Discussing balance 2.0

[Thrawn]

Point taken, though the MF was pretty bad and gargas was a lozly choice (yeah i know gargas is pretty effective in his own right but still  ). Actually couldn't watch the game to the end in one sitting, pretty boring really. Having seen top level (been a while since i played at that level honestly), mid level, and scrub level, the difference in ability is so small its laughable how "eportish" riot wants league to be rofl. The key difference between Mid level to Top level seem to be last hitting purposely clearing your own jungle.

Really?  I see a world of difference watching a "top level" game vs. just some random scrubs stream.  Better positioning, better champion picks, better laning combos, better dps focus, more dragons, earlier barons, better gank setups etc. etc. Maybe I'm crazy I guess.

[DLRiley]

Point taken, though the MF was pretty bad and gargas was a lozly choice (yeah i know gargas is pretty effective in his own right but still   ). Actually couldn't watch the game to the end in one sitting, pretty boring really. Having seen top level (been a while since i played at that level honestly), mid level, and scrub level, the difference in ability is so small its laughable how "eportish" riot wants league to be rofl. The key difference between Mid level to Top level seem to be last hitting purposely clearing your own jungle.

Really?  I see a world of difference watching a "top level" game vs. just some random scrubs stream.  Better positioning, better champion picks, better laning combos, better dps focus, more dragons, earlier barons, better gank setups etc. etc. Maybe I'm crazy I guess.

Well league is more like this.

Top level --> mid level ----> scrub level. Which translates to Top level ---------------------------> scrub level. What does a scrub needs to learn? How to pick champs, how to pick who to lane with, how to team fight, how to not feed shaco and warwick? Once you ween most scrubs from wondering off for no reason they become mid level players or alternatively you can teach them to last hit and not actively push a lane and watch them act like mid level players until the late game. Why do you think people complain about elo hell? Fact is most people are barely above scrub level or just at the fringes of entering top level play but lack the dedicated team. Unless your in that category, the fringe category, your probably going to be treated like a scrub level player just a few feet from the bottom of the barrel as far as league match maker and rank system is concerned. Compare to say SC2 where a Diamond league is on another dimension to a gold league player and godlike to a silver league player and lovecraftean horror demon to a bronze league.

The funniest moment in the match i just saw was the two attempts at early baron. Truly a lolz worthy moment.

[Samprimary]

Today alone I fought kog'maws, twitches, miss fortunes, ashes, corkis, kennens, and even xin zhaos who stacked blades, and fought alongside others who have done the same. Secret's totally outta the bag now 8)

[Thrawn]

So I got stuck playing MF in a game yesterday (ranked and pvp.net decided to not accept my request to switch characters with someone else so we both has the wrong masteries and runes).  Her ult seems just bad now, the cone is SO small afer the nerf.  Unless someone was stunned in it they just take one step ti either side and they aren't taking damage.

Also I keep seeing mid Ashe players who are leveling the slow first...did someone make a forum post that people are copying or something?  I can see the reasoning behind it be I'm not yet convinced its better then the extra damage from volley.

[Astorax]

So I got stuck playing MF in a game yesterday (ranked and pvp.net decided to not accept my request to switch characters with someone else so we both has the wrong masteries and runes).  Her ult seems just bad now, the cone is SO small afer the nerf.  Unless someone was stunned in it they just take one step ti either side and they aren't taking damage.

Also I keep seeing mid Ashe players who are leveling the slow first...did someone make a forum post that people are copying or something?  I can see the reasoning behind it be I'm not yet convinced its better then the extra damage from volley.

Ashe mid taking the slow first is becoming, from what I've seen, the generally accepted method of harass... The reason being that it makes it a LOT easier for your jungler to come gank mid.  Volley doesn't help the gank, the slow does...so early game, if you have a fairly coordinated team, it's better to have the slow over the increased dmg.  If you don't have a jungler, or your team isn't really well organized, then you want to go for volley first for sure.  The main problem is, people go for the slow even when they don't have the team to support it...those are bad Ashes. :)

[Typhon]

Given what you just said, I'd take slow regardless of whether or not my jungler/team had a clue just for the psychological advantage (if I played Ashe).

[Astorax]

Given what you just said, I'd take slow regardless of whether or not my jungler/team had a clue just for the psychological advantage (if I played Ashe).

Well yeah, the main problem is if your opponent gets wind of the fact you don't have team backup, at least early game they can just charge and eat you since you don't have the volley dmg backing up the slow.  It's cases like that were you probably want volley instead to just straight harass.

[Thrawn]

Given what you just said, I'd take slow regardless of whether or not my jungler/team had a clue just for the psychological advantage (if I played Ashe).

Well yeah, the main problem is if your opponent gets wind of the fact you don't have team backup, at least early game they can just charge and eat you since you don't have the volley dmg backing up the slow.  It's cases like that were you probably want volley instead to just straight harass.

That's basicly what happenend in my game, from level 1 Ashe was super agressive and trying to make me run with frost arrow on.  But if I just stand and fight autoattack + double up crushed autoattack + nothing.  Its as you said, like Panth mid, people playing it without knowing why its supposed to be good.

[Ozzu]

I just recently had a bit of a League of Legends epiphany.

After having what is basically a .500 record for my entire League of Legends career since beta just playing various champs decently well, I've realized in the last few days that if you just pick a main (Jax in my case) and play him really well, your record starts to magically improve.

Here I always just chalked it up to circumstances which were primarily out of my control. If I wasn't "bad" or feeding left and right, I was good enough to win. It sure seems as though that's not actually the case.

This is probably obvious to others, but it just never occurred to me that me actually playing at a higher level on the same teams could actually mean the difference between winning and losing a lot of the time. Even if I wasn't bad before, it makes a big difference.

[Ozzu]

Maybe I spoke a little too soon. After winning 10 straight and something like 16 out of 20, I've lost 2 in a row in pretty spectacular fashion. 

[Chimpy]

Maybe I spoke a little too soon. After winning 10 straight and something like 16 out of 20, I've lost 2 in a row in pretty spectacular fashion. 

Just because you win a bunch in a row doesn't mean you can't lose a few in a row.

[Samprimary]

LoL's matchmaking system loves to break streaks. Win that many in a row and you'll find yourself a 'compensator' on a bad team.

[Ozzu]

Just because you win a bunch in a row doesn't mean you can't lose a few in a row.

I'm very well aware of this from personal experience. A few months back, I had a friend come and stay a couple of days. We did some LAN games and some LoL. He hadn't played in a while so he was pretty rusty. Even so, we did the arranged team thing with just us two and it was a complete and total failure all around. I bet we played something like 20 games over the two days we were hanging out. We lost 18 of them. At one point, we lost 16 straight.

It's just now taken me til the last few days to even climb back up to a .500 record from that weekend.

[kaid]

The wow matchmaking system in solo queue pretty much wants you to be .500. You can get ahead of the curve but eventually it starts sticking you in teams with people having 100+ leaves and you wind up 3v5 and lose. Hell I had an 9 game win streak and then my next game we had only 2 people non afk and the game after that everybody on the team but me had 12 plus deaths before level 10.

[Samprimary]

I play in two major groups. Sometimes, they include bads. I am either playing on Team Bads and Team No Bads. Sometimes, Team All Bads. But really, it comes down to even just one bad! Any one single bad player makes it Team Bads. If I played with Team Bads 100% of the time, I would never, ever, ever, ever have a .500 ratio. I can crush and compensate as much as I want, but LoL's dynamic keeps you from having the true single faceraper that could seal the deal like in DotA & HoN, except in very rare instances (one time leading to a game in which I got 50 kills). It comes down to team fights. And if it's an even match or you are behind and you have to play it safe and wait for them to overextend and capitalize on this + pushed forward creep lanes, one bad gets everyone killed.

On Team No Bads we would have these wonderful, wonderful wonderful games where the five-mans would be pacing around each other in heated skirmishes, but nobody would extend or engage until we had an opportunity we could solidly capitalize upon. I would realize that we just went five minutes where the only reason why we didn't get curbstomped is because we didn't have a single bad. One bad on the team means that they DID get caught out in the open or they DID just go wander off to kill wolves even though mid was getting pushed or they DID overextend and waste their ult cause they totally thought they could sneak tactics out and watch this guys I know you said back to the tower but I am overwhelmed by the temptation to make a passing stab at galio for .000005% of his health to show him who is boss and oh shit now permastunning is happening and oh shit oh shit oops well we're dead.

[Hoax]

I keep wanting to pretend I have never read this thread.

Evidence #1.
For WCG Riot used the elo system to seed 64 teams 1-64 in a single elim tournament (think March Madness), of the final 16, 13 were from seeds 1-16, the final four were 1-4.  Their system at the top is essentially flawless.

Evidence #2.
No good player has ever posted a thread saying that they couldn't take a friend's account or a smurf out of low ranked with ease.  Several threads have been posted by people who have done just that in a very small number of games.  This seriously calls into question the idea that every game of low elo ranked involves so many intentional feeders, griefers and afk'ers from the absolute start that the outcome is assured.

An example of scrub think:
You don't give your jungler sight at river (you are mid, or top on blue or bot on purple) even though you could and he gets ganked while starting at blue buff and ragequits.  You recount that game as we had a leaver and we were doomed MM hates me and wants me to be at .500 but reality is if you played better jungler doesn't die so free and doesn't ragequit 2min into the game.

[DLRiley]

In normal que your 5man rating and your Solo rating is one in the same. Of course no one at the top of the bracket complains about getting their new account to the top, whats so hard about getting invited to the same 5man that carried you up the ranks in the first place. The "scrubs" in this game are the people who solo que more than 50% of their games. There is no skill or secret to solo que, its not the ragers and the leavers that make it so, its just that your just as likely to que up with a bad player as you are a good player regardless of how many wins you get in the row. The best I've managed is several 3 game win streaks ended by one loss. However despite having this pattern several times, I am just as likely to que with bad players in solo que as if my elo hasn't changed at all. Despite several wins I'm just as likely to have to find a way to carry a team of master yi, warwick, garen and shaco as a guy who has a match record of straight loses.

This is simple because League prevents you from vetting bad players and bad teams in general when solo queing. The pro's NEVER have to worry about shaco, master yi and warwick on the same team because they play the game exclusively as a 5man. The pugs, the solo quers, are stuck in a coin toss every time they select solo que by the nature of the game. Right now no matter how good you are you are stuck at .500 if you solo que most games. I know a friend whose rating was once at the 1600 in rank que with a .550 win rate. Number of games ridiculously small and didn't play a ranked solo que since achieving that rank. This was at the beginning of the very beginning of the ranked season. I caught the rank season a month later and only managed to get 1400 before dropping down to 1300 then 1200 then 1300 and now at the bottom of 1200.

What damaged the system is the punishing of que dodging, especially in ranked. Which ironically was a much heavier punishment when i return to league a month after the rank season started. Solo quers need a way to vet teams, something that que dodging allowed. Without que dodging the bad players don't get sifted to the bottom, they simply stay within the general populace depressing the whole system. That and there is no real encouragement to get better at the game. Being bad at the game doesn't filter you to the bottom of the barrel, in fact it places you with players better than you are, and they have no choice but to carry you.

[Prospero]

Hoax I'd generally agree with you, your skills matter, but Sam is correct too. In my last 5 games I've had a Sion who called "tank" decide to stay behind the whole team even when we tried to get behind him( or boldly ran away to farm wolves while we were trying to hold a tower), a jungle Warwick who didn't come out of the jungle for most of the game, and a Pantheon that was really excited about his ult and would jump on the other team while we were half way across the map. Repeatedly. 18 deaths worth.

The two games where my teammates didn't use their foreheads to play we won easily. The other 3 were desperate fights that were effectively 4 v 5 at best.  

So yes you can be awesome as can be and it will affect your ELO but there is an astounding number of chodes in the 1200's and it is really a crap shoot as to whether you are going to get Captain Soup Pot for a teammate or if the other team will.

[Hoax]

You are both wrong.

DL is just retarded, they don't only 5-man or they wouldn't be ranked well in the solo queue where you can only duo.  Also every disprove ELO Hell thread has been solo queue elo boosting only and all have reported easy success.

You can win with retards. Its a valid argument that sometimes in order to win you don't need to hard carry so much as psychologically coddle teammates.  Sometimes you need to bail out your teammate doing poorly by switching lanes or ganking his lane or putting up the ward he is too stupid to use.  That is a valid critique but its a far cry from MM determines if I win or lose.

Scrub mentality will stop you from getting better at the game and it will stop you from gaining elo in ranked or normal solo duo or 5-man.

[Kail]

Sometimes you need to bail out your teammate doing poorly by switching lanes or ganking his lane or putting up the ward he is too stupid to use.  That is a valid critique but its a far cry from MM determines if I win or lose.

Seems fairly similar to me...?  I mean, you're basically conceding that MM makes it harder to win in the first sentence there, which is what "MM is making me lose" is essentially saying.  I mean, sure, it's not impossible to win if your teammates are bad, and a lot of people tend to ignore their own mistakes, but if you take two fairly even teams (which is what MM does) but one of the teams gets stuck with a player who is a little worse, the team which is at a disadvantage is usually going to lose.

This "stop thinking like a scrub" thing is an entirely parallel discussion.  I can examine my faults and the mistakes I make without making the bizarre claim that the performance of my team has no impact on the outcome of a team based game.

[Thrawn]

"I lost because my team sucked." is just an excuse to not look at yourself and what you could of done better to win the game.  It's a problem I've guilty of very often myself.  Right up with the excuse "OMG, I got ganked because of no MIA!" when someone has been out of lane for 3 minutes and you were too lazy to watch your mini map.  If you tank sucks at initiating, figure out how to do it youself, if your carry keeps dying figure out how to protect them etc. etc. etc...

Yes you occasionaly get the AFK, or intentional feeder and you are just done, but most games you should be trying to support your bad team-mates and winning the game rather then just giving up as soon as you see your jungle Mundo die to wraith camp.

[Kail]

"I lost because my team sucked." is just an excuse to not look at yourself and what you could of done better to win the game.

That doesn't make it untrue, is the point I was trying to get across.  The claim that "we lost because MM paired us up with a noob who fed for five minutes" and the claim that "you won't get better if you blame your team for your losses" are not contradictory.  It's possible to notice your mistakes while at the same time noticing that you're winning/losing because it's a 4v5 game.

I'm not saying "It's all their fault" or anything, but there are a fair number of matches where the major factor in a defeat was because of something done by another player (as well as several where it was, in fact, from me).  "You need to believe X in order to get better at this game" is a different claim from "X is false."

[Prospero]

Hurf durf "scrub mentality"  

I've never given up because of crappy teammates, and I have never not analyzed my play after a game. Nonetheless if your team sucks, you will lose. That's a fact; not scrub mentality. If you try to switch lanes with a person and they will not switch there is nothing you can do about that. If your jungler opts to never help his team in a meaningful way there is nothing you can do about that. If your team will not form a lane partnership that will be successful there is nothing you can do about that. If your teammates refuse to gather up to defend an inhibitor tower and instead farm random lanes, there is nothing you can do about it.
Shockingly enough, being a team game, the team actually is important.

[Nonentity]

The problem is that the first sign of someone being bad, they are the whipping boy the whole game. Yi overextended? "gg feeder yi" if he gets hit with a first blood.

People are fickle - it takes a remarkably low amount of loss for people to throw their hands up in despair. Dunno what you can do about that facet of human condition, other than try your best to carry them through their apathy.

[Hoax]

Hurf durf "scrub mentality"  

I've never given up because of crappy teammates, and I have never not analyzed my play after a game. Nonetheless if your team sucks, you will lose. That's a fact; not scrub mentality. If you try to switch lanes with a person and they will not switch there is nothing you can do about that. If your jungler opts to never help his team in a meaningful way there is nothing you can do about that. If your team will not form a lane partnership that will be successful there is nothing you can do about that. If your teammates refuse to gather up to defend an inhibitor tower and instead farm random lanes, there is nothing you can do about it.
Shockingly enough, being a team game, the team actually is important.

Its not a fact. You are full of fucking shit.  The elo is pretty remarkably accurate if your team sucks so do you and so does the other team, elo is not so wildly inaccurate in the vast majority of games, especially in ranked.  The thing is scrubs are often unconsciously just waiting for a sign from god telling them if they have the sucky team that is destined to lose.  Many games are decided in the first 10 minutes because so many scrub players are ready to give up if the lane match up is difficult or if one player on their team doesn't do things the way they think they should let alone if somebody dies twice early or if their lane partner gets them killed or does something they feel is incredibly stupid.  If one player make a mistake and then one or two teammates seeing that mistake decide they have a shit teammate who is going to make them lose then bam the game is over but not because the first guy fucked up but because the two scrubs were just waiting to be excused from responsibility for whatever happens in the rest of the game.

Every game where you start poorly and then salvage your game by farming back into contention, avoiding some champ that is getting you for free or just by switching to a sacrificial protect a carry who has the farm to win fights role proves that bad teammates (when you start poorly you are the bad teammate) don't lose games by themselves.  I played a game with Nasus last night where I was 0/3/1 by the time I got to level 11, my team hated me because I wasn't even trying to get into fights, I was trying to maintain superior farm and stay out of fights as I had noticed our Irelia and troll where overextending and initiating poorly so I was going to need to hit carry status to win that game.  The game winning 5v5 I killed their primary carry, went down to 20% life, hunted down their Irelia who had finished off one of our guys in the jungle, killed her, got my hp back, waded back into the fight and finished off the rest of their team.

For 30min of that game I was the bad teammate I'm sure in several of those other 4 guy's minds.  In the end I was the most dominant force in the game by a fairly wide margin despite the slow start.  If one or two of them had just given up on the game, or started talking shit to me (there were some harsh words in team chat at several points but it didn't get out of hand) or afk'd or fed a kill or done anything scrubby the game could not have been won as in the end it was on a razor edge.

[Kail]

For 30min of that game I was the bad teammate I'm sure in several of those other 4 guy's minds.  In the end I was the most dominant force in the game by a fairly wide margin despite the slow start.  If one or two of them had just given up on the game, or started talking shit to me (there were some harsh words in team chat at several points but it didn't get out of hand) or afk'd or fed a kill or done anything scrubby the game could not have been won as in the end it was on a razor edge.

What's your point, here?  You claim that ELO is super accurate and that if you lose, it's because you personally suck and has nothing to do with your teammates... then you give an example in which you EXPLICITLY STATE that despite playing well and dominating the endgame, you still would have lost if one of your teammates had DCed.  These seem contradictory to me.

[DLRiley]

You are both wrong.

DL is just retarded, they don't only 5-man or they wouldn't be ranked well in the solo queue where you can only duo.  Also every disprove ELO Hell thread has been solo queue elo boosting only and all have reported easy success.

You can win with retards. Its a valid argument that sometimes in order to win you don't need to hard carry so much as psychologically coddle teammates.  Sometimes you need to bail out your teammate doing poorly by switching lanes or ganking his lane or putting up the ward he is too stupid to use.  That is a valid critique but its a far cry from MM determines if I win or lose.

Scrub mentality will stop you from getting better at the game and it will stop you from gaining elo in ranked or normal solo duo or 5-man.

The only credibility the solo rank system has is if there is rank decay which there isn't. Currently there are plenty of people who have high rank and barely play a game after the achieved it. That or reset the solo que rankings more often.

[Thrawn]

Someone being AFK/intentional feeding and playing with bad team mates are not really the same thing, it's two different discussions.

[Prospero]

That's something a scrub would say. Hoax could make up for an intentional feeder.

I'm not even sure what the fuck you are ranting about Hoax. Yes, "scrubs" give up and lose games. People who are decent try to figure out a way to get their shit together and contribute to the team. You should get a Nobel for that astute observation.

Alright master of all things LoL, let me hear how you would deal with the following situation and you can show the us scrubs how high ELO people handle things. You are Sivir. Your MF runs out in front of Amummu to try to initiate a team fight and proceeds to get grabbed by Blitz and eaten. SHe does this repeatedly. She is 0/12/3 by halfway through the game. Whatcha gonna do?

[Astorax]

That's something a scrub would say. Hoax could make up for an intentional feeder.

I'm not even sure what the fuck you are ranting about Hoax. Yes, "scrubs" give up and lose games. People who are decent try to figure out a way to get their shit together and contribute to the team. You should get a Nobel for that astute observation.

Alright master of all things LoL, let me hear how you would deal with the following situation and you can show the us scrubs how high ELO people handle things. You are Sivir. Your MF runs out in front of Amummu to try to initiate a team fight and proceeds to get grabbed by Blitz and eaten. SHe does this repeatedly. She is 0/12/3 by halfway through the game. Whatcha gonna do?

CALL FUCKING GHOSTBUSTERS THAT'S WHAT...

wut, wrong answer?

FUCK, I'll go derail a different thread.

[Astorax]

Every game where you start poorly and then salvage your game by farming back into contention, avoiding some champ that is getting you for free or just by switching to a sacrificial protect a carry who has the farm to win fights role proves that bad teammates (when you start poorly you are the bad teammate) don't lose games by themselves.  I played a game with Nasus last night where I was 0/3/1 by the time I got to level 11, my team hated me because I wasn't even trying to get into fights, I was trying to maintain superior farm and stay out of fights as I had noticed our Irelia and troll where overextending and initiating poorly so I was going to need to hit carry status to win that game.  The game winning 5v5 I killed their primary carry, went down to 20% life, hunted down their Irelia who had finished off one of our guys in the jungle, killed her, got my hp back, waded back into the fight and finished off the rest of their team.

For 30min of that game I was the bad teammate I'm sure in several of those other 4 guy's minds.  In the end I was the most dominant force in the game by a fairly wide margin despite the slow start.  If one or two of them had just given up on the game, or started talking shit to me (there were some harsh words in team chat at several points but it didn't get out of hand) or afk'd or fed a kill or done anything scrubby the game could not have been won as in the end it was on a razor edge.

Here's the thing Hoax...you, in the case you're presenting, are in fact, NOT the bad teammate.  You are in fact a good player/teammate that happened to get caught in bad positions and/or gangbanged.  You then took that information, and adjusted playstyle to account for it, and by the end, carried.

That's not being a bad teammate, that's being a good teammate.

Take your situation, and instead of adjusting in lane, going for superior farm, and avoiding fights, you continued to do exactly what you had been doing the whole time.

THAT would be, being a bad teammate, and there comes a breaking point where if the enemy team gets fed enough, and enters team fights with an effective 4v5 because you're totally useless, you will likely lose the game unless the matchmaking is SPOT on.  In some games, sure, it is, but in the vast majority outside the highest bracket levels, it's not.  Thus resulting in a game where you lose horribly because you have said bad teammate who fed repeatedly.

[Hoax]

Whatever. Stay free. If you want to see things as not your fault your gonna see things as not your fault.  The elo system works, the MM works.  It can't work 100% of the time (afk's, people who dont like team comp so decide to grief etc) but I'm pretty damn sure we all deserve the rank we have and no matter how many scenarios or excuses you come up with that say it isn't so.

Here's the thing Hoax...you, in the case you're presenting, are in fact, NOT the bad teammate.  You are in fact a good player/teammate that happened to get caught in bad positions and/or gangbanged.  You then took that information, and adjusted playstyle to account for it, and by the end, carried.

You guys miss the point.  In fighting sports there is a notion that sometimes one guy can tell their opponent is just looking for a way out as they feel beaten.  I think that compares well to what I'm talking about here.  If you have this scrub mentality where your loses aren't your fault because every game you play at the same skill level and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose so it must be outside your control then you are going to end up looking for that way out when the game starts to go poorly.  The stronger your belief that MM decides your fate ahead of the game the more it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  Why try hard if MM has decided its your turn to lose right?

I'm done here though, people want to think its not their fault when they lose, whatever helps you sleep at night.

[Astorax]

Whatever. Stay free. If you want to see things as not your fault your gonna see things as not your fault.  The elo system works, the MM works.  It can't work 100% of the time (afk's, people who dont like team comp so decide to grief etc) but I'm pretty damn sure we all deserve the rank we have and no matter how many scenarios or excuses you come up with that say it isn't so.

Here's the thing Hoax...you, in the case you're presenting, are in fact, NOT the bad teammate.  You are in fact a good player/teammate that happened to get caught in bad positions and/or gangbanged.  You then took that information, and adjusted playstyle to account for it, and by the end, carried.

You guys miss the point.  In fighting sports there is a notion that sometimes one guy can tell their opponent is just looking for a way out as they feel beaten.  I think that compares well to what I'm talking about here.  If you have this scrub mentality where your loses aren't your fault because every game you play at the same skill level and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose so it must be outside your control then you are going to end up looking for that way out when the game starts to go poorly.  The stronger your belief that MM decides your fate ahead of the game the more it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  Why try hard if MM has decided its your turn to lose right?

I'm done here though, people want to think its not their fault when they lose, whatever helps you sleep at night.

If you can actually answer what both Prospero and I have presented as use-cases where a bad teammate does in fact, cause you to lose, then we will actually listen to what you have to say...but for now all I hear is WAH WAH WAH YOU GUYS ARGUE TOO GOOD I'M GONNA GO PICK ON SOME INTERNET WEENIES ELSEWHERE.

The genre is massively team-oriented, and there are cases where no matter how good/bad you play, the game is lost by an unbelievably bad player and it really DOESN'T have anything to do with how you personally play.  Yes, the MM works PRETTY darn well (better at higher levels of ELO for sure), no one is arguing that point.  The MM doesn't work when it does what it occasionally does, which is grab a REALLY low ELO player that's in the pool to balance out some higher level ELO players against a team of mid-level ELO players.  That really low ELO player can occasionally feed, be out of position, and not help the team enough that they cause a loss.

Our assertion is that you're wrong that thinking you're losing because of a bad teammate is scrub mentality.  It's just not in a game like this.  But like you said, whatever helps you sleep at night dude. :)

[DLRiley]

I've been playing this game since beta when runes were free and you had to use the rune combiner to get the runes you like. I have to say this game is not serious business, losing to most people is a matter of coin toss as oppose to individual skill. The problem is that the better you get the more your loses are due to coin toss and less your opponents actually beating you. Because one player can cost the game it creates a negative feedback loop that literally tears a team apart in the first 5 minutes of the game, not even counting the rage at champ select. League is not serious business if you solo que that is just plain fact.

[Samprimary]

You guys miss the point.  In fighting sports there is a notion that sometimes one guy can tell their opponent is just looking for a way out as they feel beaten.  I think that compares well to what I'm talking about here.  If you have this scrub mentality where your loses aren't your fault because every game you play at the same skill level and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose so it must be outside your control then you are going to end up looking for that way out when the game starts to go poorly.  The stronger your belief that MM decides your fate ahead of the game the more it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  Why try hard if MM has decided its your turn to lose right?

Yeah, I don't think that this whole scrub-mentality-theory is as encompassing as you need it to be for the underlying theory to hold water! Especially considering aforementioned scrubs — especially in the ragequitter example — are exactly the sort of bads which can render it so that your entire game is dicked.

All of these style of games suffer that fate. I can always tell when our team is going to win because of a single player on the enemy team. I then go about ensuring this, maximally, for my benefit. Because I like IP. The less of a chance I give the other players to be able to compensate, the better.