Bronze Tier
You are not sure how you got here; all you have are some hazy memories of seeing a new button labeled "Ranked Solo/Duo" after selecting your map. You try it out thinking it is a new game mode, and have stuck to it ever since.
You don't really think about what is happening, and it doesn't really bother you. You pick Ashe for the one hundredth time, pick any lane to go, and auto attack anything you can until the match is over. You may not know how the skills work entirely, why some items are reccomended to you and not to others, or even that you can use QWER for faster casting. And the beauty of it is that it doesn't matter. You are having fun, in your own way, and so are the others. Nobody really talks except for the odd "GLHF" and "GG", but you win and lose sometimes, and you get to play your champions, and nobody will ever give you shit about it.
Until one of them show up.
They are your messengers. They are the ones who ruin your fun. They are the ones who show up in the pre-game chat saying things like "meta", "jungle", "support" and "Bronze hell" and trying to coordinate your team. They are the ones who complain when you die, make a mistake or, heaven forbid, steal their kill. However, as much as you may hate it, they teach you how to take objectives, group up, and stop trying to kill Tryn when he enters his Unstoppable Rage.
Something stirs inside of you. You want to learn more about the metagame. You want to understand what you need to do to win more than you lose. You open your browser and type "League of Legends Guide".
You become one of them, and that is when your damnation truly begins.
Silver Tier
You have read, you have learned, and you have won. At a great cost, you stepped on the heads of your fellow bretheren in the Bronze Tier and made it to Silver. You feel truly powerful for the first time; you have accomplished something, you have gained a grand new Tier, and with that a new thirst for victory. You set your sights on Gold and think you can make it there as well. Unfortunately, nothing is as simple.
You enter the pre-game chat and are surprised when everyone starts picking a "role"; some champs are more fit for some "roles" than "others". You are completely unsure how to react, and ask them "where can I go as Poppy?" and your first taste of the rage hits you like a wall of bricks. They rage just like them of the old Bronze division, and that catches you off guard. This isn't what you expected. You thought Silver was different, that people would play to get better, and not to rage more at each other.
So you read up more guides, learn more things about the game, and try to get better, but no matter what you do, people still rage. Support lux? Rage. Top Lissandra? More rage. You don't know how to react, so you rage back. Tell them to let you do what you want 'cause "this is the top rated guide in Mobafire", even though you haven't even checked the time stamp to find out you can't stack Hextech Gunblades on Mordekaiser anymore. When you win, you feel emboldened and decide you are in fact destined for Gold, and when you lose it was clearly never your fault; just your stupid teammates who fed, did ridiculous things and got caught by the jungler because "Nidalee traps are wards". You fight, you learn, and you get to your promotion series on Silver I. Your goal is in sight.
Gold Tier
You're here. Finally. Gold. Gold. This is where you were supposed to be, this is where you wanted to get to since they showed up in your face back in the Bronze division. You feel emboldened by your achievement, and happily enter the ranked que one more time to see the "Ranked Heaven" with your own eyes. You kindly ask for top lane Wukong as fourth pick.
The rage hits you once again, but despite your surprise, it barely phases you. You have been burned by the flames for too long now for them to make a difference. Everyone says to pick the "OP" champions instead. Why? Wukong carried you out of Silver, after all. No, but he is no good here. You need to get Riven, Renekton and Jayce now, or you are going to get crushed.
Your favorite picks in Silver are no longer "viable" here. It is now all about abusing who is the new "OP" of the week and punishing your opponents for picking "unviable" champs. One day it is Vlad, the other day Nunu top, and the other is is Fiora mid. Dying stops being the norm, and now becomes the exception. Giving up First Blood before the five minute mark without a jungle gank means you are now going to be reported by your entire team for intentional feeding. You can no longer depend on kill gold for your builds, now you have to learn the arcane knowledge of last-hitting, zoning and lane freezing if you hope to remain in the game. Falling behind immediately spells doom for you, and you are going to get verbally assaulted by all players over and over again until you either disconnect or get a Pentakill.
Yet, through sheer stubbornness, you persist. You play again and again, day after day, watching the numbers slowly inch their way up, and finally get you to your Gold I promotion series. You are yelling at your team the instant the pre-match lobby loads, telling them to get in line, and anyone who dares ruin your series is going to have his mother violated by you repeatedly until the day of their deaths. By sheer hatred and persistence, you get to Platinum once and for all.
Platinum Tier
The Rage hits you just as the pre-game lobby loads, but you are now neither affected nor surprised by it. You are ready. You have done everything in Gold to prepare you for this. You can do anything from Skarner mid to Support Pantheon. There can't possibly be anything more that you need to learn.
You were wrong.
The "team composition" is the new norm. Why in the world are you picking jungle Diana? We need Trundle to complete our poke comp. You don't have Trundle? You have forty seconds to purchase RP and get him before your pick is done. Never played him? Who cares, just load up LoLPro and pick the first guide that shows up. It says you need to rush Blade of the Ruined King? Then why are you asking us, rush BotRK and go for it.
Picking your best champs or the old OP ones are no longer going to cut it. You have to pay attention to the enemy bans and form an entire team on the go. The instant they ban out Janna you just know they are headed for a hard engage. That means your team needs AOE - drop that Elise, we need you to play Orianna. You have to know how to play at least twenty champions in every single role if you hope to be able to win here, and even then the tiniest mistake will cost your entire team the game, once again.
You grit your teeth and keep going. You are almost there. Diamond is just up ahead. Soon enough you are out of Ranked Hell. You can do it, you tell yourself, you can do it.
Diamond Tier
Nobody seems to type anything in the pre-game lobby at all. That is your first greatest surprise. You actually stop and take note of the names of players in your team. Some of them give you a strange case of déja-vu, until you realize you've seen them before. The players who put some of the more unique guides out there. You actually reached them at last.
This is it. You can feel it.
"Hey, scrub", one of them types in chat.
You are startled, but nobody answers.
"Yeah, you. New guy. You are going jungle."
But you are fifth pick, you are going to compl-
"Everyone has their roles already. I am going mid to fill in, and you are going jungle because we are missing out. Don't you dare fuck up."
Everyone knows everyone in here. All of them stream, have youtube accounts, or have theorycraft blogs, and they all know each other. Except for you. You are the anomaly. You are the one who is going to bring the entire team to the ground.
Players queue dodge the instant they spot the enemy pick Poppy, because they know that only that guy plays Poppy, and that is an instant GG. The moment a new lobby starts the very first ban on your team is Poppy. The same thing happens nine times over until everyone knows who is who on the other team, at which point one group decides they have already lost and just dick around and troll until the 20 minute surrender.
Somehow, you win. You play games and get better. You reach the top. The final promotion series is there. This is it.
Challenger
It takes you more than five hours to start a game. Playing requires you to stay up all night in the hopes of a match, but it doesn't affect you any more, seeing as you have already foregone normal sleep hours since Gold V. Instead, you spend all the time doing LoLKing searches on your potential allies and enemies as well as famous plays so you know what to do at all times.
Noone ever dies before the 20 minute mark anymore. Wards are placed around 80% of the map, and the remaining 20% are constantly patrolled by players of both teams. The games are so close that something as minute as dominating the central brush in the bottom half of the river is enough to snowball a victory out of control. Every single champion ult is timed, every single summoner, every single item use. An ADC that misses five CS in the entire laning phase causes his entire team to mass-ragequit at once. A Jungler who does not gank and force the enemy team to flash might as well be considered a roaming ward. A Top Lane who lets his tower die before the laning phase will have his game recorded and put up on LoLReplay so everyone in the Tier will see, laugh, and await his inevitable demise when he falls back to Diamond.
Sometimes, someone decides to troll the game. At this point, everyone decides on the same thing at once, and all subtlety is thrown off the window. Players will go 5-mid to see if it is viable, proceed to let their supports farm and the ADC to babysit them, and attempt to 2-man baron at the fifteen minute mark with Teemo and Urgot. These are the games that are broadcast and placed on Youtube to trick people in believing that "high-rank players are having fun". The greatest, most beautiful lie ever told.
Yet you are here, and you keep playing. This can't be it, you tell yourself. This can't be how it ends. This isn't League of Legends' Ranked Heaven. You are still in Ranked Hell. You are going to keep getting your LP. You are going to reach the fabled 100 thousand LP requirement to reach Ranked Heaven. You must. You have to. Just one more game... Just... one... more... game...
Originally Posted by nortis
Hem... I server non erano down... Non so perché il log-in si ma bastava thereisnourflevel e entravi
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