Iron & Bronze
ELO hell. Lots of account buyers/boosters. Skill gap between Iron and Bronze is zero. About the same level as new players in unranked normals. Games you can win even if someone goes AFK. Lots of troll picks.
Silver
People like to lump Bronze and Silver together, but honestly, from Silver onward you can actually see they're better than Bronze. So why do people always say "Bronze/Silver" like they're the same?? There's no huge gap, but if you put a Bronze team vs a Silver team, the game's probably over in like 25 mins, right??
Gold
I think the good Silver players are the ones in Gold. Their laning phase is definitely better than Silver. Teamfights though? Same chaotic fiesta as Bronze/Silver/Gold. Same lack of map awareness, same obsession with laning, same walking into river without checking if the enemy jungler is warded and dying, same blaming the team. It's all the same, but you gotta admit they're still better than Bronze/Silver.
Plat
Back in the day, Plat used to feel like you were actually good, but honestly I don't think there's a difference between Gold and Plat. The one nice thing is that from Plat onward you get the fancy border. Can't really tell the difference in laning skill between Gold and Plat, but Plat players have better map awareness. They teamfight better.
Emerald
From this point on, the laning phase is actually solid, so I don't get why people hate on this rank. Map awareness is good, fundamentals are solid. It's just the fine details that are lacking, but skill-wise, they're not lacking anything. Good map awareness, decent teamfighting.
Diamond
The highest rank us normies dream of reaching. Old Diamond used to feel like god-tier, but not anymore. That's because there are way more Master players now. I don't think there's much of a skill gap between Emerald and Diamond. Early-season Diamond matches are a mix of Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger players — straight up high-ELO lobbies. Late-season Diamond though? Pretty much the same as Emerald in my book.