Oh, there's nothing else to it.
With all the champion and role imbalance, all the snowballing and all the constant changes, I really don't think your rank's indicative of anything whatsoever unless you're Plat+ carrying your way out of Bronze (which, why are you there in the first place?)
The Nocturne God4 votesI dunno, when I go on a smurf it feels like my personal skill decides my rank since it is extremely easy to just 1v9 carry. When my friends in bronze go on 'smurfs' they seem to struggle hard and usually just pray their 2-8 placements puts them in silver 5 so they don't need to grind their main account out of bronze. Those that do place in silver typically demote if they play enough games to bronze.
tl;dr- Personal skill does decide rank, at least 99%.
KiteyKatVayne1 votesno its not just because of ur skills that makes u win those low elo games, its ur decision making that exceeds the opponents (macro play).
The Nocturne God1 votesno its not just because of ur skills that makes u win those low elo games, its ur decision making that exceeds the opponents (macro play).
I dunno, when I smurf I'm usually not going for objectives, I just try to kill a bunch of people for item advantage so I can 1v5...
Pika Fox3 votesYour skill determines your rank over hundreds - thousands of games. Theres 9 other players in the game, your actual impact generally wont be obvious. The real point is you should win more than you lose on average if youre under your skill level, and lose more if youre above.
A sample size smaller than 300 games is generally irrelevant. Unless youre a challenger player youre likely not gunna get to where you belong in less than 100 games. And even a challenger likely needs more.
Attticus Finch3 votesNo low ELO player thinks rank is indicative of skill. That's why its called "cognitive dissonance".
Mysticman892 votesOver sufficiently large sample sizes, personal skill(*) is basically the only variable, since everyone is subjected to the same matchmaking system/patch changes/etc.
There may be more variance introduced by other factors these days compared to <insert favourite season here>, but with enough games played everyone gets where they belong.
(*) = Note that adaptability to change is part of skill, as is ability to work as part of a team.
RookPusher1 votesOver sufficiently large sample sizes, personal skill(*) is basically the only variable, since everyone is subjected to the same matchmaking system/patch changes/etc.
There may be more variance introduced by other factors these days compared to <insert favourite season here>, but with enough games played everyone gets where they belong.
(*) = Note that adaptability to change is part of skill, as is ability to work as part of a team.
I know what you wrote is correct, but calling the individuals skill the variable for no good reason sounds wrong to me.
Like, it should be the constant and the variable is the matchmaking system. Is it just me?
Mysticman891 votesEvery player has the same matchmaking system, but not every player has the same skill, so considering player skill the variable makes sense for statistical purposes.
If you're looking at one specific player they might have constant skill (one would like to think it actually increases as they play more games during their climb), but the matchmaking system on the whole still works the same in every match so is also constant. The specific players in a given match are gonna be variable, but you're not doing doing statistics over a specific match, the idea is to do statistics over lots of games (so 'bad luck' in getting the DCing afkers in a specific match is cancelled out by other matches when the enemy gets DCing afkers and so on).
DrCyanide1 votesYour rank is determined mostly by how many games you play, with some part being how consistent you are.
NekoniClaws1 votesI completely agree, I feel like there's just 4 skill levels to this game.
There's superstar atheletes in league (bounce between high diamond to challenger)
There's people good at the game (gold (at the lowest) to mid diamond)
There's average players (bronze to gold)
and then there's.. (no offense here) mega-casuals / mega-hardstucks (can NOT get out of bronze, no matter the meta)
If Janna has a 54% winrate for months AND you're a good Janna player, you'll hit perhaps a 60%+ winrate for your 'actual' skill level while she's that strong. If your champion has a 46% winrate, maybe you'll hit 52% and that just won't be enough to climb beyond whatever division you're in.
And ontop of that, the meta varies by elo. Leona's my main, a great pick at lower elos. I'm told by a steamer(i0ki) she's terrible at higher elos- and I can believe it. I've faced diamond 3+ vaynes, lucians and ezreals and they just buffer her zenith or dodge her ult- her kit's useless compared to low elo.
People who get stuck in an elo's meta can either adapt or fail to adapt to the next meta... so honestly there are so many variations simply caused by meta, I don't put too much weight in rank.
