User blog comment:Lokiwg/My Ranked Horror Story/@comment-8267817-20131002132321

As a previous Silver, but now bronze player, yeah, this basically sums up 90% of the people that play ranked because bronze is a very large catagory, whereas the other ranks just get smaller and smaller as you go up.

Also smurfing has a very negative effect on the ranking system, when someone makes a smurf account when their main is in say, gold 3, when it first starts their promotionals they will be against bronze/silver players, since they are actually a gold ranked player, theory is they win right? For a good number of people, yes. Well as the smurfs win games, they drag their teammates along with them, meaning players of less skill, still get pulled up in rank, and then are paired with people that aren't that gold 3 player, because the gold 3 player by performing very well, has moved up farther in rank than the other person, because placement matches count for much more than normal matches after you are placed, so while someone may be the same rough rank as you, that does not mean it is because of their own skill.

The other issue with ranked is that people tend to develop a god complex, in other words, "OMG, MY TEAM IS SO BAD" syndrome, as far as they are concerned, they cannot do wrong, if something goes wrong, it wasn't their fault, they are obviously pro, and as such it must have been their crappy team.

Basically I have found that your rank advancement is placed more on luck of the draw of teammates, as opposed to your skill and good plays, sometimes you get someone on your team that even though they got countered hard, they destroy everyone and carry a game, other times you get an Ashe jungle that demands a hard leash at blue, then tries to counter jungle the enemy jungle Udyr that is much stronger than her and die. You win some, you lose some, yes it is possible to carry your team in ranked, assuming you have the skill to take them on basically 5v1 assuming your team is a bunch of braindead monkies, and the other team isn't.