Keystone Masteries in Low-Level Games
From experience, it is around level14+ that you start to get matched into games, where players have keystone masteries. In the last week or so, I noticed a trend in these lower-level matchmade games: teams with more keystone masteries are more like to win. As an example, players that are able to use Fervor or Thunderlord's have a much easier time taking good trades, while players that don't will often lose lane to these champions. In a way, this is very frustrating, because the success in lane appears to depend (not solely—of course—but to large extent) on the availability of keystones. This is why I'd suggest a new way of matchmaking, so that players who are able to use keystones are balanced across the teams, so that there is a maximum gap of 1 additional keystone for one team. For example, a team with three players above lvl18 will only face a team of 2-4 lvl18+ players. I think this could take away some of the imbalance. Such a mechanic should also not increase queue times, as the same players could just be redistributed to fit the scheme. Many of you won't be affected by this either way, given that most people are lvl30 and are only matched with the players of the same level, but for 'growing' accounts it can be very anti-fun. Thoughts?