Well, its been awhile since I've bothered to post or jibber jabber much here, so I figured I'd check in.
I'm still playing LOL as my main gaming interest. Playing a few things here and there but mostly LOL. Here's a few things I'm going to touch on in this post as they've been on my mind.
- Autofill
- How lobbies work to decide if you get your primary/secondary
- New ranked queues (flex, solo/duo)
- Yorick 1 tricking - queue strategy
- Who I'm playing w/
- Ping
So, autofill kind of blows imo. I get why they are doing it (to bring down queue times), but folk are often real shitters when they get autofilled. And then there's the other thing that's happening - many, many queue dodges and some folks getting tilted before the game starts simply because of the autofill/dodges.
Here's an example from me from a few nights back. I queue up and hit lobby inside of 2 minutes (pretty normal queue time for me now). I see I'm top lane, my primary pick. 60 seconds in, someone dodges. I hit the next lobby, now I'm mid (my secondary pick). I'd actually prefer top, so I ask the guy who hit top if they'd be willing swap. He agrees, so I'm happy. Someone dodges. Now, I'm back to top. Someone dodges. Now I'm autofilled to support. The game starts without a problem. This crap really makes me miss the old team builder. You got to pick the role and champ you wanted to play. You got to play that. You might have had to wait longer, but you always got to play what you wanted. Which is a hell of a lot more fun than hoping you get your primary, having folks dodge because they've been autofilled, and you bounce around over and over. Top it off, you might have had a ban choice in 1 lobby and you lose it with the dodge... or had a favorable pick order, and so on. Anyway, its a bit of a pain in the ass and the dodges happen enough now where I know that in about 4 games, I'm going to have seen at least 8 dodges. Don't really think I'm exaggerating there and it adds about 5-15 minutes to the wait to get into a game (time I'd have been willing to wait to just get the role I wanted)... instead waiting and just sucking it up after 15 minutes if I get a role I'd pref not to play.
re: How lobbies work to decide if you get your primary/secondary. I'm still a little unsure about this one. We know that in the past, if you picked support in ANY way, you pretty much always got support. That changed things for folks like me where I eventually refused to queue for support as a secondary as there is no point in doing so... you're going to be the support. The last few times I tossed it in there as secondary, I ended up getting my primary or even autofilled to mid. Then I even had trouble getting it as a primary role. Bottom line, I think Rito has been tweaking the values on the roles quite a bit behind the scenes. Things currently seem to be weighted back towards getting support if you put it as your main or secondary again. Keep in mind this is my POV from playing solo in flex queue for the most part - could vary for other queues. All said and done, I have no idea how it works now for sure and I think Rito blew it a bit with the bad weighting of things at launch and leaving it that way. It is preseason though, so w/e.
New ranked queues - so I'm really trying to figure this out and don't know for sure either. I THINK they took what was flex queue last season and transferred your MMR and LP over to the solo/duo queue. For example, I finished last season P4 in the flex queue (eg the only ranked queue). When I play ranked solo/duo, I see I'm P4, so I guess that happened and I don't recollect having any placement matches in that queue. I believe they will reset that MMR and I'll have to do placements later in preseason.
With the new flex queue, I think they treated it like a new queue for the most part... or maybe.. idk... I had placement matches and now I'm plowing through the ranks. I'm guessing they won't reset that and have me do placements again, but f if I know. By and large I've been enjoying the new flexed queue playing mostly solo. Only times its kind of blown is if we get a well coordinated team that ROFLstomps, but that's happened maybe twice now.
Yorick 1 tricking - I am loving playing yorick now.... possibly yet another flavor of the month for me (I tend to get super focused on a champ for a bit and then lose interest after I reach a decent skill level - kind of to my detriment, but I get bored). Yorick is a split push god with powerspikes that folks do not expect as the overall exposure to the reworked yorick is still pretty low. This generally means an advantage for me as I work on my top game and figure out how to use him best, which is good as top hasn't been very strong for me - now its prob my best role.
Build is trinity, zz, guardian angel, w/e. You get w/e boots you need based on matchup and you adjust your build if you end up behind to prioritize the zz over trinity. 90% of the time I'll rush the sheen and I pick w/e starting item I feel I need into the matchup. I generally lane very well and get a nasty powerspike at lv2 and lv4. He's a fun champ and not too mechanically difficult... well, I guess that's not super true. You need to manage his grasp and grave digger stacks, hit your cc at the right time, wait for your ult etc... not that hard though. His dueling power goes through the roof when he has his ult available, but its pretty critical to keep in mind you are much weaker mid game w/o that ult. With his ult and zz and the right circumstances, you can push 2 different lanes and group in a 3rd which obviously puts a substantial amount of pressure on the enemy team.
Last thing on yorick is my queuing strategy. I mentioned how if I go support as a secondary, I will probably get it. Well, if I choose top as primary and mid as secondary, unless I get autofilled, I'm very likely to get a role that is highly wanted, which enables me to generally get to play top if that's what I want or play something that I can carry on mid like fizz or even swap w/e someone else. It's mostly guess work, but I assume mid is the most desired role, so I increase my odds of getting my primary of top by picking mid as secondary... seems to be working out so far. I feel like I'm autofilling 1 out of every 5 games though.
Who I'm playing w/ - I'm mostly pugging. I'll get in games with Bryff/Swan here and there. Haven't been hooking up with hunny much, don't play with cow atm as I want to play ranked and I apparently can't even invite the guy to a flex queue game. Karl doesn't reply if I reach out to him so that's a waste of time and Boaz is super into TT, which I freaking hate, so I'm not playing much w/ him. I have been really enjoying myself though and like working on my yorick game and plowing through elo while I get better.
Last, my ping jumped up 20-30 in the last week or two. Not sure why. Was 23, now its 50 or so static. Perfectly playable, but its a weird, very static change. Not sure if its me, my isp, rito, routing, or what. I'll prob look into that before long.
OK that's it. See ya
