Granted.
Said gap grows every day I don't do the catchup.
Butstill.
Work is work, and I think I'm closing it faster than it's growing.
Pro League games today...didn't exactly go the way I wanted them to. I think that of the three teams that I hate to see win, Flyquest is the one which I least mind seeing win (basically, I most want Team Liquid to lose, so much so that in a TL versus Evil Geniuses game I'd root for Evil Geniuses, but I want Evil Geniuses to lose, so much so, that in an EG versus Flyquest match, I'd root for Flyquest, but I want Flyquest to lose against all other times), but of the three teams I'm rooting for right now (Dignitas, Cloud9, and 100 Thieves), Dignitas is the team I am most rooting for.
And while I think that their draft wasn't bad, they just...made uncharacteristic errors. Things they normally don't mess up, they were messing up on. Credit where credit's due; Flyquest did pull maneuvers which gave them the edge--but when I was watching that game, it didn't feel like Flyquest was winning the game, so much as it felt like Dignitas was losing the game. And that's just...that's not what they normally do; they normally do much much better.
I needed to play multiple games of TFT in order to stave off my disappointment there.
I did get to play some League as well, myself.
I actually set out thinking I wanted to play a game of support Ashe--but as a coward, I queued up as bot primary supp secondary because I was going to try out a new support Ashe build and didn't want my teammates to flame me because I'm not a skilled support player yet in part due to lack of practice in part due to the fear of teammates flaming my lack of skill in the role. (Vicious cycle, that.)
I won none of my adc games, though surprisingly, not through fault of my own--one was a remake due to our toplaner dcing at the beginning. Another game, we won lane, but because the enemy team had Tryndamere (who's basically impossible to kill unless you either burst him down or stun him while his ult's down), Volibear (who took tanky runes and might've been building into a hybrid tank), Gragas (who while building AP items had tank runes so he was a beefy boi who also dealt damage in spite of his chunky healthbar), and Karma (who has both shielding and healing), and my lane was the closest we had to a winning one and I'm not good enough to 2v5 that type of team, we lost.
And the third, there were two problems. First, our entire team minus myself was AP so the enemy team can and did begin to stack MR items. (And given my choice in build is partially magic damage itself...also was problematic to me.) Midway through the game, our toplaner dc'd. (Possibly a ragequit, but not definitely so.) A 4v5 made that kinda unwinnable. I was doing decently well for the most part, staying fairly even, but it wasn't a game where I could win.
Then I got assigned jungle.
Someone dodged.
And then I got assigned jungle again but the support decided to (very wisely) take over as a jungler and let me take the support role. (I honored them for it purely on the merit of them allowing me to not be forced into that role, but they were one of the top performers in our game anyway with stats topping the chart and only our midlaner being close to rivaling them, so they deserved it anyway.)
So I ended up getting to try out the support Ashe build I was going for anyway.
Previously, my support Ashe build was Arcane Comet, Transcendence, Scorch, with a secondary tree of Inspiration. There's multiple possible items to build (obviously you take Spectral Sickle, but beyond that), I previously tried out Black Cleaver + Runaan's and it works well as being supporting the adc really well, but lethality on Ashe is also a common go-to for Support Ashe. (There is a third way to do it, "Ashe is basically a second-adc 'support'", where she builds ER, Trinity, and other meta items for adc-Ashe, but I don't like that one as much.)
This time I tried out just running my adc runes. Sorcery-Precision. Arcane Comet, Transcendence, Gathering Storm, with Bloodline and Presence of Mind. Still obviously taking Spectral Sickle, but throwing in a tear as well--not building into a Manamune (that takes too much gold), but to have huge mana replenishment, and then build into lethality. Umbral Glaive, then two additional situational lethality. (Edge of Night was what I settled on due to the enemy "support" being Lux who ended up being the largest threat on the enemy team because the enemy adc was free gold for us due to how worthless he was so Lux was their real carry. Ideally, duskblade would be the third.)
Basically, a pseudo-Senna build, because Senna builds tear into Muramana (one of the three champions to do so, the other two being Ezreal and Kai'sa), then two lethality items, then a RFC, finishing off with a situational item (well, as support, that'd be the support item, but since Senna's being played as an adc primarily right now, the build was modeled mostly after that Senna).
And it actually worked out pretty well.
Admittedly, the game was a bit of a clown fiesta.
For no real reason, everyone went bot, with the occasional focus on mid. Literally, even with no dragon available, we were going 5v5 or close to down there. They kept on trying to fight and fight and fight and fight.
For the entirety of the night, adc games and support games, almost every single arrow I shot missed (even ones which had no right missing--they SHOULD have hit, and had every right to hit, I shot them directly at the champions, the champions didn't move out of the way, and yet the arrows literally passed through the champions instead of hitting them even though by every right the hitbox should've triggered), but in spite of my terrible aim, I was getting really good vision for my team in the key area (I never visited the top half of the map but like I said--I never needed to because nobody was at top, but I was lighting up the bottom half of the map), I only got two kills but a metric ton of assists, I set up my adc to get multiple kills, the stuns I did land were crucial, my slows were useful, everything felt like I was doing it right.
I did die ten times that game, probably about seven to their Lux and a couple to their jungler, but we usually got something out of those deaths, where my death led to my team getting 2-5 kills most of the time. (There was at least one death where I was overextended and knew I was risking death, but I thought it'd be worth it to try for the kill--we didn't get it and I died, so that one was my bad and I said as much, but mostly? Mostly by the time I died, the enemy team was low enough where they died one after another after another.)
It felt really good. We won. I helped set my team up for success, supporting them fairly well. So I think the build has promise. Where I harass the enemy, poke and poke and poke them down, stay at max mana, get 40% cdr, get arrows, shoot them, set my team up, and then we win.
Like I said, game was a bit unusual in that nobody was going to the top half of the map, like, ever. In most games I'd have to try and help with things like the Rift Herald and Baron. (Which I'd have been able to do fairly easily if I had gone up there, I just didn't have a need to in that game.)
Butstill.
It leaves me hopeful for in the future being able to do it better.
It was good practice and really fun.
In every game the whole night though, I do admit, I got lucky--my teammates every single game were fairly friendly and didn't flame at all. The closest I ever got to being flamed was in the champion select where I was assigned jungler and I said I couldn't jungle and didn't have any junglers (that's a lie by the way but if I told the truth my teammates would've been inclined to want to force me to play jungle on a champion I don't know when I only want to play Ashe and I don't want to play jungle and don't want to dodge so saying I don't have a jungler helps encourage them to either dodge or swap with me), but even then that wasn't really flame so much as annoyance at me being autofilled to a role I am woefully inadequate for.
Butstill.
Results paid off.
Felt good.