I would like to raise above gold to avoid afk and other player rubbish, but in particular to put my skills to the test, and improve further.

Hi, I have played lol as a mainly solo player for the last six years and I believe that I've reached my solo limit, with an unranked winrate of 60% and a ranked winrate of 49%.
My stats show that I play as an objective focused and aggressive teammate that rarely loses lane and that strives for victory: I have the firm belief that losing a game is most of the time not fun, and that in particular, losing because the enemy has fed on unskilled teammates, is the worst of all.
I have mastered a couple dozen champs and still play regularly as a pasttime.