Been playing since season 2. The years I played ranked (some years I just played norms with friends all season), I climbed more than I did the previous year. This year I have reached my peak in high master originally starting in bronze back in season 3. The games feel much higher in quality than back in the day, especially around the emerald (old plat) MMR. That said, players nowadays have such bad mentalities and mental boom at the slightest thing. Especially around diamond, it feels like the team with the strongest mental fortitude just wins.

Regardless, if you feel like you’re not having influence in games then you simply aren’t improving past your current rank. Yes, some games are unwinnable because of your teammates but those are in the minority. If Faker played on your account do you think he’d get stuck in gold? Of course not. I’m not saying you have to be Faker to climb, just be better than your average gold player. I promise you that loser’s queue isn’t real. It’s just made up by salty babies who shift blame away from their own tilt/poor performance. Focus only on how you can play better, don’t worry about your teammates at all. The more you blame your team, the more you’re ignoring working on your own flaws. If you’re good enough, you’ll climb given enough games.

I used to be one of those silver players in season 4. Complaining about my team, flaming them when they messed up, etc. Once I stopped doing that and started focusing on my own mistakes, I shot up from silver to diamond in like 2 months. It was insane how many mistakes I was making that I didn’t realize.

While I’m not a fan of the ping changes overall, I can’t deny that it feels like the amount of toxicity has gone down a LOT in my games since they were implemented. Last year, I started to personally keep track of toxicity in my ranked games (ranging from angry pinging to straight up ragequitting), and it was something like 80% of my games had at least one person on my team being toxic over ~250 games from Plat to low Master (this was before emerald).

I hadn’t started my ranked grind this season until the ping changes were already in. So far, only ~25% of my games across 117 games from Emerald 4 to Diamond 2 had someone being toxic. I’m shocked because plat/emerald to diamond is usually a cesspool with the worst egos I’ve ever seen in the game. I feel like people want to flame but can’t ping anymore and they’re too lazy to type so they just don’t bother. Which is honestly nice lol.

Phreak’s Karthus comment is out of touch and it’s annoying that I can’t ping what I’m trying to communicate at times. But it’s made a big impact in lowering toxicity in my ranked games and made my overall ranked grind significantly more enjoyable this season. Ofc there are still babies that whine in chat but the angry pingers were always way more common. I know I can’t draw any conclusions from my data, but I just thought I’d share my personal experience.