This makes a lot of sense. I’ve always believed there are players on ladder who are good enough to maintain their rank but not good enough to climb back to it if starting over from scratch. They were essentially grandfathered into their rank because they used to be better, or they’re boosted, or they one-tricked an OP hero, etc. Never thought about this in terms of elo hell though. Interesting idea.
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I’ve found that the main reason ELO hell exists is because the player is playing in a manner that doesn’t make sense in whatever rank they are in. Support is the rank where you see this the most. In lower ranks, it’s almost never a good idea to actually support your team, because quite frankly they are useless. It’s much better to go DPS support and punish the other team for their mistakes.
This applies to the other roles as well to a lesser extent. Bad players won’t take advantage of space a tank makes, so the tank should just stop trying that and instead use their huge health pool to punish the mistakes of the squishies on the other teams. DPS are the easiest to climb with because their play style is the most consistent across all ranks, just get good position, have good mechanics and don’t die.
Every rank has an optimum play style to stay in ELO Hell and an optimum play style to get out of it. You need to abandon the play style that keeps you there and embrace the one that gets you out of there.
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I played on this account for a bit. Now it’s bronze lol. Cursed account 
Yes, ow2 had pretty aggressive “smurf detection” for new accounts so to say in comp.
But since some months, for new accounts QP MMR is used for the base or seed when they go play comp the very first time.
So t500 players on new accounts may get into t500 games on their first game after the account is eligibile, if they played QP “on their level” and didnt throw.
There still is the uncertainty factor for some time when they play comp, though.
I think blizzard guys believe the qp mmr as “seed” is working ok, but they havent really commented on after they put it in place.
Maybe to reduce people trying to exploit things.
It was all done quite silently, they only told about it in twitter iirc and not in any blog post.
this has always been true
the qp mmr always had some sort of weighting factor on your end placements.
but the highest ive ever seen someone place was masters, and a year ago they glued mmr and rank together so if you are in top 500 lobbies then your rank icon would already reflect you being gm.
to be fair this isnt technically elo hell, this is its own little thing. (its a very quirky way you can interact with the games ranked system)
elo hell is a feeling that anyone can have regardless of if they belong in their rank.
its the feeling that you are better then what your rank suggests but because you more often then not arnt better you cant force enough wins to climb so you feel helpless.
people in this state will often times hyper focus on everyone elses mistakes but completely ignore their own
in effect elo hell is in your head
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They did quite considerable change to it around last summer iirc. But they were relatively vague about it, before that your QP mmr didnt really affect to the amount it now does.
I mean now people can get straight to GM1 from qp.
edit: one relevant tweet, there were some others somewhere…
I know someone who placed gm2 after going 4-15 in their placement matches. Or something like that. He posts on here as well.
I know another who placed gm1.
I placed gm on one of my alts as well.
Gm placements are relatively common especially if gm players stack together in quickplay on the new accounts. It boosts the mmr to the moon since the anti smurf is so aggressive now. Although the actual place within gm seems random and losing the placements does little to change the outcome since the system is already convinced.
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You talking about me? Lol
But yeah, this is why I say smurfs aren’t a problem. It’s not hard to place higher than your peak on a new account
No, Omni.
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Well jeez. Same thing happened to me 
TLDR
stuck in same rank since forever
but was it a completely fresh account
ive seen ppl place gm if they were GM before in ow1, but ive never seen any of the unranked to gms place higher then master’s
im not saying it isnt possible, ive just never seen it
I’d assume that most UR2GMs throw a lot of games in qp to lower their MMR. The video wouldn’t be more educational if they couldn’t smurf for more than 3 games or so
Yeah. Completely fresh account that he made hoping to place masters so he could queue with his girlfriend since they normally can’t queue together.
Like I said queuing quickplay with other gm players makes the new accounts mmr go to the moon if you’re winning the games. Especially if the other players are on already established accounts.
thats certainly possible, but it would be a crazy good click bait title if they hit gm from the first set of placements
thats an interesting change if true, i remember you couldnt place higher then 3900 in ow1
It was extremely difficult to even place masters in OW1 and I’m pretty sure gm was impossible. The anti smurf in OW2 is definitely far too aggressive though and I’ve been saying for a long time that it’s a major reason why a lot of higher ranked games feel imbalanced. Not the only one but definitely a big factor.
But yeah initial placements and from that your placement rank are now determined by your quickplay mmr so it’s very possible to place gm.
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ye it was really hard to place above like diamond, i remember watchin kabaji win like 10-0 while hard carrying every game 50+ elim type stuff and he somehow placed plat.
i also think it may of been literally impossible to do fresh placements and hit gm by the end, since all gm accounts always placed 3900 each seasons id assume that was true for new accounts.
i do know kephrii hit 3901 (i had to double check) on an alt in 2017 after doing perfect placements
This was such a healthier system.