recap of the night - ended night qualifying for my series to plat IV on my main.  Played 1-2 ranked with pals, then 2 solo and hit the series.  

Lots of easy games tonight.  Lost 1 with me as panth top.  I played ok - we were significantly handicapped by a jungle kalista on our team, but I could have played better/made better decisions.  A few bad calls from me, but honestly mostly fugged over by the shite doing that crap in the jungle.  

played with cow/karl/soupcup tonight - mostly soup.  

I don't feel like I've even kind of hit a wall with ranked yet this season.  Realistically, I think I could have made plat III easy last season if I put the effort in.  This season, I'm not sure - kind of think plat 1 atm.  I like to try to not overestimate my elo, so I think I'm probably pretty close.  

oh and we hit a wall with ranked due to cow.  I think I'm probably the only one of the group that can play ranked w/ him currently in diamond, so ranked is a bit of no go (and the reason we had a ASKJLODALKDJALSDJSALJD jungle kalista #normals).  

New solo queue apparently 1 1/2 months off

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/48ydr1/solo_queue_confirmed_notscrapped_supposedly_1_12/

https://twitter.com/RiotSupport/status/704710112846348288

#thanksreddit

I try to be realistic and then aim above.  Last season I actually felt like i hit a wall around plat IV.  Meaning I would have had to grind things out a bit to move on up (win/lose, get better, work hard, hit plat III and so on).  This season I haven't hit that wall yet.  I'm still feeling pretty strong, not getting outplayed much, etc.  Did get plat IV tonight though.  Hopefully I can keep on moving up ala the jeffersons.

Didn't karls tell you it was going to be a bit of a nightmare?  Sorry its a pisser man.  

A quick thought

I'm actually considering dodging matches I expect things to go awful based on composition.  I don't look up folks stats in the lobby itself, but if the comp is garbage, I consider dodge.  I was about to dodge my 1st ranked game of the night yesterday - rengar top + squish in all other roles.  That actually turned out to be the best team I've played with in quite some time.  We'll see though.  I don't mind the idea of losing a few LP for a dodge now though.

gots to go...

well, got in 2 more games tonight.  Both wins - qualified for series to plat III.  Hopefully get to play that tomorrow.  

I've been having some pretty remedial ass adcs.  One game the guy was about as solid as I'd be playing adc in an a game at this elo (read - not so good).  It was a lot of really basic positioning mistakes in lane - the type where I have to blow exh pretty quickly to save someone that previously had 100% hp bad.  So, had that 1 game.  He continued to be awful, I made plays across the map to get back into it.  The enemy team wastes resources going to kill bad adc over and over, we get work done around the map and eventually crush them... bad adc and all.  Our mid and jungler perform well.  Replay link if anyone's interested, though its nothing special - http://na.op.gg/match/observer/id=2119115589

I end with a 76% kill participation and 22kda.  

Game 2 my adc was a bit better - my team as a whole was kind of trash early/mid/early late.  This was the team that would take any lead we had and quickly piss it away.  At one point, there was a 4 man gank bot.  2 of us just get bushwacked and die (was a bad setup for us).  With full vision our lux literally walks into 4 of them when no one is all that low.  Anyway, bad things there.  Then another crazy ass dive call later when their top laner has TP and we get fugged as well.  Just a bunch of way too aggro calls.  This game, I come to the conclusion that I need to carry... and I'm on morg, so I can actually do that to some degree.  I do a little selfish farming to power up (again, this was straight selfish, but I concluded the only way we were going to get something done was to get a zz on the board (20 min in and we don't have a single tower down...).  Anyway, I do that, I make picks, we have some ok team fights.  I start outplaying the shit out of their leblanc over and over. We get a win.  My KP was low at 51% due the selfish plays to get money and the roams to get zz's up and running.  I'd split a bit and get the ball rolling.  Turned out to be very effective and needed as our top laner had no interest in zz.  Our j4 bought one as well towards the end. By and large, this one was work, but it worked out.  Game would have been straight easy if the team wasn't adamant about flip flopping (get an adv, make a risky as fug call, etc).  

Anyway, pretty pleased. Nice little win streak.  Be quite happy to hit plat III, so hopefully tomorrow.  Night!

game 1 of promos - I'm a freaking god.  I carry as support morgana. hard.

game 2 - i cannot dodge - I am stuck with 4 adcs.  The one I'm laning with is smeh and doesn't understand that lulu with thunderlords hurts.  We occassionally make a good play.  The team will, no matter what, immediately over extend after the play and die, ensuring we can't get back into things.  Make awareness is garbo for kids.  I do what I can, but its no where near enough as any play I make will be undercut by the ensuing over extend.    

Game 3 now

could the best skin name in the game be "Giant Enemy Crabgot?"

Got diamond 4 last night. Not feeling like I am being outskilled yet. I will keep pushing for more elo. 

Also if you want to climb easy amumu is pretty op with echos. Mao seems to shit on naut/malphite. Those are my sleeper OPs of the day.

oh - and hextech crafting is live on NA now

Cow and I TORE IT UP TONIGHT.

Thanks for all of you who joined in. Miss you bb boo's. Hope to play more when i'm on Summer Break.

Something I just learned about crafting.  So, yesterday I noticed I didn't get a chest 1 game where I expected one (either I or someone else on the team got an S).  Anyway, I get nothing.  Then I read a guide today on reddit that says that you only get 1 chest per champion for the season.  So, if I play jhin, get a S, I get 1 chest.  I play him again and get an S, I get nothing.  The key to the initial chests is playing multiple champs.  You can get up to 52 chests for the season or so.  That means you or someone on your team needs to get an S AND you must be playing a champ that you haven't already gotten a chest on.

oh and if you look at the champion list, it should show what champs you've already gotten a chest on.  

AND you get get keys regardless of the queue type (eg aram = cool).  Keys are random, so you may or may not get em after a game.  You can earn unlimited key fragments

If any of you actually get a key fragment from arams, please let me know.  Supposed to be able to do this - haven't had that happen yet.

Accidentally lost my last game promo to plat on my alt.  Fun fact. I learned that a dodge counts only as 1 loss now.  You don't insta fail your series at least in the promos to a new div.  Not sure if it always worked that way.  Dodge appears to count as just a loss.

OK, so let's talk crafting a sec.  I have unlocked all the chests I can for the next 5 days.  (4 or so I think).  As I mentioned earlier, you can only get a chest per EACH champion per season.  Meaning once you get a chest on 1 fella, you are better off playing someone else if you are grinding chests... UNTIL you hit your max.

As I have a wee bit of OCD pointed towards grinding, I immediately wanted to max out the crates.  I felt a strong need to play multiple champs to hit that goal.  I did.. so now, for the next 5 days, I can go back to playing w/e I want.  I'm assuming that while my crates are out, if I get an S on someone else, I just won't get a crate and I'll still be elligible to unlock a crate on champ that never got a crate... makes sense anyway.

Anyway, tonight I got 2 key frags - enough with what i had to make 1 full key + 1 left over frag. I also got one of those purple shards which gives you a bunch of stuff.  I unlocked that rather than hold onto it to get hextech annie (you need 10 of those to get).  So, I turned that in.  All said and done, I unlocked 2 chests.  Got dino gnar and varus swiftbolt.  I don't own varus, so I can't do much w/ that.  I have gnar, but don't care as I don't really like playing him currently.  My inventory has 3 unopened chets, 1 key frag, those 2 skins not created, and the widow ward (not upgraded).  I have 125 cosmetic essence - zero champ stuff.