[Discussion] Breaking 1600 - Page 9

Chauster,

Everything you are saying will help people get out of ELO Hell. However, your comments are showing that you have never been there yourself. ELO Hell is a frustration with losing your game because of your teammates being noticably subpar players that they make it nearly impossible to win the game despite how well you (or your sexy Taric partner) is doing.

You mention things like forcing a fight at dragon and forcing combat when they are trying to catchup on farm. What you don’t understand is that in ELO Hell (true ELO Hello is <1000ish rating), there aren't team fights at dragon. At most times in the game you can walk out and solo dragon yourself for 5 minutes. Many teams dont even want dragon and the only time dragon is killed is if they happen to saunter by it or if they have an intelligent WW jungling. In fact, many players do not even place killing towers high on their list of importance. They simply want to kill other players – deathmatch style.

You also mention to force battles when you have the advantage and the enemy is catching up on farm. What you dont understand is that at that ELO, the enemy doesnt care about last hitting or catching up on farm. This game is a death match. You get players that ask what their ult does on Shen. You get players who play Fiddlesticks and literally wait in the bush the entire game waiting for the enemy team to run close to their bush so they can ult. You get players who jump on Tryndamere and think they can 1v5 at level 6. There are players who literally do not care about the team oriented goal of winning the match, and they only care about their individual gaming experience. To them, the game is a solo game and they only care about amassing as many kills as they can.

How do you expect your suggestions to work when you are in champ select and the moment the bans start your last guy in queue says "mid as Jax" and locks in Jax no matter what your team says? How can we play the best champ for our team comp when our team comp looks good at queue and then we find out that our tank is actually building AD Shen? What can we do when we find out later in game that our carry is AP Tristana with a dorans blade to "fool the other team at start"?

Your suggestions are good for 1300-1500 ELO. But the term ELO Hell originated with the lower ELO brackets for a reason. It is hell. It's possible to get out, but not easy and it is almost entirely based on luck (or playing Mordekaiser when hes not banned). ELO Hell is real, and it might defy the logic of many as to how it can possibly be real – after all, how can a good player end up with such poor players? Can he just be that unlucky? He MUST belong with them, right?

The answer is simple. I will use myself as an example. I started playing this game approximately 6 months ago. I mained only Veigar for a long time, and then I mained Zilean after trying some Amumu. I got to level 30 and literally never took the game seriously or cared about winning. To me, a fun game was winning with a pre-arranged team of my friends. Suddenly, I am level 30 and decide I want to try Ezreal out (I see you and others mained him to get to top ELO). I want to be competitive. Well, I happened to start maining one of the hardest champs in the game to play in ranked matches right after he was nerfed. I was bad. Real bad. I was not good at last hitting, didn't have proper item builds for AD carry champs, and was overall just not good at LoL at this point (except I was fair at Zilean and Veigar…both mostly crap champions unfortunately).

So what happened? I started getting into the game. Figuring out the best items to buy, looking intently at champion stats, and trying to figure out how best to win at this game. I started taking it seriously. I watched a couple videos that featured you playing MF in a competitive setting. Suddenly, I got a lot better. I started playing ranged carry champs and carrying almost every match I play. I am a legitimately good player now. Pro level? Probably not yet. I kind of laugh at the "pro level" skill for this game because it's really not a skill based game – after you take it seriously and develop fundamentals through practice, the game is mostly about team synergy. But now I am stuck around 1000 ELO. I got myself up to close to 1300, but a terrible weekend playing way too many matches and losing so many (must've been a Brazilian holiday that weekend), and I was below 1000 again.

So the problem is with players who start out as poor players, but develop into good players. They are trapped in this low ELO Hell and have a very difficult time getting out. The guys who were good to start when Season One opened were able to hop on Ezreal and easily jump out of the starting ELO 1200 bracket.