High Elo currently is a complete joke
Everyone knows about the crazy cutoffs. In EUW, Challenger is 2300 LP, Grandmaster is 1700 LP.
But that's not the worse thing, not by any means. The worst thing BY FAR, is the matchmaking. I genuinely don't care about my LP, I just want to have quality matches. If there was only a hidden MMR system and nothing else, no LP, no emblem, no rewards, nothing BUT I had good matchmaking, I would be happy.
The matchmaking this season however, is completely atrocious. It's very common to have a full Master lobby and just one Challenger on one side, which completely decides the lobby. Or just have a full Master team vs 3 GMs and 2 Masters. It genuinely makes no sense. In the past, I remember I would, very rarely, get a Challenger in a Master lobby, but only when they were on a massive loss streak, so their MMR was essentially GM at that point, so the system treated them as GM players. Nowadays, you get people with Challenger MMR in Masters games.
Now, especially in early hours, I know Challenger queue times are pretty high, I've been there cause I mostly play early hours. Last season, the game would balance it out by putting the Challenger player on a Master team and put 2-3 GM players on the other side with a Master player. Sometimes, it would even just find 2 Challengers and pit them against each other. That was a good solution. It still sucks for everyone cause the entire lobby revolves around the Challenger(s), but even if it wasn't your typical game, it was a balanced game.
Nowadays, you just get the Challenger player thrown in a Masters lobby. Even at peak hours (the 2nd game you I've attached is during peak hours), it still happens pretty regularly. The games I've shared below aren't even hand-picked over a large span of time, both were played today.
Posted Jul 10, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC