League of Legends (LoL)

so some buds i helped with their promo matches in the past decided to mystery gift me, which I had no idea was even a thing because I stopped playing league religiously for the past week. I didn't know that EVERY possible skin was available with the mystery gifting thing, so to my surprise I got the soul draven skin and ETERNUM NOCTURN, i had no idea it was possible to get legendary skins from it haha. Today was a good day.

*sighs* Why do I constantly get trolls in my games?

You can get any skin from it, so you can get SG Udyr and PF Ezreal.
I got Forecast Janna from it.



Edit: Reginald is no longer playing for TSM. I never really like the guy but it's sad to see one more old pro go.

This is just what I think, everything I write here is opinionated, so pls dont uberrage at me.
So playing a few games today I was sort of only semi-trying, yet still stomped the enemy, I started thinking. I had an amazing win ratio and stats after I changed from top lane to jungle (In fact, the biggest reason I switched roles was because I was sick of not being able to carry as top lane, and jungle had a bigger presence in early, mid, and the beginning of late game). Now I'm a diamond 4 top/jungler with another diamond 5 smurf (I have two diamond accounts this season), and I often play/skype with a couple of other diamond 5-2 buddies (I kno them IRL and we skype at least 5 hrs a day on weekends) so im not just pulling this whole thing from my ass. Anyways, without further ado, on to the theory I came up with. Now, this isn't MY theory, as im sure many people before me thought of it, but I just felt that this "theory" should be given more credit then it currently has, be given a shout-out basically is what i'm saying.
I'm going to explain a few things first, so if you don't feel like reading this because for whatever reason you may skip to the end and just read the tl;dr.
1. The only barrier that seperates bronze/silver from gold is luck and skill, we all have been there, and know how hopeless it is being in silver/bronze.
2. The biggest factor that determines whether a person should move on from gold to platinum is "game knowledge", i've stated this before, but most plats are not even good mechanics-wise, they just know a lot about the game, each champion, skills, skill cooldowns, items, scaling, timers on objectives, etc.
3. You can't be really considered a gold/plat/diamond player if you are just bragging about ur league while u are still in divisions 3 and lower (ex: plat 5-3 are just as the same as a gold 2-1) applies for most if not all leagues.
4. And plat-> diamond is mainly grinding, if you put enough time into it and have decent mechanics, you should not have a huge problem hitting diamond.

I say all of this watching all my close friends start from silver 5 and slowly climb up, some peaked and stopped at gold/plat, some others managed to get to diamond.
Now one thing I noticed amongst my high plat and diamond friends is that they all excelled in a few categories, but we'll only be talking about one for this post, which is "adaptability".
How well a person can adapt their champion to a certain enemy lane champion/jungler/playstyle says a lot about their skill as a player in general, everyone knows to adapt to a teemo by sitting in a bush out of his dart range and slowly farming while waiting for a chance to all-in, but high skilled players can adapt well to almost every situation. Now here's my theory, what happens if you "played a champion or style that no one has before adapted to yet, or seen"?
I noticed this when I was still grinding in silver at the beginning of s3, I loved lee sin, and i loved playing him top. Most of the enemies in lane never seen a lee sin top up to that point, and only knew him as "the guy who can gapclose if he lands Q", but completely ignored the other high damage/high mobility skills he had. I won most if not all lanes from silver-high gold. I stopped lee sin and picked up a few other champs because I didn't enjoy being a one trick horse, and now my champ pool is significantly bigger, but there's only a very few champs i mastered. I loved playing unorthadox champs, and being a hipster in playing them before it was "cool". Though trick2g influenced my greatly with his udyr, i play udyr with a different playstyle, and most people, even diamond tiered players, have a hard time adapting to it, and suffer as a consequence.
tl;dr what if you mastered a champ no one knows a lot about, or play a champ in such a way that no one has seen before, making them unable to be sure how to adapt to the situation, giving you the element of surprise and letting you get away with a lot of easy kills/escapes/objectives?

So Regi retires(coach) and Bjergsen replaces him as mid laner.

I was completely expecting Reginald to step down from mid lane. Especially since they mention they were going to have a coach but didn't say who right away.

I think he realized that he just couldn't keep his negative emotions out TSM if he was actively playing on their team.

@Pandara: I just wanted to give you my opinion. No offense or anything. :D

1st Point:
The difference between Top and Jungler is not really the pressence, because a Top Lane, if you stomp, have much more pressence than the Jungler and normally you force Mid and Jungler to gank you together with Top, making your team have less pressure and easy Drakes.

I have seen some Diamond I people stomp and carry hard from Top lane just by split pushing hard that lane while his team pushed Mid or Bot. The only times I saw some of them fail were when their teams were stomped hard. In thoses cases, they could do nothing at all.

The main difference is that as the Jungler you need your lanes to help you help them (yeah, like Supports). If they don't set up ganks for you to actually gank, you are screwed. If they dont ward to avoid counter ganks, you are screwed, because you will get counter ganked. If they don't pressure or force objectives, you are screwed. The pressence in the map is good, but if your lanes (all of them) lose, then sorry you are screwed because jungler don't scale that well into mid and late game due to the lack of lv/farm and items, that is why they build tankyness and utility and normally CC Jungler are better, because they are going to be behind lanes in every aspect so they need to bring something to the team. I believe you know this already, but just saying. :P

On he other hand, if everything goes well, then you will probably win the game, but that happens no matter if you are Top or Jungler. So far, for what I have seen, I have seen more success from players running a lane like Top or Mid than Jungling, ADC or Supporting. The reason is because of how is the meta right now, not because anything else. A fed bruiser is extrmeley strong, same for Assassins or APCs. Instead if an ADC is fed or a Support or a Jungler, unless they can do damage and survive enough, they won't win teamfights.

2nd Point:
About your theory, well, I am not going to say you are wrong or right, because I dont hold absolute truth, but in my opinion, you are overall right, except on one thing: the barrier on Bronze/Silver is mainly luck AND bad decision making, not skill.

However, in my opinion the barrier in Bronze/Silver is mainly luck than any other thing, since in SoloQ you can play really bad and get carried hard, where the other way around, if your team has no clue, it won't matter if you are fed or not, the enemy team will be more fed than you do. Why? Well, simple:
- If you fed, but your team gets fed, then you have 4 players fed + 1 carried.
- If you get fed, but your team feds, then you have 1 player fed + 4 carried.

I think it is pretty simple to say, which team will win in each scenario. Of course throws exist for a reason, but we are speaking of people... People make mistakes, even at Challenger level.

3rd Point:
Regarding the Roles, I can say from own experience, not every Role is for everyone. I have tried Mid and I have failed, same for ADC. I am not good in those roles for whatever reason and I never feel confortable. I feel really confortable Supporting, Jungling... and in a less way Top (probably due to my expertise in 3v3 now).

4th Point:
I more or less agree with you here. I agree that if you play something has no idea how to play against, you will probably stomp or, at least, win the lane (or whatever) because the other player doesn't know how to counter you. However, that will last for maybe a couple of days? (less maybe?) until someone else copies you and starts spreading or your champ becomes the popular ban because it stomps.

I don't agree that Diamond player adapt better, I would say, they are just more careful overall, which is different. A Bronze/Silver will just tunell you if he sees you low HP... imagine you are Tryndamere, low HP and full rage... that guy will die because he forget about your Ulti, your Q, your Passive Crit Chance, your W, your E, etc.

Of course, this is my opinion, but I wanted to bring up the debate. :D

I used to play Shyvana a lot before Worlds because I just enjoy playing her and I normally stomped enemy junglers (I still play her a lot). Then, Worlds came in, Meteos showed his playstyle and now Shyvana is FOTM and everyone is playing her, even Diamond players who told me that she was "bullshit" are now like "She is freaking good man, you should try her" and I am like "Oh rly? Don't tell me.", but whatever, people just move around what they see in the "Pro-Scene". xD

This is want happens when you DC'd for 20mins with two GP5.

Spoiler:

Ya I agree with the top lane vs jungle game pressure idea, but I'd like to add how one sided top lanes usually go, it always either ends in one person beating the other to the ground, and it's the most snowbally lane that requires no outside interference . While mid can still come back easily during dragon fights/bot ganks and have a jungler easily hold ur lane and keep it from pushing (resulting in a much less xp loss) you wont fall behind when you try to come back/get fed by roaming. Top felt too one sided for me, because I didn't want ganks when I fell behind, which is usually the right thing to do since all junglers jungle with the mindset of "I will snowball lanes with the biggest carry potential and only have to gank for lanes that fell behind if it's still easy enough to 2v1 and perhaps 2v2 if there's a counter gank comming.
Also, with your statement about being careful, I couldn't help but interpret that as the same thing as adapting? Yes diamond players play careful because they are analyzing the situation, usually to see what the enemy laner is maxing first so they could determine when to harass and how long they should commit for.
And with the comment about how playing something no one has seen before will become old in a few days I cannot help but say that was false in all cases I tried to seriously play a champ in a different way. My Lee Sin top was practically stomp-happy for a good 400 ranked games (You can check my profile and see just how much I played him before I stopped since everyone knew his burst potential, and since pro players started playing him a lot making most people fear his presence) and my tiger udyr jungle with dorans start into spirit golem/phage rush for insane early game pressure. Even till now I can easily decide which lane to camp as udyr and snowball that lane so hard that I get the leverage to ignore ganking for one of my other lane entirely.

I will just quote what I don't agree with. :)

This is generally correct, except that normally, not all lanes (or even no lane) can be properly ganked. By this I refer to, enemy Champs are very elusive, say Kassadin, to give you a rough idea. It also depends on the Champion you are using ofc. When this happens, you can just hope for the best in your lane to not fed the enemy laner and hope for them to make a lot of mistakes so you can actually gank/kill them. However, the best tactic in this case is counterganking, so you can help your lanes not dying and maybe get a kill or two.

The point I am trying to make is, you don't want to always gank a lane, just show up to say "hi, I am here", but you won't gank that lane, maybe pass by, go to enemy Golems, get them, come back and go to other lane and so. In this case your objective is to keep up your farm and Lv so you dont fall behind because lanes are hard to gank.

No, not really. I know some Diamond players that are not able to adapt, despite they are being careful and other who are able to even stomp (no joking here). I don't play at Diamond Level so I can't really tell, but for what I have seen, being careful and being able to adapt are different things. Ofc, I agree that someone who is able to adapt is being careful for sure, but not everyone who is careful is able to adapt and the fact they are Diamond isn't a exception, because they are facing Diamond players too, not Bronze, so they will punished for mistakes. Another difference is, when someone is careful is just trying to not die, which Diamond players at least are good at, they know how to play when they are behind. On the other hand, when someone adapts, she/he can go for kills because they managed to figure out a way to deal with you, which not every player is able to do until she/he has gone through the experience a couple of times. Maybe is it more clear now? Let me know.

I have one question here, in which Tiers where you doing that? Because since you are Diamond I was speaking about Diamond. Example, Reworked YI, he was (maybe he still is?) unstoppable in Low Tiers because people don't know (and probably won't ever do) how to stop him, but in High Tiers people should know how to deal with him (and as far as I know it was the case). So, if we are speaking of Bronze to Platinum level, I would give it to you, since yeah you are right, you are going to stomp until you face a really smart player, which isn't normally the case at all, but if we are speaking of Diamond, I have doubts about it (not saying you are lying or anything lol :P), just they will be able to keep you at bay and avoid being stomped by you.

SHE SO PINK AND FLUFFY!!!!
Announcing Popstar Ahri

Fuck, what an annoying lane. Enemy Jungle Riven literally camped my lane for at least 3-4 minutes after getting double buffs so that malphite could get ahead enough to make csing difficult.

And yet, I never died.

YES! YES! OMFG! YYEESSSSSSSS!!!!!

I am so damm happy. :D

My Team 3v3 hit Diamond today.

Just hit Sliver 1. Got 6 days to get gold.

Edit: A friend give me like $25 in RP, Win.

*sighs* And there goes my promotion to Silver I again.

It's so sad when I utterly dominate Singed top as Jax only to have my shitting bot and mid feed the crap out of Lux and Lucian in the laning phase.

It literally makes it just so unworthwhile to play.

R.I.P.

No wonder people like playing Garen against a Nasus.

Adapting is the correct word, alright.

In fact ARAM is the best place for you to learn that, since champions are completely random and people usually just go full damage and compete to see who can poke who down first more consistently.

Take the game I played yesterday for example. The enemy team has a Sona and Alistar, then a Rammus for CC Taunt, then a Fizz for assassination and the last one I couldn't remember.

On the other hand, my team has no tanks at all, and on first look Sona and Alistar was going to outheal, outpoke, and generally just destroy us IF we're going to do this the usual ARAM way.

So I considered my team. We had a Yi and I was playing Akali. We had a Lulu that could Shield and Ultimate us, so that at least balances somewhat the ridiculous healing on the enemy's side. We had a Syndra - and a damn good one too, because she just pokes non-stop and hitting nearly every single stun - so the enemy's 3 main melee CC tanker won't be as terrifying as they hope to be. Since I already know my team was going to play full damage, so I decided to go tank Akali and absorb all the CC and damage from the enemy team instead.

And I was tired of losing to be honest. It was an all day ARAM (3 hours in truth - that math), and despite being decent (not at my top level at all; I slept 5 hours the previous night to watch RWBY Volume 1 final episode...) I was losing 4 out of 5 of the games I played. So I switched a mindset and decided to REALLY play the game.

After all, their mid game is powerful if they get an early lead and get those core items (Rammus would become unkillable, Fizz could one shot if he gets early Lich Bane etc), but if we are the ones who get the lead then we could slow down their items, slow down their mid game and reach ours first, and outtank their damage later on.

And it worked. I was wary of their AP damage so I went Giants Belt + Boots start, into an early Spirit Visage and Sorc Boots so that I'm doing at least some damage. I quickly went into Abyssal to further undermine Fizz's ability to do anything at all to me, and at the same time gave Syndra the ability to do extra damage (since she went into a straight DCap with no MR on first death). By this time I can easily dive turrets and they needed 3 man at least to kill me. Their sole AD damage is irrelevant if I remember correctly, so I just went into a Locket first - more protection for the team - and Warden's Mail last item.

All the while I'm blocking Rammus' ball whenever possible - R Dash makes it easy at least - tell my team that Sona is first priority to kill, and always dove for Fizz and Sona. At one point the enemy team engaged on me 5 man, unleashed all their combo, and still I have 1/4 of my life and was able to get 1 full combo down on Sona (which resulted in a kill for teammate) before dying.

Near the end of the game team was throwing (as usual) and suicided 3 to 5 man nearly every team fight. So I told them to cool their horses and wait for me before diving the next 3 v 5 (Lol). The instant I was there in the team fight, we won it and ended the game.

Remember, I only have Sorc Boots and Abyssal Scepter as my damage item. Sure, I went 21-9-0 with Glyph/Quint AP Runes, but I'm mostly a tank than assassin.

But I'm playing Akali, so it all evens out. At the end my 4 damage dealers didn't have more than 10 kills, and I the tank had a 20-10-26 score.

Like yeah, basically, adapting wins you games. ARAM is literally a place where you can troll however you want, and if you can adapt to that, Ranked should be no problem at all (there will always be that one game you can't win, don't worry about it too much).

Man i really feel like riot needs to give us one more week before the end of the Season, and no i'm not just saying this so i have more time to get gold([size=10]but it wood help)[/h]. No i feel like i lot of people on EUW and well everything that not NA is having solo q being take down for a max of 2 days in the last week. So i feel like it's not right that people on NA get one more week and people on EUW or w/e really don't. And now people on NA who use Fios are getting fuck over by lag on NA.

Pls Riot one more week is all i ask.

Omg. Finally Silver I.

And fuck that last game. An hour long slugfest where we had most of their base, but they kept creaking in good team fights and getting baron. Then they would defend, we'd get a little bit more of their base. They'd get a crucial team fight and get baron again.

OVER AND FUCKING OVER AGAIN! FOR AN HOUR! We lost half the fights because our Varus was always already retreating before the fight was over.