It's kinda annoying that everyone starts off at Iron IV. Was expecting placement games could get you higher, but nope. I finished first in one, second in two, and fourth in two more--ranks which're "you never lose LP" placements, and yet, in spite of those placements, I went 53 LP from Iron IV (initial placement) to Iron III (second game) to Iron II (third game) to Iron I (fourth game) to Bronze IV with 53 LP (final placement game).
So basically everyone starts in Iron and how good you do in a game, how good you place, doesn't make a difference--so long as you're not losing LP, you will climb in rank naturally each and every single game, apparently.
And, yes. I did place that well, in ranked, so many games in a row. I am good at TFT. I basically invented the strong meta synergies/item combos for the new champions. Like, when I first started playing them, I was the only one running them. Then within a couple of days, everyone was running what I ran, because I was just that quick in discovering the broken combos.
Plus I'm good at adapting on the fly; I've been practicing that a lot.
I do have losing streaks, where the highest I'll place is 5th with lots of 6ths, 7ths, and occasionally eights, but I also have long periods of winning streaks, where the lowest I'll place is 4th and I almost always go first, second, or third. And those 8ths/7ths/6ths/5ths are USUALLY because some prick STOLE my comp after I had committed to making it. (And I do mean, STOLE. I check all seven boards, looking at their units both on the field and on their bench. And when they don't have units from my comp by like 2-5...and then suddenly by like 3-3 they're running an almost identical comp to mine...it's incredibly infuriating because they KNEW I was running my comp and had to have DELIBERATELY chosen to screw me over by taking MY champions.)
And/or, I commit to a lategame comp and am knocked out before I can bring it online, rather than playing to a safer comp which might not win but which is guaranteed to do well earlier on. (Fun fact, that's the way to never lose. If you play a "safe" comp which you know is outscaled by other comps later on, but which can get you a ton of wins in the stages 2-3 range, then you have enough health to basically tank loss after loss in the midgame which gets you a natural ~4th placement.)
Basically when I lose it's mostly due to a combination of bad luck, bad decision making, and some prick going out of their way to knowingly and deliberately screw me over. (And the proof of this; I can run the EXACT same comp with the EXACT same tile type on the field with the EXACT same units with the EXACT same items, two games in a row, where some prick deliberately screwed me over in the first game and I did poorly, and then in that second game utterly CRUSH everyone with the comp I made, because in the second game there wasn't a prick who deliberately stole my units from me to try to--and usually succeed at--screw me over.)
When I don't lose, it's very rarely due to getting god-tiered luck. Almost all of my wins are not close 50/50s where I could lose. Almost all of my wins are not because I magically got the exact items I needed and wanted to use. (Quite the opposite, I almost never get any of the items I use and while I PLAN for the optimal items, I almost always am expecting to get none of them.) I get lousy rolls on champions, lousy items for my comp, but I make smart decisions and even if someone tries to run my comp, I run it better than they do. Them running it usually means I finish in like 4th rather than first, but on most matches I still do that well.
And I don't think that's ego. I don't think that's pure luck. I play Teamfight Tactics every day. Usually playing 5+ matches, every single day. Sometimes I might play only one or two games on a day, but then I might plan ten games on a day. I play the game a lot. I have a few comps I default to (Predator 4 is my favorite, building into Steel 2 Crystal 2 Glacial 2 and eventually bridging into potentially Assassin 3 and/or Berserker 3, but with many variants on the comp, e.g. Energy 3, Glacial 4; another frequent is the Mage-Ocean-Mountain-Warden combo, Inferno into Summoner 6, and also the Berserker/Glacial combo, and also the Warden 6 comps although those are more of a niche situational "usually won't win but is worth a try sometimes" combo), and weirdly enough, most of them didn't get nerfed.
In fact, most of their counters got nerfed.
But while there's only a few comps that I really tend to default to.
The simple truth of the matter is.
I run them because they work, and they work reliably so. They work consistently. They work well in almost every game. There are a few outliers where they won't work. Where they are countered; where someone is a prick and takes your champions, screwing you over; where you have dismal rolls and in spite of having an early game strongly telling you "run this comp!", you can't complete it because something which is a key part of the comp refuses to spawn for you. But most of the times. They just...get you pretty dang far.
So it's a case of "don't fix what's not broken"--in this case, being, I don't need to run something else I'm less comfortable with, when I know the things I normally run can, do, and will work. Especially since so many of them are flexible. I had a game where I had like six or so different possible final comps to run. (Mind you, with that hodgepodge of everything from the getgo, I was like, "I don't know what to run and I imagine this lack of direction won't let me get too far". I wasn't entirely wrong.) I did eventually settle on a comp, and did place like fifth that game, but that wasn't a comp even remotely close to what I normally would run, I was just playing around with "this might work", and it kinda sorta did.
I guess this would be to put it in context, similar to someone who is basically a onetrick for a champion in League, but who doesn't dodge when their champion is banned/picked by the enemy team and doesn't dodge when their favorite champion is hard-countered by the enemy champion--instead, they simply go..."well, damn. Guess I won't be playing that champion. I'll just play a different champion!", and then they do just as well as they do on their onetrick champion.
Where they are a good player not just on their onetrick, but in general, with them just having a preference (not requirement) to play a specific champion. I have specific comps that I prefer to run, and I know that they work and are good, but I can run other comps when need be, I just most of the time don't need to run those other comps. I can do so and have proven I can do so, but comfort picks still seem to work well.
On the note about League, I actually really want to play more games now with the preseason changes on Summoner's Rift. I want to maybe try out support Ashe with the new AD support item, though I'm not quite sure how to play support effectively. (Mind you, I don't really know how to play anything effectively, but support especially so.) I also love the addition of Sanguine Blade because of my trollish love of lifesteal and want to see where it might fit in to my pocket pick builds. Plus, the rework of Energized/Crit items means there's a bunch of combos which seem fun to try out. Including maybe actually pulling out the Fleet Footwork Stormrazor/RFC/Statikk Shiv combo and then pushing as close to the attack speed max as possible without exceeding it.
That having been said.
I actually did play some games on Saturday, before the changes went live.
And there's something unfortunate about this.
I am an Ashe one-trick. (Well, I call myself an Ashe half-trick, because one-trick implies competency at the one champion and that champion only, whereas I am incompetent regardless of champion, it's just that Ashe is the champion which gives me the highest chances of maybe just maybe possibly potentially having some semblance of not looking as incompetent as I truly am.)
In back to back games on Saturday, Ashe was banned.
What did I do when Ashe my only real champion was banned?
Why, the only sensible thing to do when your one-trick champion has been banned out!
...I played Full AD/Lifesteal Vladimir!
...Unsurprisingly, my scoreline was dismal. In both games my K/DA was like 2/14 or thereabouts.
What might surprise you is to learn that I wasn't smashed in those games.
How could I have such a dismal scoreline in those games and yet not have been smashed?
Well, that's where things get interesting.
From my understanding, Vladimir is one of the strongest lategame champions in the game, a monster in, say, a teamfight, where he can singlehandedly obliterate the entire enemy team and is ridiculously hard to kill. So I thought that he'd be smashed earlygame.
Except, with the full AD lifesteal build on him, in the level 1-4 range, I was crushing my opposition. In one instance, we won a 2v3! Twice! (Maybe more, that game had the enemy "jungler" want to play adc, and the actual adc refuse to let that happen, sooooo.) Mind you, in the first game those were basically the only kills I got to my name and in the second game I didn't so much as once get a kill from this pressure, BUT.
I was still forcing my opponents to recall even if I wasn't killing them. They had to recall--whereas I could stay in lane without recalling. No mana, and my health would be up to maximum before they could make their way back to lane. So in the early game, I was crushing them.
Mind you, past that point, from level 5 onwards, their adc had the damage to kill me which is where half my deaths in both games came from, but that still gave us earlygame lane dominance--enough earlygame dominance where we could've theoretically with better coordination/planning taken objectives like Dragons. (We had some bad timing where we were applying pressure just as our jungler was backing, and our jungler was botlane just as we were in base, so we couldn't synchronize that and make it transition into an objective, unfortunately.)
And here's another interesting tidbit--almost the entirety of both games, I was either ahead or even in cs with my lane opponent. I was ahead, or even, in cs, with my lane opponent. I died 14 times. The enemy adc most definitely did not. Given that I was constantly in the death chamber and they were not, and yet I was in spite of those deaths which they didn't have, even or ahead in cs, that means I was comparatively speaking, actually csing better than the enemy adcarry was!
Plus, it wasn't like we were getting creamed even when we died. We traded blow for blow, objective for objective. They got a turret plate, we got a turret plate, they got two turret plates, we got three turret plates. They took first tower, we obliterated them and turned it into mapwide dominance.
In turret plating gold we had to be almost even; in cs I was either ahead or even. Yeah, they probably had more gold due to kills (and in one case probably also Kleptomancy from the enemy adc--because on Saturday that wasn't yet removed, obv), but the pressure I was applying meant that it almost didn't seem that way.
While I was utterly worthless in teamfights (that'd be where the other half of my deaths came from; attempting to group up with my team and fight when I was ill-suited to the task of helping my team in any way shape or form), in a more splitpush orientated setup, I was excelling. In one case, I tower dove, 1v2!
That's right.
I went under THE ENEMY'S TURRET. Took TURRET AGGRO. I STARTED THE FIGHT AT HALF HP. Against TWO TARGETS AT FULL HP. I at half health. Against two full health opponents under their turrets. Engaged in a 1v2. Suicidal, right? Except it WASN'T.
I mean, I screwed up and died in a situation where I very easily could've lived, but I killed one of them and almost killed the second, only being killed by taking extra turret shots I had zero need to have taken, thinking I was already dead before I actually was, not using spells I could've used, not using my item I could've used, and misclicking. Generally mismanaging the situation in the worst way possible, and in spite of that utter incompetence on my part, I almost still won the 1v2 and it was still trading EVEN in the 1v2.
Given that I was like 0/12 at the time.
And that this was the enemy support/adc who I needed to keep busy, keep preoccupied, keep distracted.
That was something which was well worth it. I had no business doing as well as I did there, and yet I somehow actually did do that well.
Heck, while we did lose the first game, that was due to our toplaner dcing and us being in a 4v5 until we could surrender, not because of getting smashed. We were going mostly while it was a 5v5; it was very much winnable until the 4v5 put us in a basically unwinnable situation. And that second game? We actually won!
Mind you, I'm not gonna pretend that my team won in any part due to my efforts. I don't think they won in spite of me, but I also don't think they won because of me. As I said before--the pressure I applied in what amounted to a pseudo-splitpush style was something that my team was able to take advantage of. They got massive gold leads and were often able to capitalize on situations I created openings on. Even when I died I often put the enemy team in a situation where my team was propped up to win a fight, take an objective, and so on and so forth.
They did 90% of the work, but I still feel like what I did helped them get set up to where they could do that work. And let's be honest; that's basically what I do on Ashe anyway because I am incompetent as a player and not good at being an adc who hard carries.
So all in all, basically, it wasn't all that much different from my play in any given Ashe game. I went in with the mindset of "we're going to lose this anyway so might as well have some fun", and it was incredibly fun even if it was incredibly trollish. (I did more or less get the consent of my teammates for this tho where I warned them that I'm an Ashe onetrick, Ashe was banned, and if they wanted to win the game they better dodge because I wasn't willing to dodge and with Ashe banned I wasn't going to fulfill the role of carry. They didn't dodge, so they by proxy accepted the challenge!)
That tangent over.
What I was saying was.
Ashe got banned back to back in games.
And I know why.
Everyone wants to play Senna, the new champion who was recently released.
Ashe is, apparently, a counter to Senna. (From my understanding, it has to do with her hawkshot revealing the exact champion silhouettes of wraiths, possibly also due to Volley obviously being able to hit them.)
Since literally everyone wants to play Senna.
And since Ashe is apparently an adc counter to Senna.
Everyone who wants to play Senna, bans Ashe.
And in both the back to back games the enemy team wanted to play Senna.
Which is ridiculous in my opinion; Ashe just got a pretty significant nerf which basically forces you to if you want to play her seriously go the meta arcane comet path for manaflow band (or have sorcery as a second for it) and go ER/Trinity Force as early items because she runs out of mana way too quickly now. That nerf would you think make her be banned less, but given the new champion which Ashe apparently inherently counters...
...Yeah.
Preseason's release does nothing to remove that. Senna hype will eventually die down (especially when she is inevitably given the Yuumi treatment and receives nerf after nerf to gut her because Riot will go, "Senna's being played in every role except for support, when we designed her to be support? WE GOTTA FIX THAT!"), but it's not going to have died down just yet.
So for the next couple of weeks or so, I'm probably still going to see a ton of those Ashe bans which means in spite of me really wanting to test out some new item builds (Sanguine Blade is kinda OP as an item and as a lifesteal item is RIGHT up the alleyway of my favorite pocket pick for fun build on Ashe; legit think it could potentially possibly replace Blade of the Ruined King as a first item due to it giving similar dueling abilities but even if BorK is bought first Sanguine Blade can augment it perfectly), I probably won't get the chance to for a while.