Alright, let's talk about ranked, climbing in ranked and how that relates to skill

Before you continue reading, you should know this will likely be a long post. I will include a tl;dr but I feel it won't do justice to the real message here. Also, keep in mind that while I could post this in Tips and Tricks, I prefer this board because it has the most traffic and more people are likely to read it, and as a result, hopefully get a better perspective on rank. And this is related to gameplay so I think it's fine here.

Let's talk about ranked here. What does your elo/rank mean? To be honest, it's more of an arbitrary number or ranking that means very little in relation to skill. Certainly, at each rank/elo/league, there's likely a bare minimum of requirements in terms of mechanics and knowledge and that relates to skill but I think, as a player trying to climb or being anxious over winning and losing, thinking your rank directly correlates to your skill is incorrect. Let me explain:

When I play ranked, certainly every game I'm trying my hardest to play well and win. We've all been there though, there are some games you flat out just can't win. Too many deaths by your teammates, dc's/afks or Flamers that just make the game so incredibly unfun, it impacts someone's play negatively and can cause mistakes that lead to losses. This isnt unique to anyone, it happens to everyone at every elo. Thinking this only happens to you is foolish and is a terrible perspective that only holds you back. Remove this thought all together.

So why does this mean ranked doesn't fully tell your story or directly correlate to your skill? For starters, solo queue is a team game. Your ability to play in a 5v5 situation with 9 other strangers takes skill and is still measured by this but it doesn't fully tell your story. That's not to encourage those who say "haha! See! Told you! Feeders hold me back!" On the contrary, it's quite the opposite. Playing in solo queue is learning how to succeed with random players. These players could be amazing, they could be trash. We've all heard it before: you're far more likely to have less feeders than the enemy team because you can control one of the players on your team: you. So knowing this is the situation, it's completely pointless to focus on your teammates gameplay - it's counterproductive and doesn't at all help you improve. You can chalk up winning and losing games to bad teammates play but when you're done reading this, you'll realize winning and losing is just a byproduct and doesn't matter much.

So what am I saying? Here's a good way to look at ranked play: it's a measurement of your improvement as a player. Each game, win or lose, your focus should always be on you and your gameplay. You need to take away what you could've done better. For example, did you CS poorly? Why did you CS poorly? Was csing poorly a result of brawling in lane a lot and roaming and helping your team or just poor csing mechanics in general? Your bot lane fed hard? Could you have helped them? Could you have carried them? What could you have done to maybe help the team instead if they weren't worth helping?

Each game, you need to be asking yourself these sort of questions about YOUR gameplay. As ranked is a measurement of your improvement; youre improving, you rise, you aren't improving you fall or stay in the same area, it is important to know that focusing on your gameplay is what leads to direct improvement. Because of improvement, you're likely winning more than losing, and as a result the winning/losing is a byproduct of improving or not improving. In my mind, this is a much healthier approach because it focuses 100% on your gameplay, you become less anxious over winning/losing and in all probability you're less toxic towards your teammates because you rule them out entirely.

There's a few things worth noting here: this takes several games, not just a small sample. You're not going to play 10 games, win 8 and say "yeah I've improved a ton!" On the flip side, you're not going lose 8 out of 10 and think that you're getting worse or not improving. This is basically your perspective over an entire season measuring where you start and where you finish, and that's a general area, not a specific one.

It's also worth mentioning that sometimes, games are just straight up unwinnable and there's absolutely nothing you could've done. But it's important to draw that conclusion by focusing on what you could've done differently to help your team, evulate your own individual mistake and come to a conclusion that regardless of what you did, chances of you winning weren't good. This approach alone improves your ability to focus on winning first and fixing the weak links or just abandoning them all together in favor of helping the stronger ones. And at that point, it's still focusing on your gameplay that helps you improve, win or lose. And over a course of several games, with this approach, you will definitely win more than lose. And the winning and losing at that point is a byproduct of your improvment and constant focus on your own gameplay. That is always the most important thing in a land of random players you've very little control over.

Tl;dr focus on your own play. It's what's important and winning and losing is a byproduct of your ability to improve or lack thereof. This really doesn't do it justice honestly.