So... my new net is.. um... faster.  Like 10x faster.  Pinging out at 22ms in lol as well.  Might start streaming sooner than later as a test

hotfixes to dumb shite:

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/xjvV0YeJ-69-balance-hotfix-going-out-soon

watch this for last shadow talking about league of tanks - very insightful imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIm4iqy4oA0

PACOV VS HUNNYBADGER

Just stumbled across this from quite some time back.  Witness karls gank me 10 times in the first 10 minutes.  

This is from the old madcast in houses where things were always perfectly balanced.  Also, holy crap, I was an even more special adc back then.  I clicked to level up, didn't really understand trading unless it was super obvious, etc.  woohaa

MSI has been really interesting. If this doesn't get you excited I don't know what will SKT 2-4 and CLG 4-2. CLG beat SKT last night. 

hmm... best champs per leagueofgraphs atm

1. malz

2. skar

3.voli

4. amumu

5 ahri

I enjoy the stream. As I don't always have internet to really play, I like watching buddies. So thanks for the stream, sir. 

So, I was reflecting a bit after some games last night and thought I'd share some of my super deep, incredibly meaningful, fantastic insights.  You are welcome, world.  

I'm going to talk a little bit about how some games went down yesterday - 2 games specifically.  Game 1 - loss.  Game 2 - win.

In game 2 - boaz was our jungler and forgot to take smite.  There were 3 of us grouped + 2 Puggers.  We asked boaz to mute those other 2 fellas at the start in case they trolled him (he was already leaning towards tilting after his 1st game).  Those fellas turn out to be nice and don't talk any crap (though they probably would have if things went to poop). Things did not go to poop, though.  Boaz/pacov/thunder all had a blast in this game.  We got thunder a 16 minute quadrakill and controlled every single drake, rift herald, baron (our lucian was a shitter and took RH for himself, but eyyyyyy w/e).  the rh buff is not as valuable unless you are solo and he did go solo a bit.  

Anyway, game 2, depending on your mindset, was an easy recipe for tilt, though.  Jungler f's up, forgets smite, and you are already andicapped.  But I don't think any of us really cared that much about it and just wanted to have some fun.  With my old mindset, this game could have tilted me, I might have gone on broken record loop complaining about boaz forgetting smite and being all pissed and how this guy just wasted my time by being absent minded, etc.  Which would have only succeeded in making one guy feel like shit that really just made a small mistake, make that guy upset having his nose rubbed in it, and I'd be really annoying/distracting to everyone else.  What a win, am i right?  

Game 1 - our mid is a pooper.  Dr karl gets abused by the enemy jungler a bit without help.  boaz gets crushed in top lane.  And we don't really get anything good going bot lane. In short, the game ends up being a bit a of a stomp that's not particularly fun for anyone on our team.  Not only is it a bad game, but its also a bad game that's played really poorly with more than a few questionable decisions.  This, however, is exactly where my updated mindset shines a bit, though.  I repeat my exciting mantra - this is lower elo.  I chose to be here by who I'm playing with and what account I'm playing on.  It's not right for me to expect platinum decision making (I mean plat ain't diamond, but its generally quite a bit better than gold decision making/plays).  So, then you might say, well, I should expect more of the folks I'm playing with.  Wrong.  I chose to play with them and I have good idea of what to expect - and that includes some good things and some bad, same as me.  Anyway, getting that in perspective, it helps diffuse the situation to me, which keeps me from tilting, etc.  

But, you have to go into games with that in mind.  And just skip out or minimize playing with folks that tilt ya.  So, if folks that have a tendency to making bad decisions here and there and that tilts ya, play with em less.  Then everyone enjoys their experience more.  blablhblsjkjdlsjdaksdjasd

Other stuff - I was thinking about my multiple account approach and trying to dissect the way I feel playing on 1 account vs another in ranked.

1st - I play ranked.  Period.  However, on the account I'm playing on now, I have absolutely no anxiety in the slightest.  Like straight up nothing, and that's pretty unique for me.  But, if I play on my main account with some of the folks I play with on my "carefree" account, I care a lot more and get a little anxious.  

So, on my carefree account, I don't give a rip because I don't really use the elo to evaluate my actual skill as a player (eg I could care less if this account is gold X - I know I can play at a plat level just fine).  And I know I'm using the games to get better at things I don't play as much.  So, its relatively stress free.  It's like a normal game where most folks generally care and don't try crapo.  That helps with me disliking non meta picks that often occur in norms anyway).  

This means I do still care about my elo on my main, though.  And sometimes I am hesitant to play on that as a result (eg some anxiety still present, but not as much in previous seasons anyway).  

Observations on my "carefree" account.  I pay little to no attention to my LP.  I think I'm gold 2 or 3 off the top of my head, but I actually don't know.  No idea how much LP I have.  I know that I'm climbing, but at a slower pace as I generally choose to play w/e role I'd like to try out vs doing what I'm best at (support).  I don't really think about elo other than the occasional hoping I don't gain too much (as dickish as that sounds).  In my mind, what I'd like to do is play with pals and slowly help elevate them to the plat level (AND elevate my skill level in other roles to plat level).  I can actually say I generally play on this account for fun the majority of the time, but do try hard when pals get to series, etc. 

All said and done, though, I really wish I felt exactly the same way I do about my "carefree" account when playing on my main.  There's a lot of agita (for me anyway) caring about your elo.  I think it would be much more fun to have the same attitude.  But, I cannot maintain plat IV/III with that attitude currently.  For me, that actually requires not playing with some folks, choosing to play my best role when possible, etc.  There's also a really rough impact to folks as well when I start playing on my main with my gold pals (some more than others, ofc).  When I do this and specifically because I believe my mmr is up a bit now on my main, we get some pretty big mismatches here and there - and not in our favor.  This mean as I do this on my main, games will get harder for my pals, which will result in more losses and less fun.

So, its like bite the bullet in 2 ways.  1 - play on my main, sacrifice my elo and try to mentally move away completely from truly caring about my rank 2 - make my pals games really fing rough for awhile while my mmr drops.  

That might actually be the healthiest approach, but the drawbacks are kind of rough.  I could keep things as they are (occasionally playing on my main when inspired, but mostly solo).  Start playing on my main mostly with pals (there will be pain for all).  Start playing w/e role i feel like on my main which will likely cause a slow mmr drop.  Also knowing that losing on my main a bunch will not exactly cause me to feel "carefree."  Anyway, just some of my nerd thoughts atm.

It has become clear that I can't play ranked any more with pacov's groups in ranked games.

The combination where people don't care whether we win or lose and a ranked game is incredibly frustrating.  I honestly don't understand the insistence that we have to play ranked when the goal is to try new things out and not care about winning.  But there we are.

Of the last 7 games with pacov and his group, 4 have been complete troll fests.  It is simply not good.

We've had support Karma trying to backdoor inhibitors when they are pushing down our base (because hey, "who cares"?), we've had protobelt on support Janna in a close game, we've had the open trolling of the ADC just because he wasn't sufficiently meta.

I'd like to play with people.  But if I'm playing ranked games, I'd like to try and win.  If everybody is not trying to at least kind of win, then we need to be playing normals.  I thought that this was clear with this statement earlier:

but this is just not true.  Like every at least half the games are screwing around.  AT LEAST.  There are almost never serious games trying to get better.  I have to yell at people to not do stupid plays that they know are dumb, or to not intentionally troll in ranked, or not to build intentionally stupid items in ranked.  Why?  You can do that in normals, but why in ranked?

I'm happy to accept invites when people are going to try and win ranked games.  But please don't invite me if it is going to be yet another screw around ranked game.

I don't even care about ranked that much, but it is really frustrating when one team is trying and one team isn't.

It's not about me being counter jungled.  I can handle being counter jungled.  The problem was that I was being counter jungled while my mid lane was 0/3/0, my top lane was down 34 to 97 in CS and had rushed negatron cloak into a darius (gotta get that zrot portal), and we started 0-8 against them in like 5 minutes.

At that point there is nothing that can be done, and there is nothing that is going to be learned from the game since its just a curb stomp.

I also don't mind losing ranked games if we gave it our best shot.  But if everybody was screwing around in ranked and we lost because of it, I don't have a great time.  That is correct.

I interpret ranked as the place where we try to win games.  Normals is a wonderful place to LEARN and try out new things and shrug our shoulders if things don't work out.  I play a much wider range of champions in normals.  Ranked is a place to implement what you know.

The problem is that we aren't really trying to win the ranked games, at least not very hard.  Pacov has adopted the exact normals attitude that he complained about when he insisted on switching to ranked (carefree, doesn't follow meta, weird items, trying lots of stuff out, etc).  We have a lot of people playing champs for the first time against people who are really experienced on their champs.  Etc.

The problem with treating ranked as a learning experience where some people don't really try and others learn new champions is that you are playing against people who are trying their best to win and playing optimally.  So its a stomp.  And you don't learn much in a stomp.  In a normal game things are a bit more open a relaxed, so you have the opportunity to take something from the game.

I feel ya, Karl. I do learn in a stomp. Maybe not much, but I do. If I'm learning a champs builds/mechanics or something, sure normals is where to do it (the only exception I can remember is a poppy game I played). However, after that I don't feel much self-improvement in normals (maybe useless matchup data, but players can make up any difference there). There's usually more troll set-ups in normals than a cheesuscrust game: shacos and teemo, tops with ignite, full ap supports, etc. 

I see your points, and see that we view ranked differently.  If climbing was my main objective, I'd probably only play normals forever because I'd want to perfect every champion before trying ranked. Saddly, metas change too frequently, and communication and objective control (with randoms) is not something you can be perfect at. Ultimately, I learn best in ranked with people I know. I always try my best, but am not going to be upset if I lose. 

I do respect your feelings on it, so we should maybe communicate ahead of time what kind of game we're planning on playing. If I end up having to play mid or adc, we probably shouldn't play together. If I am planning on playing a champ I'm not super-experienced with, we can either not play, or I can accommodate and switch to champion I do know. Up to you, bud. I like ya, and enjoy playing with all of you folks. I wasn't trying to start a fight earlier, but I see issues and I'm not really biased (I love you and pacov equally), so I wanted you guys to know what I saw. 

@Thunder - I miss you.

If the goal is to hang out and have fun with pals and screw around there is a wonderful game mode for that.  Normals.  Or maybe ARAM.

The thing that sets me off more than anything is the real inconsistency.  If we want to build silly items its "LOL, we are just having fun".  If we want to do a 1 man rush of their base on support while losing our own, its "HAHA, its just for funsies".  If we want to play a really strange support with no practice full AP, its just good times.

But if somebody else does it...  Then there is complaining or trolling.  It is absolutely not acceptable for other people to do the exact same things that we do.  Can you honestly say that you would be OK if your teammates acted in the way that you do in ranked games?

In fact, we avoid normal games for the same stuff that we do in ranked games.

So my question is: with everything that has been said here, why aren't we playing normals?  At some point we are just the trolls that people on reddit complain about, and it honestly does bother me.  I hate being *that guy* in ranked games.

Well, even though we threw, I thought that everybody was trying to win and everything so that made the game fun at least.  Throws happen sometimes.