Level at the beginning of Day 3: 5

What I learned since last time:

• Lissandra is best at top and mid-lane
• Good spells to get for her are teleport, flash and ignite (which I don’t have access to yet but I should soon)
• When she uses her Q ability, she shoots an ice shard, which deals damage to the opponent it hits, but then shatters and also deals damage to those behind them
• You can do something cool with her E ability where you can instantly flash to the final location of the shot if you cast it twice. Except that is confusing to me, because can’t you only cast an ability once until the cooldown period is over?
• When she uses her ultimate, the opponent is frozen in ice, and damage is also dealt to surrounding opponents. I think that the idea of the ultimate is that you’re supposed to follow it up with other attacks while they are frozen. I don’t think it is much good on its own.
• You can cast Lissandra’s ultimate on yourself but I don’t know how
• The W ability is good to use in a combo
• Apparently if you do this: R>Q>E>W>Q you can kill someone instantly  in many situations so I will try to remember that
• Apparently you used to be able to hide the E ability’s claw marker in certain circumstances, but they changed it so that now you can’t. I then came across this paragraph and appreciated it greatly: “Elevation changes to the new Summoner’s Rift made a few situations where Glacial Path’s indicator was hidden, turning obvious ganks into extreme ambushes, so we’re fixing it. Even Lissandra knows that’s not… cool.” *slow clap* #dadjokesftw
• The things that looked like plants on the ground are wards, and I learned how to use them. However I don’t know how to tell if a ward you find is your team’s or the opponent’s.
• Apparently for Lissandra specifically it’s a good idea to place a ward in the “enemy raptors” which is good to know except I don’t know what those are

  

• I read a lot about which items are good for her, but I can’t seem to actually remember any of them, so I might just stick with the recommended ones for now

Wow. That was a lot to take in. (Even though I had 6 days to process.)

I ended up applying almost none of those things.

On day 3, I moved up to beginner level and exclusively played with Lissandra, as was my plan. But I found myself struggling more than anticipated. I didn’t seem to be getting much better by the end of the day (and I played for hours) so I thought maybe Lissandra isn’t the best fit for me after all.

I never did really figure out how to blink with her E ability. I did it once by accident but…not sure how. And I tried to make that insta-kill combo work but…it didn’t. Maybe I just wasn’t strong enough yet.

I did stick to the recommended items, but one that I actually remembered was Rod of Ages so I made sure to pick that up. Can’t really comment on its effectiveness compared to others though.

I also hit level 6 on day 3, and when I did that I realized that the free champions that are available rotate every week, and Lissandra won’t always be available until I can afford to buy her. So based on that I decided to drop back down to intro games on day 4 so that I could experiment with different champions.

I tried Kindred, Nocturne, Janna, Ashe, and Kalista. Kindred was my favourite concept and aesthetic-wise (although – HOW is that a lamb?!). I felt like Kindred, Nocturne and Ashe were all equally fun to play, although Ashe was annoying as fuck my first game with her. (What on earth is this focus nonsense? Never did really figure that out.)

Janna was just boring to me, and I also really don’t like the support role. I never thought that I would be like this considering how scared and anxious video games used to make me, but I really enjoy being up front and center killing things left and right. A lifetime of blending into the background has made me an attention whore, both in real life and in LOL, apparently.

Kalista I feel has the potential to be really cool but I didn’t understand two of her abilities at all. I might play her a bit more but since I have 4 champions now that I’m decent with I feel like that’s a good starting place.

I then started playing beginner games with those 4. The first few were rough, but by my second or third game with each champion I was kicking ass (by my standards anyway). I was never the strongest player on my team but I wasn’t the weakest, either. I also played one beginner game with Lissandra again right at the end of day 4 and did SO much better. So maybe I have the ability to succeed with lots of different champions and roles, I just need to practice.

Beginner games also gave me my first experience of communicating with a team. Sometimes it was just hilarious (ex. during one game, one of the players had to go and was like COME ON GUYS LET’S WIN I HAVE TO GO LET’S WIN NOOOOWWWW), other times it was confusing. When someone would ping a location I didn’t always know what it meant. Sometimes people would ping the outer or inner turret and I had no idea which ones those were. I successfully pinged for help once (although no one came) but other than that didn’t use the feature at all.

I have to say that it did feel really nice when someone would say “good job” after something I did, although I don’t know how they possibly found the time to do that in the middle of a fight. I’d like to make an effort to do things like that for others myself.

I feel like I’m getting pretty quick at using abilities and also whatever my F spell is; all those keys are like reflexes now. But I can’t seem to ever use my D spell (unless it’s teleport) and I struggle with pinging.

So for my next couple days, those are going to be my goals to improve: successfully ping, use the D spell, and communicate in chat on a regular basis.

Once I have those down, I will move on to beginner PvP games.

I should have a ton of time this week because my boyfriend has a lot of evening shifts so WHO KNOWS what level I’ll be by Friday!

Level at the end of day 4: 9

Games played: 22

Hours: 11

Champions played: Lissandra, Kindred, Nocturne, Janna, Ashe, Kalista