Riot is Killing Duo Ranked (an open letter)

Dear Riot,

I love your game, and I love playing ranked. I'm dissapointed however, that I will have to stop playing duo ranked queue, indefinitely. My brother and I have been ranking together this season. We split our placement matches 5 to 5, but things have not been going so well ever since getting placed. I'm in Silver III and he is in Gold V. We usually go bot lane together and we honestly win our lane 80% of the time. Seriously. We dominate our lane almost every time. I play support and you'd think it would mean great success when I get my ADC fed almost every game.

Unfortunately, such has not proven the case. After getting placed, my brother and I went on a NINE game losing streak. Both of us have an over 50% win rate. Do you know what the chances are of us losing nine games in a row (based upon our normal win rate)? I'll tell you. It's about .15%. Let me repeat: 00.15% chance that we would lose 9 games in a row with a roughly 51% win rate. We're approaching statistical impossibility here. Now, my brother and I aren't idiots. We considered that we were just on a rough losing streak. We persevered. However, our duo ranked queue win rate is still at about 10%.

By the way, my summoner name Pimpsexual (brother is "DJ Rotten Crotch") so you can look these things up. But I'll give you the Sparknotes version. I've played 25 ranked games and won 8. 5 of those wins were from our placement matches and one of those wins was from a solo ranked game. Total, since being placed we are 2 for 15 (2 wins, and 13 losses).

Now, I know this isn't the biggest data set in the world, but it's still pretty dang suspicious. I know Riot has claimed that they keep their win rates between duo and single queueing pretty close to 50/50. But I don't think, however, that your system works at well for each individual duo set. I can't help but think that in whatever system you have set up, my brother and I are getting the short stick. Our team mates have been so terrible in nearly every game we've lost. We win our lanes, and then proceed to get dominated by the rest of the fed enemy team who is now roaming at their leisure. We can't play like this anymore.

I understand that you think that duos are better and so you need to place them with crappier teammates, but I think you're getting very carried away here. Don't you want to encourage people to bring their friends to League of Legends? Don't you want this to be a social game? Shouldn't you be happy that people are binding together and forming friendships in game? The idea that you want to punish people doing duo queue with statistically crappier teammates just doesn't make much sense to me. People should have an incentive to play with friends. I have brought at least half a dozen friends into the League community, but if things don't change with duo ranked I guess the main aspect of this game isn't worth much.

Anyway, I know this e-mail has rambled on but I think you should realize that punishing duo queue-ers hurts not only the League community, but it will end up doing Riot more harm than good in the long-run (again, you wan't to encourage a social network, not hinder it). Until you fix our 13% duo queue win rate, you can expect that my brother and I will be keeping away from this broken aspect of your game.

Sincerely,

Pimpsexual