Elo hell. What is it? Is it real?

General Discussion
1

Title isnt me asking, its for me to try to shed some light on those.

What Is Elo Hell

Elo hell is what is rather globally accepted as a rank, or competitive area which of where people can get stuck in whether they are good enough to climb out, or not, which is what you see often times debated on the forums, on servers, on social media, etc, its a rank which someone cant get out of, and where they often state that its "their teammates fault" and "if it wasnt for my healers" or "if it wasnt for my tanks" or "if it wasnt for my dps- i would already be out of insert rank theyre holding me back!"

Is it real?

Well, yes and no

What do i mean?
Well, elo hell isnt real in the way that most people tend to use it online.
The way its used a lot is a kind of bastardized version of what it actually is, or how it actually effects a game like overwatch.

The way its portrayed is that its some universally global experience that EVERYONE will go through no matter what, and the ranges of where it is somehow still range from bronze to masters depending on who you ask

The way I think its real, is in a slightly calmer, way.
Where the ranges would be i would argue would be high gold to high plat (at its worst)

Me, i am a masters player, i have been to masters and play in masters most of the time i play ranked, if i dont play ranked i might drop down to high diamond but i typically get back up if i keep grinding (my last seasons rank on tank was masters, this seasons dps high diamond after placements)

But from the rank reset i got some insight into the game, where i played them all with my friends, who were of lower ranks before (this is the first time i could queue with them together since forever) and the game placed me in low to mid plat, both on tank AND dps

I have gotten out since then, as i had expected i would, as i play normally quite a higher level of game than those games were

HOWEVER
There were a surprising amount of games that genuinely did feel fully unwinnable, i could go 40-1 and double the stats of the enemy anyone and still lose.

The reasoning for this is, or well how i theorize it, is that the skill divide inside high gold to high plat is so insanely large (since it is the median rank, most people are in there) that you will just genuinely get a lot of people who have just placed for the first time, or who dont know how to play the game well, as well as people who have played for a while but have been stuck, who skill wise could belong in diamond at least.

And I could imagine that for someone who isnt much higher than high plat, having say 1 or 2 games out of 10 that are unwinnable, that puts you at an already net loss of 20%
Then after that you have the 8 games where you now HAVE to play at the best of your ability for (where if the matchmaker works, youll have even games that can go either way) you might lose another 4, and win 4, where in this scenario you are going 50/50 on games that you have an input for (which isnt ideal, but it should keep you in the same rank) BUT you had those 2 losses from those games that you simply just had no input on, thus making you lose up to maybe 40% rank out of 10 games played.

This is worse on support, by far, where the carry potential depends even more on how good your teammates are.

Of course you can always play like a masters player and get out, like i did, but having to grind plat lobbies until your mechanics are better than diamonds doesnt seem like an insanely fun thing to do

1 Like
2

“Elo hell” stops once you get to plat full stop, maybe multiple bad games, maybe ya know multiple people always outta VC plat is when this stuff actually matters anything below that your own skill will get you out period without question your solo performance and understanding of the game is all it takes.

INCLUDING knowing how to use your avoid list and que dodge this is a “Skill” you also need to learn cause your gonna carry it for the rest of your ow carrer.

1 Like
3

I wouldnt say so, i would even argue it was worse in plat than it was in gold from what i experienced, the games in general seemed a lot more lackluster and far less balanced overall, where i won some games because I was better than most people in the lobbies fullstop, because i had started placing my accounts mid to late season, where most other people had already placed, thus the ranks being settled for the most part, so there werent many other masters players still grinding ranked from the ground up, and had already gotten back to masters

but

your personal skill has to be quite a bit larger in order to solo carry those games.
If your personal skill is only slightly better than a plat, and you get for example 3 games out of 10 where your team has a tank that just placed for the first time, and goes 0-5, you are out of luck, that is just how it goes, you will lose that, if you were to be someone again, higher leveled, then sure you can carry the game, but MOST people arent, MOST people who could belong to even diamond couldnt do that in a plat game

1 Like
4

No that’s why I said one of the skills you pick up is learning to use your avoid list, I doubt a bronze player or like a brand new player even knows that would be a thing.

You’ve also developed your own “Thing” at this rank for example Im a shot caller some people even tho they’re in plat they don’t have an identity yet, maybe good game sense, maybe good positioning, maybe good mechanics, or hell maybe they just got boosted by an OP hero and think there good but now are just going through the motions to get back to where they belong.

You also learn to check profiles check for stacks on your team (and the enemy team) and you know you should play different accordingly because well stacks are trash. These might be some of the more “Advanced” things buuuttt if I look into your profile and see that you play Genji I will lock the nails.

1 Like
5

I’d argue that ELO hell doesn’t exist because it’s every rank. Randoms ruin everything. It’s the law of the internet. But blizzard caters way more to the “lone wolf” mentality, even though it’s completely at odds with the fundamental nature of the game.

2 Likes
6

This is completely off topic, but I like how the centered-aligned post looks here. I’m going to have to start using that more. Lol :upside_down_face:

1 Like
7

isn’t Elo hell where you go if you’re a ranked sinner and didn’t repent before you drop to silver?

1 Like
8

This is true, although it matters less in plat, where the playerbase is so enormous that you might not even bump to the same people twice

i mean during my time in there, i saw ONE PERSON twice, and otherwise all the enemies and teammates were fresh (i didnt avoid anyone once)

This is also true, but even with your own identity some scenarios just WONT work out in your favour, no matter how well you shotcall, or position yourself, again, if you have a reinhardt going 0-5 and the enemy has a ram going 30-1, as an ana you have nothing you can do to stop that, if youre already on 30k heals for example

Yeah, although again in plat (seems like most of these work worse in plat than anywhere else) a lot of people , more people id like to admit just have priv profiles, i always check the entire enemy teams profiles when i get into a game and in plat in particular i think i got like maybe one person per game that had an open one on average

I do agree in every rank there are randoms who ruin everything, but in other ranks in particular the SKILL of those randoms more or less matches the rank they have, or has a trend going that way

For example bronze players for the most part all play horribly, lets be real, so as long as you train your mechanics you can climb, all the way to gold even

Masters players typically all already know shotcalling ,game sense, how to play in general, both mechanically and game sense wise etc.

In higher gold and plat in particular the skill divide of players is so wide that you can have people that are WAY worse than anyone else in the lobby in your games, and in your team (again, i experienced this multiple times while grinding my games back up to high dia and masters)

i have screenshots from games where everyone else was doing fine, but we had a soldier, or a reinhardt, or a junkrat, or a reaper who was 1-5 or 0-6 or 6-14 or something like that, who DID NOT know what they were doing at all, and this happened multiple times per 10 games. While i won some of those games, because i was better (again, grinding after rank reset placements while normally being around masters) i KNOW for a fact that most people around plat itself wouldnt be able to do so, because their skill level is around the enemy teams skill level, and they are now playing a 4v5

again this does happen higher too, but its WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less prevalent, to a point it practically doesnt matter

Hahahah i used to make REALLY long more “thesis” like posts on my old account (that got hacked)
(like here)

and it kinda stuck to whenever i make anything that i actually want to have a bigger point with (instead of just complaining or asking about a simple subject) i make the text centered and have headlines and such xD

1 Like