I think the reason that Emerald is considered "elo hell" is because this is where the maximum casual effort will get you. If you aren't talented in either macro or micro emerald is where you'll end up before you start having to make a conscious effort at improving. So i think it's hard for some people to have to shift from just playing only fights and trades with intent, to thinking about literally every part of the game with intent.
That jungle clip is a really good example of how Emerald turns toxic. No one calls off plays even though they know they shouldn't go for them. So when it goes bad the people that know they shouldn't have been there start flaming. And because everyone is compensating it turns into a massive fiesta. When they lose the game to this fiesta they go "Emerald is elo hell".
Just wanna say guys, After the azzapp collaboration last week, this emerald focused podcast is making me feel like you are creating content solely for me, as a former vel koz main who is currently jungling around emerald 1 knocking on the door of diamond. This podcast is exactly what I needed to help my improvement. Next week I'm expecting a title like "how to improve on xin zhao and nocturne" or "how to make long term experienced players unlock their capacity and push to new heights" or "Ben, listen to this, its about you" 😂
(Viewpoint of a mid-plat player) I feel like Plat/Emerald sits in a weird spot. There are as many was to play League as there are players. In upper tiers, players have a lot of skill in all aspects so they do well. In lower tiers, players have poor skiils in everything, so they do poorly. And then you hit this weird spot in the middle, where people are great at some things, average at some things, and bad at some things. Just the other day I had a top lane Yone who was 0/7 by ten minutes, but we stuck it and he carried the game by the end. On the surface it makes no sense. He did awful in lane, so its a loss. But if you dig a bit you notice that once he got out if his lane he did everything right in skirmishes and teamfights. And THAT'S the mid-tier experience right there. Everyone is either average at everything, or they are fantastic at one aspect and terrible at another to the point it evens out. The problem is the early game player doesn't see a way to win, calls the late game player out, both mental boom and nobody leaves happy. If anything makes Plat/Emerald elo hell, its the mental.
That does happen in every elo though, i have an iron friend Who is alwais aware of whats happening on the map, which makes no sense in an iron player when even at fairly high Elos some of the players would struggle with It, yet he is bad at literally everything else, so It evens out to iron, and the only champion with whom he ends Up impacting games is on shen, where he never does particularly well even on his elo, but is just aware everytime he can turn around a play by ulting, or another friend Who mecanically is fairly good waay better than me probably emerald level i'd Guess, but again mostly everything else IS just kind of missing, like It happens on every level just the overall amont of "skillpoints" just go down as rhe rank decrease😅
As an Ashe/Jinx main in emerald, you were so very accurate on us. Very emotional, big fragile egos all round. I DO play with chat muted so at least a few of us who mute. I just went through my last half a dozen games or so, my problem is not thinking big picture, not gathering information, which results in me dying to ganks I shouldn't die to, dying in fights I should not have gone for, not linking up with what my jungler is doing etc. Sometimes its mechanical but mostly its lack of knowing what will happen next.
Oof that's a tough weakness to have as an immobile ADC main. Especially with Ashe where she gets a lot of profit off of thinking about the big picture. Improve at that and your E will become way more useful. If you know where the jungler is gonna be you can find them and ping them for your team.
Ive played in every elo from silver to master 450 LP and i can say with confidence emerald is the most disgusting MMR to play in. It combines an insane amount of smurfs mixed with completly new player due to broken matchmaking system, the peak of mental degeneracy and delusion as well with an crazy amount of toxicity, afk, and intentionaly losing a game up to running it down a lane. Its literally a digital mental asylum and i can truly understand someone actually playing in emerald feels like its elohell to them. If someone manages to playi thousands of games in emerald without going insane you maybe are not the best league player but your mental has evolved into a higher being by then for sure.
None of the issues you describe matter. They are not influencing your ability to improve. Maybe Emerald is the rank at which you need to learn to accept what you can't control and focus on becoming a better player.
A lot of interesting points. I finished emerald 4 last season, after genuinly improving from gold 2. Quite the jump Id say. But this season I somehow managed to rocket all the way through emerald 3-1 with an insane winstreak even peaking diamond 4, with lp gains that looked like +25 -19. And guess what happened then? I dropped all the way back to emerald 3. This was no surprise to me. Nor am I mad. Even while it was happening I understood I was on a lucky winstreak. So from personal experience I would agree, emerald might as well be 2 ranks. The difference in play between every division there is palpable, and I should not have been able to winstreak all the way to diamond. That being said, peaking diamond was one of my best league experiences ever. It honestly felt surreal. Even if Im not genuinly at that level, I look forward to actually improving, and reaching diamond for real this time. Your podcasts helps me a lot.
Hi Curtis and Nathan! Matt here, the one from the e-mail. I just watched the episode, and I 100% agree with everything you guys said. I honestly appreciate the advice, will put it to practice. The amount of people that told me to just "retire" the account after I fell to Silver 3, and get a new one; or drop my champion pool and play X champion was massive, but I decided I was committed to fixing the account, not giving up on it. It's MY account, MY mess, and I'M the one who's fixing it. "Just get a new account and play Tryndamere/Quinn only, you'll be Emerald in no time". Yeah I don't care about temporary elo gains, I care about long term improvement, and I saw in this the opportunity to get better than ever before at the game. Currently back to Gold 4, playing 3 games a day as before. A bit of a sloppy process, but a sloppy one is better than no process at all. LP gains have somewhat stabilized at around +26/-24, and I've picked my winrate back up from 35% ish to 48%. I'm going to take Nathan's advice here, embrace reality (as Cupcake would say), and take it one game at a time. Who knows, I could be Emerald next split for the extra Chroma for the Sona skin (yes, chromas for the champions I like do motivate me to climb higher). Thank you so much for replying to my e-mail! I'll send another one in some weeks, or maybe at the end of the split, to let you guys know how everything went. I hope that the viewers were able to get something out of my experience too. Have a good one! 🤍
I was in a similar boat to you. I peaked Plat 3 last split and ended up falling to Silver 4, almost Bronze 1. I have since fixed my LP gains / losses and the process has been very rewarding. Reality for me was that I climbed because my LP gains were artificially high (started off with +30 / - 20, allowing me to climb too easily), my champion of choice was overtuned (Smolder on release) and lucky winstreaks. When I hit Plat, I was faced with the reality that I am likely not a Plat player, as the games became suddenly extremely difficult and I lost far more than I won. Then after that, tilting caused me to queue up when I shouldn't have and I fell further. I should have taken a break. After almost hitting Silver 4, I took a break, smartened up and came back to the game looking to improve rather than climb specifically. I let go of the LP, the rank, etc. and just focused on getting better. It took the rest of the split, but I did stabilize my LP at +25 / -25 by the end which to me indicates I hit my true skill level roughly of Silver 1 / Gold 4. Now this split, I'm focused again on improving and have let go of the numbers between every game. I focus on what I do wrong, how I can improve, and getting better at the game. My LP gains are still around +25 / -25 but I am actually climbing now. I mention this because I think the stabilized LP gains / losses are still a good indicator that you are where you belong, and so improvement is rewarded more than if your LP gains are very high or very low. If you try to improve with +30 / -20, you may not get accurate feedback game-to-game because you may be doing things wrong or developing bad habits but still climb (like I did ). But if your LP gains are also too low (+20 / -30) then improving is also hard to gauge because you may not be moving at all despite improving, so it may feel like you are not doing things correctly. Too many people throw away accounts when they fall or have loss streaks and compromise their gains. In reality, I think every player should strive for +25 / -25 LP because when you hit that point you are stabilized and at your true rank. It is a good spot to be in, because now when you try to improve between games your efforts actually give you valuable feedback. If you climb with +25 / -25 gains, you know you are likely improving and it isn't necessarily just luck. I think overall climbing high fast and then falling so low actually really helped me mentally with ranked, and I feel like I am in a good spot to actually get better at the game. Keep at it and keep improving brother. If you seek to improve, you'll be rewarded with better opponents and team mates and more improvement, which I think ultimately should be the goal of every player who is taking ranked seriously. It's true what they say - focus on improving effectively and the wins / gains will come naturally.
As someone who recently broke into diamond rank I think this is one of your best videos. Emerald was the most challenging ranks where I had to improve myself little by little. I do wish you would talk about other lanes though not just mid and Jungle maybe bring a guest in.
I'll approach it a bit differently with my experience as someone who sat around d2-master since season 6 as I think you are looking at it through a lens of ''what makes an emerald player unable to climb'' and I think personally that's missing the point of the issues I have had with emerald, and maybe not emerald specifically but problems that came with Riot reshaping the rank system with splits, extra division and LP changes coming with shorter seasons/splits. I think if you ask 10 people what elo hell means they will all give different explanations so idk what it it really means for starter. I think for me the issue with emerald and climbing through it while getting ''stuck'' for a while to get back to my usual rank upon season reset is something I have never experienced in any other seasons in the past. The LP gain according to win rate has shifted completely, playing 50+ games with above 55-60% wr should not be giving +20 -28. Riot did say it was unintended issues they we're working on fixing which they apparently did but that doesn't change the fact that it has caused some players to be ''stuck'' when otherwise they should not have been. I think Riot's rank system has always been by far the best in any competitive game at giving fair competition in rank. My opinion on this has shifted a bit since the rank/splits reshaping took place. The implementation of it caused issues that essentially killed a lot of players accounts, it's unfortunate but yes with change there can be errors. These changes took a rank system that worked and in the process of iterating on it caused problems making it a not so good a system at giving proper feedback as it previously did. The worst I would get before when getting completely stuck with 50-51%wr in mid Diamond was something like +13 -15, this is worlds apart from what it is or what it was the last time I played earlier this split. The problem for me is not that I can't climb through it, but it has been the most miserable rank I have ever had to climb and slog through. As a player not that far above that level to simply smurf it 70%wr my way through it & when I compare it to let's say platinum in previous iterations of the rank system my win rates climbing back through them didn't change, but it took me marginally more games to get back to diamond through emerald than it did through platinum previously. I think smurfing in this rank is indeed a massive issue, there are more than an unhealthy amount of games being decided by a lvl 30 account either solo winning or solo losing a game on either side. I think that makes the game quality at that level atrocious. I'm winning too many games for free for it to be satisfying, and losing too many games for free for it not to be frustrating. It's just overall a bad experience around that rank, and it gives bad feedback more often than it should... I don't think toxicity is something that emerald is that above anyone else as a lot of people seem to say, I've watched friends play in multiple elo brackets and honestly it's just as bad... League is a toxic game no matter the rank and I think that's just what it is. That's my thought on it, sure people will call the elo THEY are stuck in elo hell thus making every elo ''elo hell'' to someone, but honestly I think emerald has had actual issues outside player constructed narratives. Actual systemic issues caused by revamping the rank system untouched for over 10 years before that. So yeah... it is bound to have issues, and it's not far fetched to see the issues appear in the 1 rank they added, it makes sense, hopefully they fixed it since I last played a few months ago.
In an ideal world, the only measure of success a player needs is the comparison with their old self. Your rank is just a word and number. It only has the meaning you ascribe to it. The issues you describe aren't issues you need to care about. They have no impact on your ability to improve as a player.
i wanted to find the statistics at the start. it's the korean ladder for anyone wondering. But I had a quick look at some other regions and similar data is represented where there is, at some stages, double the amount of emerald players between emerald 4 to emerald 3. So this data isn't 1 region specific.
Thats exactly video i needed, i am currently mega focused on getting diamond, no duo q with friends, chat muted by default, no raging on blaming on teammates, full focus. Lets get to watching :D
Also i muted chat bcs of everyone writing, every game. And of course its mostly flaming each other for no reason. (or becaue someone dont understands the game)
my goal is gold. ON a fresh account i could probably do it mega easy if i focused on two champs i have 65% winrate with in silver and ive gone even and even carried a few games in plat 3 and emerald on a diff acc i bought to test my skill.
The last few episodes have been exceptionally good and this one was the best of the bunch! Feel like Curtis and Nathan are hitting a really good stride right now. As someone who will at some point soon try to make the push to diamond it was super motivating for me! Also, I thought it was a great approach to avoid being combative toward all the people with the elo hell narrative and instead focus on finding common ground.
I'm diamond 3 and emerald is the worst elo I have ever faced, it's more difficult to get out of emerald than diamond 4, games in emerald are unplayable and the disparity between players is insanely huge Each season is a nightmare to get diamond back, sometimes I just don't want to play in ranked anymore just because emerald players, there is 0 fun to make efforts for just coinflip games.
As a silver/gold player, I can honestly, the amount of people who's account shows they were emerald last season, is shocking. As for the current state of emerald....I cant speak on it, as I'm not in that elo, but judging by the amount of people with 300+ games in silver while being emerald last season, shows that many of them didn't "deserve" to be there to begin with. But I guess this is entirely different conversation...
Yes many people getting boosted as well. In emerald, about 10% of players in my games were last season master… even had a gm player 700LP with 200 games stuck in emerald lol. He then proceeded to wreck me in lane haha..
There's probably a lot of people like me in that category. I hit Master in split 1, got to d2 in split 2 after around 15 games. Couldn't be bothered to play anymore as I'd already hit my goal that year, decayed, decay leaves you at Emerald 1 75LP (now 50 LP I think?).
theres also a loooooooot of people diamond in my emerald games and while I was climbing through plat. Theres no way people are dropping from diamond to plat in 3 months without some weird mmr to get to diamond in the first place.
I peak at silver 3, never being even gold and I'm playing for 10 years now. I see what you are talking about. Many of those players that are on emerald would descend, is just logical. They might have a lucky strike. I see silver player "plays" on that video about emerald people.
@@carlosemiralonso7997 I think that could be partially true for some, but I don't think its that common to go on a win streak so legendary that it gest you from silver to emerald. I think its a mixture of players that were perhaps boosted, or maybe placed in the wrong ranked incorrectly in the previous seasons. I have no proof of this, but I suspect that is a large factor contributing to this. I also play on EUW and not sure if other regions are also experiencing high amounts of former emerald players in their silver games.
52:31 is the perfect takeaway from the video, it doesn't matter whatever complains there are in emerald, if you are not finding out the basic solutions/response to help win games as the coaches did in each clip. You simply have so much control in determining the outcome of games whether people realize it or not that any argument saying emerald is elo hell is a non-factor in someone's climb compared to the mistakes in the clips show
I've been playing since S3... until last night, I've never hit diamond. Some of the tips from this video helped me be more intentional with my jungle role. Thanks y'all
the thing about "if it's not an obvious mistake they don't realize it's a mistake" made me think about how I tend to think about 4X games... they usually aren't actually that complicated, it's just that a decision is unlikely to have consequences for sometimes DOZENS of turns and that makes it really rough to actually point to "this is the bad decision/set of poor decisions".
My addition to your answer to matt is to realize that the effective skill level of a player is how well they're playing in that specific game. Edit: Upon further thought, this ties in very nicely with your previous statement that rank of a player is determined by the quality of the mistakes they make. If a plat-level player makes silver-level mistakes in a specific game, then they can lose to silvers in that game. Peaking at a higher rank doesn't suddenly make you immune to making basic mistakes: it's all about the quality (and quantity) of mistakes you're making in your current game.
42:00 as a emerald player, if I were Galio my brain would have stopped thinking there, because information gathering is *distressing* . The chance of Garen getting dove is significant, I could understood that very quick, but there are other questions that paralyze the brain - *how much* (exp, gold) it costs to counter gank top - are the exp and gold important - would counter gank grants a kill - could Garen survive it alone (if this is true but the above is not, then going top imply a complete waste) - even if Garen died, he might still be completely fine? ..... If the answers to these questions were all available in my mind I would naturally ran top, but because I didn't, my mind would go blank.
it’s better to just act in game. don’t try to figure all that out. if you see a play, just decide: YES or NO. worry about why you made the decision in the review
Something you need to do to become a strong league player (and strong player at any real time competitive game) is to train and trust your intuition. You're not a computer, you can't analyze 100 variables before you make a decision - at some level, you need to be able to make snap decisions based on limited information.
Haven't watched the video yet, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents here: I've been a Diamond player for many seasons. The old plat was considered what the new Emerald is now considered as; elo hell. In my experience, I've had a much easier time winning games in D3/D2 than E2/D4. I originally thought that due to my playing adc, that that may the reason for easier games in more coordinated play. However this season, I swapped to just play Gwen top. I started this season in Plat 3 (Yikes). I obviously won a ton of games and immediately shot up to E2 with a 70% winrate (E3 - E2 was 80% winrate). Yet as soon as I hit E2, the games became unbearable. Huge skill disparity, smurfs, obviously bought accounts and trolls were rampant. I climbed from E2 - D4 with a 55% winrate. To me, this was the clearest evidence that it wasn't because of my role. It was simply because E2/D4 was THAT bad. The good thing is, being Emerald, you learn wayyyy faster than other elos due to the skill disparity, and how a low Emerald player playing against high Emerald players will improve quickly.
Ego in emerald is dangerous for sure. I think many people underestimate the fact that you could ping people to the correct play but they will go off and do what they want to do most of the time.
I think Emerald is difficult because it's the first elo where you can see a botlane lose lane go 4/10 and in the very same game the other team can make a small mistake and all of a sudden the 3/7 Jinx wipes and suddenly the team that had a massive gold advantage for 95% of the game loses off a single play.
Got to emerald IV for the first time this season as a top main. Immediately the first thing I noticed is how quickly the game spirals out of control and how little I can realistically do about it. Either my team is the one snowballing and my job is tonjust not feed, or my team is feeding and now somehow I'm supposed to bring us back against for other fed players? I feel like as a player I'm very open-minded and I known when to accept blame for my gameplay, but this elo genuinely confuses me sometimes and so many games make me feel like I never had any say in how the game plays out.
@@Unintelligentful im just saying this is my experience. Im sure better top laners than me experienced this as well, but like Nathan and Curtis say in the video, merely go from a 90% wr to a 60% wr. Emerald rank is just a genuinely harder rank to climb through than the others is all I wanted to highlight
@@IchigoKurosaki3119take small steps. One is understanding your champ, second the hardest matchups spell combos. If you know a champs combo you already know exactly what they will do and you can counter it. Then it’s the champ you play and how to use it in team fights and skirmishes. Self criticism and actively thinking about the game also go a long way to improving.
@Curtis, I was an Emerald Steve kind of player, once I learned how to iron out the first 8 I went straight to D1/Masters games from low emerald. It's very interesting to see how much just building consistency helps the journey.
Interesting. I'm a similar type of player - my match-up knowledge isn't great and my laning in general isn't my strong suit. But I know how to handle myself post 15 mins. If I get through early game unscathed i'm quite confident in my ability to impact the game in a positive way, but yeah I die 1v1 or to ganks way too often.
As an emerald2 player, thank you so much for this video, everything is so true, in emerald we don't process information, we Just play at random, specially the clips were so accurate, i see things like that in every game by anyone myself included
emerald is harder than diamond to climb through unironically because you have to be the carry players are too inconsistent to rely on. In diamond/masters there are so many one tricks so they understand how to play their champs better they might have terrible macro but they can play their champs. So the best way to actually climb through emerald is just play 2-3 champs and understand the role of your champion and what you can do to generate leads or how to play team fights consistently because you will often face people who have no idea what to do.
yes from an article I found - "The sentiment of disdain towards the Emerald League from ‘Byepolarpolarbear’ and others isn’t unwarranted. It seems to stem from a few crucial areas of gameplay that are noticeably different and indeed worse than that in the Diamond League. For starters, the skillset of players in Emerald is viewed as lackluster, making games harder than those found in Diamond. ‘Byepolarpolarbear’ particularly highlighted this, stating that playing in Emerald was challenging due to teammates’ inferior skills compared to that of those in Diamond.." like Curtis is describing bobby 11:22 as if emerald should be easy to climb and steve aswell but bobby is the reason emerald is hard to climb. imagine being an adc or a support, you can't even rely on your own teammate, but you can't even 2v1 the enemies because they're not bronze, they're emerald. and what if you're the jungler? and you have bobby laners? who take unnecessary fights and don't say no to them. you basically have to coin flip that your laner is the one that wins, and just farm since you can't gank any lane since they're dead. curtis and nathan are only looking at it from the point of view that - the enemy team is making mistakes - but YOUR teammates are doing the same shit, AND you can't rely on them, AND its not bronze where you can 1v5, the higher in ranks you go the more the game becomes less about single player and more about team play. but bobby and steve are both good and BAD which is the problem, you cannot rely on your team, but the opponents are much stronger than in bronze/silver/gold
You don't need to rely on your team. You just need to try to do your job at every point in the game. Sometimes that means being the carry, sometimes it means enabling the carry, sometimes it means being a punching bag. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but more often than not, it will. Relying on your team shifts the blame away from you, which is a way to guarantee a lack of improvement. Yes, your team makes mistakes, even game-losing ones, but what could you have done better? And the answer to that is never 'nothing'.
To everyone saying they're in emerald elo hell. What's the alternative? Let's say you skipped emerald and get instantly placed in diamond. What do you think would happen, climb up to master or fall into emerald? People are in their ranks for a reason.
I'm not an "emerald is elo hell" person. But what's funny is that everything you discussed in the first 26 minutes makes me second guess myself that it may actually be elo hell.
So something ive been stewing on for awhile the amount of changes ranked has gotten makes me very uncertain if ive been improving let me paint a picture before all ranked changes I ended a season rank gold 1 it was really simple getting to gold one but every promotional failed. Then the next season the introduced iron I believe and reduced tiers to 4 and that season I got to like mid high plat pretty easy but everyone was saying plat is the new gold so I was compeltely unsure if I actually improved that season then emerald was introduced the season after I hit plat 1 and again I was told emerald was just the new plat so again Im unsure if ive improved. Now ive hit d4 and with all the ranked changes im asking myself at this point am I diamond? or has ranked been completely upended.
lul states are just times when you aren’t actively doing something. walking back to lane after a reset is the easiest example. the first minute of every game is a LUL state where you think about win conditions and levels 1-6. jugglers have the most lul states. (in between abilities while farming camps, in between camps, + after reset) how to use lul states: ask and answer the questions: “what are my teammates doing” “where are the enemies” “what should my next play be?” in that order. be thorough first, then speed comes naturally. remember: slow is smooth and smooth is fast
I have recently tried not to OTP Poppy which has been my preferred pick the previous two splits, where I reached gold 4 both times. So I went with Gwen and now I am thinking about including Garen, to focus on the basics with a basic champion. This switch caused me to lose almost every lane and game and I ended up being in an angered state after when I finally sat down and reviewed a block of games. What I find is that I have to look at my replays more than once. The day after I am calm and can review my gameplay in a relaxed state. I do notice that my Poppy mastery is way above anything else because I feel way more relaxed playing Poppy. It is interesting to see it from this angle. If I just sit down and grind those 150-200 games of Garen or Gwen, I might eventually end up having the same calm playing not just Poppy, and also sticking to actually playing league and not abandoning the game for months at a time.
I love this ❤ Played a game in emerald today which turned out to be a free win, cause their adc mental boomed and ran it. Not sure about the ELO Hell narrative, but I've seen more trolls there than any other rank. I've always felt that my losses are due to my own basic mistakes and not due to these random trolls. There are just a few extra random trolls there
Gold 2. Emerald 4 starts at old Gold 2. That's the disparity I was talking about. It's old Gold 2 to old D4 0 LP. That's a MASSIVE skill gap to have in a game.
Hey guys, i ve got 4 different accounts in emerald in 2 regions. I peaked E1 last season and demoted to E4 really fast. I have all the narratives you mentioned: elo hell, shit match making, auto filled = insta lose, etc. I watched last tf blade series "highest win rate to chall" and He obliterated emerald elo winning 85 % games at 15 mins. Every game he was top damage, doing incredible well even when counterpicked HARD (irelia vs volibear for example) and winning impossible games (5 / 20 global score with him having all 5 kills). He did this consistenly from plat to master 400 lp. Guys, the gap is real... we emerald players are not even close to elite despite we think we diserve to be placed higher. I know i m the main reason i m not climbing. My ego does n t allow me to play from behind and start blaming everyone, while underperforming so bad. My hard stucked formula is as it follows: i can snowball really hard playing bruisers but dont win every game i ve got feed; in the other side, if i fall behind early game i m so tilted and toxic that i lost most of this games (90 or 95%). When i watch replays, maybe my jungler missed opportunity to gank my lane, but i ve also did a really bad trade for bad tethering. I recognize this pattern but it s really hard for me to fix my mental.
I think what people don't understand about percentiles is that when you're closer to the top, it essentially becomes multiplicative. For example, 90% is 1 in 10 and 95% is i in 20 and 99% is 1 in 100. Going from Silver say 50% is essentially 1 in 2 vs Emerald III is 1 in 10 and say Diamond IV is 1 in 20. Ie. a 2x jump. and then there's Diamond I which is essentially 1 in 100
This has opened my eyes I’m emerald 3 peaked 2 and just couldn’t figure it out, but when I see these examples and the lul states 10/10 over many games I could instantly remember many times I was not locked in or not even paying attention to big picture
I was a 'climb to gold and quit' player from season 2 to season 12. As soon as the new rank system dropped I was instantly plat, which gave me the dopamine boost to try and climb, now I have an account in d4 and another in mid E which I made to play with my lowbie duo. No process, just spammed games. And Emerald is definitely the most toxic division even if its not true elo hell
Idk as a soloq support main i am exactly 55% wr with +20 -22 in e4/e3. I stomp every game where no one runs in my team and I get stomped every time someone does. As per math i have 45% chance of getting a runner in my team and that's perfectly represented on my WR. And with these LP gains I have been in e4/e3 for like 30 games now because of this.
I no longer believe Emerald is that bad. After Riot themselves admitted that it was too varied in skill level and made some adjustments games have felt better for the most part. Before then I thought you missed the mark in your assessment of Emerald, but the current narrative is getting out of control. Calling it "Elo Hell" or "Impossible to climb out of" are harmful mindsets. I am acquainted with a Diamond to Master tier player who struggled through Emerald so that comment resonated with me a little. However, it's all about adapting to the environment. I've been stuck in Emerald since the rank was introduced, but I'm trying to keep a positive attitude and learn from my mistakes!
As someone who is currently stuck in Emerald I heavily agree with this video. Esp the information gathering part. TBH the experience I have a lot as a mid laner is I see Junglers who are weak early pathing bot to top or mirroring a stronger enemy jg nad dying to level 3 invade 1v1. And it's so predictable. Some games I am able to get prio as mid and can defend this invade but other games I can't depending on match up. But my junglers never look at my lane (or other lanes) to assess this, they just autopilot path. Like every time I have an Evelyn on my team or a Shyvana or Kayn or something and they just afk full clear bot to top, they always die level 3 against solo invade and I'm just like... how are you not reading this map state and realizing this would happen??
Another way to look at it is what does elo mean and their respective brackets. For this instance: if your emerald you can carry plat games and to be diamond you need to carry in emerald. In essence elo determines whether you can carry in your elo bracket, if you need to be carried in your elo bracket then your aren't actually that elo bracket thus why you get hard stuck. Riot tired to solve this perception problem by creating a new bracket but the player base is to small to really flush out the issues these players are having so they think its the system and not their respective skill to carry.
I ended last season Emerald, top 10% NA. After getting placed in Gold, I managed to climb through Plat and hit Emerald within a month pretty easily. But first time Diamond was the goal for this season so I kept queuing until I was hardstuck tilted in Gold for another month, making both me and my opponent’s lives miserable. I’ve met like 3 different players that experienced the same thing this season.
Do BBC'ers play /muteall? I usually /muteall by either 00:15 or 01:30 and only turn it back on if we're stomping and it seems unlikely my teammates are flaming each other (or me).
People think they're in elo hell because they don't understand what to do,. There's little recognition of any skills they haven't mastered themselves - and by Emerald level - they can get punished heavily for disrespect in various ways. For instance. Being "carried" by strongplayers is a skill - and can let people recover from lost games. Put the carryable player in a game without a strong ally and they will struggle just as much as the 1v9 mechanical god with no macro.
While I don't think this is the case anymore, Emerald at it's inception in Split 13.2 genuienly was the most coinflip rank. You had gold/silver players that got lucky and gained insane mmr being in your games, and vice versa diamond players that got unlucky at the beginning of the season, the games felt extremely volatile and uneven. Emerald 4 is still a painful rank to play in but it's nowhere near what it was an year ago I think, things have for the most part balanced out.
Haven't finished watching the video but I have some thoughts: I am master tier oce and I hit master on ad/sup with a 77% WR. I am a player who mostly plays off intuition. I have very good mechanics compared to most players below master (but about average for my rank). I sometimes play in emerald on alts or friend accounts. I think emerald feels particularly frustrating because your teammates are very unreliable, and people don't really play to a single wincon. I've had a few games where I'm a scaling ad with 9 CS a minute, and yet the teams in emerald just don't play around me for fights (they fight when I need to recall or just randomly in the jungle with no objectives up) I think emerald teams get confused and try to play to a bunch of wincons at the same time without really focusing on the best one. Games tend to get dragged out a lot because unless you are in a position to solo carry, it's very hard to push the pace of the game forward because everyone has conflicting ideas on how to end. I think the reason diamond to master and master+ feels easier to climb is because people know how to close games better with a slight lead. There's a lot of subconscious knowledge in diamond+ players that help make the game feel more smooth. Concepts such as setting up vision before an objective spawns, playing around waves better and the idea of a strong vs weak side of the map for example. (in emerald, people just walk to the objective when its up and then try to get vision, they don't think about waves and just try and fast push everything, TPs get used way too late etc). At the end of the day, obviously higher rank players will be better at the game, but emerald is mixed up with players who understand some of those concepts and players who have never thought about those things ever. Since some players are trying to make a decision and other players cannot understand those decisions, emerald teams tend to + a very conflicting ideas on how to progress their position in a game. However, none of this really matters for climbing. If you play well in your games, you will eventually climb. If 9 players will play at random skill levels, and you play consistently well, mathematically you will climb in the long term.
There is a disproportionate amount of alt/smurf accs in emerald also imo. Like every other game you’re guaranteed to have some level 30-60 player(s) who thinks they’re god and go omega boom when one little thing goes wrong
I have managed to reach after many games of beeing hardstuck d4( 1k games) to reach master. And i had to lose my ego and be open about my own mistakes. Beeing decisive and reducing my emotions towards my own teammates helped me tremendously. I wish i would have accepted sooner that i do mistakes aswell then i would have avoided beeing demoted back to emerald for 20 times🤣
my experience in emerald is people just being scared to move out from under the turret. botlane is so frustrating when you have to try to farm 1v2, and when you get filled support its the adc who sits under your turret out of xp and gold range. i dont know what kind of catatonic ptsd they have but its bad. the best excuse i get is "im x champion idiot" aka "im supposed to lose, give up do nothing afk because i play this champ". like that prevents them from trying to win the game what the fuck? why not pick y that CAN do something then?? im definitely steveish because ive played waaay too long for my own good. 14+ years..
I 100% agree with you guys, there is no such thing as "elo hell" and there is a lot of nuance as to the way that emerald elo is right now, however as someone who has experienced emerald as a player this season, my climb through emerald had a lot of low quality matches. I think it's an mmr issue (which is slowly being resolved with the new changes) but it's definitely an issue when I load in to a game and there is me (300 games this season 60% wr) mixed in with players who are fresh level 30s actual first season of ranked playing against challenger smurfs. I am not even joking when I tell you my first game in emerald 4, I was playing against a challenger smurf jungler, and my jungler was a level 40 account and this was his first season of ranked. I'm not saying all games are like this because they're not but there is definitely a good chance that in emerald you will play games with high skill disparities that ruins the quality of the match. I think the core issue with this matchmaking problem is caused by the default mmr for newer account being emerald (which is no longer the case, but was up until recently) so new players can get lucky in placements and get placed emerald while smurfs buying accounts are in the same elo. At the end of the day I think this issue is slowly going away as riot made it easier to derank so newer players are less likely to get lucky winstreaks to emerald and smurfs will most likely climb faster, but I guess we will see at the end of the split and how the new changes effect nest season. Overall, playing consistently well will still win you games and no matter what elo you are in, some games are out of your control. I think the reason emerald elo feels so bad to so many players is because it feels like there are more games out of your control than other elos. This applies both ways however, sometimes you load into a game and its a team diff, just a free win or loss. Does anyone else agree with this sentiment or am I delusional?
I have two accounts in Master on EUW. For both accounts, it took me considerably more time to get through Emerald than Diamond. Your performance matters much less, because a large amount of games are decided by trolls/griefers/afks/etc. It's not "harder", but it definitely takes more time.
100% Emerald is filled with the boosted hardstucks who don't give a fuck about winning, since they know they can't climb anyways, so they given up. Mixed with the actual good players who are on the climb, trying their best to win everygame, and when you mix this, you get the possibility for the most unstable teams you can ever imagine. Games completely collapsing within 10 mins. There's a reason some challenger streamers end up spending a few hundred games in that elo, before getting out.
I've been dealing with this problem.. you hit em1 30lp and riot decides to give you these trolls.. it's a very consistent pattern I've noticed in my games.. just so fucking hard to carry these mutts
yeah these guys are delusional. also alot of smurfs get put in high plat / low emerald and so my games are shit quality. i think OCE has such a small playerbase emerald doesnt really matter. only 50 players in oce are chall compared to 300 NA
1. u guys re amazin 2. i am gold I- plat IV 3. I usually get REAALLLY tilted at teammates that flame but also fucking suck at the game, OR, teammates that are stupidly useless. i get the "u dont have control over them". i usually just mute at the first sign of "this guy will not be a contribution to the game" (to keep my focus). and i have managed to keep my cool time to time. but i still tilt at those kinds of ppls
Climbed from emerald 4 to diamond 4 last season. Turn your chat off, play without emotional influence and focus on yourself. Elo hell is whatever elo you think it is.
I'm a support main that reached Masters in S12, didn't have too much trouble with Emerald in the early season, reaching Diamond relatively easily, then summer season hits and I'm hardstuck Emerald. Granted after the kids are forced to return to school in 6 days the games should be carriable again but there should no reason whatsoever that an even ex-masters player should be anything less than Diamond 4. So yes Emerald is absolutely ELO Hell, if you're not literally solocarrying every single game you will spend a LOT of time at this ELO.
The fact that emerald rank is very large (top 18% to top 6% or whatever you said) is irrelevant in terms of matchmaking and game quality since you are not matched based on rank in the first place. Rank is purely visual, only MMR matters in terms of matchmaking.
Hey guys in episode 156 you promted " charliemwraith" for ADC coaching - is he still around? As far as I know you have a guy that uses the same principles for support and you are obviously Mid and Jungle. If he is not around can you recommend anybody else? Can you maybe do an episode about botlane I feel you never did a single episode about it. Thanks and keep the great work up!
the percentage of emerald top 18 to like 8% is pretty insane. In fortnite the difference between top 10 and top 1% is absolutely massive as well. in top 10% i can drop 20 kill games all day long. top 1 its full placement.
yes as an emerald Midlander im very familiar about the jgs solo ruining the game esp when im picking a champ like naafiri or asol that loses in 2v2 anyways where the jg might win the 1v1 even worse if a top or bot laner has no prio too, its the dichotomy of if i should help or not sometimes i make the right decision but sometimes the right decision is to let them die, but we are talking about emerald here, do you know how common it is for a jg to come mid and ruin the game because i dont go to help them. Its a good video because yes the advice you give is pretty relevant to the skill level of emerald but it doesnt change the fact that sometimes i have a masters top laner smurfing and they die to a gank or limit testing in the 1v1 and then they go on 100% idc mode it would be funny to go 0/10 from this point or having a master smurf adc who plays with an plat support and they just for fun it even in some cases i play vs a smurf midlaner and they are just better the prevelance of level 30 accounts is crazy just checked my last game and there were 3 now i would say i definitetly have things to work on but it woulnt even affect the outcome that game was and thats the coinflip idea of it, like if you just spam games sure youll get better odds seeing as youre not the one trolling but i think thats why its so bad especially if youre genuinely an improving emerald player playing solo with no duo is that the odds of these things happening is too coinflip and when they stack negatively its tremendously wakeful feeling, i feel like I'm a player who doesn't care about hitting ranks higher because i know its a journey and that improving is the most important thing but its just a painful experience when you hit 3 games in a roll with a troll on a fresh account but sure i could improve my consistency with early warding ignoring my kamekaze jgler and muting straight away, thinking about win cons in champ select and null states and matchup mechanics
First of all asol doesn’t lose 2v2 if you do then you are playing it wrong. Is there a wave pushing into you catch the wave. 3v2 skirmish about to happen ditch the wave and go there anyway. I can only speak on asol but you don’t give up farm unless you are forced to. Meaning NO roaming when the minions meet in the middle. Also here is a elo hack for emerald, actively think about the game. I swear all emerald players I see actually don’t think when they play the game. They are on autopilot 4fun gaming thinking it’s helping them. Don’t do that :) think about the game and your role and play to your characters strengths. If you do that consistently you will climb out of emerald.
I'm a emerald player and i got here by trolling inting and making my team-mates mad. I also autopilot every game. How is this high elo? Can someone explain?
when i smurf in emerald i also noticed that most of the people there have fresh account and can barely click at all, then a week later then are playing in low plat/ gold games lol. also they have very poor mental and ego due to being boosted to that rank
peaked emerald 3 38lp last split. currently emerald 3 44lp and this episode has come at the perfect time. time to focus up, drop the ego, get diamond this split. the areas of improvement are obvious, it's just laziness.
I've seen these "elo hell"s in a lot of games. There's a point where pure mechanics alone can carry you to, in this case emerald, and past that you need to play better to reach it, but most people don't self-reflect enough to improve their non-mechanical skills, thus creating a space where everyone thinks they're amazing because their mechanics are insane and everyone around them is the issue. I've experienced it in CS:GO, Overwatch, Observed it from the outside in Rainbow 6 Seige, and now I'm experiencing it in Emerald. I think these spaces are the closest thing we can get to a genuine elo hell because your smart decition making can be hampered immensely by the chaotic yet mechanically skilled players around you just sort of doing things. Or worse yet, people who will just throw games because of X or Y. One game you have 4 team mates silently playing and doing their best, the next your ADC is calling FF cus they died while your team got a 3/0 top laner, 2/0 mid and all 6 grubs off of the support roaming, and that ADC will do whatever it takes to lose the game. I don't think that the traditional sense of an unbeatable MMR exists but I think the term "Elo hell" could easily be used for these chaotic, toxic MMRs where the amount of agency a single player has varies so heaily like this just form the sheer chaos of the MMR.
Elo hell is just another stage 4 issue. If you think you're there, you're too busy thinking about how factors outside your control influence the results of your games, instead of improving at the things you *can* do. A player with a healthy mindset will never feel trapped in elo hell.
You know why is elo hell? Because you get to e4 with 91 lp, you're doing well ,climbing, and then you get in a lobby with a duo mostly likely one who just reached emerald and one who is plat 1 with 9 lp that plays jg. He is not even a jg main, he picks a champ that he has played 5 times, has no idea what do to as jg, then goes 2v1 and feeds the enemy bot. You can do your best (obviously there is room for improvement for all of us) but getting 2-3 games like this per day can be mentally crushing.
Before watching this, maybe it'll get answered but I just want to say my thoughts: I dont understand the focus on elo. There is no real difference between Elos. The only thing that matters is MMR. If you call a specific elo elo hell, you fundamentally misunderstand how the matchmaker works.
How can emerald be elo hell? First of all, replying to the first comment you replied to; there are no new players getting placed in emerald. I am in silver, and I struggle because I have been playing for about 6 years, and I watch the pros as well as lots of coaching videos. I feel like I understand the macro even though im not as good at the micro. In silver, there is alot of M7 champion players that still go for bad plays. Should I be playing differently as an ADC then how the pros plays? Ex: I rotate to jg scuttle and every other objs. But I feel like I still make mistakes in lane phase because I don't understand matchups very well. But don't feed the enemy adc. It just feels like alot of players know when they're supposed to group later in the game, But don't understand their matchup well enough and end up dying over and over on a lane matchup, then the game becomes almost unwinnable because of a fed enemy
I am speaking as someone who has been to silver 1, 1 game away from getting placed in silver. But many years ago. I have since changed to primarily adc and its still very hard to climb. Is it because ADC is so reliant on your team? I used to main a hypercarry like vayne., but didn't understand the game as well as I do now. Please help me
Clips 5 and 7 are really good examples of why people call this ELO hell. It's cool to point out these mistakes as why the players in these clips are there, but you're kind of ignoring the fact that these players making these mistakes are why OTHER PEOPLE are miserable in this ELO. Sure, if you belong higher than Emerald, you'll get there...but that doesn't make the experience any less frustrating. Especially since if you do try to ping plays like this jungle fight off, your team will usually go through with it anyway and then flame you for not being there to die with them. (As an ADC, I get pinged every single game for not ditching my wave for some bad coin flip fight that has no purpose, just like I get pinged as a mid laner if I don't follow the assassin into the zero vision river when I'm playing a champion like Viktor and the bot lane dies despite me pinging them back until I get ping muted by the system.)
Man I'm not even Emerald. I just get triggered by people whose entire job is to help the community spouting off nonsense when they don't understand the issue. Same reason I used to try and hold Neace accountable for saying dumb shit, even before all the drama. I just expect better. They're not wrong about why people get stuck in Emerald, but it's crazy that they did that whole bit about "ELO hell" without bothering to understand WHY it's called ELO hell.
@@TheDimsick explain it then. why is it not elo hell? and please accept the premises at 3:12+ and 4:28+ so their reality, and the reality of many high elo players on smurfs is that they get hiigh winrates in bronze silver gold plat, then BOOM emerald, winrate drops from 100/90/80% to down to 60% , they hit diamond, and boom from diamond to masters they get 70-80-90% winrate again how is it not elo hell, when literally the ranks above it and below it are easier to climb through. hey grandpa, boomer, all this video did was explain why emerald players don't play great, or aren't great in all areas. elo hell isn't a skill or winrate thing. the least skilled players are iron 4, and the hardest to get high winrate is challenger, nobody is calling challenger elo hell, there could be some people in iron calling iron elo hell, but no smurfs are calling iron elo hell, its heaven for smurfs so boomer can you break it down for us? I can tell you why iron- bronze isn't elo hell, because you can 1v5 in bronze as a smurf, because its basically a single player game, only you matter. but the higher up the ladder you go, the more it becomes a 2v2 game, a 3v3 game, a 4v4 game, a 5v5 game, its no longer "me against the world, don't care about my teammates" right? picks like azir start becoming pickable, people start picking braum, play for the team. tank junglers. etc. people start coordinating. I can tell you why challenger isn't elo hell, because everybody is on a similar page, you're not gonna have bobby or steve described at 12:00 its very common knowledge that jungle pathing is less random in high elo, you can know that your teammates have a base line understanding of everything, when to hit 2, when to shove, when to engage, etc etc gold is very smooth to climb through, your teammates start to help you, but the opponents are very exploitable and you can 1v5, your teammates also don't have much ego, and they play kind of slowish which is nice plat same ish emerald, see now you have steve, you have bobby, you don't know who you have, or what they know, your teammates aren't helping you for shit, but you also can't 1v5 the enemies the segmant at 45:00 in this video is called - jungler solo loses the game, that implies your emerald jungler could solo lose the game for you when you're playing top/mid/supp/adc, its coinflip if you're smurfing in bronze? silver? gold? your jungler could never just solo lose the game for you, you can always 1v5 and find mistakes. diamond, it becomes smooth again, the opponents may be better, but you can somewhat rely on your teammates, games like 2v5able the only other contenders for elo hell aside from emerald would be master/grandmaster imo please @dimsick explain to us kids, how did this video in any way disprove emerald being an elo hell??? all this video did was explain that emerald players make mistakes, and aren't challenger level. but nobody is arguing that challenger is elo hell, or that elo hell is when your opponents are the best at the game
"Impaired Information Retention: Individuals with ADHD may struggle to retain information in their working memory, leading to difficulties in remembering instructions, organizing thoughts, or following through on tasks that require holding information temporarily" - there you go, that's your 3rd stereotype of emerald player. Not saying every single one of them but there is high chance ADHD plays the role in it.
Emerald has a problem, a massive problem. As of season 14, fresh accounts start their climb in Platinum 3 0LP at the lowest. And I get the idea, this way you reduce the amount of time smurfs spend smashing lower skilled players as well as the area they cover. But in exchange, this creates extreme team disparity because smurfs of all skill get mixed with genuine emerald players, and then on top you add the poor bastard who touched ranked for the first time and will have to get demolished 10+ games in a row because his starting MMR is ludicrously high. And the funny thing is, Emerald isn't so different from old Platinum, the difference between P4s and P1s was very, very noticeable, but the other variables weren't nearly as present.
I mean emerald is the worst ranked bc you have past diamond 4 0 lp peaks in games playing random champs not even trying to win and then you also have accounts that were gold 3 peaks now emerald. The skill disparity and quality of each game changes massively from lobby to lobby. Feels like a lot of the games are decided in champ select.
The problem with emerald is that you have too much variety in skill for the games to be consistent even if you are a consistent player yourself. I know my skill level and fundamentals are master level minimum, and I base that off of skrims I’ve played in where I’ve out jungled d1-gm players consistently. In solo q I’m a hardstuck E4 player with a 52% wr on 700 games this season, and I can’t climb due to inconsistency from the other players in the game, what can I do if I finish my 3 camps and bot lane has a double kill and top lane got a solo pick? What can I do if when I do attempt a tank my mate trolls it? What can I do with my 0 vision perma in lane support? These are all things I can’t control, and these are all reason emerald is elo hell. It’s really easy to say “emerald is not elo hell because 90% of the players there make simple mistakes that could be avoided” but the reality is the 10% of players in emerald that got there legitimately (not from doing 5 placements on a fresh account and getting places there) can’t win games because the other players in the match don’t actually care about winning or improving.
That was old mid-high Plat. Emerald is even worse I feel, since it contains old Gold I at the bottom of E4 all the way up to old D4 at the top of E1. The skill discrepancies are even bigger.
I will say, no matter what account I play on, as soon as I promote to emerald it’s like my team mates immediately play like they are toddlers enjoying their 10th league of legends game ever. It’s so confusing and I only find it in emerald elo, yes I climb out of emerald but I’d say most emerald player seem to play worse than literal silver players. Always found it weird
For me personally it was the easiest elo to go through. I had a great winrate through it and got d4 without any circumstances (with mute all ofc)while I struggled way more in plat. I think this is very subjective but yes the rank in system is absolutely horrible - i got all the new players in plat.
There are 4 main reasons that make emerald uniquely miserable. 1. Riot made a change that encouraged players that did not belong in Diamond to demote (harsher decay, higher LP gain/loss, etc), meaning that boosted accounts have fallen into high emerald. 2. There is a wide spread of ranks that can exist in emerald. Gold-2 to Diamond-4 argument, yada yada, you've heard that one. 3. You can get to emerald through good placements, meaning that you'll have both smurfs from other ranks and new players land in the elo. 4. ESPECIALLY LAST SEASON, there was an issue that allowed some peoples MMRS to become incredibly bad, +18 -30 LP gains. So you can have a game that has a D4 jungler, with a smurfing mid, against a level 30 jungler, and a boosted mid. You know, as an adc, that if you lose this game, you have to win 2 more games to make up for it. You lose, because you statistically, as a player, probably will because of that discrepancy, losing 30LP. Go through 60 games of that and its incredibly taxing on the player. My first 20 games this season were incredibly low quality, 17/20 of them had either an AFK or greifer on one of the teams. I won 14/20 of those games, and actually enjoyed 3 of them. This doesn't mean that you can't actually get out of emerald, but it is incredibly hard to improve in emerald. Any emerald player can become better and get to diamond. That is simultaneously not what they are complaining about. It is the equivalent of someone going "Wow this chronic back pain sure is causing me distress!" and someone tells you to go to the gym. Yep, that sure would fix my issue and is also not at all what I wanted to hear. This is where all of the annoyance and anger comes from the community in this discussion. It isn't healthy for the community or the game to deny the existence of this issue. Everyone that is saying "It's impossible to get out of emerald" is definitely coping. Anyone who has 200 games and feels miserable about that experience is perfectly valid. The quality of games are objectively bad. There are many definitive, and specifically preventable factors that have decreased the quality of games in that elo. It doesn't make sense to respond to widespread chronic backpain caused by preventable issues by telling everyone to go to gym. Riot needs to crack down on smurfs and boosters and fix the placement system so that level 30 accounts aren't getting placed in emerald. Riot did actually fix the MMR discrepancy (and then introduced a new one with 50LP demotions, love you riot) and lowering the % of players that emerald covers.
2 doesn't seem like much of a reason to me. You could say the same for any rank and the fact is realistically a low emerald is only going to match mid/high plats to mid emeralds most of the time, no single emerald player is matching gold 2s one game then diamond 4s the next game outside of some exceptional duo queuing. Not to mention this should be much less of a thing now that riot seem to be fixing a lot of the mmr problems. Like the thing with Emerald is it *could* be the most miserable elo but we only have anecdotal evidence. Like in low master I don't see too many smurfs sure, it's usually just smurfs who are finally getting to where they 'belong' or if anything higher than where they belong. But I see so much of the other stuff like massive egos, people giving up far too easily, and just people making stupid macro calls that you'd expect in silver. It just seems silly to me to believe Emerald is that much worse than any other rank
Thank for you being more thorough and tactful than I was. That's pretty much the point I was trying to make about the skill disparity in Emerald, but I was frustrated AF with them commenting on something they don't even understand...and this isn't the first time they've done it. I know these guys are smarter than this.
