Biography

Prolog: I have never palyed any DOTA-style games before LoL. So this whole thing was completely new to me. I'm generally used to dominate the lower levels in every game I play because of my general abilities and mindset. However, starting LoL I quickly noticed that there is a lot more "things you have to know" than "things you have to practice".

In general I'm the researcher-type of player. I read up early on "what are optimal setups" or "which Champions are for which role?" or "Which items in which situation". However, I noticed multiple issues with researching in this game:
- There is no big fansite where you can find everything like there is with WoW on mmo-champion
- There was no general agreement on how to setup the lanes exactly
- The whole complexity of the game from (70+ Champions * Lots of items * Masteries * Runes) is flat out insane to learn from scratch

When I reached level 30 I researched a bit more before jumping into the ranked games. Often I found that there is something like "Elo hell", and I tried to determine where it actually is. I couldn't find a definite answer and started playing ranked.

My first few ranked games were wins. I dominated on Karthus or supported on Zilen to victory, going straight up to 1.5k rating. But I was scared to keep playing ranked because I didn't feel experienced enough.

Knowing I could only play mages at that point I started another account with the goal of learning the Meelees and AD Champions. By the point I reached level 30 with this account I felt much more confident in most roles, and my knowledge greatly increased.

However, there were still two things that bothered me: For one, I had no prefered role ever since the "roaming" was thrown out of the window. For two, jungling was still a mystery.

Through repeatedly pacticing, reading various guides, watching stonewalls videos and recently watching Saintvicious' stream I finally got the hang of the jungling thing. So, as of now I can cover all roles. While learning these basics I noticed a few things:

Mid or top lane:
These are the easiest roles to learn and the most directly rewarding ones, hence why most people want to play them. They feel as if they had the most impact.

Playing AD Carry bottom
Requires adapting to 3 people at once and has in general probably the least impact, since most games end before the AD Carry starts to be the biggest threat (unless the AD Carry absolutely dominates his lane).

Playing Support
Has certainly more impact on the game overall than AD Carry. Cleverly placed CVs, map awareness, warning allies, setting up good wards while babysitting one player and directly having to care about 2 enemies is a hard task. Even though it has more impact than playing AD Carry, it's way less effort/gain efficient. That's why it feels as if it was less rewarding.

Jungling
Basic jungling is easy. However, when you play the jungling role well you have flat out the most impact in a solo queue game. In short: There is so much more you CAN do besides the standard "clearing jungle, securing buffs and occasional ganking", it's not even funny how much you can screw up your enemy. Too much you CAN do to even start naming these things.

In general
Jungling and Supporting are the two roles that are taken by people when "they have to". Hence, barely anyone really bothers playing them on a decent level (as in - they perform below their actual Elo). They don't realize how much impact they could actually have in these roles: Yes, when you do the 'standard', you did your job. However in these roles you have so much freedom to add more beneficial things to your team which can easily dip the balance into your favor.

Back to the ranked stuff
I still couldn't find the place that is called "Elo Hell". And by now I'm fairly sure it DOES EXIST. Too many people complaining about it, so it has to exist. However, what I did find out is, that it's not a place, it's a state of mind.

If you don't understand what this means and you still think that you are in "Elo Hell", there is no value in discussing this with you right now. Maybe you will understand what it means one fine day - on the same day, you will be out of your "Elo Hell".