I just did the math.  After losing another promo series (I have now won 1 promo series out of 7), I have won 67% of my non promo games, and 28% of my promotion series games.  This means that I can't ever work my way up because Riot has decided that Promo series matches are are all that really matters.

But hey, I enjoy getting screwed by a system that never made sense in the first place.

That blows.  Let me know if you want to duo.  I'm about to go into a promo series and see you are at 90 lp - I'll be sufficiently motivated at the very least.  I'm assuming if you get 1 win you'll hit your silver III to silver II promo match.

noobs

dat  butch.  how dare you.

anywho - in my promo series from gold V to gold IV at - about to play game 1.  duoing w mr bryff.  Bryff needs 2 wins in a row to qualify for his promo series. 

Don't duo with me in promo series people.  It doesn't work.

So i read the discussion where i think you got this from.

Most ADCs start with Dorans right now anyway. Generally, my opinion is you only go Longsword + 2 if you are inconfident in the lane. (eg, Sivir/Quinn/Graves/Vayne against Caitlyn where the poke is brutal and you have no range). 

The typical AD carry page is 21/9/0. (i personally go 21/6/3 with Barrior/Cleanse and 21/4/5 with Ignite)  

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Analysis:

21/9 + Dorans versus 14/0/16 with Dorans + Pot

Lost:

5 ArP - best case 5% increase damage against champions. More realistically half that. 

5% Crit Damage - inappreciable until 25 minutes. After that it is like a 1%-3% increase in damage depending on your crit.

Frenzy - potentially lane-winning with a 1% Crit, basically zero effect otherwise - if you have a 30% crit with a 1 AS (low AS but lets assuming you are kiting), this is a 5% increase in end-game damage though

Executioner - Worth 4 AD for last hitting. Basically ~3% increase in damage in teamfights once you figure AP burst. Also works on towers.

108 HP @ 18 - not super dramatic but useful

3.5 Armor / 3.5 MR - again, not super dramatic but useful (also "counters" 2/3rds of the ArP points in offense tree). Scales well with Veteran's Scars and Durability though.

30 HP @ 1 - really useful for level 1-3 all-in, less useful otherwise

Gain:

15 Seconds off flash - Generally you don't use flash off-of-cooldown so it doesn't have a huge effect, but probably 1 out of 10 games having this mastery does save your life

3 MP5 - useful early game for people with good waveclear like Cait/Graves to push towers. Very little effect endgame if you aren't Kog. 

10% reduced SS - see above about flash. Does create 10 second windows of opportunity to all-in though

2 GP 10 - it's nice when you are doing baron dancing and stuff - however if you miss just one CS every minute due to not having executionar/etc then it is worse. Esp if it is a Cannon Minion. 

+50 gold - having an extra hp pot might encourage you making bad trades (oh i have an hp pot that i switched around my masteries for, if i didn't use it, all of this was a waste)

Buiscuit - See above

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In Summary:

Losing nearly 10-15% potential damage endgame against champions (2% + 2% + 5% + 3%) mid/endgame

Harder to last hit 

Weaker all-ins

Losing 5% survivability against divers

If a bad-trade happens level 1/2/3 you don't have to go back to base because you are zoned and can't LS

Some gold when wandering around midgame

Better early game push (good against weak anti-push or 2v1 lanes). 

High sustain from harrassment

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Conclusion:

All-in-all your first few minutes you have the advantage with sustain (biscuit + hp pot + mana regen). However, due to the fact you don't have Executioner, or the defense tree, your "all-in" is much weaker.

This might be great for someone like Caitlyn, who only all-ins by making the opponent frustrated about being poked down to nothing. Otherwise... 

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Suggestions:

Personally, if you were going to do this, i would have gotten +3% LS in masteries, 6% LS in quints and sustain that way instead. And then get the +6 HP5 in the defense tree. (14/3/12 with 1 leftover point, not getting gold masteries).

That would be a total "sustain" bot lane with a lot of HP5, but you'd never win an all-in with that.

no time to think through it all now, but thx for the thoughts hedgie.

Still going to think through all your feedback, hedgie.  only had time to skim it.  I'll respond tomorrow re: that. 

Wanted to do a quick recap of tonight.  So game 1 - I duo with bryff ranked.  We end up with me as adc and bryff as support.  We crush it.  Side note - this was with me using my new rune setup, but playing as cait.  I've also come to appreciate barrier quite a bit.  Might be my new goto item on adc. Anyway, this win puts me into my promo series for gold IV. 

Before I get into game 2, a few notes on what happens when Bryff and I queue up together.  I'm almost always 1st pick and Bryff is almost always last.  Now, Bryff prefers mid and is stongest there.  But, what happens the majority of the time is that I'll call adc so I can carry.  Bryff will either be silent or call mid and someone ahead of him in pick order will call mid.  Thus, Bryff becomes mr support.  This is generally fine.  With the exception of game 2.  Where... things happened.

In game 2, I'm 1st pick - do all the bans, call adc, and lock in cait after a short wait.  About this time, we discover that apparently no on can jungle... well, the 2nd pick guy can, but refuses to do so because he needs to play akali awfully in mid.  Anyway, Bryff eventually offers to jungle - and then pulls out jungle leona as he has no other junglers apparently.  Anyway, long story short.  Ouch.

I decide I'd rather not duo up another ranked with Bryff during my promo series and we host a normal.  Now, I'm bent out of shape from that debacle (see what I did there, Thunder?).  Our next game we have Bryff jungle again and he does not have a good time of things.  Like the ranked game, it wasn't 100% Bryff fault that we lose - not by a longshot, but now my mood worsens.  The next game, we rotate Bryff out of jungle and things go well.  Then we continue on and win 1 or 2 more then I call it a night.   Anyway, the only thing I was really bent out of shape about was that ranked match.  Pretty sure Bryff got the message that I'd rather not ever have a last resort of Leona jungle.    No hard feelings bro.

Moving on - holy crap did I hit my promo series quickly in gold V.  Hunny and I were doing quite well as a duo.  We were both quite motivated for a bit as we both were fighting to hit gold.  The interesting thing to me (and probably only me) was that Hunny and I were duoing on and off before with god awful results.  We had like a 25% win rate together (which led me to hitting Bronze 5 out of my promo series).  Now, we play extremely well together.  Personally, I think I'm a better adc than him (not by a lot, mind you) but I'm certain I'm a better support.  He almost always gets the job done as adc, so me running support is a great combo for us.  Other thing - when he and I duo, we are always at the bottom for pick order.  This makes it very easy for me to call support and ask someone to pick taric for me and (oddly) makes it easy for Hunny to get adc.  No idea why folks generally let him play adc out of last spot (outside of me calling support and folks knowing they wont have to do it - maybe that's all there is to it).  Anyway, more often than not, we get to duo bot. 

Thoughts about my current elo/rank - I'm still convinced that games are getting easier the higher up I go.  Not that I stomp more or anything like that - its that the skill level on my team is higher.  This results in fewer dumb ass plays.  It also GENERALLY keeps folks from calling it gg at 8 minutes in when there is plenty of game left.  Always a bit discouraging when folks want to throw in the towel when other lanes are doing well.  I think one of hunnys promo matches to gold had like 2 people whining on our team because mid and top weren't going well... they just didn't factor in that we were light years ahead bot lane.  So.. we get to waste a small amount of time giving a pep talk to our teammates and move along to a win.

Anyway, I spectate some games from time to time and what I see just blows my mind.  I've watched a few games where Bryff was doing a ranked and literally everyone on his team was having a derp party.  I couldn't win that game.  Wallstop couldn't win that game.  No one I know could win that game.  That just solidifies my idea that it gets much easier as you move along (obvious caveat being your individual skill level - but bottom line - you lose less games because of some jackass wonders off and gets killed by themselves at the very least).  A lot of this is likely why karl is so frustrated with the league system.  I think he's getting closer to a non derp level, but not quite there yet.  Honestly, I didn't start to see the derp factor start to wear off until I was like silver 1 with a decent mmr. 

Random stats:

I'm 81/63 (per lol king anyway) now in ranked - which puts me at at a 56% win ratio provided i can do math... which i might not be able to do.  Hunny is at 132/112 - 56% win rate.  Bryff - 43/42 - 50.5%.  Karl - 32/27 - 54%.  hedgie - 12/13 - 48%.  wallstop (gold 1 atm) 23/14 - 62%. 

Random observation - when I duo'd with Bryff in that second game, the players on my team were a bit toxic and referred to our current elo as elo hell.  kinda weird, eh?  Anyway, I currently think I'm most likely to win games with folks either at silver 1 or gold level as it removes quite a bit of the derp factor. 

Anyways, I end the night 1/0 in my promo series to gold IV.  I'd love to get promoted or at least not lose another game in the series due to herp derp.  I'll find out tomorrow if I can pull it off. 

made another long post just before this one - just adding a note in case this moves the thread to another page.

pacov's Guide to Improving at League of Legends and Moving Up in Elo

k - so I'm just going to put down some of my thoughts.  I'm not amazing at this game, but I do certain things that improve my odds of winning in ranked and so far its panning out just fine (bronze 5 to gold 5 in about a month or so).  We all have varied skill levels, so some of this might be useful and some not.  Caveat complete.

Prerequisite- you need to know how to play every single role.  You don't have to be a god at every single role (more power to you if you are - I'm certainly not).  You need to be able to play at a serviceable level in every single role and excel at least at 1 role (preferably 2).  In my case, I'm good at support and adc.  I'm not great, but have serviceable mids and jungles and so so tops.  Knowing what you are good at and bad at is very important.  If you don't know, I can probably tell you - but you really should know...  Anyway, you need to have enough champs to make solid picks in any role and you need to be able to cover any role if it comes down to it.  I'll talk about how to get better at specific roles in a bit.

Champ select advice - Don't be the "fill" guy unless you really feel like you are awesome in all roles.  Call your preferred role immediately when you hit the lobby.  Say "adc pref."  Do this as soon as you hit the lobby.  Some people believe that if you call a role you magically get it.  This is stupid, but if you call something out, folks will often accomodate your request.  If you are feeling wishy washy for whatever reason, call out multiple roles in order of what you want to play - "adc/mid pref."  In my experience, you generally do not want to call support.  It's a very important role, but you want to be in a position to carry every single game if possible.  If you aren't calling out a role, you are hoping that other players can carry you.  If you are hoping that folks will carry you, you don't deserve to win.  You need to know your best roles and you absolutely should request them.

Solo or duo in ranked? - Well, my 1st thought here is that you should solo.  If you solo, you have to rely on yourself.  IMO - its a much bigger test of skill to play solo and win than to duo.  Do you want someone to carry you or do you really want to know that you are actually good?  That said, provided you have the right duo partner, you can increase your odds of winning quite a bit.  The simple math is that instead of having 4 teammates as unknown quantities, you only have 3.  If you have a good duo teammate, you know what you can expect.  When you duo, you get the most bang for your buck by having complimentary roles.  Support/adc is good; jungle/mid also works.  Even if you don't have direct symmetry in roles, if you are an amazing mid and I'm an amazing adc, our odds go up quite a bit if we both get those roles.  Our odds go way down if we can't get those roles and are forced to play out of positions that we are weaker.  For example, Bryff is a good mid.  If he duo's up with me, the only way he will get to play that role is for me to call mid, take it myself, and then put myself into a position like support where I can't carry out of (I'm always 1st pick, Bryff is always last pick when we duo)... that and I have to show the mid I'm picking at the start which means Bryff gets hard countered.  In short, we can expect that we will be a disadvantage when duo queuing.  Now, if Bryff queued up with someone at a lower elo than himself that was solid, he'd likely be 1st pick and be able to get mid and have a better chance of carrying the game.  Anyway, you need to keep in mind where you end up in pick order when duoing if you aren't looking to go adc/support.  If you want that, you can usually get it. 

How do you get better in roles that you are not good at? - Well, here's what I do.  And this is really what I do on a regular basis.  I think about what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.  For instance, I realized that I don't play any hyper carry ads.  So, I read up on hyper carries like vayne and kog maw.  I look for guides on how to build them (most adcs are the same btw ), I look for vids on how people play them (eg how do I all in with a specific champ - is there a combo - when do I all in - what's the best way for me to burst - how should I behave in lane with this champ).  Then, I fire up a custom game and try out the mechanics of whatever champ vs AI.  Usually I learn a few tricks during that custom on how to position myself, etc.  Then, I'm off to normal games where I'll request the role or character I'm trying out.  Now, people still report your for being awful in normals, but it really is where you need to try out characters to see if you are any good or not as the bots are useless for proving your skill level to yourself.  So, fire up that normal and ask to play a role (again - after you've tried out the champ against bots).  If you don't know anyone you are with and you are quite awful, I suggest muting everyone at the start of the game.  Then, do your best.  Continue with this until you feel like you have a serviceable skill level in whatever role.  And keep in mind what you need to work on.  For me, I noticed I didn't really have alot of mids for ranked, so I started practicing some with gragas against and karth.  That way, I'll be able to get the job done if I need to play mid.  The next thing I need to do is put more time into being better top lane. Again, because while I prefer adc/support, I might need to play top for the team.  So, best to be ready for it.  Put your time in and practice roles. 

One last thought - there are certain things you can generally expect in ranked.  1 - if you are 1st pick, you generally can call whatever you want.  Common knowledge, I'm sure - but I'll add - CALL WHATEVER YOU WANT.  2 - if you duo queue, you generally can lock down both adc and support.  It works best if your adc is 1st pick, ofc.  I've bumped into like 10 random dedicated supports in all of my games of LoL.  People generally aren't going to call support. So, if you are 1st pick and duo'd, just call adc and then your duo partner can almost always get support. 

When you duo'd with Bryff, they probably were in ELO hell.  With his 50% win rate, he's playing with the new joins to ranked.  How much ranting happens is usually evidence of frustration at recent trolling, or just an inability to admit they suck.  I'm there myself, there's usually one or two recent converts to ranked in every game, and they tend to swing them quite violently towards horrific losses.

While I understand how playing support is not a good idea in ranked(I main it after all) I disagree with your reasoning.  When I play support, I am a major advantage to my carry.  If they are even just decent, it turns into a route in short order.  The enemy ends up zoned out and regularly bushwhacked, ends the laning phase 50 cs down and a level or two behind.  When they're good, we usually have a perfect lane.  I'm at least gold, and maybe platinum in this role, but I will probably never get there.  If I started playing top and jungle exclusively, I expect I'd make gold easy enough, but you can't carry bot with your support, even if you are the most valuable member on the team.  Once your adc proves useless, it's a hard game to win.  Your primary function has been removed.

I've had carries so bad that at the end of the game I had more money without farming.  If you have an outstanding team aside from that, you can turn it around by keeping other people safe, but you're essentially down one glass cannon adc.  It's the role most dependent on being well farmed, so when yours is rot, you're losing more end game power than you are with any other role.  Everyone else gets a higher percentage of their damage from levels.

here's the really, really odd thing - the folks on our team were gold V and gold IV.  Bryff is like silver 2 or 3. I literally have no idea...

While I could provide the same sort of quality support to a random adc my team would pick up, if I'm actually a good adc (even if I'm great at support), we'd likely be better off with me trying to get in that role.  I still tend to think that a great adc > a great support.  If your adc is rubbish, a great support generally can't compensate for that (unless you can now do 1500 dmg in a few seconds late game team fights).  But - a great adc can often accommodate for a weaker support.  We still might disagree here, and that's perfectly fine.  Personally speaking, my odds for winning go up when I am in a role I can carry out of.  And I'd really recommend playing in roles that you can carry from in ranked whenever possible - UNLESS you are duo queing with a pal and then you could call support. 

pulling this forward...

OK - so I'm still toying with this and tweaking a point here and there, but I'm currently digging it still.  jebus hedgie... too much info to reply to all at once.  re: lifesteal setups.  I alternate back and forth between my lifesteal rune setup.  I always take it on kog.  Was running it before on cait, but change up recently in favor of the standard ad rune setup.  I'm still kind of on the fence, though.

I actually think the setup I've been trying out is a nice mix between sustain and damage (obv damage would fall off if I ran with a life steal page).  Running barrier makes a big difference in my experience combined with the health regen you get from the pot + cookie.  Worst case, you can often easily survive an all in attempt against you and then even go right back into lane still feeling safe. 

Let's talk about the trade offs you mentioned.  Having an extra pot does not encourage me to make retarded trades, so skip that.  If you run ad runes, you don't really have a problem last hitting as long as you are experienced with whatever champs dmg output, so losing execution isn't a big deal there.  The only thing I've allowed myself to be a little foolish with is on pickpocket (currently trying out).  For me, its best to even forget I have that on and just harass like I normally would.  Still not sure if its worth it compared to other things.  It's certainly a smidge more valuable on cait than on other adcs.  Your 2 gp/10 analysis is interesting.  I'm still not sure if its worth it or not.  Its more than a few points to invest just for the 50 extra gold.  So - me = on the fence. 

Good info all around.  I find myself checking back here each day to see what the discussion will be about. (well...LoL obviously.  Perhaps "..what direction the discussion will take" would be better)

I have been playing quite a bit of Draven lately.  I was loving Cait - and I still do - but there is just something about that cocky bastard that I really enjoy.  Probably his double blades of spinning death.  I have definitely found that a poor start/bad matchup is difficult(at best) to come back from.

I am having a difficult time getting away from the ADC role.  I just find it so much fun.  I have tried Taric off and on but I'm still missing something - I really suck with him.  Either that or I am not paired well.  I picked up Skarner on sale this week and I really like him a lot.  Good mobility, survivability.  I tried him Jungle and was amazed.  I found him very easy to use.  The trouble with jungle in unranked blind pick is that I rarely find a team that incorporated a jungle/solo top well.  Generally it is about 5 ppl connecting and picking their chosen champs - then arguing about who needs to change until we run out of time and go with 5 squishies...  It's not always like that but often. 

I guess I need to sit down with a decent support (Taric....) and learn that role better.  Then a good solo-top.  I think that would be 3 good roles.  4 actually if I can get some more jungle skarner in.  I have played some jungle Nocturne also.  It's good fun.

Still - there isn't much better than sending those two blades spinning across the map to take out a champ who thinks they've gotten to the safety of a tower or some bushes to port home....

I'm almost 28...  honing in on 30 so I can play some ranked!!

edit:  I meant to ask - in these non-ranked, blind pick matches - where most teams don't run with a jungler - are there any suggestions for a champ who could hold top solo while our team (me) ran jungle?  I play regularly with a couple people over Skype and we try to synergize our roles, but I don't want someone to feel constantly overmatched by an opposing pair up top.  Another thing I've noticed is that savvy teams invade our jungle when they see Smite.  PITA.

Well, if you are trying to gear up for ranked, I'd stop playing blind pick altogether.  At least in my recollection, I stopped seeing teams without junglers around level 21 or so - but I played a lot of draft... so there's that.  Champs that are good or can be good for 2v1 lanes - nidalee, olaf, rumble, jayce.  If you are playing top lane, you should most likely be running a sustain setup - by that I mean you start with flask or a ton of red pots.  Your main goal, sadly, should be tower protection, winning trades when you can get some damage on 1 without getting destroyed by the other fellow in lane.  I know you aren't talking about what we see in some pro games (where there is a jungler, but bot lane swaps with top), but if you were, the goal of the enemy is different - here the 2v1 objective is to kill your tower as quick as possible.  If you are playing 2v1 and there is no jungler, then 1 of 2 things will happen.  The enemy team will zone you (probably the smarter move - but also less likely for any group of people choosing to forgo a jungler).  If they zone you, they just keep you from getting cs and exp while they try to freeze the lane.  If that happens, then if you have a champ with ranked poke, you farm as best you can - otherwise you leave for a smidge and try to farm something in the jungle or gank another lane.  That scenario is the most frustrating.  If they are just go apeshit trying to kill you and pushing the creep wave (this is most likely) just keep your composure and try to safely farm under the tower.  Just accept its going to be frustrating - BUT - keep in mind that you will actually level up faster than they will and they will likely have 2 under powered champions top while you will be the only one potentially weaker on your team - this means your team will have an advantage as long as you don't feed a bunch. 

Pacov....You typod your

Bronze 1 dude