Eternally Silver, Why?

I do not profess to be "good" at the game.

I cannot really imagine anyone outside of professional play actually being "good" at the game.

Instead, I imagine that there are varying degrees of "bad".

But rank does not feel at all like a reflection of any individual's performance.

It is based entirely on which team has the most amount of feeders.

Whichever team has the larger number of feeders is generally the one that loses the match. Regardless of what any combination of other players do.

And queuing up feels like playing a game of Russian Roulette in which the chamber is filled with 5 out of 6 bullets and I am the one expected to pull the trigger first.

I have attempted varying roles to try and improve my win ratio with the exception of ADC and Mid. ADC is my absolute WORST role and I dare not play it, especially with the enormously high risk of getting a support who isn't a support.

And Mid is just too highly contested of a role for me to think to "main" it consistently. Getting Mid even with it highlighted as your preferred role is a lottery. In all likelihood, you'll end up with no less than 2 players who main mid and one of them ended up filled as Jungle, ADC, or (shudders) Support.

And there is no worse offender when it comes to feeding in this game than the filled support. Why else would I bother making it my secondary role after jungle?

But the support, no matter the amount of vision, no matter the amount of peel, no matter the amount of healing, no matter the amount of CC...At the end of the day, the support becomes a victim to the feeders on their own team. The biggest feeder is usually the mid laner who "mains" mid without an inkling of what it means to be the nucleus of the entire team. Because that's what mid is, it is center stage. It is the center of your team's entire network. It is placed directly under the spotlight and who doesn't want to be the star of the show?

If not the mid feeding then it's the top laner who never dropped vision down, died multiple times to ganks, lost their turret, and then never once bothered pinging their MIA that could have otherwise prevented the enemy from scoring two-four kills down in bot lane plus a turret. The top laner who, after dying two or more times to ganks finally starts playing it safe under their own turret, but it's too late. The damage is done, the cards are dealt, and they die under turret to additional ganks because the enemy has their core item and it is more than enough to get in, get a kill, get out so minions can reach the turret and then go back in to demolish it.

But those are the cases when the support isn't filled and the support is someone genuinely trying their best to keep the ADC alive and help secure kills and lane for them while simultaneously preventing ganks from mid, top lane teleports, and the enemy jungle.

Then you've the cases in which the support was filled and, suddenly, bot lane just becomes a buffet for the enemy. Because no wards and the support has it in their freaking head that they have to build damage and just damage so that they can carry their team to victory. Sometimes the all damage support works, but rarely does it work.

What generally ends up happening is that bot lane becomes a gank fest for the enemy, support scores a few kills early, and then everyone wonders why the ADC ended the game with less than 9 kills and deaths in the double digits. It's because the ADC did not receive the help they needed. The ADC is like a child. They need a nurturing parent to make them strong enough to surpass their peers and elders. But without a nurturing support, they just become that ward of the state orphan case who never amounts to anything and ends up dying in a shooting.

And what of the player who got filled jungle? The guy who just ignores when lanes are just pushed up balls deep and, at any time, they could drop everything, take the 20-30 seconds it takes to walk from one side of the map to the other and not only score an easy kill or two, but also a turret. The guy who power farms all game long even while the enemy is knocking down all the doors to the inhibitors. The guy who attempts to counter jungle the enemy without vision only to die in enemy territory and then spams pings all over their allies. I'm not the kind of person who blames the jungle for everything, but when one ally on the team is doing jack freaking crap, they may as well have left the game. At least then, they wouldn't feed the enemy!

And if you are a jungle main, jeeze do I feel for you. You're the player whose job it is to roam the map, farm what you can then head straight for the most available lane with allies in it to outnumber the enemy 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 and secure lanes. But everyone wants everything instantly. And if they don't get it then they think you're just not doing your job. And so they try to do your job for you and abandon lane altogether, losing out on gold, experience, and costing your team a turret or more. As soon as the blame jungle circle jerk begins in game, it's pretty much Good freakin' Game. Because allies are all over the place, accomplishing nothing other than biting enemy bait, blaming you for their deaths, and then stealing all your camps despite the fact they have 2 or 3 waves of minions tearing their turret to pieces!

And if you do give into their childish and unrealistic demands then you end up 1-3 levels behind the enemy jungle who was allowed the leisure to farm enough to stay on top of things and then the enemy team can simply walk into your jungle with or without vision and make you their whipping boy before spamming in all chat how bad you are.

That's just to mention some examples of what it means to be in Silver. And, in all honesty, it is an actual improvement over Bronze. You want to know the difference between Silver and Bronze if you happen to be in Bronze? Because I can assure you that playing Silver games for the first time will feel like getting a much needed drink after nearly succumbing to dehydration in the desert.

1. Fewer players AFK.
2. Fewer players intentionally feed.
3. Fewer smurfs whose main accounts were banned for one reason or another (toxicity, account boosting, account sharing, etc).
4. Fewer players demand the role they highlighted as their primary despite being given their secondary or, worse, filled.

Yeah, I too know the pain of Bronze games and it is the lowest depths of Hell in league imaginable and why I take great efforts to avoid any form of punishment that could result in the loss of my account.

That said, Silver is where the climb upward comes to a screeching halt. Like someone just slammed the brakes and told you to get out of the car and walk all the way back home. And it's because of the very real and reoccurring examples I've listed in this long rant.

And if you're expecting a TL;DR then I have to disappoint you. There is none. There's just too much I feel I need to get out there that I just cannot summarize my absolute frustration towards the situation I am in.

I understand that it is pre-season. I understand that all I am attempting to accomplish right now will do nothing except maybe, JUST maybe, ensure that I start upper bronze next season rather than lower bronze. But the experiences I've had recently are no different than what I've experienced in seasons past that just forced me to quit entirely for my own mental and physical health.

I honestly don't have much in the way of complaints about items or champions. How strong or weak they are...I really, really don't. The circle jerk of what is and is not OP and what does and does not need buffed and what does and doe not need nerfed is not really a concern of mine. Not since before the nerf to Illaoi's oppressive soul snatching BS (that was just outright toxic).

My greatest complaint about this game is this and simply this. Despite LoL being a team game, few people treat it as such. Everything is "Me, me, me!" Everyone does things their own way and usually on their own without any regard to the consequences even after those consequences occur. And I do not claim innocence. I've done the same because I eventually just gave into it and thought "Since everyone is doing their own thing, I might as well do mine and maybe that'll be enough."

But it isn't. You can't do your own thing and expect to climb past bronze. I've seen players go 20+ kills, 15+ assists, and deaths that number less than 5, but they still lost badly as a result of how poorly their allies performed. You cannot carry hard enough in league to cover for the mistakes of 2+ others. Not unless you play flawlessly. But even then, ending a game on zero deaths could mean that you avoided the risks and gambles you should have made, the necessary sacrifices needed to ultimately secure victory for your team.

I think that's it. I think I've said everything I felt I wanted to say. Read it or don't. Comment or don't. Vote up or down or don't. I don't care. I just feel a measure of relief having put my thoughts into words and expressing them. After all, that's what the boards are for.