Lets talk about why NA ranked is just frustrating to play in, in season 9.

Lets start from the top.

A bunch of challenger players/grandmasters/masters don't want to play in their own elo thanks to the fuckery that happened at the beginning of the season. They have a fuck ton of players that don't deserve to be in those elos, that are in those elos. Meaning that all of their games are coin flips. From the streamer side of things for the highest elo, its not easy to make content that is appealing to their audiences. Then for the rest of them, they are either trying to climb (which is normal), or they just see this whole season as a flop, not even worth getting X rank. Because everyone will say "Oh that was season 9, that rank doesn't even mean anything." Because it doesn't. When in the season you had accounts that managed to get challenger with a 30-40% win rate, there isn't much to say other than "Wow, this game is a joke. I could have just played 2k games and made challenger at some point." So they go down to lower elos to just have fun, since no one wants to risk their own LP doing dumb shit.

Then as you go down in elo. High/Low Diamond (because that is the difference. There is no mid diamond.) you get smurfs that absolutely shit on your games. Or you get the other side that challenger players also deal with. People who shouldn't be in that elo. That ruin your games. This then makes diamond players want to smurf as well. ( I am guilty of it, I am sick of seeing bot lanes that go 3/16, or junglers that just don't know how to ward around mid lane/ that don't know how to gank properly. Or mids that don't know how to roam.)

Then this roles down to plat, we start doing dumb shit. Just because we can. I have pulled out mages in the bot lane in plat elo, just to fuck around. And guess what IT WORKS. My worse lane is BOT and I manage to win with mages in the bot lane because I am a better player that just doesn't want to deal with the bullshit in my own elo. If my elo weren't a coinflip of smurfs and boosted animals. I wouldn't be here.

But guess what happens after that? You have these plat players, who might have been in their correct elo, now in lower elo than they deserve, because no one wants to play in their elos anymore. That just causes a domino effect until mid gold. Where everything just balances out.

What NA riot didn't do is the cause of so much frustration in the Ranked Community for league.

Korea on the other hand, reset accounts. SO THAT THIS WOULDN'T HAPPEN.

So again, this season is just a meme. When you see your hard stuck diamond 4/5 friends, with a masters border next season. Don't even think anything of it, because their achievements weren't theirs on their own. Their achievements were on the backs of riot fucking up, RNG, and games played.