ELO Hell problems by rank...
So people complain about ELO hell a lot. I'm not of the opinion that it exists, but I think each rank has something that can make it feel like hell if you get stuck at a rank bc it's where you're at currently in terms of skill, or you haven't played enough games to get past variance that is keeping you down. I got to thinking about it and decided from what I can tell it tends to be different things from bronze to silver to gold to etc. Below is a description of what the problems I've seen or talked about w/ people are at each rank. I'm wondering what the community thinks is right or wrong here, and what people would suggest to try and fix the problems?
Bronze: Why listen to me on this- I was placed in bronze when I started ranked in season 3 and in season 5 after quitting lol for a while mid/end of season 4 through start of season 5. Have climbed out 3 times (second account in season 5).
Personal thoughts: This is an area where there are a TON of mistakes or mechanical weakness/misplay that is present. People get frustraed because it is easy to see people struggle and often lanes can be really volatile. People really want to get out because of the stigma of being bronze so they become more frustrated when people damage their chance of winning and there is a lot of potential for rage. The biggest issue imo is people blaming others when they are frustrated instead of focusing on how they can improve. I see a lot of people in high bronze who play at a silver level but criticize their teammates so much that teammates tilt and throw winnable games. The players getting raged at feel the toxicity is hell, and players who are mechanically okay but put teammates on tilt feel that it is elo hell bc they are held back by teammates and don't see how they contribute to poor team play.
Silver: Climbed through this 3 times (season 3 and twice season 5), and spent the time I did play season 4 bouncing around this rank.
The biggest issue I have seen is the skill variance. New accounts start at silver ELO so sometimes you get people who are early on in raked and hare dropping to bronze but haven't played enough games to fall yet, and sometimes you get people on a second account or worse yet someone who is violating TOS and playing their friend or sibling's account to get the player rewards. Players who are higher or lower elo, but are in silver because they have not played many games make some games really frustrating because of huge skill differences between teams. Additionally in high silver there is the much larger incentive of season rewards that exist for rank up that don't for all other ranks. This makes the jump to gold more important usually because there is more content and not just bragging rights. However, you have silver players trying really hard to get into gold, and often hit gold 5 players who have less interest in playing a game out when it goes poorly because they cannot drop back to silver easily and already have the reward.
Gold: Current rank on 2 accounts.
People in low gold are more prone to giving up or tilting and not caring about the game if people rage (sometimes guilty of this myself). This gets really frustrating for some people still climbing to plat because a lazy gold 5 can be placed w/ people up to around gold 2 if the high gold is duo or the low gold is on a good streak and near gold 4 promotion. Additionally in my experience the requirement in terms of improvement of skill needed to go up becomes much steeper at this rank. 70% of players or something like that are bronze or silver, so there is enough variance in the ranks that improving slightly is fairly noticeable. The % of players is starting to get much smaller so it takes a bigger increase in skill to move up and players can feel stuck easily. Below gold you can move up by getting decent at mechanics OR game sense and shot calling. To move past gold you have to either get decent a both, or get fairly good at one because the competition pool is much smaller, and the extra work to improve can be really frustrating and feel like hell.
Plat: Not there, but have a decent number of friends list who I met while climbing that have hit this rank and talk with me about it.
Plat is an area where I start wanting more input from community about the accuracy of my writing given that I haven't been there. From what I hear it is particularly frustrating because diamond is the rank people start calling you good and for the most part stop criticizing your rank. People are frustrated with their team easier, and players who have climbed with really good mechanics but not fully mastered a single champ (look ate the number of one trick ponies in diamond, and players like Annie bot or Box Box for what I mean by mastered one champ) feel like they should be diamond because of their mechanics but may be lacking in another area and their ego is obnoxious to other players. People rage and the "you're trash" mentality is more prevalent than some other ranks so I hear.
Diamond +: Only have one or two friend's list players who are this rank, so really not sure what the issues are. Anyone who knows, feel free to put it in the comments and I'll cite your post and put an edit in here.
What are the community thoughts? Did I hit the right frustration points? Are there things I should add or subtract? How does the community or an individual player work to remove some of these problems in their games?