Skill Caps & Update

I have finally beaten the 50 ELO / LP barrier that has plagued me in the past!

This is just another short update post. If anyone has been wondering why I have not posted anything in a while, it's because I have been desperately laddering to diamond. It has been a rough path, but I feel like I can finally do it. The past week I have played ~80 solo queue games with almost 60 of them irrelevant. I felt that I reached a skill cap that I couldn't overcome at Plat II ~0-40 LP. Eventually, I dropped down to plat III after several losses in a row after playing on tilt.

I was completely devastated, I felt like I was in the same situation as last season where I tried to get into platinum and was 14 ELO away. However, after taking a small break and discussing mentalities with a close friend, I managed to pull myself together. I told myself that I might be stuck at a certain tier like last season, but I wasn't going to give up until the very end.

Today has been incredibly motivational for me. I feel like I have defeated the skill cap that I hit at plat II. After watching several of Cloud 9's games, I paid close attention to what Meteos did and followed his more 'farm' heavy jungle mentality to some degree of success. Although I tried Meteos' style of jungling, I still played very aggressively and managed to snowball several of my games. Mostly all my games today have given me incredible KDAs as I made sure to prioritize avoiding death over anything else.

This is more of an update than anything. I will resume my regular posts probably after I hit diamond or the season ends. However, with this break in skill cap I feel like I have a real fighting chance at hitting the diamond club. What joy it would bring me if I could overcome two tiers in one season!

Edit: I am now plat I! Yay! Time for elo clamping and the final road to diamond!

Counter Jungling Guide

You don't have to be a genius to figure out how dead that Amumu is; Chauster once told Doublelift something along the lines of "even jesus couldn't get you out alive because you were in that position to begin with, you just happen to have the mechanics to get out of it alive this time." While the quote directly refers to Doublelift's ability to survive terrible situations with pure mechanical skill, I feel like League of Legend players can really learn a lot from Chauster's wisdom especially when it comes to new junglers being counter jungled. Counter jungling is an application of knowledge and situational understanding of League of Legends; likewise, preventing counter jungling is the same.

Check out 'understanding counter jungling' after the jump. Warning: wall of informative text to follow

Junglers, Gold, and Cost Efficiency

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j30SnAsSFg
(REST IN PEACE IN PEACE, RUNIC BULWARK)

Recently, it feels like Riot has been intentionally just nerfing junglers to the ground. Frankly, I am appalled by these changes to the jungle but, like every other jungler out there, been desperately finding ways to get around these changes. It seems Riot did not learn from the Udyr nerfs where they took away a part of his passive (dodge) and didn't replace it with anything else. While Riot has stated that they intend to find methods to give junglers more gold, I find it difficult to understand what they expect junglers to do at the moment.

Find my rant on Riot's jungle nerfs by clicking below.

State of the Jungle: Article 6 - General Patch 3.9

State of the Jungle: Article 6 - General Patch 3.9

State of the Jungle is an article series that details current meta changes in the jungle. It is aimed to inform players of all skill levels on how the jungle is currently played when effected by tournament results and solo queue formalities. 

See what the jungle camp changes and the best of the professionals have to offer to the jungle meta after the jump!

Post-Vacation Update!

I haven't been posting a lot recently, even with all the changes in the current LCS jungling meta due to patch 3.8, because I have been trying to get myself up to speed on my planned road to diamond. As you can see in the picture above, I have been climbing slowly over the past couple days with Elise and Lee Sin in the jungle to great success (66% win rate in the jungle).

Those looking at my blog can look forward to the upcoming articles!
- Understanding Ganking Mid Lane
- Understanding Ganking Bot Lane
- Understanding Counter Jungling
- Understanding The Jungler's Mirror
- State of the Jungle Article Series Continuation

I have wrote many of those articles already, they just need to be edited and posted. However, I have not had the time. Please look forward to these articles in the impending future!