well, got in 2 more games tonight.  Both wins - qualified for series to plat III.  Hopefully get to play that tomorrow.  

I've been having some pretty remedial ass adcs.  One game the guy was about as solid as I'd be playing adc in an a game at this elo (read - not so good).  It was a lot of really basic positioning mistakes in lane - the type where I have to blow exh pretty quickly to save someone that previously had 100% hp bad.  So, had that 1 game.  He continued to be awful, I made plays across the map to get back into it.  The enemy team wastes resources going to kill bad adc over and over, we get work done around the map and eventually crush them... bad adc and all.  Our mid and jungler perform well.  Replay link if anyone's interested, though its nothing special - http://na.op.gg/match/observer/id=2119115589

I end with a 76% kill participation and 22kda.  

Game 2 my adc was a bit better - my team as a whole was kind of trash early/mid/early late.  This was the team that would take any lead we had and quickly piss it away.  At one point, there was a 4 man gank bot.  2 of us just get bushwacked and die (was a bad setup for us).  With full vision our lux literally walks into 4 of them when no one is all that low.  Anyway, bad things there.  Then another crazy ass dive call later when their top laner has TP and we get fugged as well.  Just a bunch of way too aggro calls.  This game, I come to the conclusion that I need to carry... and I'm on morg, so I can actually do that to some degree.  I do a little selfish farming to power up (again, this was straight selfish, but I concluded the only way we were going to get something done was to get a zz on the board (20 min in and we don't have a single tower down...).  Anyway, I do that, I make picks, we have some ok team fights.  I start outplaying the shit out of their leblanc over and over. We get a win.  My KP was low at 51% due the selfish plays to get money and the roams to get zz's up and running.  I'd split a bit and get the ball rolling.  Turned out to be very effective and needed as our top laner had no interest in zz.  Our j4 bought one as well towards the end. By and large, this one was work, but it worked out.  Game would have been straight easy if the team wasn't adamant about flip flopping (get an adv, make a risky as fug call, etc).  

Anyway, pretty pleased. Nice little win streak.  Be quite happy to hit plat III, so hopefully tomorrow.  Night!

So a few days ago, I played with what I'd consider was easily the best team I've ever had.  It was solo queue around Plat IV elo.  Sadly, I don't even remember the composition.  Anyway, what stuck out was the extreme objective focus we had.  Folks played well (nothing super flashy, but people were on point).  Folks didn't bugger off with low HP if we could safely get an objective - they'd stick around and get crap done. I could make aggressive plays knowing I had backup.  I'd start a roam for vision when its relatively safe, clear a path with sweep and I'd had someone roam along with me for a quick kill, etc.  Bottom line - it just felt really good and incredibly uncommon to have a full team on point in fake solo queue.  Think we knocked out the game in like 21 minutes, never gave up any lead we had through good decision making.  In short, we made it impossible for the enemy team to get back into things (no throw bro).  

Anyway, I'm off work a little early today due to an early morning install, so I might be able to play my promo games this afternoon.  Good luck me anyway.

game 1 of promos - I'm a freaking god.  I carry as support morgana. hard.

game 2 - i cannot dodge - I am stuck with 4 adcs.  The one I'm laning with is smeh and doesn't understand that lulu with thunderlords hurts.  We occassionally make a good play.  The team will, no matter what, immediately over extend after the play and die, ensuring we can't get back into things.  Make awareness is garbo for kids.  I do what I can, but its no where near enough as any play I make will be undercut by the ensuing over extend.    

Game 3 now

Yay - Plat III!

Highest I've ever made it in LoL.  

Game 3 was tough.  My adc sucked a little, I didn't play quite as good as I could have in lane.  I rotated like a freaking boss though and got us an early turret lead with team.  Our lux mid did really good.  our riven tilted off the planet, but we calmed the dude down and he got his head on straight.

Feels good - morg legend on soloq.gg pewpewpewpew

And got to play 1 game w/ karls/cow.  I got to play jhin as adc... which I've been really wanting to do for awhile.  I did fairly well with jhin, but my adc mechanics as a whole w/ positioning, etc, still kind of blow.  Nice easy win for us and we had 2 people on our team that were making up rhymes during the game.  You could hear them dropping the mic over and over.  

could the best skin name in the game be "Giant Enemy Crabgot?"

A discussion about where everyone is at this season coming up in the am.   Chime in if interested in topic 

Got diamond 4 last night. Not feeling like I am being outskilled yet. I will keep pushing for more elo. 

Also if you want to climb easy amumu is pretty op with echos. Mao seems to shit on naut/malphite. Those are my sleeper OPs of the day.

Had not considered - good stuff.  

Re: rank/elo, etc.  Here's my bit then I'll list some of our pals.  So, I have 2 accounts I've been playing on this season.  My main is plat III.  Don't think I've played a ranked game on it since I hit plat III.  Honestly, I was feeling a bit handicapped playing with a few of our regular pals, but at lower elos.  NOT because they are poop, but because the disparity in players I'd get.  For instance, I play solo at Plat III, I'm getting mostly folks around that elo.  I play with someone that is gold V, I get a hodge podge of folks with lower skill caps on either side. Which can lead to HUGE mismatches in a lane.  

My other account I believe is gold 1 now... which I'm not too happy about.  I was using this account so I could do 2 things - 1 - play with my pals that were still in silver and 2 - get to work on roles I kind of blow at when the skill cap is a bit lower.  Well, I go on a freaking 9 game winstreak or so and get promoted from gold III to gold 1... and now most of my games are against plat level opponents.  So, I'm losing out a bit on my 2 goals and if I do get promo'd to plat, that's that for the account.

OK so here's our listing:

• super king pacov - plat III - 56% win rate (games still feel pretty easy), pacov gold I
• Cow - d4 (games still pretty easy)
• karl - gold 4 - 55% win rate
• soupcup (been playing a bunch w/ him lately - madcast fella) - gold 1 - 51% win rate
• boaz (the bouche) - gold 5 - 58% win rate
• thundercleese - silver 2-  42% win rate
• swan (no idea - been gone awhile)
• bryff - gold 5 - 55% win rate
• hunnybadger - gold 4 - 52% win rate

Other random stuff - I'm liking jhin, but liking him more at lower elo.  Last few games were a little rough.  I find he's a really easy adc to use.  It's weird, but his 4 shot then reload system resonates with me and I find it really easy to utilize well (including last hit + speed boost).  I like the crazy power at starting fights at long range - makes it really easy to avoid a lot of positioning mistakes.  Anyway, dig him.  Starting to play a bit of graves top.  Not particularly good.  

oh - and hextech crafting is live on NA now

When you are in your series to plat on your alt you could always just dodge, I am pretty sure that still counts as an auto loss in a series?

Cow and I TORE IT UP TONIGHT.

Thanks for all of you who joined in. Miss you bb boo's. Hope to play more when i'm on Summer Break.

hmm.... kind of works - mmr still goes up.  I think you are right tho - that should dodge.  Maybe I'll just start dodging a game a night before I bugger off.  Doubt doing it that infrequently is that big a deal.

Yah - we saw dr swan back tonight.  Was chilling w/ cow.  Good stuff.  Thx for the games fellas.  

Something I just learned about crafting.  So, yesterday I noticed I didn't get a chest 1 game where I expected one (either I or someone else on the team got an S).  Anyway, I get nothing.  Then I read a guide today on reddit that says that you only get 1 chest per champion for the season.  So, if I play jhin, get a S, I get 1 chest.  I play him again and get an S, I get nothing.  The key to the initial chests is playing multiple champs.  You can get up to 52 chests for the season or so.  That means you or someone on your team needs to get an S AND you must be playing a champ that you haven't already gotten a chest on.

oh and if you look at the champion list, it should show what champs you've already gotten a chest on.  

AND you get get keys regardless of the queue type (eg aram = cool).  Keys are random, so you may or may not get em after a game.  You can earn unlimited key fragments

I wonder if any of the retired skins will show up like rusty blitzcrank or ufo corki. It would be nice if they worked some of those skins back in.

If any of you actually get a key fragment from arams, please let me know.  Supposed to be able to do this - haven't had that happen yet.

Accidentally lost my last game promo to plat on my alt.  Fun fact. I learned that a dodge counts only as 1 loss now.  You don't insta fail your series at least in the promos to a new div.  Not sure if it always worked that way.  Dodge appears to count as just a loss.

OK, so let's talk crafting a sec.  I have unlocked all the chests I can for the next 5 days.  (4 or so I think).  As I mentioned earlier, you can only get a chest per EACH champion per season.  Meaning once you get a chest on 1 fella, you are better off playing someone else if you are grinding chests... UNTIL you hit your max.

As I have a wee bit of OCD pointed towards grinding, I immediately wanted to max out the crates.  I felt a strong need to play multiple champs to hit that goal.  I did.. so now, for the next 5 days, I can go back to playing w/e I want.  I'm assuming that while my crates are out, if I get an S on someone else, I just won't get a crate and I'll still be elligible to unlock a crate on champ that never got a crate... makes sense anyway.

Anyway, tonight I got 2 key frags - enough with what i had to make 1 full key + 1 left over frag. I also got one of those purple shards which gives you a bunch of stuff.  I unlocked that rather than hold onto it to get hextech annie (you need 10 of those to get).  So, I turned that in.  All said and done, I unlocked 2 chests.  Got dino gnar and varus swiftbolt.  I don't own varus, so I can't do much w/ that.  I have gnar, but don't care as I don't really like playing him currently.  My inventory has 3 unopened chets, 1 key frag, those 2 skins not created, and the widow ward (not upgraded).  I have 125 cosmetic essence - zero champ stuff.