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. :)