Why did I recieve a traffic cop if I did not build a single unit that gives slow, only a paladin?

OP statement is a truism decorated in emotions.

Objectively:

1. When your elo rises, your teammates, on average, will be getting worse and worse, due to the balance.

2. If you reached the point where you lose half or more of the games, it means your elo reached your current skill level, nothing else.

3. You cannot blame the teammates generally (as in "I think the problem is most people don't know ..."), because you get different team each game, so the same "not knowing" people will be distributed evenly between your team and the enemy (according to your elo, naturally).

4. The fact that most of your teammates seem to do weird things arises not from your bad luck (again, on average; in a single game you indeed can have exceptionally bad team), but from the fact that you are one of the top players.


The infamous "we won because I played well; we lost because the teammates suck" is nothing more than two sides of the same psychological phenomenon: self-importance which is masqueraded self-pity.

As a wise man said, "Self-importance is man's greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one's life offended by something or someone."

That is the real endless loop it is worth to speak about.

Maybe imperfect summary but how I see above discussion: elo drops when you play worse compared to others than you did some time ago NOT (on average) because of team mates are bad.

Keeping similar level of performance is VERY hard and probably not always fun which applies to everybody (to different degrees).

You want to be top5 all the time? Might be more efficient to improve the "give up" part rather than think of the team mates performance. Is it worth it to be top5 all the time? Your call. probably not, this is a game in the end.

Also consider there is quite some noise in the ladder (ex: different timezones will play rarer together; way ladder is computed; people choosing or not to stop playing; amount of games played by each player; etc.)

quote: i find that me playing zk is just an endless loop of tryharding

Of course. Like every other team onlaine game. Its even is with Dota 2. And it doesn't matter that you playing in Dota2 with same skill level players.

Of course Rollmops, complaining that we lose because allies are bad is not very chad, and maybe I feel others being sometimes inadequate is because I'm too good and...
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Yes, Let's go for that. :-D

quote: Coordination cannot be forced by one person. Somebody who reaches Neutron Star by coordinating their teammates is presumably still going to lose some games because their teammates chose not to coordinate i.e. didn't play well.

Fair.