Ranked is not professional play, quit acting like it is
The one thing that I honestly believe I'm the only person who understands, out of the 60+M players League of Legends has, is that ranked does not equal professional play. After reading the boards for the time I've been here, since season 1, I can say with confidence that I am the only, singular, one person on the entire planet that understands that ranked is not professional play.
Everyone wants to make all these restrictions for ranked. They want to require a certain tier of mastery, or so many normal wins, or a certain normal MMR. Some are demanding such ridiculous things that players would have an easier time sacrificing a goat to Beezlebub for their entry into ranked (despite living in NYC and never having seen a goat in person).
"You have to be summoner level capped." Definitely, because you need to have all the available rune and mastery slots/points. Going into a game without all your runes and masteries puts you at a huge disadvantage by not having mid-table singles or keystones, which are extremely powerful. This is also to give you sufficient time to earn enough IP to buy champions (and runes/rune pages for those champions).
"You have to have sixteen champions purchased." Completely acceptable, because of the improbable scenario that you can have no champions available to select. It's possible (highly unlikely, but possible) to see six champions banned and nine selected before you pick (totaling 15) and the last person to pick has no available champions to play if they own less than 16.
Ranked, by definition, means that players are assigned a ranking based on how well they play. That's all it means. In chess, that number is your ELO rating. Pokemon uses a Glicko2 number that looks almost identical to an ELO rating, but it's calculated differently. In League, that number is your league and tier. That's your "Bronze 5", "Silver 3", "Diamond 1", etc. That's all ranked means. You can't lose anything by losing a ranked match. You don't have to buy into matches with IP or RP. You don't use up your runes. There's no magical Riot assassins that will break into your house and slip scorpions in your mattress if you lose too many games. What can you "lose"? Your number can go down. That's IT. Nothing else can happen because you lost a game of League of Legends.
Adding restrictions to ranked to help you climb has no limit. We start with only allowing champions you have a mastery level 2 on. But people still play badly. Why? Because sometimes people have bad days. Sometimes they aren't sober, or they're distracted, or their ISP is working on the lines and they keep disconnecting. Sometimes it's within their control and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes they got picked into a bad matchup or a role that they're less proficient at than their rank says. So people demand mastery 3. But those factors won't go away no matter what restrictions are placed. But nobody understands that, so they demand harsher and harsher restrictions until eventually people just start playing Heroes of the Storm and Riot goes bankrupt.
Sometimes mastery limits can make you lose a game you could have won. For example, let's say the last pick is left with support. Their team already has a Teemo top lane and a Master Yi jungle (let's say a Lucian bot and a Ziggs mid just because). Even though he owns Braum, he's only played him once, so he doesn't have the required mastery to play Braum in ranked. It would be a perfect pick into this comp. Lucian + Braum is a very strong bot lane, and the team needs a tank who can initiate and peel. But the only supports this person has the required mastery on are Lux, Sona, Karma and Brand. You lose because the mastery requirement prevented him from picking a tank support and forced him to pick AP supports, despite the fact that he owns tank supports, and now your team has no tank. And this can't be prevented because pick order > call order. Teemo and Yi locked in, assuming that the support player had tank supports available (or didn't have any other non-banned, non-picked champs for the roles they fell into that were tanky instead of squishy), and now the support is who gets reported, effectively for being last pick.
It can also limit your opponent's bans, which helps them. I purchase champions that I know I won't ever play because of bans. Specifically, I target what is "OP" at the time. Right now, that would be things like Tahm Kench. He's a very common ban (at least at my rank). I don't play him because I'm bad at him, but I own him, simply so he will show up on my opponent's screen as a bannable champion. People will say "ban tahm" on their team, and they will ban him because he's available to ban. That way they aren't banning champions like Shyvana, Lucian, Lux, Jarvan IV, or other champions that I actually play. But if it required mastery on Tahm, I would have to ruin your games to get the requisite mastery on Tahm (because I'm bad at him), just so my opponents ban him instead of champions I actually play. And because I'm bad at him, I'm more likely to lose games I play as Tahm than win them. Mastery increases very slowly when you lose. This means I need more games for the same mastery level, which means I have to ruin even more games to get the mastery just to make my opponents ban him over my actual play champions.
So don't beg for restrictions in ranked beyond what we already have. It hurts you more than it helps you, and also costs Riot money.
I'm somewhere near my true rank. I'd say I'm probably about S2 (I'm actually ranked S4). Some games I play like I'm high Gold. Some games I play like I'm Bronze. Others I play like I'm mid-Silver. So I belong in mid-Silver. You're probably around where you belong too.
