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Hello everyone. Sorry for taking down the last blog, but I felt like I was blabbering too much. After talking to one of the members on MOBAFire, I've decided to start a journey blog. I'll post a new blog every time I hit a milestone, learn something important, or if I happen to see something worth mentioning. Hopefully, I can keep everyone entertained. So...time to start.
Win 25. Yeah, I'm not in PvP much at all. This one was pretty big for me though. For the first time...I played a solo-queue ADC. Everything was pretty normal in champ select. Three people put in their calls for Mid, Top, and Support. I asked if the other person was okay with playing Jungle since I am GOD AWFUL and have two champions to use in the jungle. He's fine with that, and now I'm playing Jinx with Thresh as backup.
The lineup: Garen, Poppy, Xerath, Lulu, and Twitch vs. Rengar, Udyr, Lux, Jinx, and Thresh.
The first part of the game goes well. Despite being terrified of Twitch, I'd never played a game where this champion lost, I scored two early kills. Lulu proved more annoying. I could see why Twitch was dying though. Lulu built AP and was more focused on trying to attack us than shield Twitch. Twitch continued to get dropped whenever I saw him. Around 12:00, Udyr took the dragon down on his own. Xerath had pushed Lux to their limit, and Lux wasn't getting the help they pinged for since Udyr was focused on his Feral Flare. Our lane was fine since Lulu couldn't push, so we roamed up. Zap into Flame Chompers while Xerath was ulting dropped his HP low and Lux finished him with the Laser Pointer of Doom. Twitch and Lulu rotated to follow us after Xerath died, but the rat got trapped again. We stayed to help push to the first tower, and Poppy helped Garen with a gank to take Rengar in retribution.
Teamfights started breaking out at this point. Xerath was a big threat. He had Zhonya's and was a better tank than I expected. Most of the fights went in our favor though. I kept near the back and picked off targets, but I always watched for the biggest threat on the enemy team: Poppy. Poppy had a Feral Flare and enough armor to wade through the bullets I rained her way. Luckily, Exhaust and Flame Chompers kept her locked up until we could focus our fire. Thresh did an amazing job. He would flay enemies away and seemed to have "Hook Sense" where he would wheel around and catch Xerath and Twitch off guard. This continued for about ten minutes of non-stop kill trading. In this middle of this, Rengar and Udyr went to take down Baron. We held the enemy team in mid, and I died right before Baron gave up his buff. From there, we continued to push down all the lanes. Baron buff and an insanely fed carry proved too much, and the nexus was not too far behind the inhibitors.
In the after game, everyone said their farewells, but Poppy stayed to chat. I complimented them for scaring the **** out of me (seeing Poppy take SMDR at 20% and live...yeah), and they congratulated me on my first ADC win. I mopped up a healthy 21/2/4. Hopefully, this is just the start. My first goal is to get PvP experience, about three to five hundred wins, before I dive into Ranked play. Until then, see you on the Rift!
Win 25. Yeah, I'm not in PvP much at all. This one was pretty big for me though. For the first time...I played a solo-queue ADC. Everything was pretty normal in champ select. Three people put in their calls for Mid, Top, and Support. I asked if the other person was okay with playing Jungle since I am GOD AWFUL and have two champions to use in the jungle. He's fine with that, and now I'm playing Jinx with Thresh as backup.
The lineup: Garen, Poppy, Xerath, Lulu, and Twitch vs. Rengar, Udyr, Lux, Jinx, and Thresh.
The first part of the game goes well. Despite being terrified of Twitch, I'd never played a game where this champion lost, I scored two early kills. Lulu proved more annoying. I could see why Twitch was dying though. Lulu built AP and was more focused on trying to attack us than shield Twitch. Twitch continued to get dropped whenever I saw him. Around 12:00, Udyr took the dragon down on his own. Xerath had pushed Lux to their limit, and Lux wasn't getting the help they pinged for since Udyr was focused on his Feral Flare. Our lane was fine since Lulu couldn't push, so we roamed up. Zap into Flame Chompers while Xerath was ulting dropped his HP low and Lux finished him with the Laser Pointer of Doom. Twitch and Lulu rotated to follow us after Xerath died, but the rat got trapped again. We stayed to help push to the first tower, and Poppy helped Garen with a gank to take Rengar in retribution.
Teamfights started breaking out at this point. Xerath was a big threat. He had Zhonya's and was a better tank than I expected. Most of the fights went in our favor though. I kept near the back and picked off targets, but I always watched for the biggest threat on the enemy team: Poppy. Poppy had a Feral Flare and enough armor to wade through the bullets I rained her way. Luckily, Exhaust and Flame Chompers kept her locked up until we could focus our fire. Thresh did an amazing job. He would flay enemies away and seemed to have "Hook Sense" where he would wheel around and catch Xerath and Twitch off guard. This continued for about ten minutes of non-stop kill trading. In this middle of this, Rengar and Udyr went to take down Baron. We held the enemy team in mid, and I died right before Baron gave up his buff. From there, we continued to push down all the lanes. Baron buff and an insanely fed carry proved too much, and the nexus was not too far behind the inhibitors.
In the after game, everyone said their farewells, but Poppy stayed to chat. I complimented them for scaring the **** out of me (seeing Poppy take SMDR at 20% and live...yeah), and they congratulated me on my first ADC win. I mopped up a healthy 21/2/4. Hopefully, this is just the start. My first goal is to get PvP experience, about three to five hundred wins, before I dive into Ranked play. Until then, see you on the Rift!
The video was great. It makes sense. He kinda hit the nail on the head that playing longer does give an advantage if the player has been trying to improve across all those hours.
You don't have to be good at all roles to grind elo, being great at 2 and having basic knowledge of the rest is sufficient.
I recommend you watch this:
Pick a champion you enjoy in a role where he's actually viable (doesn't have to be in-meta), main that champion in majority of your games. That's a good way to climb.
Also, after reading that Maokai top lane guide, I might try him out if he pops up on free week. I may be a hippie yet.
In the meantime, I'll just enjoy the game and work on getting better. Thanks again for commenting on this. It's good encouragement. Maybe I'll see you on the Rift one day!
I'm a player who has never really had any once consistent role. I like a small handful of champions (say 10-15) that I actually enjoy playing and am comfortable on. I know that most players are like this to some degree, but for the most part I just can't play champions outside of this rotating group. I never really "main" any role, but rather, I bounce around to wherever the champions that I like are meta (i.e. viable) for.
Early season 4 I learned about upcoming
My point is, you can really do either to get good at the game. At some point or another, a good support is going to have to learn how to jungle. Supports who understand the theory behind effective jungling are much better and knowing how to play with and against junglers, and are therefore able to be better supports. You can say the same for understanding the split push/tele meta in top lane, the high mobility AD assassins at mid lane, or simply knowing what ADC's do and don't like in lane. Regardless of what you like playing the most, you need a good amount of exposure to the other roles to really understand what your job is in a team. Once you start getting to higher tiers of play, you start to realize that even people who go "I'm X role or feederino" understand the basics of every other position well enough to play them every now and then (or be that guy like me and bounce around without a main role or champion).
I guess what I'm trying to say is don't stress out where you should be playing, or if you should be learning everything. Just play through all the meta champions, learn what they do, why they do it, and why they're the most effective man for the job. Eventually you'll get enough rotations around the block that you can hold your own with at least low golds.
On an important topic, is it better to be well-rounded in all roles with a specialty or entirely specialized to one role? The second type has a bad reputation (Mr. X or Feed), but I know a lot of people main both a certain role and champion for 90% of their games. Meanwhile...you get me. I play support well, but I can do the other roles at around the same level. Except jungle. Every time I jungle, Meteos has to kill a baby wolf with Smite.
Also ask Joxuu and some of the diamond senpais if there's anything I missed.
*looks at Sion* Do I have to play everyone?
When I started playing I hit 30 and immediately went into ranked. This was before season rewards were a big deal, so I was doing it for the pride of having some recognition for my (later I realized lack of) skill. I honestly thought that I was good at League (I only played [Ahri]), and I had huge stat averages. We're talking 30/5/20 games all the time. What I didn't understand is that I was pub stomping equally unskilled players.
I was placed bronze 5 (if it could get lower believe me it would have), and I had about 400 Elo.... And yes it goes that low. That being said I had no background in DOTA or HoN so maybe I was a bit disadvantaged. But the point here is that ranked isn't important. If you are excited about season reward skins and such, you have to realize that without enough experience you'll never manage to place gold and get them anyways. And because your tier more or less carries over between seasons, if you get bronze in your rush for rewards you're probably crippling yourself in the long run.
Now I know there's an argument that people only play seriously in ranked. This really just isn't true. Even challenger players troll in their ranked games. Moreover, a lot of people in platinum and diamond actually came out of playing normals almost exclusively. A friend of mine (who was silver in s2 when I started playing) does ranked in the morning and normals at night. He used to only play normals. Because normals actually track your MMR (though it's hidden unlike in ranked) he started playing against higher tier players. He's now D3. Also if you've heard of C9 Meteos, the man used to grind high Elo normals the same way.
Unlock every champion. Play everyone at least 10 times. Learn all the roles. Copy the pro player's runes and Masteries (and think/discuss why they're picking what they're picking). Investigate the math behind the game. And then, after you find your niche, the way you play and play consistently, then start ranked.