"Elo Hell" and why it exists

"It took god 6 days to create the earth, and man can now destroy it in one." (Not sure how the actual quote goes, but that's not the point)

Bronze 1 player here to share some thoughts on the age old top, "does elo hell exist?"

While many who chime into this discussion take a staunch approach saying no it definitely does not exist, or yes it definitely does exist because they're trudging through it themselves. The reality of the situation as I see it, is that it exists; however, this primarily due to what I see as Riots matchmaking system rather than player skill. Having just recently lost a ranked match, I find myself on tilt and incredibly salty - forgive me if my thoughts seems somewhat disjointed. Through the powers that be over at lolking.com I found that one of my team meet mates was a bronze 2 ranked player that has 1 win and 10 losses in ranked - myself a bronze 1 player with a 51% win ratio. Low and behold this was the 1 player that fed his lane hard enough and had a bad enough item build to effectively cost my team the game.

The main point I seem to discern from most theories on elo hell seem to be regarding the idea that if you are a good enough player you will manage to make your way out of it. However, theories such as this seem to predominately feature the idea that you must be the best player on your team in order to win, put another way, you must carry. However, with the active bronze player base being arguably the biggest in LoL it makes team mate match ups pure luck. Thus, removing the idea that you must carry based on skill over to you better hope the other team feeds you and then you can carry. The reality is many people such as myself possibly belong in bronze or silver and are actively improving; however we are never given the opportunity to move up because we are randomly paired with someone of a significantly lower skill level. While we play well and perhaps win our lane and have a better understanding of how to win the game, we must play SO well that we carry our team to victory.

Basically, in low elo there is such a disparagingly differing range of player skill level that luck plays a far bigger role in moving up than anything else, yes you will move up if you are better, but you have to be A LOT better.

tl;dr - the range of players in bronze is just too wide, making teammate/enemy luck a significant portion of how to win.