Twitch/Rakan vs Jihn/Caitlyn: Super weird game. Twitch was gold last split and clearly disrespecting his opponents. Jihn has never gotten out of bronze and shat on him 1v1 all game, just goes go show. Yorick mid is absolutely bonkers OP in low elo so I was rather worried about this, but given how bad this Caitlyn support was I felt we should have won this game easily. Obviously, stuff happened. Jihn/Cait hugely out-damage and out range us in the first few levels. This was why I was hesitant to try to lvl1 cheese them from river. However, their lack of sustain, low health pool, limited peel, and slow item scaling mean that, if we don't die or get poked out in the first few levels, we will eventually be able to ambush and murder them on loop. I feel like we tried to do too much too soon, despite (and in part because of), all the ganks we absorbed, we started to comfortably kill them when we played together. 4:22 my attempt to poke trade went horribly wrong, need to wait for them to commit abilities on the wave before doing this. I'm generally happy with how I played the lane after this. 7:46 Twitch disrespect recall was really bad, I needed to spam danger ping him as soon it looked like he was going to back there, and move to try to distract Jihn toward river before he reached the mid bush. 10:18 I needed to call off Twitch's greedy overplay. 11:16 me deploying to the grub fight was the 'right' move, but it compelled Twitch to suicide, and worst of all de-synced us for the rest of the game. Twitch was my most reliable win con, and very obviously a psychopath, I needed to adapt and try to give his forced plays the highest chance of success. I did not recognise Gwen as a potential carry during the game, but she was actually not doing too badly around the 20 min mark and could have been an alternative to invest in. Ultimately, I think the game rested on Twitch though. Ekko's ult usage made my eyes bleed. Jihn/Rakan vs Caitlyn/Nautilus: Surprisingly high quality lobby. Jihn, Diana, and Caitlyn were all previously gold... although Teemo was an actual iron4. Cait/Naut are lane bullies, they want to use Cait's waveclear and Naut's bush control to own the wave, help set up angles for naut to engage, or use the threat to zone us and siege. Jihn's range poke is good, I give us the sustain advantage, and I outscale naut, but neither of us can match our counterpart at their game in lane. This should be a losing lane for us, and we need to lose gracefully. Jihn's range allows him to CS without getting into Cait's range, so I need to check naut by going into pure peel mode - distracting/body blocking hooks, and keeping the lane bushes warded or taking them if he lets me (I can't contest him if he wants them, and BE CAREFUL OF CAIT TRAPS). If naut does get onto Jihn, I need to CC Cait so she can't follow up. As it happened, lvls 1-3 played out the opposite of how they should have (due to skill gap). I throw some terrible Q's in this lane omg, but I am very happy with my attention to lvl ups, and communication of what I want to do with the wave. 30:41 too risky to take this ward now, naut had returned and I didn't know where the jungler was - should have taken it after we killed naut. 31:53 pro deep ward, also hitting the vision plant on the Diana roam shows her their vision of the river and potentially misleads them as to her location - pure gold. On the gank, I needed to have the presence of mind to wait for Diana to E them and then E her instead of wasting my flash. 33:33 I needed to anticipate the hook and E Jihn, very lucky the minion did my job for me. 37:36 warding is ok as bel'veth was dead and likely to be re-deploying top, but not when wave is neutral and naut is under no pressure so can match me or engage on Jihn, and then fighting over the ward was incredibly stupid and costly. 38:57 my mechanical misplay cost us an easy kill. 39:52 the power of panning camera to fights, enables me to create a play with J4 to kill Bel'Veth, felt so good! 56:26 MONTAGE PLAY OF THE YEAR! Good game, funny how much easier it is to play well when you have the better team. Jinx/Rakan vs Xayah/Milio: Bit more balanced lobby, only Talon was gold last split, rest bronze/silver. Xayah should be stronger than Jinx in lane, but has a much higher execution demand, Milio sustains much better than me and pokes better, but I can't see that they have especially good synergy or really much pressure we need to fear. We scale better, and it should be reletively easy to just peel for Jinx, but we also have the power to take over the lane if they mistep too much. They don't have much to be able to stop me taking the bushes so I can create space and pressure without actually having to do much, it also makes hitting Q a bit easier and keep up with Milio's sustain somewhat. 1:08:47 the burning question all engage supports ask - and a potential solution?! 1:10:59 how should I have known to roam mid here? I thought our wave was neutral so I needed to be with Jinx and Talon wasn't in lane, but as it turned out Jinx would have been safe and I could have helped get a high value kill on Talon (or protect Fizz), especially if I thought Milio might gank (which he is not likely to do). 1:12:43 once I am sure Lee is on dragon I wonder if the correct move here is to roam up with Bel'Veth and help secure grubs, with both top and mid dead she is super vulnerable (enemy were trolling not to check it). The wave is pushing to Jinx and they don't have the waveclear or all in potential to dive her. If I roamed, you know it would actually alert Talon to check herald and trigger Jinx's lemming instinct, but on paper I think it is more valuable than me running in circles spectating it all from botlane. 1:13:53 unforced trade goes really bad, get Xayah's ult but cripples our health bars, don't do this unless they have the important abilities (e.g. Xayah's E) on cooldown. 1:14:48 Lee Sin has a stroke. I made a bad call regarding the wave after, Jinx did need to crash it (enemy ADC retreating, Talon on vision and Lee Sin dead, Bel'Veth on drag), me recalling is ok, I didn't have any mana and couldn't of helped anybody much and it gave me tempo to potentially back up Fizz and spot out Lee before he could effectively gank us. 1:20:17 another really dumb call by me, of course we want Bel'Veth to take herald, and she has all the prio to do it. Don't know why I was so negative at this point, guess I have been traumatised and am waiting for another free win to be snatched from me.

people have known this for years. That's why you get some people telling you to just take a break after 2 losses. Even if the break is kinda short, like a few hours, that already trains eomm to potentially give you an easier game. However if you went on a huge win streak, there's not much you can do to stop a lose streak. Lets say you went on a huge win streak, like won 6-8 games in a row. You're GOING to go on a lose streak.....so even if you know this ans stop playing after 2 losses and don't come back for a month, when you do come back, your return game will be easy, just as thie game in this video was, but you'll immediately start losing again after 1 easy win. Riot had the audacity to tell their players that "people love going on win and lose streaks". I don't think there's anyone more corrupt and pompous than gaming software developers in the tech world.

Some time ago I did a slander and said Riot is using EOMM/manipulating queues. I take it back,i dont have any solid proof.I am a liar.

Jhin/Leona vs Varus/Blitzcrank: Spicy matchup, Jihn and Varus have good poke, blitz and I have good catch potential. I think Jihn/Leo have the advantage of a better CC chain pre-6 and Blitz's hook does half my job for me. Slow building the wave will keep us safe and empower my all ins, but we have to be very careful not to get it frozen on us outside their tower as that will make me useless and give Blitz 1 hit KO power. I controlled the bushes, but I think I actually need to play this lane in the wave - basically negating blitz's hook and acting as another body to shield Jihn, helping feel safe enough to move up into trading range. Need to be careful of Varus' poke when I do that, but the big arrow is quite telegraphed and I can move out of the wave (away from Blitz) whilst he charges it and make him choose. We did get frozen outside their tower a bit, but Jihn did realise to stop hitting the wave quite quickly compared to my usual ADCs. However, we did not thin the bounce enough, and I tried to look for an engage too early ( I was only lvl2 and they were lvl3) and got chunked out by the time we had them fully extended in to us. I misplayed our gank, not having flash was a real pain, but in this circumstance I needed to keep walking at the Varus to try and get a clear angle for E. If I had dropped ignite on Blitz he would have died, but I'm not sure I could have known he was the most viable target whilst I was in range. I feel like this 4 man gank should work easily, but can't actually see how it could have without me being able to get passed blitz - maybe just walking it in and CC combo chaining Varus under tower for the others to blow him up? If we had stomped this lane, maybe we'd have been able to soak more jungle pressure to take it off our other lanes, and I'd have been able to find more roam windows to back up mid and jungle. Given the vast team gap I would have had to play out of my mind to achieve this, just not realistic. Samira/Maokai vs Kai'Sa/Serphine: My team have opted to have (at least) 2 autofills in this game. I went Maokai because Leona was banned and, to me, they play quite similarly (Leo has better threat extension and early power, but Maokai scales better). Kai/Sera have range, poke, sustain, and damage advantage, however Kai'Sa's reletively short range should make things a tad easier for us early. If we are able to chill and try to go relatively even in the first few levels our all in will absolutely smash them at lvl6, and potentially from lvl3+ if they mistep bad. In the event, I badly misjudged their lvl2 timing and we got absolutely slammed. Having to base at lvl2 was so bad. I'm not sure about me sitting in the bush whilst the wave is frozen outside of tower, I suspect it is bad play by me. I do it to avoid hitting the wave so that it will bounce out (if my ADC doesn't hit it too much), because I find I usually can't damage it enough to break the freeze (maybe Maokai Q could though?), whilst being in position to counter engage if the enemy goes in on my ADC. If I roam, my ADC dies 100%, and in this case my Mid backed and there was no neutral objective. I think it would be better in future to hover off vision around the river wall, that way the enemy team don't know where I am, I can make my ADC feel less exposed to ganks, and even use them as bait to see if the enemy bot will come out and fight us. I have not played Maokai in a while and messed up Q usage a bit this game, not knocking enemies where I wanted to very reliably, or even just getting it to go off when I wanted it (can't click other butttons too rapidly when trying to use it or it cancels). The fact my team all lost their lanes and messed up every dive attempt doesn't really matter, I need to make sure my lane is winning and I am pulling off 1-2 mid ganks in as many games as possible - and I'm just never achieving that at the moment. Miss Fortune/Rakan vs Kalista/Pyke: In low elo, this is an auto win for us. Kal/Pyk just have too high an execution demand and are too dependent on getting early kills and snowballing a quick game witthout throwing shutdowns. All we need to do is chill and not die and we can't lose, MF/Rakan are just so much more powerful in the teamfights that determine the game if someone doesn't feed to the moon. we were able to start in lane and get control of the wave to ensure we deny them the lvl2 engage they should be looking for. I think I am going to start not leashing meta junglers from now on, I mained jungle previously, they just don't need leashes and it makes such a difference for us in bot. So yeah, my job is simply to peel for MF, keep her sustained and try to create as much space for her to farm as I safely can. Overall I am happy with how I played this, helped out by how bad the Pyke was. Some good hook body block and disruption attempts by me. Some suboptimal ability usage by me cost us kills that would have enable us to dominate this lane. 56:50 I needed to use 2nd E to jump to MF and extend my W so I could hit Kalista, if I do that and ignite her I think MF could have chased down the kill. 1:02:40 the all important lvl6 fight, I needed not to walk into the Pyke E by just pausing and waiting it out. In trying to get a double charm into double knock up I let Kalista get out of the MF ult, which allowed her to use her R to save Pyke and turn the play. 1:05:17 I need to R+flash not the other way round, and I needed to ensure I overlap W with the R charm (I tried to Q in between), not doing that gave Kalista the moment to flash and escape the MF ult. I wonder if she had more tenacity than usual - my charms seemed to end on her sooner than expected. I don't think I missed any obvious windows to roam, except maybe 1:06:54 where I died to Xin's ambush and protecting the bot tower alone was pretty risky in anycase, could have gone to try and hold mid instead, but neither option was without risk or would have acheived that much beyond averting a bit of tower damage and catching a wave of xp. Running top for the play on Smolder might have been the best move, but I thought Wu and Kayn had it easily and I hate the thought of letting the enemy hit 2 towers completely uncontested.

the algorithm led me here, and this type of video is extremely interesting, hope there's more to come!

4 games, 3 AFK/disconnects only on my team. Vast range in ability on display. General game quality really low. Welcome to the start of a new split. Kog'Maw/Rakan vs Aphelios/Xerath: Both sides scale well. Xerath gives them the range and dmg advantage early, but I provide us better sustain. I need to keep Kog safe whilst he farms, which means I need to distract Xerath and get him to focus me with his skillshots. I could do this by controlling the bushes to create space and project threat, then wiggle in and out of vision using Q to harass and keep me topped up through occasional hits. I need to play heavily for botlane as Kog is our only AD damage and very reliant on support. I have learnt that this does not mean I should not roam. I have to roam, or I will not create enough value to tip the game in my favour, but roams need to be very succinct and timed so as not to miss waves or leave Kog alone. I did not play the lane well enough. 2:56 I let Aphelios slip past to get the kill on Kog, which was illegal - he should have died and got nothing for that play. My aggressive trade patterns (W Q aa E back) did not work very well, as Kog did not understand what I was doing and clearly thought I was going for all-ins, causing him to flash engage several times into fights that did not go favourably for us. I'm not sure what to do about this. I feel I need to take these trades to soften up and attrition the enemy, but it is difficult to communicate what I am doing and need my ADC to do. The obvious alternative is not to go for these trades, and play passively, focusing on peel and Q poke. The problem is, if I do this in bronze, we will at best go even and more likely slowly fall a bit behind. In order to win games consistently I need to be consistently getting us ahead, to counteract the fecal implosion going on in my other lanes, so it is not really an option. I wasted too much time on my roams, getting nothing for them and leaving Kog to fall behind and suicide. I don't think Kog was bad (for the elo), he was the win con and played with the kind of aggression I usually like to work with, I made the wrong call trying to help my griefing mid/jung. Ultimately, the team disparity meant that I probably could not have won this game on any of my champions, although if Kog and I had turbo stomped lane maybe there was a chance. Xayah/Rakan vs Miss Fortune/Seraphine: Xayah and Rakan are a classic power duo, but I play the combo so infrequently I realise I don't have a great understanding about how to optimally play it. My understanding is that although Rakan is generally quite a weak laner, with Xayah his power bumps up a bit due to Xayah's W giving him an AS steroid, the increased E range grants him a bit more safety to disengage, the recall passive improves reset tempo, and when we hit 6, overlapping our ults provides a strong dmg+CC chain. However, my understanding of Rakan trade and all in patterns in relation to Xayah's position and ability usage is very basic. MF and Sera have good poke and sustain, and a monsterous ult combo when they hit 6 - which these two were coordinating very well. The lane is quite volatile with both sides needing and able to contest each other for advantage as scaling is quite similar. I think we have to play to get ahead pre-6, as their power is high and has much lower execution burden at 6. I played lvl1 too agressively and took too much damage, incorrectly judging the balance of power - potentially as Xayah did not level W. This set us behind for the rest of the lane. I continued to play too risky after being set at a disadvantage and was lucky not to die before we hit lvl3 and I was able to start sustaining us back up. I think I should play chill and preserve health until lvl3 next time (and in most lanes generally). My Q accuracy was horrible in this game (and the previous one), more hits could have created opportunities to take more initiative in the lane rather than relying on Amumu to bail out our asses. I am happy that I identified Amumu as the wincon and played around him appropriately, even though I made some misjudgments and mechanical errors in several team fights and skirmishes. Draven/Leona vs Ziggs/Senna: Draven and Leona are an extremely powerful kill lane. Ziggs and Senna scale much better and have better sustain, but are extremely vulnerable in lane - if I catch one (preferably Senna because slightly worse escape potential) they die. Ziggs' non-interactive waveclear is annoying, but we should be able to threaten a successful towerdive on quite small waves. Ideally, we want to look for a lvl2 kill, and generally let them push the wave out so we can either completely zone them off or kill them at will. Sadly we kept pushing them under tower and were unable to dive them effectively, however, overall, I am fairly happy with how I played this. My roam times made sense and were just very unlucky and frankly griefed by my mid and jungle (especially the latter). 1:05:16 My roam to grubs was 'correct' on paper and I communicated it was well as could possibly be expected, but Yi made it take FAAAAAR too long whilst leaching from Morde, causing Draven to die alone and me to fall very far behind. After that, Draven and I were too weak relative to Ziggs and Senna, and we failed to claw it back. In this game I did not NEED to be there for the grubs, it is an example of where the right idea was wrong for the circumstance. I obviously made mistakes (e.g. death tower diving Ziggs), but I feel I had output that would have been sufficient to win the game if it was a normal 4v5. As it was, Ahri was a non-entity and Yi was actively playing for the other team, and a 3v6 was too much to overcome. Caitlyn/Nami vs Twitch/Xerath: This game was just not fun. Cait/Nam are lane bullies and overall we should play to control the lane by poke attrition and putting them in a position where we kill when they make a small misstep. We should get lvl2 first and be able to pin them under tower, preventing Twitch from getting the space to get a stealth flank attack or roam for riveer skirmishes. Xerath's waveclear is a bit annoying, but we should be able to make him choose between damaging the wave or us. As it was Xerath correctly targetted the flatfooted ADC, who could not CS uncontested minions to save her life. I was not skillfull or confident enought to play as aggressively as I needed to - I didn't find many/any good E+W trades or quality bubbles, and so was not able to provide the pressure I needed to in order to suppress them and set up kills. J4 played well, and ganked effectively. I am sad I missed his approach from behind on full vision, but the over the wall tower dive was clean. The gap in Top and mid, as well as my ADC going AKF made this completely unplayable. I could not have won this on any of my champs, but playing Nami made me feel especially powerless and depressed.

Hi, how would this work on Lego? (ABS plastic) acetone melts Lego, so what would be you solution? Thanks in advance

First, some venting: Curious lobby drops after I start winstreaking continues. I can think of no reason this would happen or that it means anything, but coincidence is stretching thin at this point. Am I wrong to feel that my MF was playing about 6 miles behind me quite often during lane? Was I really over extending, or was she just not taking the space I was giving her and leaving me to 1v2? Diana. omg. PvE max, old McDonald on the farm. Yes, she got a lot of kills, and great cs by the end, but this is the classic 'hey guys, just accept being endlessly punched in the face until I reach full build, okay? Neace said I need to clear camps' syndrome that I used to have when I first started Jungling. She didn't come bot once. I don't think she would actually know what a dragon was if it sat on her (and one did a few times). She gave every objective for the opportunity to counter jungle. Do this vs a Shyvana and expect (and deserve) to lose. We only won this game because Shyvana repeatedly threw away her auto win by ulting blind into our team. I mean Diana even f*cking backed to 'buy her GA' after we aced them at Baron and Voli commited for the end. FFS. Miss Fortune/Leona vs Caitlin/Yuumi: I like playing with MF, she can poke, follow up trades, and has an impactful ult without being very execution demanding. Caitlin and Yuumi have strong poke and decent sustain, but we will murder them if I land an engage. To do this, I need to conserve health at all costs, go in for a short trade, then re-engage for the kill. I need to control the bushes if possible to zone cait from CS or risk dying, but need to be very careful of Caits traps. Scaling is fairly even and whoever wins the lane is going to have a big say in detrmining the game. Given this, and the importance of dragons to Shyvana, Junglers can be expected to be paying attention to botlane this game. We need to be careful of Yasuo roaming as vlad is going to want to play for lane and scale safely. I'm happy with how I played generally. It was quickly apparent that Yuumi knew to aim for the bush back pocket, so I should have adapted and positioned on the lane-side edge. I stepped on traps a few times, needed to get sweeper much earlier, wards aren't very useful as Yuumi doesn't contest bushes. I missed some opportunities to roam mid/topside from base, and a couple of times I dithered on whether I should roam from lane (deciding not to). I think it generally worked out because at the time I was miking the decision it would have been too late to reach the fight, but if I'd noticed and made the decision earlier I might have had more impact. 1st death, retreating a few seconds sooner would probably have saved me and overchasing the Yuumi with low probability of getting her meant I died. 2nd death, not sure I could do much about this, Shyvana used ult to dodge my E well. It was 3v2 with Diana in the wings, so the fight looked good. Guess I should have had better awareness that more enemy could join the fight, and maybe kited toward topside river.

Samira/Maokai vs Draven/Nautilus: Draven and Nautilus are premier lane bullies, Samira and Maukai have a powerful all in, but all things being equal they are likely to beat us in a straight fight. Draven NEEDS early kills, and Samira becomes a monster at lvl6, so respecting them until she hits her spike is the most reliable way to play this imo. However, Draven was terrrible, so we punished hard when he gave us the opportunity. Entering lane I suspected Nautilus was in the near bush, I tried to cut him off so we could heavily damage him, but I messed up the angle on my Q. Having to use my ward against the potential invade was annoying, but I can't really contest the bushes againNaut's skillshot passive root combo anyway so staying in the wave to fight for lvl2 is probably the best plan. Given I was late to lane, I decided to concede the wave and respect. Once I get E, I don't have to play Nautilus' bush game and can poke and keep vision on him whilst pressuring Draven because ADCs are reliably allergic to standing near bushes that their support is sitting in. Not much I could do about taking the first 2 kills I don't think. I didn't know if we should fully crash the wave before 1st recall, but suspected we might get stuck in lane if we tried - so more important to spend kill gold. 2:50 I needed to go straight mid, I might have been able to help Jax against Fiddle before Nautilus turned up. Good flash+W+Q by me, but if I'd been there earlier it would have been better. 5:00 this was one of a couple of times my Q knocked Draven to safety, need to be more intentional with the angle. Jungle tracking failed to anticipate the gank. I didn't have a ward for the river and ADCs are too good to use theirs of course (except after the gank, in a place fiddle is not likely to re-gank from). 7:47 not sure what more I can do about this, would have been nice if Jax had decided to counter gank rather than taking the sexy sexy scuttle, but I can relate. 10:12, not sure what more I could have done in this fight, even if I was psychic and warded over the wall as soon as I could, we wouldn't have repositioned enough to escape fiddle, his angle was great. Sorry internet who believe that I am always to blame for loses and never to credit for wins, in this one I did my best but my team shat the bed, deal with it. Miss Fortune/Maokai vs Brand/Morgana: They do a lot of damage and have independent sources of hard cc, but are squishy and very immobile. Mages need kills in lane or else the shared xp of botlane will make them fall behind the game's power curve, whereas we scale with it just fine. Thus, we can chill for the most part and either wait for nocturne to come online and get some easy kills, or wait for them to overstep and blow one up. Playing in the wave to avoid Morgana's Q, sets us up for Brand's damage. Therefore, it is best if I distract morgana and fight her for the bushes, flushing her out with E and taking the space if I can. I was late to lane again, so had to give lvl2. I need to make sure I place my E against the lane wall to prevent the sapling being triggered by the wave. 27:56 missed an opportunity to flash+Q Brand when Morg put her Q on cooldown, we probably kill or get flash if I do, but maybe it is best to be patient and not force things? 28:42 1st death - do I live if I don't stall my movement to throw E? I think commet still gets me. I was miffed at MF for eating morgana Q, getting chunked and being out of position to follow up my pick, but she did actively use heal which nearly saved me. 29:28 classic getting hit by skillshot when focusing on using one of my abilities. 30:42 I should have stayed to hold the wave and protect nocturne from himself, but I really wanted boots and sweeper. 32:26 over commit for the sake of a bad gank. 33:21 roam from base had right intention, but I tried to do too much and took a bit too long. 34:51 2nd death, truly dreadful map awareness by me! 37:40 3rd death, worth. So yeah, I played ok and my team were better. Kai'Sa/Nami vs Miss Fortune/Swain: Didn't fancy taking Leona or Maokai into Swain, so the idea was to deny kills and out-useful him with Nami. MF Swain bring big damage, out range us and have pretty good synergy if they co-ordinate bullet rain with Swains E+W combo. I bring much better sustain and can enable Kai'Sa to speed into range and dodge stuff if we are good enough to coordinate it. Honestly, execution burden is on us this lane, making it a bit dicey. I was late to lane yet again, so no push for lvl2. The enemy were content not to press their advantage so it was quite chill. Me pinging off the countergank by Lilia almost got me killed and forced my flash. I thought it would be better if we just wasted Shaco's time and she cleared her camps promptly, but what did I know? Can see my movements and micro-decision making are much less sure on Nami than my engage champs. 56:00 hmmm, needed to save my Q to peel instead of just throwing it for no reason, needed to be sneaking aa's on Swain, needed to space my W and E on Kai'sa to give her maximum speed. Hard to save her when she gets hit by everything though. 57:26 Not sure I should really be roaming on Nami, ADCs always suicide (case-in-point), but I think in this case it was important to get mid prio before grubs. I guess I was lucky that Kai'Sa got herself killed so was able to stay to help the grubs fight. 59:20 support life. 1:02:45 I need to sort my bubbles out. I honestly wonder if I'd be better off playing Soraka, as 90% of what I do is run around healing people, I don't get anywhere near as much value from Nami's CC or empowered auto trades as I should. Soraka is so 1D though. 1:04:58 was not expecting to win this so hard, Nami power. My team were better, and scaled better, but this felt harder than it needed to be.

Samira/Leona vs Jihn Swain: J/S is a synergistic duo I have played a lot of myself. Swain is good into short range, low burst teams, and S/L are relatively low range at least. Swain is a mage and although his E is always relevant he relies on getting kills and assists to keep up with the curve of the game. S/L is a ferocious duo that definately have to tools to destroy this immobile enemy if we can avoid taking too much poke before our all-in. Our lvl6 is particularly devestating so it is okay to go even up until then, but we certainly can and want to estabilsh a lead lvl2-3. If we get a kill early and let the wave push into us we can kill at will whenever they walk up. I think we have a significant advantage in this match up. However, it doesn't go that way. We lost the lvl1 2v2 by one auto attack, probably I backed off a bit too far for a bit too long, but it was very close. I thought I was the one letting us down at the time, but in retrospect Samira was not playing great either - I don't understand why she sat back so far from the wave lvl2, was she even in exp range?! At least we killed the Jihn on the lvl2 engage. The gank was unfortunate, I possibly might have lived if I had run for tower immediatly after E-ing Eve, but at the time I thought we might be able to kill her as well. 4:47 this wrap-around was unfortunately timed, it could have got us the kill on Swain, but in the even I too chunked to be effective for a while after. The huge wave was probably the sign to just collect under tower, but I don't know that I won't look to do something similar again. Re-engaging at low health when it was clear Samira would never be able to back me up got me killed a third time, needed to sit back soak exp and regen then recall when they do. We got a lot of jungle attention, and I kept getting chunked down. The early deaths and 2v2 losses meant I was behind a level and couldn't afford refillable to top myself back up for re-engage kill attempts. 7:51 how the hell did Swain get into that bush?!? wp by him. My E back in after I'd escaped the ambush can only be described as panic decision making after being rattled by how this lane was going. 10:11 4th death, I was too low health and we were too far behind for me to be contesting space like this. I guess I misjudged when the wave was going to move and that misstep was not allowed. 12:20 This engage was maybe the last opportunity to get us back in the game. We would have won if we had focused and burst killed Jihn then turned on Swain. I could definately have E'd Jihn, but by targetting Swain first I inclined Samira to focus on him. Feels bad, this game was very winnable, I can't blame matchmaking, the Kha'Zix was trying, but we messed up botlane to hard. Jihn/Leona vs Samira/Soraka: My team was very off-roled. Despite that, most of us were doing well early, but Teemo's relentless feeding made it a 4v5. They ended up with too many threats - every single one of the enemy became a high level priority threat that we just could'nt coordinate well enough to take apart. S/S is not a good laning duo although they have sustain and scale very dangerously (which is what happened), J/L should win this lane. Jihn greatly outranges Samira and can poke her to soak Soraka's mana. I need to match Soraka to bait and dodge her Q, and look for opportunities to engage, chunk and retreat, re-engage, kill. I need sweeper early to allow me to set up a kingdom in the bushes. We should be able to poke them a zone them from the wave. Samira can't engage us alone, and if she can't farm she will fall too far behind to be useful (until late game when she will inevitably clean up a team fight and suddenly be a monster). I was caught off guard by Samira getting lvl2 first - because she go to lane first, and pushed the wave for solo xp. 37:31 I think my engage on Soraka was good, we were both lvl2 and she was lvl1 and the target we have to kill first, health was good, it was a cannon wave but the wave sizes were similar, and I pinged my intent ahead of time. This was just unlucky not to go our way (super glad I missed my E on the back end). 3:40 we got her on the re-engage (she appeared to be having some finger trouble). My roams seemed appropriately timed. 44:04 don't know why I stopped playing the bushes during this sequence, I was clearly trying to zone Samira from the wave, but it would still have been much more effective to do this by pushing up to control the bushes. Ults continue to be bad. 12:48 this was an important fight we messed up bad. Honestly, I actually think I played this game fine. Top gap, comp diff, autofill disparity. Jihn/Leona vs Ashe/Braum: I don't think there is anything wrong with J/L. As a duo they have high utility, and a balance of burst damage and staying power, range and melee capability. It just wasn't working out tonight. A/B are a classic duo with high utility and strong extended fight. I'm not sure either side drastically outscales the other. They actually seem quite strong into us because if Leona gets the desired engage onto Ashe, Braum blocks all of Jihn's follow up and I get stuck in a 1v2 from which it is hard to retreat. We need to find a way to split them up like we did at 1:21:48. I need to play in the wave to avoid getting pelted by Ashe E and Braum Q. It is hard to control the bushes against double skillshot poke, and even if I do get position, engaging on them is playing into their strength. Maybe roaming is the key in this match up? They want me to engage on them, but I don't think they have much active kill threat on Jihn? 1:17:26 1st death, not sure I could play this much different, I judge this worth for us. 1:18:39 2nd death roam to link up with jungler gone bad. I'm not sure about this - I think it was an over-reach too early by Vi, but it could have worked out if Braum hadn't seen me in that split second and we had been able to ambush graves from the buff bush. I think either way I had to move to support the play, but I had to run directly and immediately mid, compensating for Vi and trying to get her out got me killed. Actually, I was only lvl2! definately should have called this off. This had the knock on effect of Jihn proving that a roam heavy strategy would not have worked by getting pushed out of lane in the 1v2 and a sequence where we both ended up de-synced, allowing A/B to have their way with the lane. I fell really far behind in levels - wasn't even lvl six by the time of our 8min recall after winning that comeback fight at 1:21:48. 1:24:29 omg this tilted me, it was an easy sidestep. Sadly from this point on, enemy team realised that Jihn was our only hope and commensed repeat 4 man dive mode, the gap in top and mid was just to big to overcome.

Miss Fortune/Leona vs Caitlyn/Senna: Cait and Senna gonna poke, and I think Senna may have been buffed cuz I swear she healed them more than I expected her to. They are immobile and squishy so it is Leona default gameplay - conserve health lvl1, bloodbath lvl2. Turns out Senna can contribute respectable dmg in the first couple of levels so I can't be too gung-ho.I need to try and get bush control if I can, but prioritise staying healthy enough to engage, chunk them, and then have enough health to re-engage. MF was a bit slow to back me up lvl2, but she came through with a clutch heal. In general MF was not 'it' this game. 2:24 1st death WHERE WAS THE TRAP?! Need to respect when Cait goes near bushes, need sweeper. Just should have recalled, MF was full health and should have been fine, and I could have been back to help catch the wave. 3:09 engaging when I was lvl2 and fresh back to lane whilst they were lvl3 and looking to recall probably wasn't sensible, but it did set us up for a re-engage kill so it worked out in this case. 6:15 supp gap, suck it (don't look MF). 12:05 it is really hard to hit R raw, need to place it behind them so they have the choice of either walk into it or my E range, or flash. 14:02 supp gap, suck it.

Miss Fortune/Leona vs Caitlyn/Zyra: Quite a volatile lane, they are looking to poke heavily to keep our health too low to effectively engage, we are looking to punish their immobility by engaging and blowing them up. In terms of how games play out in bronze, I'd say we are more likely to have higher impact in the late game even if our champs don't 'technically' scale better - therefore the pressure is on them to get kills and plates to secure a lead. Leona's job is pretty simple here, conserve health lvl1, then engage whenever one of them steps up too far from lvl2+. Tracking the enemy jungler and establishing bush control is important to enable this. I think I need to match Zyra, and focus on drawing her attacks away from my ADC, dodging them, and seeing if she gives me an opportunity to E her when her E is down. I can also keep an eye on Cait's position and E her if she thinks I am distracted and oversteps. I need to control the bushes, but have to be very careful of Caitlyn traps and Zyra plants. Overall, I was able to do this to an adequately bronze level. I can see me generally applying the principles, but there are a lot of moments of principle violation e.g. 3:15 - overextend into big enemy wave, after taking too much damage contesting bushes. 1st death, stepping on bush trap then compensational engage, terrible. Need sweeper and more thoughtfulness about enemy ability usage. I notice multiple instances where I am not taking space I could be taking. Generally this doesn't lead to anything terrible, but it creates a small pressure vent in the lane when I fail to do this, allowing the enemy access to a little gold or exp they otherwise might not get, potentially costing us an opportunity to kill, or allowing the reverse if my counterpart is able to capitalise on it themselves. I'm noticing more and more that my positioning in quieter moments of the lane (i.e. when the enemy are not contesting the wave) just does not make much sense. I don't notice this at the time, and presumably I am acting on thoughts that seem pertinant in the moment, but in retrospect with fuller understanding of the map state these movements betray a lack of understanding of what is likely to happen and therefore where to be. Usually this comes down to standing in the open lane rather than in a lane or river bush. There is nuance to this, as sometimes I want to be standing toward river to spot out a feared gank (if we don't have wards), block a gank (if we do have wards, but I am still concerned), or fake a roam to get the enemy to overstep (if I feel confident they haven't got wards). Ultimately, these movements look wrong and I don't want to do them. 7:44 good time to roam mid, but poor execution. Worst thing was my not identifying what to do with the wave, I needed to let it keep pushing into Fizz and just zone Zoe off. I probably stayed too long, but I did get tempo over Zyra. 10:37 what is with the crazy hitbox on Leona's E?!?! 11:35 2nd death, full brain dysfunction, catastrophic misplay - I thought Vi and Fizz were free to move, but did not check where they were before I went in, just needed to float and let team position for grub fight. 3rd death, good identification of pick opportunity, just missed the E which would have been big. Did not have bandwidth to check minimap during fight - unfortunate, other priorities to improve on first. Jihn/Leona vs Warwick/Shen: A note - Warwick/Shen is, to be as charitable as possible, a bad cheese/gimmick lane. To be realistic, it is trolling. However, the WW player is has played 20+ games of ADC WW this split and has a 60-70% winrate depending on how far back the match history you go. As I said to Jihn in lobby, we want to avoid engaging these guys early and my job is just to peel and create space for Jihn to farm and poke. They are useless if they can't get on to us, and if they don't get kills the shared exp of the lane will make their champions fall to far behind the curve they are expected to opporate at. So we poke and farm and avoid giving them a chance to killl us until we are strong enough to smash them. I noticed and warned Jihn not to waste mana on WW, auto attacks are fine, but his healing will eat all Jihn's mana, better to spend mana on Shen. Walking up to hit tower at lvl3, then getting Shen taunted and having to flash out was super dumb, and ultimately contributed to Jihn's death to WW (although that was mostly his stupid choice of recall spot). I should basically never hit tower pre-5 mins as support - there is always going to be a better use of my time - in this case probably recalling for boots and a window to gank mid. 1st death was okay, broke the important rule with my E that took me under tower, but I didn't take damage from that and blocking the snowball for Jihn was the right move - shame he didn't judge the range of Nunu's ult correctly after. 2nd death, completely avoidable and very costly, I don't know why I moved forward, I guess I didn't realise Nunu was rolling in? In any case better map awareness during this sequence was needed. Ahri and I played well together, which made the game pretty easy to close out. My R's continue to be terrible.

Jihn/Leona vs Lucian/Nami L/N is a famously strong duo lane, with surprising and flexible (poke and all in) lane damage and good sustain. However, it has a high execution demand, whereas J/L are also lane strong and much easier to execute. Nami outscales Leona (but due to the nature of Bronze this basically doesn't come into effect), and Jihn probably outscales Lucian. This is a volatile lane as both sides are looking to dominate early and snowball - and should draw considerable jungle attention because of this. I wanted to ward early and recall for a sweeper to help me control the bushes and generate threat, I didn't realise that if I use the ward, the sweeper shares the cooldown - foiling my plan. I considered E+flashing Nami, but took too long to make the decision. In the end it was the right one as we burnt her flash for free. I tried to minimise damage taken at lvl1, which was harder without being able to clear the ward, but I'm happy with how I did. As they got to the wave first and had double range, they hit lvl2 first, though barely. I figured it would be bad to target Lucian as he can dash away and I will eat a tonne of dmg whilst they sustain back up, so Nami was my target (also no flash). She ran away at lvl2 so I waited, I missed a golden opportunity at 2:21 when she walked back up, Lucian overextended and Jihn (SHOCK-HORROR) moved to a great position to support me. The engage I found was ok, but a bit forced due to my concern that my lvl2 powerspike was slipping away and was less effective than it could have been. 1st death, it was the right thing to be aware of the potential gank and ward on the crashing wave, I was really happy with my pings to communicate the idea to my ADC. Unlucky that Nocturne was right where I feared. I guess this is a case of redundantly warding for danger you know exists and can play around? I will do this again and see how often it bites me - disaster in this case. I missed some potential opportunities to roam mid from base, Heimerdinger is scary to gank because he can 1v2 or just waste time quite easily, but it is important to put him behind - I was lucky my midlaner was good enough to handle him. 5:15 I messed up this sequence so badly. The initial engage was bad, too far up beyond the wave, targetting Lucian instead of Nami, they had item advantage after our deaths. I should have just made space for Jihn to freeze the wave for a bit and then backed off and waited under tower to catch them trying to crash it. Both sides ended up a bit chunked, which was ok if we could quickly force another fight, but worked to their advantage if not. Again lucky that Hecarim responded to gank, but I messed up again in letting Lucian slip past me, and the rest unraveled with Nocturd's counter gank. Game was not looking good at this point, and it was largely my fault. I continued this by making the same mistake of engaging deep against stronger enemies instead of letting my ADC farm relatively safe waves, I'm surprised Jihn didn't flame me more. 8:52 Trying to follow up on Jihn's ult was the right idea I think, it almost worked, shame the trap didn't get the shutdown kill for him on Nocturne, but that put me back in the game, which helped a lot to undo the consequences of my errors. 10:51 we overstayed taking the wave after getting the plate, I was worried about this at the time, definately should not gone back to hit the tower more, need to listen to the ol' gut, we had a relatively small window to get out. 12:38 I probably should have dived Lucian as I had ult, but I was worried it could go badly wrong and played it safe. My ult usage continues to be bad, proabably the single highest priority thing to improve.

Jihn/Leona vs Aphelios/Shaco We are stronger in lane, the danger is Shaco roaming and harassing our jungler and Aphelios' scaling. However, I should be able to match Shaco's pressure and cc chain aphelios to death whenever he steps up, so I think we are quite favoured here. They hit lvl2 first which is why I backed off. I didn't E into the bush with Shaco when I hit lvl2, because I knew he had a box in there, I made the right decision to move up and engage on Aphelios. Subsequently, I could have played further up the lane (away from Shaco's bushes) to stress Aphelios' CSing and look for a re-engage before the wave pushed closer to tower and the danger of taking tower shots - which is what happened. The death was worth, but unnecessary, and we could have gotten a bigger lead if I'd played the sequence better. I struggle with zoning ADCs off last hits, it seems like I try to do it and they shoot me and get the last hit on the minions anyway - and this Aphelios didn't punish me nearly as much as he could have. I need to NEVER EVER use E on an enemy in the zone in front of the tower (unless they are on <2/3 health and we are going to dive) it is going to get me killed very reliably. 2nd death unfortunate, I think you have to go for these on Leona, so I'd do it again. I could have flashed toward river but I think I still die as Shaco would chase me down. I wonder if aa-Q-aa would quick kill a Shaco box, like with wards? Creating better lane pressure translated to roam tempo over Shaco which enabled me to gank mid first (even though this ended up going the enemy's way in the end, because Yasuo didn't respect Shaco) and getting back to bot to kill Aphelios and put him further behind. I don't think it would have been wrong to stay mid protecting Yasuo and helping with grubs. I was lucky that Morde decided to help Amumu, as if he hadn't, the kill on Aphelios would not have been worth the loss of Yasuo, Amumu and grubs. 9:09 I played this as well as I could becides ping the target for Amumu so he might not totally grief us. 3rd death obviously if I look like I am winning lane the enemy coordinates a 4 man gank like they are in the LEC (still waiting for my team to ever do this for me). If I had ulted the group of them under tower instead of going in with E it might have been better, but I thought I was going to die and only Shitmumu was near so didn't want to waste R. After the dragon fight I realised Morde was the win con and played around him. Sivir/Leona vs Caitlin/Nautilus Pretty balanced matchup, Naut and Leona have quite a similar laning pattern, and Cait and Sivir have a similar long range poke playstyle. Nautilus was finding more engages in us than I was on them, but my Sivir was doing much more than the Cait so I feel like we were winning. I deliberately moved to body block Nautilus hooks, which got me killed a few times. I needed to pay better attention to whether Sivir had her shield, as she showed she was good enough to use it to cancel the hook, so my sacrifice may not have been needed sometimes. We took a lot of enemy jungler attention, and I didn't know Leona's limits well enough to make the judgement to counter engage or just run away. 11:04 my roam toward topside was poorly timed, Gragas was sure to back and dragon was spawning, me not being botside to contest the wave push and establish river control was bad. The fact we didn't survive or turn many of the ganks (which soon turned into 4 man mob squads) was a big factor in the game. The one time our team sent our mid and jungle to help us, holy sh*t what do you know? We turned the fight. Shocking. Ultimately, our team's coordination was dog, and theirs was miles better. Despite that we came so close to winning, and might have done so if Sivir had followed us on our desperate nexus assault instead of farming for next game.

Nilah/Rakan vs Vayne/Teemo I think Nilah/Rakan should play pretty similar to Samira/Rakan, except that the passive experience will change when we hit powerspikes and so shift the pace of the lane slightly. They outrange and out damage us, we out sustain them and should blow them up on an all in if we have not taken too much poke. I need to match Teemo to allow Nilah to access the wave without getting burnt down, fighting for bush control (get an early sweeper, and invest in a few extra pink wards than normal) is important to allow me to do this without eating free dmg. Teemo is less mobile than Vayne so we should probably be looking to catch and oneshot it first if possible. We hit lvl2 on the 2nd melee minion of the 2nd wave which caught me a little by surprise, but I don't think I would have wanted to act differently - engaging on the pip would have gotten me 2v1'd and chunked out before Nilah could get involved. We got a good chunk on Teemo, but this would still probably have been a kill with any other engage support champ. 2:42 I got myself chunked for no reason trying to trade autos with Teemo ready for lvl3, put myself in their triangle when Nilah could not support me. 4:02 I made the correct judgement to leave this wave and back. Should I have run top straight after? I didn't know if I would be in time and figured we would be losing out on Nilah's passive if I were to take that long a detour from returnign to lane. lvl4 we were clearly no match for double dmg lane, lesson learned. 10:46 if i had hit Q I would have survived this, using W instead of E to escape was super dumb. I needed to find more windows to roam and gank for Twitch, but I didn't see them and having a Nilah made it less feasible even if I had. Ultimately, things did not go our teams way several early skirmishes and we did not play slow enough to farm back in or coordinate in the way our unorthodox team needed to. Ashe/Rakan vs Miss Fortune/Seraphine I gave this Ashe an uneccessarily hard time in chat, I don't think Ashe/Rakan is a good combo (too much utility not enough damage) and Ashe players are consistently the worst ADCs in my experience this split. This Ashe was actually decent, my apologies to her. The enemy out poke and out sustain us with at least equal scaling, we basically have to rely on jungle ganks until we hit lvl6 and can stun lock and focus down MF (going for seraphine risk MF ulting us for a double kill). I messed up the lvl2 engage (or rather the follow up one), again committing too deep (and missing an easy W) to where the enemy could free hit me without reprisal from my ADC. 30:42 at lvl3 I needed to stop MF running past me to kill Ashe, it was a split second window (that I wasn't expecting) to W her early as a deterent, as her move speed meant there was nothing I could do to actually stop her running Ashe down if she wanted to. I have gotten much better at hitting Q in lane over these last few blocks, it really makes a difference to the lane experience if not the actual game result. 8:08 this was very frustrating, not sure what I should have done - 1v2 in dragon pit would not have gone well, running past to Gragas basically puts us in a 2v3, probably should have just gone back to the wave with Ashe to get lvl6. Vayne/Nami vs Miss Fortune/Serphine MF/Sera seems pretty popular at the moment. Strong poke, good sustain, good late game. Their weakness is that they are immobile and squishy. Vayne is a hyper-scaling duelist that is usually too unforgiving for a bronze player to pilot. Nami can help sustain her through lane, and actually has pretty good trading, chase down and cc synergy. If Vayne and I play aggressive (and well) we can do stuff in this lane, but it is quite volatile. If we get behind it is going to be tough, especially because our waveclear sucks. Not sure it matter too much who I match - distracting Sera creates space for vayne, poking MF distracts her last hits and soaks Sera's mana to keep her topped up. In this case they were really bad and let me harrass them at will and Vayne was also responsive and aggressive. I do miss out on the edge of the range for getting W to bounce a few times, I need to target the enemy rather than self to make sure I get both dmg and heal. As usual, being slow out of base costs me important exp. 1st death I needed to flash basically as soon as we saw the gank and then immediatly ult the gankers to get out of this, was not expecting to get 4 manned (why does my team NEVER do this for us?). I messed up R+Q combo at dragon fight but otherwise happy how I played it.

Why is the match making designed to force an autoloss if every game has is supposed to have a 50/50 ...sounds more like the devs perverting the game to favoure their stupidy..like riot August Buffing champs he plays and reaching his highest rank .....wow riot ....yeah i think its time to pull the plug ...thats not a competitive element

Miss Fortune/Rakan vs Kai'Sa/Soraka: Kai'sa and Soraka technically outscale us, although we are no slouches late either and have good ult synergy. However, their whole team outscales ours across the board (except karthus i guess), has relatively low execution demand, and they were slaughtering us early - we were 2/12 down at 15 mins! :/ I think who I match is less important in this lane, as MF really needs to be commiting poke into Soraka, but it is also good if I can be baiting and dodging Soraka's attacks. I really had this Soraka's number. I wasn't doing anything special, just how I naturally move happened to hard counter how this player naturally attacks. At it's very most extreme basic, league is a game you win if you hit your abilities and dodge the enemy's. Roaming to help irelia kill brand could have been viable, but she 'should' win that without me and winning bot lane is both possible and important. I do well to body block Kai'Sa for my ADC, like i did to Jihn in the last review block - I think this is something I wasn't doing anywhere near enough until recently and is an important part of Rakan's playstyle. 1st death omg what was I thinking here? I needed to be calling this off like fire, not aiding and abetting Karthus' crazy plan. 2nd death caught out by gank, probably could have played it better, but overall this is a good death. 18:00 throughout the game Bel'Veth proves tricky to lock down with her multiple quick dashes and this river skirmish demos it. I have to be basically on top of her to hit W to minimise her time to react or else it is too easy for her to dodge. I need to contest her with position and holding abilities as a threat because there isn't really much I can do to her without back up. My target priority in later fights wasn't the best - my job was to lock down the body of their team and keep them off my carries, but I knew soraka had to die and noone else on my team was going for her, tough. I think realising I needed oblivion orb was important, fights felt considerably easier after I picked it up and I think it makes more sense for Rakan than thornmail as my abilities are aoe, enemies shouldn't be spending a protracted time hitting me, and I scale well with AP.

Happy to find your channel! I saw your comment on the loosing streak video and as an adc main I love to watch support replays :) iron/ bronze too btw!

The player quality has noticably dropped since I tanked my MMR playing Swain. Ezreal/Nami vs Caitlyn/Thresh: Probably the best I have played Nami so far, I give the ezreal some flak in the subtitles for fun, but I am actually pretty pleased with this game. I am still not bullying as much as I need to in lane, I still miss -time, -sequence and -target my abilities, but it has gotten better. I even hit a pretty decent ratio of bubbles. My first few deaths are all primarily due to map awareness issues, although small misteps like not quite being behind the minions on the first one also contribute. The matchup is a 50/50 based on skill and execution I think, we have better sustain, they have better waveclear. We want to constantly poke them down, they want to set up catches to burst us down. I need to match Caitlyn as it is safer for Ezreal to match and poke Thresh. Twitch/Rakan vs Jhin/Pyke: They outdamage us in lane, we outsustain and heavily outscale - therefore we want to play conservative, bide our time and wait for them to mess up, or for our jungler to gank. Don't fight Pyke lvl1, unsurprisingly Rakan does not win. I need to match Pyke to create space for Twitch wasting his cc abilities and Qing him to keep us topped up. Save W for peeling twitch. 1st death was lack of map awareness (enemy team did a good ambush here) and greeding for a Q. 2nd death was a silly over-force after not really playing the skirmish right, misjudging damage, failing to target with ignite and poor camera control. Ezreal/Rakan vs Miss Fortune/Seraphine: They outscale us on balance and both are great teamfighters. They match or outdo our damage and poke, and should also outsustain us as seraphine's sustain is less conditional. We need to catch and chunk them, and then zone them from the wave, but it is not a great matchup for us. Our strength is Ezreal's ability to lane 1v2 and my ability to roam. Both mids are relatively low mobility high damage mages and I have a nocturne. I think I needed to play roam heavy for mid and jungle. In lane I need to match Seraphine to draw her artillery poke away from Ezreal, which I'm happy I was doing. I definately need to play in fog, more especially in down time (learn the exp range better so I can hide and still level), and respect Seraphine's bush cheesing - she caught me several times, and 1st death was a facepalm moment. Map awareness continues to be a cause of deaths for me and my ADC - need to be pinging the danger out. 2nd death not cutting losses, very unlikely i get my ezreal out with only enough mana for 1 ability. 3rd death didn't respect hwei's power or frankly anticipate his cc, needed play it slower and bait abilities, my low health would probably have been enough to keep him interested.

Seraphine/Swain vs Caitlyn/Morgana: I'm bad. Ashe/Senna vs Corkie/Brand: Ashe was bad. Swain/Nautilus vs Jihn/Morgana: I'm bad. Jinx/Rakan vs Caitlyn/Nautilus: We are weaker in lane, but not toothless, and outscale them. Bush control is useful for both supports here, but Nautius has the advantage due to his multiple cc abilities. Therefore, I should attempt to contest the bushes if he lets me, but not force it too hard and prioritise keeping the bushes warded and keeping pressure on the wave. I think I did that acceptably. I should usually be trying to match Nautilus to body-block his hook and keep pressure off Jinx to allow her to farm. Caitlyn's range makes it more difficult for me to match her without eating damage for free. However, I should look to stress her when she goes to last hit if Nautilus lets me, ideally soaking an auto or two from her with passive and Q to get her to miss a high value minion. I think I managed to keep pressure on her ok in general, but didn't really work around last hit windows. I should simply create space for Jinx, look for Q opportunities, and save my W to peel for her rather than trying to start any 2v2 engage. Jinx did well to poke them down, and I made things harder for us by W engaging and getting chunked/killed. I use my E for no actual reason too often, and a couple of times that meant it wasn't up to block lethal damage on a teammate. A couple of times I struggled to find my E target with my cursor. Didn't manage any smooth long range engage combos, as usual. R usage needs to be better, a couple miss-timed, I seem to get stunned just as I use it quite frequently (which means I'm doing it at the wrong position/time), a few instances of putting myself in a bad position in order to hit as many enemies as possible. Pretty pleased with flashing the Malphite ult, that is hard to do.

​ For those who think that it isn't rigged: nah bro dw riot, a very wealthy corporation, got there by having a fair game, by wanting everyone to have fun... for sure they did not manipulate anything to get rich... for sure they don't manipulate anything. they want money, and EOMM is very known and the best way to make out-of-this-world profits, but of course, riot is for sure full of good guys wanting people to have fun without even wanting to exploit them, for sure bud, riot does not exploit anyone, sure!!! don't worry, riot doesn't want any money from anyone, so they clearly won't manipulate the matchmaking and elos of each person to make them play more, which makes them talk more about the game, leading to new players, who know about skins and everything in which they can use their money on, hyped by buffs to champions and even Arcane, with extremely-produced cinematics and colaborations with very famous artists, with emotional videos about faker and a very expensive skin, but no, of course not, i'm paranoid right? the people in riot just want people to have fun, they do not want any profit whatsoever, they don't even make u lose when u are 1 game away from getting promoted, they don't even give you the worst teammates ever when u keep playing after u lose, of course, having easy wins and then suddenly all your teammates are bad and you lose 12 in a row is not manipulated, sure!!! me destroying diamond and emerald players, reaching plat with 25 wins when starting in silver 1, and then losing 9 games in iron and getting hardstuck is not manipulated, for sure, as someone who reached plat, which supposedly is miles above iron, how could i win in iron? fair!!!! fair!!!! it is fair!!!! a plat player would never win in iron, cause of course, plat is not even above iron, right? give me a break, wtf

Yorick vs Akshan: ADC matchups are toughest for Yorick i'm finding, their autos do a lot of damage and are unmissable and they sustain better than mages with runes, items, and the fact they use their abilities less to CS. 1st game of the night and having not played for a few days I felt a little rusty going into this, but at least I can see me trying to space and preserve health. This Akshan was S3, and I could feel the difference between him and the Bronze players I have been facing. I think he was better at certain things than me, but I don't think he was a better player overall. It is interesting, I feel like the low/mid silver players this split are like the high silver/low gold players of previous splits (except the Volibears). Is this due to my perspective swap from jungle? Anyway, hitting E with 3 graves is sooooo critical, I still struggle to watch my minions to gage when the enemy will move up to last hit so I can tag 'em. I can really feel how every missed E makes the game harder. Shame we lost this game, it seemed to start off well. To me it looks like my team just utterly thundersh*t the bed, dying at every possible opportunity and completely ignored my calls. Obviously there is so much I could do better, this was winnable. I didn't support my team's lead well enough early enough, I didn't time my split pushes well enough with my team's (non-existant) pressure, although I think getting top tier 2 and multiple waves was worth by that point in the game - absolutely can't believe bounties weren't up by then though. I liked the idea behind my TP to dragon, but I played it bad. I don't think grouping with team for fights would have worked, the enemy were stronger, out-ranged us, and were better coordinated. Ultimately, to win this game I think I needed to win 1v2 in the sidelane instead of dying, I just don't know how. The enemies were too fed and I wasn't fed enough. Akshan and Quinn weren't great players but they kited me well enough. There were a few moments when I wasn't sure whether I should roam/TP bot or hit mid tower and I think I made the wrong decisions. Interestingly, watching this back made me more annoyed than when I was playing the game. Just have to think of it as was winnable if I was MUCH better, but really a game the system intended me to lose. Ashe/Nami vs Jinx/Thresh: We outsustain them in lane, but they outscale us and are still dangerous in lane with more damage and good gank set up. Quite volatile. Luckily Thresh was atrocious and my ADC at least knew that attacking the enemy sometimes = gud. I was able to create strong pressure in the lane because they were too bad to punish me. However, I got hit by some hooks I shouldn't because I was focusing on using my abilities rather than prioritising dodging the (more dangerous) hook first. I also didn't sequence my E and W for trading (i.e. self E to speed myself up to get into range for a surprise aa+W trade. A lot of my bubbles were unfortunate e.g. despite throwing from bush, the enemy would move in a way I didn't predict. During chases, I am finding aiming Q a bubble length in front of the target, despite it being beyond the range indicator, improves hit chances. I got de-synced from my ADC too much, which on one occasion you can see how that caused Ashe to nearly die under tower and have to burn her flash - if you aren't with them an ADC's IQ drops 100 units, I need to be there to provide the IQ buff. I missed a key opportunity to pull the trigger when we hit lvl6. The enemy were extended up the lane and Ashe had ult. I needed to self E, R them both and Q chain one of them (ideally Jinx, but Thresh might have been higher percentage). I sense Ashe was responsive enough to have followed up with her R. I suspect moments like this have a big impact over game results, and it was bad to miss this. I do not know why I sold 2 red pots to buy refillable, straight up threw 110 gold on the ground, I knew as soon as I did it, shows I wasn't calm enough. Our team mega diffed the enemy, so this was an autowin regardless of what I did - top laner champs in mid baby. Yorick vs Xerath/Volibear: Classic case of a mage matchup that should in theory be tough due to range, wave clear, and self peel/gank set up advantage on the part of the mage, but in bronze is the free-est lane you ever did see because, whether or not they hit their skillshots they burn through their mana trying to match your shove and can't space well enough to avoid being mobbed by ghouls and either killed or completely pushed out of lane. As usual, they pull the dogsh*t midlaner out and put in the 'better' top/ADC. Also as usual, Volibear mid is trash because he doesn't have the space to run you down in a short lane, and he falls off a cliff without kills or overbuffed toplane exp. I can't believe how much Aurora seemed to struggle against the Xerath, she seemed decent and he was GARBOAGE. I'm shocked how many kills the guy ended up being gifted after I had made him a caster minion. My death at 2nd dragon was because I felt strong and did not respect the enemy team enough, causing me to not consider missing players and get baited by Senna. 4th death was an overstay and not respecting MF enough. 3 item ADCs can be dangerous for Yorick in an open lane if you miss an E, especially if I am building squishy lethality. 5th death might have been a compensation death, although I feel it was possible to clean up a couple of enemies if I played it slower.

Kindred vs Amumu: Poor neglected Kindred. Oof I am really rusty. Early game started off well, although I'm annoyed I missed the smite on Amumu's red, but my info gathering was dull, and so I neglected my lanes too much, and my macro broke down as the game decended into chaos. I was too fight-shy and camp/objective hungry, and in most of the fights I took, my mechanics let me down. That last point is especially annoying given that one of my two goals this split was to improve my pvp mechanics by laning (the other being to increase games played by swapping to a less mentally taxing role). It is certainly looking like this split has been a total waste of time. Playing more games hasn't made me feel or look like a better player, and I have regressed on my main champions and role. Yorick vs Veigar/Volibear: I'm not sure why they swapped mid/top, I would have though the matchup was better with Veigar mid, Voli top. Veigar was doing a good job of dodging my E, and given that, his range advantage was letting him stack easily. It might be that Volibear was struggling to farm against ranged top and forced it. The player was clearly quite unhinged, regardless. In any case, with veigar pre-6 I just need to make graves when I can and slap him with E a couple of times to chunk him out to the point I can zone him off the wave and starve him. lvl6+ I should be able to keep him perma under tower and help my jungler with objectives. Veigar likely shouldn't roam, and with his trap and AP damage he can probably kill Maiden quite quickly, meaning that getting all the plates off his tower won't be so easy. Probably I should half-roam with my jungler to pressure the map and then gank my own lane if Veigar dared to press forward while I was gone. I can see how Volibear could be tough for Yorick in top lane, but the short lane means he had no space to run me down. After a point, when he hasn't got a lead through kills and zoning CS he falls off. I'm not exactly sure when that point is because this player was so garbage. Yorick vs Heimerdinger: This matchup is pure cancer. Heimer outranges and perma zones you from the wave with his turrets - which you can't Q for graves!?!?!?! so pre-6 you struggle to make graves, so you can't effectively poke him with E. I think I just need to farm under tower as he can't help but shove the wave. This makes him easier to gank early, so need to stay healthy and call the jungler in - there is a short window before he is strong enough to 1v2 which needs to be seized. At lvl6/first item his damage is MAD! I rushed merc treads, but his wave zoning and easy last hitting via turrets meant he had a huge CS lead and so could hit full 1st item quickly. Eating one combo would leave me on 1/4 health! Baiting his ult is easy, just walk at him like you are going to engage, then run as soon as he drops it. However, he absolutely obliterates Maiden with his high AP and item advantage, and it is difficult to stop her getting into his range or pulling her out before she dies. This means you can't even generate ghouls from the wave to poke him post-6. WifiYorick suggested taking comet and going E max first, which will help attrition his health. I think this is the play, I even started putting extra points into E this game for this reason, although not having the sustain from fleet footwork will hurt - second wind and refillble will have to do. The suggestion to call the jungler for ganks is sound, but unreliable and after a point it is what Heimer wants you to do. The suggestion to play aggressive I don't agree with, Heimer's whole identity is to bait and turn aggression against itself, and area control against people that understand that. In practical terms, I think the best strategy is to communicate with the team that either we should swap lane assignments, or that I will be playing turbo safe (CS under tower, trying to E poke) until bot tower goes down and I can sidelane. I need to ask the jungler to lvl2-4 gank Heimer and then leave the lane well alone. I don't know how Akali handled him so easily in game 1.

Volume needs a boost I assume you're doing reverse boosting

Guys, I can't overstate how much fun this is. The games I lost, I still had an absolute blast - actually feels better than winning on some other champs because the game itself is such a thrill. Honestly, I pat myself on the back for facing this as Diana and beating it. Yorick mid is MONSTEROUS. Yorick vs Xerath (and Samira, and Morgana, and Shen, and Vi): I can't believe we lost this game with the lead we had. This is my first time ever playing Yorick mid (before this I did one normal game where I got filled to top) I AM SO BAD! But look at how easy it is to spank this Xerath, even when I fail to dodge literally any of his abilities! Then Samira fancies herself a smurf and takes over only to get spanked as well. Yorick mid completely warped the game - tier 2 mid tower down at 12 mins!!! Incidently, I think this game shows the only counter to low elo Yorick mid. You HAVE to lane swap the dog***t midlaner out and sub the best player (Top or ADC in). Then the whole team HAS to goon squad mid at every possible opportunity. The enemy are NEVER allowed to leave mid unguarded. I wish I could honour this Vi, she did everything she needed to against this BS. My build was a hodgepodge mess, still figuring it out. I wanted sustain so I went RH, but I think I need to commit either to lethality with PH or bruiser with TH. My split push attempts were awful. What, my team thought they were doing I dare not speculate, but I blame myself - it was always going to be tough against 9 enemies, but I know I could have won this game. Yorick vs Katarina: Kudos to Katarina, she was better than me. Did it matter? F**K no. Yes, my Tryndamir was a whole division higher than everyone else in the lobby and sat on them (for once, usually the abnormally high ranking person feeds into outer space). I reckon I did my part - taking tier 2 mid at 15mins, for example. I CS'd horribly and miss-timed all my abilities as Katarina ran circles around me, but who had pressure like they were winning lane the whole time? This guy. My build was a mess again. I wanted sustain so I could absorb Katarina's trades and keep sustaining myself out of lethal range - I wonder if BORK would be better which would then allow me to go lethality or bruiser core item paths? I'll have to try out WifiYorick's sustain runes, that might be enough to forgoe a lifesteal item altogether - but I'll miss GotU trades and free boots. Yorick vs Leblanc: Don't know what it is with my top laners picking Tryndamere when they see a Yorick... anyway, the game is all the same thing. Spank the mid laner, spank both the mid towers pre-20 mins, choke them to death with waves. I need to time my Q better. As for the matchup, I don't think this person showed me much of what Leblanc can do. I know I need to dodge the chain, and be wary of whatever her instant jump in-bomb-disappear combo is, but otherwise it seemed pretty safe to ignore her, push wave and bonk anything that comes into range. I need to be patient and wait for 3 graves before using E, and use E when they go to last hit or when they think I am going to last hit - EQ just before last hit for the surprise mist and extra ghoul feels smooth. They were all pretty squishy, so PH felt really good, but I am still too much of a wussy to commit to full lethality. Yorick vs Galio: Yikes, do I get to call team diff? Probably not, this was totally winnable. Galio seems like a tougher nut for Yorick to crack, but eventually he is going to ult away and lose his towers. I think its okay to trade quite liberally early and farm GotU, we can't kill each other until lvl3. Need to wait for him to use his gust attack and passive ground pound before going in. The gust actually does a lot of damage sometimes, prioritise attention to anticipating and dodging it - he tended to use it when I approached my backline minions. I'm not sure about my first recall - it was good as I could exactly buy tiamat, TP back and use Maiden to get 2 plates. But it was bad because it let Galio roam bot for a double kill and I missed a cannon. Backing earlier to keep Galio in lane would ultimately have been better I think. Fed Urgot and fed Volibear were a lot to handle, but if I was a bit smarter with timing my split push/grouping and TP use I think our team comp would have won eventually. If I could have helped Swain and Twitch out earlier and kept them alive in fights it could have gone the other way. In the end there was no stopping them all charging one by one into the meat grinder on repeat. I think full bruiser was the right build choice in this game. Yorick vs Fizz: Yum yum egotistical assassin players. Fizz seems pretty similar to Katarina, saving Q and toggling target champions only for a mega GotU pro when they pop out next to you is probably important. Same key issues to iron out as all the other games, same relentless pressure regardless. I need to save my Q to last hit the first minion so I get a grave. I think if I pay attention to making sure I have 3 graves when I hit lvl2 that will make a big difference. I liked how I saved my Q to bonk Fizz so much early, though. I think I could have played more aggressive and zoned him off CS once I had the health lead and he had used his pots. I definately need to stop using E when I have no graves. My W placement is a thing of wonder - its going to take a little time for me to get a feel for where to place it. Imagine what this is going to be like if I learn to go into the mid-late game with a bit more farm and a positive KDA! I needed to find an opportunity to recall sooner, staying in lane OOM cost WW his life. Wasting flash stupidly and aggressively, got me killed on the gank moments later. Just don't flash aggressively during lane, there is no point. If they are chunked so bad you are flashing for a kill, they are almost certainly going to have to leave lane and give me plates or be totally unable to help their team and miss CS.

Swain vs Lux: Ew, dodge one skill shot pls. Diana vs Fizz: Matchup seems okay for Diana, like Katarina but a bit harder maybe. Q gives me a huge range advantage, Fizz can dodge it with his E polevault, but this is also his main waveclear, trading and escape tool, and I'm pretty sure my Q has a lower cooldown. Make sure to use Q from max range so he can't both dodge it and damage me. At lvl3 I have the option Q to make him E and then raw EW run away trade on him, I think I win that hard. I have to be careful of his ignite all in once I get to 50% health. Lust like Katarina, I want to pressure waves and try to prevent river skirmishes at all costs. 19:41 not sure what I should have done here. I could not contest the wave when Fizz wash shoving, and I pinged repeatedly when he left lane to roam bot. I can't give up that cannon wave to immediately follow him. I could give up the next wave and head bot to try to clean up if the enemy dive the tower, but I might not get there in time, might get collapsed on as I get there, and I think my wave would be slow pushing out meaning I would lose more CS and Fizz can turn up to collect a big wave without missing much. Hitting the tower seems pointless. My guess is I should have roamed top immediately after shoving wave to tower to gank Rumble or at least take pressure off the Malphite. My 1st death was so dumb, I played it so poorly. I'm 2 lvls up and can't fight him :'( . 27:46 I needed TP bot but I thought they had it and I would give up too many plates mid. 29:14 compensating for team losing a fight I was far too late for, face checking that f***ing bush that always has a pile of enemies in it. Diana vs Syndra: Diana favoured I believe - Diana is a counter to control mages. I need to play outside of the wave so she has to choose to Q me or the minions. If I want to bait her to shove or waste Q on a non-last hit I should stand next to the minions and focus on dodging when she throws it. Otherwise Q poke and preserve health as normal. Hmm, scatter the weak is quite hard to dodge, but generally it seems to put her in range for my QEWaa combo, which trades at least evenly. For this Syndra, walking up - walking back - then immediately turning and walking up again got her to wander into my Q range quite reliably, should have abused that more. Neeko became a problem, I just didn't have the mental stack to factor her in - pretty good support for low elo with damage, cc and very powerful roam potential. Diana vs Yorick: This was not a pleasant laning experience. Not sure how this matchup is supposed to go, but it gave me a hard time. Yorick just outsustains the Q poke, relentlessly pushes the wave and does tonnes of damage. It is risky to QWEaa trade because he can wall you in with his roided up zombies and he just sustains back up with his shovel. Oblivion orb first item was needed I think, you can see the heal cut reducing his shovel heal, he'd have been perma full health otherwise. lvl6+ you can't match him and the maiden in lane, but you can't roam or he will make marmalade out of your tower. I have started dropping my wards in the middle of the lane. This is because they are guarenteed to give me ghost poro stacks as fast as possible. I mostly rely on my internal jungle tracking clock, enemy laner positioning and map state to know where the enemy jungler is and avoid ganks, and it doesn't tend to be river wards that save me. I think putting the ward on enemy chickens is probably the best value for this strategy though. 47:28 I think I was lucky Yorick lost his nerve and flashed out of his own all in, I think he kills me if he sticks it out. After this, the sustain difference become very apparent, I'm all out and he just keeps getting more health, needed to TP reset on the cannon wave. The trick seems to be, QQQ to proc his bone plating and take a bit of health off, then wait until he doesn't have many graves and all in, if you can somehow dodge the mist-spunk great, use E2 to follow him over his wall (just beware tower). Don't do this if he has the Maiden. If she is out, QQQ her to death first, that thing needs to die, especially if you are building off-tank not assassin.

I am only going to be reviewing the first 15 mins or so of each game. If I can learn to consistently get ahead in this stage of the game, that should be enough to climb for now. I haven't decided on a champ pool. For now, I am playing Diana because she is simple, fun and I have experience on her from playing Jungle. If she is banned I'll play Taliyah or Swain. If team really needs AD, I will probably play Kindred. Diana vs Swain: Seems like a very easy match up for Diana. Play default vs ranged, except don't have to respect quite as much as usual because of Swain's short range and low damage. I take a lot of unnecessary Qs and autos trying to go for minions. Q outranges Swain's Q and E so just hit him with it whenever he goes to last hit, and make sure it last hits a creep or two at the same time. Walk up and back to bait his abilities and drain mana. Aim to all in lvl3. Swain is not really dangerous until lvl6, so long as you don't eat EW combos. E and W are easy to dodge individually because of Diana's high base movement speed (which I LOVE btw). MY CSing IS HORRENDOUS! 03:00 my roam was terrible, good to spot out and pressure the jungler in wave down time, but it was too far. Getting the vision was all I needed to do then back to wave. Why did I ward topside bush when I know Jungle and Support ganks will be coming from bot side? On my first back I had a tonne of HP and mana, Swain was low and hadn't based, I probably should have stayed longer? 05:51 Swain missed 2 abilities so I went for a trade, but did not respect his ult. Once Swain is lvl6 my number 1 priority should be to fake an all in to bait his ult and run away, then kill him when it ends. 1st death, right idea execution not quite there, I either need to E2 immediately to get behind him before it will put me under tower, or full focus on dodging his E. Safer just to not have taken E2 in this case, but I just don't know Diana's lethal well enough. 08:11 perfect ult bait, missed an opportunity to kill if I had E'd to the wave and ulted after. Boots first item are good for dodging skill shots and chase down. My roams all failed, partly due to Shen, but mostly because of my poor awareness of map state. Diana vs Katarina: Seems like an easy lane, just need to deny river skirmishes at all costs. Play default vs melee, dodge the dagger bounce and don't stand near them. Relentless QQQ, why did I back off when she was shoved under tower? Keep Qing her! lvl3+ I think Kat waits for me to Q then blinks in to dodge it and engage. Not too bad so long as I save W for this and keep the trade really short so she doesn't get to stack conqueror. Needed to Reset after Zyras gank and TP back in. Need to make sure every Q last hits a minion so I get value even if I miss the enemy, and don't end up pushing waves into enemies that haven't taken much damage. Ah, I think Katarina gets a blink reset if she blinks to a dagger (and presumably when she kills someone). Basically I should not ult her unless she jumps on me and roots herself with her ult, my knock up should cancel it right? Seems better to rush lichbane over boots, I'm not going to match her speed and want to avoid roaming much, so I need damage to poke, shove waves, and defend against her all in. Trundle vs Volibear: When you queue mid you have to be prepared to off role. As an aside, the queue timers are noticably longer for mid than Jungle or Support. I haven't played Top lane or Trundle in years. It was crazy how a health deficit from one lost trade made the lane completely unplayable. I had no idea what items to build, probably triforce was too expensive, BORK first? Ultimately I minimised as best I could under tower, then in the mid game I took towers like a demon and grouped with my team to kill Volibear when he mispositioned. Trundle is fun, will probably keep him as my toplane pick as I think Swain and Diana will be too unforgiving. Diana vs Akali: I suspect this is a matchup I will be playing a lot. Seems very Akali favoured.

#1 - This is the most games of soloq I have ever played in a single split/season. My average since 2021, when I started playing, is 48.4 games. I am super happy to have finally hit this basic, entry level, number of games - due almost entirely to the reduced mental fatigue playing support inflicts (compared to jungle), which enabled me to queue up when even I was feeling tired after work, and put in more games per block. #2 - I learnt many things over this journey. The biggest thing I learnt was improving lane positioning in coordination with other players. I am still bad at it in the grand scheme of things, but I have markedly improved compared to when I started. This was a focus for me, and of my reviews, so it is pleasing to see small results. The main thing that helped me was focusing on positioning relative to enemy threat ranges, which caused everything else to fall into place organically. #3 - I learnt that I absolutely love playing Rakan. From a pure gameplay experience, no other champion has the highest highs and, importantly, the highest lows. However, unfortunately this was not enough for on its own. Ultimately level of effort put in to something needs to be rewarded with a certain ratio of success, and for Rakan this equation just did not balance. I found that playing a champion with less conditional impact (Nami) gave more consistantly favourable results for far less effort, despite me being 100x worse at her. I enjoyed Nami, just nowhere near as much as Rakan, I think she is a fundamentally strong pick with a lot of potential and will retain her in my core support pool going forward. #4 - I learnt that small improvements do not translate to increased consistency in winning games. I am convinced that this requires multiple huge improvements, and for support the difference in skill between you and the enemy needs to be truly gigantic. This is because support is the most team reliant role as the member with the lowest general income and exp, and usually highest utility lowest damage i.e. most reliant on the follow up and execution of others. To concisely demonstrate this argument - support is the least picked position (even after 'fill') by professional non-duoing soloq boosters. If 30/30/40 is true, of the 40% of games that are 'in your control', a higher proportion than any other role are vulnerable to someone else's performance issues. Typical reasoning from higher elo players as to why low elo players do not climb is that 'you are the common factor, team does not matter over many games, you made mistakes therefore you lose'. This logic is internally consistent. However logic relies on how well the input fits reality, and this general argument is missing some important factors. Everyone makes mistakes, worse players make more mistakes. However to climb, what matters is not 'are you making more mistakes than a e.g. diamond player?' the only metric that matters is 'are you making more/worse mistakes than the other people in the lobby?' If not, you should climb. However the reality is that there are mistake thresholds i.e. making slightly fewer mistakes (being a little bit better) does not counterbalance members of your team making slightly more. If you are the better player in the lobby, then you have to make significantly fewer and less severe mistakes than your team to overhaul the disparity. If you are the common factor in the game, and you are better than the people around you, but you don't have the power to clear waves fast, destroy objectives fast, or push enemies off your screen, then the common factor is not that you are technically bad for the elo, but just not outputting what the matchmaking algorithm expects you to. Simply put, being a little bit better as support may ironically be worse for winning games. If we don't credit that paradox, then at the very least climbing is much more swingy as you are far more reliant on your team's carry's perfomance and so individual skill takes an impractically huge number of games to manifest an impact. At higher elos where more people know how to carry a game with a lead, I can see support skill requirement flattening out. In bronze, carry's are highly unreliable, it is basically random whether you can make the horse drink, and the so skill requirement to have consistent meaningful impact as support becomes enormous and highly vulnerable to variances in fortune. I understand this will be seen as cope. I watched the games and you didn't. To summarise: I really like the support role, it has the highest highs, I have really only just begun my journey and there is still so much to learn. However, I really do not like playing in Bronze, and need a break from the negative sentiments that are building up currently, so it is time for a new chapter. My mechanics are very poor and I want to focus on developing them (indeed this was a driving reason for the role-swap to support), so rather than go back to jungle, I am going to queue midlane for the rest of the split. I understand that this will likely lead to even more losses, but that doesn't matter because its not like I am going anywhere good on support. I believe this will be the most efficient way to improve my weak micro, whilst feeling like I have agency over the game result as my own win condition. I will continue to play support and review my games in order to keep improving at the role, but will restrict this to once a week. At my level it really does not matter what I play as support, so I will stick to the champions I enjoy - Rakan/Nami/Swain. I look forward to figuring out a pool for mid.

Jinx/Nami vs Aphelios/Leona: This was the lowest quality game in as long as I can remember. Actual Iron IV gameplay. I could have played better, snuck in extra autos, maintained better position distances, timed abilities better - the enemy were below usual quality. However, every other member of my team were vomiting excrement from every orifice with every single move, without relent, for the 15 mins it took them to just give up. Categorically nothing I could have done to change the outcome up to this point, and we will never know what could have been. Complete, total, 100% waste of life. In terms of the matchup both ADCs are weakish early and Leona and I are strong in nearly opposite ways - quite volatile. Comes down to can we attrition Leona down and avoid her engage so she is useless, or can she get on to us and snowball the lane. Irelia/Nami vs Ezreal/Smolder: WTF is this? I actually like the Irelia pick, especially into double ranged. I think Nami can sustain her through the rough first few levels and then provide sufficient back up to support the kill pressure Irelia has once she has her abilities and a few components. I think this is likely more than most Bronze/low Silver players can handle. Smolder support on the other hand, I almost can't think of a worse champ for the role. Irelia was not a smurf, and not an Irelia OTP, just a multi-season bronze player not even on a win streak. She demolished the game, despite us having our jungler AFK 10 mins into the game after straight up solo INTing our lane. I think this could be a legit pick in iron-gold. This game really hammers home the concept that if you are the better player on an early spiking hyper-carry champion it is very doable to blitz-stomp through Bronze. Really puts my efforts at Support in perspective. Jinx/Nami vs Lucian/Ashe If L/A don't get early kills they are sunk. J/N just need to play patient, Nami just needs to keep people off Jinx and sustain her up whilst she farms. I feel like my first death was very avoidable, wasn't expecting Jinx to just straight up ignore Lucian walking past her down the lane, but my bad for accepting the honour duel against early game Lucian. I played as well as I normally do and that was inconsequential compared to enemy top lane learning you can make a Bronze, off role, negative winrate, barely plays Volibear player look like a turbo smurf when you Bronze-ly first time INTing Sion.

I'm totally fine with them using eomm in normals and aram. Even think it's a good idea. However, ranked is ranked. How can you rank someone, if you change the results? Then it's not ranked. Ofc, you can still climb if you really want to. Just takes unrealistic effort. To climb from emerald to dia in a reasonable time, you gotta play on a master + level. If you only play dia level, it's gonna take ages. Which is unrealistic. Ultimately this is destroying their game. They just don't realize it yet. People have been consistently moving away from the game. None of my irl friends play it anymore. And more and more internet friends quit aswell. Sad really

My lane positioning is noticably better than it was, all thanks to focusing on enemy threat ranges rather than my own ADC. However, my Nami is painfully Bronze - I miss half the bubbles I throw, and honestly miss my targeted abilities (by struggling to find the target with my cursor) occasionally. Also, I bascially don't trade in lane - this is going to be the new learning objective for Nami. However, it hasn't mattered for the last few blocks. I might just be getting autowin games on Nami by coincidence, but the ability to casually undo everyone's trading mistakes with 1 button seems very OP in bronze. Nami feels 4x stronger than Rakan for 10x less effort. Kai'Sa/Nami vs Miss Fortune/Rakan: I think we win this lane quite comfortably. Nami W completely cancels MF's poke and E gives Kai'Sa some extra teeth in early trades, whilst Rakan has to work so much harder to keep his ADC topped up and contribute generally. Once they hit 6 they are more dangerous, but we should have the lead by then and our lvl6 isn't nothing. Our bush cheese cost Kai'Sa 3 minions, but chunked MF to 50% which gave us control over the next few waves - probably worth. When attempting to zone enemies off cs (and exp if they let me), I am not noticing how much minion aggro I am taking. Its fine cuz Nami heals, but a bad habit - I should zone from bush side so I can drop minion aggro more quickly. My death was me being too aggressive and totally avoidable - I'm an enchanter, always default to playing back behind everyone. Jinx/Nami vs Draven/Yuumi: As with all Draven lanes, we just need to chill and not die for the first 15 mins and all will be well. Draven with Yuumi will kick our teeth in early unless Jinx and I somehow land a full bubble into chomper combo, and maybe not even then. Knowing this, we entered into the most boring lane of all time against the most passive Draven I've ever seen. Yuumi and Draven being one entity makes it really easy to see little I pressure ADCs for CS and how many windows to trade I miss when they go to last hit. In this specific case it is best I didn't try though. Draven and Yuumi being together means that I would always be walking into a 1v2 trade, Draven hugely out damages me and Yuumi will heal anything I do to Draven, they can even split their attention to get CS and hit me and still win the trade. Therefore, focusing souly on keeping Jinx in lane CSing is all I have to do here. My 1st death shows how dangerous it is to misstep against this duo, even under tower. My E and W timing and sequencing continues to be pretty terrible - so many times I think the ADC is posturing to go in, put E on them, and then they run away. Ezreal/Rakan vs Lucian/Blitzcrank: I went Rakan here because I didn't fancy Nami into Blitz and like the matchup with Rakan. My ADC chose Ezreal because of the Blitz pick too, I am certain, which was a little problematic for our comp as it meant we lacked sustained DPS. Luckily our enemies didn't take a lot of upfront damage either, making this quite an unusual game of two chunky lowish damage teams going at each other. This made fights last a bit longer and actually more fun, but slowed the game down a bit. The reason we went to 50 mins however, was that our midlaner had a tantrum that meant we were playing 4v5 for 20 mins. Anyway, to the matchup - Lucian is strong early and Blitz can snowball him dangerously, but Ez and I can deny them extremely well and outscale them moderately. We also do have the potential to control the lane if I can create space for Ez and he is good enough to land his skillshots. I find Rakan struggles to find windows to trade on ADCs when they go to last hit because of the range disadvantage, and the fact that I bascially have to commit to a mini engage, use and hit all 3 of my abilities to make it worthwhile. I think Rakan usually needs to contest the enemy support to distract them from his ADC and waste their abilities, whilst it is on the ADC to cs whilst punishing their counterpart for doing so. The detail is, if Rakan is able to create space for his ADC AND the ADC is competant to move up into trading range, THEN Rakan can use his ADC as a surprise E node and quickly switch the matchup to trade favourably onto the enemy ADC. This will never work in Bronze and Silver, so Rakan will enevitably feel under powered in lane. The alternative is to make up the difference by roaming. I am trying to avoid roaming now until I have developed my laning mechanics, but I think this game was one where I did probably need to roam. I even asked Ezreal at one point if he would be okay if I started roaming, but it was clear he was not. I could have contested bush more, but I felt going even in this lane, rather than risk losing it to a lucky Blitz hook, was over all slightly winning for us. I missed the brief glimpses of Casseo moving bot that was the only indication of the 4 man dive coming for us. I had a lot of criminally wayward Ws this game, omg! Poor movement prediction! I stand by my judgement not to help Galio in the play that tilted him.

Ohhh, the classic faceoff of monster hunters vs monsters

Riot for once needs to implement an honest matchmaking queue, no bs, just 10 players of similar rank put together in a team randomly. Just rank is taken into account, not kda history, not winning history, not griefing history, not mastery of their preferred champion... just their rank

That is so true for valorant, if you stop playing for like 2 weeks. The first few games you play will be insta wins, it don't matter if the other players were the same rank as when you left off... My friends had a name for that "welcome back buff"

Nami feels so strong. I'm not playing her anywhere close to her potential, but am still having consistently solid impact on the game just using W as an undo button for everyone's mistakes. I think i am doing the right thing holding Q, I'm spamming W to great effect - which is enough for now, but will need refining soon. E needs work. Badly need to learn to sequence and time E and W better. Want to start pushing myself to take trades a bit more. Starting off with E on myself for a speed boost to close the range and empower my autos, eat their return auto and throw a Q if I have spare mana, then W on the back end of the trade should be pretty nasty so long as I set up the spacing well enough that I get the first hit. Rakan feels futilely glorious to play as always, I live for the saves. Not sure I can feel darkseal making much of a difference, more testing needed. (Nearly) everyone knows that you should last hit (slow push) the wave when it is on your side of the lane and pushing out so that it should become large enough to crash into the enemy tower. However, it doesn't always seem to happen. I am beginning to notice how the position of the next wave travelling along the lane behind you is the determining factor, and we need to use that to judge how much to hit the current wave. No ADC below gold is going to be thinking about this, and communicating the idea is probably too complex. I can try typing 'just last hit' or 'hit wave REAL slow', but strongly doubt anyone will get it. More important to work on my judgement of when to try and help shove through a freeze or when to ping my ADC off so the enemy accidently break it themselves. Caitlin/Nami vs Tristana/Ashe: Pretty sure we should bully the double marksman lane, we match range and they have no sustain. They have the advantage on hitting lvl2 first, so long as we play around that, should be fine. The invade and Cait backing so late was not the best, but luckily Tristana was off having a stroke somewhere so it balanced out. Laning was generally ok, staying in acceptable sync with Cait most of the time, but obviously I am giving too much space to the enemy unecessarily as I am not comfortable with Nami's threat ranges yet and am being conservative. I needed to match Tristana in this lane. Ashe wins trades with me as she outranges and slows me so I take too much damage on approacha and disengage, but Cait can sit within the wave farming to be safe from the arrow fan and threaten poke on Ashe in return. Tristana has more similar range to me and csing to distract her. I need to be careful of her bomb and all in potential, but I will win short trades when she goes to last hit. I didn't like our first base timing, but we did need to reset and Cait was going so I had to follow to obey the sync rule. Can't believe we lost this game, Syndra and Nocturne were just slightly too heavy. Smolder/Nami vs Miss Fortune/Leona: This Smolder was such a pussy omg! If I'd been playing Rakan, I think I would have lost my mind. Regarding the match up, MF/Leo wreck us early, but we hugely outscale if we don't die and can keep Smolder farming. Obviously, our Smol knew this, but either his time to online has gotten WAY longer, or this guy had severe micro-testicle syndrome. I don't know for sure, but I feel like us starting in lane and hitting the wave first was good thing to make sure we secure lvl2 first and get control of the push so we can push them in and poke them down to nulify Leona's deadly lvls 2-3. Maybe I'm wrong and that would actually make us vulnerable to being engaged on and run down at lvl3? In any case, I think we needed to take opportunities to poke Leona's health down much more (you can see me target pinging her at one point). I definately could have hit her more (which would have been good for my supp item stacks, as I think using it on minions interferes with Smolder's stacking, not to mention I get more gold), but the range felt tight and didn't feel comfortable risking it as Smolder was making it absolutely clear he wasn't going to back me up, let alone stoop to contributing himself. Yes, so long as we play the lane safe we have a good chance of winning, but letting Leona sit in our face uncontested is not safe. If MF had not been a complete imbecile and kept stopping the wave from pushing out we would have been slaughtered, as Leona (73% winrate onetrick btw) was happy to prove most times it did. I was impressed, and worried, by Leona's patience, but knew the boredom and ticking clock would get to her eventually and make her slip up. She probably needed to roam more. I used my bubble to try and peel Leona off Smolder during the engages, I needed to bubble MF instead. Needless to say I was pretty excited when a testosterone fuelled vastayan hunk came to help me kill some humans (Yi's ganks were nice, but I'm glad he didn't do more). Subsequently following him around broke the sync with ADC rule, but Smolder and I needed a break from each other. Fair play to Smolder he held the enemy off the dragon later, but I can't help but feel we might not all have needed to die if he hadn't been doing the chicken's like a total incel. Kai'Sa/Rakan vs Jihn/Nautilus: Damn. We got the red Kayn and Gwen counterpicks and they still curb-stomped us. I had to first pick so went Rakan, but this would have otherwise been a Swain game. This is another matchup we have to respect their early strength, but will outscale. I felt sorry for Kayn, he commited his time to us whilst Top was getting shafted and we couldn't repay him. It just seemed like Jihn/Naut could just stroll back in and control the lane like they hadn't been the ones to get killed. Nautilus was good with his hooks, and I didn't control the bushes well enough (i.e. by warding, contesting would have been suicide). Again, I feel my ADCs don't just shoot the support walking around in front of their face. I swear the moment I step a toe into range I'm hit by a bullet storm. 1:23:47, could have killed Nautilus so easily, but just wasn't prepared for the window. The herald fight we just needed to avoid, they were too strong and we needed more time for our damage to scale. Draven/Nami vs Ashe/Blitzcrank: How could I not lock in Nami? Rakan probably would have been fine though, I like Rakan into the 'crank. I appreciated Draven's aggression, but I've had better. We need to play this the only way Draven knows how, and I need to keep shoving the steroids up his arse to help him do it. The enemy lack damage and sustain, but getting hooked is a death sentence. Need to be especially vigilent for ganks as any Jungler worth their salt should be running at this lane, so I probably should have warded river side more than the bushes - luckily this is Bronze. My positioning was moslty fine I think, a few windows where Blitz could have hooked me, but comparatively small. Timing W and E was more of a problem, just not used to predicting the way my ADC is going to move in quite the way that is needed yet. Blitz (G3 80LP last split, now B3) found him rather more predictable I fear. I wasn't quite sure how to engage a fight when Draven signalled he wanted to go in. Post-lvl6 I realise I should look to do this with my ult, but pre-lvl6 beyond clutching a raw bubble (maybe from bush?) I'm a bit stumped. I ain't flashing into melee, that's for sure. 1:55:28, lol killing Ashe in a 1v2* as Nami (*thanks Draven). This game had no reason to be as hard as it was. Thank goodness for their trollpick Bard Top is all I can say.

Really low quality games this session, sadly. However, looking at laning in a new way i.e. how many enemy abilities can I bait and dodge, and how many of my own can I land, was actually pretty fun. I tried out Warmogs 1st item on Rakan, and I like it. Honestly, the build path felt fine, I didn't feel weaker sitting on the components rather than a full locket, and I felt a little stronger on completion. I didn't feel like I got a huge amount out of the passive, I reckon it was mostly the massive health injection generally amplifying all my resistances. I think I need to start buying darkseal on all my champs (Rakan, Nami, Swain). I tend to get so many assists and die so few times, I think I'm missing out on a load of free useful stats most games. Affording darkseal AND warmogs seems quite greedy though. Need to test it out. I have slightly altered my learnign objective to be to position relative to the most threatening enemy in lane to soak and create pressure, which seems to organically lead to better movement and positioning in sync with my ADC. After laning phase I consider syncing with the ADC to be guiding/following them around them map. Miss Fortune/Rakan vs Caitlyn/Bard: Clear auto-loss. As usual when my team all equal or outrank their counterparts they all happened to have terminal cholera, nothing I could have done better on any of my other champs so that's fine. I reckon Cait/Bard are stronger than us early, but that steadily turns in our favour as the game progresses, unless they get Cait too far ahead early that she can hold us 1v2 whilst Bard roams. Therefore, I think we want to contest lvl2 if we can, but prepare to chill until lvl3 when Rakan becomes a bit more useful in the 2v2 than Bard. In lane, Bard got away with actual murder, I guess I needed to match him and stay between him and my ADC, because I couldn't pressure Caitlyn equally. If MF had ever decided to shoot Bard as he waddled slowly towards her that could have quite easily changed the dynamic, but as that clearly wasn't ever going to happen, because of high level reasons I'm too bad to realise, I needed to adjust my gameplay accordingly. Ultimately, we did not punish Bard's over aggression anywhere near enough. I could have played the 1st dragon fight much better by ulting first to group the enemy, then waiting out teammates cc before using W. 12:10, after killing Brand I think technically I should have trimmed the wave then backed so we could deny the enemy some cs and set up a freeze because our jungler was likely to be going topside for the next while. Good sweeper usage by me throughout the game to clear multiple wards. My 1st death, should W to safety behind MF instead of staying in the lost fight. After that crazy sequence, its not really worth reviewing, I helped shut down the Garen and did some good (but ultimately pointless) saves as the team threw themselves 1v5 at fed enemies on repeat. Probably didn't sync with ADC well. C'est la vie. Caitlin/Nami vs Jinx/Nautilus: After the last game super reminded me what a total lottery game outcomes are I felt like it was time to start Nami. As I was quite high in the draft order cuz I swapped with top as usual, I probably should have gone Rakan as my main and thus blindpick, but Nami is arguably the better actual blind pick so that's ok. Team then didn't pick any AP, and facing chunky Nautilus this could have been a Swain game - which probably would have gone badly. Literally never played Nami in pvp before, ever - which will clearly show. I think this matchup should be pretty Cait/Nami favoured early - we have a big range and sustain advantage - which should delay Jinx's threat until too late and make Naut a walking potato. Unfortunately, Cait was hung like a flaccid baby carrot. I mean h*ly d*mn. I know I was playing a bit more passively than normal (still riding up with the ADC), but I don't know Nami's limits very well and am the squishy enchanter, not the one with the 0.90 calibur cannon. I mean, riot pls buff Caitlyn's auto range ffs. ANYWAY, I think we want to play up in the wave and keep the bushes warded so that Nautilus can't find engage angles and we can poke them out. I was pretty confused by what the team wanted to do during lvl1 jungle defence. I was also thrown by Caitlyn's lack of aggression when we hit lvl2 first, I should have pinged forward immediately - it took me a moment to check that they hadn't also hit 2 or that Cait hadn't spotted an incoming gank, by which time we missed the window. Imagine if I had been starting to go in as the minion died, I would have been sushi! We didn't chunk Nautilus' hp like we should have so lost control of the wave. I needed to match Nautilus to abuse my range and allow Cait to CS and abuse her range advantage against Jinx. I was waiting to use W until we were in range to heal and dmg, but I should have used it just spent the mana to top up hp as I wasn't running low. I need to just spam W later in the game when I get loads of mana regen. Hitting Q is hard, I think it was ok to hold it rather than spam it which saved me mana for heals. However, I missed most of them, except the oopsie 1st blood and a few times I managed to R+Q. unfortunately there was a bit of anti-synergy between me and Skarner overlapping our cc. Skarner forcing a stupid dive attempt and us taking unforced towershots made us have to take one of the worst base timings I think I've ever seen. I think it disgusted Jinx as well as from 32:30 she went balistic and threatened to 1v9 the game. Luckily our braindead fightfightfight teamates had managed to get enormously fed on scaling dive champs so the game was basically unlosable. In the mid/late game I didn't sync with ADC very well because she was a potato and I had other win cons. Jinx/Rakan vs Caitlyn/Lux: Similar to Ezreal/Lux, this lane is an orbital bombardment simulator. They should dominate early, but need to get kills and put us behind or we will outscale them. My stated goal was to play passive (not force engages), but try to absorb pressure by baiting skill shots toward me instead of Jynx. lvl1 I needed to match lux, where Cait was positioned I couldn't really threaten her from the bushes without over extending so I should have let Jynx have that side of the lane whilst I distracted lux. Not going in on Lux's overextend lvl2 looks a bit troll, but I was repecting their lvl2 spike whilst trying to create space to allow Jynx to fall back. If I'd W'd lux very conservatively i.e. not gone too far, that would have been best, but overall I'm happy I didn't fully engage to get double-teamed by them. Defending under tower I did my best to play forward and distract heat whilst looking for Q's and landed most of them. Unfortunately, this Jynx had a habit of EATING AS MUCH D*CK AS SHE COULD POSSIBLY GET despite being a screen behind me, which was a theme for the whole game. On Ekko's gank I needed to W Lux, I knew she had no flash, and maybe Jynx lives, I honestly was caught by surprise there though. 53:40 big no no W from bush engage on Lux into a big wave in a narrow space near tower. I always get chain cc'd an die in this position, just don't. 54:55 I made the wrong call on whether they were cheesing in the bush, should have pushed the wave faster. I thought their base animations were a bait and wasn't expecting them to go because the wave was pushing out and dragon was up, but I guess I didn't realise that they'd been in lane a while. Roam to mid was fine, shame I missed Rumble but the main objective was to keep Leblanc safe and get back to bot in sync with Jynx which I achieved. 57:55 warded at a very dangerous time, could have made Jynx kill herself. Some slight mechanical misplays in the mid game that cloud have swung things our way - refinement will come with time. Didn't sync well with Jynx into the late game, but honestly I could never rely on her not to be 1/4 hp, 8 miles from following me up. I think Jynx/Rakan should be able to match Cait/Lux 2v2 at this stage in the game, but in this case it wasn't going to happen so I shadowed my witless assassins instead.

well its nice to see Malifu getting some love... plz keep it up

Ok, so humble pie was eaten, Zyra was not the answer to all my problems. The games I won previously were simply because I was on the team chosen to win and I didn’t mess up my part in it. Zyra games in this block were not winnable on any of my other champions, so I don’t regret trying her. My lack of mastery with Zyra (missed skillshots, poor combos, and probably positioning errors) will be readily apparent, but to win these games I would have to be so much better it is not realistic, so for all intents and purposes it does not matter. I still think she has a lot of potential and would reward further investment, but playing these games made me realise that I enjoy Swain more. Not because I won with Swain, I probably would have done better in lane with Zyra which might have made the late game easier, Swain just feels more exciting to play and also rewarding to invest in. I’ve done some more thinking and my new approach is going to be to build a small support pool to both teach me the fundamentals of the role and give me flexibility to not make matchups harder than they need to be. I will main Rakan because I love playing him. I feel he performs a hybrid engager/warden role in my pool. I think he is best into catcher/hook supports so will pick him into these, but will also blind-pick him so I can learn to play him into anything. My enchanter will be Nami because she has a very well-rounded kit that works with many ADCs and seems consistently relevant patch after patch. I do not really like enchanters and have never played Nami, so this will be painful, but I think it is important. Soraka, Janna, and Renata also interest me, but given this archetype is not my passion and the advantages of Nami’s kit, I will commit to 50 games of Nami before trying another enchanter. I think she is blind-pickable, but will focus on picking Nami into mage and warden supports. If enchanters end up just not being for me I will investigate other engagers like Maokai and Rell against the problematic mage supports. My mage will be Swain because I also just really like playing him. I think Swain is currently one of the weakest/risky mage supports in lane, so I will just have to accept that I will need to get a lot better than I otherwise would have to on another mage like Zyra to achieve the same results. I will pick Swain into engager supports or teams with multiple tanks, or if my team needs AP (but that is mostly tank dependent anyway). Zyra, Neeko and my Taliyah are potential alternative mages, but Swain gives my pool important coverage into chunky teams. I WILL REMEMBER THAT THE POINT IS NOT TO WIN GAMES. The point is to enjoy the process of improving at my champions - to dodge as many attacks, hit as many skill shots, and know what to do in as many moments as possible. I will be Bronze or Iron or Silver or whatever rank the matchmaking decides, but I will make everyone else in the game sweat to beat me. I’m not going to review the Zyra games. Miss Fortune/Swain vs Caitlin/Lux: I get hit by most of Lux's skill shots and miss most of my own. This can't happen against Bronze players. To dodge better I think it will take a combination of building the right muscle memory, and better mouse and camera control. I know how to dodge Q, wait for an animation and click at a 90 degree angle. Having the cursor close to my character is essential for doing this quick enough. I think it is often too far at the crucial moment because I am trying to hit one of my abilities - maybe try walking up like I'm going to use an ability, but entirely focus on movement until her ability has been used, then attack. Dodging E I'm less sure about, its mostly a feel thing at the moment. Having a lane position that gives me space to click in the right places is helpful, being near a wall or tower is dangerous, minions love to block you if they possibly can. My camera position sometimes slips and makes fine control awkward. It would be nice if MF would use her E on Lux which would then allow me to to hit W, continuing the slow to allow me to get into range for E - communicate this next time. I got caught out a couple of times that would be solved by just staying in line with my ADC. 2:21:24 Felt good when I finally got the call to pull the trigger and all-in that little *****. We needed to do this much earlier, basically whenever my ult and flash are up. During a lot of the lane when lux used her skillshots we did not move up to pressure the cooldown. Late game I wasn't too far behind so I got to do Swain things. Kai'Sa/Rakan vs Miss Fortune/Blitzcrank: Urgh, how bad is my movement generally in this lane?! Lvl1 I engaged because Blitz missed his hook, we had the minion advantage so would hit lvl2 first and I will outsustain him on any trade cuz I can go Q 2nd. It worked out because of all those reasons, but my Kai'Sa moved in the opposite direction, allowing MF and Blitz to both attack me. I guess I should be grateful Kai'Sa backed me up at all. I think I made the 'correct' move, but Bronze ADCs can be relied upon NOT to follow me up. In future I will ping 'on my way' to signal my intent, though I may just have to not take these trades in Bronze if that still proves not work. I was respecting their lvl3 up on the wave bounce, I didn't know we were going to lvl up at the same time. Got too far from my ADC but realised and recovered, standing in the minions to shield from Blitz. Good engage on the MF, but I think I backed off to soon? I don't think I should have backed at lvl4 until Kai'Sa was safe, I didn't want to risk dying to MF and wanted to match Blitz's respawn, but I left her in a bad wave state at a disadvantage against MF - very lucky she didn't die. We were lucky not to get frozen on and ganked when we returned, as well as escape their play off MFs lvl6 spike. I played our J4's 2nd gank so awfully, went in too early (giving the game away), missed everything and nearly died for nothing. Why do I always seem to get lvl6 so late? Obviously I miss experience on waves, must be my base, ward and roam timings. I didn't notice that Kai'Sa didn't follow me for the mid gank until far too late. Learning objective failed. Unlike me she saw the Vlad was ungankable and went to commit alone in bot. To play support is to be a suicide prevention officer, I failed to protect her from herself. 3:33:17 I styled out walking into the Blitz grab pretty well. Honestly, don't know if flash to bush was actually necessary (I could probably take 1 aa and live?), probably just shouldn't have reengaged to ignite as Kai'Sa almost certainly had MF anyway, but I felt cool at the time. I had the right general idea using W on my carry to peel Viego's counter gank, judgment in the moment was off - shame might have been a triple kill if I'd landed it. 3:35:03 SIN! Clearing wards instead of moving my ADC to a very dodgy looking fight, what was I thinking? 3:37:02 I messed up this skirmish - if I insta turn on blitz and MF after charming viego, I can probably get both, then double knock, and get Kat a double kill. Missing that window and continuing the chase was super bad. Fortunately made up for it at 3:39:00. Not perfect, I should have R+flashed onto Blitz, then run onto the carries to round them up for a multi-man W. In the event I should have at least predicted MF's movement and charmed her as well. Overall, the fight was executed well enough for bronze/silver and secured us the game. Tristana/Rakan vs Kalista/Ornn Odd matchup. Not sure how it 'should' play out. Kalista ulting Ornn in to engage seems spicy, but I think they rely on getting ahead in lane and this is bronze so odds are they aren't good enough to do that on these champs. As in the previous game my laning movement is all over the place, tiredness? Maybe I should have respected Kalista's lvl1 power and not antagonised them? I think people underestimate Rakan's lvl1-3 aa damage though (I was doing as much to Ornn as Trist) and again we have Q sustain so I like these fights into enemies that can't match it. On the lvl2 gank, I initiated a bit too early. Once commited I think if I had backed off the fight at any time Kalista would have killed Trist. I needed to save Q for a guarenteed hit when I W'd Kalista and I might have lived. 1 for 2 is acceptable, but it didn't need to be that close if I had just judged Kayn's arrival time better. 3:43:31 this roam was awful! Given the time I had before Trist would be back in lane, I should have been moving straight to mid from base, but even then I'm not sure I have time for a skirmish in the topside jungle. In any case, I am not allowed to roam until I can consistently follow the sync with ADC learning objective. This put me so behind, and it was just lucky our jungler decided to gank for us again. 3:50:56 I flash+R the engage (and miss my Q on a sitting duck), I think R+flash would be slightly better? No need to E back to Kat, stay with Trist. 3:52:00 really happy I saved my W during the retreat so it was ready to defend the tower dive. Needed to use my pots though - too close! 4:00:22 compensating for suicidal, mind-controlled Kat, have the confidence to know what is right and just walk away. There was no way this game should have gone on this long, I know everything I do could be better, but frankly I did more than enough and sometimes my teammates just need to stop trying to throw my autowins.

*VENTING* alert. I'm not Keria, I'm not Lathyrus, I'm not even gold level, and I don't need to be. I do my job well enough, consistantly enough, to at least be going even in these diarrhea bucket games, but it is loss after loss after loss after loss after loss after loss etc. Some lanes I win, some I lose, but the other enemy lanes are basically always gigantically fed and my team cannot. stop. running. off. to. Narnia. Yes I make mistakes, please point out the ones that matter, that are truly worse than the rest of the lobby, or kindly fuck off. I don't need to play flawlessly to reach Silver, which I did easily with Rakan earlier this split and in the the previous one when I was definately worse at the role. Rakan is great, he is strong and flexible, but he needs teammates to coordinate with him *in the short windows he provides* or else he constantly loses value. He is safe, I generally give away very few deaths, get high KP, play for objectives and impact fights. It is not enough. It does not matter. I'd genuinely love to see how a high level Rakan player would handle these games, I'm very curious as to what rank skill level they would have to be to win them consistently. Sadly whatever the level it is clearly far far beyond what I am capable of. This block shows how despite all I have learnt over the years of playing Rakan, I can literally first-time a champ that has a safe, brainless method of delivering damage, that relies on teammates only enough to allow me to get within my massive effective range and I am a one man army against the quality of players I face. I barely even know what the buttons do, let alone what order they should be pressed in, but I can sit back a screen away throwing bullshit that looks like it misses by a mile but still counts as hitting somehow. Maybe these games were a fluke. Certainly I was gifted an unusual number of competent teammates in the Zyra games, and there is a weird phenomenon of champ honeymoon periods in this game. However, it felt like so much less effort for so much more impact that I dare to hope it might be transferrable to the more usual games were all my lanes are 0/4 by 10 mins. There are similarities with the playstyle that I liked about Taliyah, and I think it could enable me to learn defensive fundamentals more forgivingly, which I can take back to Rakan. Maybe I can ride Zyra to a level where it is worth playing Rakan? Or maybe I'm wrong, it was a just pure luck, Zyra will require mastery I don't have, and I can go back to losing on Rakan. *Rationality Returns*(ish) Samira/Rakan vs Twitch/Neeko Volatile lane, we need to stay healthy and look for a lvl3 all-in and again at lvl6. They will rely on cheese tactics, we need to deny them. I had watched a video about how to deal with mage supports, it recommended simply paying attention to their threat range and moving in and out of it to draw pressure off your ADC and bait out abilities. I found this much easier to focus on than staying in line with my ADC, and maybe it is coincidence, but it looks like it actually helped me achieve that as well passively. In any case I really like how my movement in lane looks compared to how it usually does. It is really interesting to see how frequently in the moments I stop doing it, Samira gets harrassed. Neeko's roams paid off for her, tipping the balance that was already straining in mid and top over the edge, and I guess we couldn't punish Twitch hard enough and Samira later used whatever advantage she had in perculiar ways. I like to think my contribution to fights started to make my mid and top vaguely relevant, but with bronze Nidalee making this game a 4v5, it wasn't enough. I don't think Samira was the most mentally stable monkey in the troupe - I thought her emotes were collegial at first, but suspect they turned toxic after I flash secured the kill on Neeko. Xayah/Rakan vs Tristana/Yuumi Yuumi lanes are a pain, I feel like you have to aggressively pressure the enemy ADC off the wave whilst dodging Yuumi ribbon-things to drain her mana so she can't sustain anymore and has to dismount. Or maybe I'm overthinking it and you just wait to all-in. Either way trading is pointless. I guess lvl2 wasn't the time for the all-in. Good value delaying Trist's base - Yuumi can't roam, so they both end up missing a bit of gold and exp from the crashed wave. I'm happy enough that my sync with ADC position objective is at least sometimes happening. Not sure about my roam mid. In principle the timing was right and in the event it worked out - protecting Hwei from a gank and even drawing Trist/Yuumi out of lane so Xayah got free farm. However, I find I generally lose far more than I gain from these roams, and honestly think I should ban myself from doing them until the sync with ADC objective is secure. 2nd death was unfortunate, need to be more patient with W and wait to predict and interupt Trist's jump like I did at 41:09. Punish of Trist roam top was appropriate, but I missed a window to possibly kill Ekko under tower, which might have gotten us first tower gold. Missing the lovers base at 47:56 was so annoying, and I think quite impactful as this de-synced us quite a bit and meant Xayah went to go take on a fed Illaoi alone. 50:08 was such an unfortunate time to try and type to Xayah that we should go mid, ping instead next time. Rest of the game was the usual, top/mid/jungle too behind/ineffective to carry. The Leona Jungle troll wasn't as bad as Trynd I guess, but I don't think it was quite IT. Yuumi sitting on superturbonitro fed Illaoi made her even more raid boss than usual, especially when my team didn't seem to understand how her ult works. Xayah/Zyra vs Jihn/Pantheon So, cards on the table, I have played Zyra once before, about 3 years ago, in normals. My friend asked me not to do it again. Needing to let Rakan have a rest, aware of how bad I seem to have gotten at Swain recently, and impressed by the Zyra from the other day, I decided - what the hell. So obviously I am on an unpleasant losing streak and the matchmaking is due to throw me a bone to prevent me from uninstalling, so yes this game was a free win I would have struggled to find a way to lose even if I had decided to play Master Yi support. However, rest of the map aside, I completely crushed the enemy bot lane by almost randomly pressing buttons. I didn't know what items to buy, thinking about it I probably want to get Rylai's first - but I worry about mana issues without lost chapter. Also, Fizz was the only thing I was afraid of, so Zhonya's was a good call. I clearly need to learn what order to cast abilities in and how to space them. I don't know which plant type is best to hit objectives and waves. I need to not spam the abilities so much in general. I deliberately tried to play safe (so squishy and immobile), but you can see my reckless nature come through a couple of times (e.g. 1:04:06 and 1:18:06 facechecking bushes I knew were dangerous, without my ADC close enough to back me up). Too much pointless and dangerous moving around in the jungle between bot and mid. Ashe/Zyra vs Ezreal/Lux Much tougher test for my Zyra. My Top/Mid/Jungle were stronger again from matchmaking pity, but I was 1v2 in botlane from the very start. I actually wish Ashe had AKF'd, and nearly asked her to. Ezreal/Lux lanes are extremely oppressive as you get relentlessly missiled whether you stand in or out of the wave. Do I suddenly know how to play Zyra? No. Did I play flawlessly or even well? No. Did I hold that tower and delay two extremely fed enemies from adding their power to the rest of the map for 20 mins, and also manage to stay relevant? You bet I did. Would I have won this if the rest of my team had been on their usual form? No. But can you imagine trying to play this as Rakan? There ain't no way! The team struggled to end as it was, and though I was too behind to deal much damage I could at least do some, and me catching enemies at nice safe range became quite pivotal. All-in-all I need to figure out the proper combos, and definately spruce up my ults, but this felt like playing a completely different and MUCH easier game.

Still learning to even just begin to focus on the learning objective (Sync with ADC). I get into game and just forget, presumably a symptom of long established habits and low mental stack free space. Need to chill, take it slow, and probably over-index on defensive play for now. Hopefully that will allow me to build the foundations for syncing my position with my ADC, and moving properly in relation to the enemy. That will come at a cost of losing pressure in lane as I find the safest boundary to play at (i.e. take minimal hits), that will later translate to creating good lane pressure as I steadily learn to push that boundary forward. Xayah/Rakan vs Ezreal/Lux I hate playing against Lux - her kit really highlights and punishes my weaknesses as a player. I started banning her after this game because I couldn't stand laning against her anymore. This was a mistake, the skills needed to overcome Lux are the ones I need to develop as the highest priority. lvl1 and 2 trades were ok I think, but shame ADC was hanging so far back - guess I failed the learning objective. Death at lvl3 was so dumb, my reckless trade meant I was fishing for a Q to sustain back up. Interesting to see how my movements after lvl2 trade don't make any sense, I clearly don't know where to be. Fighting Pantheon over control wards was next level stupid. I thought Kat (who had been crying from champ select about how I needed to come mid and help her) would come and 2v1 Panth, but her wave was more important I guess, probably not wrong. Rest of the lane went okay overall and we came out strong, but the rest of the team had been feeding something fierce so game was really tough. Xayah was the only win-con, I needed to stay with her, but she kept running off alone to places that made no sense to me. I either needed to try and guide her back to sanity with pings or just follow her and hope for the best, support life. Jihn/Swain vs Kog'Maw/Zyra Regardless of how stupendously Jihn griefed this lane, the Zyra (previously gold) was clearly better than me. If I could move like her, it would make a massive difference. As far as I can tell she is staying cool enough to anticipate what abilities I will use, when, and maintain comparatively precise control over character movement. This needs to be me. I think I know what they will do, but not when. I know how to dodge (90 degrees off the line I appear to be moving in, and mix up the direction), but put myself in positions that make it harder (e.g. near a wall) or else just don't execute brain to mouse. I didn't pay attention to watching friendly minion health to land my E. I didn't sync movement with my ADC. I didn't come online fast enough, Swain needs kills in lane or a boat load of assists - especially in S14. I used to find this pretty easy, but I've got bad or Swain has been nerfed at somepoint I guess. Sivir/Rakan vs Aphelios/Morgana I think we just want to use Sivir to perma push the wave so that Morgana struggles to get good Q angles and Aphelios is pressured to get CS, all I need to do is peel for Sivir and keep them off her while she shreds the waves. Good lvl1 trade by me. I was too aggressive lvl2, it worked out, but I took unnecssary damage and could have gotten us killed for no reason. lvl4 Amumu - we picked different targets which was unfortunate and Sivir didn't join in. Then Sivir insanely over-greeded. Lvl5 my movements and positioning create no pressure on the Morgana. My bush control is bad. I get steadily more and more de-synced with Sivir. I do the raw W 1v 2 tower defence thing that gets me killed 90% of the time and get killed, pls just stop. When I return, I like attempt to engage the fight, but I tunnel on Aphelios and lose track of Morgana. If I W+Q=aa Aphelios instead of going on Morgana I kill and probably survive, instead this double kill is the nail in the coffin. I then feel like I need to be too many places on the map, so as usual I prioritise holding mid, putting my ADC further behind. Disconnection can suck my ass sweat. Rest of the game is the usual thing where I have no win-con, teammates won't go within 5 miles of each other, and I get picked off either trying to force something or compensate for a teammate. Zeri/Rakan/Caitlin/Tham Kench Not sure how this lane should go, maybe respect Caitlin in early levels, contest more in mid levels and generally aim to outscale? I like my bush contesting, not clean, Kench has the advantage lvl1 but it evens out at lvl2. We respect their lvl3 appropriately and I am prioritising just distracting Kench from Zeri and hitting Qs, which Kench's over-aggression is making easier. My E-W onto Caitlin on the gank could have been much quicker and smoother. My roam on mid - needed to me more patient with W, just walk up to Akali aa then W and stay in front so she can't backflip to safety. This was my alotted 1 in ~6 games auto-win, not a lot more I'm interested to dig into. Xayah/Rakan vs Hwei/Yone Odd lane, we should win this early which should set them too far behind to impact the rest of the game - but you know they will find a way to get kills and shutdowns at some point. lvl1 firstblood death to Yone was annoying, if I Q slightly earlier and hit it I think I live. They lost a lot for it though and Xayah was accelerated nicely. Didn't really sync position with Xayah well enough, although occasionally I seem to remember. Needed to track Amumu better for the gank, other than that I did what I could. Unfortnately Hwei just gradually started to execute better than Xayah, helped red team generally pressuring bot more whilst also smashing top. I started to think Vlad might be the more reliable win-con and Xayah and I got steadily more de-synced. Given we had 4/5 people with good scaling at least matching (and arguably doing slightly better) than their counterparts we should have won this game. However, when Rakan is having to hold full waves and solo take towers, you know something is wrong with the team's macro decisions. Just felt like we could never all be in the same place at the same time, and were losing more than we gained with every skirmish.

Rakan vs Caitlin/Lux The lag meant I wasn't able to react to what was going on quite as normal. However, most of the mistakes are clearly the same systemic ones. I have chosen my main learning objective to be 'Sync with ADC' - meaning that, at all times, I must try to maintain a line with the ADC perpendicular to the nearest enemy, I must not be more than half a lane width away from the ADC, I must base when they base, stay when they stay, and assist what they seem to be trying to do with the wave. This was really really hard to apply. Honestly its rare that I ever did it this game, last game was better. This is going to be something that will take significant time to ingrain. There are some pain points for me with the Syn with ADC heuristic. In lane, bush control seemed to be very important so that I could create space for Jinx to approach the wave whilst forcing Cait/Lux to choose whether they used their abilities on the wave and Jinx, or use them to force me out of the bush or hold them incase I attacked. If I didn't do this they are free to attack the wave and us simultaneously, potentially hitting us both and getting double value, without fearing any pressure from us. Due to the way ADCs choose/need? to position in lane, bush control seems to conflict a lot with the synced position rule. Also, I usually need to break the rule in order to ward at all stages of the game. Additionally, later in the game when the ADC is moronically standing deep down midlane alone, with no wave, and knowledge that the entire enemy team are pushing out, it would be frankly insane to follow the heuristic. These scenarios aside, it was applicable and would have been effective most of the time. Even in team fights. Later in the game I realised that all I really had to do was peel for Jinx, sit on her head and save my abilities for if someone dived her. Given the frame rate seeemed to slow in every fight, I was forced to do this rather than diving in as I normally would, and I think it paid off significantly. Chill and effective way of playing, but boring. Guess I just have to learn to get satisfaction from it. Maybe the most important thing is to learn the rule until it is second nature and THEN re-learn when to break it - I know that will be a real struggle for me.

Rakan vs Ashe/Zoe: Zoe might be the worst player I've ever seen, and even if she was a normal human playing normally, the top and jungle gap meant we win this game no matter what (I think their mid was better despite the score). Same main issues as always, I am not moving up and staying close enough with my ADC in lane, not tethering enemy movements so eating free dmg, and occasional ability sequence fumbles. Backed up the Jungler trying to take an early dragon again when I should have called it off and backed with my ADC.

My gameplay may have improved a miniscule amount in this block - not getting caught out AS much, not missing AS many abilities, but all the same issues remain and the amount of this alleged improvement doesn't matter in terms of impact on game result. The general level of play among everyone has dropped noticably though as my MMR is now so low as to be solid Bronze, so this is likely the dominant factor. Rakan vs Ashe/Nautilus: Nautilus was better than me in lane, but worse in late-game. I needed to hug the wave much more as the effectiveness of both Ashe and Naut is reduced when there are minions in the way. I needed to be on full peel duty for Kog'Maw, never fight without jungle or mid assistance, just focus on keeping Kog alive and CSing. Game overall was a solid Bronze throw-fest, totally random who won. Rakan vs Senna/Rell: Hmmm, Rell was pretty bad, similar over-aggression and ability misses to me in fact, I feel we went pretty even. I think this lane is quite even on paper? Kai'Sa > Senna, Rell > Rakan early, but Senna and Rell scale slightly better later, though not much in it? We probably could have, and needed, to dominate this lane by aggressively targetting the fragile and immobile Senna, but I wasn't good enough to create opportunities. Game was chaotic, it was just about balanced until Scarner forced the dive in bot. From there team just kept forcing and continuing fights until we had lost more that we gained on repeat. Beyond better pings and typing out of macro calls, not much I could do. Swain vs Jihn/Janna: I think Janna is a bit of a pain for Rakan, so I went Swain. Should have just used the opportunity to practice the hard matchup - there is no world in which I win this game as Rakan, but that is not the point anymore. I let Janna get away with murder in the first few levels, need to be more calm with bush control and time the autos and E's properly. I'm starting to see how bad my spacing (going forward and back in relation to the enemy going forward and back) is. Its like I'm playing on 1000 ping. Interesting, definately something to bring up the attention priority list. 1:09:00 Aggressive flash on Brand was awful. Without W, even if I hit I'm not sure we kill. I needed to ping the Jungler off the 1st dragon attempt. Mid was dead and we were OOM in bot, it was a terrible call and cost us a lot. We could have won this game, but team constantly getting caught out made it very hard, last straw was Varus running solo down mid instead of waiting for us to group and end with the Elder buff we had fought so hard for. I hope he gets dysentery for a month. Rakan vs Caitlin/Lissandra: Tristana was deep Iron, I'm sorry, its the truth. Really low quality game across the board. Start of lane was unusual due to the Kayn invade, needed to play super chill and back until I caught back up in levels, right call to take Q 2nd. I swear minions pushed me on to Caitlin's traps at least twice in the game, the little traitors! Oof my first death was shameful, I give away so much defending turrets. Need to start playing way back and focus on just peeling any dives, or E+W through my ADC for a Q+aa then E back for a more surprising punish if the window presents. Several times during this game I missed the chance to use my E properly, tiredness. Frozen Heart was a terrible buy this game, either go Randuin's to blunt their Cait specifically, or Force of Nature/Kaenic for the rest of the team. I have been finding itemisation on Rakan tricky. Celestial Opposition: has felt way better that Solstice Sleigh - mostly for saving me from bursty poke that would otherwise chunk me too low to safely engage. Shureliyah's: I used to love, but health and resistances go noticably further early, so I have started buying it much later. It nice to fit it in but feels more and more like a luxury, unless team lacks dive champs. Zeke's: I thought this was good until I realised the passive does very little in conjunction with Rakan's ult (basically makes it slightly easier for me to catch un-charmed enemies, who usually I'd catch anyway). Locket: I have started going this 1st item as it is cheap, gives me stats I need with none wasted, and a useful active. Frozen Heart: is nice, but it gives me mana I don't need and no health - necessary if the threats are bruisers with no crit. Randuin's: if the threats have crit this should be the choice, health makes all resistances go further so I think this could be better for Rakan's short burst fighting pattern than Frozen Heart, but losing the haste is sad. Trailblazer: Love the theme, but the stats seem a bit meh, maybe I should try it more though. Knight's Vow: Similar to Trailblazer the stats seem meh, and Rakan is designed to soak a few fight deciding hits but not truly tank. Should probably try it more though especially if my ADC seems like they are going to actively shoot fools instead of forever farming and hoping to get carried. Force of Nature: still feels good into significant AP damage. Maybe should go Abyssal Mask instead as it is way cheaper, definately if my team is AP heavy. Kaenic Rookern could also be good into really heavy AP, but expensive. Thornmail: gives me health and armour but doesn't really apply greivous wounds (the reason you buy it) as Rakan doesn't really get hit consistantly. Morellonomicon: gives me more control over the wounds, its also cheap, but makes me feel very squishy. As anti-heal feels weak compared to healing I probably just want the resistances, but I'm not fully decided which is better. Echos of Helia: has felt quite good - health, haste and AP in support price range. Rakan's abilities only seem to scale with AP, so I think it is important to get some into the build and this gives me a bit of nearly everything I want, although mana regen is wasted. Warmog's: seems interesting as a last item, but I basically never get to full build, too expensive and rubbish build path to get early unless stomping. Basically, there don't seem to be many items that Rakan gets his full money's worth out of, and his AP scaling competes a lot with his MAD need for tank stats, haste, and move speed.

Reviewing my games like this is actually making this quite enjoyable, I look foward to watching my games back on my break and they really make me want to queue up and try again. Rakan vs Aphelios/Lulu: Just horrific laning by me. I was tired after work going into this block, if I had been queueing Jungle I probably would not have played this evening. Given the gap going on in Mid, Top and Jungle, even if we won the bot lane, winning the game seems unlikely. Who knows though, a fed Samira can do crazy things. Lulu makes stomping this lane pretty hard, she and Aphelios out-range and out-damage us early. Need to not fall too far behind and look for an all-in lvl6 - probably a coin-flip without jungle assistance. Rakan vs Caitlin/Camille: I played the lane a bit better, but that's not saying much. Early trades with the enemy went ok, especialy as I hit Q a bit more than usual, but I missed a number of windows to punish or trade back. I feel like my 1st back was badly timed, but don't know when would have been best. I clearly needed to roam mid to set Brand behind, but my attempt at lvl5 was probably bad as it left Ashe vulnerable, but at least it spotted out Shyvana early? I am still too aggressive when defending under tower. My engage on Caitlin with ult after picking Camille was bad, I thought 3v1 we'd kill her, but I was too low health and my team didn't have any cooldowns (except J4 flash & ult) or testicles I guess. Game seemed to turn when we lost the 2nd dragon and team coordination fell off a cliff, remained quite throwy but we were steadily getting outscaled. I let myself get baited compensating for J4, and in teamfights engaged too deeply instead of peeling for Ashe. Rakan vs Kai'sa/Thresh: Engaging on Thresh feels terrible, especially at lvl2 without Q. Need to play in the wave more against hook champs. I feel like Kai'sa overstepped a few times and I didn't punish, though I'm not sure Sivr was in position to back me up before thresh got there. Maybe if I try to stay on the same side of the lane as the enemy ADC I can pressure them more and hit the punish windows when they move up to last hit more easily? I could have waited a bit longer before engaging Kayn at the 1st dragon, and wait for his spin before using W, was a bit dicey. 1:09:43, awful sequence of compensating into bad tower defence - just chill. Misplayed my abilities in skirmishes and reacted just a fraction late in deciding who to protect. Once a teamfight has started, I need to save my 2nd rotation of abilities for peeling my backline instead of diving in again. Rakan vs Jinx/Nautilus: No matter what I did this game was probably un-losable due to the Lee Sin smurf. However, I certainly INTed lvl 1 about as hard as I could. I engaged on the Nautilus because I wanted to deter him from warding, but he is never going to be alone here and even if he was he could happily root me, place his ward and walk out. If the team doesn't want to defend an invade it is simply my job to not die. My short side-step flash of the hook was intentional, but would only make sense if I wanted to stay in combat range, and I obviously needed as much distance as possible, just an absolute clusterf*ck. Even though the Nautilus was a terrible player (and the Jinx somehow worse) i bled lane pressure to him constantly. Getting hit by the hook when contesting the bush lvl1 could have got me chunked and was unnecessary to risk. Against Nautilus' stronger lvl1-2 all I need to do is ward the bush from the safety of the minion wave and hit the wave more than him so we get lvl2 first. I can even wait to ward the middle bush until it looks like we are losing the shove or if he moves up to posture aggressively. I forgive myself for not looking for the lvl2 engage, it is hard to know if your ADC will follow you up, so it is a risk generally not worth taking until I have tightened other things up first. It is noticable that when my ADC moves up to last hit I am frequently moving back. Also, when Nautilus moves up to pressure my ADC I usually also move away. This is super bad and is a big reason for losing laning pressure. I need to move up with my ADC to present enemies with a target choice and be in range to peel more quickly if they go on the ADC. Moving toward the aggressor means I can soak their engage whilst the ADC punishes. Rakan's kit is designed to short trade his health bar for CS or damage in these situations, soaking with passive shield, hitting Q to sustain back up, and being able to quickly disengage with E. If Naurilus walks up, I should walk up to him and aa+Q, soak his cc, then either E away, or if the trade becomes more all-in-like, W+aa the enemy ADC and E away. Either way, with my sustain, we should win the trade and be in a better position in future scuffles. Rakan vs Ashe/Milio I comlpetely griefed my Xerath in the early levels. Same issues: bad spacing, too aggressive straight-forward W's. I just needed to create space and sustain for him. I liked the way I started to chain my abilities together after 07:00, though needed to stand a bit closer to Xerath when we we posturing for trades and CSing. I feel we pulled the lane back and came out ahead, but the gap going on in all the other lanes was too big. Xerath and I would have had to be much better than is resonable to expect of us (i.e. > gold) to stand a chance at winning this.

General: I feel like I end up covering a mid wave for quite a long time around level 4-5 very frequently. To me this seems good - reduce damage to mid teir 1 which is the most important tower in the game, get a bit of gold and solo EXP on me that would otherwise be wasted whilst making the wave state better for my midlaner, my ADC should also be getting solo EXP and not losing too much CS because the enemy will almost always push the wave instead of freezing it. However, is this actually bad? The lane generally feels harder once I get back, does the enemy bot gain too much and my ADC lose more than I think? My positioning is just too reckless and disrespectful too often. Almost all deaths (especially the early ones) are avoidable simply by playing more conservatively and not trying to do as much. Me dying less will not win these individual games, but it will make things generally a bit harder for my opponents, and could tip the balance over a sample size of hundreds of games. Just watched a few of Lathyrus' Bronze to Master videos - really eye opening. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hGWvgamgoJeCoac Swain vs Caitlin/Pike: Very hard game. I have to be better than Caitlin AND her hyper-accelerated team, and I wasn't even better than Caitlin. I notice I often don't really have a plan when I engage e.g. dying trying to defend mid due to bad target priority and spacing, dying 1v1 to 1hp Caitlin by her tower etc. - need to think first, I know what cooldowns I have but I need to plan around what the enemy will do to dodge their attacks and hit mine. Play fights slower. Swain vs Jihn/Zyra: Very hard game. My ADC was a slut for eating every ability they threw, whilst every other lane was also getting wrecked. I was too wild with my skill shots. Not on me to force anything, needed to sit back soaking waves stacking passive where possible, wait for an opportunity to punish an over-commit, and generally just make them work as hard as possible for the LP they will inevitably take. Swain vs Tristana/Cho'Gath: I played badly, bit tilted should have taken a break. Veigar getting bummed by every single Cho' Q was annoying me more than it should. We should probaby never be aggressive in this lane, simply soak waves and farm stacks off Cho' and wait for Trist to get bored and over commit. Playing passively is not a great plan as their team outscales ours, if their tanks build MR we are boned, but what else can we do? Epic team fight at 1:22:08 was fun. Swain vs Ezreal/Zyra: What is this garbage team comp? Smolder wanted to play passive and farm to late game, and maybe I ended up getting a little aggressive because our counterparts seemed quite weak initially. Yorick is always going to become a monster, if we can prevent Karthus from becoming one too by not dying to him, and we kill our laners instead of dying to them and nocturne we might have a chance. My positioning against relentless skill shot poke is not good enough. Rakan vs Ezreal/Yuumi: Hmmm, I didn't play this as well as I could, probably tired and a bit tilted. I don't feel like EzYum should have been getting control of the wave nearly as much as they did. Yuumi sustain makes poke trading pointless. Need to position pressure Ez to overload his mental stack and make him miss CS. Dodging skill shots (staying in the wave more) to drain enemy mana whilst taking as little damage as possible is the key. Pressuring and dodging will allow my ADC to CS more safely and build waves which in turn makes my pressuring and dodging job easier. This would inherently increase risk of ganks from fanboi Rek'Sai, so jungle tracking would become even more important. Quite a skill-check lane! Rakan vs Sivir/Senna: Not much to say. Algorithm felt sheepish for all the bullshit it has put me through, so put me on the team it intended to win. Enemies were bad, and all my teamates were at least a bit better than them. Senna and Sivir kept positioning dangerously and didn't predict and punish my attacks well even when I messed them up. My engages were often a bit reckless and a couple of the deaths were rather silly, but because we were all just a lot better it didn't matter. This bot lane is how most of the laning phases through Bronze went. Seems I wasn't prepared for the skill jump when I hit Silver IV, which is interesting as in previous seasons with Jungle I didn't really notice a difference between B1 and S4, and usually cleared S4 in <10 games.

Given my skill level at Rakan demonstrated in game 1 (which was not enough), I do not see how I could have won any other game in this set playing as him - maybe an argument could be made for the Maokai game, though that was almost un-losable despite my best efforts. General: 1. No improvement on coordinated lane positioning with my ADC. 2. Shaco players are the lowest form of life. Rakan: 1. Slight improvement on doing fewer raw direct frontal W engages. 2. Some combo errors i.e. need to R then W, and commit summoner spells to fights better. Swain: 1. Need to 'win' lane consistently to make sure I am ahead AND the enemy bot are behind before mid game, do this by: a. Hit more E's - Watch friendly minion health, E+W ADC when they go for it, b. Die less - Main reason for deaths (especially early) is over-extend positioning errors, respect fog more, play inside the wave more. Better fight micro will come with time. 2. Falling behind in levels badly in laning phase - Need to move to ward and W mid more intelligently, it costs me EXP, and frequently causes my ADC to suddenly over-extend in order to suicide. 3. Starting to hit a few E+W combos - To hit more I need to avoid raw W's (except zoning W on ganks or to secure E hits) in the early game when enemies are more attentive to dodging, that way it will be up more when I am ready to E. Maokai: 1. I played terribly, but luckily Maokai is too fat and simple to fail, and the game was absolutely stacked in my favour by the algorithm to stop me demoting. 2. Improving Q usage to get the right knockback direction is probably the biggest priority, in a list that includes literally everything.

Most frequent and costly errors: General: 1. Positional coordination with ADC, not forming a triangle with trade target - Attention priority. 2. Compensating trying to save teammates and dying too - Cycle risk taking, try being more conservative for the next few game blocks. 3. Bad at dodging Vel'Kos skillshots - Mix up dodging pattern? Walk forwards more? Rakan: 1. Raw, direct frontal W engage, especially in lane in front of either tower - Just stop doing this. 2. Losing EXP from warding and roaming - not sure how to fix, better timing around waves and recalls? 3. Missing too many Q's - Make W+aa+Q instinctive. Take more time to assess enemy movement. 4. Cursor placement for E - Practice tool. 5. Not seeing windows for R+E+W long range engage combo - Will come with time when mental stack is more free. 6. Rakan does not work well with bronze/silver Caitlins - Of my pool, Swain probably best to match Cait's poke and bully lane. Swain: 1. Face checking bushes - Always W the common kill bushes before walking up to ward. 2. Missing too many E's - Take more time to assess enemy movement. 3. Not doing the E+W combo - Actively try to do this with every E. 5. Not W mid and enemy bot jungle camps enough (for assists and jungle tracking) - Pay more attention in lull states.

Is David starting a minute down on clock? That's harsh.

3:14 uaeeegh

Nice to see some Malifaux again. Guildball as well the only thing missing (a big miss though) is Warmachine mk4 😊