Look at my match history and tell me skill matters in League of Legends.

Morgana Deus·Mar 20, 2019·48 votes·15,726 views

Do it. Convince me that skill matters.

Game 1: I'm 9/0 mid as Malzahar versus my hard counter. I win. Top and jungle feed like crazy. They try to two man baron twice and get it stolen twice. Meanwhile I'm defending inhibiters solo as Malz again'st master yi. Better mid won what can I say.

Game 2: Melee range Ezrael in lane. Sums up that game.

Game 3: I win lane and go 2/0 BOt lane is 0/11, jungle is 0/4, top is 0/6. I should have played better what can I say.

Like seriously. Does skill not matter in platinum at all this season? It's so fucking ridiculous that stupid teammates lose you the game so fucking hard even when you're massively ahead.

104 Comments

im always saltyMar 20, 201935 votes

your skill alone is one thing , but in a team based game your team also requires the same skill for it to work. skill on a champion alone isn't enough to win a 5 vs 5 team based game , you need skill in team work , strategy and communication , on top of that your team needs to have these skills as well , one person bringing the team down can be lifted up , but 1 person trying to lift up 4 people who have non of them can't. especially if the enemy team has said skills.

SaiannaMar 20, 201918 votes

if only we had such thing where players can be matched with each other based by their skills, where they can fight against other similar-skilled opponents.. If only..

PeachBunsMar 21, 201913 votes

Please, if your winning 70% of ur games, ur next 10 games will have 4, 20% winrate teammate on ur team.

Sir SaltarinMar 21, 20195 votes

That's right, and that's why nobody reachs high elos like Challenger or Grandmaster, they are just lucky to get good teammates it's not that they are good amirite?

IllabetheMar 21, 20196 votes

Here's the thing:

Most high elos are seeded, and have been since about Season 5. They gain a baseline provisional score higher than anyone else, and easily maintain their 5%+ of the community status.

The game is invariably easier for them to accomplish Challenger/Masters than anyone else to. What changes is generally simply the order or ranking in that 5% or less.

Skill does matter when you're comparing a Sub-Gold to people above gold. But..... it's generally knowledge to abuse some reset assassin, or hard counter mechanics. It's not always "Skill."

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to have a Diamond + Zed in a Silver game. I as Nami got a Jinx to rage quit vs me and a Vayne - literally every time she got back to lane she was instant dead. She wasn't even playing bad - She just ..... got hit by accurate bubbles, while E slow did the rest. She didn't even have room to "play safe."

Didn't matter that we hard stomped the game. The Zed was better. We were fed beyond belief, but this Zed..... had 0 counterplay, simply because Nami skills have delays, she's squishy even when she embarks on a nonsquishy path, and because Zed began purposefully hunting me.

Without me, the Vayne couldn't do much either. Her play requires her to actually have time to go through 4-5 volleys of attacks, while Zed only has to hit everything in .5 seconds. So they'd dance awhile, and Vayne would actually be mechanically playing better than Zed, get in 3-4 hits, but somewhere during her Ult, when she popped out of invisibility, Zed would just annihilate her.

I think we actually won the game, because Zed's team surrendered the 4v5, but if they didn't realistically, Zed purely controlled the game simply because there was no counterplay to a good Zed.

Skill matters some. What champ you express that skill through matters more. And where you are pre-seeded matters most.

DisembarkMar 21, 20193 votes

What did I just read? IWD literally went from unranked to Grandmaster in under a week but ok. Pre-seeded I guess.

Sir SaltarinMar 21, 20197 votes

Sure buddy IWD went with a new acc to Grandmaster in a week because seeded accounts right.

Skill matters, on all elos, the ones that dont climb while playing a lot of rankeds is because they are on their peak elo for their skill.

EedatMar 23, 20191 votes

No, you are soooooooooo wrong. Its common knowledge that a challenger player will get hardstuck in silver ELO if they didn't have their precious seeded account. Everyone knows that.

Spicy RiceMar 21, 20192 votes

Lol, of course.

That's why so many high level players have done unranked to challenger challenges in 2-3 weeks.

PartholonianMar 21, 20191 votes

They try, but the same player can have a different level of performance from one game to the next (even if they're on the same champion in the same matchup, which they often aren't).

SaiannaMar 20, 201914 votes

I thought damn dude, that is some serious bronze bullshit.

Then you said this:

Like seriously. Does skill not matter in platinum at all this season?

Riot did some serious mumbo-jumbo fuckery with matchmaker and now they try to act as if everything's normal.

Hayaishi2Mar 21, 201912 votes

Matchmaking is just awful. Someone always feeds, i played 10 games on the weekend and there was a feeder in every single one of them, the game quality is awful.

Mael broMar 21, 20194 votes

Welcome to a dying genre that is known as "MOBA"

SugarliciousMar 22, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Matchmaking is just awful. Someone always feeds, i played 10 games on the weekend and there was a feeder in every single one of them, the game quality is awful.

Same man, I did my promos this weekend, won 6/10, got bronze 2 (was silver 4 last season), managed to get into promo for bronze 1, but in every single one of those promo games I got stuck with an ADC that was just plain bad. Mind you, I am support main, and my first pick is always Lux so if my adc is not as good, I can at least hold the lane with the damage. Also, I did end up carrying 1-2 games by going full AP (I only do that when asked/ needed). However, if the adc cannot avoid skillshots, and jungler happens to be busy somewhere else, that lane is gone. And if the adc is so bad at avoiding skillshots that they end up dying from poke damage, well, you can imagine what hell will come mid lane after they take down bot turret. So, yeah, what I hate the most is that it's so easy to lose the game but so hard to carry it.

Akali is SO HOTMar 20, 201911 votes

skill matters in league of legends

Morgana DeusMar 20, 20192 votes

Okay. How would you have won those games?

mrmeddymanMar 20, 20192 votes

In that first game at least being 9/0 and not carrying that lead into other lanes is criminal. You didn't write enough about game 2 or 3

Morgana DeusMar 20, 20192 votes

I told you why we lost game 1. I had to defend inhibs. My team duoed baron and died to it twice giving it to the enemy team. It had nothing to do with my skill.

SaiannaMar 20, 20196 votes

They will >always< find something to blame you for loss.

iamthegoatofwarMar 21, 20192 votes

welcome to the game and how toxic/low elo players think. Refuse to understand that at some points someone can do near perfectly with all the options available and still lose.

Minimac2000Mar 21, 20191 votes

{quoted}

welcome to the game and how toxic/low elo players think. Refuse to understand that at some points someone can do near perfectly with all the options available and still lose.

Idk, this guy is plat and thinks this way, I'm probably silver and I don't maybe it's just a symptom of playing too much ranked

Hexs FortuneMar 21, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Morgana Deus,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gB68gznq,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2019-03-20T21:27:22.145+0000)

Okay. How would you have won those games?

You don't. You just keep playing until you roll enough winnable games. Season 9 has had a larger amount of completely unwinnable games for some reason, but the strategy remains the same.

HeeroTXMar 21, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hexs Fortune,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gB68gznq,comment-id=000000000002,timestamp=2019-03-21T15:49:11.883+0000)

You just keep playing until you roll enough winnable games. Season 9 has had a larger amount of completely unwinnable games for some reason, but the strategy remains the same.

This is why I think League is going to die (in terms of playerbase). I know people have been making that dire prediction for years, but this season feels especially bad and in my OPINION it is because for the last year (maybe 2) Riot has explicitly stated they're trying to make the game faster so that you can get OUT of bad games quicker to move on to the next one. Instead of devoting their efforts to making EACH game better, they explicitly changed their focus to allow for QUANTITY over quality, and I think for a LOT of people, it's just not gonna be worth the grind of so many BAD games just to get that one really good one.

Maybe they have enough people addicted to prove me wrong, but all I know is my last dozen or so games have been an AWFUL experience to play through and my main is currently in the META.

5050BSMar 20, 201910 votes

This is all Ranks.

I do very well most games but Im matched with trash also in most games.

Riot seems to always put the Smurfs on the enemies teams too. I believe this is because Riot thinks I balance out the Smurf but often its not my lane the smurf is in.

Unlimited NinjaMar 21, 20198 votes

With all the Damage, it becomes harder to outplay things because you just straight up die. I've been noticed that a lot recently.

ModAcademy KaynMar 21, 20198 votes

Okayyyyy, what about the skill it took for your enemies to beat your Top and Jungle, or with game 3, the skill it took to beat your Bot lane, jungle and top. You can't tell me the person you killed and made 0/9 is any different from the people on your team who end up going 0/9 or worse.

astralwitMar 20, 20196 votes

It matters but not always in the short-term. I've had break-even days when I palyed great and some where I played worse and climbed. There are quite a few games which you win or lose almost indepedent of your play as long as you're still decent. However, there are a few games which really make the difference and where you can be a big factor. Those are the ones that matter most for climbing.

It's a bit like poker. Anyone can win short-term but over a million hands, the better player always wins.

Beacon AcademyMar 21, 20194 votes

Once your winrate becomes too high, you get paired with low winrate people.

The idea is that your WR becomes closer to 50% while their WR becomes closer to 50%

Eating the good and all that jazz

Welcome to an attempt at equal winrate distribution

AORVALMar 21, 20194 votes

Lol I just stomped this dude like 4 games ago. Everyone on his team was blaming him in all chat for missing his Qs and losing them the game lmfao. Small world i stumble upon this post, but yeah skill doesnt matter in this game anymore. Its all on luck unless youre playing a hard carry that you one trick like Rivern, Vayne, Draven, Yasuo, Yi, etc. Champs that can essentially 1v9.

ColteMar 21, 20194 votes

looking up players during champion selection and queue dodging a sure loss is also skill. [slayer-jinx-catface]

DisembarkMar 21, 20194 votes

You have made so many posts about how you're a "plat player hardstuck in another elo (with not even that many games played)".

When you were bronze, talking about how you deserve plat https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/k4whqFMv-what-is-the-point-of-starting-in-bronzeiron

When you were gold, complaining about how you can't get plat https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/f0xnB9kn-to-climb-in-season-nine-is-a-literal-1v9-required

So first of all: you've literally proved that you can climb, especially seeing as you started on a fresh lvl 30 account. A Gold-level player would not be in Plat right now.

Now you're plat and you're complaining that... you have good stats and you lose games?

Newflash: good stats do not mean shit. Having a good KDA does not win you games. Having a lot of CS does not win you games. Killing the nexus wins you games, and usually the best way to do that in SoloQ is teamfighting.

So what do I mean? Good stats do not show the teamfights where a better player would've seen a flash + ult/bind opportunity to win the teamfight, whereas you, being so concerned with your stats, decided that "it's lost, can't win a teamfight cause we're behind" or whatever.

Doesn't show the target selection on your spell shield. Doesn't show how you value your bind in teamfights/lane. Doesn't show how oppressive your trade patterns are in certain lanes. Doesn't show the kill opportunities/roam opportunities you forego.

You seem to have low control ward purchases. You should easily have 6+ controls bought every game. Instead of your 1-2. Maybe you can actually use that vision control to setup picks which Morgana excels at. Or use it to hide over a wall so you can get a game-winning engage with flash ult.

In the end of the day: the only stat that matters is your win rate.

Vlada CutMar 21, 20194 votes

#BringBackSoloCarry

VectrosMar 21, 20193 votes

To be fair, you are 1/5 your team, 20% of your total skill. Perhaps more, perhaps less-in this case more. I'd argue in any given game, the more skilled team wins (not just skill shots, mind you); they may not have the best skilled single player, but overall have a higher skill.

In other words, matchmaking screwed you >_>

hhaavviikkMar 21, 20193 votes

you're right skill doesn't matter which is why anyone can reach the highest rank in LoL

jng dif victimMar 21, 20193 votes

in one game i went 10/0 TOP and i lost that game then i won the next game when i was 0/12 Hard lost top. Great game. yea ofc skill matters Kappa

DakeudharmaMar 21, 20193 votes

Matchmaking is luck based. Even greatest solo queue player of history God himself - Dopa said that. Your goal is to minimze luck as muchas possible to climb. You do it with a lot of tricks, consistency is the biggest factor in it. And then there situational tricks, sometimes you have to go 0/5 because you see enemy jung is dumb and focus your lane only so you play sacrificial lamb, sometimes it is better to be 0/0/10 malzahar then 10/0 malzahar, especially if enemy have combo to insta kill you. Sometimes you need to buy 10 control wards per game bcs enemy jung is great and your team pay attention to vision. Sometimes you don't have to buy single control ward etc.

PadoµchMar 21, 20193 votes

The main thing is, that it stopped being "who is the better player" and started being "who get the bigger monkey into his team".

You can win the game, your team can be good, but in late game if, lets say the jungler, jumps into enemy team solo and gets killed, you loose. Thats it. I feel its sad that personal skill isnt taken into calculations. I´ve seen people that had to be boosted from B5 (in which they fed like crazy) into S5, and it doesnt let them drop down, even tho their normal score is like 1/16/3.

radetariMar 21, 20193 votes

People on EUNE and EUW Boards downvote these post like crazy Thats why I love NA Boards Cuz you can speak freely and mostly everyone will agree with you

The situation I have is the same Too many dumb people in high Gold low Plat

Clone Is FriendMar 21, 20192 votes

the worst part when you arent playing a hard carry but still make callouts like "go take baron while i split bot" and they all come bot and my team is taking raptors. dumbass teammates who are stuborn af and cant follow callouts because that is "beta"

Anchorit WracajMar 21, 20192 votes

Get ur DuoQ...who will dominate top lane,as same as u dominate mid lane.And u will climb... But yeah..platinum is full of boosted players,bought accs,ragequiters and kids..unbeliveble.

Morgana DeusMar 21, 20191 votes

I have like a 20% win rate with a duo Q. I don't know I can't ever make it work lol. I'm like 20% duo Q win rate and 60% solo.

SęraphMar 21, 20192 votes

Skill doesn't matter. It is all about RNG on who gets the less stupid team.

FridgesArePpl2Mar 21, 20192 votes

Looks like you almost always win when you play well and usually lose when you do poorly. I could only find a 2 or 3 in your last 30 or so where you played really well and lost or played really poorly and won.

HeeroTXMar 21, 20192 votes

To be fair, you can't really tell just from stats if someone "played well" or "played poorly" (and that's even ignoring that THAT is a subjective measure depending on how you define the two). In late game, either direction will get exagerrated by the final result unless you sit on the fountain. (ie. if you're winning you'll get more kills/assists from the advantage and if you're losing you'll die more from the disadvantage, likewise farm, wards and other stats will be affected similarly)

Morgana DeusMar 21, 20191 votes

There are games where I ended like 1/4/5, but I was 0/0/4 in lane. I would say getting my adc four kills in lane is doing pretty well. However, if the entire rest of the map goes to shit I'm going to eventually die and be dragged down too. Final scores aren't really indicative of what happened in the game.

Jerry SeinfeIdMar 21, 20191 votes

Alright hold on tight cuz this is gonna be some heavy math.

Let's say you do well and go 9/0. But your jgl/top don't and theirs are both 5/0. You have 1 person fed, they have 2. Now for the hard part: 2>1

SanKakUMar 21, 20192 votes

Yeah, this is what some people don't understand. When you're getting things done, it's generally not going to be enough. Somebody on your team is going to need to work with you or you need to work with them without jeopardizing your success in the process. It's not always easy, but organizing good strategies almost always requires groups of at least 2 in this game.

Doing stuff while outnumbered is fine, but it comes down to what each player/champion is capable of and trusting in that power. Making a habit out of fighting while outnumbered might just be throwing a chance for a win away. And refusing to ever fight while outnumbered is even worse.

Jerry SeinfeIdMar 21, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Yeah, this is what some people don't understand. When you're getting things done, it's generally not going to be enough. Somebody on your team is going to need to work with you or you need to work with them without jeopardizing your success in the process. It's not always easy, but organizing good strategies almost always requires groups of at least 2 in this game.

Doing stuff while outnumbered is fine, but it comes down to what each player/champion is capable of and trusting in that power. Making a habit out of fighting while outnumbered might just be throwing a chance for a win away. And refusing to ever fight while outnumbered is even worse.

it's also alot easier to overpower one very strong enemy with just 2 strong allies grouping up on them due to CC being long enough to kill someone easily. I still think it's possible to 1v2 or even 1v3 in this game, but your champ has to be made for it ( Illaoi ) or it's their own damned fault ( Singed MasterYi ). Especially as the weaker early game classes/champs this is a hassle. And i don't feel like adc lategame for example makes up for it at all (i'm not saying they should get buffed, just that it doesn't feel rewarding).

Overall they can change the game however they want, you're almost never gonna snowball hard enough to actually 1v5 and if 1/4 "lanes"* wins while 2/4 lose, the enemy team should in general have the advantage. It's why i can't take ranked serious in this game. I don't believe i'm great, or even good. I do believe if i REALLY cared enough i could get to gold and possibly climb further, but it's not worth it. It doesn't get better because in the end this is a teamgame with randoms. I'd rather play something like smash or tekken competitive than league (or OW, dota, W/E the fuck else...) for the simple fact, that the loss or win is on me.µ I'd rather have fun in normals then.

######*i'm including jgl here

Morgana DeusMar 21, 20191 votes

Yeah I agree. I have so many friends who are diamond, masters etc and they just don't want to play anymore. They feel like the game quality is constantly decreasing and it's no longer a measure of personal skill.

SomeOneButNoOneMay 13, 20191 votes

Skill doesn't matter anywhere, as bounties exist, and you're punished for outperforming the enemy. The entire game is a joke, where better pick wins, over skill. There is no "solo-carrying" with the exception of hyper-late-game-scalling champs (and that's if they reach late-game and I'm talking Kog/Twitch/Vayne/Jax/Yi/Kayle).

The game is a shitshow, with the poorest balancing that has ever come to be. Damage is off the charts, as post-1 item in lane, mages half HP everyone, while Irelia one shots you if she hits her E or R.

The game is a joke. 1v1's are decided by pure stats, regardless of the 1v1 playout with the exception of true-damage-dealers.