Playing in a group aside, what point is there...

to a placement/rank/elo system in a team-based game that will be mostly played via pubs? Worst case scenario while sqing is I can be amazing but be on a bad team and lose enough games to be put into a rank where I am to play with more teams like this, essentially making it near impossible to get into a rank with teams more comparable to my skill level. I understand grouping up is often a good option as long as your friends aren't shit and want to win, but I'm excluding that situation for the sake of discussing this, because not everyone plays with others.

I need to read again the requirements for ranking up and down, but I feel like rank depends on winning and losing, with individual performance not considered. I might be wrong on that, but if I'm not, it should really be a thing. At least, I feel like it'd help in situations like I mentioned above. If you're gonna solo, for whatever reason you must have, then you should at least have the chance to not be stuck with teams that don't mesh ever.

Off topic question: How does a match turn into bo5? I understand how bo3 happens, but not bo5.

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/36953589.jpg

IIRC Jeff Kaplan talked about that in the HUGE forum post on the blizz forums earlier this week ( on mobile so im not gonna search it up) but he said that your ELO/MMR rank isbt purely based on win/loss, winning and losing just determines if you lose or gain points, not how many of each. Other factors that determine the amount of points are ally and enemy ranking, personal performance as well as your ranking compared to the rest of the players. Naturally this means a harder fought win will yield more points (usually...) and a quick roll (in either way) should yield less.

For what its worth this seems like a VASTLY superior systemto other games like DotA 2 (+25/-25) and CSGO (although im fairly certain CSGO does use a similar system to OW).