The majority of posts I see on this page, on the summoner school and even meme subs are complaining about bad LP gains or stagnant ranked climb this split. I want to preface my explanation that I do not wish to condescend on anyone of a lower rank, nor diminish the accomplishments of anyone with the ability to operate a champion at the most basic level in this hyper-complicated game. It is hard! I am also not a statistics major, but feel as though I have a grasp of the concept of a ranking distrobution, as well as have had experience with every rank of this game from silver-grandmaster.

Firstly, it is important to understand how a ladder system functions differently than a raw elo system. A ladder has a defininitve ranking, example being the rank #1 is 1,948 LP challenger, and rank #320,111 is 80 LP Platinum 4. There are 320,110 players that constitute the ladder rankings between this Platinum 4 player and the rank 1 player. In order to move up the ladder, you must replace somebody that occupied a position above you, subsequently relegating that player to a lower rung on the ladder. We are ignoring the truth for the sake of the simplicity of the explanantion that many people with the same exact rank, will constitute a range of ranks, and subsequently each LP increase will have a player jump 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of ranking spots.

What else? We also need understand that ranking ladders are formed from the top down, meaning the rank1 player directs and shapes the ladder as he marks the top rung, and the rank2 player the next one and so on. The system is predicated on ordering top down, rather than from the center of the distribution out, despite new accounts being thrown into the center of the distrobution, and ultimately wedging the upper half of the bracket because more people joining ranked on fresh accounts are more likely returning to the game or smurfs rather than completely new players.

What does this mean? The ladder system is constructed by players occupying rungs on that hypothetical ladder all the way from Iron4 to Chal1. There are concrete ranking segments in C (top 300) and GM (top 1000), however after that everyone falls into masters, or divisional tiers that represent a macro grouping of players that fall into a specific rank segment that is assigned based on an percentile that is decided by riot and driven by community sentiment. As riot has explained their implementation of Emerald, they want Diamond, Emerald, Etc. to represent the top X% of the ladder and maintain its prestige by keeping this pool of players exclusive to these specific population percentages, and therefor percentiles. The amount of players per rank only fluctuates marginally, and herein lies the problem of stagnant growth.

I see everyone upset with their LP gains, and blame the hidden MMR to rank system for their failure to climb. “I have a 58% wr in Emerald, but I have +15/-26”. I am sorry to tell you that you are right in your emotions of frusturation, but are not entitled to climb unless you ascertain those places above you. Keep in mind, Emerald is a massive accomplishment, you are an exemplary league of legends player; People in high diamond and above study the game like it is schooling, and often take playing it as seriously as anything in their lives.

The reality is that in order to climb, beating players of your skill level is not enough; You need to be better than people currently ranked higher than you. I do not have a mathematical explanation or understand on how to do it, but I know the answer is winstreaking. You need to winstreak so the arithmetic of the win/loss doesnt matter and the system sees you only climbing the ladder. If you are falling many rungs at a time in your current ranking, even if you win more than lose the system does not think you are worthy of replacing the people who, when in your shoes/position, went on winstreaks or acheived a net victory margin worthy of promoting.

I would love to have an open ended discussion on ways Riot could make this system more clear to the playerbase, but it is apparent they are happy with you addicted to grinding for a rank that they keep out of reach.

TLDR: Ranking is a ladder, ranking up is hard and takes considerable improvement to promote, MMR works as intended, winstreaking is the best way to rank up.