The upcoming season seems to be a sort of New Year's occasion for League players. With the elo reset (more or less) coming up soon, a lot of people are setting goals for the coming soon so I figured I might as well write down some of my thoughts as well.

1. Rank up my soloqueue rating (surprise, surprise)
This past summer and early fall I finally started getting into solo/duo ranked and working on my elo. Though I have limited access to decent internet at my college (basically just Friday and Saturday evenings right now), I was able to reach my goal of hitting gold before season's end and passed it a bit to 1608, which I'm happy with. This coming season, I'm setting my sights on 1750 as my target elo, with an ultimate goal of 1850 if I can improve enough along the way.

2. Re-evaluate and solidify my top champions in each role
I pretty much had my junglers down this season, but with the new S3 jungle as well as the significant item changes, I might have to re-examine my current picks for my main role. I expect Cho'Gath will be my top pick (or at least in my top three) for a while at least since he seems well suited to adapt to the changes. Skarner and Amumu will probably still be fine, but Maokai and Hecarim might have to be dropped. To be honest I don't play them as much as I used to anyway.

AD carries are totally up in the air for me right now. Since the nerfs to Essence Flux and Phage/ Trinity Force, I've been hesitant to continue maining Ezreal (might reconsider though). I've bought Miss Fortune and Vayne recently to experiment with and will probably pick up Corki next since I seem to be able to play him pretty decently most of the time. I'll also be looking at Kog'Maw and eventually Graves when I buy him, so I'm really not sure at this point. Ideally I'd like two AD mains - one with a more passive laning phase and one for more aggression, but I might just end up picking the one or two I can play best.

Supports I think are fine for me right now. I've been playing Leona, Janna and Nunu & Willump which all fill a nice variety of roles on the team. Not really looking at any other supports right now, though eventually I'd like to get Blitzcrank and Zyra since they seem pretty influential over the course of laning phase and team fights.

In mid I still plan to main Lux primarily, though I need to get back in practice with her. Kennen is still my oldest main (first champ I ever bought <3) and I feel he's a fairly safe pick, but I'm looking for a strong mid as a third option. I like Katarina but don't feel quite as confident with her as I'd like. I can play a decent Orianna usually but not in a brilliant way. I'll likely get Ahri in the not too distant future and play her some more since I liked her the last two times she was on rotation.

Lastly there's top lane. I can still play a good Malphite but he's almost always first-picked or banned now, so I either can't play him or get a tough matchup. I used to play Riven top for ranked (I'll try her again to see if I can still do it), but that's basically it. I think I'll probably take another look at Cho'Gath top to see if I can handle his matchups. I also want to buy Irelia and Jayce and experiment with them.

3. Get some ranked 5s and tournament experience
This is more of a happy eventuality than a goal, but I'll be playing ranked 5s and competing in collegiate tournaments with my college team this season! :D I'm pretty excited for this opportunity and I expect it'll help me work on coordination and communication a lot more than soloqueue and normal 5s. I don't have much ranked 5s experience at all, so like I said, I'm pretty excited.

4. Stream regularly on Fridays and Saturdays (well, as regular as I can manage)
Since I can only really play ranked on Friday and Saturday evenings (when the computer labs are open to gaming - the internet in the dorms here is really unstable), I'll probably be solo/duo queueing most weekends if I can afford to. If people actually want to watch my stream (either Live or the recordings or both), I'll probably stream every ranked session I play. Streaming is a really good way to get feedback on your gameplay, plus it gives me the opportunity to analyze my own recordings to look for ways to improve. It's also a nice medium for teaching other players if someone would find that useful. I'll probably also stream ranked 5s when I play with my team as long as the internet can handle it (we'll probably be playing in an apartment some days). I'd love for you guys to watch, of course, and I usually post the link in the Mobafire chat room in the game client when I start to stream.

5. Get some guide work done
In addition to all the updates I'll need to do to make my current guides applicable to season three gameplay, I also want to get a few gameplay videos into at least some of my guides - something I've always wanted to do but never got around to doing. I learned a ton from watching TheOddOne play when I was first learning to jungle and I'd like to pass on what I know in the same fashion for those that learn by observing rather than just reading about strategy. There's a lot that gameplay can communicate that words simply can't, so I feel that having just one or two videos of one of my ranked games with the champion would be a real asset to my current guides.

I'm also looking forward to writing my Lux guide people keep telling me to write. Since Koksei is looking to archive his guide if I step up and write one of my own for Lux, I don't feel too bad about entering competition with the current top guides. I won't be starting this project until I've done some playtesting in Season 3, but I think this guide will hopefully be the best I've written yet with more gameplay information, tips and screenshots than I've included in the past. Also gameplay footage of course. ;)

Anyway that's my spiel. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions as always.