Some thoughts after playing normals all year and now playing ranked

I played blind pick almost all year long and am finally starting to play ranked for this season(I've been playing ranked since Season 4).

I'd like to share some thoughts on the differences between the two:

• Normals and Ranked, even in low elo, are two completely different games. Normals, especially blind pick, is a constant battle between people playing for fun and people trying to win. Troll supports or people being force to support and then fighting you for CS is a common feature. Normals is no preparation for ranked anymore and maybe it never was, but it was a lot closer before.

• Normals low elo games are the season 5 and 6 low elo ranked games. Ranked, even at Bronze 1, has increased in difficulty compared to previous seasons. People are buying wards now and sweeping. This didn't happen before. Just today I saw a Lux at 130 CS at 15 minutes and I'm regularly seeing big increases in CS. In Normals? They'd be maybe at 40. People are playing much much smarter in ranked, even at lower elo's than before. Mistakes are still made, but all of the damage in the game now makes up for it. I've regularly been the top in CS last season in ranked and all this year in normals, but I cannot touch most of the players in low elo ranked early on as I'm the lowest one now. I know people are going to laugh and say "bronze players suck" and blah blah, but I'm seeing much better play than before.

• You do not see the early game snowball stomps in normals like you do regularly in ranked. It rarely happens in normals. Stomps seem to be the norm now in ranked and appear to be happening much more frequently than ever before. As an ADC main, it totally sucks because I'm not even close to ready to start doing damage and the game is already over.

• The toxicity is ranked is something like I've never seen. I've been playing ranked since Season 4 and the toxicity is at an all time high. Just this week alone I've been called f@@@gg, been told to drink bleach and seen multiple kill yourself's. This rarely happened in past seasons. I put in reports and I'm sure a fart will accomplish just as much. And for once, winning teams are actually the nastier team. I cannot believe how awful people have become in this game, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE WINNING. Winning right now is almost secondary to the amount of crap you can talk on someone for winning. People are purposely stretching out games and focusing more on taking a dump on their opponents than actually trying to win the game. I'm honestly not sure how anyone is left with how low the bar is for punishment in League.

• People are surrendering a lot more than before in ranked. Again, I think this points to people being better at the game now.

• Smurfing has definitely picked up in low elo ranked, compared to last season. I've played against Diamond's and Platinum's before and I know for a fact I'm seeing above Gold players in ranked right now. I really didn't notice many smurfs last year until I hit silver, but now I'm already seeing them in Bronze. It's totally obvious. I feel totally out of my League even in Bronze right now even though I was Silver last season.