I ended up working from home one morning this week, so obviously I used that time to play LOL. (I played bot games so I could still check my email semi-frequently.)

I played the only two champions I was really interested in on this week’s rotation, Ezreal and Maokai. Ezreal I just wanted to play because I haven’t played him since I think January, and I like him a lot more than I remember. He’s not that interesting, but I’m starting to feel that way about a lot of ADCs. Like, they all basically just shoot things in a variety of ways. But I really like his range and he seems pretty strong, although I’m finding it increasingly hard to get an accurate first impression from bot games.

I wanted to play Maokai because of his rework. As I’ve noted a few times, I didn’t really like him the first time I played him, but I really liked him this time around. Except, he is exactly the same as I remember him. So do I just remember wrong?? Or…. :S So that’s confusing, but the point is, now I think he’s awesome, although again, kinda hard to tell from a bot game. I liked that he has a mix of ranges, and it felt like even though I was pretty close up, I wasn’t at risk of dying constantly, like I usually feel I am in that position (even with melee champions). His ultimate is also just really satisfying to watch. One change I did notice is that his saplings that he tosses seem to have more range and also they make sounds and have little faces, which is really cute.

Something I don’t get though is that his role has now shifted from top to support. Like…what?? That is kind of an extreme shift? And why? To me he felt stronger than before, not weaker. Although perhaps that is actually why – he’s so strong that he can just soak up all the damage that the ADC would otherwise take? That’s the only thing I can think of. And my boyfriend doesn’t like him as much now, which, OF COURSE. God forbid we agree on anything -__-

I had several hours over the weekend, which was great but not nearly as productive as I wanted it to be. Now that I’m playing all draft games, the queue time and pick/ban phase alone eats up a big chunk of my time.

So, let’s take a look at these numbers shall we?

I started off strong with another great game as Soraka (A+). That obviously met my goal.

Then I played a game with Janna, because I had just bought a skin for her and I wanted to try it out. (It was her Fnatic skin – it showed up in the new “your shop” feature and I bought it solely because I know it’s retired. I didn’t like it all that much.) That went terribly!

Then I moved onto Morgana – that one went okay, just barely scraping in to meet my goal at 0-5-14. I was nervous going into it, because right away in queue, our ADC said, “morg pls don’t steal my kills or cs” and I was like um…okay? I won’t? Why the completely unnecessary aggression right off the bat? But they ended up being really nice in the game.

After that, I started queuing for mid, with support as my secondary choice. For some reason, even though I was autofill protected, I only ended up getting mid twice. For those games, I played Lux, and neither of them met my goal (Cs again).

Side note, though – I also got the Elementalist Lux skin because it was on sale, and it is so cool!! I just wish there was splash art for all of her forms.

My remaining games were also support games so I played Morgana and Soraka again. I had another A game with Soraka (goal met), and a bad one with Morgana.

For my last game of the day, I chose to play Soraka because I wanted to go out on a high note. I was thinking to myself, “I don’t remember the last time someone got mad at me while I was playing Soraka! In my last game with her, someone even called me the best support ever!” Well, it was time for that to change, apparently.

First, in the early lane phase, our ADC (Caitlyn) told me not to touch the minion wave at all, even though I hadn’t been last hitting, just helping her out/trying to level up myself. This turned out to be a problem because without being able to use my abilities on anyone but a champion, I was constantly a level or two behind everyone else for the rest of the game. They even told me to stop touching the wave when I was clearly aiming at a champion, and minions just happened to also be there.

I tried to explain that I needed to use my Q in order to heal myself, so that I could heal them, and also to level up, but that apparently didn’t matter. Or at least, it didn’t matter until later on in the game when they kept exclaiming, “where are my heals? why aren’t you healing me?” etc. etc. I thought about explaining, but I felt like that would take too long, so I just said that I was doing my best.

It was especially frustrating because Caitlyn does not have great wave clear, in my opinion. They could have really benefited from my help just so that we could clear faster and push the lane. There were at least two opportunities where if I had been able to help them kill the minions, we would have been able to get a turret or at least make good progress on one. Again, I thought about explaining that, and also that I was playing the exact same way I’ve been playing for the last few months and no one complained about that before (except when I was just starting out), and that I had just gotten an S on Soraka so I knew what I was doing, but that sounded too much like, “don’t you know who I AM?!” and I hate when other people pull that shit. So I just said nothing, as usual.

Later on in the game, once we started team fighting, they started criticizing all of the other players as well, and they were not as nice as me. They told them that they were being annoying multiple times, to shut up, and also at one point to “blow me” (I reported that guy. No matter what’s going on, that kind of language is never okay).

But they did not, in fact, shut up.

Anyway, we lost and I hoped I would have time to play another game just so I wouldn’t have to end the day that way, but I didn’t.

In the end, I reported them as well as “blow me” guy. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should, because they weren’t being mean per say, just kind of unreasonable and, yeah, annoying. But honestly, I kind of think that they cost us the game. I don’t think anyone else actually played any differently because of them, but I did, because as support I feel like I kind of have to do whatever the ADC wants. And I have learned that I can turn a game around as Soraka if I heal people enough, and I wasn’t able to play her to my full potential because of all of their restrictions and bad decisions. (Another problem was that I kept following them/the rest of my team around, as I would have to in order to heal them, and walking into bad situations. I was usually the first to die because I couldn’t fight back very well. This person accused me of feeding, and I thought about explaining, but – well, you get it.)

I tried my best to explain their behaviour in the report, but it was tough with the character limit. I sort of feel like acting like you’re the “boss” and constantly giving other people orders sort of is a form of bullying, even if you’re not saying any of those things in a mean way (at first). Why would you just assume that you know best?

So that was not fun, and it didn’t make me feel good by any means, but I didn’t let it make me feel bad about myself or my skills. I know I can play Soraka well. The numbers don’t lie. They just had a very specific idea of how the game “should” be played, just like that Thresh from the “incident”.

And I’m proud of myself for that! I feel like the more confident I am, the better I will play, so I’m happy that I didn’t let it get to me.

Games played: 10

Hours: 7

Champions played: Ezreal, Maokai, Soraka, Janna, Morgana, Lux

% of PvP games that meet goal: 38% (43% if you exclude that awful game with Soraka, which I would like to, but I won’t.)

Death snack of the day: Maltesers