Did some team builder today and met a nice group of peeps.  1 guy seems to really like playing wukong mid.  Anyway, I decided I wanted to work on my thresh game and I did really well with the adc I met, so we duo'd some ranked.  2/0.  Gold 1 75 LP. Had a 2/0/20 game as janna and did a really good job.  Was going to make some comment about racing to beat karl to Plat... then saw karl had a rough day in ranked.    Sorry bro. 

Missed out on playing w/ swan as I wanted to roll with ranked.  Hope to catch you again soon. 

Oh - I picked up destiny on Ps4.  Really dig it.  Lots of fun so far and its really well done.  Anyone else have destiny? 

ugh - sorry to hear that.  Well, hopefully its just 2 games to get back into your promo matches again. Guessing I'll get boned at 75lp and have to play 2 games to hit as well.  Anyway, good luck tomorrow if you decide to give it a go again.  rough night, no doubt... getting trolled + dcs... woo...

Well, I think I'm done with ranked solo in LoL.

I just got demoted due to a bug again.

So I've lost 8 in a row.  4 of them had disconnects that substantially affected my team losing, 2 had people on my team intentionally throwing (after stating they would intentionally throw), and 2 had just had ordinary really really bad play on my team.  So thats fun - I don't know why I seem to get really really really bad luck in solo queue, but it seems to happen to me.

But thats not the bug.  The bug is that my last game my screen showed that I was at 10lp before the game.  I lost the game (Sivir got upset at level 1, said she was going to throw, spent  much of the game just walking into the enemy team on purpose), so I get demoted despite the fact that I was at 10lp before the game?  Oh, and it said that I got demoted for INACTIVITY!  And there is a red triangle in my league standing screen that is an Inactivity Notification saying that I got demoted to Gold I in solo queue (which happened a long time ago) due to inactivity.

Meh, I don't actually really care about ranked solo queue much or I'd play it more.  Its frustrating when you lose 6 of 8 due to stuff like feeders and dc's, but whatever.  I don't really care enough to play enough games to have the stats even out.  I also don't really care enough to open support tickets on it, although I might have to if it keeps being goofy just to keep the weird stuff from happening.

I did finally win a game.  It had nothing to do with me since I was playing super terrible since I was way too tired.  I finally had better players though, so I won.

on and on I go...

so, I'm all geared up for ranked last night, but my bud has those net issues I mentioned, so I decided to do some team builder so I can play w/e role I want.  I go for adc and end up with a support janna (me = corks).  Now, my corki is one of my weaker adcs (best prob cait/lucy/trist).  Anyway, I get this goof support and we're playing into a dumb lane (brand+graves or something like that).  Anyway, its certainly a stretch to say that I played well, but my support was weak and did very little that approached being useful.  I'd move up to trade/farm while pushed under my tower - janna would shield the tower.  I'd try to freeze the lane, janna would try to push the lane putting me in a very bad position and keeping me from being able to farm.  Also, guy clearly didn't give a fug and just wanted to do w/e he wanted to do (eg choose a support in team builder but did not want to play support or had no idea how to do so). 

So, I have a lane where I can't get cs because the enemy team can zone me very easily while my support stays behind me.  And if the wave pushes to tower, I lose more cs because my support aa's and shields the turret or herself under turret.  In short, I get put into a situation where I really can't do much of anything.  I figure fine, I'm boned.  My turret gets taken, I freeze and slow farm... janna comes to my lane and pushes the wave so I can't even do that for long.  I was super happy when the game ended as it was pretty freaking miserable.  Didn't report the janna because maybe she was trolling, but it just seemed like she was quite awful and had no idea how to support. 

I said all of that to whinge a bit, but also to point out how much I love it when I get a good support.  How great is it to have vision where you need it and have someone competently zoning, shielding, cc'ing, w/e needed.  It is a real treat and makes playing adc so much more fun and easy.  The game after the one I went on to describe had bainick from MadCast running support for me (him morg; me corks).  Night and day difference (weak bot lane as well to be fair).  He zoned like a boss, I'm csing well and getting poke down as appropriate.  Anyway, was so nice to go from having a tormentor support to having an actual support. 

Last, rammus's win rate is crazy high in ranked solo queue at the plat/gold lv at least for the past week.  58% w/r. 

Did not receive a response from server on NA.  Runs through 5 times then craps out.  Can log into PBE and LAN.  No idea...

Just a heads up to anyone using the SR VU Mod - I think you will have to do a repair every time a new patch comes out and it seems like each patch breaks the map mod.  Still worth playing that map, though - riot did a great job and are still tweaking things.

Didn't play any ranked last night - just putzed around a bit and played games w/ pals.  FYI - OP GG had its database reset.  Not sure why but it went into maintenance yesterday. For those that don't know OP gg is a great site for tracking stats.  It can also be used to record live games - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=pacov

Anyway, hoping to get through my promo series shortly.  This trick guy might be too volatile though.  Going to give ranked another go with him when he's not so exasperated.   

:/

grats

note to self-  talk about drop hacked and best movie I've seen in a long time.  Night peoples.

So - my ranked games from last night.  I spent some time in 2 of the 3 games managing my team.  By that, I mean helping folks untilt.  I do have a nice advantage here as I have been that tilted guy many times, so I get it.  Anyway, in 1 game, we had a really trollish top laner.  Goes liss top with ignite.  The enemy team gets both trist/yasuo.  Anyway, our jungler ganks for top lane and takes a few cs.  As a result, this liss player (I think this liss is actually just a lousy player tbh) over extends, dies several times, runs her mouth in chat, and is generally a shite.  Anyway, the liss keeps feeding and doing nothing useful for the team resulting in 4v5 on every team fight.  But my jungler can't help himself - he keeps going on and on with liss (I muted her when it was clear she was going to be a nuisance and encouraged everyone else to do the same).  Eventually I call out my jungler and put it clearly that him going on and on with her is hurting our team and distracting everyone.  Please mute now and be done with.  He apologizes and mutes her.  We go on to beat a late game team, that has baron buff, 4v5, by out playing them. 

I was 0/1 in my series and got into that game with a trolly POS.  I helped calm folks down, played best (worked super hard) to help win that game.  Honestly, I think if the lee kept talking w/ Liss, we would have lost that game.  Anyway, just says a bit about being positive and helping people keep from tilting.  I was super happy getting a win on that game though.  Extremely difficult, but a win that put me to 1/1 in my series. Not at all surprised to check that liss's stats and see her at 3/7 for last 10 games in ranked. 

Anyway, we win the next 2 games due to surrenders (I go 0/1/10 and 1/2/17 as janna respectively).  Both pretty solid wins. 

So, I'm super happy, but my last game is stuck at the waiting for stats screen (the game I would have promoted on).  Next thing i know, hedgie pm's me and says that he thinks my game may have been drop hacked as he can't see the stats.  I whinged for a bit on stream and was pulling my replays to open a ticket with riot (that probably would have gone no where).  I queue up for another game and play a fairly trolly zilean as I'm done w/ ranked, relaxing, and starting to tilt a bit due to the drop hack bit.  Well, my normal game ends and I'm greeted with the "congrats you've been promoted to plat" message.  Turns out the servers where just slow or w/e and there was no drop hack.  So, I go back to being happy and play a bit better. 

Side note-  hedgie put in some time on gnar.  Feeling good about him now?

yeah i suck a bit less. There's a lot of intricacies about top lane that i'm not aware of. But i've certainly lost lane and been able to transition much better than someone like Quinn or Teemo, even putting out reasonable KDA by the end of the game. Brutalizer + 2x Dorans means that you can usually get 4-5 CS a wave just with your boomerang, so he's very difficult to zone. i think that he also has a lot of trouble against Ranged Tops, similar to Teemo (Ryze, Liss, Quinn, Rumble).

Quinn in particular is a difficult match up since she's able to massively deny Mini Gnars W and very easily kite Mega Gnar (and % hp execute to counter the bonus hp on Mega form).

And once you get your first big defensive item (Banshees or Randuins) you really are able to brute force most lanes with Mega Gnar, regardless of how far ahead the enemy is. That's been my experience, at least. Even when i was ~2.5 kills behind that Quinn the moment i got my Randuins she really couldn't do much to me if i got do a double-bounce E as Mega.

i will say that you're "probably" better off just playing Irelia or Jayce if you want a reasonably competent laner who is very difficult to deny and scales well into teamfights, while also being good at split pushing. In particular, Irelia is very easy to play in teamfights, as opposed to trying to manage Gnar's transformations.

But he brings good poke (which Irelia doesn't really have without ult) and he brings good tankiness (which Jayce doesn't have), so he does have his own unique advantages. i def don't consider him bad, the build paths seem to have been figured out and the latest set of buffs really helped him. But there are some more straightforward champs with more consistent results. Which has been pretty much the story of my league career, haha. Why play the hard inconsistent champs when you can just play the straightforward consistent ones?

Nah you don't one-shot the wave. That's usually not good if you're behind because it lets them freeze it on you.

If you catch the boomerang everytime, with just the CDR of Brutalizer, you're able to last-hit every minion as it dies from safety.