S1 Gold somewhere, barely played rank. S2 barely played rank got to silver 1 and stopped (30-40 games tops). S3 same story got to gold in a week and stopped playing.
S4 didn't play.
S5 Played a little got to gold in less than 100 games, quit playing.
I have more than a couple thousand hours in this game, and i've played dota since before it was even conceived as dota from way back. Quite frankly it's goes along understanding the weaknesses and strengths of the champion you play, having amazing map awareness to the point where you know exactly where someone will be. Understanding timings in the game, understanding how fast a jungler can clear a jungle, depending on the jungler type etc.. knowing critical time frames in the game where you will expect a gank or dragon setup etc...
I'm necroing this thread, just out of interest. Watching streamers and high end play allows you to think what is most optimal in the situations they are in and what items work best at early and mid game or how they build etc... It also lets you see some weird plays you may have not expected out of a champ, specially if you're fairly new to a champion. Fine tuning your play on a champion with different sets of runepage builds etc... varies alot. Gamestyle varies alot.
If it was that easy for everyone to climb the ranks by sheer volume of games played (which in fact kind of works that way the way the MMR averages out), everyone would be in diamond no problem. I'm too old to really try to rank and put the time in to climb. The one season I actually played more than 100 games I got to G1 and played a few games there where I encountered true ELO hell within g1 through PLat 5-3. Most people I play with say I play well above my current rank. I personally don't see it as how i'm ranked or what color i'm being put into. I play the game for fun and I'm confident of my skills, I don't need the game to tell me where I should be. I know if I put the time and I had the patience to sit through couple hundred game of toxic wasteland in ranked I could push much further. Truth is, I don't stay interested in this game for that long, I don't know how people play ranked season for an entire year and not get tired of it, I can barely do a week or two and I'm done.
Anyways, my suggestion to you is to start thinking above and beyond what people do, limit your play on a few champions and really really get to learn them to the point where everything is just muscle memory. I can play every champ in the game definitely on an average level, but there's a few champs less than probably 15 that I can play really really well, that I know every little trick in the book for them and I know how fast their animation speed is, how much damage they do to a minion or to a champion etc....
I'd love to a see an update on how you have fared this last year, I hope you've become a little more confident in your gameplay.
-Abue
