The Three Types of Bronze Players

The New Players

There are plenty of people starting League of Legends, as it is a popular game, and most people will end up in Bronze when they start ranked, especially if they do shortly after they reach summoner level 30.  The game is just very complicated, and unless you're extraordinarily talented or have prior experience in the genre, it'll be hard to not be a bad player.  There's nothing wrong with being placed into Bronze.

For background, when I first started ranked, I had already been summoner level 30 for a while.  I was not a great player by any means, and I didn't even know how to set up my rune pages properly.  I was placed at 1400 ELO, which is around Silver 1 today.  I would consider myself extremely lucky, as I went 7-3 in my first set of placement matches without much of an idea what I was doing.  Shortly after, I fell down to around 1000 ELO where I belonged, which is probably around Bronze I today.

This class of players is just simply trying to figure things out.  These people are generally experimenting with builds, learning new champions, and practicing the basic mechanics of the game.

I believe that it's hard to improve your game in normals because matchmaking is more lenient on who you can play with/against, so the spread of skill in the game tends to vary greatly.  Ranked matches you with players of similar skill, so the games are much more consistent.

Over time, they will fall into the one of the other two categories, depending on their attitude.

As an aside, for those seeking to improve, I actually recommend trying new champions in ranked on a smurf, because it will give you better room to practice in a more controlled environment without affecting the rating on your main account.  Of course, smurfing is technically not allowed, although Riot generally condones this behavior.

The Old Guard

These guys have been in Bronze for a while.  It's pretty normal to see people with 500+ games per season in low Bronze.  I won't provide names here since there's no reason to shame players, and I'm also too lazy to look for specific people.  If you want to do your own research, you can always go to op.gg to find some low ELO players, or go to lolking.net, and you can see which summoners have the most games on each champion, and I bet for each of them you can find some person on the list that has very low ELO.

I believe that the primary reason that this class of players exists is because of their attitude towards the game.  Clearly, they care enough about the game to keep playing it this much.  However, they fail to improve because they either cannot or are unwilling to recognize their mistakes.  These are the people crying on Reddit about being stuck in ELO hell.  These are the people post on the forums that complain about having bad teammates.  These are the people that "deserve challenjour" or something.

Oftentimes, they refuse to learn basic mechanics, or have skewed priorities for objectives, like kills vs. CS, towers vs. dragon, inhibitor vs. baron, etc.  They also tend to itemize poorly, often believing that their build is the best build, and refusing to listen to others.  They never acknowledge their own mistakes, and are usually quick to criticize others for their mistakes.  Having been in Bronze for so long, I wouldn't be surprised if they turned extremely toxic.

The Silver Players

These are the guys who have learned from their mistakes and are actively improving their game, and therefore their ELO.  While they still have a lot to learn, they know what they need to learn, and they will continually work to get better.

I call them the Silver players because they are on their way out of Bronze and going into higher places.  I have great respect for these guys because they have a very good attitude.  They focus on themselves instead of their teammates.  Of course, the quality of your teammates will vary from game to game, but in solo queue, it is your job to make the most of each game.

Smurfs

I wouldn't give this its own category since they're not actually Bronze players, but there are a lot of smurfs in Bronze.  Most often, they're secondary accounts of Silver or high Bronze players.  There are also boosters, since boosts in Bronze are relatively cheap.  Once in a while, you will meet a high ELO smurf who is just hanging out in Bronze for whatever reason they may have.