Last - pulling this forward from the start of this thread - copy/paste.  I'm interest in what you folks ranked experience has been.  Do tell.  A summary paragraph would be neat.

So, continued discussion re: my thoughts on earning your rank/elo - with a focus on duo queuing. 

my entire ranked history in a paragraph

Duo'd up to gold in season 2 - I played about 10 games with brad wong.  We hit gold in 10 games.  I played 3-5 more games all season.  That's about it.  Season 3 - I tank my placement matches carelessly and end up bronze 1.  Season 3 - I duo here and there, but primarily play solo queue and hit plat IV.  Season 4 - I go 5/5 in my placements, get kicked down to silver 1 from plat IV.  Disgusted, I take a break and now and am back fairly actively climbing in rank (gold 5 promos to gold IV or gold III atm).

Season 2

So, that duo queue in season 2 I mentioned - that was absolute crap in my mind.  It did little more than get me and my bud some some season rewards.  I worked well enough to hit gold in 10 games with my duo queue and I vaguely recollect like 1-2 difficult games in all of my ranked games that season.  I personally think less of myself and also of others that duo queue their way up in rank.  I'm not even remotely proud of my gold standing in season 2 because I really don't feel like I worked for it or earned it. Getting a reward after so little work was a joke in my mind.

I have 2 thoughts here:  1 - I don't think much of folks being proud of their duo queue rank in general (I'm sure there are some exceptions, ofc) and 2 - I am in no way impressed by people playing a few games and getting a high rating.  I believe its how you do consistently that shows the caliber of you as a player - not that you could play some games, place in gold, then over time be revealed to be smeh.  I respect players that work to get their elo and put their time in. 

Season 3

That said, season 3 - I feel like I earned plat IV. I'm confident I could have gone higher than that, but I lost a bit of steam when I hit my goal of plat and only started to get back into things near the end of the season.  To be fair, I'm not really sure how far I could have gotten, but more than plat IV I'd say. 

Anyway, season 3 felt like a huge accomplishment because I didn't get as far as I did by duo queuing (eg I earned what I got).  Sure, I played a duo queue game here and there, but they were few and far between my solo games.  And I wanted it that way - not because the people I could queue with would hold me back, ofc, but because it meant more to do it myself because, again, I feel like its more of an accomplishment. 

Season 4

Man - f ranked placements matches.  I end season 3 at plat IV.  I play my placements matches - 3 of those games are losses due to afk dc'd people.  1 loss due to an outright troll intentionally feeding.  So, I go 5/5 (with 4 games that can't be won really) and place in silver 1.  Kind of disgusting imo.  And that disgust kept me from playing much ranked for a bit.  That said, eventually I snapped out of it and got back to work.  I feel like I'm good enough to hit plat again without issue.  I continued to find the hardest elo to be at as silver for whatever reason.  In season 3, it was a pain to go from silver to gold and relatively easy to go from gold to plat for me.  We'll see if that trend continues.  Currently, I don't really care with regards to myself if I duo or solo because I kind of think this elo is a bit of a joke and I don't really encounter that many highly skilled people.  I will probably stop duoing after a bit and will likely try to climb solo when I hit plat again.  Kind of a personal challenge for me. 

other jibba jabba

Regarding why I found silver to be the most difficult - I think karl actually had some pretty good insight regarding this and it plays out.  You can't do some things in silver that you can at other elos.  For instance, back prior to the feral flare nerf, udyr was a nightmare if he was able to farm up a feral flare to the 11 min marker (he's still ok after the nerf, but nowhere near as good).  Now, if you do this sort of thing, you are really counting on your teammates to hold off and keep their lanes in ok shape with no jungle support for about 7 extra minutes (compared to when you'd normally start getting ganks). It's actually really unreasonable to assume your team can do that going into a game as there are really, really good odds the other team will have the jungler ganking lanes during that time.  Anyway, at lower elo's, you are better off going with the meta in my experience.  Even a split pushing, heavy ganking shaco can be a problem because the team generally needs a strong initiator so they clearly know when a fight is on.  At higher elos, you see to need less of that and individual players can shine more. 

I actually think bard is pretty good as is. He has very very high damage in lane. Using his portal to make plays or reposition in team fights takes a weird school of thought and I still don't do it effectively (although I have seen some bards make awesome plays with it). I think my favorite was our bard got "caught" so he used a long portal that brought him back in our entire team. 3 of the enemy team followed him and we annihilated them, it was delightful.

I am really liking Olaf with RG, ghost, ult, botrk or randuin, elixer of iron. He is a carry destroyer when built this way. He sticks harder than anyone and you usually go 1 for 1 atleast while the entire enemy team tries to kill you before you kill there little adc or mage. It would probably be even more fun with a janna/coin.

A third option would be that his A-Z marathon tilted him.  You've been known to not pay enough attention to whats going on in the rest of the game and start going on suicide tower pushes when you tilt, which sounds pretty similar to how you witnessed Spartan playing.  I'd think you'd be more sympathetic.

Just because someone is mechanically gifted at this game and plays it at a professional level, doesn't make them immune to the same negative state of mind it can pull us all into.  Spartan is a young man who plays for long periods of time almost every day (8? 10? 14?!) which is his job, not for a couple of hours to unwind after like most of us do.  I don't think it's an option to just quit playing for the day every time things start getting frustrating, especially if he's in the middle of an A-Z.

He was only on the letter d (dr mundo). 

edit - that's weird... part of my post posted and the rest did not. 

Perhaps he was in a I don't give a fug sort of mode.  I'm mostly curious if any one else has watched him stream before and if he's normally like that or not.  I'll probably tune in again if I catch him streaming and see as there's certainly stuff to learn from his playstyle, but I found the complete island mentality so frustrating and he seemed to be the poster boy for top lane is an island and I have no idea what's happening around me. 

re: olaf - I love the brolaf skin, but I really dislike him as a pick.  As a jungler, he can clear well, but skill shot slows aren't good comparatively speaking.  As a top laner, he's much better ofc, but I think other champs are better at initiating and getting at squishies than he is.  The playstyle is fun at least.  That said, built like you say, def sounds fun.  I wonder if I can bard ult you during your ult. 

I was playing him last night. Using ghost + RG on people that were trying to split push was hilarious. There was no escape! I have a feeling it wouldn't work. I don't think anything can stop the ragnarock olaf train.

So he had just played 'only' twenty games where he had forced himself to play a specific champion in Top lane regardless of whether it was a horrible choice?

Another thing to consider is that this might not have been done on his main account.  I believe these A-Z things tend to be done  on smurf accounts in Teambuilder.  This is not an ideal place to find good teammates or opponents, so I imagine he very much was in 'fug it' mode.  

If I remember your history of Ranked, the toughest part of your climbs have been those times you were stuck in Silver and Bronze.  Sometimes when playing with garbage teammates there is no winning strategy right?

I used to play Ranked on my smurf account in High Bronze/Low Silver and I'll tell you that leaving your lane is not always the best option when you're the best player in the game.  TPing bot lane to rely on scrubs to kill the opponents they've been feeding isn't always the right move.

haha - something in my brain did not translate 4 letters of the alphabet into as many champs as there are up that  doh

Was reading a Reddit post about the new BC where folks was speculating about who's gonna love it.  Think it will be good on Ollie?  His true damage doesn't really go along with the armor shred, but he loves all the other stats.  Here's the changes if you didn't know:

The Black Cleaver

• Phage + Kindlegem + 825 gold (3000 gold total)
• +400 Health
• +40 Attack Damage
• +20% Cooldown Reduction 

UNIQUE Passive: Dealing physical damage to an enemy champion Cleaves them, reducing their Armor by 5% for 6 seconds (stacks up to 6 times, up to 30%). 

UNIQUE Passive - Rage: Dealing physical damage grants 20 movement speed for 2 seconds. Assists on Cleaved enemy champions or kills on any unit grant 80 movement speed for 4 seconds instead. This movement speed is halved for ranged champions.

I'm thinking you need to not give up on The Got buddy.  The new BC's movement speed buff is triggered by physical damage so once you lock on to someone, you can probably chase or kite pretty well.  Not as much reliance on dumb teammates!

So what other champs do you think the BC 2.0 is going to be good on?

My guesses:

Rene is going to become the king of top lane again, at least temporarily.  Wu Jungle might become a thing again, Wu Top might become God Tier. Forget what I said about Rene.  Quinn, the new Queen Of Top.

Of course it's only on PBE so stats are subject to change for sure.  But no matter what the strength ends up being, at least they're finally coming out with The AD Caster item we was promised so long ago.  I think people are going to be finding Phage starts immensely strong on champs that they didn't want to buy it on cause it's only real path was Trinity until now.

I heard about the changes but never really looked at the stats turned out to be. Seems like a huge buff if they don't tweak the numbers prior to bringing it live. The price is the same, the damage is only 10 less, and everything else scaled much higher, (Health, Passive, Tri Force Movespeed Passive etc).  

But yeah, I might play Wu top again if these changes come through as is, stopped playing him after they neutered Jungle wu, since it affected his top lane drastically. It also might be a pretty decent pick-up on Jayce.

Quinn? Try Gnar. Has all the stats he wants for both of his forms. And he already goes Brutalized in 1v1 AD lanes. Will probably be enough to push him back to 50% in soloq.

Surely will help Quinn too though. Which is exciting for me at least. Item will probably be needed tho  

UNLESS Riot intends to balance AD Casters against Cinderhulk with this item and allow Smite top to stick around for certain champs.

Did you notice that it doesn't build from Brut anymore nor does it have any flat pen?

Oh I thought it was phage + brutalizer and the flat pen transformed into the armor shred.

boozed pacov playing adc? No.  Top or jungle plz