First day back in ranked - utterly shocked

What's up guys? I am finally done school for the year! Time to play ranked games! Also, I will try to update this blog on a daily basis now that I have time.

I've been preparing for solo-queue ranking games for a while now. Aside from my game-killer Anivia, I picked out Shaco and Alistar for my secondaries in case I get the last pick on the remaining roles (tank and jungling). Now I had my doubts with those champions that I've picked for ranked; they're very good champions, but also extremely team dependent. In my opinion, Anivia is one of the best champions in the game with a good team. In solo-queue, Anivia's weaknesses (slow movement speed, blue buff reliant, sub-par survivability) can be easily exploited by the other team due to the lack of coordination on your own team, or the downright ignorance of Anivia's capabilities by some of your teammates (most of the time). My previous ranking games experience involving Anivia has been lackluster; I would expect even worse team performance involving Anivia after the several nerf hammers. However, I stick with her because she is the best I got, and I have friends in high ELO who made it there using Anivia.

I picked Shaco as my second main after I fell in love with watching Reginald's Shaco. Shaco has the ability to control the map and apply tremendous pressure to the enemy team while being almost ungankable. Plus, he can fulfill the role of a fast jungler. I've had tons of success with Shaco in normal games, so I brought him over to ranking games as one of my mains. However, I had my doubts with Shaco's ability to carry solo-queue teams due to his absolute incapability in teamfights under un-fed situations. Furthermore, the fact that most players in my ELO range are incapable of understanding Shaco's role and the concept of "split-pushing" could mean that playing Shaco in solo-queue would result in disaster. Nonetheless, there are high ELO Shaco players who made it out of low-mid ELO using Shaco, so it's definitely possible.

Lastly, I've my trusted roaming Alistar for my third main. Roamers are beasts in all ELOs, especially low-mid ELO because there are usually tons of bad laners who don't know how to play against Roamers. Alistar can also fulfill the role of counter-jungling. I've had games where I sabotaged enemy junglers by "visiting" them when they are doing Blue Golem or Red Lizard. By making sure the enemy jungler can't jungle fast, you are securing an eventual win for your team. Alistar is also very team dependent. I've had games where I wrecked the entire enemy team through ganking in early game, just to see our own team feed like noobs and throwing away the game winning advantage. Very unfortunate.


As I've always said, I don't believe in the concept of ELO hell. I remember it was Reginald (or someone else) who said that ELO hell is a mere concept that exists in every ELO; the "hell" comprised of bad players who either refuse to play the game as a team, or severely lack the knowledge and skill to play at an adequate level. I played some ranked games today, and I was very shocked at the level of average players. It seems as if they just started playing LoL. To avoid any biased opinions to due sheer disappointment and frustration, I will wait until I've played more ranking games to share my experience with all of you!


Good luck and have fun!