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As a Diamond, Silver elo is surprisingly hard.

SIayton·11/4/2015, 7:53:41 AM·1,283 votes·205,965 views

So I've been playing on a Silver account recently since I got my main account to Diamond for the season and I'm really shocked at how difficult Silver elo is. The games are really inconsistent as far as team work and people knowing what to do. Some players feel like they know exactly what to do and lane / last hit really well and I'm surprised they're in silver, and then there's others that I'm shocked have even made it this far.

People feed out of control here. In Diamond if someone loses lane they die at most 2 times, and that's still a lot. In Silver, people don't seem to understand that if they died fighting once, it only gets harder to win and keep trying, and its not uncommon to see 7-9 deaths coming out of laning phase. Having players on the enemy team fed that much makes carrying hard, even if I win my lane every time or have a ton of successful ganks jungling. There also seems to be a disproportionate amount of AFKs here.

It feels like the best way to win here is to just stomp your lane and split push. Team fighting is a crap shoot, people are uncoordinated, don't follow up, and engaging is a huge risk because you may engage and only have 1-2 people follow up, or attack the wrong targets. If I don't HARD carry, IE 10+ kills before 20 minutes, and things go to the late game team fighting phase, I get a little nervous because its kind of a dice roll on how the fights will go. Its different in Diamond because you can make smart plays and expect people to be on board but here you really can't trust your team to follow up on things, so doing things like going full tank seems like a bad idea because a lot of the time you gotta do all the work yourself. Its a completely different meta than higher up.

I was a little embarassed about the struggle here so I mentioned it in a group and a bunch of other Diamond / Master level players were having the same issues. I felt a little relieved to find that out but at the same time, it makes me wonder about skill in this game when players that have consistently proven themselves to be able to play at a high level struggle at this low of an elo.

So for all the players grinding out of Silver that are frustrated with the climb. Don't feel bad. It really does suck down here. Take it from a Diamond.

1,056 Comments

ULTRA RAMOOSE11/4/2015, 8:54:39 AM484 votes

This is a refreshing change from the troglodytes that make youtube videos blaming people for being stuck in their elo and asserting that elo hell does NOT exist. Thanks for coming forth with the truth! KUDOS, BRAVO! +1 INTERNETS!!

Zarg11/4/2015, 3:12:35 PM88 votes

When a diamond says it, it's the biggest revelation ever and everyone goes nuts. When us silvers say it, we get down voted to oblivion with a couple "lol ur just trash u deserve ur elo fucking scrub"

Remlap122311/4/2015, 8:53:13 AM87 votes

You basically summed up why I don't play ranked anymore. It's not a good representation of my skill because I stomp whenever I play ADC, but my team can't follow up worth shit. So it's a lose lose. I don't get any better at the game because I'm not challenged, but I'm not climbing because all it takes is one moron that doesn't know to teamfight.

Luckily, I've gotten myself to a point where I'm getting matched up with high silvers and low golds (the occasional plat and diamond player when Riot's matchmaking goes full MacIntosh), but I feel sufficiently challenged.

It shows a pretty sad state of affairs of Riot's ranked system when I'm going to fucking normals to find people on my actual skill level, and to have a proper challenge.

Ryuku Cruxis11/4/2015, 8:58:17 AM53 votes

Lower elo players can be really good or really bad, all the time. They lack consistency, and a bit of mechanics.

Grinding through silver now, climbed from bronze 3. Will be silver 3 soon maybe, tilt will come soon I'm sure.

People in silver, gold, and hell, even bronze, can be really good at the game..at certain things.

You get plat by being good at everything, and maybe great at a few things.

You get diamond by being great at everything, and mastering one or two things, like Riven, or Annie, whatever floats your boat.

And as a butthurt silver player, you get master/challenger by being a no life loser tryhard go outside and let me win the game :*((((

Slamurai Jack11/4/2015, 12:21:18 PM38 votes

You don't win in silver by playing like a diamond player. The patient, objective oriented approach just doesn't work. You have to play them at their game and just do it better. These guys want to fight and they want to get kills and snowball out of control, so you need to play that game, pick champions suited for that, and then outplay them. Want to carry silver games as a high elo player? Pick snowball champions with strong early games and get fed and completely take over the game. Silver games are insanely messy and you need to wade through the blood of many, many enemies to reach their nexus. Playing smart and winning through good teamplay doesn't cut it in low elo. You need to get fed and stomp.

xJLx MCHammer11/4/2015, 8:00:05 AM35 votes

Yeah ahah I made an ALT account. Im still leveling it it. Clearly, everyone is a smurf. I can't tell their rank but i'm surprised at the fact that I cannot carry.

tommyagun11/4/2015, 7:55:19 AM32 votes

This is how it is in bronze too but worse

blkKalameet11/4/2015, 8:42:57 PM31 votes

You do realize that you playing a smurf account is actually contributing to the problem of getting out of low elo, right?

How is anybody supposed to advance if they consistently are getting paired up against diamond players in the silver elo? People like you make things worse than they should be. You help reinforce the unwillingness to cooperate with the team, as you help make your opponent seem inferior and useless because of the skill difference. And at the same time you reinforce the disparity of the loss and throw people so far into tilt.

Smurfs are as much of a problem in low elo as trolls, afk, and intentional feeders. And there is no justifiable reason for you to be playing a smurf account.

Zair Umbras11/4/2015, 9:23:56 AM31 votes

About 40% of the ranked community is in Silver. Diamond+ is about 2% of that community. When you notice that sort of a difference, well, you can understand why Silver is so inconsistent. There's so many players of varying types that the likeliness of facing similar opponents is almost none. You'll get people who get placed with bad players, but are actually quite good, you'll get baddies who got carried out of Bronze, you'll get Trick2G and Meteos wanna-bes. You can get anything in Silver. Anything.

A Liberal11/4/2015, 2:35:18 PM17 votes

I love how in this thread there are so many people saying "I am a SIlver Smurf"....

This is the reason it's so hard for real silvers to do anything Dx Nothing is more fun than getting trainwrecked by a person named "Rivenonlysmurf" who is actually a D3 Riven main in lane as a fresh level 30 in your promos, or getting pubstomped by a nidalee who reveals at the end that she is a smurf filming a youtube video for their botlaner e.e.

DarkSunSovereign11/4/2015, 2:41:14 PM17 votes

It feels like the best way to win here is to just stomp your lane and split push.

Silver player's experience. Step 1: Win lane and be able to 1v2 and get out alive or at least kill one. Step 2: tell team "go mid, I'm gonna splitpush. If they send 3 people to stop me, engage on the players defending mid and take turret ok?" (No answer). Step 3: Go bot/top and start taking turret, get 5-man ganked and be shut down, players in mid start flaming and don't take turret.

Team fighting is a crap shoot, people are uncoordinated, don't follow up, and engaging is a huge risk because you may engage and only have 1-2 people follow up, or attack the wrong targets.

Correct. You also get the idiots clumping up when the enemy has a yasuo+malphite+orianna combo or something, or spreading out against a team with Zed and LeBlanc.

Man I hate my elo, but I can't be bothered learning to cs XD.

JerrBear711/5/2015, 12:26:48 AM14 votes

It's one of these:

Clear win.

Clear loss.

HUGE throw.

Lux Magus11/4/2015, 1:21:20 PM12 votes

The frustration of low elo games. Some are really good players, just stuck because of crappy teammates.

Seenan11/4/2015, 8:12:52 AM12 votes

Specifically worse in the x2 divisions. I know from experience. (Bronze 2, Silver 2..etc). That division is like..designed to make you lose a lot.

BoxOfFedUpFrogs 11/4/2015, 8:10:47 AM11 votes

Welcome to LoL at anything below like mid tier gold at the very least. The one reason to love it though is that it's insanely fun to be able to play pretty much any champion and have a good shot at winning lane if you have basic skills down and know what each champion does. Of course it's not as fun if the enemy team is competent and you just end up eating everyones ult and then can't carry.

Livin like Riven11/4/2015, 9:40:07 AM9 votes

What kind of reverse 'Dunning-Krugger' expedition is this???

1+

Hyrum Graff11/4/2015, 5:38:33 PM9 votes

Coming from a primarily unranked player in high gold, getting out of silver has very little to do with your mechanical ability. It has a LOT to do with your leadership ability.

Working in champ select to make sure everyone's on a role they feel comfortable with, keeping the team focused and positive throughout, even when there's a losing lane. These are the essential skills of climbing out of silver. That's why you see players who are mechanically skilled and have good game knowledge who can't climb. They think they can't control their teammates, but the that just isn't the truth.

Can you do an experiment for me? On your smurf start every game with these three lines:

Good [time of day], everybody. My prefs are [X, Y, Z] Is anyone a good [least preferred role for carrying]?

Then work to make sure everyone gets one of their top two roles. I'd be surprised if you didn't experience a significant jump in the consistency of your teammates' play.

Leonerdo11/5/2015, 9:40:09 PM8 votes

I like this post. It highlights some of the biggest problems that most League players face. Namely, it mentions that in silver (the median rank for Ranked players) things are more... out of control. Players don't feel like they control when they win or improve in rank.

Sometimes a single player will AFK or troll all game, and relative to that the impact of the other 9 players on the game is insignificant. i.e. the outcome of the game was not controlled by the 9 legit players, but by the one AFK. However, this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to.

More importantly, even when both teams are putting thier best foot forward, players feel like their team is holding them back or throwing the game. As the OP said, even with diamond-level skill he feels it's hard to carry a game or make enough of an impact to win despite the mistakes of his team.

In essence, when playing League especially in lower ELOs, it doesn't feel like your efforts have much effect at all over the game. Perhaps putting this way makes it easier to understand the frustration: How can we even know when we are playing well if we seem to win/lose randomly despite giving 100% effort every game.

Now I think everyone gets that. That's why this thread is at 400 upvotes. But I want to explore a little deeper. Why do people feel like they are stuck in ELO hell? Why does it feel like we don't have control over the outcome of our matches? And what can Riot do to improve that feeling? What can WE do to improve that?

I don't want this comment to be even more giant, so I'll just leave y'all with one of those answers (two technically):

Now this is common knowledge but it's a good starting point, LoL is a team game. Every game has 10 players in it, and thus every player should only have 1/10 control over the outcome of a match. That much is unavoidable. So one of the best things WE can do to have a better time playing, is just to keep that in mind, that we are playing with a team. Try to alter the way you think after a game (or during, if you have thought cycles to spare). Don't just think about yourself:

  • Don't just think, "[insert prefered curse words], I lost again. Still trapped in ELO hell..."
  • Even worse, don't think, "[more cursing], my team sucked again. Thanks for the loss guys."
  • Instead, how about, "[expletives], WE didn't have what it takes to win that game. Teammate 1 didn't use his ult like he should. And Teammate 2 got caught. I thought I permored well actually, but maybe I could have help out Teammate 1 or spammed pings for Teammate 2."

To be perfectly clear, the last example was better because it didn't feel like you lost for no reason. It may not have been your fault, and indeed in this example your team totally threw the game, BUT at least you identified why your team lost. If you think about the details of how you and your team played, you keep your mind busy rather than just stewing about how far behind everyone was. You also kept in mind that you are a part of that team, rather than being isolated, like it's just you vs. the game. As a bonus, you may even be able to learn from your teammates mistakes. (And if you are learning from 5 people's mistakes rather than just your own, then you should improve very quickly.) And as a final shoot-for-the-stars goal, you could even think about what the enemy team did right to win the game, or what mistakes they made that your team didn't capitalize on.

So sure, League can be really frustrating sometimes, for many reasons. But it helps to think about those reasons, and sometimes you have to change HOW you think about your frustrations. And besides, League is still really fun most of the time :)

Kinky Hulijing11/4/2015, 4:23:26 PM6 votes

You prolly just dont deserve Diamond i have a 95% winrate on my smurf youre defo doing ssomething wrong nap

Craft Zeppelin11/4/2015, 9:22:00 AM5 votes

I have been playing on the EUW and im extremely surprised how persistant the NA community is when it comes to getting a kill or a "win" that doesn't connect to a "victory". They also don't surrender and persist even if they obviously see a loss they seem damn bloodthirsty to get a fight. This comes out very big in silver elo in the NA which I can't get out. Although I managed it really easy to get out of the EUW.

No offence here, but is this some sort of cultural characteristic?