User blog:Mineko Charat Lucky/Low Elo doesn't exactly mean you're bad at the game

For you tactical RPG players out there, ever played any of the Sangokushi(RoTK) series? Well, even if you don't, let me set an example easy enough for people who don't know about the genre easier to understand, using that game.

In that tactical RPG, a General has 5 stats - Leadership, Strength, Intelligence, Politics, Charisma. Leadership determines how good your general manages the military, force distribution and resources. Strength in that game determines your generals attack power, and how good he is when fighting, especially in duels. Intelligence on the other hand, are people who are smart enough to have an array of strategies and tactics to win against the enemy, they excel in debate wars, to speak in old english "Ye Olde Keyboard Knights", where if you are even foolish enough to say nonsense like "umad brah?" in debates like that, the enemy debater will probably respond at how you are a disgrace to your family and your ancestors for such meaningless rubbish, you're nothing more than a brainless swine that does not deserve to even waste his time talking to you and do not deserve to lead your soldiers and should surrender yourself instead ANYHOW I'm getting carried away and back to topic... Politics determine how good you are at managing the country, espionage and relationships between empires. And finally, Charisma determines how cool and respected the general is.

Now then, which general is important in RotK? The stupid but powerful general or the smart but weak general? Any good player will tell you it's both. What does this have to do with LoL then? LoL Elo value mostly consists of the stat Strength, which is how skilled you are at controlling your champion, how skilled you are at last hitting, how good you are at chasing and escaping, how good you are at positioning etc. In fact strength covers most of what you do in LoL, you can build your champion like a 200 elo and can still play the game well solely by how experienced you are at playing your or  (like say, 2500 games of them).

The other stats are pretty secondary and are not as much as Strength even when combined. Leadership is the largest secondary stat, in LoL it means you know how to rally your team, you know when to initiate or to retreat, you know how to control your team and warn them of incoming enemy opportunities, you know when to capture objectives, or to take towers and inhibitors.

Intelligence determines how much you understand the game, you know how to play the champion theoretically, you know the limits, strengths and weaknesses of champions, you know what to build and how to counterbuild and adaptbuild according to the game plan, you know what to do for that current time, either to farm and turtle more, or to take objectives, etc.

Politics mean you how much you know about resources. You know if your team has more gold than the enemy or vice versa, which allows you to plan, forcing fights, or counterjungle, or threatening objectives. You know when to burn summoner spells at maximum efficiency.

Charisma determines how cool or professional you are, you know how to be humble in victory, and graceful in defeat. You know how to say "gg, well played" when the enemy outplays you at the end of the game by taking down your nexus after a good fight instead of "OMG my teammates are scrubs repot!". You know how to enjoy the game, and make fun of your teammates and yourself post game, such as "trololol I keep missing my skillshots all day, those jukes you did are f**kin awesome" when you're vs vayne.

Here's the good news and the bad news, you can be good solely by strength alone, LoL is a game about fighting after all, if you're good at motor skills, you will outlane the opponent, being much more fed than the opponent, and can carry the game by yourself.
 * You may have poor leadership, but why bother when you can find people who can tell you what you should do? "focus cait and avoid ali" the captain said, and skilled as you are with your years of experience with your, you replied with "no prob this is ez" and proceed to wipe caitlyn's face off the map.
 * You may have poor intelligence, you probably suck at teaching, you probably are not counterbuilding your opponent or are using substandard builds, but substandard builds aren't as punishing as being low in skill. Give the best items in the game to that newbie, and he will still lose as he sucks at understand his champion, landing his skillshots, positioning etc.
 * You may have poor politics, but just like leadership, why bother all the thinking when you can smash your enemies off the face of the planet?
 * You may have poor charisma, you may probably be a toxic player and you regularly rage at your noob team all day, but who cares you said, screw charisma, I have teh skillz scrub you said. (This is still bad though, nobody will like you for being an arse)

So to summarize elo, it's Elo = Strength + Leadership/2 + Intelligence/2 + Politics/5 + Charisma/10, as Strength > Leadership+Intelligence+Politics+Charisma. What does this mean? Elo means you're good at playing, it doesn't mean you're smart, good at leading, enjoying your game etc. Being 2000+ elo doesn't entitle you to scoff at 1200 and below players when they talk about counterbuilds, counterpicks, strategies and stuff. Being 1200 elo doesn't mean you don't understand the game either, you probably ARE extensive in the knowledge of LoL, just that you don't have the skills to handle your champion. You probably know every single nook and cranny can jump to, you probably know the best places for  to wall, you probably understand what the enemies are up to and you know how to lead your team, just don't know how to use them effectively.

The LoL community (DotA and HoN community included too, if you guys are reading this) has the common mistake of treating the opinions of silver and bronze players as trash, and treating plat and diamond players as the gods of LoL and worship them. Heard the term "metasheep"? Remember the last time everyone played, , AD and support ? Remember what the community said before the time they became popular? "Oh lol Ezreal and Urgot sux, AD Kennen are trolls and sp Zyra should uninstall because she's much better at mid." Yes, most silver and bronze players don't know what they are talking, but that doesn't mean there are no bronze and silver players that are much smarter then gold, plat or even diamond players.

Back to RotK, remember that China's smartess badass Zhuge Liang? He has a Strength stat of 25 and an Intelligence stat of 100. Is he useless? HELL NO, he has the widest variety of skills in the game. Because of his poor combat capabilities he shouldn't be sued to fight head on with most enemy officers and instead should stay away and use his ability to cause infighting between enemy generals, or fire ambushes, etc. If I would convert him to LoL, he would be about 1300-1500 elo because of his extensive knowledge at everything, even when he's bad at fighting. Let's pick another extreme, that unmatched officer Lu Bu, strongest man in China, with a gigantic Strength stat of 113 but with a pitiful Intelligence stat of 10. Converting him into LoL would mean he's 1900-2300 elo, because he wins most fights, or even the entire battlefield single-handedly with his massive stats. He's easy to use, leave leadership and intelligence to the generals and strategists while he does the massacre alone.

Now to summarize this blog, don't feel bad about your elo, you could be the one in a few million that is actually good at the game but just bad at controlling your champion. If you're at a high elo, you should not look down upon people who have less elo than you, because there are very likely players who know the game much better than you, and you should learn from them to strengthen your already good skills at playing the champion. They can also be players who actually know how to lead the team, and for every different player that is giving out plans you should give them a chance and trust their judgments. They can even be players who are enjoying the game much more than you, the players who do not flip off every single bad game and is trying to learn.