Placement MMR is something we know the least about, but we do know that performance based SR adjustments are stronger during initial placements than at any other time in the game. We don’t know exactly what metrics are in PBSR, but it does seem to be closely correlated to your “on fire” metrics. For supports, assists (offensive & defensive) seem to be as important or more important than healing.
If you want to know more about how the system works:
There are a lot of smurfs. There are also a lot of “drunk accounts”, alt-accounts of experienced players who don’t want to play on their main account while drinking or … otherwise inebriated. There are also, consequently, a lot of experienced players who have been tilted by a smurf or by a particularly raging or trolling drunk account and consequently crashed down to low SR.
Almost everyone that gets out of Bronze does so by simply focusing on killing the entire enemy team whenever they get near the objective. Oh, well, or by getting boosted of course.
Since everyone who isn’t trying seriously to climb is probably inebriated (or a smurf) and everyone who is trying seriously to climb (including your supports and tanks) are playing like it’s a deathmatch, it often feels like your entire team is throwing.
That turned into a bit of a ramble, but the key two points to take away:
- Not all experienced low-rank players are smurfs
- You’ll never get out of Bronze by relying on your team. Nobody will kill the enemy if you don’t. If they could and would, they wouldn’t be in Bronze.