Matchmaking has long been one of the hottest topics of discussion around LoL. For most players I’ve talked to, the system is hit or miss. You’re either paired with a team that does reasonably well usually against a team that’s not so good, or you get the reverse, stuck on a team that has some less than skilled players playing against people that know what they’re doing. In rare (sometimes even not so rare) circumstances, you’ll matched with someone who has no business playing in your games, someone like the level 3 I was matched with just a few days ago.

The Garen patch brought with it a bunch of changes to the matchmaking system, including some optimization for level balance alongside the current ELO balance. There were also some changes made so that 5-man premades would be placed against other full premades more often. While all of this is good, I have to ask, now? We’re just now getting these changes and also getting word of them? Why hasn’t this been a part of the forum discussions for months. No doubt one of the highest contributing factors in the number of forum posts lambasting the matchmaking system is the lack of a Riot response. There was very little indication that these things were being worked on, and the general sense was that it just wouldn’t be fixed.

Now Zileas has stepped forward requesting feedback on the new changes, and he uses language that I think points at some of the design attitude around matchmaking. Take a look at his last point: “4) Any other weirdness that is obviously very bad, not just subjective “this guy really sucked’ type stories.” While a player’s assessment of another’s skill is subjective, there is also some empirical data we can look to for determining whether matchmaking is doing its job. A while back I cited a player who had a significant number of losses in his last 10 games, nearly all of which included stats to support the theory that he’s not a very good player. I’d hardly call that amount of data subjective, and it took me a total of three minutes to discover without any analysis tools.

The bottom line here is this – if you want a more accurate ELO, you need to find four friends you believe to be of similar skill level and premade, premade, premade. Riot’s matchmaking system will never be able to account for individual skill in the midst of unskilled teammates unless it moves to some sort of performance-based system, which is unlikely at best. Until then, its probably best to just keep quiet and enjoy the five to ten percent of your games that turn out to be a decent match.

A couple weeks ago I went on a tear. I had been somewhere around 50 games over .500 for a little under a month and for whatever reason it seemed the stars had aligned. I was getting matched with smart teammates who could communicate and move as a group. Even when my teammates left a little to be desired, my opponents were always in far worse shape. My win count climbed and climbed until I plateaued sometime last week at 69 games up.

I should have seen it coming. Over the course of the past two weeks I’m now down 16 games, back to 53 over even. I know, that’s still 3 games positive, but when the swings come in batches of 15 games or so, I don’t really know what to do. As it stands I’m about as frustrated as I’ve ever been with the game. As my friends and I like to say, I seem to be losing the teammate lottery time and time again.

Once my score dropped below 60 games up, I decided I would go tryhard, choosing only the strongest toons for the map at hand. I rolled a bunch of games as Jax and Poppy on TT and had my first Twisted Fate match on SR in a long, long time. None of it seemed to matter. I carried the SR game handily, with 2 legendary streaks and a handful of turret kills. The rest, though, were mostly losses. I’ve had teammates AFK, teammates leave, teammates who start fighting with one another before the game even starts. The latest trend is teammates who refuse to get survivability. Two games in a row I played with an ally Morgana. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Morgana dominates on TT if she’s played well. The spell shield alone is enough to make any DPS champ climax with glee. Throw her ultimate down in a team fight and you’ve got nearly guaranteed victory.

There is one caveat: she has to live. You know what doesn’t help her live? All the blasting wands my teammates keep buying. Then there was the Ashe that refused to buy any health items against Sion, Nasus, and Shaco. I’m sure you can imagine how that turned out.

By this point I’ve given up on the tryhard comps. My last game I played Yi. I was legendary. We still lost because of the aforementioned Ashe. I’ve got my fingers crossed for some good action in the next round of games I have time for. I’ll be playing whoever strikes my fancy until I can turn this ship around. At the very worst, I figure my ELO will drop to the point that I can just steamroll some opponents and hope that the streak will turn in my favor.

You’ll see me talk about solo queue games a lot here because that’s where I spend at least half my time. Being a freelancer, I can split my play time throughout the day when a lot of people are at work or elsewhere. When I have the chance, though, I’ll always choose to premade.

If you’re new to the game, pay attention to the people you play with. Chances are, if you’re playing a few games in a row, you may end up with a few of the same players. Try to pick out the most coordinated players with the best communication. As an example, I was on a 5-game losing streak today. Fortunately I pulled a big Anivia play and beat a team of decent players with support from a good Mundo. That decent team, the guys I beat, wanted to friend up and play together.

What happened next almost shouldn’t be talked about. We were stomping people so hard there were multiple rage quits most games we played and it was all because of coordination. Having Vent or Skype only compounds things.