Elo Hell n.
A range of Elo rating a player feels he cannot rise above in solo queue ranked League of Legends despite his self-assessment that he is more skilled than other players in this range.

That's about as succinctly as I can put it. See, you're not in Elo Hell because you acknowledge that you are "terrible at LoL" and "mentally challenged". This kind of self-awareness precludes you from ever being in Elo Hell. By acknowledging that you are terrible, you accept that you are probably ranked where you belong.

On the other hand, an entire segment of the LoL community feels that they have exceptionally bad luck, continually getting players on their team who are consistently worse than they are (according to their own assessment). This unhappy set of circumstances also always coincides with encountering teams that don't have the bad luck they have. So, unfortunately, everyone is passing them in the rankings, leaving them at the bottom with feeders / afkers / griefers and other folks whose ilk never appears on the opposing team. Ever.

This belief is also optionally linked to a belief that the top players are there simply because they were lucky in exactly the opposite way. In a way, this provides a certain internal consistency to their belief. After all, since their opponents are never as unlucky as they are, surely some people are unfairly elevated in rank over and over again. Viola -- top players are made.

It's not too hard to see that believing in the existence of "Elo Hell" is best categorized as a form of psychosis.


OP by Vichar of the US forums:
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board...d.php?t=287541

cool story bro

Good post, +1

hearing about this elo-hell thing i had to try solo Q ranked. I have mixed feelings about it. Basically it can go any way: either you get good teammates or u dont. The first few games were alright. won 2, lost 1, all good games, the loss was cause of lack of skill, i can take that. After that "hell" broke loose: for 5 games in a row (!) we were 4v5 where 3 of em was from the beginning. the other 2 games we had ppl go afk cause they got flamed by teammates about how bad they were. But hey, that's just bad luck, there's no evil spirit trying to supress my rise in the ranks after those 5-6 horrible games, things started picking up again and my latest games have been pretty nice, win or loss :-)

I tend to agree, while some players DO tend to get really unlucky, top players somehow all manage to get to high elo. Probably elo-hell mentality comes from players not being able to grasp the overal "strategy" of game, where many factors should be taken into account of loss/victory and the player himself might not realise, that the mistakes he did affect the game more than he thinks.

For example a "elo hell" player, who usually plays carries and gets good k/d ratio, thinks that his team sux as they feed and such, while a high elo player would do something to prevent that and "optimise" the game.

Im no high elo player, but i believe i did happen to get into "elo hell". Basicaly i had 1400~ rating, then got into massive losing streak due to teammates just TOTALLY FEEDING, feeding so incredibly that its hard to believe. If not feeders, then i would get leavers, i think at some point i had several games in row where one of our team left or didnt even get to game to make it 4v5.

Now i almost managed to get back to my previous elo due to huge win streak, but i can imagine some players get stuck in the "elo hell" alot worse than me.

The thing is everyone has their losing streaks and luck does play a sizable factor in short term ranking.

However if after playing several hundred games you're still stuck at a certain ELO (stuck meaning you're consistently at this rating and haven't been significantly higher or lower for a longer period of time) you simply belong there.

I have plenty of bad allies/enemies and I'm the 1500s (not exactly high ELO I know but significantly above average) and I find myself playing really badly every now and then too even though in general I'd say I'm a good/smart player who's not new to competitive gaming by any means.

One of my friends, who basically plays upwards of 10 ranked solo queue games per day, has been as high up as ~1800 and tanked back down to the 1500s (he's 1600-1700 now), streaks happen, especially when you play a large amount of matches.

Someone had to tell them.

I thought it was "mid-high elo" syndrome. Everyone was "mid-high" before season one started... well, at least in their mind they were.