My friend was Silver V last season, but got placed in Silver IV He has played all 10 placement matches and got put into Bronze V. He went positive in all of his games, won 4, lost 6. He carried most of his games, and did excellent on many of them.
How is this possible? Is something wrong happening here?
Here is the image of his ranked match history. http://imgur.com/l5g75Ug
In-game performance is irrelevant, you're placed entirely based on your final MMR, and your MMR only gets influenced by wins/losses (although by how much depends on the MMR of your opponents, so winning versus bronze 5 MMR people won't gain you much compared to winning versus gold MMR people).
It can be frustrating sometimes if you individually do well, but at the end of the day, it's only the wins/losses that matter. In the long run if you consistently do well individually, you should end up winning >50% of you games and slowly climb though, even if it feels rough when theres occasional unlucky sprees (particularly when they occur during placements).
If he was silver V there's a reasonable chance his MMR was significantly lower than silver V. (your ranked placement is based off of your hidden MMR, not your current rank).
Secondly, as for the placement matches themselves; while they don't actually have a ton of impact on where you are placed, you win/loss is all that goes into account - not how well you did or if you carried.
