Understanding Elo Hell
The first step to solving a problem, is to identify the problem. 'Elo hell' is a problem to many players out there, and it is crucial that you understand what it is.
1. You never belong to a specific Elo. You belong to an Elo range, such as 1200-1400, instead of a flat 1300. This is a 5vs5 game, and a single player cannot control the environment the same way he/she would in a 1vs1 setting. This creates variance - the statistical measure of how your results will be dispersed.
2. You can have a very narrow Elo range such as 1300-1400, you can also have a very wide Elo range such as 1200-1600. It will never be so narrow that a player will always have a specific Elo, and it will never be so wide that a player will jump between 1200 and 2000 constantly.
3. This variance is determined by many things, mechanical skill, knowledge in itemization, reflex, lane matchups, team comps, physical and mental condition, tilt control, internet connection, the weather, number of socks you have, etc.
4. And this variance determines your Elo range, and it is Elo range that creates Elo hell. Elo Hell is the bottom of your Elo range, the same range that you belong in the first place.
Yes, if you think you are in Elo hell, you probably belong in it. There are exceptions of course, but very few.
"But I always do good, it's my teammates that suck!" - It is natural that you will compare "your best" to the seemingly noob teammates that you have. It is very likely that you will remember only your good plays, and think highly of yourself than your average performance, whereas if you go through a game with somebody who performed extremely poorly, you will immediately tag him as a noob and assume that is how he normally plays. So in comparison, it seems like you are a thousand Elo ahead of your teammates!
Let's put it this way. Say you have 70% win ratio as Graves, but 40% as Caitlyn. You usually do well as Graves, but not so much as Caitlyn. How would a random solo Q player that you've never played with before, view you as a player, when you play Graves? Not too shabby. But what if another random solo Q player watches you play one of your bad games as Caitlyn? Yet another nubsie pubsie.
What about this scenario? You just came home from a party, all wasted, but in a mood for a game of LoL. Turn your PC, somehow manage to login, and stupidity kicks in, search for ranked game, picks rumble and go top. BAM! Don't even remember what happened after, you simply turn off the game while mumbling, "Hurrrrrr derp fun fun, I bed now.", while your teammates are left mind-boggled, flaming and blaming endlessly to unleash their anger towards what they've just witnessed, possibly the worst, most worthless, game throwing, rage inducing yordle in the universe.
How about this. You are just playing a ranked game of LoL like any other day, everything seems to be going smoothly, picked your best champion, game started. Decent CS, 5 minutes in. Then suddenly, you hear your favorite ringtone from your iPhone. 'Never gonna give you up~ Never gonna let you down~~Never gonna' Pick it up, it's your girlfriend. Yap. She just wouldn't shut up! You are completely distracted, don't react to ganks, give up easy kills, pretty much end up feeding nonstop. Your teammates are blaming you, but you have no peace of mind to even look at the chat. What do they think of you? Some troll living in a cave, only to que ranked whenever they do, to make their games miserable. Elo hell!
Point is, you don't always play your A game. So do other players.
"But I always get tards on my team. Why can't I have normal (as in, not stupid) games all the time?" - You occasionally get into games where all your teammates are playing good and the game ends smoothly at around 20 minute mark. This is not your average game of solo Q. This is the IDEAL solo Q game which happens like once per 10 games. Your average solo Q game consists of, at the very least, one player who fits one or more of following characteristics : noob, rager, foreigner, troll, drunk/high, IQ of a donkey, etc.
Also, what about yourself? Do you ever have a bad game? If you say no to this, I will personally visit your household and smack you in the head, because you are clearly delusional. Even I get games where I play so bad, that I'm a huge part of why the team lost. It happens! It's just that we are all too full of ourselves to remember these games, but rather just forget they ever happened and move on. How convenient. The fact remains, that you too, are a part of the result, whether it be a win or loss, however big or small.
So Elo hell, is the bottom of your Elo range where you "feel" that you are better than most players, and it will always be there for you. So really, you have two options from here.
1. Try to "ride" the high end of your Elo range by playing ONLY your best champs,
2. Get better as a player and shift your Elo range upwards, so the quality of your Elo hell increases, whenever you get stuck down there.
Or, you can make a third option for yourself if you constantly find yourself in Elo hell and games are unenjoyable,
3. Screw ranked games and just play normal games with your friends that you like to play with, do whatever you want and try to have fun!
Conclusion
That's poker, folks.
Thanks for reading, you may or may not agree with my view on Elo hell, but if you enjoyed it, you may also enjoy my stream!
www.twitch.tv/chu8
Original post with a little introduction on Chu8 is located here!
It's nice.. i agreed that i don't always play my main champs, and i don't feed / throw the game, but i don't give my best as i would do if i play my main champs. I just play decent, and that's not enough in the most of cases.
ReplyDeleteWhat i always say is, i don't want 2k elo, because to get that, i am sure that i should give away a lot of things, i just want a elo where the ranged ad farms, the support helps and get wards, people doesn't blame.. because you can see when someone is having a bad game, and someone is really bad..
I can't forget my last game with a really noob, a person who had 5 victory ranked games, and he played graves, (did 0-5-1 and 38 creps in 28 min), his support was a good player, and he wanted to kill himself having to support a person who hasn't a single idea of the game... I have 500 ranked games, (victories/loses) why am i with this people? Don't give me top players, give me people with a brain! I always play to win, but i don't complain if i loose because the enemy team played clearly in a better way...
Cause of that you say gg when the game finishes because it is a good game despite if you win or loose... Riot, stop nerfs/bufs, fix that :D