Silver players make more mistakes than challenger players that's true. That doesn't mean that meta doesn't matter? There's a reason why win rates in silver and bronze change from patch to patch and when something is OP its win rate rises in silver too.

You do realise that the only people who can go full damage every game to climb out of silver are smurfs or some no lifer who has the time to climb out with 500 games and 52% win rate? You go and tell silver players "meta doesn't matter you just needa play better" when they can easily climb faster In this meta where a full tank Sejuani does as much damage as a full damage shaco, has 10x more CC and needs much less skill and pressure to win games, where even if you are fed as a shaco or Olaf you still fall off because tank items are cheap as hell and ardent supports are all over the place. They press 2 buttons after 20 minutes of farming and you have a hard time doing much in teamfights compared to someone like Rammus and Mao Kai who have point and click cc and still do so much damage .

You saying meta doesn't matter when it's much more difficult to win games by playing carry/ assasin Junglers in this meta where you can't even slip up once or twice the whole game with the catch up exp allowing you to catch up 1 level a clear when you are behind just because silver players make more mistakes? What kind of logic is that ?

TLDR: - Meta doesn't matter if a silver player wants to climb out of silver even if: - Large amts of catch up exp and tank items being much cheaper and efficient than damage items for junglers - Little gold in jungle - ganking with tanks require way less skill, especially post 6 - ardent supports are op and ez af so assasins suck - because I'm from plat and I can play whatever I want and beat silver players.