Hi! I'm the Karnage from the mailbag, just wanted to say thank you for answering my question(s). I reached Plat 4 (yay!) and you're right that documenting my climb would be interesting to teach other players who are on the newer side, like me. I'll let you know if I ever make it to/ past Masters, but thank you for being honest and keep doing what you do!
I kind of agree with what Curtis said about the problems League faces as an e-sport, but I don't think that big faces can change that 3rd problem. I think it changes alone with time. As an example, my mom used to believe (and told me a million times during my childhood) that playing videogames was a waste of time and all games are shit and throwing my life away. Until she saw me and my cousin having the time of our lives playing together, how she saw me grow as a normal human being while loving to sit for hours playing games, how passionate I am about League and other games, and how other people are too. I showed her people that made careers out of playing or casting videogames, even if they aren't at the top 1% of best most talented players simply because of their love for what they do and passion for it. But this viewpoints won't change fast. In the grand scheme of things, gaming as a hobby is relatively new. As everything, it takes several decades to change the general perception of it. And it's on us, the "gamers" to show that it's not a bad thing with the examples that are our lives.
On top of this, it’s important to realize that the only people playing games when a lot of current parents were kids were people who were really into them. My parents were born in the 70s, and they’re experience with gaming before me and my siblings was essentially my dad occasionally played with friends as a kid and in college, but didn’t even own a console himself ever or play computer games. And that’s basically the same as most of his friends, except for a couple people he knows who were massive gamers like his brother, who failed classes and took like 6 or 7 years to graduate college because of gaming. Now it’s much more common for people to game frequently, but only in free time. It wasn’t his experience growing up that if you had a couple hours free during the day and you just wanted to chill by yourself you’d play video games, for him it was just sort of something you did with friends occasionally (mostly group game type games like Mario or smash) if you were normal, and the only people playing for any substantial amount of time were addicted, not that it was just your way to unwind (they’d do something else for that, maybe read, maybe listen to music, etc). They just have a different perception of what a healthy relationship with gaming can look like.
wow that first mailbag post is insanely demoralizing to me lol. i honestly envy that guy for only having played for a year. i'm also 21 but i've been playing since i was in middle school and i'm hardstuck silver even after finding all of this broken by concept stuff. when i heard the part where he was like "oh boy i'm gonna get plat after only a year of playing" it made me want to uninstall league right then and there. the earlier section where you guys were discussing the perception of video games in society is actually just my reality; pretty much all of those stereotypes apply to me. the summoner school post kind of gave me the same sensation. i feel like all of my time playing league has been totally wasted because of my lack of awareness while playing. i feel like no one really takes into account the baggage that accumulates after doing something for years and never getting better at it. i know you guys share all these success stories and whatnot, but it's so hard to take any of it to heart when reality just looms over you.
On the topic of new player experience, I saw a video recently about how the Dota 2 tutorials go extremely in depth. There are guides for movement, interacting with the environment, playing teamfights, playing champs, so MOBA tutorials can actually be way better than the League tutorial. The video is called New Player Experience - League Of Legends VS Dota 2 from TZAR POTATO in case you want to give it a watch.
As someone who was part of the birth of an esports club, it is difficult to get anything besides Mario Kart supported by the school because everything else is violent. To me this statistic doesn't accurately represent game popularity. I did not specifically fight for league but we could not get valorant or even smash ultimate to be approved by the school
I really doubt that High Schools in Korea and China struggle to get support from their schools. I wonder if support from schools is the root cause of the widening gap between these teams and NA teams. Riot has put a lot of effort into making the game more acceptable to Chinese culture/religion. If Riot can incentivise NA schools to accept LoL, I wonder if the region can be improved.
when I play a 3 block with quick breaks for water in between (sometimes not) it takes about 2 hours. Full time job and gf, no kids but a new puppy which requires a lot of love and attention. A lot of the time the hardest part is having enough energy to play focused. I could definitely improve diet and exercise, but its pretty difficult right now with my schedule looking like: Wake up 7/730, work from 8 until 5 pm, watch dog from 5 pm until 10:30 PM, 10:30-12:30 would be a 3 block, and that doesn't take into consideration time for dinner, dates with my girlfriend (which are more fun anyways), variuous other random things to do in life, etc. So if I realistically actually go for a 3 block, I'm not getting to bed until 2 AM most of the time. I can function on 5 hours of sleep, but its a miserable existence--while I love league and how challenging it is, its just not worth it to get a 3 block in all the time. I actually prefer spamming games on specific weekends where I don't have obligations irl. Coffee and league from 11 PM to 4 AM is enough for 7-9 games typically. Last season without a puppy, and before I switched jobs, I was able to play 97 games and climbed from Bronze to Gold. Every game was intentional and I really enjoyed the climb; league is my first computer game and its been an incredibly satisfying experience which has overall made me more comfortable with computers!
As a mid laner I can just wholly agree with Curtis' take on Zed! I was thinking why people kept saying that Zed is not in a good spot right now because assassins aren't which I am not sure I think is true, and if you watch something like Skill-Capped tier lists they also don't place Zed overly high on their list, but the way Zed just gets so much sustain and wave clear from Hydra is so dumb, because those two things were the only ways to beat the champion in the lane, and Zed has incredible skirmish power and few other mid laners can really match it. Like other assassins Zed also snowballs really hard, which is just strengthened by being AD and having cheaper power spikes than mages. I also feel Akali is in a really annoying spot right now but she doesn't get free wave clear in the same way Zed does from Hydra.
Zed is more of a poke mage than an assassin, with execute. Interestingly though, the 2 zed one tricks in korea (zed99 and onzed) are both yet to reach challenger, as of the last couple days (they might have reached it as of writing, but its taken a while) so it shows the state of even zed, who has an easier time than the usual assassins like fizz who is absolutely sucking rn.
Hey guys, long time listener of the podcast (episode 1) and former member of MLA. Idk how I feel about Coach complaining about Zed here. It feels counter to the get "creative" mantra that we frequently hear on the BBC. If you look at Onzed's accounts, you can see that he goes different builds and different setups depending on the champion he is facing. It is clear that if you face a one trick, their champ is going to seem so broken because they have optimized every single detail for the matchhup based on experience. I just feel like Coach might be talking emotionally from a bad game he had vs a zed with a bad matchup(I could be wrong). Onzed just posted a new video demonstrating how he can't go hydra/conqueror against certain matchups(qiyana), tristana, akshan etc. Its not an insta win setup and it can be punished hard. We need to get curious! All the Zed players are just benefitting from Onzed's curiosity and passion for the game. Its the same way beifeng, pzzang and irelking push the meta for their champions. Everybody is riding on the shoulders of these onetricks. Onzed is simply pushing the meta. It is not clear that other champs are strictly weaker.
Well you may be right but you gotta see it from Curtis perspective. If I'm not mistaken, he plays mainly mages like Cassiopeia, Ahri, Syndra (he once played Orianna but don't know if he still does). From their perspective, playing against Zed already is a hard game but with Hydra it becomes nearly impossible. Sure if you play champs like Qiyana, Tristana, Akshan the whole dynamic changes. But this is basically what he is saying, there is no real counterplay to that other than picking other champions when before Zed had clear counterplay in the area that is now compensated with Hydra.
@@anniekujo What I am saying is that it is not clear that all 4 of those champions can't get advantages against zed if their practitioners get creative enough. Onzed literally takes cleanse + tp vs lissandra. He changes his entire playstyle for a single champion in 1 game and people are complaining just because he builds hydra now?
@@_tndn I don't know how much you know about mid lane but let me explain. A crucial difference is that Lissandra is supposed to counter Zed, but hydra Zed is balancing out a big weakness of Zed that is supposed to be a counter to him. Lissandra's counter to Zed is a champ/class counter, like assassins are to adc's, adc's to tanks, engage supports to enchanters etc. We also have item counters that are made for specific classes against other specific classes. Like as example shieldbow for adc's against assassin's and Zhonya's for mages against assassin's. But now we have Hydra. The problem here is, that Hydra gives an assassin the ability to balance out the 1 thing mages were better at than him and give himself an advantage over other assassin's. Wave clear is the one thing that Mages are better at than assassin's, if you take that away then the balance shift's dramatically. For mid lane, lane control is a big factor that you constantly have to fight over. Every mid laner has a turn on lane that is getting defined by who shoves the wave in faster. If you shove in a wave before your lane opponent is able to, then you get to ward, hover, roam, help with scuttle, drake, herald, invade etc. Zed (or honestly any assassin) getting this for free is actually kinda game breaking. Like I said, usually Assassin's don't have great wave clear (unless sacrificing something like ability cd, mana and hp) but now, Zed has great wave clear without the trade off. Which is insane for an assassin, because assassin's usually want to roam. No assassin wants to stay on mid and wait for the next wave, assassin's always want to hover out of vision. Because assassin's being out of vision alone is enough of a threat to impact other laners drastically. So as a mage you never want to give an assassin lane control, you want to keep them in lane as much as possible. As an assassin yourself ofc you want to have lane control, which usually results in a trade over wave control or sometimes a fight into a kill. Now with Zed having insane wave clear, he is almost always getting the turn with ease. Effectively being a threat to the entire map. I hope you now understand what makes Hydra Zed so strong, sure in lower elo's this won't be as effective because players don't know what turns are or how to use them correctly. But for everyone else, Zed is a nightmare right now. Which he was before already but now this is pushed to the extreme, with no real way of countering it.
Just a random thing on the stigma of gaming and league of legends. The NBA player luka doncic is bit of a gamer and even did a press interview wearing a solorenektononly merch. He's a good example of a person that games and excels in other aspects of life
The splits are just a distraction. It’s short term gratification of rank. Improvement will increase mmr. Mmr increase with improvement will eventually increase your rank that’s all that really matters. Just a different lens to see things 😎
I agree, for people who play this game regularly the 3 splits shouldn't be a problem. 1 thing I heard Agurin say tho was that in the first month of the the new season the rank ladder is a bit f'ed up which is really annoying. I kinda agree, at the start of every season where everyone still has to get to their rank the games feel really worthless you play with/against higher and lower elo players which makes the games almost feel like normal games. I imagine it to be even worse for high elo players since everyone who was master+ will start low diamond, this also means that there won't be anymore 1.9-2k lp players in challenger anymore (which was already hard to achieve).
This might sound weird but I don't think those are actual esport clubs that were being talked about. I think the guy Steve was talking to conflated video game clubs with esports clubs and that's why he said Mario Kart.Over in NA or at least the US our pro gaming circuits barely if at all talk about mario kart or host it. Smash bros is taken more seriously as a competitive game than Mario kart so there was likely some miscommunication.
I love the way you guys talk about weaponizing excuses at 33:49. When you talk about league, it's easy to just make excuses for poor play and people are so quick to use them. However, when people use those excuses in a school or work environment, it's almost unacceptable! Your performance is the thing that matters the most, and poor grades or poor work performance is the end result; just like how poor play without accountability should be equally as inexcusable!
yeah this part really stuck out to me. i kind of have a bad habit of doing this with both the game and my actual responsibilities so it’s doubly important to me. for me, i think it mostly stems from knowing i have issues that i need to deal with and not knowing how/not making a big enough effort to deal with them. in both contexts, it’s kind of hard to navigate; it’s hard to tell what you should focus on first.
Sure, but lets say you have a team project with 4 other people. If the 4 other people on your team don't contribute to the team project, you can still do well on it, but it will take significantly more effort than what should be expected of you.
Hey Nathan and Curtis! I'm from South Korea and here, League IS the premiere e-sport. Pro League players are some of the highest paid (even more than Olympic athletes), and the recruitment scene is extremely competitive. Because of this, every pro or even academy player is, on one hand, respected and looked up to, but on the other, closely watched for any mistake, whether as a player or as a public figure. League is taken very seriously here (which ironically may contribute to some of the "Korea-unique" toxic elements on the server). Still, the sheer fact that almost every male below 30 plays ranked League is insane. I personally don't see how League could reach the same levels of cultural presence in NA.
Does anyone know roughly how long the waitlist for saltu might be? I don't know if it's like 1-2 weeks and I might be in, or if it's measured in months and I can hit up a different coach in the meantime.
One of the best ways to learn how to play against a champion is to play the champion yourself. The weaknesses a champion has are on full display when you are the one experiencing them.
16:31 I heavily disagree with this section, ultimately because I think curtis is putting WAY to much emphasis on efficiency when it should be on fun. I fundamentally struggle to understand why being efficient in a climb matters at all, who cares if you climb from bronze 2 to platinum 4 in 6 months or 5 YEARS. As long as you see improvement in yourself each and every week why does how you do it or how fast you do it matter? So I would argue that playing meta doesn't matter at all, even in master+, it only matters if you care about efficiency which is not nessacary to have fun or even improve. One example to show my thinking a bit better is how fighting game players (i.e street fighter, mortal kombat, etc.) talk to new players, they emphasize FUN above all else. ua-cam.com/video/mCUlBX8E2BU/v-deo.html This video shows the clear rhetoric across the fighting game community about getting started and having fun, and I would argue this is the same rhetoric that the league community should adopt. FIghting games have been around for quite a bit longer, and are equally if not more difficult than to play than league imo. The video talks about picking whatever game you find the most fun no matter how "difficult" the game is perceived and same with picking a character. How "fast" or "efficient" one improves is never mentioned once, because it does not matter. If we want new players, to come and enjoy league, fun HAS to emphasized first. For master+ I can see curtis's argument, but I would argue why does meta really have a place on the podcast at all? Meta doesn't matter for people which are below master, which is most of the audience of this podcast, and talking about meta honestly risks creating narratives and sabtogating the fun for these below master players on their journey imo. Who cares about efficiency, I just want to play. In my own experiences, I play league for 3 reasons, 1. I love the game, it's incredibly well designed 2. The champions are super cool 3. It's a competitive outlet. Nowhere in these reasons does it talk about efficiency or even improvement at all. Even when talking about league being a competitive outlet, You can still be competitive whether you are bronze or challenger, is challenger more competitive? Yes, magnitudes so, but bronze league of legends can still be a competitive outlet for people. Overall, this emphasis you guys put on efficiency is the one thing I massively disagree with you guys on, and is why, even as an avid follower of your podcast, I will not join your below gold programs, because limiting what champions I can choose from to play limits MY fun and increase my stress and anxiety. Limiting fun is not worth efficient improvement or even improvement at all imo. But this is just my take, would love to hear what others think.
I come from background of playing other pvp games (some shooters, few games with arena pvp similar to WoW). In the recent few games I have been in community of top players from whom I learnt a lot of stuff and became much better as a player. For me, efficiency is about transition. You don't want to play at a level where mistakes are not punished if you played other games at high level. At the same time you dont want to make it so you rely on your team too much until you feel like you're at your current peak rank, just because you will play differently. What I mean diffirently is usually you expect some kind of obvioust stuff like trying to share damage taken between each other (you remember these cases where you fight 5v5, tryhard and then you realize one of your teammates is 100% hp, 100% mana while all 4 of you died? He could've shared dmg taken and weave in more abils - you generally dont have that awful player performance in other high elo games) or stuff like kiting together away from vision/threat. You can often have people just stand there, like 3 of you kite away and one person stays back. Or you can have situations where enemy is 10% HP renekton and your team just runs away from him due to some biased fear, only to be outranged and let 10% Renek escape You just can only learn so much (mostly champions, items, general awareness) in lower skill brackets. You will never know limits or understand differences between champions in low elo because you will always have a guy who just plays well and a guy who just plays bad on the same class. On higher elo people play more in accordance with what their plastyle should be, letting you get used to it. Let's say you play against Caitlyn at low ranks - they may be half-afk not trying to weave autos on you, not trading their HP aggressive enough (playing Cait like its Xayah or something). Then you get to higher rank, you feel like you know what Caitlyn is, but the guy actually brings you top-notch Cait gameplay and you go 0/4 in lane. The reason it happened is because you formed wrong perceptions and wrong habits by being at lower rank. In other words, you are only as good as your opponent. The reason most people want to get higher asap is to be beaten more and learn more
At the same time, I think you misinterpreted the message in a way. I think what Curtis wanted to say is "if you lose and you feel that it was due to meta - it's fine to think that way, it can be real. Question is whether you will make more balanced champion pool or sign soloQ contract where you agree to climb slower". However I can agree in few cases Curtis was using bad sentences that make it seem like he was saying "why would you ever play something that is not top 10 in your role?", something Skillcapped or someone like that would say
@@ArkeniusTV yeah that's how it kinda felt to me, thats the idea that I was saying of meta creating false narratives. Your prone to talking like the way skillcapped does when your focused on meta even if you don't really mean to.
@@ArkeniusTV This is true, but for a low elo player like myself, and as somone who has NEVER been a high rank or skill in any game, why would I care about this idea of transition? It's not worth talking about fighting a master level Caitlin if your bronze imo. I don't want to get away from where I'm at by getting focused on some lofty goal, I'd rather try to focus on what to improve at now. You can do that at any skill level and in any rank. It's very cool to learn more the higher rank you go, I think that sounds awesome, but it's not worth losing sight of the now to wish you were just better.
@@bowmain1577 I mean, the idea of transition only matters for people who come from other games, obviously. Also, if you dont care about rank - what's the point then? I mean, do you even want to play ranked? Ranked is just a matchmaking system, like in chess Essentially, rank is just a natural improvement for most games after community develops, and in LoL it took years. People want to be divided in brackets to not play with opponents higher or below their level, but it only matters for people who are at that level - doesn't it? Otherwise it's just ego and doesnt give you anything
My perspective is definitly gonna be biased as I am a Qiyana OTP. Zed is a super easy matchup, I love when zed goes conq or first strike with hydra vs me. Beifeng and higher elo Qiyanas also feel the same into the zed matchup.
I would like to say one thing about the topic why League is not as popular as other games like Mario Cart in the general population is partly due to Riots own making. (I don’t mean to say that players don’t hold any responsibility to the game, but this is based off my own personal experience). When it comes to quality of life changes, I think other games listen to their player base faster than Riot does. I mean things like toxicity, Riot has only RECENTLY started to address and implement some of the new punishments and it’s already been 13 (THIRTEEN!) seasons. The client breaks all the time (which to think about it, people wanna play, then they find out major bugs preventing me from playing or in game dc or something happens more often in League than other games in my experience). They also took a lot of fun game modes away from League only RECENTLY bringing them back. I mean I can make a whole list of things that Riot has done to alienate the community from new/casual players who wanna get into League. I mean you can preach solo Q all u want, but a 99% of players did NOT FIRST getting into league and did NOT FIRST started growing because of Solo Q. It probably was because friends or enjoyability (which Riot kinds F*cked up for the majority of 13 years imo).
I mean, I would rather play League than Mario Kart any of the day of the week. It really comes down to the fact that League is closer on the spectrum to a fighting game than it is to Mario Kart. Mario Kart isn't a game people are playing for the competition. It's usually played for fun with friends. League is about improvement and mastery. And to be more clear, even though this is in reference to esport clubs, the high school kids likely are just playing video games that are fun. It's the same as the difference between smash bros and Street Fighter KOF or any of the more traditional fighters.
In my experience meta is relevant even in lower elos, just in a different way. I'll just use an example to explain what I mean. I'm an emerald jungler and in season 13 I played basically only Graves and J4. Both Graves and J4 are objectively speaking quite bad in the meta, so there is no reason for me to keep playing them when I can rotate them out of my champ pool and play champions I enjoy and also aren't just terrible. My current pool is Viego (main) Nidalee (if we need AP) and Kha'zix (If Viego is banned). I could stubbornly pick J4 anyway, but it would just be a frustrating experience. The items currently don't synergise all that well with him and other champions just perform his role better than him. I think switching 1 champion every few months when either the meta shifts to make them really bad or you stop enjoying them is more than reasonable even in lower ELOs.
i just paused at the part where curtis realized hes not playing a balanced game. this is what led me to quitting because it felt like i might as well be playing ARAM or something. things arent "fair". im interested to see what his thoughts are later. the only options i see are 1.) quit the game 2.) only play meta 3.) stop caring about rank (i cant do that personally)
Just had a similar discussion with a friend few days ago. I was raiding in SWTOR, it's essentially a WOW clone (raids were quite hard). I was playing mostly off-meta at first. The conclusions I arrived to: the higher the level of play, the better people adapt to off-meta and meta together. As example - how there was some kind of prejudice to skew drafts towards Holy Trinity (Peeler, DPS & Tank) or Front to back as they call it in League usually. Nowadays, you can have multiple assassins or multiple ranged or totally reasonable DPS-y support. Keria just played Lissandra supp in one of his games and also plays a lot of Ashe - in 2009-2013 it'd be considered throwing games. So, essentially better adaptation of how different weaknesses can be avoided + better mental to tryhard when off-meta happens, with less blame on it. In 2009-2013 people could easily blame everything on meta, as I see from documentaries this mentality slowly changed to "get good" instead of blaming game So, first one was adaptation to off-meta. However, remember off-meta has to make sense still - Singed is not very helpful as Support, for example. Or duo jungling can tank your team's mental because you take everyone out of comfort zone My second point Ive discovered in raiding is the only thing making game serious is people wanting to test stuff and tryhard. If your class/champion is too strong, you will compete with others of that class to have higher stats. At the same time, generally an anti-meta will arrive at higher ranks to dump your class (counter-picks or just cheese strategies like no-confrontation)
(Part 2 of my response) The biggest thing our raiding players thought is mental plays a huge part in "meta" since you just don't want to ever get annoyed or whine about meta. It's not about the game - if it feels too bad to play specific class just change to meta class. If you like the game - play. You can still pick your off-meta picks situationally. For example, in that raiding game I eventually made it so my pool had few classes that were versatile and kept playing off-meta in the encounters where they made sense. Essentially, your pool can be 2 champions that work in any situation decently and two champions that work in specific team comps/lanes. This way you keep your off-meta in your pool and take them each time they are remotely decent, but you also have an all-rounded champion or two to smooth out these games where your off-meta struggles For example, team-reliant ADC vs self-reliant ADC. Tristana, Ezreal, MF are all-rounded champions that are considered good for soloQ performance. At the same time, there are Xayah, Ashe & Caitlyn. Xayah seems to struggle without engage support or Janna/Sona (according to stats Ive found - 49% winrate for other duos). Ashe doesn't have self-peel, thus very abusable defensive-speaking. And Caitlyn just won't work that well without team or into longer range like Ziggs or Seraphine APCs You can probably see my point. Supp went Engage? You could go your Xayah/Kai'sa. Supp went Enchanter? Could go your Ashe. Supp went Sona? Could go Tristana or Xayah, or Ashe Overall, opportunities for roles seem to allow you playing your off-meta quite often
for me its because ranked solo is such a time investment that when i play it i want to use it for personal growth and that means increasing rank. itd be like lifting weights but not building muscle is the best way i can explain it. if not for the rank id just play something chill.@@bowmain1577
Finally remembered to switch to this account lol! I need to start coming to coaching, social anxiety be a heartless bitch though. I've been playing mls champs only since I think march, 200+ on Anivia, 100+ on Veigar, and I fell in love with Aurelion this week cause yay a control mage with movement! Took me about 5 months of playing consistently to go from a Silver 1 Support main all the way down to a Bronze 1 Mid and now I have a comfortable winrate in high silver - low gold mmr.
As a fizz one trick, I consistently have to be like 10-0 to actually be able to hard carry and not even 1v9, and any fed tank is legit get fucked, at least thats how it’s been feeling lmao. Assassins feel so bad rn, I’m only plat and can consistently win lane, but converting especially without a solid jungler feels like total ass - to the point I’m trying to figure out what I wanna play and definitely struggling on that part. Think I’m settling on yone/lb and maybe bite the bullet with trist cos lb is similar rn with just being ap as opposed to the ad of trist. Kass is another option, but waiting to scale just feels like I’m coin flipping the actual carry lol -> that said, champion mastery going out the window as I’m just gonna be forced to focus on fundamentals with like push/move/objectives and somewhat give up lane/handshake it
Can we please talk about how the age-mechanics thing is a total fuckin myth. You don’t significantly slow down until your 40s. Look at the actual studies. It is way overblown and macro is more important anyways.
Man, I wish there was more talk about this cause this myth gets spread around everywhere every since the early seasons of league. While I might not be the best example since I never really stopped playing games, I'm pretty sure my reaction time at almost 31 have been at least the same since I started ranked in season 3 at 21yo. And I know my mechanics are definitely better now than before. You certainly shouldn't be declining in your 20s, especially in your early-mid 20s. That's absurd since you're at your peak physically in like everything else that age. For gaming in general imo, age and decline is mainly related to outside factors, usually not being able to spend as much time gaming as when you were younger.
On the META, I think your view is skewed by mid lane. Pretty much everyone else can easily OTP without much worry. Mid is weird because you get a lot of different match ups, mages, assassins, ranged, melee, fighters, etc. You need to be able to deal with a lot of variants.
Yeah as mid laner you kinda have to balance your team out, that's why in pro play you see mid laners always picking champs according to what their team comb is missing, while most of their team picks the same 2-3 champs.
@@anniekujo A problem in soloq is that people will happily draft completely terrible team comps and if your champ pool is small there isn't anything you can do about it.
I have an old account and played ranked rarely year over year....I recently played to improve and did 2 months 200+ games in bronze and just bounced up and down from bronze 4 to bronze 1 the whole time. 61% win rate...with Ashe, not sure if this is working. is it time to swap out of ADC, or is this something odd with the new splits. because i didn't play much in split one did split 2 get screwed...you did say you're over hearing about win rate....but I mean yeah, i'm havng fun but im not feeling rewarded?
Well there has been a little bit of an elo inflation going on after they added emerald to the ranks in split 2. Like players who have been plat last season are emerald now, players who have been gold are plat now and silver and bronze players also ranked up like 2-3 tiers. If you really want to improve the best thing you can do is keep playing consistently and not role swap at all. Ofc the most important thing is that you have fun, so if you don't feel like you have fun playing adc, then you are free to swap roles. But if you really want to improve/climb, it's better to not switch roles to much. And with the reward thing, it comes slowly over a long period of time. You can imagine it like going to the gym, you have to put in months of work until you see real progress. It's not a fast or short process, if you wanna get better and climb you gotta stay on the grind. And yeah better not focus to much on your wr, it will go down naturally as you continue to climb and play more games. So focusing to much on that will simply make you unhappy, the only thing you gotta focus on to climb and improve is your own gameplay. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant and just a distraction that keeps you from climbing.
@@anniekujo I appreciate the vote of confidence and the helpful words. I may just swap to an ADC I enjoy more maybe? At least I have Ashe as a back pocket Champion now.
@@Alexcv215 Ofc if you want to, it's practically never to late to switch but you just shouldn't do it to much. Curtis is also cycling his champion pool from time to time, playing the same 3-5 champs for like 1-2 seasons and then looking to maybe switch up 2-3 champs out of his pool. But you haven't played to much league. You might wanna look around and test a few champions or lanes before commiting, because if you wanna climb it's better to know a few things about other lanes and champs. Especially because in lower elo's it's better to commit to 1-2 champs if you really want to climb. I did the same thing a few years ago, when I was stuck in bronze. I tested around a few lanes with different champs and then commited to Annie mid, I became a Annie otp. I watched high elo Annie players, tried to copy what they do and improve my overall understanding of the game. It took me a while to get out of bronze but when I got to silver I was able to climb to gold in no time. I then dropped Annie and started playing other lanes and different champions again (which was a huge mistake), effectively making myself get stuck in gold for a very long time. Until a year ago where I started getting back to mid lane being an Orianna otp, I then hit plat for the first time last season and now I am emerald 2 on a good way to diamond. The best advice I can give is playing a low champ pool 1- max. 3 champs, vod reviewing your own and high elo player games of them playing your lane and even better your champs, try to copy what they do and try to understand why they do it. But the most important thing, you gotta play a lot of games consistently. If you do it like me back then, dropping the game for months and then picking it up again. Then you won't climb. So if you really want to climb, then you gotta stay on the grind. You can kinda imagine it being like going to the gym, if you don't consistently go to the gym over a long period of time then you won't see results. Anyway, sry for the essay. I hope I could help a bit.
I said years ago already when u don't play meta u just leave winrate on the table u could have there is zero reason to not do it not playing meta simply means u don't play the game in the most optimal way and thats just a mistake no matter how u look at it
honestly u don't have to think "what am I trying to do" every game... cause the main goal should always be to gain lane control and gain prio to move and thinking about goals only really matters if you are good enough and ahead enough to actually achieve this goals if I get counter picked like who the fuck cares what goals I have i'm not going to achieve them anyways the only goal I should have is to survive
Every time I see meta picks in my games, be it champs,items, or both, I just know the players on the other side of the monitor needs their face punched in by a figure of authority (me)
The first person writing into nathans mail bag is a victim of the system change confusion that gold split 2 is the same as in split one, i’m disappointed you guys didn’t explain the difference 😢
I would wager that the avg age for lol players is pretty high compared to a lot of games. LOL came from DOTA. people who were around for OG DOTA are 30s and 40s now.
I love hearing a success story but like anything else in life.. there is a lot more unsuccessful stories. If we were to know the actual counts of accounts in Silver and lower.. I would say 60-70% of player base is in there which are the "lower elo (worst players)"
I'm so fucking confused on what to do, should I learn league through champs that are really fun to me which means they are usually off meta but lower my chances of winning or should I force myself to play meta since it will improve my chances of winning. Winning is fun, playing meta is boring.
@@hellfiredwarf_6173 Yeah but then again winning is fun, losing not so much. Playing off meta feels so bad when the enemy picks something meta and rolls you over without effort
just pick something relatively stable. if it’s not super strong or a random dogshit pick that doesn’t work in the role then you should be fine. don’t play the strongest champions, because they’ll be nerfed, and don’t play anything obviously difficult or weak, because you’ll have a harder time which will be less fun. once the item update comes out in a few months and champions don’t live and die by their mythic options there should be more viable champions to choose from.
League is a video game first, you will achieve nothing by playing something that isn't fun to play for you. Yes ultimately your climb will be harder but if you climb with the champ that is fun for you to play, it will feel infinitely better and you will achieve better results. You won't improve a lot on champions that aren't fun to you, you gotta love your champ in order to improve. Play what champ you think is fun, in the end meta only really matters in master+. Until then you can climb with practically anything you want, heck there are players in challenger playing off-meta picks. The champ is never the problem when you fail to climb, it's always you. So play what you want, if you are good enough you will win.
Adding to the above, the point is to take breaks and make sure you're mentally fresh so you avoid tilt/autopiloting. In general they recommend playing 3 games in a row then break. However, if you're more mentally exhausted that can be 2 (a 2-block) or if you're more fresh/have some quick games then it can be 4 ( a 4-block). Another note: what is a break? Its not just get up and go to the bathroom/get water. Its a full step away from the PC for at least 30 minutes. Get dinner, go to gym, or go for a run & shower. Something that takes your head fully out of the game. The best break is to play one block per day. That might be obvious on weekdays but if you have a lot of free time on weekends then the point is its better to play two or three distinct blocks rather than spam 12 games in a row.
ADC is the hardest role to play, but JG is just the hardest to learn. Once you learn it, it becomes simple and like clockwork.. ecept the games where your team all dies solo before your 3rd camp and makes it your fault heh
@@dreamdate4833 Not anymore but as a midlaner playing together with my jungler is one of my highest priorities. I constantly have to keep track of where my and enemy jungle is in order to play the game. I need to be hyper aware of both junglers locations, so I pretty much know what junglers do the majority of the match. Besides the fact that I climbed to plat as jungler 3 seasons ago, doesn't really hold much weight but what I want to say is that I did play jungle with a pretty positive wr. Just stoped because the gameplay is to boring imo, there is not enough going on to keep me engaged. On lane you are perma interacting with another player, on jungle you literally watch lanes in between camps. Which is not the most exciting thing. So saying jungle is "by far the hardest role" is not true at all.
you can still apply most of the fundamentals they teach into wild rift or even mobile legends if you play it, i've been doing the same for a while you just have to adapt it into what fits for you
NA Bronze player here and 3 games usually takes about 2 hours of my time between a 1 ten minute warm up, queues, dodges, long champ selects, long game load times, and most of my games being between 25 and 30+ minutes as well as client side and leagueofgraphs stat review after each game.
But why are you doing a stat review after each game, this just feels very unnecessarily. Especially because Curtis and Nathan always say that those sites amount to nothing but negative believes about the game. You are better of vod reviewing your games, looking at your stats is just basically a waste of time.
@@anniekujo Thanks for the reply. I don't know if I have negative beliefs about the game, maybe I need to understand their point more and I will try to do so. I'm sitting here trying to explain what I get from looking at stats, but I feel like whatever I say you will dismiss (which is probably proving your point). Would you be able to find a clip where they talk about this? I'd appreciate it. I think, one reason I like to look at leagueofgraphs and the in game stats after a game is to calm down a bit before the next game, and try to understand, at a glance how the game went overall for both teams.
@@webignar I see, if you try to understand how the game went then vod reviewing is much better. Looking at the game afterwards is infinitely more effective than looking at the stats, especially from your own pov you can find many mistakes that you didn't notice in game. And Curtis made a whole video about websites like this, it's called "DANGEROUS OR VALUABLE? - Stats For Climbing Solo Queue" on his Coach Curtis channel. Otherwise I searched through all of their podcast episodes and landed at the bottom. They actually talked about it in episode number 6 titled "Broken By Concept Ep : 006 - Motivation To Play Soloq - Using 3rd Party Programs - Worlds Casting" (which is the second podcast episode that you can find on the channel) [time stamp being 10:20]. But they also uploaded this section extra with the title "Are 3rd Party Analytics Apps Really Useful?" on the same channel.
Bronze que times are longer than Platinum que times. Just because there’s more players in bronze doesn’t mean they’re as invested in ranked to the same extent as plats. I was able to play 2 play games this morning in about and hour and the 1 bronze I did as a warmup, took 10 minuets for the que to pop and the game lasted 40 minuets. This is consistent from my experience. Please just stop talking about low elo if you’re not actually going to spend more than a handful of games there just to make a video to get the community pissed at you.
Draft alone takes 5 minutes regardless of rank. If the games are 25 minutes then that leaves 0 time for queues in a 3 block. I think this was just Nathan being bad at mental math more so than them disrespecting lower ranked queue times. Bump that up to 2 hours and its reasonable for most cases. 2.5 hours would cover most combinations of long games + queues. 3 hours is the upper limit for 3 very long queues + long games back to back to back. But if you set aside 2 hours and only get 2 games in then its also fine to just play a 2-block.
They've gotten slightly better but they still simply do not understand how plat and below it. Usually one game in a block at least is ruined by smurfs or outright trolls or someone tilting in draft.
Also, there's no tactful way to say this. But this guy is constantly stumbling over 9th grade reading level vocab. And "how many days in a year?" You shouldn't be gaming at all. You need to read a book.
This only really matters in master+ tho. In lower elo's people barely know how to play Zed/how to use him or the items correctly, you don't really have to worry about him. Especially since lower elo players tend to overestimate themselves, play something like Zed (or any meta pick) and then solo lose the game for their entire team. There is a reason you see all those Zed and Yasuo one tricks in bronze/gold.
@@LamixFace Well the majority of people are plat or below, so I just assume that most people on the internet are as well. But yeah if I'm not mistaken a lot of otp's are also stuck in diamond, it seems like Bronze, Gold, Diamond and Master are the elo's where most otp's get stuck for a long time. Don't know why tho
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Hi! I'm the Karnage from the mailbag, just wanted to say thank you for answering my question(s).
I reached Plat 4 (yay!) and you're right that documenting my climb would be interesting to teach other players who are on the newer side, like me.
I'll let you know if I ever make it to/ past Masters, but thank you for being honest and keep doing what you do!
I kind of agree with what Curtis said about the problems League faces as an e-sport, but I don't think that big faces can change that 3rd problem. I think it changes alone with time. As an example, my mom used to believe (and told me a million times during my childhood) that playing videogames was a waste of time and all games are shit and throwing my life away. Until she saw me and my cousin having the time of our lives playing together, how she saw me grow as a normal human being while loving to sit for hours playing games, how passionate I am about League and other games, and how other people are too. I showed her people that made careers out of playing or casting videogames, even if they aren't at the top 1% of best most talented players simply because of their love for what they do and passion for it.
But this viewpoints won't change fast. In the grand scheme of things, gaming as a hobby is relatively new. As everything, it takes several decades to change the general perception of it. And it's on us, the "gamers" to show that it's not a bad thing with the examples that are our lives.
On top of this, it’s important to realize that the only people playing games when a lot of current parents were kids were people who were really into them. My parents were born in the 70s, and they’re experience with gaming before me and my siblings was essentially my dad occasionally played with friends as a kid and in college, but didn’t even own a console himself ever or play computer games. And that’s basically the same as most of his friends, except for a couple people he knows who were massive gamers like his brother, who failed classes and took like 6 or 7 years to graduate college because of gaming. Now it’s much more common for people to game frequently, but only in free time. It wasn’t his experience growing up that if you had a couple hours free during the day and you just wanted to chill by yourself you’d play video games, for him it was just sort of something you did with friends occasionally (mostly group game type games like Mario or smash) if you were normal, and the only people playing for any substantial amount of time were addicted, not that it was just your way to unwind (they’d do something else for that, maybe read, maybe listen to music, etc). They just have a different perception of what a healthy relationship with gaming can look like.
wow that first mailbag post is insanely demoralizing to me lol. i honestly envy that guy for only having played for a year. i'm also 21 but i've been playing since i was in middle school and i'm hardstuck silver even after finding all of this broken by concept stuff. when i heard the part where he was like "oh boy i'm gonna get plat after only a year of playing" it made me want to uninstall league right then and there.
the earlier section where you guys were discussing the perception of video games in society is actually just my reality; pretty much all of those stereotypes apply to me. the summoner school post kind of gave me the same sensation. i feel like all of my time playing league has been totally wasted because of my lack of awareness while playing. i feel like no one really takes into account the baggage that accumulates after doing something for years and never getting better at it. i know you guys share all these success stories and whatnot, but it's so hard to take any of it to heart when reality just looms over you.
On the topic of new player experience, I saw a video recently about how the Dota 2 tutorials go extremely in depth. There are guides for movement, interacting with the environment, playing teamfights, playing champs, so MOBA tutorials can actually be way better than the League tutorial. The video is called New Player Experience - League Of Legends VS Dota 2 from TZAR POTATO in case you want to give it a watch.
As someone who was part of the birth of an esports club, it is difficult to get anything besides Mario Kart supported by the school because everything else is violent. To me this statistic doesn't accurately represent game popularity. I did not specifically fight for league but we could not get valorant or even smash ultimate to be approved by the school
Those schools better get out there and protest war and violence then or else they are just virtue signaling.
I really doubt that High Schools in Korea and China struggle to get support from their schools.
I wonder if support from schools is the root cause of the widening gap between these teams and NA teams. Riot has put a lot of effort into making the game more acceptable to Chinese culture/religion. If Riot can incentivise NA schools to accept LoL, I wonder if the region can be improved.
I attempted to form an esports club for league in high school also and was denied because one of Caitlyn’s skins had fur covered hand cuffs.
@@xcort4021😭
Yet schools let kids partake in violent sports that can even lead to life changing injuries. So stupid.
when I play a 3 block with quick breaks for water in between (sometimes not) it takes about 2 hours. Full time job and gf, no kids but a new puppy which requires a lot of love and attention. A lot of the time the hardest part is having enough energy to play focused. I could definitely improve diet and exercise, but its pretty difficult right now with my schedule looking like: Wake up 7/730, work from 8 until 5 pm, watch dog from 5 pm until 10:30 PM, 10:30-12:30 would be a 3 block, and that doesn't take into consideration time for dinner, dates with my girlfriend (which are more fun anyways), variuous other random things to do in life, etc. So if I realistically actually go for a 3 block, I'm not getting to bed until 2 AM most of the time.
I can function on 5 hours of sleep, but its a miserable existence--while I love league and how challenging it is, its just not worth it to get a 3 block in all the time. I actually prefer spamming games on specific weekends where I don't have obligations irl. Coffee and league from 11 PM to 4 AM is enough for 7-9 games typically.
Last season without a puppy, and before I switched jobs, I was able to play 97 games and climbed from Bronze to Gold. Every game was intentional and I really enjoyed the climb; league is my first computer game and its been an incredibly satisfying experience which has overall made me more comfortable with computers!
I just love this podcast, thanks for putting the effort in for it! Great for listening
As a mid laner I can just wholly agree with Curtis' take on Zed! I was thinking why people kept saying that Zed is not in a good spot right now because assassins aren't which I am not sure I think is true, and if you watch something like Skill-Capped tier lists they also don't place Zed overly high on their list, but the way Zed just gets so much sustain and wave clear from Hydra is so dumb, because those two things were the only ways to beat the champion in the lane, and Zed has incredible skirmish power and few other mid laners can really match it. Like other assassins Zed also snowballs really hard, which is just strengthened by being AD and having cheaper power spikes than mages. I also feel Akali is in a really annoying spot right now but she doesn't get free wave clear in the same way Zed does from Hydra.
Zed is more of a poke mage than an assassin, with execute. Interestingly though, the 2 zed one tricks in korea (zed99 and onzed) are both yet to reach challenger, as of the last couple days (they might have reached it as of writing, but its taken a while) so it shows the state of even zed, who has an easier time than the usual assassins like fizz who is absolutely sucking rn.
Broken zed with negative winrate , cmon xd
Hey guys, long time listener of the podcast (episode 1) and former member of MLA. Idk how I feel about Coach complaining about Zed here. It feels counter to the get "creative" mantra that we frequently hear on the BBC.
If you look at Onzed's accounts, you can see that he goes different builds and different setups depending on the champion he is facing. It is clear that if you face a one trick, their champ is going to seem so broken because they have optimized every single detail for the matchhup based on experience. I just feel like Coach might be talking emotionally from a bad game he had vs a zed with a bad matchup(I could be wrong).
Onzed just posted a new video demonstrating how he can't go hydra/conqueror against certain matchups(qiyana), tristana, akshan etc. Its not an insta win setup and it can be punished hard. We need to get curious! All the Zed players are just benefitting from Onzed's curiosity and passion for the game. Its the same way beifeng, pzzang and irelking push the meta for their champions. Everybody is riding on the shoulders of these onetricks. Onzed is simply pushing the meta. It is not clear that other champs are strictly weaker.
Well you may be right but you gotta see it from Curtis perspective. If I'm not mistaken, he plays mainly mages like Cassiopeia, Ahri, Syndra (he once played Orianna but don't know if he still does). From their perspective, playing against Zed already is a hard game but with Hydra it becomes nearly impossible. Sure if you play champs like Qiyana, Tristana, Akshan the whole dynamic changes. But this is basically what he is saying, there is no real counterplay to that other than picking other champions when before Zed had clear counterplay in the area that is now compensated with Hydra.
@@anniekujo What I am saying is that it is not clear that all 4 of those champions can't get advantages against zed if their practitioners get creative enough. Onzed literally takes cleanse + tp vs lissandra. He changes his entire playstyle for a single champion in 1 game and people are complaining just because he builds hydra now?
@@_tndn I don't know how much you know about mid lane but let me explain. A crucial difference is that Lissandra is supposed to counter Zed, but hydra Zed is balancing out a big weakness of Zed that is supposed to be a counter to him. Lissandra's counter to Zed is a champ/class counter, like assassins are to adc's, adc's to tanks, engage supports to enchanters etc. We also have item counters that are made for specific classes against other specific classes. Like as example shieldbow for adc's against assassin's and Zhonya's for mages against assassin's. But now we have Hydra. The problem here is, that Hydra gives an assassin the ability to balance out the 1 thing mages were better at than him and give himself an advantage over other assassin's. Wave clear is the one thing that Mages are better at than assassin's, if you take that away then the balance shift's dramatically. For mid lane, lane control is a big factor that you constantly have to fight over. Every mid laner has a turn on lane that is getting defined by who shoves the wave in faster. If you shove in a wave before your lane opponent is able to, then you get to ward, hover, roam, help with scuttle, drake, herald, invade etc. Zed (or honestly any assassin) getting this for free is actually kinda game breaking. Like I said, usually Assassin's don't have great wave clear (unless sacrificing something like ability cd, mana and hp) but now, Zed has great wave clear without the trade off. Which is insane for an assassin, because assassin's usually want to roam. No assassin wants to stay on mid and wait for the next wave, assassin's always want to hover out of vision. Because assassin's being out of vision alone is enough of a threat to impact other laners drastically. So as a mage you never want to give an assassin lane control, you want to keep them in lane as much as possible. As an assassin yourself ofc you want to have lane control, which usually results in a trade over wave control or sometimes a fight into a kill. Now with Zed having insane wave clear, he is almost always getting the turn with ease. Effectively being a threat to the entire map. I hope you now understand what makes Hydra Zed so strong, sure in lower elo's this won't be as effective because players don't know what turns are or how to use them correctly. But for everyone else, Zed is a nightmare right now. Which he was before already but now this is pushed to the extreme, with no real way of countering it.
Just a random thing on the stigma of gaming and league of legends. The NBA player luka doncic is bit of a gamer and even did a press interview wearing a solorenektononly merch. He's a good example of a person that games and excels in other aspects of life
The splits are just a distraction. It’s short term gratification of rank. Improvement will increase mmr. Mmr increase with improvement will eventually increase your rank that’s all that really matters. Just a different lens to see things 😎
I agree, for people who play this game regularly the 3 splits shouldn't be a problem. 1 thing I heard Agurin say tho was that in the first month of the the new season the rank ladder is a bit f'ed up which is really annoying. I kinda agree, at the start of every season where everyone still has to get to their rank the games feel really worthless you play with/against higher and lower elo players which makes the games almost feel like normal games. I imagine it to be even worse for high elo players since everyone who was master+ will start low diamond, this also means that there won't be anymore 1.9-2k lp players in challenger anymore (which was already hard to achieve).
This might sound weird but I don't think those are actual esport clubs that were being talked about. I think the guy Steve was talking to conflated video game clubs with esports clubs and that's why he said Mario Kart.Over in NA or at least the US our pro gaming circuits barely if at all talk about mario kart or host it. Smash bros is taken more seriously as a competitive game than Mario kart so there was likely some miscommunication.
I love the way you guys talk about weaponizing excuses at 33:49. When you talk about league, it's easy to just make excuses for poor play and people are so quick to use them. However, when people use those excuses in a school or work environment, it's almost unacceptable! Your performance is the thing that matters the most, and poor grades or poor work performance is the end result; just like how poor play without accountability should be equally as inexcusable!
yeah this part really stuck out to me. i kind of have a bad habit of doing this with both the game and my actual responsibilities so it’s doubly important to me.
for me, i think it mostly stems from knowing i have issues that i need to deal with and not knowing how/not making a big enough effort to deal with them.
in both contexts, it’s kind of hard to navigate; it’s hard to tell what you should focus on first.
Sure, but lets say you have a team project with 4 other people. If the 4 other people on your team don't contribute to the team project, you can still do well on it, but it will take significantly more effort than what should be expected of you.
Hey Nathan and Curtis! I'm from South Korea and here, League IS the premiere e-sport. Pro League players are some of the highest paid (even more than Olympic athletes), and the recruitment scene is extremely competitive. Because of this, every pro or even academy player is, on one hand, respected and looked up to, but on the other, closely watched for any mistake, whether as a player or as a public figure. League is taken very seriously here (which ironically may contribute to some of the "Korea-unique" toxic elements on the server). Still, the sheer fact that almost every male below 30 plays ranked League is insane. I personally don't see how League could reach the same levels of cultural presence in NA.
Does anyone know roughly how long the waitlist for saltu might be? I don't know if it's like 1-2 weeks and I might be in, or if it's measured in months and I can hit up a different coach in the meantime.
It's around a month. There will be an opening next week in your emails. - Nathan
Best league content out there! Thanks for this.
One of the best ways to learn how to play against a champion is to play the champion yourself. The weaknesses a champion has are on full display when you are the one experiencing them.
16:31 I heavily disagree with this section, ultimately because I think curtis is putting WAY to much emphasis on efficiency when it should be on fun. I fundamentally struggle to understand why being efficient in a climb matters at all, who cares if you climb from bronze 2 to platinum 4 in 6 months or 5 YEARS. As long as you see improvement in yourself each and every week why does how you do it or how fast you do it matter? So I would argue that playing meta doesn't matter at all, even in master+, it only matters if you care about efficiency which is not nessacary to have fun or even improve.
One example to show my thinking a bit better is how fighting game players (i.e street fighter, mortal kombat, etc.) talk to new players, they emphasize FUN above all else.
ua-cam.com/video/mCUlBX8E2BU/v-deo.html
This video shows the clear rhetoric across the fighting game community about getting started and having fun, and I would argue this is the same rhetoric that the league community should adopt. FIghting games have been around for quite a bit longer, and are equally if not more difficult than to play than league imo. The video talks about picking whatever game you find the most fun no matter how "difficult" the game is perceived and same with picking a character. How "fast" or "efficient" one improves is never mentioned once, because it does not matter. If we want new players, to come and enjoy league, fun HAS to emphasized first.
For master+ I can see curtis's argument, but I would argue why does meta really have a place on the podcast at all? Meta doesn't matter for people which are below master, which is most of the audience of this podcast, and talking about meta honestly risks creating narratives and sabtogating the fun for these below master players on their journey imo. Who cares about efficiency, I just want to play.
In my own experiences, I play league for 3 reasons, 1. I love the game, it's incredibly well designed 2. The champions are super cool 3. It's a competitive outlet. Nowhere in these reasons does it talk about efficiency or even improvement at all. Even when talking about league being a competitive outlet, You can still be competitive whether you are bronze or challenger, is challenger more competitive? Yes, magnitudes so, but bronze league of legends can still be a competitive outlet for people. Overall, this emphasis you guys put on efficiency is the one thing I massively disagree with you guys on, and is why, even as an avid follower of your podcast, I will not join your below gold programs, because limiting what champions I can choose from to play limits MY fun and increase my stress and anxiety. Limiting fun is not worth efficient improvement or even improvement at all imo.
But this is just my take, would love to hear what others think.
I come from background of playing other pvp games (some shooters, few games with arena pvp similar to WoW). In the recent few games I have been in community of top players from whom I learnt a lot of stuff and became much better as a player. For me, efficiency is about transition. You don't want to play at a level where mistakes are not punished if you played other games at high level. At the same time you dont want to make it so you rely on your team too much until you feel like you're at your current peak rank, just because you will play differently. What I mean diffirently is usually you expect some kind of obvioust stuff like trying to share damage taken between each other (you remember these cases where you fight 5v5, tryhard and then you realize one of your teammates is 100% hp, 100% mana while all 4 of you died? He could've shared dmg taken and weave in more abils - you generally dont have that awful player performance in other high elo games) or stuff like kiting together away from vision/threat. You can often have people just stand there, like 3 of you kite away and one person stays back. Or you can have situations where enemy is 10% HP renekton and your team just runs away from him due to some biased fear, only to be outranged and let 10% Renek escape
You just can only learn so much (mostly champions, items, general awareness) in lower skill brackets. You will never know limits or understand differences between champions in low elo because you will always have a guy who just plays well and a guy who just plays bad on the same class. On higher elo people play more in accordance with what their plastyle should be, letting you get used to it. Let's say you play against Caitlyn at low ranks - they may be half-afk not trying to weave autos on you, not trading their HP aggressive enough (playing Cait like its Xayah or something). Then you get to higher rank, you feel like you know what Caitlyn is, but the guy actually brings you top-notch Cait gameplay and you go 0/4 in lane. The reason it happened is because you formed wrong perceptions and wrong habits by being at lower rank. In other words, you are only as good as your opponent. The reason most people want to get higher asap is to be beaten more and learn more
At the same time, I think you misinterpreted the message in a way. I think what Curtis wanted to say is "if you lose and you feel that it was due to meta - it's fine to think that way, it can be real. Question is whether you will make more balanced champion pool or sign soloQ contract where you agree to climb slower". However I can agree in few cases Curtis was using bad sentences that make it seem like he was saying "why would you ever play something that is not top 10 in your role?", something Skillcapped or someone like that would say
@@ArkeniusTV yeah that's how it kinda felt to me, thats the idea that I was saying of meta creating false narratives. Your prone to talking like the way skillcapped does when your focused on meta even if you don't really mean to.
@@ArkeniusTV This is true, but for a low elo player like myself, and as somone who has NEVER been a high rank or skill in any game, why would I care about this idea of transition? It's not worth talking about fighting a master level Caitlin if your bronze imo. I don't want to get away from where I'm at by getting focused on some lofty goal, I'd rather try to focus on what to improve at now. You can do that at any skill level and in any rank. It's very cool to learn more the higher rank you go, I think that sounds awesome, but it's not worth losing sight of the now to wish you were just better.
@@bowmain1577 I mean, the idea of transition only matters for people who come from other games, obviously.
Also, if you dont care about rank - what's the point then? I mean, do you even want to play ranked? Ranked is just a matchmaking system, like in chess
Essentially, rank is just a natural improvement for most games after community develops, and in LoL it took years. People want to be divided in brackets to not play with opponents higher or below their level, but it only matters for people who are at that level - doesn't it? Otherwise it's just ego and doesnt give you anything
My perspective is definitly gonna be biased as I am a Qiyana OTP. Zed is a super easy matchup, I love when zed goes conq or first strike with hydra vs me. Beifeng and higher elo Qiyanas also feel the same into the zed matchup.
I would like to say one thing about the topic why League is not as popular as other games like Mario Cart in the general population is partly due to Riots own making. (I don’t mean to say that players don’t hold any responsibility to the game, but this is based off my own personal experience). When it comes to quality of life changes, I think other games listen to their player base faster than Riot does. I mean things like toxicity, Riot has only RECENTLY started to address and implement some of the new punishments and it’s already been 13 (THIRTEEN!) seasons. The client breaks all the time (which to think about it, people wanna play, then they find out major bugs preventing me from playing or in game dc or something happens more often in League than other games in my experience). They also took a lot of fun game modes away from League only RECENTLY bringing them back. I mean I can make a whole list of things that Riot has done to alienate the community from new/casual players who wanna get into League. I mean you can preach solo Q all u want, but a 99% of players did NOT FIRST getting into league and did NOT FIRST started growing because of Solo Q. It probably was because friends or enjoyability (which Riot kinds F*cked up for the majority of 13 years imo).
Solo queue is kind of objectively the least fun thing about league, no matter what these guys say.
I mean, I would rather play League than Mario Kart any of the day of the week. It really comes down to the fact that League is closer on the spectrum to a fighting game than it is to Mario Kart. Mario Kart isn't a game people are playing for the competition. It's usually played for fun with friends. League is about improvement and mastery. And to be more clear, even though this is in reference to esport clubs, the high school kids likely are just playing video games that are fun. It's the same as the difference between smash bros and Street Fighter KOF or any of the more traditional fighters.
Delusional comment full of narratives.
In my experience meta is relevant even in lower elos, just in a different way. I'll just use an example to explain what I mean.
I'm an emerald jungler and in season 13 I played basically only Graves and J4. Both Graves and J4 are objectively speaking quite bad in the meta, so there is no reason for me to keep playing them when I can rotate them out of my champ pool and play champions I enjoy and also aren't just terrible.
My current pool is Viego (main) Nidalee (if we need AP) and Kha'zix (If Viego is banned). I could stubbornly pick J4 anyway, but it would just be a frustrating experience. The items currently don't synergise all that well with him and other champions just perform his role better than him.
I think switching 1 champion every few months when either the meta shifts to make them really bad or you stop enjoying them is more than reasonable even in lower ELOs.
what's your opinion on the double jg strategy that tilterella is doing?
I'm so grateful for this podcast
Love the podcast you are the reason i love this game keep up the Great work!❤
Thing with League is that the game is complex and they keep adding champs, every champ has new interactions, mechanics, etc.
i just paused at the part where curtis realized hes not playing a balanced game. this is what led me to quitting because it felt like i might as well be playing ARAM or something. things arent "fair". im interested to see what his thoughts are later. the only options i see are 1.) quit the game 2.) only play meta 3.) stop caring about rank (i cant do that personally)
Why do you have to care about rank? I personally don't see why rank matters at all.
Just had a similar discussion with a friend few days ago. I was raiding in SWTOR, it's essentially a WOW clone (raids were quite hard). I was playing mostly off-meta at first. The conclusions I arrived to: the higher the level of play, the better people adapt to off-meta and meta together. As example - how there was some kind of prejudice to skew drafts towards Holy Trinity (Peeler, DPS & Tank) or Front to back as they call it in League usually. Nowadays, you can have multiple assassins or multiple ranged or totally reasonable DPS-y support. Keria just played Lissandra supp in one of his games and also plays a lot of Ashe - in 2009-2013 it'd be considered throwing games. So, essentially better adaptation of how different weaknesses can be avoided + better mental to tryhard when off-meta happens, with less blame on it. In 2009-2013 people could easily blame everything on meta, as I see from documentaries this mentality slowly changed to "get good" instead of blaming game
So, first one was adaptation to off-meta. However, remember off-meta has to make sense still - Singed is not very helpful as Support, for example. Or duo jungling can tank your team's mental because you take everyone out of comfort zone
My second point Ive discovered in raiding is the only thing making game serious is people wanting to test stuff and tryhard. If your class/champion is too strong, you will compete with others of that class to have higher stats. At the same time, generally an anti-meta will arrive at higher ranks to dump your class (counter-picks or just cheese strategies like no-confrontation)
(Part 2 of my response)
The biggest thing our raiding players thought is mental plays a huge part in "meta" since you just don't want to ever get annoyed or whine about meta. It's not about the game - if it feels too bad to play specific class just change to meta class. If you like the game - play. You can still pick your off-meta picks situationally. For example, in that raiding game I eventually made it so my pool had few classes that were versatile and kept playing off-meta in the encounters where they made sense. Essentially, your pool can be 2 champions that work in any situation decently and two champions that work in specific team comps/lanes. This way you keep your off-meta in your pool and take them each time they are remotely decent, but you also have an all-rounded champion or two to smooth out these games where your off-meta struggles
For example, team-reliant ADC vs self-reliant ADC. Tristana, Ezreal, MF are all-rounded champions that are considered good for soloQ performance. At the same time, there are Xayah, Ashe & Caitlyn. Xayah seems to struggle without engage support or Janna/Sona (according to stats Ive found - 49% winrate for other duos). Ashe doesn't have self-peel, thus very abusable defensive-speaking. And Caitlyn just won't work that well without team or into longer range like Ziggs or Seraphine APCs
You can probably see my point. Supp went Engage? You could go your Xayah/Kai'sa. Supp went Enchanter? Could go your Ashe. Supp went Sona? Could go Tristana or Xayah, or Ashe
Overall, opportunities for roles seem to allow you playing your off-meta quite often
for me its because ranked solo is such a time investment that when i play it i want to use it for personal growth and that means increasing rank. itd be like lifting weights but not building muscle is the best way i can explain it. if not for the rank id just play something chill.@@bowmain1577
Finally remembered to switch to this account lol! I need to start coming to coaching, social anxiety be a heartless bitch though. I've been playing mls champs only since I think march, 200+ on Anivia, 100+ on Veigar, and I fell in love with Aurelion this week cause yay a control mage with movement! Took me about 5 months of playing consistently to go from a Silver 1 Support main all the way down to a Bronze 1 Mid and now I have a comfortable winrate in high silver - low gold mmr.
Im a BBC addict.
As a fizz one trick, I consistently have to be like 10-0 to actually be able to hard carry and not even 1v9, and any fed tank is legit get fucked, at least thats how it’s been feeling lmao. Assassins feel so bad rn, I’m only plat and can consistently win lane, but converting especially without a solid jungler feels like total ass - to the point I’m trying to figure out what I wanna play and definitely struggling on that part. Think I’m settling on yone/lb and maybe bite the bullet with trist cos lb is similar rn with just being ap as opposed to the ad of trist. Kass is another option, but waiting to scale just feels like I’m coin flipping the actual carry lol
-> that said, champion mastery going out the window as I’m just gonna be forced to focus on fundamentals with like push/move/objectives and somewhat give up lane/handshake it
Can we please talk about how the age-mechanics thing is a total fuckin myth. You don’t significantly slow down until your 40s. Look at the actual studies. It is way overblown and macro is more important anyways.
Man, I wish there was more talk about this cause this myth gets spread around everywhere every since the early seasons of league. While I might not be the best example since I never really stopped playing games, I'm pretty sure my reaction time at almost 31 have been at least the same since I started ranked in season 3 at 21yo. And I know my mechanics are definitely better now than before. You certainly shouldn't be declining in your 20s, especially in your early-mid 20s. That's absurd since you're at your peak physically in like everything else that age.
For gaming in general imo, age and decline is mainly related to outside factors, usually not being able to spend as much time gaming as when you were younger.
On the META, I think your view is skewed by mid lane. Pretty much everyone else can easily OTP without much worry. Mid is weird because you get a lot of different match ups, mages, assassins, ranged, melee, fighters, etc. You need to be able to deal with a lot of variants.
Yeah as mid laner you kinda have to balance your team out, that's why in pro play you see mid laners always picking champs according to what their team comb is missing, while most of their team picks the same 2-3 champs.
@@anniekujo A problem in soloq is that people will happily draft completely terrible team comps and if your champ pool is small there isn't anything you can do about it.
@@netherby4335 Yes I 100% agree, as an otp (I'm a Orianna top myself) you suffer even more from it.
Role swap series where you coach each other at your respective role and see who can climb the highest. go go
Can you guys recommend a good top lane coach please?
Alois
AloisNL is bussin
www.youtube.com/@CoachChippys good content.
coach eragon
I thought the comment section here would be more extreme but it’s pretty chill
This podcast is BiS, ty so much for your work guys
I have an old account and played ranked rarely year over year....I recently played to improve and did 2 months 200+ games in bronze and just bounced up and down from bronze 4 to bronze 1 the whole time. 61% win rate...with Ashe, not sure if this is working. is it time to swap out of ADC, or is this something odd with the new splits. because i didn't play much in split one did split 2 get screwed...you did say you're over hearing about win rate....but I mean yeah, i'm havng fun but im not feeling rewarded?
Well there has been a little bit of an elo inflation going on after they added emerald to the ranks in split 2. Like players who have been plat last season are emerald now, players who have been gold are plat now and silver and bronze players also ranked up like 2-3 tiers. If you really want to improve the best thing you can do is keep playing consistently and not role swap at all. Ofc the most important thing is that you have fun, so if you don't feel like you have fun playing adc, then you are free to swap roles. But if you really want to improve/climb, it's better to not switch roles to much. And with the reward thing, it comes slowly over a long period of time. You can imagine it like going to the gym, you have to put in months of work until you see real progress. It's not a fast or short process, if you wanna get better and climb you gotta stay on the grind. And yeah better not focus to much on your wr, it will go down naturally as you continue to climb and play more games. So focusing to much on that will simply make you unhappy, the only thing you gotta focus on to climb and improve is your own gameplay. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant and just a distraction that keeps you from climbing.
@@anniekujo I appreciate the vote of confidence and the helpful words. I may just swap to an ADC I enjoy more maybe? At least I have Ashe as a back pocket Champion now.
@@Alexcv215 Ofc if you want to, it's practically never to late to switch but you just shouldn't do it to much. Curtis is also cycling his champion pool from time to time, playing the same 3-5 champs for like 1-2 seasons and then looking to maybe switch up 2-3 champs out of his pool. But you haven't played to much league. You might wanna look around and test a few champions or lanes before commiting, because if you wanna climb it's better to know a few things about other lanes and champs. Especially because in lower elo's it's better to commit to 1-2 champs if you really want to climb. I did the same thing a few years ago, when I was stuck in bronze. I tested around a few lanes with different champs and then commited to Annie mid, I became a Annie otp. I watched high elo Annie players, tried to copy what they do and improve my overall understanding of the game. It took me a while to get out of bronze but when I got to silver I was able to climb to gold in no time. I then dropped Annie and started playing other lanes and different champions again (which was a huge mistake), effectively making myself get stuck in gold for a very long time. Until a year ago where I started getting back to mid lane being an Orianna otp, I then hit plat for the first time last season and now I am emerald 2 on a good way to diamond. The best advice I can give is playing a low champ pool 1- max. 3 champs, vod reviewing your own and high elo player games of them playing your lane and even better your champs, try to copy what they do and try to understand why they do it. But the most important thing, you gotta play a lot of games consistently. If you do it like me back then, dropping the game for months and then picking it up again. Then you won't climb. So if you really want to climb, then you gotta stay on the grind. You can kinda imagine it being like going to the gym, if you don't consistently go to the gym over a long period of time then you won't see results. Anyway, sry for the essay. I hope I could help a bit.
I said years ago already when u don't play meta u just leave winrate on the table u could have
there is zero reason to not do it
not playing meta simply means u don't play the game in the most optimal way and thats just a mistake no matter how u look at it
That Summonr School post 👏👏👏👏👏
honestly u don't have to think "what am I trying to do" every game... cause the main goal should always be to gain lane control and gain prio to move and thinking about goals only really matters if you are good enough and ahead enough to actually achieve this goals
if I get counter picked like who the fuck cares what goals I have i'm not going to achieve them anyways the only goal I should have is to survive
Reached dia 4 by playing only my main Cho'Gath jungle that i play since season 3.
I eat the meta.
Every time I see meta picks in my games, be it champs,items, or both, I just know the players on the other side of the monitor needs their face punched in by a figure of authority (me)
I wish my team would pick meta picks. No, I get first time Teemo top lane
You might wanna get some help bro 😂
@@protocolsavage8506 No I need to punch people as a figure of authority
The first person writing into nathans mail bag is a victim of the system change confusion that gold split 2 is the same as in split one, i’m disappointed you guys didn’t explain the difference 😢
a good next video would be "champions that always return to meta in soloq"
I would wager that the avg age for lol players is pretty high compared to a lot of games. LOL came from DOTA. people who were around for OG DOTA are 30s and 40s now.
I love hearing a success story but like anything else in life.. there is a lot more unsuccessful stories. If we were to know the actual counts of accounts in Silver and lower.. I would say 60-70% of player base is in there which are the "lower elo (worst players)"
I mean 95% of all league players are below Diamond 2, and it's probably even more now that they introduced emerald.
I swear a good ekko will shit on zed anyday
I'm so fucking confused on what to do, should I learn league through champs that are really fun to me which means they are usually off meta but lower my chances of winning or should I force myself to play meta since it will improve my chances of winning. Winning is fun, playing meta is boring.
id say unless you're trying to reach the highest levels just play whats fun for you
@@hellfiredwarf_6173 Yeah but then again winning is fun, losing not so much. Playing off meta feels so bad when the enemy picks something meta and rolls you over without effort
just pick something relatively stable. if it’s not super strong or a random dogshit pick that doesn’t work in the role then you should be fine.
don’t play the strongest champions, because they’ll be nerfed, and don’t play anything obviously difficult or weak, because you’ll have a harder time which will be less fun. once the item update comes out in a few months and champions don’t live and die by their mythic options there should be more viable champions to choose from.
League is a video game first, you will achieve nothing by playing something that isn't fun to play for you. Yes ultimately your climb will be harder but if you climb with the champ that is fun for you to play, it will feel infinitely better and you will achieve better results. You won't improve a lot on champions that aren't fun to you, you gotta love your champ in order to improve. Play what champ you think is fun, in the end meta only really matters in master+. Until then you can climb with practically anything you want, heck there are players in challenger playing off-meta picks. The champ is never the problem when you fail to climb, it's always you. So play what you want, if you are good enough you will win.
curtis looking swole asfck holy
Yo, I didn't know Coach was so buff!!!
Hello, new watcher, what are 3 blocks? What does a block mean?
A block is a set of games played in one session without any extended breaks. A 3 block would be 3 games in a row.
Adding to the above, the point is to take breaks and make sure you're mentally fresh so you avoid tilt/autopiloting.
In general they recommend playing 3 games in a row then break. However, if you're more mentally exhausted that can be 2 (a 2-block) or if you're more fresh/have some quick games then it can be 4 ( a 4-block).
Another note: what is a break? Its not just get up and go to the bathroom/get water. Its a full step away from the PC for at least 30 minutes. Get dinner, go to gym, or go for a run & shower. Something that takes your head fully out of the game. The best break is to play one block per day. That might be obvious on weekdays but if you have a lot of free time on weekends then the point is its better to play two or three distinct blocks rather than spam 12 games in a row.
LESSSGOOO NAMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AYOOOOO IM FAMOUS
1 hour & a half for 3 games in low elo is kinda low balling it. Games get longer the lower the elo is, so 2 hours is more likely. Maybe even more.
yeah each game is usually 30 minutes, plus dodges/remakes, plus a couple minutes in queue. Easy 2 hours.
guys im emerald 2-3 and I played 460 games. i don't know what I'm doing wrong. My confidence is dropping
Good podcast.
Ngl my favorite thing about 3 splits is getting 3 free skins lol
When Irelia guide feat Neckless?
Great episode as always boys. 10/10, would watch again.
Jungle is by far the hardest role in the game.
ADC is the hardest role to play, but JG is just the hardest to learn. Once you learn it, it becomes simple and like clockwork.. ecept the games where your team all dies solo before your 3rd camp and makes it your fault heh
You literally play vs npc's the majority of the match wdym
you obviously dont jungle@@anniekujo
@@dreamdate4833 Not anymore but as a midlaner playing together with my jungler is one of my highest priorities. I constantly have to keep track of where my and enemy jungle is in order to play the game. I need to be hyper aware of both junglers locations, so I pretty much know what junglers do the majority of the match. Besides the fact that I climbed to plat as jungler 3 seasons ago, doesn't really hold much weight but what I want to say is that I did play jungle with a pretty positive wr. Just stoped because the gameplay is to boring imo, there is not enough going on to keep me engaged. On lane you are perma interacting with another player, on jungle you literally watch lanes in between camps. Which is not the most exciting thing. So saying jungle is "by far the hardest role" is not true at all.
I wish Wild Rift had content like this
I wish adc had content like this
you can still apply most of the fundamentals they teach into wild rift or even mobile legends if you play it, i've been doing the same for a while you just have to adapt it into what fits for you
The bbc meta has changed
coach ur arms look good
yo nice thumbnails
NA Bronze player here and 3 games usually takes about 2 hours of my time between a 1 ten minute warm up, queues, dodges, long champ selects, long game load times, and most of my games being between 25 and 30+ minutes as well as client side and leagueofgraphs stat review after each game.
But why are you doing a stat review after each game, this just feels very unnecessarily. Especially because Curtis and Nathan always say that those sites amount to nothing but negative believes about the game. You are better of vod reviewing your games, looking at your stats is just basically a waste of time.
@@anniekujo Thanks for the reply. I don't know if I have negative beliefs about the game, maybe I need to understand their point more and I will try to do so.
I'm sitting here trying to explain what I get from looking at stats, but I feel like whatever I say you will dismiss (which is probably proving your point). Would you be able to find a clip where they talk about this? I'd appreciate it.
I think, one reason I like to look at leagueofgraphs and the in game stats after a game is to calm down a bit before the next game, and try to understand, at a glance how the game went overall for both teams.
@@webignar I see, if you try to understand how the game went then vod reviewing is much better. Looking at the game afterwards is infinitely more effective than looking at the stats, especially from your own pov you can find many mistakes that you didn't notice in game. And Curtis made a whole video about websites like this, it's called "DANGEROUS OR VALUABLE? - Stats For Climbing Solo Queue" on his Coach Curtis channel. Otherwise I searched through all of their podcast episodes and landed at the bottom. They actually talked about it in episode number 6 titled "Broken By Concept Ep : 006 - Motivation To Play Soloq - Using 3rd Party Programs - Worlds Casting" (which is the second podcast episode that you can find on the channel) [time stamp being 10:20]. But they also uploaded this section extra with the title "Are 3rd Party Analytics Apps Really Useful?" on the same channel.
inb4 every below masters player tries to play around the meta because of what curtis said 🤦🏾♂️
jungle has more viable champs than lanerse
Bronze que times are longer than Platinum que times. Just because there’s more players in bronze doesn’t mean they’re as invested in ranked to the same extent as plats. I was able to play 2 play games this morning in about and hour and the 1 bronze I did as a warmup, took 10 minuets for the que to pop and the game lasted 40 minuets. This is consistent from my experience.
Please just stop talking about low elo if you’re not actually going to spend more than a handful of games there just to make a video to get the community pissed at you.
Isn't 1.5 hours for bronze/silver or so reasonable for 2-3 games block?
3 games is approximately 1.5hrs of in-game time@@ArkeniusTV
Draft alone takes 5 minutes regardless of rank. If the games are 25 minutes then that leaves 0 time for queues in a 3 block.
I think this was just Nathan being bad at mental math more so than them disrespecting lower ranked queue times.
Bump that up to 2 hours and its reasonable for most cases. 2.5 hours would cover most combinations of long games + queues. 3 hours is the upper limit for 3 very long queues + long games back to back to back. But if you set aside 2 hours and only get 2 games in then its also fine to just play a 2-block.
They've gotten slightly better but they still simply do not understand how plat and below it. Usually one game in a block at least is ruined by smurfs or outright trolls or someone tilting in draft.
Also, there's no tactful way to say this. But this guy is constantly stumbling over 9th grade reading level vocab. And "how many days in a year?" You shouldn't be gaming at all. You need to read a book.
I better start banning Zed
This only really matters in master+ tho. In lower elo's people barely know how to play Zed/how to use him or the items correctly, you don't really have to worry about him. Especially since lower elo players tend to overestimate themselves, play something like Zed (or any meta pick) and then solo lose the game for their entire team. There is a reason you see all those Zed and Yasuo one tricks in bronze/gold.
@@anniekujo Did you just assume my rank cowboy?! Nah I'm only Diamond 1 peak (for now muhuaha)
Good point tho, I think you're right.
@@LamixFace Well the majority of people are plat or below, so I just assume that most people on the internet are as well. But yeah if I'm not mistaken a lot of otp's are also stuck in diamond, it seems like Bronze, Gold, Diamond and Master are the elo's where most otp's get stuck for a long time. Don't know why tho
60 games per year is literally nothing, why should a player like that even be allowed to have an opinion of ranked? ranked aint for you bruh.
???????
first
Frick
but y do u guys look the same.