man... I really need to do a vlog. Pretty sure I've got some stuff to talk about you folks would be pretty interested in.  I'll try to do one soon and recommend you check it out when I do.  If we play together regularly I think you'll be interested/entertained.  I'm kind of in a unique place currently. 

anyway, played some with pete tonight.  I'm on a mini mission.  Learning to communicate with PDT.  I won't even tell you my secret goal until it's been achieved. 

If I don't get around to the vlog soon, I'll just spill my guts.  Night all

Pacov's Vlog:

1. Confession of a strange love for everything Cowbuttzex
2. You are also going to Hawaii
3. You are gifting me 2 legendary skins since you feel bad about getting pulse fire in a mystery gift from me
4. You are actually not a Lord

Those are my expectations, do not disappoint pls.

1. obv.

2.already here

3.no

4.Lord Borg

worth a watch re: the new pbe item

Silly Cow.  Pacov's Vlog will be about how he plans on duoing with Peter to get to Diamond this upcoming season.  Him, Karl, and Brad have been getting carried pretty hard by Pete's Malz recently...

I'll be playing on a good connection tonight and tomorrow Cow, so get me the times you're going to be on Maui and your phone number and shit.  Oh, and is Pete gonna make it over here too?  I need to know how many releases I need to print for the Lava Cave Underground River Of Doom hike...

dude.. if pete dies in hawaii in a cave I'll never get to diamond... don't do it. 

also it occurs to me that the magical vlog is probably a good deal less interesting than I originally imagined.  

I think I'll just ramble some now...

I'm contemplating changing my focus to a specific role with a smaller pool of champions.  I think my main problem is that I want to be very good with any champ I play.  To flesh that out a little, let's say I'm into jungle now.  Well, what I do is pick a champ that I'm interested in.  play test literally any reasonable jungle route, toy with runes and masteries over and over, how soon they can safely take drake..you name it... and then work on mechanics with w/e champ I'm into. In short, I'm actually putting in quite a bit of time before I even get into playing a champ in a live game.

And then, after all that time and prep, my options are to play team builder and get w/e role I'm focused on (side note... every single team builder game I've played recently has an afk on my team), or hop over and try to get in some games with you folks.  Where I'm likely going to offer to play support so someone else can have a go a w/e role they want. 

Guess I'll talk about that a little bit - playing roles I'd rather not so others can do what they like.  Now, I actually enjoy playing all roles from time to time, but typically cycle through very specific interests for a few weeks or a month.  I think if you observe me specifically, you'll notice a pattern where I'll either offer to support early based on who we have on the team or after a few games. 

About 90% of the time, I'd rather be playing some role other than support.  But I generally want folks to have fun.  As a hypothetical example, consider me wanting to play jungle every game and I keep inviting karl (mains jungle), but I take jungle all night.  In my mind, that's me being a shit.   So, having that attitude, I choose to let folks do what they want.  But, of course, this means I'm not working on whatever I'm looking to improve at. 

I will add that I also don't really like playing champs I suck at or am working on with pals.  Consider 5 of us wanting to win a game and I take a role where I'm inexperienced from someone that has much more experience.  On top of that, I play a champion I'm interested in working on instead of a champ where I'd be better at in a role.  All of that strikes me as dickish. 

So, I feel bad when folks don't get to play w/e role they want because I'm taking it from them.  I feel bad when I take a role from someone who has a higher skill cap or more experience (or in pete's instance, turns to poo town in other roles).  Anyway, that's how I generally feel and is why you see things like me offering to cover support for someone else.

So - magical martyr pacov, right?  well... if you like.  If we want to be friendly, I'm requesting that you folks try to have more of an open mind when it comes to what roles you play.  Barring that, I'm going to start playing other roles MUCH more frequently which will quite possibly result in other people being put into roles they blow at.  Also, bad news - I'm probably going to suck while I work on getting better.  Perhaps you can be the good guy and step up and offer to cover support so someone else might do what they want.  

long winded topic 1 of about 7 on my mind...

onto other things...

skill level thoughts

Previously, here's how I'd do things.  Pick a lane.  Pick a champ I'm interested in.  Learn everything i can about them.  Try them out against bots with various rune/item setups (focus mostly on laning, last hitting, and a few rune/mastery setups).  Play against people.  Depending on the role, I end up putting more time to practice in than others. I don't just pick a champ and go play with folks.  I put in some time to learn the mechanics, etc.  I like knowing more and having a decent idea and then beginning to play with people.  I take this approach mostly not to screw over people.  You know - the jackass that goes to ranked in the jungle without having played a single game in a the new jungle?  Not me. Anyway, I like to think through these things before getting into a game. But bad news for me - within 2-4 weeks, I will be interested in playing someone else and move along.  I'll have a reasonable skill level with whoever, stop playing them for the most part, and have that skillset slowly erode.

Me playing this way is detrimental for 2 reasons - 1st - I don't become a specialist.  I become a jack of all trades, but not as good as a specialist.  As such, if I'm up against a specialist in a lane and I'm just some guy that's been working on a champ and getting better and better with them, I'm going to have problems.  I'll be even against other, non specialist types potentially, but I'm at a disadvantage (not really talk about lower elo folks here, but high gold and above). 

The 2nd reason - so I do all of this drilling outside of games with you folks.  But then when I'm looking to play against people, I get into games with you folks and I'm more than likely working on a role that one of you specializes in.  And as I described in the last post, while I'd rather be playing w/e role I want all the time, I also like for my pals to get to play what they want.  The end result is that even if I choose to specialize in a smaller pool of champs, I still end up only getting in a small amount of reps.... and then just end back up supporting where I essentially learn jack and shit. 

anyway, back to skill level thoughts...

So, I've been exercising a ton lately.  I wrap up like 5 miles of running before I sit down to play league (well, 2 before I start league 3 earlier).  I'm not tired, but this seems to having a pretty big impact on my skill level, awareness, and decision making.  In other venues (coding, etc), I find the exercise to be extremely helpful for productivity, etc.  With league, its like I'm becoming a worse player - particularly with decision making and awareness... and I'm not really sure what to do about that. 

Anyway, offer to fill more often to be my hero.  I'm going to be support less and less and work much more on solo lanes for awhile.  I'm also going to force myself to cut down on some my champion pool diversity and focus in on specific, to be decided (but not constantly banned) champs. 

Take it less seriously and a skill drop from exercising wont matter.

yah, but its just kind of silly to be off quite a bit because of exercise.  I really don't know why it is. Anyway, perhaps that will normalize after a bit.. only been at it 4 weeks or so.

off to bed - I had a really fun night though.  Really enjoyed having an entire night off from support though.  Thx for brad/hunny and thunder previous night. 

I actually had some pretty mixed results tonight and learned a bunch about lissandra top. Was a really good learning experience and I feel like I'm starting to get a good handle.

I'm thinking she'll be one of my main champs as she can be used top/mid/support as well (though I personally think supp is bad and actually really lean toward her being a stronger top than mid at this point due to matchups).  Still - plenty more to learn.  You can see my 1 night progress here:

Training started last night solo + 1 game or so with peeps.  Tonight I got to spend some time and work on.  I've been building her very situational and welcome feedback.... but you'll need to look at who I was up against to get an idea.

Next topic is how I'm hitting diamond this season and ranked attitude (you'll notice 0 ranked games in preseason for me).  Quite  a few thoughts but sleeping sounds so much more interesting atm

Hopefully Pete can fix his lag somehow though!

[PBE] Dragon's attacks can no longer be blocked, dodged, or juggled.

so... phase 1 is complete. I got peter to take exhaust as support.  Asked him 1 time and he did it.