play other roles they either intentionally or casually bomb at, pulling them down to the level where they can carry again.

And then, people pulling 45% are in the wrong elo as well; They deserve lower.

So when you put a 50% in a Promo on a team with people "around" the same mmr as you, but who are carrying a 45% win rate, you're actually putting them with people who are not around your elo, but in fact much lower, and it's Versus people who are actually much higher.

Some of these setups literally feel like A Bronze III team versus a Gold I team. I wouldn't say much higher than Gold I, but it's close. On those 2-3 champs they hyper carry with as a one trick, these players feel like Gold I mechanically. But then you have the very random, very loosely picking players who are not skilled, but survive on occasional luck, who feel at best like Bronze III in their toxicity, willingness to troll, int feed, and leave games. You tell them to respect an adc who carries an AVERAGE 8 or 9 KDA, and what do they do? They completely forget that condition even exists, chase, feed, get caught in a position where they cannot run. The jungler turret dives that adc.

There are so many factors now days that have to go right to actually have a change at carrying these players.

-If they don't build grievous wounds, they're going to lose. -If they build an auto attack team vs Jax, they're going to lose. -If they refuse to gank a struggling counter lane, they're going to lose. -If they never group once, they're going to lose. -If they ignore drakes, turrets, split pushes, they're going to lose.

You can't 1 man carry this crap.

The only reason some high elo players can do it, is because they run assassins and just spend the entire game using their out of place mechanical prowess to become Loki and sew Chaos the entire game. If you're not running one of those or particularly skilled at it, you have almost no chance of carrying. If you're a healer or mage, it's very unlikely to pull off. If you're an adc, it's unlikely to be pulled off on same tier skill by his or herself (she generally at least needs one other competent player).

Livin like Riven1 votes

Last season or the one before that, I had a B2 promos game where two teammates were low silver, one was bronze 5, and one was literally first time ranked. One of the silvers was first timing Shyvana while she was borderline troll pick. Their lowest was only one rank below our highest, and they had 1 low silver, 1 mid silver, a high bronze and 2 high golds, one of which WAS ALSO IN HIS PROMO GAMES. After that, i kinda gave up on ranked. A gold 2 should not be getting to gold 1 for beating at best a low silver player, and at worst a never-even-played-ranked player.

Mojihito6661 votes

Everybody with IQ > 80 knows that riot matchmaking is fixed.

But lapdogs keeps defending it cause no "proff".

Well cant give you "proof" since data is HIDDEN for a reason.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Illabethe1 votes

The same formula that is used for NON promotion games: randomized teams. Atm, there is a different formula for matchmaking on tier games versus promotion games. The aggregate ability of the competitor is always better on a promotion, unless BOTH teams have promotions in place.

Also, lock Placement players out of Promotion games. I've had Gold Promotions where I've had 3 Unranked players in Placements, and that was in October.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Illabethe1 votes

There is a different formula for matchmaking on Promotion matches than for regular matches.

The time waits are similar atm because so many are queuing.

I literally wait about 1/2 a second atm, because queues are so active. (Ofc, I Queue Fill, so I probably don't have to wait as much as a dedicated role)

Illabethe1 votes

Update # 4. Same kind of team. However, win rates were not contingent in this match:

The other team had the worse win rates, but their raw play was better.

We had a Singed vs Fiora who didn't proxy, and fed like a true nutty Singed. Went 0/10 in lane!

Had a Rammus compound that with even more gold.

But...... they had an inferior bot lane (mostly due to me, but my adc was mechanically good too and abused it.

We were down 3/20 by like level 8.

But...... Vi tried to take an infernal drake at level 5. I had it warded, so I went to behind the pit, Bubbled her, W'd her, and Tristana jumped over the wall and finished her. Then we proceeded to take infernal drake.

After that, Trist and I just pretty much 2v5'd.

We caught MissFortune several times, and Nautilus shortly after. Had to avoid Vladimir and had to time everything around Fiora 's feint because she was so fed.

Mostly won because a fed Tristana is a turret killer. I zoned their team with Nami bubbles while Tristana hammered down turrets. My E and item 3504 just put Tristana over the top, and eventually we muscled through their team by killing their initiator 3-4 times in a row (usually Vi) and finishing game shortly after.

The other team was mechanically solid. We mostly won because of their adc, and lucky drake picks.

Vi: 10/7/9 Fiora: 10/4/10 Naut: 3/2/7 Vlad 6/4/3 Mf: 2/6/7

Our team:

Me: 3/3/15 Rammus: 1/6/12 Singed 3/13/2 Trist: 13/5/5 Lux: 3/4/13

They had 1 negative. We had at least 2, and by MUCH higher margins.

Thank goodness Singed wasn't worth any gold on shutdowns.

SilentBomber1 votes

Promos will always be hard to win - the point of promos is to prove that you deserve to be in a higher tier/division. You aren't going to get matched with the best teammates against crappy enemies. You'll be matched with people around your skill, and matched against people of the skill you're trying to promote into (at least that's the idea).

Riot should try better to lie.People are not stupid.They will all know the truth soon or later.Lostt 4 promos for gold 3 from getting bad teammates and while having a nice winning rate.

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