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Seemingly Unpopular Opinion: I like the New Ranked System

CloakAndGrenade··3 votes·1,296 views

Whoa! Put your pitchforks and torches down. Give me a moment to explain before you draw and quarter me...

I've been a support main since day one of my League journey. I've spent over a thousand games each season in the support role, playing everything from Shen and Poppy to Janna and Lulu, to Thresh and Blitzcrank and many more! When I got to gold 2 briefly last year before falling back to my season-ending level of gold 4, It was all on the support role.

This... is an issue, for one simple reason: I can't (or couldn't) play any other role. Not at that level. Sure, I could practice in bots and in norms (watching my Yi level 3 turret dive because "there's no LP norms don't matter LOL XD get wrekt") but nothing pushes your skill level to advance like a ranked game. I wasn't a gold tier mid, top, jungle, or ADC. Sure, I had a champion pool of about five or six champions for each role that I could play and not feed, but not feeding and being useful are not the same things. I was probably around silver 3 in terms of skill in most of these off-roles, mid silver two at best. I was afraid to venture out and try new roles and new positions because I knew that I was going to get put up against someone who was as experienced in my off-role as I was in my main role. This meant that I was pretty much guaranteed to lose lane. More still, when someone on my team was autofilled, it was potentially devastating. The same set of skills and reflexes and game knowledge that makes a good mid laner are not the same as what makes a good jungler, tank, or ADC. One person on the team feeding in a snowball oriented meta and costing the game was extremely common.

This new system fixes those things. The new system fixes this. Sure, the pro-players might be able to hop around to different positions and still be highly effective but for us lowly mortals in solo queue this usually isn't the case. If you have a thousand games in your main role, and only a hundred games in your off role, you aren't going to be nearly as effective in your off role. This is just mathematics. Practice and experience are hugely important. Even the pro players practice for up to 10 hours a day because of this. If you are a zed one-trick, your thresh skills probably aren't going to match your zed. If you play mostly Lucian, you are going to struggle trying to play Lux in the mid lane, or whatever. This new system better reflects how strong you are in that particular role.

One thing that has certainly gone down this season is the number of profuse feeders in my games. This is anecdotal, so take it for what you will, but it is far less common for me to watch my mid or top laner give over 10 deaths in the first 20 minutes than it was last season. It still happens, it's just rarer. My matchups in bot lane feel more even in most games. Rarely do I ever feel like the support I'm up against is way out of his league and I can tell he's been auto-filled there. You can usually tell from ward placement to the movement commands (how the enemy champion 'walks') if the enemy is uncomfortable in their role.

Sure, it's annoying to have to go through multiple placement games, if you're even bothering to level up your off-roles. You don't have to. You can keep gaining LP in your main role, hit your elo, and get your end of season rewards without ever touching the off-roles at all. The benefit is that when you go to pick back up your off-role, you don't feel like you're fighting a red-bull fuelled Dwayne The Rock Johnson while you are in a full gimp suit with a broken leg. I can now select fill every game knowing that I'm most likely going to get a fair matchup. I can push my skills in every role and expand my game knowledge without being a detriment to my team.

2 Comments

Mavëríck3 votes

{quoted}

Whoa! Put your pitchforks and torches down. Give me a moment to explain before you draw and quarter me...

I've been a support main since day one of my League journey. I've spent over a thousand games each season in the support role, playing everything from Shen and Poppy to Janna and Lulu, to Thresh and Blitzcrank and many more! When I got to gold 2 briefly last year before falling back to my season-ending level of gold 4, It was all on the support role.

This... is an issue, for one simple reason: I can't (or couldn't) play any other role. Not at that level. Sure, I could practice in bots and in norms (watching my Yi level 3 turret dive because "there's no LP norms don't matter LOL XD get wrekt") but nothing pushes your skill level to advance like a ranked game. I wasn't a gold tier mid, top, jungle, or ADC. Sure, I had a champion pool of about five or six champions for each role that I could play and not feed, but not feeding and being useful are not the same things. I was probably around silver 3 in terms of skill in most of these off-roles, mid silver two at best. I was afraid to venture out and try new roles and new positions because I knew that I was going to get put up against someone who was as experienced in my off-role as I was in my main role. This meant that I was pretty much guaranteed to lose lane. More still, when someone on my team was autofilled, it was potentially devastating. The same set of skills and reflexes and game knowledge that makes a good mid laner are not the same as what makes a good jungler, tank, or ADC. One person on the team feeding in a snowball oriented meta and costing the game was extremely common.

This new system fixes those things. The new system fixes this. Sure, the pro-players might be able to hop around to different positions and still be highly effective but for us lowly mortals in solo queue this usually isn't the case. If you have a thousand games in your main role, and only a hundred games in your off role, you aren't going to be nearly as effective in your off role. This is just mathematics. Practice and experience are hugely important. Even the pro players practice for up to 10 hours a day because of this. If you are a zed one-trick, your thresh skills probably aren't going to match your zed. If you play mostly Lucian, you are going to struggle trying to play Lux in the mid lane, or whatever. This new system better reflects how strong you are in that particular role.

One thing that has certainly gone down this season is the number of profuse feeders in my games. This is anecdotal, so take it for what you will, but it is far less common for me to watch my mid or top laner give over 10 deaths in the first 20 minutes than it was last season. It still happens, it's just rarer. My matchups in bot lane feel more even in most games. Rarely do I ever feel like the support I'm up against is way out of his league and I can tell he's been auto-filled there. You can usually tell from ward placement to the movement commands (how the enemy champion 'walks') if the enemy is uncomfortable in their role.

Sure, it's annoying to have to go through multiple placement games, if you're even bothering to level up your off-roles. You don't have to. You can keep gaining LP in your main role, hit your elo, and get your end of season rewards without ever touching the off-roles at all. The benefit is that when you go to pick back up your off-role, you don't feel like you're fighting a red-bull fuelled Dwayne The Rock Johnson while you are in a full gimp suit with a broken leg. I can now select fill every game knowing that I'm most likely going to get a fair matchup. I can push my skills in every role and expand my game knowledge without being a detriment to my team.

First Bold: Right there, your entire argument fell apart. The pros are pros and they sit at Diamond+. They can git gud, then reasonable everyone can or should. If you can't. Tough. People who got high ranks before this terrible system got there through learning multiple champs in different positions so they could flex and still do well, because they understand mechanics inherent to every part of the game such as farming, itemization, and macro game.

Second Bold: You're darn right it's anecdotal, acknowledged, I respect that. The amount of outright troll feeding might be down, but the giving up is rampant because if YOU don't do well then NOBODY does well, because it's true. When you one trick a single position, you don't learn the finer points of the game, you just learn how to one trick. If you're a Silver Top Tryndamere/Yorick one trick, you're likely going to just farm and keep going top. This isn't "wrong" to do, you understand that you're supposed to split push, but you have no concept of why or how it works or when or how to adjust your play style and group with the team that keeps dying 4v5 or you keep getting 3 man ganked before they turn on your team. God forbid your lane gets camped or you get shit rekt in lane. You have no concept of playing safer or roaming. All you know is to push top, it's not working, so you feed and give up.

Third Bold: It certainly is very annoying going through multiple placement matches just to achieve the same effect as the previous ranking system, because it's possible to be good at ANY of those roles with basic mastery of two champs per role and an understanding of macro game. The whole thing is cheapened. The rank now means that you got Plat as a jungler one tricking. Plain and simple. It has none of the clout of the previous ranking which dictated you HAD to learn the whole game enough to get by, sure you had your preferred spot and you did it well, but you HAD to know other roles. Sure it's great now, but in the long run this is going to hurt the game in a big way.

Not attacking OP, just responding how I see it. You have a good post that I enjoyed reading and gleaned insight from and could relate to, I just see it different and am showing you where I divulge.

Upvoted.

CloakAndGrenade2 votes

Fair points. I myself have become rather a jack of all trades this season. I've gotten far more practice in on my off-roles and am Silver 1 across the board except for ADC and will be back in gold within a week (I am taking my time this season, I can be tilt-prone).

I don't full agree with your first bold point. Redmercy and Phylol had basically built their click-bait channels from the ground up with videos like "AMAZING ONE-TRICK TRYNDAMERE CHALLENGER NOT CLICK-BAIT (Gone Wrong)" or whatever nonsense. There are ALOT of one-trick ponies at the higher elos, or at the very least they are easy enough to find.

With your second point, I will take over-all general poor performance from the team versus one person feeding and giving up the game. If my top and mid don't do well, I can still reclaim some agency over the game. A 4/0 Jarvin is tough to beat, but he's far better than a 10/0 Jarvin, which is just going to stat check the team. I feel the system encourages players to learn off-roles by not punishing them for it. I still maintain that role experience counts. You may not know the ins and outs of every top lane matchup if you're not a top lane main. Sure, you can pick a champ like Garen and focus on your macro play, but if you're against a Riven or Aatrox who is really good at what they do, they can starve you of farm, levels, take your turret and even turret dive you. Playing against a smurf Vladimir is probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever dealt with in this game. How many roles can you really be expected to master? I agree that everyone SHOULD learn all or atleast most of the roles. It's just that not everyone can and not everyone will. I'd rather not be punished because someone who's only ever played Yasuo got filled to support and ends up going 0/10.

Your third point is something I can't disagree with. Your right in that regard. I suppose as someone who hasn't yet managed to even climb to plat the 'prestige' isn't something I'm really after. I just want to climb, better myself, and be useful to my team in every situation. As long as I'm climbing and improving I don't really care what my rank actually is. I may be in the minority in that case.

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