HumbleBrag Thread

[UberTri]

Dat lux build. Can't get enough CDR, can't she?

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I played my first three solo queue games since the re-install last night. I ran Taric support all three games, and probably went something like 6/6/50 between the three games. I forgot what staggering jerks some people can be during these games. Every single game had one person on the team who felt the need to berate 1-2 other players on the team the entire game. One even asked "how are you playing at THIS elo?" to someone playing Elise. First, it was an unranked game. Second, whatever elo it was, it was my elo, so it has to be something miniscule because I have never played a single ranked game and very few solo queue period. That made me lol. Like we were playing in a 2200 elo game or something.

But I have just basically decided no matter how big a troll someone is, I am just going to be as nice as possible to them, relentlessly positive, and not take the bait. In some ways, responding to "Why r u such a noob" with things like, "Yes, I suppose I am not that good. Please provide me with some constructive criticism to improve my game" is far more entertaining, even if they are far worse than me.

[Jowy]

Responding will eventually break you, just put them on your ignore list. I've been doing that for 1,5 years and it's still not full.

[Sullla]

Jowy is correct, just ignore the people who are raging and don't respond. Nothing good will result and you're likely to get reported if you try to engage with them. Report them at the end of the game without saying anything.

[Voldymort]

Responding will eventually break you, just put them on your ignore list. I've been doing that for 1,5 years and it's still not full.

I don't think there's such a thing as a full ignore list...

[pocketbeetle]

Well, it's taken long enough, but finally hit that shiny Platinum tier today.
Motivated by the impending realisation that Cull is almost certainly going to succeed on a Plat promo at some point (Edit: he's now hit it, grats Cull! ), I went on a support rampage and won something like 20 out of my last 25 games.

Along the way I encountered all manner of mystical beings, from the well known trolls, the feeders, the ragers, the diamond smurfs "I carry you np" who go 0/12/2, to the actual diamond smurfs who go 12/0/2 and have half the enemy team afking by minute 10. I've suffered through the disconnects of the vengeful internet gods, the trials of the obviously elo boosted (and on the swift way back downwards) and, I'm not ashamed to admit, thrown a couple of my own little foot-stomping tantrums along the way.

I've played with people who on their Plat promos have decided to go yolo first time AP Trist because their usual adc spot was called (we won), played with a rager who went Blitzcrank mid (we lost), played against Plat Soraka mains who ran +15dmg +12 AP runepages with 30/0/0 masteries (she hurt, but we won) and played with first-blood-giving jungle Karmas who cause the top lane to lose their inhib at 15 minutes (we stomped bot lane and won).
I've won many games where my team was outnumbered 4v5, lost just as many when my team outnumbered the enemy 5v4. Meta-be-damned, I've stomped games without a jungler, and on one particularly memorable occasion, I even lost a 5v3 game. Yes rly.

Some observations:
Gold 1 for me has been incredibly swingy.
Think it took me 4 attempts to win the Gold 1 -> Plat promo. Keeping in mind that in the Division 1 region, often games will only reward you around 5 lp per win due to the clamping:

• The first time I failed the promo, no problem. But I then went on a losing streak and dropped all the way from around 90 lp down to 0 in the division. Took a while, but I built that up again and reached the second promo.
  
• Again failed, and again went on a losing streak, this time getting demoted down to Gold 2.
  
• Again built it back up, reaching the 3rd attempt. This time the internet Gods kicked me while I was down, and on the deciding game (2:2 best of 5) my internet cut out in champ select, automatic loss, failed promo.
  
• This time, the resulting losing streak took me all the way down to the bottom of Gold 3 and my hidden mmr, judging from the players I was being matched against, to around Silver 1.

The resulting graph of that downward trip and climb back up looks something like this:

What's the point of typing this out? I started wondering why I was getting these swings.
I wasn't trolling, rarely raging, I know my strengths and weaknesses, and was generally being sensible and playing to the former. No first time champs in ranked, sticking to specific main champs, nothing too unconventional, taking time outs if I lost 3 in a row.
Yet for some reason, over the period of a couple of days/week my rating was dropping from that of a mid-low end plat player to that of a mid-high silver player, ie entire Tiers, which seems like a pretty serious amount of variance to me.

Possible reasons why?

1. I'm wondering if the mmr requirement for reaching Division 1 promos is maybe set a little too high. It's pretty standard when looking to get promoted, that you face up against players possibly in Division 2-3 of the Tier above you, so if looking to go Silver -> Gold, it's not unusual to see some Gold 2 and 3s, and probably most of the rest of the team will be Gold 4-5, similarly Gold -> Plat, Plat 2-3s are not uncommon, some Plat 1s if they're duoing.
   Here's an example of a game from one of my promo matches before I went on the third and biggest slump, it's not a perfect example - not entirely sure why I kept it, but I think maybe because the disparity between the teams was most obvious and I felt aggrieved.
   
   
   
   
   So in order to get promoted to Plat, I believe one has to have a mmr of around Plat 3, maybe high Plat 4.
   If like me you are on the borderline of Gold 1/Plat 5, then typically you're only going to reach promos on a burst of luck/ playing well, and sustaining that through the next set of games can be difficult, going on a losing streak after is not uncommon.
   Since the system is designed to respond to mmr changes in a non-linear fashion (ie if you lose or win a number of games in a row, it will raise or lower you faster than if you alternate win/loss/win/loss), people like me can therefore find themselves going on these swings?
   
2. I'm also wondering if Riot takes into account 'trending' when matching teams.
   Anecdotally, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that when I'm on a losing streak I've noticed I tend to get matched with people who have also lost more ranked games than they've won in their recent match history, and vice versa.
   If this were true, can anyone think of a reason one might do this?
   Say you've got 20 people, who you need to distribute into two groups of 10 (and who will further be matched up 5v5). 10 are 1600 mmr but are trending down towards 1500, while the other 10 are 1500 mmr and trending up towards 1600.
   Would you match the 1600s all against each other and similarly the 1500s? Or would you create two groups of 5x 1600s against 5x 1500s and let God sort 'em out?
   Is there any reason to do the latter, any kind of beneficial outcome? I didn't do enough statistics to even know where to begin on that question.
   Who knows, maybe I'm talking complete rubbish *shrugs*.

tl;dr
Pb's top tips for getting promoted:

• Focus on a few roles and get good at them.
  At least two different roles, preferably three. Don't be the guy in champ select who can only play XX, because a) you just won't get it all the time and b) doing so may hurt your team (eg if you play only support, you may end up splitting and therefore denying a strong duo bot lane that would have hard carried, but now can't because of your inflexibility).
  Very rarely will your team lack a dedicated top/mid/adc - jungle and support seem to be the least preferred roles (jungle because you can get blamed by your team, support because come lategame you're everyone's bitch). So if you're looking to pick up another role, take one of those two.
  
• You don't need to be able to play every champ in your preferred role - assuming neither are common bans, two can be more than enough. Default champ A who you main, and default champ B who you can play well if a counter or bad matchup to A is on the enemy team.
  
• At the risk of repeating myself, know your strengths. I personally believe all champs in LoL can be divided into two groups: positional and all in.
  Positional champs have a set range they need to maintain between them and their target (adcs being the obvious example, but also certain mids fit this such as Twisted Fate and Anivia) while All-in champs quite obviously dive in, gap closing bruisers like Irelia and assassins like Talon fit here. For me, I hate kiting, find csing boring, and tend to lose track of where I am in teamfights, All-in assassins fit me as a result because I always know where I am - either on top of the enemy adc or right in the middle of the teamfight (preferably on the end of my trollpole).
  Know which you're better at and play to it - it's not coincidence that Nidalee mains tend to also play and be good at Lux, while Fizz mains almost always seem to have a sideline in Kassadin.
  My second roles of Support and tank all-in Jungles (Amumu, Malphite) also avoid the csing and other issues.
  
• Particularly in promo matches, know when you're already beaten before the match has even started. In one game I was matched up against their highest elo (Plat 2) in mid, with them on their main (Akali) who is a partial counter to mine (Fizz). In these situations don't play like a complete wimp, but don't feel pressured into having to beat them straight up and ending up feeding them either - give your team a chance to carry.

For those that are still reading (why oh why?), the last game in my promo was... a rollercoaster to say the least.
Here's the matchup:

The game opened with a BennyHill invasion scene, where the Varus asked me to explorer ward their blue for a potential arrow/Q steal. Unfortunately they were all sitting in a bush nearby, so several flashes from both teams later, our Rammus escaped on 50 or so health with a Janna shield maybe or maybe not deciding the outcome.

Bot lane vs Ashe/Nami went okay. The Varus wasn't an adc main, but he knew the ropes and both sides remained roughly equal with very few kills and little jungler interference.
Meanwhile on the other half of the map however, all hell was breaking loose.
Our Rammus decided to camp top to give Rumble a strong lead against Voli, while the enemy Zac set up a full scale tent-and-resupply camp in mid. The Zed coped reasonably well, only died a few times, while Rammus and Rumble dined on bear, to the extent that Rammus got fed enough to buy a BOTRK (apparently this is not unusual for him).

All was looking good 20 mins in, when suddenly the Zed exploded in a fountain of rage.
Apparently after simmering through the continual Zac camp and brought to the boil by his first kill being taken by an errant tornado from his side's AP Janna (oops); his anger was fully precipitated by being denied both a red buff (Varus) and blue (Rammus).
He then proceeded to sell all his items while continuing to afk farm and jungle, occasionally roaming to kill the enemy Ashe with no items (yes rly Zed OP).
All pleas and calls for calmness were met with the repeated and rational response of "legit fuck you all".

It's worth noting that I wasn't the only one invested in the game, our Rumble was in the deciding game for his Plat promo, being 2:2, while I at least had the cushion of being 2:0 (yet still, you don't want to throw games in this sitation). Second note should go to the Zed being Diamond 5 in a Plat 3ish elo game - not a case of boosting though, he was definitely good enough, but a downward slump maybe explaining some of his negativity.
We were fed enough and good enough to hang in there 4v5, picking up bot inhib at some point and leveraging that to sneak a baron, but it was becoming clear that it was only a matter of time before Ashe hit a game-winning arrow and the resulting loss.

Fortunately between alternate begging (me), threatening (Rammus) and attempts at bribery (Rumble, offering any item in the RP shop), the Zed eventually cooled down after around 15-20 mins of no-item farming. I'd like to think I had a hand in this by pointing out that even Ashe was now beating him in 1v1s due to his state of inventorious vacantus. He then shopped around 5 complete items, and while certainly didn't play with the team (we had a merry game of chase the Zed while he dived 1v5 to kill the Ashe), the resulting number of ults blown on killing him allowed us to clean up afterwards and win at around 45 mins.

To say it was a tough game would be an understatement.
/end long post

[Jowy]

Congrats PB! You are right that the reqs are too high for advancing to the next tier. You're pretty much set on speeding through the next few divisions once you beat the artificial barrier, with the exception of those who got carried there by duo queue. It's just one of the downsides of Riot taking a more scientific approach to things.. The theory behind it sounds good on paper, but once you actually play it, it's very anti-fun.

Now do it on EU West :P

[v8mark]

Congrats pb! From playing with you on EUW, I know how hard you must have been carried have worked to hit platinum. Now all you need to do is carry me there

Some interesting observations and talking points there. I can certainly empathise on the winning and losing streaks… my MMR on EUW has roughly gone from about 1700 down to 1550, then back up to 1700 over the last couple of weeks. I don’t think there are any qualitative differences in how I’ve been playing over this time, so I can only attribute it to the vagaries of solo queue variance. (incidentally, if you haven’t come across it you can find your team’s average MMR on the quickfind.kassad.in website).

I’ve also been keeping a journal-type spreadsheet for all of my ranked games after my placements; these now number 150 over the past two months or thereabouts. On this spreadsheet I’ve also been entering my games on a rather unscientific ‘carry scale’, estimating the strength of my team vs the strength of the enemy team. The rating is intended to show (subjectively, of course) how hard I feel I had to carry that game (or how hard I would have had to carry, in case of losses) to win it. The scale goes from 1-10, with 1 being an ‘unlosable’ game where my team stomps all-comers, and 10 being an unwinnable game, where my team gets stomped. The mid-point (5.5 in this case -- if I’d been sensible the scale would have run from 0-10, but I didn’t think that far ahead) would therefore theoretically be a balanced game where someone above their ‘true elo’ would have won, and someone below their true elo would have lost.

The motivation behind this scale was initially to see to what extent my perceptions of the difficulty of each game differed from their actual difficulty. My reasoning is that with a large enough sample size (I’m not even sure I’m there yet, with 150 games) the actual difficulty of my games will average out to the midpoint of 5.5. At last check -- about 50 games ago, before my epic losing streak, it should be said -- the average of my subjective scores was around 5.9, which means that I overestimated the difficulty of each game by approximately 0.4 points, on average. This is probably about as expected; even attempting to be entirely objective, Dunning-Kruger rears its ugly ahead and I give myself more credit for victories than blame for losses. This is also borne out by the fact that (I think) only two of my hilariously OP teams have so far achieved a ‘1’ rating, whereas six particularly frustrating exercises in futility have justified a ’10’. Additionally, according to my ratings, only twice has my poor play lost a game that someone at the average elo would have won (i.e. I lost a game with a rating of ‘5’ or less), whereas the number of times I carried an otherwise losing game (winning a game above a ‘6’ rating) is close to 20. In part this is borne out by my W/L record (90/71 overall) but seems disproportionate.

Another interesting facet of this data is the extent to which streaks occur… streaks of five or six games above 8, or of games below 3, are not uncommon. Generally I’m happy to put this down to variance given the extensive literature in neurology and psychology that illustrates the human propensity to see patterns within random sequences. (Random sequences, such as coin flips, frequently contain patterns or runs that on first glance seem non-random or biased.)

I can’t imagine there is any inherent statistical advantage in putting people on winning streaks or losing streaks on the same team, and in fact intuitively there would seem to be a disadvantage in doing so. People on losing streaks are likely to be playing on tilt or under pressure, which means that their skill level and decision-making ability within the game may be below their MMR -- vice versa for people on winning streaks, who will be more confident and able to make correct decisions. If you group people on similar streaks together, it seems to me you create an unbalanced game where the chances of each team winning do not equal 50% according to the MMR system, which is its overriding purpose.

[Jowy]

What's your name on EUW?

[v8mark]

What's your name on EUW?

Terror Incognita, same as NA