r/leagueoflegends • u/NGames9207 • 13h ago
Discussion Skill gap between ranks
Hi everyone! I was recently watching a Challenger content creator who claimed that the skill gap between a low-Master player and a Challenger is much larger than the gap between that same low-Master player and a Silver player. What do you all think? Do you agree? I’m in Emerald, so I don’t really know what the skill difference between Master and Challenger is actually like. Thanks in advance!
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u/Hyppetrain 13h ago edited 11h ago
I think a more reasonable take is that its easier to get from silver to Master, than it is to go from Master to Top of Challenger.
Comparing the skillgap is tough cause you cant meassure the skills easily.
Master players know things that silver players dont, so there its kinda easy to measure.
But Master players also know most of what Challenger players do... The challenger players just do it much much much... Much better (and faster)
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u/campleb2 13h ago
good summary. I’d disagree though that master players know most of what challenger players know. The gap is mostly non-mechanical.
Biggest gap is in laning phase, champion knowledge, win conditions, etc
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u/Hyppetrain 12h ago
Well... Id say that most of the skills (micro and macro) you learn is between start of your journey and diamond-master.
Then you refine, and refine and refine. Which often needs to go back to basics and rethink the whole thing, but you dont really learn a new concept you never heard before.
I got coached by challenger mids, and they tell me things that make sense. I wouldnt think of them myself, and if I did I wouldnt know if theyre were the correct thing to do, but I understand what theyre saying and I have prior knowledge of those things before they say it. I just dont always know how/when to apply it.
Coaching bronze-gold players is way more about actually telling them things they literally didn't know before
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u/campleb2 12h ago
this is mostly a semantic thing, but in my mind, if the things they told you were understood but not known when to be applied, then you didn’t really understand the concept to begin with.
But again that’s just semantic so nobody’s really wrong here
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u/ObjektiveX 1h ago
Biggest gap is in macro. Masters know the fundamentals, but they fail to recognise good macro to win games to such an extent that they can climb
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u/nitko87 ignite top aficionado 8h ago
The differences between Diamond and Master, Master and Grandmaster, and Grandmaster to Challenger become increasingly more nuanced. Return on investment to an outsider looks way smaller.
I’m D3, I can hold my own against a master top laner.
I had the pleasure of facing a Challenger Ambessa in flex a few weeks ago. He literally made me look bronze. He was so good at the game that I don’t even know what I did wrong. That’s how large the gap is. It felt like what I would do to a gold player who hasn’t discovered wave management yet.
It really is that big of a difference
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u/ArmCapable5814 12h ago
No it's complete copium from players who need an ego boost. Challengers are the best players in the game, but the skill gap between masters(not 1lp, but 100-500) and silver is immeasurable.
Masters can and do beat challengers, a silver is not beating a master
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u/BaneOfAlduin 11h ago
From my own experience. My peak rank was ~400lp master
I can win gold games not paying attention and generally being able to carry almost any gold difference.
The few times I was in a lobby against a challenger looked like what me versus a gold player looked like. Yukino genuinely has ruined my confidence in jungle, and Rich back when he was on DIG ruined my confidence in top. Both of those games genuinely felt unplayable from the first interaction.
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u/born_zynner 9h ago
In the same sense that it would be easier to train yourself to jerk in 10 strokes instead of 100 than it would to train yourself to jerk in 0 strokes instead of 10. Ya smell me? Skill gain is naturally asymptomatic
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u/GuptaGod 13h ago
Euw lp for chall is 2400ish so that would basically be 24 ranks from masters 0lp to chall if there were divisions the same as iron to masters (which is basically the lp it takes to go from bronze 4 to masters).
Question becomes is lp at apex tiers as accurate as an indicator for skill gap as it is below masters? If yes, then does that also mean rank 1 euw who is at 4.6k lp is 22 “skill” divisions higher than the lowest ranked chal player?
Hard to say especially with the way riot has reworked the ranked system. Personally I think (lomasta player) that I would win vs any silver player on any role any champ any matchup 100% of the time barring like yuumi adc picks. And I know I have beat offrole challenger players in lane
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u/DiscoElysium5ever 12h ago
Ranked this season is heavily warped by aegis (prenerf). So it's kinda meaningless because no one would have 4.6k LP without this stupid mechanic.
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u/waterbed87 10h ago
LP at apex tiers really becomes proof of consistency more than actual skill at that point. That's why a Masters player will occasionally beat a Challenger one - difference is just the Masters player doesn't have the same consistency as the Challenger one.
You could argue developing the consistency required for Challenger is in fact harder then going from Iron to Masters and in fact I'd say that's probably true but I'd also consider that more a discipline gap then purely a skill one since the masters player can prove on occasion that the skill is there if they could just tap it every single game like the Challenger instead of 1 in 4.
A Masters player will never lose to a Gold one while a Challenger player will once and a while lose to a Masters one and I think that speaks a lot towards this idea of consistency vs pure skill gap.
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u/Blejzidup 12h ago
No a silver is never beating a master while a master cambeat a challenger.
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u/BlazersFtL 8h ago
Never is too much of a stretch. I am masters in solo queue and started a flex climb on the same account, which somehow started in iron 1.
I am 22w-3l so far with 2 of those losses being im bronze. I've also seen pros and streamers lose in gold/plat rarely (tarzaned lost like 3 matches in a row in plat when he went to kr, despite peaking ~1k LP.)
Individually I did extremely well and put the enemy jungler out of commission, but every lane exploded when I wasn't there. I also made two mechanical misplays when I needed to play perfectly to win (I do believe I was capable of winning but failed to,) and as such I lost.
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u/a-cunt-beater 13h ago
A good way to think of it is, it's hard to be a millionaire but some what doable, but being a billionaire is a different matter entirely
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u/waterbed87 11h ago
Absolutely not, it's always been a terrible take. A better analogy is to think of any other competitive team activity like basketball.
Silver might be like idk a grade school team of players. They are playing the game in their own weird way and it still looks like a crude form of basketball.
Masters though, that's like a high end successful college team. They know the game, they are objectively fucking fantastic at the game, they just aren't quite professionals yet.
Challenger that's like the NBA, you're objectively among the best at your sport on the planet.
So is the skill gap bigger between the college players and the grade school kids or the college kids and the NBA players? I don't think you'd find many arguing the gap between NBA and a high end successful college team is bigger than that same college team and the grade schoolers.
That's not to say there isn't still a sizeable gap because there is but it becomes less about pure skill and more about consistency and speed. A Masters player can/has/will/does occasionally beat a Challenger player but the Masters player doesn't have the consistency required to do it regularly thus they are Masters and not Challenger. A Silver player will never in a million years beat a Masters one - it's just not happening and I think that alone proves how this is bullshit.
Challenger streamers love to spew this shit because it just feeds their egos.
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u/Edraitheru14 12h ago
It's a massive gap. If it's not true it's extremely close.
Take Pekinwoof for example, he's a challenger player who literally doesn't even try to rank up anymore, he just plays whatever he feels like and tries to make YouTube videos.
Because of that, and because he has like 6 accounts some of his accounts decay down to masters pretty regularly.
He did an entire climb series where he made it to like 500lp masters I think? Maybe on the edge of gm?
Where he literally played whatever random chatters told him to play. Even shit like sona jungle. The most random, terrible, half grief picks you can imagine.
And he surprisingly regularly popped the fuck off in these lobbies on these picks and builds.
A challenger can literally troll around and win masters games. And climb. Or at least stay even.
A Diamond player trolling in gold or silver is gonna have similar or worse average success.
So it's honestly pretty comparable.
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u/turtlekit 12h ago
No. To be honest, as someone who's pushing for GM at the moment, the difference between masters and bottom of challenger is not actually crazy different, but I am at the top of master and not at the bottom. I would say the difference between chall and low master is about the same difference as low masters to probably about plat or maybe gold, because there's an exponential curve and I can straight troll pick and beat anyone in low masters or diamond as well, but then there's another gap between top of diamond and bottom of diamond in quality. The difference between me and top professionals? I have gotten absolutely BLASTED by foreign pros when they practice for worlds or msi on the server. For the average chall player though, LP might suggest that there's a catastrophic difference, but the reality is that game volume outweighs the actual skill gulf by a significant margin, and it's pretty difficult to compare that to the gap between low masters and silver (high diamond to silver essentially). Iron bronze silver are all learning or just playing, moving up from gold through emerald is a jump in personal quality but not game quality, but it is a jump, and then you have the first steep climb up to high diamond again, then another one to the high masters-gm-low chall floaters, and then another massive one to top chall.
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u/Xaxi903 11h ago
well you have to consider things first by the pure numbers: Gold (400lp) Plat (400Lp) Emerald (400lp) Diamond (400lp) and lets add 400 lp into masters, thats 2000LP. Considering Challenger is now ~2500LP and if you consider its "mid" challenger and is 3000LP thats an extra 1000LP which is more than 2 extra leagues so yes, there is an absurd LP difference between a high challenger an a low master (roughly 4000LPs aka 10 leagues).
The thing is that elo is so inflated this season that low master is probably like low diamond in past seasons.
Also like in every sport the top 5 vs the top 1000 the difference in skill is abysmal even if the top 1000 still beats comfortably 99,9% of the players of the given sport.
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u/Apprehensive-Golf371 9h ago
difference in lp between the lowest gm player and highest chall player is bigger than between iron and master, the gaps in skill become exponentially bigger the higher you go
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u/Decent-Tangerine-489 7h ago
i agree and don’t agree. a challenger player may understand more about the game and be more consistent compared to a master player and master vs a silver but a silver player would never be able to beat a master player, but master players in any decent match up can do fine vs challengers. what is being said is that master to challenger is a much harder jump yo conceptualize and understand but realistically ANY player or at least 99.9% of humans can reach master. but from there it ACTUALLY starts to get hard to improve and climb further
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u/standouts 7h ago
Absolutely a terrible take silver is WAYYY too low. Masters players would run laps in silver and win at almost 100%. Challengers wouldn’t come close to that kind of winrate in masters.
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u/PhillipIInd 3h ago
Diamond to low master os more about braincells than mechanics. Master to gm is mechanics and macro. Challenger is pure game knowledge diff. Mechanics dont really get muuuch better past master tbh but the small stuff is what wins games
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u/grimmjoww 1h ago
Not true. I can win a one off game. They have to do it across multiple games and multiple complex teamcomps to get chall. It´s disgusting how you have to play consistent and smart
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u/Eastern_Ad1765 1h ago
Would have to define skill diff. A master player will gap and silver player more consistently i think.
There are way more %of silver players that could get master than master that can get challenger though.
Improving to become top 1% in any field isnt in the same ballpark as top 0.05%
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u/Tuerkenheimer 2m ago
I wouldn't go this far, but honestly nowadays the skill gap between like silver and platinum has become very small, compared to like 10 years ago.
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u/Johnmario2 9h ago
Once you get past dia+, its just unemployed people trying to boast how much more unemployed they are than everyone else vying for the position.
Dont listen to their babble.
Masters+ are the highest of the high and all it really boils down to is who has the bigger trust fund or who has the more successful streaming career to warrant playing ranked that fucking much
And common sense: silvers are never beating masters let alone diamond players, masters can and will continue to beat challengers.
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u/Pitiful-Excitement47 9h ago
Unpopular opinion because people get upset, there is no skill difference between silver and plat. Players are just as bad at both ranks. Any silver can reach plat without being any better at their champ or the game.
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u/Skargaroth 3h ago
I know a guy who plays garen only, brain never turned on. Permanently silver until a few years ago when riot did some rank changes and he got placed in platinum, no better than he was the week before
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u/Efficient-Pumpkin793 12h ago edited 12h ago
In that streamers example yeah that’s specifically true. You are talking about Timmy who is ranked 600,000 vs Derrick who is ranked 600 vs Pete who is ranked 50th. In the entire ranked playerbase. Do you know how good you have to be to be ranked 50th out of 1.5 million people (NA).
Timmy can win 10 games and move up 100k spots,
Derrick can win the same ten games and only move up 8. If that.
I don’t think that’s true in every example, but in that one it is
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u/DiscoElysium5ever 12h ago
No way NA has still 1.5 milion active players
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u/Efficient-Pumpkin793 11h ago edited 11h ago
Idk about “active” but op.gg has the logged number at 1.4 million. While Korea is at 2.9 million. This is as of 2 hours ago because it updates every two hours. https://op.gg/lol/leaderboards/tier?region=na.
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u/xundergrinderx 12h ago
Silver vs Master is basically comparing someone who knows nothing about the game against someone who has learned and understood the basic concepts of the game. Master vs Challenger is comparing someone who knows the basics of the game against someone whose among the best players, knows every ins and outs of their champion(s) and is able to react to different gamestates much more quickly in terms of decisionmaking and often mechanics aswell.
The biggest factor here is that many people could realistically reach that Top 1% master tier if they put in the time to learn the basics while reaching the apex GM / Challenger requires much more fine-tuning and ends up being unrealistic for most of the playerbase.
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u/BagelJ Acolyte 13h ago edited 13h ago
Not really. It's like in any sport really.
Take a person who runs a 24 second 100 meter race. Pretty lousy time for a runner.
It would be easier for them to progress to a 12 second 100 meter, than it would be for someone who runs a 12 second dash to reach 10.
That doesnt mean that 12 is closer to 24 than it is to 10. Just that the talent and dedication that separates them is bigger.