Finally figured out why low elo feels like a skill gap roulette😅

They don't know how to play safe.

It was bugging me. When I play in low elo, the skill variance between players is wild. But then I check their last game and they played fine? I mean, if you've grinded 300-400 games in Emerald, that's your actual level, right? Yet on OP.GG and just from my own experience, the variance feels way too huge. Like our Yone going 0/10 Gangplank going 0/14.

Today I figured out why.

They just don't know how to play safe. Not sure if it's because of some YouTube guide or just chasing the dopamine hit. They lose one fight, and it's like 'ah, I can win the next one' and they just go in again. Then they lose again, now they're down 600 gold. But they still go in. And when they're completely gapped, they start screaming about jungle diff, team diff—anything that had even the slightest impact on them losing.

Same thing happens with some junglers, y'know? They get counter-jungled once, then it's revenge ganking, revenge counter-jungling until they're twice as behind. I used to be the same. Getting counter-jungled as Rek'Sai? Unacceptable, gotta fight back. Then I'd end up 0/15 crying about how much my laners suck.

Around Master, if you get rolled once, you tend to play safer. That makes it way easier for the jungler to gank for you. (Not everyone, but mostly.)

But in low elo, your laners just keep inting, so the jungler can never find the right timing to path for them. The moment they say 'okay I'm coming!' the lane is already 0/2.

Come to think of it, YouTube is full of shorts about solo kills, big plays, games being decided early—but there aren't many about coming back from behind. And even the ones that do, it's usually because the comeback player made a huge play or the enemy messed up.

Guess I need to look up guides on how to actually stall. How to survive when you're behind. There's tons of that content for junglers. But for top lane? Almost nothing.