Just my experience here:
The beginning of this season saw a major change to sbmm, but it only affected people on the left side of the bell curve. Those matches typically had a very narrow skill range. As soon as you pass the peak of the curve into the right side it's all bets off. Those matches are the same as they ever were with wide skill ranges, sometime half of the curve or more inside the grey bar. If you're on the left side of the curve the matches are tight, although there are still a lot of smurfs making sure that there is no such thing as a truly tight lobby. On the right side of the curve everyone is still playing a secondary, but, as noted by everyone, the higher you go then the wider the spread and the more likely you are to get cheaters and stacks, or maybe even stacking cheaters. Nothing surprises me anymore. It's the wild wild west. And it's on the player to sort of take the bull by the horns and manage their own experience. By which I mean downward manage their own mmr. Which you have to do or otherwise end up in one unplayable lobby after another. And hoping to rank grind to some reasonable level that you attained with minimum fuss fifteen seasons ago? Forget about that. Don't even go into ranked. If you're not actively cheating then you'll hit the wall at platinum somewhere, maybe D4. Just buy your pred account like everyone else, I guess.
