User blog comment:Leyrann/Placement Matches - The toxic that creates the Elo Hell feeling/@comment-5570995-20121128164630

Reading through the threads and comments, I figured I'd just post a new reply that addresses points from all over.

I'm kind of torn about the existence of ELO Hell. On the one hand, I've definitely had a game where I started out on a legendary killing spree as ADC (8/0) - only to lose the game because the enemy team had a jax that got  5-6 early kills in top lane, and could just jump me every team fight since our team comp didn't have the ability to peel him off of me (and the rest of the team didn't do well enough in their lanes to have enough damage to down him with me gone).

But on the other, it's definitely possible to improve yourself and pull yourself up into a higher ELO. As an example, in season 2 my brother climbed from 1200 to 1800 ELO over the course of some 1600 total ranked games played (you can't win'em all). He's a higher ELO than me now, but I'm trying to catch up :p.

And you were asking how to "carry" a game, or how people can "not die". Really, I don't think there's anything that can be conveyed through words on how to do this. The best teacher is experience. It's definitely possible to die no more than 3 times in a game (with the exception of 1 game where I went 12/6/14, I haven't died more than 2-3 times in a single ranked game if you look at my last 10 games). 2 of those games (which were about 30 minutes long) I had scores of 8/0/7 and 8/0/8.

My point is, the more you play, the more you can rely on your experience to know whether or not you can trade with an opponent, whether it's likely you're about to be ganked, whether you should commit to a fight, how to position yourself to still contribute to a fight even if you have less than 100 HP left, how to be more map aware, etc. As rough as it sounds, just pick a role/champ that you feel you do the best with, and keep playing it. Your ELO will raise as your skill raises from the practice.