That's a fair observation regarding folks picking off meta and me having a negative disposition immediately.  Good call out and something for me to work on.  That goes in degrees with me.  1 - I should be OK with at least trying off meta.  2 - I'm very OK with it if we have a 1 trick wonder. 3 - I get agitated if I feel like I need to play the straight man to make crap work because someone wants to try something out that they have no experience on (and its off meta). 4 - all of this applies primarily to ranked now as a limiter.  Meaning you are a dick imo if you are trying out a champ you don't really play in ranked.  But I really shouldn't have a hissy fit if someone is just picking off meta.  

Also fair and something to work on.  I think what happens is that I go in trying just as hard as normal, but then when things start going crappy (if they do), I take on more of a defeatist mentality.  Certainly a heck of a lot more than I would with meta picking.  

Grats on Dia 3!  Last I checked you were 1 loss in your best of 3, so grats on killing it the last 2!  

Just got back to plat 3 tonight (2nd or 3rd time this season).  Happy to say my mmr is on the rise now (gained about 250 mmr since i hit plat III last time).  

Random comment - is velkoz's popularity up a bunch mid due to some reddit posts recently?  Seem a lot more of him lately on folks that aren't so good w/ him (not talking about you dr cow).  

It's really cool you are getting to play with some well known folks.  That's neat.  You should grab replays at least (LSI does that and you can upload em).  I'd be interested in watching that stuff.

RE this:

Current best bans:

Ekko, Zed, Kindred, Fizz, elise, gragas (jungle), nid, graves, yi 

Best sleeper OP's IMO:

Sivir, Ryze, Kayle, Trundle (top/support), kha (jungle), Gragas (top)

Bans - I agree.  I think raka belongs there. I feel pretty strong against her, but win rate is win rate. it's high.

Sleeper - kayles not sleeper, I think its pretty well known (53.5% win rate - #4 in game).  I think you might have missed the absolute strongest champ that has not seen much talk.  Kog maw.  This fugger is very strong.  They delayed his power spike, but only a little.  And folks have not caught on yet (they will soon I think).  I'm actually very surprized folks are not keyed into this.  Like yasuo had to be nerfed into the ground when he was perceived as strong.  Many times. Kog was ungodly strong (eg the easiest adc bar none imo - press w, use e, all die).  He was nerfed some and folks acted like the problem was solved.  It was not. Give him a try and play him EXACTLY as you did when you felt he was strong.  You can do the same crap, but it takes about 7 min longer.

Oh and honey swears by voli bear jungle being OP right now.  He actually does really well with him, so perhaps he's onto something.  He runs distortion boots and the cdr mastery on summs + cdr boots.  Tends to get to the back line very very often.  Worth a look. I'm hoping to watch a replay of his soon. 

i think ekko nerf might be coming - something to make him less slippery. I still dont see graggy top as super strong.  hoping to see something along those lines, but I'm missing it so far.  

Here is one of the replay although an embarrassing game for me haha. 

http://www.lolking.net/replay/na/2155013079

Mid, top usually but when I feel in the mood for a blitz game I just pick support primary

Was reintroduced to drunk boaz tonight.  Turns out I am the funniest mofo on the planet.  He said he had 75% of a 1 gallon jar of wine. God bless Alaska.  

Tired, but will rattle off some crap quick.  Been having a lot of fun playing lately.  Done with dj bby d (more often than not was playing poop - my goto twitch stream for music is this crap (hit and miss - https://www.twitch.tv/monstercat).  

Starting to look at elo differently.  Specifically, I'm trying very hard to gravitate away from caring about promo series/demotions and keying into the behind the scenes mmr.  Being up 200 points or so since the last time I hit plat 3 is cool.  Feels like I'm building on something.  

Also, I'm starting to wonder a little bit about why raising elo is a little more difficult for a few folks.  It's not like an I think folks are bad thing in the slightest.  I'm actually just trying to put together why it wasn't that much work for me to hit plat elo again while some other plat folks are taking longer.  Was the old ranked system different in ways that it was easier for folks?  For me I felt like my biggest problem was not being able to get the role I wanted in previous seasons.  Now that you generally can, maybe that offsets things (eg if everyone can usually get what they want, then perhaps the skill ceiling is raised in those roles, so some folks don't do as good). idk.  Just kind of wondering.  

Hit gold on my 1 alt tonight.  Didn't even know i was in a series.  Another really nice thing about multiple accounts.  While I try, I don't really give a shit at all about the elo on alt accounts.  I just take it as an opportunity to practice crap I blow at.  Starting to get good w/ lucy again.  

Anyway, that's all.  Dr rando out.  Night.

what's that?  Low elo ragebuild tristana losses inc?  already got one.  

I get it though - I get all pumped to play things and try out stuff after watching streams.  Unlocked cait on my lowest elo alt, so I'm working on that.  

I am in no way an expert in the ranked system, but I've been keeping track of teammates and opponents in my climb.

The best way I can put it: it comes in waves (or resets).

Last week from thurs-fri I went up more than a whole division ~20lp s2 - 100lp s1.

I had about a 75% win rate those two days playing top, supp, and jungle (descending order).

The combined mmr/ranking was about even to my team being a little on the lower end (about 50% of my games was duo+ queue).

I played saturday night completely solo and went 0-4 (promos + one game).

The matchmaking was a disaster. On average, 2 teammates weren't even ranked, and the remaining did not make up for the difference (opponents averaged gold 4ish).  

synn - you crazy.  Folks made a bunch of clubs when the club system 1st came out.  Folks like me, also have created and deleted like 6 different clubs (you can't do name change AND you can't own more than 1 clubs, so you actually have to fully drop your club to make a new one).  I likely invited you to one and then killed the club when you were offline and booted ya out (so as to delete the club).  No offense was intended, buddy.  Hope that explains things for ya.  I've personally been playing on lots of different alt accounts I own, which likely also explains why I haven't seen you online.

http://oce.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-68-notes

Yeah just reading through now.

Also, anyone else just get a summoner icon from rito?  Just logged into my main and saw this:

edit ah i see - here's what karl was talking about:  http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/mid-season-magic

 don't play muh anymore, I only came back to play aurelion sol since I'm obsessed with dragons, but wtf? Why are they changing space aids?

Random off topic - don't know how often you folks cook, but my wife and I started using hello fresh.  It's a service where they send you 3 meals for 2 each week.  It's not like a calorie thing or crap like that.  You just pick from a list of like 6 entrees each week, they send you the stuff you need to make it, and you cook.  Kind of an easy way to try out new things and learn new recipes of stuff.  There's also blue apron as well, which is a little cheaper.  I think both give you a discount on your first week and you can cancel pretty easily if its not your bag.  The

Here's what we had this week:

https://www.hellofresh.com/recipe/week/current/

Trying the vegetable spaghetti Bolognese tonight.  Anyway, just a random heads up in case anyone is into this sort of thing. Only made 1 meal so far, but it was something new and was pretty good.  

Looking forward to not playing taric tonight and watching everyone ban him.

OK - so I got to spend some time playing Taric.  Here are my initial thoughts.

So, I tried him out 1st vs bots.  One thing becomes clear very quickly - dudes got high cool downs. You need to use his dbl hit passive to drive down the cooldowns.  Even with like 25% cdr, its still pretty rough UNLESS you are using the passive.

He's fun and fairly intuitive to use.  Doesn't take you long to get familiar with how he works.  The real problem is getting other folks on your team to know how he works.  Think like when kench came out and no one would hop in his mouth to go for picks/ganks, etc.  People just don't understand what his kit does yet I think. 

Anyway, I fired him up and played him in a few ranked games.  The biggest problem again was folks having how his interactions work.  For instance, I can heal/shield someone and toss out a stun.  I'd see clear opportunities for a kill if my adc would continue moving forward instead of retreating.  It's mostly that sort of thing.  You see a clear all in and people not used to him have no idea that you could easily get a kill.  

Same thing goes for his ult.  Folks just don't know what to do.   I will say this - the time it takes for his ult to go off is a little long, but that's probably fair.  He doesn't feel OP though, which is good.  I'm curious how the win rate will pan out and how folks will be once they start to get his kit.  I think he works well with most adcs but probably would be best suited with lucian.  Lucian is like 100% certain to land tarics stun on dash which means a free trade if the support is not close enough to back him off.  

Ex lucian dashes to the side of an adc, while he's dashing, I fire up the stun.  Lucian lands, dbl taps, stun goes off, gets a free q.  Anyway, looking forward to playing him more.  

prob right - its super hit/miss with folks knowing what to do now.  30 days it is.