Quote Originally Posted by LeonKeyh View Post
Agreed here. I managed to hit Silver 3 a few weeks ago but after being Silver 3 0 risers for about 20 games I ended up walking away.

The problem is for us (people who didn't max rank "right away") is that in the beginning there were a ton of people playing that were...well... bad... so it was easy for a couple of players on each team to ultimately swing the fight. At this point, most of the worst players have stopped playing because they're not having fun and aren't getting anywhere. So, your teammates are a larger part of the total team skill level and you have a much lower chance of really turning the tide yourself.
The variance was bigger in the beginning, you would have very casual players and experienced players who hadn't ranked up yet. Now it's fairly even, I don't think the skill level is that much higher but the main issue in low ranks is the randomness and lack of objective play. You can have very big impact on low ranks even now BUT you will still get completely unsalvageable teams. Unranked to Silver 1 is extremely coinflippy and you can easily end with scoreboard where you are at the top, then the whole enemy team and at bottom the rest of your team.

Playing more supportive roles is absolute hell in low ranks, the best bet is to either play something that can just delete one person from enemy team at a time or something that has insane AoE damage to grind them out. Next to nobody uses elixirs and people struggle with MP management and proper Guard/Purify use.