Promoted - Bronze 4, and ELO Hell

So I finally made it out of Bronze 5. I was initially placed in Bronze 3, but went on a massive losing streak. After months of trying, I have finally gotten back to Bronze 4. My recent mega-winning streak with Caitlyn helped, but I've generally gotten better. I've lost count, but I think I've won about 8 of my last 10 games with her.

It seems that no longer am I the one people blame for games I lose. I've even been told on a few occasions that I'm one of the only good players on the team. In the game I won for promotion (screen shot below), I was told by the opposing ADC that I deserved better from my support* (support description below). Sona (the support) wasn't what I would call bad, but we didn't really coordinate very well. We probably just had different aggressiveness levels.

There is a thing in LoL called "ELO Hell". ELO refers to the rating system, which is used for chess. In LoL your ELO ratings are hidden, and they may even use a modified formula, or a different system entirely. But that's what we call it anyway. ELO Hell refers to having a low ELO score, so you get matched with bad players, making it impossible to improve your ELO and get out.

As a purist game designer, I have always thought this a myth; the other team must have the same problem. Millions of people play LoL, so there's a large enough pool to take players from to balance teams according to their ratings. Sure, you get AFKs or trolls* (explanation below), but in theory, the opposing team should have a similar chance of having these things happen.

The trick, I thought was to be good enough not to cause a loss when the games were not ruined by these other factors. It looks like I'm right about this. I have not been blamed for a loss for a long time, and now I've been promoted. What made it seem like ELO Hell to me was the long period of time it took for me to improve enough to get out of Bronze 5. But I can see now how much I've learned in that period of time, and I really do feel more at home with the game.

One other funny thing is that I never thought I'd be this good with Caitlyn. I preferred Ashe as an ADC just because the ice arrow thing is cool and the Massive Infinite Range Stun Arrow Thing is a lot of fun. I also like playing Ziggs (only champ I paid full RP price for) and Sona, but the stats show that I'm better with Taric, Warwick and Caitlyn. I had never successfully jungled* before finding Warwick.

* The "support" is a champ that is designed to help another, usually the ADC for most of the game.
* A "troll" is a player that doesn't try to win.
* The "jungler" patrols the parts of the map off the main lanes killing the neutral monsters there for gold and XP. They periodically show up in the lanes to get sudden numerical advantage for kills, which is called "ganking".

Taking advice

I was playing a normal game as Caitlyn, a long-range ADC* (see definition below) player. She has a nice escape propelling her backward while launching a net to slow your pursuer, and a mega-long-range ult that deals a ton of damage. Shame it's a traveling projectile that can be blocked if another hero gets in the way, but that makes for some fun saves.

A Silver division pal was spectating, and gave me some advice. I had been building items almost exactly in the order shown in the Recommended Items page. It worked well enough, and I have a pretty good record with Cait in ranked games: 15-8.

He recommended I buy the Vampiric Scepter before getting any boots, then get the damage. I tried it, and here are the results:

I went 8/1/8, and we won pretty handily. Supposedly their Pantheon was being a complete dork gameplay-wise, but I don't usually have such an extreme disparity between kills and deaths. I'm more likely to go 8-6 or something. I'm not sure if it had much to do with the build, but I did find myself not needing to go back to the base as often.


*ADC = Attack Damage Carry. Weak early game, must be carried by the team. Deals tons of damage late game, and then can carry the team.

First game with Urgot

I just played Urgot for the first time. He's a beast! The ability to gain 120 bonus armor and magic resist right when you do the suppress/swap ultimate, then wail on your opponent in their disorientation is awesome. His missile spell has a really short cooldown, and he can also trigger a shield. He's not popular, but I recommend giving him a try.

It was a Dominion game; maybe he's tougher to play on Summoner's Rift. LoLKing lists him as third lowest champ for win rate at this time with 44%. Anyway, it was certainly fun, and I got the best K/D/A record.

Three supports on the same team in ARAM

Wow! Just finished a game with three supports on the same team. I don't have a whole lot to say about it other than that we kicked ass. Our two damage guy really had a lot of support. :)

Look Ma, no items!

So I sat down to play a short game of ARAM mode. I got Janna, which is cool, because I like playing support characters. Her +3% movement speed to everyone on the team is pretty cool, too.

So, as usual, I'm in another window while it's loading. I hear the sound of the game start, so I flip back. I'm trying to buy the recommended items, and it's not working. So I flip away and back, because sometimes the keyboard gets disconnected from the app. But I'm thinking, "but I'm not using the keyboard..." I come back, and my team is saying WTF and I'm getting shot at.

I had miss-clicked somehow, and wandered into the middle of the map, and the turret was shooting me. I backed away and survived. For the whole game.

This means that I never got to buy any items, since in ARAM mode you can't return to shop for stuff unless you die. My team won, and I went 3/0/32! At one point in the middle of the game, I thought I should die just to buy some stuff. But it became "a thing" to try to survive the whole game without items, but not by avoiding playing. Here's a screenshot of the end:

First time with LeBlanc

LeBlanc was on sale, so I bought her. I'm always hesitant to buy a champ who has an ability that requires controlling more than one unit (Mordekaiser, Shaco), but I decided to try it.

So I did what I always do with a new champ: go play a game of Dominion. I know the mode well from over 300 games, and my win ratio is approaching 50% after coming to terms with its peculiarities. Also, I have figured out that Twitch really kicks ass in it.

At the start, I warned my teammates that I would be a bit on the noob side, as I was trying LeBlanc for the first time, and they said they didn't mind. During about the first 5-10 minutes, the complaints came out. "LeBlanc, do something!" "You're useless." So I just muted the losers, and continued playing.

I soon came to like her abilities, which allow some serious sneakiness and big AP damage. She can warp to a location nearby, dealing damage to everyone near, then start moving. If she re-triggers the ability soon after, she pops back to the original location. The ult just re-triggers the last-used ability, and adds damage to it. So you have some good flexibility. Need to double up on damage? Do the damage ball twice in a row. Need to pop somewhere again? Do the warp again.

Well, what do you know. We won, I had 2nd most points on my team, and capped 11 towers, while the person with the next most had 7. I also had the same kill/death score as the first guy to complain at me (4/7), while he came in last or second last in points on our team. Heh.

Jungling with Warwick

Warwick was on free rotation this week, and he was served up to me in an ARAM game, and I didn't have a reroll available. I had never played him before, though I'd been mashed by his ult on many occasions.

I had a good time, and we won. So I went and tried him out in a Dominion game. Did very well. Enough for an opponent to say I was playing "a noob champion". So if Warwick is a noob champion, and I was beating that guy, what does that make him? Heh.

Anyway, after those two games I forked the 450 IP for the champ.

Just now, I was forced to play Jungle in a ranked Summoner's Rift 5v5 game. Jungle is my weakest role, so I was worried about it. I thought I'd try Warwick since I'd had such good luck with him in those previous games.

I didn't go with the later recommended build items, heading for stacked Bloodthirsters for massive life steal.

I got in several ganks, and was always able to pop into a fight and use the ult to suppress one enemy. We won all or most of the team fights, and I like to think it was partially because I was helping!

So I can thank ARAM for a champ I would probably never have gotten.

The story of my name change

I just changed my summoner name. It was on sale for 650, and I wasn't happy with my old one.

Way back in the day, I played DotA RoC 1.6. My favorite character was one of the early carries, Lina Inverse. At the time, she threw flaming rocks at her opponents, and had very high attack speed. With the sound of it, this character had a great feeling to play. Plus her nuke (ults are called nukes in DotA) dealt a lot of damage at decent range.

So when I chose my summoner name in LoL, I chose "Ms Lina Inverse". This was to mark myself as someone who likes playing carries, and had been playing this style of game for a long time.

Then, I found this:



Lina is the main character in an anime show called "Slayers"; this is where the DotA character got her name. So I watched the first two episodes to see if I would mind being named after her. I did mind. She's got the right kind of attitude, but the show is just (in my opinion) too dumb for me to be named after its main character.

Right about then, Riot announced that they would clean up some old unused names and put summoner names on sale for a week after the 3.7 patch. So I spent some time trying to come up with a new name. Their name cleaning script messed up, so they prolonged the sale beyond the 3.8 patch. So I spent some more time working on names.

Here's the list I came up with:


Blue Ice Dragon
Mizuki Takahama
Justice Almo
Justicar Almo
Master Almo
Sneak Master
Norjia Greystone
Slate Monster
Slate Golem
Type 2 Supernova
Norjia Mistvale
NorjiaWinterwind
Reginald the Sly (Sir Reginald was taken!)
Arctic Sapphire
Mystic Opal
Angela Blaze
Eiko Magami
Frozen Sapphire
Krystal Blue
Angela Starr
Damij Master
Damij Tsunami
Deep Indigo
Azure Hamster
Dean Corso
Alonzo Mosley
Jack Walsh
Grt Stone Dragon

I'm usually "Almo" in games, but with millions of people playing, that was already taken. I didn't want to take my usual adjustment to Almo by adding a number, so I tried to come up with something new.

Some explanations for the names:

"Justice Almo" and "Justicar Almo": I'm ranked in the top 400 Justices in the Tribunal, the League's player-based toxic-player punishment system.

A Type 2 Supernova is one of the most powerful events in the known universe. I studied physics in college, and always liked stellar mechanics.

The "Norjia"s are variations on my original Diablo II Ice Bowazon's name. Norjia Blacksteel is my EVE-Online name.

"Sir Reginald the Sly" was my Thief in Wizard's Crown on the C64.

"Eiko Magami" is the main character in Project A-ko, an anime movie I did like.

"Dean Corso" was the main character in one of my favorite movies, The Ninth Gate.
"Alonzo Mosley" and "Jack Walsh" are characters from another favorite film, Midnight Run.
"Grt Stone Dragon" refers to Eddie Murphy's great line in Mulan: "Uh... did I mention I was the Great Stone Dragon?"

You'll also see references to blue and ice, because my favorite color is blue, and I like cold weather.

Still unable to choose, I asked my wife which she liked. She picked the "Damij" ones, and "Azure Hamster". So my name is now Azure Hamster. :)