When I queue for a normal, I just want to mess around. I am not going to be trying hard. I might buy a few wards here and there. If my team feeds, I am not going to rage at them. If somebody goes 5 tiamat gp I won't care, because I am probably trying 5 tiamat malphite.

Normal queue is essentially "practice" for ranked matches, and its a place to test out builds, jungling, and new strategies in general. Because of this, I believe normals should only match by level, and not elo. If you are 5-0 at level 3 and you are running into a 15 minute queue time and being matched [...]

Are We There Yet?

I will start off by saying that I have played a number of online games, thus I have been exposed to number of companies ranging from those that rarely engage the community, like Nexon and Ntreev, to companies that work a bit closer to players, like Valve and Hi-Rez Studios. Out of all of the gaming companies I have experienced, none are as engaged with the community as Riot Games is. On the other hand, none have as many unfulfilled promises either.

Anyone that frequents the League of Legends main forums will notice a number of constantly reoccurring [...]

So yeah I just checked out the new "Tribunal" function that Riot added. All in all I was actually pretty impressed about how much depth it has. You can check not only the game in question, but 7 other games as well. You can see the player in question's builds, scores, why they were reported, chat logs, etc. After you check out their page, you can choose whether to "Punish" or "Pardon" them.

How am I going to use the tribunal? As an experienced player in solo queue, the only type of player I have problems with is the player that doesn't do [...]

In an attempt to avoid writing another essay (see last week) for a couple hours, this post will be more specific in subject. I'm mostly going to describe basic goals you want to have when you're stuck jungling since your team locked in 4 carries.

For me, I often expect these objectives to be literally everything you need to do OR prevent:

1. Have control of your own jungle

2. River Control (Warding enemy entrances to it/oracle to kill enemy wards)

3. Stop a lane from losing by taking it over when they bluepill/giving them buffs [...]

Pre-req: Be able to play a support, ad/ap carry, jungle and tank.


Your queue just pops, and you're last pick. Obviously you're the lowest rated, and perhaps worse than your teammates, but you are in the fortunate position to know your enemy's and your team's entire composition before picking your champion.

To begin, look at your team's composition first. If your team doesn't have a support... pick one! If your team doesn't have a tank.. pick one! This is the first step of learning how to strategically manipulate the [...]

Well, so am I.
Before you ask why is this low-mid ELO player blogging on SoloMid among top ELO players, who obviously know hell of a lot more about LoL than I do, I can assure you that I've been in ELO hell a lot longer than they did (this I am not proud of). I've seen the changing meta and mindset of low-mid ELO from the start of season 1 until today. Therefore, when it comes to discussing the low-mid ELO environment, I believe that I am qualified to post here. Furthermore, many of the SoloMid viewers are in the low-mid ELO range, so I have a sizable [...]

Finally a patch where I don't completely /facepalm at a majority of the changes, I wonder if Riot has been reading my blogs...

Mastery pages - Cool. Was expecting to have to pay for them, very suprised here.

Alistar nerf - General trend seen here with the buff/nerf cycles, Riot definately needs to do a better job of testing heroes thoroughly on the test realms before bringing changes live. However I don't think Alistar was overnerfed, his ratios are still pretty strong, and he has his ult which makes him the tankiest caster/support in game.

Annie/Kog [...]

Being busy Saturday and not having anything to write anyway, I decided I might as well post something now rather than wait until next week (I'll have another post then and I hope and have my Warwick guide completed).

Despite some controversy on Saturday, team Solomid (TSM) managed to get back to #1 at the end of the tournament. Most of the following reasons also apply to EG and the barely eliminated RS for their success.

1. We scrimed. The fact that EG, a team that doesn't care about getting 2200+ in solo queue could get 2nd easily with only a couple weeks of [...]

So, you are losing a lot of elo. Why?

Solo Queue in League of Legends is an interesting concept. How does it work, exactly? Well, I don't think I am alone in saying that wins and losses come in streaks. It usually doesn't happen in small streaks, either. From what I have gathered, when you start your winning streak, matchmaking pairs you up with others who are on similar streaks. When you start to lose, however, for whatever reason, you start to get the players who are "tilting", which is a combination of bad luck and not going outside for 2-3 days straight. [...]