So, anyone playing League of Legends?

[Ulminati]

Given that the people I duo with are arguably worse players than me by a small margin, I'm actually carrying them. About half my ranked duo games were with my ranked premade teams primary support player. Yet I'm the one keeping track of dragon/our buffs/their buffs respawn timers for her and pitching in with (a lot of) wards because she tends to forget those after laning is over. I still think rating is justly earned, as evidenced by the fact I maintained it (and even improved it slightly) during my last 20 or so games that were all solo. (Until the retards I whined about on the last page made it dip a bit again).

You got lucky Ulm. The fact is, taking chances and playing "for fun" has no place in ranked. It fucks over your team-mates more often than not. You wanna test some lulzy build that you think might work? Fine, do it in normals. It works for 30 straight games? There might be something to it.

Most of my "for fun" builds have already been tried in normals. They work, although often only under certain circumstances or with specific caveats. The main risk I run with these builds are that some people really are of the mindset that ranked is not supposed to be something you play for fun. (Yeah. A computer game mode is supposed to be played for something other than fun. think on that for a minute ). So sometimes half my team rages because I refuse to conform to the current meta. Heck, it's been over things as simple as a nidalee support raging that I didn't take heal on ashe and started dorans instead of boots+pots. More often though, it's things like me deciding an ezfail/corki can probably handle themselves for a few minutes and roam with ali/leona to gank in the early game. Or jungle karma. (Showing up in a bush and ultshilding someone who's about to towerdive/get towerdived never gets old!)

I've actually been meaning to get some honest-to-god jungle eve in on EUW ranked to mess with the current ward-spamming meta.

 

[Phage]

Well if you've gained rating after 20 games that's likely where you should be.

Regardless - I find it completely mind blowing that you encountered a solo top ashe and roaming twitch. Jungle twitch isn't unheard of (he's pretty good when played correctly, actually). Then again, whenever I watch streamers of higher elos, there seems to be more dumb trolly picks than lower elos since the players are so (over)confident.

 

[Ulminati]

I've actually given this some more thought, and I think my response to Grunker deserves further elaboration.

Back in S1 I tryharded in ranked. As evidenced by the fact that about 99% of my games were on the same 3 champions. (And of those, Morgana counted for about 90% of all my games played). When people suddenly woke up and realized how awesome she was again, she got banned every single match and it really hurt me going into S2 because I had gotten locked in the solomid/solotop mindset. I also got quite butthurt over every stupid mistake my teammades made. (And by jove, puggers make a lot of stupid mistakes regardless of GRUNKER). Ultimately, self-inflicted fustration because I was tryharding was what drove me to take an extended hiatus from LoL back in 2011.

When I got back in the game, it was with a promise to myself never to take puggers seriously again. I mean, they're goign to do mind-bogglingly stupid shit anyway. I also decided I wanted to change characters more often so I didn't get shoehorned into a specific role again. (I've been somewhat successful with this, although I still find myself jungling/roaming a lot). Ranked games on EUW with an artificially lowered GRUNKER is a wonderful place for me to practice new builds and roles, since I can be reasonably sure my opponents are trying to give me actual opposition. the things that work then gets transplanted onto my ranked team matches, which are on US since 4/6 players on our ranked team are native kwanzanians.

Sure, I could tryhard on my EUW acct and play 100 games as jungle lee/udyr/shyv or solotop riven and probably hit the 1500-1600 GRUNKER mark. But why should I? Then I wouldn't be able to try out new builds anymore without probably feeding and my team raging even harder at me than they already do while I'm carrying them.

But enough waving our GRUNKERs about. Who's pumped for the new champion? Polymorph looks interesting to me. Especially if it disables flash like regular silence does. Actually, I'm thinking the "she has 6 spells" comment might be tied into her abilities possibly doing something different if cast on a polymorphed target.

 

[Grunker]

Well if you've gained rating after 20 games that's likely where you should be.

Regardless - I find it completely mind blowing that you encountered a solo top ashe and roaming twitch.

Why? 150~ ranked games here and on 1550 I've met three jungle twitches, a Soraka solo top and won with support Vladimir. Granted, it's not the norm, but it's hardly mind-blowing.

ALSO APPARANTLY IT IS NOT IRREGULAR TO SEE TIAMAT-SHYVANA EITHER LOL

 

[Grunker]

stuff

If you're not going to tryhard, fuck out of my ranked. Seriously. Otherwise, you're part of the problem.

 

[Ulminati]

I play solotop soraka in ranked and win. Problem, tryhards?

Dat wish. So stronk.

 

[Phage]

Well if you've gained rating after 20 games that's likely where you should be.

Regardless - I find it completely mind blowing that you encountered a solo top ashe and roaming twitch.

Why? 150~ ranked games here and on 1550 I've met three jungle twitches, a Soraka solo top and won with support Vladimir. Granted, it's not the norm, but it's hardly mind-blowing.

ALSO APPARANTLY IT IS NOT IRREGULAR TO SEE TIAMAT-SHYVANA EITHER LOL

I have nearly 300 ranked games this season. Almost all of them were between 1200 and 1500 ELO. I don't recall ever seeing anything like that. (I'm not counting jungle twitch as trolling, because he's actually pretty decent if you get those early ganks)

 

[Ulminati]

I have nearly 300 ranked games this season. Almost all of them were between 1200 and 1500 ELO. I don't recall ever seeing anything like that.

My experiences from yoyoing between ~1000 and ~1750 GRUNKER on various accounts at various times is that the 1100-1500 spectrum has the worst tryhards. Those are the games where everyone uses cookie-cutter builds taken directly from solomid.net or whichever tournament was streamed last. And where even the slightest deviation from THAT THING SOME PRO PLAYER WON A GAME WITH AT A TOURNAMENT runs you the risk of instant raging and reports. also, the 1100-1400 range is usually where people immediately start raging at their teammates if they die. Because obviously it can't be their own damn fault they fucked up. they copied THAT THING SOME PRO PLAYER DID after all. The weird and wonderful builds don't crop up until you reach the places where people are either high enough or too low to give a fuck and start playing for fun again.

Or you can join them, stop giving a fuck and have grorious amusement in the 1400 range with AP Karma!

 

[Phage]

Hmm

Well I'm in the middleground. While I use cookiecutter builds often and study up on solomid and streams, I really don't mind if someone uses something odd - as long as they're geniunely trying to win, and it's worked for them in a few normal games. I very rarely rage. The last time I raged at all was in a normal game I called our jungle ryze (yes, jungle ryze) a fucking idiot for not giving me blue as anivia (he locked in ryze after he saw me pick anivia). And that was literally the extent of my rage, calling him a fucking idiot.

I do troll a bit though. For example today I was facing a Vlad top as Warwick in ranked. He dove me under tower and I ulted+killed him, a minute later my jungler came and we killed him again. He kept calling me "garbage kid" over and over in all chat, so I kept asking him "uvlad?" while spamming warwicks joke "All the better to eat you with dear" (made better by the fact that I use the Big Bad Warwick skin). As the game went on, Vlad continued to shittalk, but at post game I was 6-2-12 while he was 2-8-8. Feels good man.

 

[Ulminati]

Jungle ryze is pretty fun too. His ganks are quite good so long as your support invests ina vision ward to clear your approach.

It's interesting to note that while I (quite regularly) play trollish builds in ranked, I very rarely actively try to antagonize the other players. My team chat is usually restricted to things like: "Blu for you in 20 sec", "Dragon up in 1 min", "Push open inhib", "Warded top?", "Lots of farm bot", "Baron now!", "Don't need pull", "gank mid", "3 top" etc.

Heck, half my games I make do with map pings and a "gg" at the end. In normal games I like to shittalk puggers though. Especially if they're hilariously bad but take the game srsly nonetheless.

 

[Jim Cojones]

1. AD caster item. Not going further than that.

2. The brush next to lanes from river that makes it impossible to get CS at level 1-3 as a melee champion since junglers can just camp in it. Blue side melee top lane basically has to give up 15 CS to avoid getting first blooded since they can't even SEE someone in melee range of them.

3. Level 2 jungler ganks in general. Why have they been allowed to stay so powerful?

4. The #1 cause of a lane with no action is that one side has no chance to trade even near evenly. As such, why are champions like Udyr/Lee Sin allowed to exist as they are when they can NEVER be traded with in lane successfully? All they do is force one side to never even think of fighting, and the other side to not want to overextend.

5. Sup with the whole blue buff situation? Blue buff is basically scaling for mages that can be stolen. It sucks for everyone involved.

1. AD caster item incoming this patch (I think!)

2. It's late and this is hard to think about right now

3. We're hitting one of those this patch, with another we think will be better. We're OK with this existing, but it has to be a little less egregious.

4. Is a matter of fighter sustain imbalances, also addressed in this patch

 

[Ulminati]

Ad caster item!?

Also an interesting thought on the top lane blueside river bush. Not sure what to think of it, since the jungler is giving up valuable farm time to camp it. I can see how it could be problematic in some matchups.

 

[Phage]

I've got a bad feeling that things may happen to Warwick... just when I had an 80% win rate with him too.

 

[Ulminati]

Since warwick isn't known for his early ganks, I doubt he'd be the one they tried to hit with nerfs to make lv2 ganks less powerful. It's actually curious that the post hilights the blueside top lane as being hit hardest by the river bush, since my early ganks on purpleside tend to have a higher success rate. Probably because I usually come through the enemy jungle and hit them from behind after their creep wave arrives.

 

[Phage]

I'm referring to the bit about "fighter sustain imbalances". IDK if it's going on in Europe, but top lane warwick is a bit of a menace here.

 

[Grunker]

He's quite popular here too. Most people at 1500 seem quite bad at playing him however.

 

[Ulminati]

If lanewick gives you trouble, you need to play more teemo for trolldarts

Or morgana and push the lane to tower so he loses CS.

I'm thinking Vlad could outsustain him too. Or Nidalee.

Or grab yorick.

Lanewick is so easy to counter I'd only really be worried about him if he showed up in blind pick after we got someone with poor sustain/pushing top.

 

[Grunker]

He rapes Nidalee. Vs. Vlad he buys mr, same story vs. Morg, and he last-hits very well under turrets.

Teemo he kills from level 8ish + and he can sustain himself better than most at the start.

I don't think he's OP, but he's pretty good.

 

[Phage]

He rapes Nidalee. Vs. Vlad he buys mr, same story vs. Morg, and he last-hits very well under turrets.

Teemo he kills from level 8ish + and he can sustain himself better than most at the start.

Pretty much this.

Especially now that I've got 4 seperate runepages set up for WW (each is the same except for differing quints - AD/HP5/MR/Armor) there really aren't any tops I fear. Yorick and Cho'gath would be annoying though (not outright die to them in lane, just, annoying)

 

[Juul]

If lanewick gives you trouble, you need to play more teemo for trolldarts

Or morgana and push the lane to tower so he loses CS.

I'm thinking Vlad could outsustain him too. Or Nidalee.

Or grab yorick.

Lanewick is so easy to counter I'd only really be worried about him if he showed up in blind pick after we got someone with poor sustain/pushing top.

Yorick makes sense. He doesn't really lose any lane. Picking Vlad against WW is effectively counterpicking yourself.

 

[Ulminati]

Haven't played vlad/nid so I owuldn't know. Yorick works pretty well 90% of the time depending on jungler interference. Morgana usually can't kill him, but won't die either and beats him on CS.

 

[Azael]

Pantheon/Alistar bot too stronk. Or the Sivir I was playing with was just a retard, which is also an option and quite likely seeing how I ended with much better stats than her as Sona. Still, that was some epic towerdiving from that duo. If they had had Lee Sin as their jungler, it would have been even more so.

 

[Markman]

Ye, Panth eats bot lane, with double block shield and his burst its like hes made for towerdiving.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

It's Ezreal's birthday... WHERE THE FUCK IS THE PULSEFIRE SKIN?! AHAWRBUJAFWKUJKLABNQW:BMX

 

[Ulminati]

Cleaning smegma off its face. Taric pulled it into a bush and raped it.

Thus is the fate of Pissfaggotry Ezfail.