User blog comment:Commander Marko/Will matchmaking ever find true balance?/@comment-3097946-20131104221943

I understand your frustration since I've been down that path. Fortunately, I never got lower than Silver II; now I am Gold III. Was I lucky? Maybe. It's unfair to base things just off my experience alone, but here is my story:

When the announcement for S3 awards came out, my friend and I returned to ranked to try to finally get out of Silver I. We mostly did bot lane which isn't necessarily the easiest to carry; it's only one lane and unless the team cooperates to make the plays, not much is going to happen. My friend eventually stopped for a while, leaving me stuck on the border of Silver I and II.

I was a little concerned. What should I do? How can I get out of this thing that players call "elo hell"? Well, I began to watch videos. Particularily, this was during the S3 Worlds and was a good time to watch how the pros play. At this point, I didn't play ranked as often because I knew many players who wanted to get better or who wanted entertainment would be watching, leaving a rather negative player base.

It wasn't just watching the Worlds at the time either. I found a lot of videos, etc. on "How to get out of elo hell" and the like. They say things such as, "the loss was your fault", or "you couldn't carry hard enough", etc. Sometimes they imply or outright say it, but one thing I noticed they had in common was that there's always room for improvement. You have to think to yourself: what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? I found my strength was that I'm versatile. I can play every role consistently well with the exception of jungle; that role I have yet to refine, but I can still do it. I'm also careful. I make it a policy to die as few times as possible. My weakness was experience. In ranked, I mostly played bot lane. I didn't play a lot of top and mid lane. So what did I do? I did normals. Normals I see as a way to practice. You can learn matchups, study your damage output and the enemies', and adjust your playstyle wherever necessary. I picked up Garen, Riven, and Wukong in top lane because I find top to be generally easier to carry from. I found what works and what doesn't, I roamed, helped out other lanes, communicated. It's hard to go into detail since you probably don't want to read all of this in the first place.

tl;dr All I can offer as a former Silver player is to keep a positive attitude, be in it to win it, don't bash on your team no matter how toxic/bad they seem or are, keep improving your skills. And TAKE BREAKS. There is no shame in going into normals, bots, or just resting in general to relax your mind. Playing on tilt will generally have negative effects on your gameplay. Good luck to you.