On Low Elo as a Learning Experience
This essay is listed in my "Master List of Essay Threads" under the title "On Low Elo as a Learning Experience"
It's true that different tiers require you to learn different things to succeed and rise, but you do need to learn those things anyway.
I think climbing out of bronze is less about 'fuck the team selfish carry all day' and more about 'you need to learn how to build a lead and snowball it, and you have an easier time doing that if you're snowballing yourself rather than someone else'.
Selfish non team oriented play will only get you so far, but you DO need to learn what it feels like to have a lead, how to gain a lead, and how to use that raw power to force objectives and close out a game.
When you have that skillset down enough you can climb to elos where people have learned how to shut down or minimize the impact of any one super fed enemy, and you will have also learned the same thing, so at that point you will be forced to learn other things to advance.
So even though at first glance it might seem that learning to play super selfishly in order to get out of bronze is counter intuitive to getting better at a team based game, the reality is that you do need to learn the lessons that such a play style teaches you in order to grow as a player.
