Balance Ranked Games PLS

I apologize in advance for the mess -- I wanted to express my thoughts more than follow proper English. Also, to all those gold, diamond, platinum, etc. players who think every bronze and silver player deserves to be stuck in their current ranking, please read the specifics and consider them before opening your mouth to say that all of us play poorly and belong at our current rank. I know you guys have people who troll too, but that does not mean you understand everyone's situation. As your mother would say, "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Solo queue -- Recently, I was lamenting over the state of solo queue with my friend Akali. She and I agree there needs to be some better balancing and think that the new rating system (with the statistics it gathers) may go a long way to helping with that. During this discussion, we talked about one guy who suffered around 5 straight losses in top lane. While it seems balanced (something both Akali and I like) that a player could achieve anywhere from A- to S ratings in each of these matches and still lose them all, the particulars made it seem unfair. You see, in each of them, the player systematically began building a lane advantage or denying that advantage to an opponent who wanted a snowball/kill lane through a lane bully and taking ignite. This frustrated the enemy top-laner and led to the enemy jungler essentially camping his lane from level 3 on. With no friendly jungle ganks or counter-ganks, the player was left basically to face 40% of the enemy team with only 20% of his own team (himself) to help. In each of these five straight games, the player managed to look like a certain retired top-laner from Gambit who would often be down in kills, but have lane pressure and a cs advantage. Thus, the player enabled the rest of his team a relatively gank-free laning phase and his jungler to have every advantage elsewhere on the map. Despite the camp, the player was essentially proving himself equal to 40% of the enemy team or even better than 40% of their team. For instance, in at least one game, his tank/bruiser Mordekaiser would manage to tank wombos from the enemy top and jungle, chase off or kill both opponents, and keep pressuring lane. Akali did not think this was balanced, but agreed that it was pretty OP for a level 6 or 7 champ to do with zero assistance from his team. We both agreed that with that kind of performance – CONSISTENTLY – the player should have seen wins in at least 50% of those games. After all, he gave 80% of his team the freedom of only having to beat 60% of the enemy team. Yet in each of those losses, it seems trundle made his way into bot, mid, jungle, or some combination of all 3 of those lanes to troll his team and throw the advantage he had given to them. These stats should be clearly visible in match history through things like kda and maps of champion kills and deaths. This strange situation puzzled both Akali and myself, so we talked it over. It seems there are certain players that intentionally throw games to ensure they fail their promos in bronze and silver or just because they feel regularly having the occasional troll game is fun. There are also players who are (hopefully) relatively new to league and are struggling in a difficult 1v1 or 2v2 matchup and do not get help from their jungle like they should. When offered solid advice that sounds like it comes straight from the analyst desk of an LCS game, the struggling player(s) refuse to take the offered help and improve their gameplay. I remember a time when noobs (I was one back then) were okay with filling whatever role was available and learned from more experience players. Through this, I learned to be a fearsome support – seriously, give me a decent adc and I make my adc look like an LCS smurph (that is going try-hard in a silver level game). I have also analyzed my gameplay and am continuing to work on improving it – namely tunnel vision and early rotations to join a skirmish or 5v5. The point is that I am working to improve, and will accept SOUND advice from others while ignoring poor decisions – like face-checking an obvious 3v5 at dragon vs a fed enemy team (despite me winning top vs essentially 2 people). I have also been working to supply my team with good vision. I have done that for years now as a support, but am doing it in every role now. In fact, one game I placed about 22 wards to the 7 or so from the support on my team. Yes most of them were for me in laning, but knowing half your jungle is free from any enemies (or that there is someone invading it) frees teammates up to ward elsewhere and make some smart decisions. Yet that is just the problem, players today either do not recognize or do not accept sound advice and decision-making unless it is from themselves. I still go with a teammate’s shot call if it is a sound decision, but I will not contest 3rd dragon when my team has failed to ward any of the bot half of the map and has fed all of laning despite me pulling enemy jungle to top most of laning (and providing vision in top half of map). Diving blindly into an obvious 3v5 situation – because 2 members of your team recently died from lack of vision or some dumb mistake that they refuse to quit making – is not a good idea; I think both you and I can agree on that. Yet teammates (who feed) would report me for not joining them in their 3rd dragon 3v5 face check. I am left frustrated and confused because I face a story like this way too often. Sometimes the specifics change slightly, but the result is almost always my team losing. I consistently: win 80% or more of top lane games despite enemy jungle camping me and no assistance from team; crush bot 2v2 leading enemy mid and jungle to start camping bot and fail half the games despite essentially being perpetually 2v3 or 2v4 bot and winning lane anyways. This is followed by: 1) trying to save rest of team who has fed and refuses to listen to the guy or the duo that actually won their lane (me, or my adc and me), which results in a loss for my team due to them continuing to make bad decisions like fighting where we have no wards instead of taking alternate objective or forcing fight where we have wards or 2) teamwork actually occurring (FINALLY SOMEONE LISTENS TO REASON), but it being too little and too late. Example: with zero assistance a Mordekaiser top split pushes to pull enemies away from team so they can 4 man push mid and kill some towers. Why not group? Enemy has too strong of wombo for adc and mid to survive enemy burst – instantly turning any 5v5 into a 5v4 or 5v3 in enemy team’s favor. Secondly, I can easily 1v2 and keep pushing. In latter half of mid-game, I’m pushing top and survive all in by Malphite (my lane opponent), semi-fed Udyr (from ganking other lanes on occasion), and a fed Zed (from mid). I ult and literally tank everything they have and leave them all around ¼ hp or lower while being half hp myself – that’s deathmark, smite, unstoppable force, ignite, and all sorts of other spells wombo’d on me. I keep my minions pressuring top inner tower after surviving that 3 man all in. When I consistently win trades like that all of that game, my team should win easily right? Nope, leave it to our mid to refuse to group with other 3 and push towers as 4 man group. Instead, he solo pushes a different lane and dies to every 1v1 – literally enemy support 1v1 killed the guy with no help from tower. This stupidity and refusal to group means 3 mid can’t push very far and allows enemy to rotate all 5 members to punish me so I can’t escape despite decent warding. Mid refuses to listen to ENTIRE TEAM and keeps solo pushing a lane. Again, I did not group with team because adc and mid would instantly melt to Malphite and Zed combo, so I had to pull them away from team. I used sound logic, asked nicely for mid to do the reasonable thing, and did my best to enable team. We reported mid for feeding and refusing to communicate with the team, yet I keep running into people like that mid. I find it hard to believe there are that many people out there who want to throw games like our mid apparently did, but game history says otherwise. Could you please: 1) use new game analysis functions you have made (thanks by the way) to maybe reduce lp loss for people to consistently over-perform on losing teams or 2) consider more serious or more consistent/accurate discipline for players who either intentionally throw or throw because they refuse to make smart decisions and/or accept teammates’ logical advice? This way, players will be more inclined to work together, make smart decisions, and improve. Moreover, players will be less likely to report each other post-game. Players that refuse would not continue to be a problem because they would either be moved to a lower rank where they better match up with opponents or would be removed from ranked due to toxicity. The rest of us would see that and shape up our play to reduce toxicity and make league a better place. Seems like the balance Akali, Shen, Kennen and I would like to see in ranked. Then again, there are still those Noxians out there who might oppose something like this.

Do you agree -- are you seemingly getting held back in ranked despite your best efforts and focus on helping team as well as yourself? Ideas on how Riot can improve (ranked) matches?