Is playing ranked worth it?
So, for like, the past 6+ years I've been doing nothing but play Blind Normals, every time I did play ranked it'd go horribly and thus I didn't have the energy, motivation nor the incentive to keep playing ranked. Some time ago my friend brute forced me into playing Draft Pick which has really caught up on me, and now I can't really play Blind Normals anymore. Now here's where ranked comes in.
So, now everyone starts ranked at Iron IV in the new(ish) ranked system. Take note that I am not in any of the major servers which have the individual position ranking thing, I'm on OCE so I still have the "normal" ranked system that we all know before. Just a few days ago a friend of mine, self-proclaimed Plat "smurf" (I say "smurf" cuz his main got perma'd lmao) and he brute forced me into playing my first ranked game in a helluva long time, first game of the new season. I'm happy to say that we won that one game which is nice, but now I'm "stuck" in Iron IV, since I've played one game, won it, and I'm unsure of whether I wanna play more ranked. Here's a couple things "stopping" me from doing so:
1 - I hate cheese strats. It seems like ranked nowadays is a massive sweep either way, where whoever picks either the strongest in the meta or the cheesiest strat wins. Skill seems to have taken a backseat. Winning by picking meta picks or cheese strats feel undeserved, like you didn't win the game but you took advantage of the system. I don't mind my teammates doing that, but personally, I can't do that. It's not fun to steamroll your enemies just because meta favors your pick.
2 - I cannot find someone to main for the life of me. If you don't wanna strictly pick meta or cheese strats, another common way to rank up is to main/one trick someone. I can't find anyone who sticks for longer than like a week. I'd find someone, love them to bits, spam games as them (in normals) and a week after they become stale. It's been like that for 6+ years, ever since I started playing the game I've struggled to find someone to properly one trick without getting sick of them like a week in. And a week is the longest I've done, the average is probably like, 2 days. Though I seem to have mainly settled down into jungle and support, but both of those roles still do have a diverse amount of picks.
3 - Ranked, being more competitive, gets to people's emotions much more easily. I'm literally invulnerable to tilt. Nothing can ever tilt me. I could be going 0/6 and still be playing for the win and trying to fight my way to victory (literally just did, went 0/6 Kha'Zix in the game directly before typing out this post/thread). But, that's not what I'm worried about. That one ranked game I won wasn't strictly because my team played better, but rather because enemy support Zyra gave up on the game due to one lost trade in lane with the ADCs before 5 minutes. Everyone in the game were speaking up about the fact that Zyra's like, super unreasonable etc but she didn't care. I'm really afraid of having that in my team. If something small goes wrong in ranked, people tend to blow it way out of proportion and just call it a loss, whereas in normals, even when things go terribly wrong, the losing team often still can do something even if it's for fun. In other words, there seems to more extreme cases of emotions in ranked compared to normals, and I'm not sure whether I want those extremes.
So that's why I don't wanna play ranked, but then again, I seem to have qualities that does suit ranked:
1 - The tiltproof thing. That's obviously a massive up for me since one of the biggest reasons why people don't rank up is due to tilt. I think just recently someone made a post about how he climbed just by having a non-emotional mindset which I 100% advocate for. So, if I do suck at the game, if I don't play well or if I even feed, I at least won't be emotionally broken and still look to play for the win no matter how the game is going.
2 - My gameplay, if I play at my best is at least average. I know for a fact that if I do play my A-game, I am at least average. Why do I say that? Well, I know for a fact that I don't belong in Iron IV, or even Bronze. I'd say if I play properly at my best I'm at least a mid Silver (which I'm absolutely fine with).
Sorry for the long-ass winded post/thread, it's kinda been on my mind a lot ever since the new ranked system (starting in Iron thing) came to be. I'm probably thinking too much about it, but I guess I just don't wanna play something that might not be worth it or even potentially make the game un-fun. So, overall, for my personal case, would you say ranked is worth playing?
