Now I fully expect to be stuck in gold 1 for a while once I reach it, because the opponents always take a skill jump in division 1 of a tier.
When I got to Gold V somehow I managed to get to Gold I within a week and a half. I was getting promoted like every 1.5 days. Reached a peak of being 41 games above .500. (I tend to look at how many games over .500 I am more then what my division is to see where I stand). When I was Silver1 I was typically 10-15 games over .500.
Anyway, I had a nice streak, but been stuck in Gold I for a while now, even got demoted to Gold II twice (sitting in Gold II atm actually, was demoted 2 days ago, and am at 30 games above .500 atm). The more I play with gold players the more I see there are still bad players & trolls. You still have games like Guardian's post above where you lose 5-25 and everyone has 5+ deaths. You can still lose 5v4s, you still have ragers and drama.
What you notice is that players mechanics are slightly better, teamwork is slightly better, however, there are still the afk farmers with 0 map awareness who never want to be with the team. It's different but also the same as with lower Elo.. It's like... Bronze/Silver you will see just bad mechanics dominating most bad play, in Gold you see mechanics are sufficient but now it's the really bad outplays... And its on both sides, I have won a lot of games in Gold by our team just outplaying the fuck out of the opponent.
Your lvl discrepancy compared to your team, not to mention theirs, is odd. Mid laner should rarely be behind jungler in levels, much less your ADC unless they get fed kills, which your saying the opposite happened.
Both mid and top laner are lower level then the jungler & adc.. lol... I don't think I've ever seen that before.
The other team just has a better team comp especially for late game. Vayne & Ryze are dominate late game threats, CC from Sona/Naut will be devastating and Jayce is still OP.
Guardian's team has little CC and not as strong late game. Kassadin is great for late game, Singed is more of a disrupter and needs to get farmed to make any sort of impact. The fact he was shut down during lane phase means he became a non-threat. Varus, normally a very good adc, built attack speed instead of damage.
Guardian's score is good but he probably sat outside the fights (like a Kass should do) and only popped in to clean up kills. Cho Gath has the highest kill participation (8) and imo was the MVP for the team. Singed, Varus and Lulu are dead weight against that other team. Too much CC+Dmg and these 3 players either got shut down or built badly to compete.