Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
It's mostly the type of games you find. For example, 1400 is still the level of elo where a single strong player can practically 1v5 games. That won't happen much in 1600s or 1800s anymore. Classic pubstompers are still incredibly potent in 1400s.

Peoples' map awareness and warding habits are still extremely inconsistent (to be fair, it never becomes reliable in solo queue but the higher you go, the higher the chance that peoples are competent at it) and in general, the kind of mentality you apply to "elo hell" still functions in 1400.

That's why I find it hard to call 1400 players "good"; Mejai's is still a strong item in 1400s, stealth champs are absolutely devastating in 1400s and you can't count on your lane coming to help you in the jungle with a ping in 1400s. 1400s tend to be very conservative about Baron and Dragon also (except for the other extreme, the Baronists, who try to force a Baron starting from 15 mins on the grounds that "it's probably not warded").
Again, my point is that it's all relative. At the point where most people are fairly capable of filling in the meta, understand how to last hit and how to pull, understand that dragon and baron are important and to follow the jungler to do so (granted, I jungle, so my dragon aggressiveness may be rubbing off there), I'd generally consider them good; they are, without a doubt, significantly above average, being, well, one in 10.

Also, from when I played up through 1400, I don't see any of the things you listed actually being true. Supports warded bot every game (top was, admittedly, spotty), people were aware of what was going on in the jungle, I never actually saw Eve or Twitch (pun not intended), but I doubt they'd be good, and I also never saw snowballs.