I had the narrative for a long time that I was “better than my teammates.”
I had the narrative that I “deserved a higher rank” than I’d been given.
If I was “gold”, I’d swear I was playing better than my “gold teammates.”
And maybe my narrative was true, in a way.
I was better than them, in game after game.
But that wasn’t the whole truth.
The whole truth was this:
Yes, I was better than my teammates, but I was not better enough to carry consistently.
I wasn’t nearly as good as the streamers I looked up to, and I was making tons of “invisible mistakes.”
So like many people, my narrative was ‘true’, but also misleading.
I knew I could “pull my weight” most games, but “pulling my weight” is just another word for “being adequate” or “having a skill-level near the top-end of my current rank, but not high enough to climb.”
The truth is…
If I was good enough to be in Plat, Diamond, Master, etc., then I would be able to carry my current “Gold-ranked” games, with a positive win rate.
And since I wasn’t consistently carrying those Gold players to victory, it could only mean one thing.
I had improved a bit, but I simply hadn’t improved in skill enough to carry myself out of gold.
Sometimes you have to improve yourself in many ways to consistently carry your current rank.
Your KDA may be great every game, but at your current rank…
Kill-participation and timely rotations may be the skill you need to climb.
Or maybe you KP is great every game, but at your current rank…
Optimal vision-score may be the skill you need to climb.
Or you may need both of those, plus higher damage numbers, and more, in order to climb past your current rank.
If you can’t maintain a decent, positive win rate in your current rank…
You’re absolutely missing key skills, and you’ll find them through VoD reviews, coaching, practice, etc.
You must realize there’s a big difference between:
“Being able to perform ‘reasonably well’ in your current rank”
Versus
“Hard-carrying consistently in your current rank.”
They are very different skill levels.
And chances are you’re tilting because you’re the former. Chances are you haven’t yet improved yourself enough to become the latter.
Sure, I can play Plat games with some of my Plat friends.
Maybe I can even carry a few of them.
But that doesn’t mean I deserve to be Plat.
Deserving Plat means consistently stomping in Gold, period.
So if you don’t have the skill-level to consistently win with Gold teammates, you don’t “deserve” a higher rank.
To get that, you must commit to a healthy review process, and consciously improve your decision-making.