MMR hell is real, while I would need access to raw data to prove it, it does exist. The simplest way to put it is, some people get above average luck, and some get below average luck. However, there are ways to climb, and they are not the ways most smug players here on the forums will tell you.
First, lets assume you are not the problem. You have great mechanical skill, rarely miss skill shots, hit all your cd’s on time, know how to focus, combo, etc. You also, have near perfect situational and map awareness, you know how much mana your healer has, where your team is, where the other team is, even when you can’t see them on the map. You always know how many players each side has in a fight, when to engage and when to back off. You know when to soak, when to group, when to go for camps, bosses, objectives, forts, and core, and when not to. You know how all the other characters in the match play, and approximately how long their cd’s are. You know how to draft, what to ban for the map when you have fp, what to ban when you don’t, what the counter picks are, when to run a nonstandard comp, and why. If all those things are true about you, and you just keep getting dumped on by the matchmaking system, this post is for you.
Before I go any further, one of the biggest problems in low ranks is soaking. The only reason a lane should be empty before level 10 is if you need to group for an objective. I mention this specifically, because if you are not soaking all the lanes, or abandoning lanes to get camps before the first objective, then that is the first thing you need to fix. I see it in almost every match in bronze and silver, and even in gold it happens. You have 5 players, 2 or 3 lanes, you can soak with 1 player in each lane, and two people can still get a camp. If you abandon lanes to get a camp, and the other team does not, they get half a level to a full level ahead, and they can still get their camp. I think this needs to be mentioned, because if you don’t already know this information, you have much bigger problems than bad matchmaking, and it is not other people sinking your games.
Above note aside, there are ways to give yourself higher chances of winning, no matter how bad matchmaking is. However, this only works if you are in fact, not the problem.
First, and most importantly, DO NOT SOLO QUEUE IN RANKED! EVER. Just don’t do it. play qm games until you find a good player, maybe team with them a couple matches to make sure that one game wasn’t a fluke, then queue as a duo in ranked. This is by far the easiest way to rank up, which is why a lot of smurfs do it, or they duo with another smurf. You can not carry in hots, no matter what the liars on the forums tell you. You can influence the outcome, but to actually “carry” a team, requires the other team to be a level of bad that rarely happens. However, you can easily play well enough to offset one bad player, or 2 mediocre players. This is where the brilliance of teaming up with other players comes in. If you can compensate for one bad player, and your partner also can, then that means the only way you are at a disadvantage is if all 3 other players on your team are bad. Not only that, because you take 2 of the 5 team slots, you only have 3 chances of bad players on your team, instead of 4 when you solo queue. Again, this only works if you are actually in MMR hell, and not where you are supposed to be. Two bad players teaming up will sink teams just like two good players carry teams. This math ofc holds true the more people you group with. The matchmaking does attempt to offset this by matching you against other premades, but quite often they are bad and will sink their team.
Another tactic to use is to group with decent players of lower rank. You have the same positive of playing with someone your skill level, but your opponents will be roughly the the rank of your average rank. This is how people boost, by using a low ranked smurf to team with the person they are boosting to get favorable matches and boost ranks. I do not recommend teaming with smurfs though, because if you rank up above your skill level, you will always be the worst player on the team, and people notice.
Thirdly, figure out the best times to play. Children tend to make bad teammates, often throwing tantrums at a perceived problem, even when one does not exist. Weekend players also tend to be worse than average. However, if you are in a premade, that means you have a better chance of winning during those times because you have less of a chance of having those kind of players on your team.
Next, make sure you have a pick you are really good at for every role/map. You can main ranged DPS, or even a single pick, but you should have flexibility to adjust for otherwise unfavorable drafts. It doesn’t matter how good a murky you are if the other team already has ming and butch, they only have to be halfway decent and you become a liability.
Lastly, I will mention teamplay and communication. A lot of less than stellar intellects on these forums will tell you you need to get better at these two things and you will win. That is mostly BS. Doing something stupid because your team is doing it, and because being grouped is “better” often isn’t really better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and quite often you do more for the team by not being with them. Communication is also overrated. Good players pay attention, they know where to go, and when to push an advantage. If you have to tell them these things, they are not good players, and telling people they are doing it wrong, or even pinging, more often than not produces the exact opposite results when it is another random player. However, since you are a good player, and you only group with good players, you should be fine with just pings to draw attention to something they may have missed, because everyone makes the occasional mistake. Coms are also nice for good players to set up plays in advance, but that doesn’t really help much at low ranks, unless you have a 4 or 5 stack of really good players.
So does this work? Well, I have been testing different strategies in bronze/silver as both a solo queue player and premade group player. I have won about 40% of my solo queue games, and about 80% of my premade group games, and that number is low because I was joining other groups, and sometimes not everyone was as good as they everyone else. People are also a lot more forgiving of picks they don’t understand when it is clear someone else on the team does. In solo queue, if you take a non-standard pick at low ranks, say a second healer, or nova, expect rage, soft throwing, afking, feeding, etc. Even when this happens when in a duo, a loss isn’t guaranteed, unless that player is 100% feeding, or moving around in nexus to avoid auto timeout.
Honestly, rank doesn’t really mean much. You can find really good players stuck in low ranks, and absolute trash players that somehow made it into high ranks. The average of each tier will be better than the average of the lower tier, but there are always exceptions, especially when it comes to purchased accounts and boosted players. If it is important to you though, I hope this advice helps you climb to where you should be.