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

Vekkna·Jul 6, 2015·1 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

RndmInternetManJul 7, 20152 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!

VekknaJul 7, 20152 votes

Thanks for the reply. I have a few rebuttals/questions.

Firstly, the losses where I have low farm are support games (except one game as Zyra where bot fed hard early on and asked everyone to let her push out lanes to catch up). The Lux game at 51 minutes and 147 CS was as support.

I only use summoner 13 as Lux and only as support. I take it so I can keep up with Q spam or be able to rush (and afford to use) W if we're losing trades. If I take it mid it's because they picked a champ like Malz that can sustain mana in lane while shoving you under tower and forcing you to spam skills to not lose CS to turret. That seemed like the best choice at the time since I was already locked into Lux. Good thinking or bronze thinking?

I have no problem taking blame when I'm the problem. I readily admit that I'm generally not capable of being a "carry." My strengths are with cc, teamwork, poking, and vision. I'm generally bad at objective control, all-in engages, tanking, prioritizing farm versus ganking as jg, and CS under pressure (against a Yasuo, Rumble, Blitz, etc). So I generally end up playing cc mages. I can carry a bot lane (sometimes), but I can't carry a game. I I'm not good enough and don't play champs that can solo carry.

The thing is that I have gotten better since I entered ranked. Much, much better. I can actually stutterstep now, how to cs with minion types and ratios, use attack-move, use quick-cast, learned where to ward, when to expect ganks, learned tons of champs' damage types and skills, how to land predictive skill shots, etc.

I didn't suddenly get worse, though. I even managed to stay silver the entire season while losing over 20 lp for every loss and never gaining even 20 for a win. And you're right about the odds of getting a "dud" player on the team, which is why it seems like it's not a coincidence that I keep getting them.

I just think it's kind of fucked up that the matchmaking system essentially flags your account as belonging in a certain tier and then all but forces you down to that level. I lost a lot of games early after entering ranked, but by the time I stabilized in silver, I could hold my own just fine. And that's my entire point: I did better in silver than I'm doing in bronze, but the system has decided that it has to push me to bronze and keep me there.

At this rate, I honestly feel like I got into ranked too early and my account is basically just fucked because of it. If I started a new account and went right into ranked, I would start in silver and stay there. I have no idea how I'm supposed to climb anything when I have to have a 60% win rate just to stay LP neutral.

ZoratuJul 7, 20151 votes

My advice is to just keep spamming ranked on your best champs and mute anyone that is harassing you and just learn to carry. A new account will not help you even though you might get higher at first chances are you will just fall back down to bronze. Also if you belong in silver that is where you will end up you just need to play more games.

RndmInternetManJul 9, 20151 votes

Hello again, good sir!

First off, about summoner 13 .

(Sidenote: back in the day, there was an item called Eleisa's Miracle. It gave mana regen, health regen, reduced the cooldown of summoner 7 Clairvoyance summoner 13 , and if you leveled up 3 times with it, you'd gain it's effects permanently and gain back the item slot.)

When Nami first came out, I used to run summoner 13 on her, rush an Eleisa's Miracle, and then rush a Philosopher's Stone (more health regen and mana regen). Basically, I had no mana management skills, and to compensate, I did everything I could to get more mana. So I totally understand where you're coming from.

If you're building that much mana/mana regen, it probably means that you're throwing out a lot of spells, and if you're not winning games as a result, it means you're missing a lot of those spells. This is a problem for two reasons: first, you're spending mana and getting nothing for it, and second, your spells are on cooldown pretty frequently. As a support, you need to realize that the threat of your spells is often as powerful as the spell itself. Probably the best example of this is . The threat of being pulled is insanely high, and you need to play as though Blitzcrank is throwing that pull out even if he isn't. Because as soon as you don't, he will actually throw it out. And there you can see another tip on being a better support: try to only use your spells when you're nearly guaranteed to hit them. In summary, use fewer spells, but make them count.

Second:

My strengths are with cc, teamwork, poking, and vision. I'm generally bad at objective control, all-in engages, tanking, prioritizing farm versus ganking as jg, and CS under pressure [...] I can actually stutterstep now, how to cs with minion types and ratios, use attack-move, use quick-cast, learned where to ward, when to expect ganks, learned tons of champs' damage types and skills, how to land predictive skill shots, etc.

Different skills in League of Legends matter more at different levels of play, so the skills that will get you from Gold to Platinum are not the same as the skills that will get you from Bronze to Silver. Things like being able to stutterstep, using attack-move, and using quick-cast are not nearly as fundamental of skills as improving farming. And teamwork, though extremely powerful at higher levels of play, doesn't do quite as much in Bronze. (DISCLAIMER: I am not saying that you should not work with your team in Bronze. It's just that, if only 1 person on your team cares about teamwork, that person's teamwork skills aren't actually going to suddenly make the perfect team comp or something like that.) This is why people very often say that to get out of Bronze, you just have to work on CS'ing. Because you literally can just massively outfarm your opponents and roll over them because you have so much more gold. So try to learn some of those more basic skills, and as you climb, you'll find that your more advanced skills become more useful as you go.

Finally,

the matchmaking system essentially flags your account as belonging in a certain tier and then all but forces you down to that level

No. This is not how it works. Believing that this is how it works, though, is a good way to discourage yourself from actually getting better. Don't do that.

How do I know this? I was Bronze in Season 3. All of it. And I had much of the same frustrations as you. But, looking back on it, it was where I was supposed to be. I reached Gold in Season 4. I've reached Platinum this season. If you improve, you will climb. It will take time, so don't let yourself get discouraged if it takes a while.

Once again, I hope that helps, and I wish you the best of success on the Fields of Justice!

VekknaJul 9, 20151 votes

On Clarity: summoner 13 is absolutely a crutch. Going into a game, I don't know how lane will go. Will the adc follow up if I root something? Will I need to rank and use Lux's W a lot if the enemy is aggro or my adc loses lots of trades or eats lots of skillshots? If we get pushed under tower and can't B safely, will I need to spam skills to save the turret? summoner 3 can give you momentum to snowball and win lane, but summoner 13 is more versatile when at a disadvantage. I went a few games with a 15/0/15 mastery build using and it seemed to solve both problems.

On Regen: As support, I am rather spammy with skills, but I don't miss a whole lot. My goal is to do one or more of the following:

Make their adc worry about me and distract them from farming
Give my adc lots of small windows to attack when s/he feels comfortable
Poke enough to deter all-ins we would probably lose
For vision (Lux E, Zyra plants, Ori ball) if wards expire, are destroyed, we're being jg stalked, or we have a bush-humping laner
To keep them moving to capitalize on positioning mistakes

And if I'm being honest, it's because I don't always recognize what circumstances are "ideal" with all the matchup/comp variables. So it's safer to allow room for non-ideal decisions instead of blowing Exhaust on a fake-out. That's an experience issue, but I'm trying to minimize consequences while learning.

On Matchmaking: After bottoming out at B3 0 LP, I won 10 of my last 12 games and should be back to B1 series soon. Interestingly, my games have been completely free of afks/dcs and feeders. I've even won 5/6 of my Teemo games now that hellweek is over.

My LP gain/loss ratio has also equalized instead of losing 50% more LP than I gained for wins. It could be as simple as a bunch of horrible people queuing over the long holiday weekend. But it does seem to fit my theory that the matchmaking system decided I needed to be X rank, and I wouldn't be able to effectively climb until I hit the floor that would normalize my gains/losses and win ratio.

Question for you. What happened between the end of Season 3 and the start of Season 4 that changed you from a bronze player to a gold player? Did you improve your play that much in a short time, or did the season reset change something that allowed you to climb with your level of play at the end of S3? As for CS: It's definitely easier on some champs than others. I struggle on Lux early because of the variation between her super-low AA damage, passive procs, and minion types. Zyra's pretty easy, but her AA travel time takes some getting used to. Teemo's freakin' easy with his combination of attack speed, projectile speed, movement speed, and on-hit damage; it's really easy to harass without losing farm.

VekknaJul 9, 20151 votes

On Regen: As support, I am rather spammy with skills, but I don't miss a whole lot. My goal is to do one or more of the following:

Make their adc worry about me and distract them from farming
Give my adc lots of small windows to attack when s/he feels comfortable
Poke enough to deter all-ins we would probably lose
For vision (Lux E, Zyra plants, Ori ball) if wards expire, are destroyed, we're being jg stalked, or we have a bush-humping laner
To keep them moving to capitalize on positioning mistakes

On : I usually build it for the CDR, AP, and grievous wounds. The mana regen seems pretty negligible compared to Lux's mana costs, so I never even thought of it as a primary regen item for such a mana-hungry champ.

With the AP changes, building item 3070 is going to be the best long-term choice. item 3165 is the fastest route to CDR with the best build path for early game. Where would you pick up that 20% CDR?

RndmInternetManJul 11, 20151 votes

can give you momentum to snowball and win lane, but is more versatile when at a disadvantage.

This might be true during laning phase. But it's very important to remember that a lot of the game isn't in laning phase. Once laning phase is done, summoner 13 becomes more or less useless because you've got items and increased mana regen from levelling up. But summoner 3 or summoner 14 remain very useful, allowing you to shut down a fed enemy or get an extra kill at the end of a fight. And since the enemy nexus doesn't blow up during laning phase, I'd argue it's more important to be better prepared for the later parts of the game.

Another tip to help you out here (which you might already be aware of, but it's helpful to keep in mind): you don't have to win lane to win game. If you can, that's great, but, as a support, it's usually enough to keep your ADC safe while they farm, and play for the teamfights that happen later in the game. And a lot of that can be done using autoattacks, even as someone like Lux.

I'm trying to minimize consequences while learning

I can understand why you want to do this, but in the long run, you'll learn more if you don't. Think back to when you first started using summoner 4 . When you first start using Flash, they barely ever actually use it, because they're super afraid of using it wrong and then not having it. But as you get more used to it, you use it a lot more, and you get better with the spell as you go. Same thing here.

Where would you pick up that 20% CDR?

It is totally reasonable to get item 3165 or item 3174 as your first item. What I'm saying is, don't start your build off with and item 3070 ; after your mana item, getting damage is very important. As much as item 3040 is an awesome item, it takes a long time to get it stacked all the way up, and it's not so good if you lose before you get there.

Also, keep in mind that 20% CDR from item 3165 / item 3174 , 5% CDR from masteries, and 10% CDR from blue buff (if you can get it), gets you to nearly maxed CDR.

One other super helpful point about mana and CS'ing in mid lane: item 1056 gives you some mana back every time you kill a minion (or anything else). So work on that CS, and it'll help your mana too!

But it does seem to fit my theory that the matchmaking system decided I needed to be X rank

If you mean "my MMR was at a particular level and the system is designed to make my LP rank and my MMR match up over time", then yes. But! The game did not arbitrarily decide your MMR; your performance in your ranked games did that. Blaming the matchmaking system only blinds you to your own gameplay errors.

Congrats on levelling out though! That's the first step to climbing :)

What happened between the end of Season 3 and the start of Season 4 that changed you from a bronze player to a gold player?

Just to be clear, this wasn't a change that happened between the end of Season 3 and the start of Season 4. At the end of Season 3, I was ranked Bronze 2, 100LP. After my Season 4 placements, I was ranked Bronze 1, 0LP (longest promo series ever). It took me a number of months to get to Gold, and it wasn't a straight climb either. I dropped ranks in Silver sometimes. But I got better. My mechanics had to improve, my decision making had to improve, my objective control had to improve. And none of that was because of the season reset.

There is one thing that's awesome for lower level players about the ranked reset though: you get to play with higher level players than you normally do. But in order for this to be awesome, you have to accept that they are actually better than you. If you can do that, you can watch what they do and learn from them. I very distinctly remember one game from early Season 4. I was probably low silver at this point, and when the game started loading, I saw that all of my teammates were Gold in Season 3. At that point, to me, Gold level players might as well have been Challenger; I felt like I was playing with pros. That game was amazing, and really made me see what higher-level play was like. I saw objective control like I had never seen before, and I saw teamfighting like I had never seen it before. I distinctly remember that, every time I jumped into the enemy team, our Orianna had her ball on me, and it blew my mind. That game taught me a lot. Not everything that I learned in Season 4, but it was an important lesson for me.