Re:  Pacov's Mid LoL Crisis 

You don't play optimally on purpose (as do we all) occasionally but it bothers you quite a bit when other people do silly things or play really loose. With your reputation to experiment and try different things I think that leads to people playing with you to tend to get in sort of a mode where they're not taking things as seriously.  Even if you're trying your hardest in a particular game.  I think it's as simple as that.

My advice to you:

Separate your games.  Play some try hard Ranked like Cow suggested.  Play semi-try hard with friends.  Want to rush Zz'rot portal against Panth while playing Teemo?  Play Teambuilder by yourself.  Don't let people get conditioned into not giving a shit about winning or losing or playing their best when you're on their team.  

It's not even a conscious decision mind you.  It just... the few times that it's only me and Karl playing together, I try my hardest without realizing it.  He's always going to do what's best from the moment he chooses his champion so I do the same without even thinking about it.  Even when the team is losing he's going to make plays that at least have a small chance of turning things around, not go on suicide missions to try and take an outer tower over and over again.

And maybe concentrate on playing Mid and Top.  You like to split push so much, I've always wondered why you don't main Top.  Especially in the TP Meta! You like having control of the game so why are you not always trying to play Mid where I'm told you get the most control over the early-mid game?

Getting fed as an ADC might make you strong but you still need your team to peel for you. And you need to rely and be on the same page as your Support to win your lane.  

Seems like you enjoy having a lot of personal influence in the games you play in and winning your lane with a great KDA not only gets you and your team ahead, but it helps get the Randoms to listen to you when you call shots.

patch notes- readin stuff in a bit

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-57-notes

teambuilder matchmaking adjustments= murder.  I play anything i haven't played in tb before, I get tardo city matching.  back to it

spent the night running morg support.  100% mismatched games in my favor.  nice to win, but all games jokey town.  Met a nice silver 3 adc fella.  

Went 2 for 2 in solo queue tonight. Felt pretty good about both. 

Played mao game 1. Got pretty far behind my Diana lane opponent, lost a stupid fight and died with minions shoving my way. Anyways started 0-2 and had the latest RoA in the history of the league. My CS suprisingly stayed close to the top if not the top through mid game so I was able to get tank items (Frozen Heart/spirit visage). Ended up making some nice TP plays and the vlad on our team carried the team through to late game. Ended up 3-3-20something and was a huge presences in team fights. 

Game 2 I got brand and was vs a morgana. I had a slow start but farmed well and stayed ahead of morg since she was pretty roamy. We gave up a few kills to morg roams but I took mid tower pretty early for it. Eventually team fights started happening and I picked up a double kill to make my score 2-1. I finished Rylais after having to do a triple dorans ring start to keep up with morgana's wave clear. Anyways long story short I showed up in team fights and ended  up 9-3. I was set up to get kills largely due to our fed malphite making nice ults and our nautalus support making plays with his hook. Great teammates = easy game. 

Sort of sad they made the bouncing bomb really derpy looking on the new ziggs skin..... I hope they reconsider a different animation before release. The new jayce skin looks sick and has a dark voice over. The fiddle skin seems to be more sand/sharima stuff like the 3 coming out this patch.

hue

I had quite a bit more fun last night.  Finally getting around to addressing cows/thunders comments.

yeah - playing with pals that I know aren't particularly stellar erodes my good mood, as one would expect.  Especially if now they have to perform at a much higher level (eg its not 4 bronze peeps + plat pacov - its a mashup with a guy I know will likely be herpsmuhderps).  I get that its nice to be king poop when I'm super swell guy and all my bros are not (eg pacov the hero will destroy them for you) - I just don't get to play with consistently low level folks (nor would I really want to). 

made me laugh yesterday

Anyway, I was just venting a bit as I was frustrated.  Just a good series of events. Ranked mismatches not in my favor.... then derp game mode, derp normals, derpy team builder on 1 day.  Next day derpy team builder in my favor (result easy wins, boring arse games).  Just kind of an over time frustration sort of thing. 

Cow saying go play some ranked doesn't solve the problem for me directly because I'm expecting to be in some crap mismatches like before (just negative attitude ofc).  Then if I play champs I haven't played a million times in team builder (cause I've played champs a million times in team builder...), the matchmaking adjustment kicks in.  This means I will potentially get derpy teammates trying out champs - what it means for certain is that folks I'll be queued w/ and against have that matchmaking adjustment on... so lower quality matches are the outcome usually. 

My real frustration with this teambuilder adjusted matchmaking based on how many times you've played a champ - you don't know how much you need to play to end the adjustments... so I constantly feel like I'm going to be getting derps mcgirks.  And when that actually happens over and over... well... poop.  Also queueing up in tb for role I want to work on but have little experience often take me a VERY long time for some reason.  Whereas before, I could queue up as vbear jung and be in a queue in 1 min... now its like 5-10... also frustrating.

Anyway, I'll even out in a bit.  Decided to just play a bunch solo and work on morg in top/mid/bot. 

I usualy do, outside of urf, have difficulty in separating try hard from "semi" hard.  I just find when I'm getting frustrated more often, I make fug it calls and choose to push longer than I should to try to get a turret, etc. Things like that. Where if I didn't feel like folks were blowing it, I'd be more reserved.  That's the downside - I choose to join in (perhaps this is what you mean by semi hard) when others start derping.  I just get super pissed when I'm doing my part, then others piss the game away.  Feel like my time was wasted.  Last, I know I'm not amazing or anything and I do know when I've just fugged up vs tilting.  I certainly don't do well every game if things are equal.  But I do certainly tilt a bit if I'm doing my part and people just do dumb as bricks things.

I'm off to bed, but let me put a few thoughts out and see if any of you early morning/late night folks have some thoughts.  I'm tired so this won't be completely thought out - sry.  before i start - some of this will just sound common sense but roll w/ it.  Also... tis a rant and scatterbrained... no edits - pacov away

k - so I'm trying to switch to Hyper aggressive objective focused play and trying to think about perfect scenarios (eg lets say I know everyone and control all champs - I rotate everything in the most efficient way, etc). That's not realistic in premise or execution, but its where I'm starting.  

So lets skip any invade discussion and jump to the start of the game.  The best setup for most games is to have top and bot swap (provided the other side stays as norm).  You need a decent 2v1 top laner or to call in jung supp as needed.  Anyway, the top and jungler split some xp in the jungle.  For instance, if red side, jungle/rotated top start gromp and share xp (kill can go to jungle) and then share blue - kill can still go to jungle.  Both hit level 2 here.  Jungle is set back, but top goes to bot lane with a slight adv + easier ability to farm vs 2 for a bit.  Anyway, if bot goes well, then jungler isn't needed.  Otherwise jungle comes down to assist in a pinch.  

If all goes well, there is a proper rotation where top lane goes to bot and bot goes up to top and farms some xp/gold that was likely missed. Having tp, can still get into a fight at drag to join, etc.  And can easily defend the existing top tower... "easily" - enemy top lane might be even/ahead,etc.

blah... I'm too tired to flesh this out much more - let me toss out some q's.

1 - what scenarios can you think of where you can use dragon as bait to get a tower objective?  I know its a bit abstract, but the most common urge is MUST DEFENDED drag - when its really a big op unless your team is a bunch of goofs and all just died - to get a turret somewhere.  Any thoughts on non OBV - setups?

2 - i'm going to sleep. This is stupid.

Night all!

There are very few tops, if any, that can successfully farm 2v1 bot.  Both tops are going to get wrecked in short order, it might be a great move if your top is countered hard though.

I think most 2v1's are played out because the team that wants the 2v1 feels that there adc/support will lose to the other teams adc/support OR they have a hyper late game carry adc (jinx, vayne, kogmaw). If this doesn't sound like your current adc/support you should opt for the 2v2 lane. Some times it is beneficial to swap if the other team is running a hyper carry top laner (jax/nasus come to mind). Some top lanes don't really care if they don't get farm because they will always be relevant (lulu, mao kai, sion, malphite etc...) these champions will always have an impact due to there low item needs and massively important ults in team fights.

The other scenario is if you are running tristana. Her absurd ability to take early towers and sup par laning phase make swapping her into a 2v1 lane a great option. I feel caitlyn can also be played this way but she IS a lane bully and can shut down most other ADCs in lane so playing her 2v2 is the way to go. Trist does the early push better.

But if you are the team with the 2 bot lane you should try to take dragon at some point while the 2v1's still exist.

After one lane loses its tower that teams ADC/support should 100% swap to the lane that still has its tower so you can save the tower from the other teams duo and push to take the other teams tower.

IMO this is how all 2v1's should be played obviously a dive onto the solo top laner can also be arranged with almost any comp but having a tanky support/annie/morgana is a better bet for securing these kills.

other thoughts just focused on the 2v1 lane swap stuff.  Really try to flesh out the scenarios where a swap would be ideal.  I do want to add that my primary goal for the swap is to get a top turret while putting their top laner behind if poss.  I also think janna/jinx is incredibly good fort his strat as jinx's AS buff is very useful for turrets and her passive gives you a little extra leeway for how long you can stick around to finish a turret. 

So - back to dragon concerns.  I say fine - lose the 1st dragon.  If it accomplishes the goal of getting top turret and then rotating your adc/supp back to bot with a turret still intact. Actually a pretty big part of my entire thought process is being willing to quickly sacrifice a dragon (don't even setup for it) and instead push and take a turret while the enemy team enjoys their dragon - we enjoy a more useful objective along with money.

It's generally a given that most/all champs should have difficulty farming 2v1.  I'm suggesting its often worth the sacrifice.  I am also talking here in terms of a 5 man team and not solo queue stuff. 

There's so many other angles and things to think about w/ this stuff. 

The main thing I'm driving at is trying to figure out ways to more effectively lock down objectives (specifically turrets) via intelligent rotations.  Any thoughts on that?

A very easy way is taking advantage of awkward roams or backs by the enemy team. I often do this in solo queue since brand is pretty slow when following up on enemy mid lane roams. I stay mid, clear the waves as fast as possible and I try to take turret. You can do this in other lanes obviously as well.

Another easy way to take a turret is if you are in a 2v2 bot lane and you force the ADC or support to back because of a bad trade or gank. If you put the enemy support or ADC into a 2v1 scenario it is very easy to zone them off the creeps and push them into tower. You might not get the turret by doing this once but by the second time it should fall unless they get help. If your jungler is on your side of the map and can assists with the turret it should be a free tower.

you can snow ball this tower pressure by rotating your adc/support to mid lane and putting your mid bot and or just taking 4 mid immediately after with the jungler to take mid lane. You can also rotate the adc/suppor to top and do the 4 man push with our top laner and jungler.

Anyway after one enemy tower goes its VERY easy to move your ADC and support around the map to get the rest of the outers.

Um, lane swaps aren't typically played as you describe.  That is, you don't attempt to hyper aggressively push down a tower.  Riot has put mechanics in place to make this difficult, and if the other team plays intelligently, I don't think that it works out in most cases.  This is why pro teams rarely use this strategy in lane swaps.

They almost always go for a zone out strategy.  There is a lot of risk of putting our top massively behind their top if you go for more aggressive pushing.

Since there are mechanics to prevent the strategy, you need to play pretty specific champions to implement it with much success.  I'm not convinced that having to play very specific lineups is worth whatever somewhat marginal benefits such a strategy would bring.

still can't figure out teambuilder matchmaking... I keep playing morg and the matchmaking adjust keeps staying on.  My magical pacov idea is that I'll play enough as a champion and then start being grouped with people that have also played enough with champs to get out of that adjustment/lower skill cap stuff. team builder can be pretty infuriating as a support.  Had a vayne just straight up feed and then afk after 10 min or so.  Super fun. 

Another game I had a decent kog with me.  I missed a black shield (eg to be fair, he maybe should have attempted to dodge a max range hook by moving to the left or the right...), then he ran his mouth.  Funny thing about supports.  Probably good to not harass them (I know, I know... dr pacov has done the same thing).  Anyway, I then left him be while I roamed across the universe for a bit.  It's really not worth busting folks balls in games in chat.  It's not like someone instantly has a flawless game when you bitch at them.  Quite the contrary.. so you are really just setting yourself up for a loss -or in that guys case, some quality time in a 2v1 lane for a bit.  I did go back after a wee bit, but I muted the fella assuming any thing he had to say would be rubbish. 

And... as things are going full circle.... I really like chogath now.  top/mid/jung.  Its a sad day for me. 

Anyway, I'm working on nid jungle - I think we will see some shifts back to her and she's currently not perma banned (sigh... but she will be again I think).  She was getting perma banned before the tank jungle item.  Now, with them nerfing tanks a bit, I think she'll start being more common.  If they continue to nerf tanks next patch... I'm pretty damn sure she'll be heading back towards commonly banned status.  That said, at least now I have a little bit of a window where I can play her.  Still mainful focused on playing morgana in multiple roles.  I might take lulu back up, but IDK.  I'm also thinking more about jungle nunu for that hyper aggressive objective control idea.  A good gank can very quickly turn into a tower w/ bb - all the while providing excellent vision control.