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I Didn't Change: From S4 Series to B3 0LP in 5 days

Vekkna·7/6/2015, 8:15:03 PM·1 votes·1,248 views

http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/66893799

I've never pretended that I'm an exceptional player. I started playing in April and went into ranked at the end of May. Ended promos in S2 and tanked to S5 pretty quickly, but I stayed in S4-5 the entire rest of the season.

Then out of the blue, it turned into Hellweek. Abuse starting in champ select. AFKs. Disconnects. Feeders. Trolls. Hard throws. No teamwork. Surrender spammers. Client crashes. Ridiculous client-side lag and ping spikes out of nowhere. From S4 series down to B3 0LP in a matter of days.

I didn't change. I didn't get worse. I didn't become negative and toxic overnight. Something else completely outside of my control caused this to happen. Dominating or losing my lane had no clear impact on the outcome of the game.

In fact, I managed to get back to Silver promos almost immediately, which ended 2/3 with every loss involving a feeder, troll, or afk. I had series to get back up to B1. Same thing. Series to get back into B2. Again, same thing.

Is the matchmaking system literally designed to group you with other players on a losing streak until you fall far enough to be grouped with winners again? Then it seems the losing-streak queue is matched against a group of winners, making most games extremely lopsided bloodbaths.

The outcome of games feels mostly predetermined. When I'm on a winning team, the other team has somebody that needs to be reported, and ALLchat and post-game are full of spite and abuse. It's the same when the situation is reversed.

At this point, I believe that ELO hell is real.

7 Comments

RndmInternetMan7/7/2015, 1:06:52 AM2 votes

A couple things to know about ranked that are relevant here:

Your MMR (actual ranking) doesn't directly correspond to your LP ranking, though as you play more games, the LP ranking more accurately reflects your MMR.
Dropping Leagues (ie. from Gold to Silver, Silver to Bronze, etc.) involves having an MMR significantly lower than your LP ranking (I believe you have to be playing at an MMR of the League below you to drop Leagues.

Knowing that, let's look at what you're saying here.

Ended promos in S2 and tanked to S5 pretty quickly, but I stayed in S4-5 the entire rest of the season.

This describes pretty much perfectly what I said in the points above. As you dropped from S2 to S5, your MMR dropped as well. When you hit the bottom of S5, your LP ranking stopped going down because you were at the bottom of a League. However, your MMR does not stop dropping (so your MMR does not match your LP ranking). Eventually, you reached a point where your MMR was somewhere around Bronze 5, at which point, the system dropped you to Bronze, and your LP continued dropping until you reached where you are now.

Abuse starting in champ select. AFKs. Disconnects. Feeders. Trolls. Hard throws. No teamwork. Surrender spammers. Client crashes. Ridiculous client-side lag and ping spikes out of nowhere.

Note that, outside of you, there 9 other players in the game: 4 on your team, 5 on the other. If the reasons you listed here are the reasons that games are won or lost, and if they are not because of you, there is a ~44% chance of the problem happening to your team, and a ~56% chance of it happening to the enemy team. Over enough games, you should actually win more than you lose. Since you aren't winning more than you're losing, there's something else causing your losses.

I Didn't Change

Here, you're absolutely right. Your play hasn't changed; in particular, it hasn't improved. It appears you started the season over-ranked, and you are now closer to your proper rank.

So, how CAN you improve?

First of all, change your attitude. Rather than blaming your teammates for your losses, own up to your mistakes and fix them. Second, work on your farming. You have recent games that are nearly an hour long, and you have under 150 farm. This is a massive loss of gold. Third, learn to manage your mana. One mana item ( item 3174 item 3070 item 3165 ) should be enough, and it really hurts your damage to rush multiple of them. Also, summoner 13 is a crutch, and learning to play without it will make you a better player.

I hope that helps!