No, not my hair (that happened a while ago, and not by choice…it’s a long story*). I finally bought LISSANDRA!

Back when I had no concept of anything like “IP”, I thought I was going to main her, because I thought I’d have access to the starter champions forever. OH HOW WRONG I WAS!

As such, I had not played her since early January. But I could never get my love for her out of my head. I longed for her random shrieks of agony and lack of legs. All of my champions were such do-gooders; I needed someone bad.

We made an entire video around that, but in case you don’t have time for that, my thoughts in a nutshell: I still love her! But I am really, really bad at her. As I am with all non-support champions. I love her range of abilities and something about them is just so satisfying. I feel like the 6300 IP champions are just higher quality in general (because they’re newer) and they’re more detailed. I did finally figure out the E blink (without anyone having to actually teach me! I’ve been thinking about it FOR MONTHS. That, and I’ve now played a bunch of other champions who do similar things) and I learned that her ultimate actually deals damage. For the longest time I didn’t know that. Well, I actually did at one point, if you read this post, but I apparently immediately forgot. I did NOT know, though, that it heals you too. Pretty darn cool.

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Anyway, that was the highlight of my week (life-wise AND League-wise), but some other interesting things happened too, I guess.

I acquired Zyra, and I love playing her, but when I tried to play her in PvP I failed so hard. My final score (which I recently learned is commonly referred to just as KDA, which makes sense) was 0/11/0. I got a D-, which is the lowest grade there is. I don’t think I’ve ever even gotten a grade lower than a D+ before. Granted, I was playing with higher ranked players, but still. 0/11/0. There is pretty much no circumstance in which that would be acceptable from a level 30 player.

It didn’t help that my ego was slightly inflated because two days earlier, I played an ARAM as Zyra against a team that turned out to be entirely composed of bots. How, you ask? I have no fucking clue. But as a result, I got an S- and ended with 16/1/33. That is…very different from 0/11/0. Of course I knew I wouldn’t do anywhere near as well playing against humans, but I thought that based on that performance I’d at least do okay.

(Speaking of bots – does anyone else feel like there’s been WAY more of them lately? I don’t think I ever even encountered one prior to a few weeks ago. And now it seems like they’re in the majority of my Co-op vs. AI games.)

Since I got an S- on Zyra, although completely undeserved, I got a chest, which contained a champion shard for Shen. I have no special affinity for him, but I’m always down to add new champions to my collection (except for Aziz Azir, who can go die in a fire), so I decided to make him permanent. Spoiler alert: I’m really bad at him too. One thing I was disappointed about was that my favourite thing about him is actually not a thing. I thought that when you drew your sword to you through enemies they took damage, and I thought that was super badass. Unfortunately…no.

Other than that, I spent most of the week playing bot games with the free champions and other ARAMS.

My opinions on some of them seem to have changed a lot. I liked Aatrox the last time I played him; this time I absolutely hated him. I loved Kog’Maw, and now I think he’s just okay. I didn’t like Jhin much because I found his ultimate disorienting; now I am actually super into him. Same deal with Vayne. They’re just SO. FUN. And I played an ARAM, against actual humans this time, as Jhin where I did pretty okay, which made me think that maybe he could be good for me. I didn’t like Leona in the past, and she’s still not my favourite but she can do some unique things for a support champion and she will likely be my next IP purchase because of that.

I’m starting to get a bit sad because I’m getting to a point where there aren’t too many champions that I really love that I don’t already have, for the positions I play. The rest are all played in other roles. I know I said I might expand, but while my heart wants to, my fingers/scores/teammates say no, absolutely not. But on the bright side, only two of those are kind of out of reach right now (Bard and Aurelion Sol), so it shouldn’t be too long before I have all the rest. And a completed collection is always nice to have. Bittersweet, perhaps.

And of course I still have tons of fun playing the champions I do have. I’d probably have even more fun if I had more skins for the supports I play a lot other than Soraka, just to shake things up a little, but I’m unemployed right now and have a wish list about a mile long, so I don’t think that’s happening any time soon. (Except I am going to get iBlitzcrank when it goes on sale in August. Because sales.)

But you know me, I always have to have a goal to work towards, and once I have all the champions I really love and get really excited about, I feel like some of my motivation to play lots and get that IP will be lost. Of course I do plan on acquiring all the champions, but I would be much less enthusiastic about it. Then again, I’m always changing my opinions – a few weeks ago I hated Zyra, and now I love her. I’m sure that many other champions will grow on me in a similar way as well as I have more opportunities to play them.

Also I just want to say thank you to everyone who commented on the “why don’t junglers ward?” issue! Some of you agree with me, some of you don’t, but I certainly learned something from both sides and I think that the most important thing is being able to have a healthy discussion. That’s the kind of community that I want to build here. So thanks for being so respectful, everyone 🙂

This week I’m going to end with a completely different type of question. We may be able to start streaming earlier than I thought, though nothing is confirmed yet, and we’re thinking about what we want our schedule to look like. We have some ideas in mind, but I also wanted to know your opinion. If you’re interested in watching us, what times (in EST) and days would be best for you? I can’t promise that we’ll be able to accommodate them but we would certainly like to do our best considering that you guys are the OGs.

Death snack of the week: Lays Original

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*It’s actually not really that long – basically, I went to my stylist and asked for a darker shade of blonde. They said sure, but my regular colourist was busy so I had someone else. He had no knowledge of what has been done to my hair previously, so I think he either mixed the colour too dark or left it on too long. And when I left, my hair was slightly lighter than my natural dark brown. And that is the way it has stayed since then.