Not a whole lot I can do about it, Riot hates me.  I get trolled hard in series games, my last run had two trolls in the same game.  Unless I carry, I can guarantee the game will at best be an epic throw job that should have been won.  I usually end up doing more damage than the carries when I run Zyra support with an actual support build and not just stacking AP.  I got to silver 3 by not being support in enough promo games to get my teams through to victory.

I don't know how they're running it, but you get some kind of massive retard penalty for being in a promo game.  Outright trolls, people who get 30 cs in 20 minutes, feeders that die almost as fast as they can spawn...

In the non-series games, I can play support and out damage most of the enemy team...

I find it hard to believe that hearing me point that sort of thing out over and over is not helpful.  Anyway, sorry!  But that aside, ts can either be a help or hindrance (like in your example). 

I don't think it is, but hey - to each his own.  I guess I've haven't met folks that actually enjoy ranked and only enjoy playing ranked with a pal.  Oh boy I can't wait until my buddy gets on so we can play ranked every night is not a "feeling" that I get or have seen someone else have ever.

I suppose its worth talking about ranked in general and why we treat it the way we often do.  Like - why do you want to play ranked?  If I'm honest, I like proving that I'm better than other people.  Sounds arrogant as fug, but I mean, think about it.  Why do you care if you are challenger?  You've proven that you are excellent at this game.  Someone can talk trash or say what they will, but guess what - I've proven I'm good while you are just running your mouth.  So, in my mind, if I'm duo queuing up, I'm not proving that I'm doing it on my own.  I'm just proving if I have a dedicated support, I'm good enough to get to X place.  Not I'm good enough in and of myself.

So, for me, spending a bunch of time duo queuing is an absolute waste of time because I do not really accomplish my specific goal.  That said, my specific goal might not be anywhere near your goal... but then again, ask yourself, why do you play ranked?  Curious to any other reason other than I show that I'm better than others.  The boarder rewards you get, the skins, etc, all that crap is there for you to showcase how well you did in ranked.  

But let's look at it another way - how many of us look forward to either solo or duo queue ranked as our preferred mode of play?  Within our group, afaik, cow does that a bit and so does zen.  Everyone else seems to just play ranked to keep their standing or in really brief stints.  It's not something that's often associated with fun.  It's generally something where we feel compelled to do it.  Again, perhaps going back to wanting to prove we are excellent players or "better than X" players, but also perhaps having some anxiety that we are not.  So, we work up the courage to have a go at it and go at it... for a bit. 

Here's what I want to do with ranked.  I want to figure out how to play well in it but also to really have fun.  If ranked became a mode I played several times a week for fun, that would be great.  I can force myself to do it and start grinding on up, but wouldn't it be better if it was my try hard fun mode.  hurm.

All I know is that I found it VERY difficult to move up from lower elo playing primarily support.  I kind of think a good support needs a decent adc and if you don't have that... well... smeh.  Anyway, I def wish you luck in your placement series when you get around to it if you have not. 

If I cared, I'd play AP mid and get to at least gold.  Ranking is irrelevant to me, I just play ranked because it's usually a better game.

I play ranked because it's less stupid(well, it would be if I weren't winning most of my games so I'm constantly rebounding off those damned series games...) and I prefer a serious game to 3v5's with tools that can't even run a jungle in normals.  It's not that I mind off meta stuff, I'm off meta myself, ranked just weeds out more of the incompetent players.

@Cow: tbh, Fnatic's midlaner got even more points than your ADC. Ha?

I have joined Pacov in the negative points land. Roccat got destroyed by SK. 

Cassieopia picks?!?!?!?!? WHAT

Yeah, I was invested in Roccat.  Hunny's 1 player has managed to outscore 3 of my players by quite a bit, which is a great start for me.  And he has somebody from Gambit coming up, and I actually think Gambit will be good this split.

went 5-5... managed to win another thresh game haha! I had a pretty uncarriable game as ziggs. Jarvan had some nice ganks mid that ended with him getting kills (not sure if I could of finished any of them so can't say he took them) if they were on me I might of been able to get far enough ahead to make a difference but I never did. An AD malphite pretty much won every lane for the other team. 

streaming ranked

I WAS YELLING "DONT DO THAT BARON" AS I WAS WATCHING YOUR STREAM.

Yeah.  Even with Panth's ult coming late it was still... yeah.

yah - I played really bad that game as well.  Dc'd at start of game... didn't even know that as I was load screen stuck.  The irelia was actually doing fine until she went full brain dead crazy.  She'd been pinging really unsafe barons a few times.  Her last thing was to spam ping baron and say she was going to zone the enemy team.... and then she instead opted to stand in baron pit.  Was a pretty obvious awful decision.  The game certainly wasn't going to be won based on my "good" plays, but an insane call will obv lose it for us. 

On the bright side, I didn't really have any ranked anxiety re: the game.  Was a bummer to lose game 1 of 10 though.  Oh and I think cow said he placed in plat II or plat III. 

oh - and I'll mention it here in case folks aren't all aware.  With the last patch, a change was made to the duration you have to clear wards immediately after they have been placed - you have more time to clear. Depending on your attack speed and/or resets, you can quickly clear wards after they have been placed.  It is SUPER easy for an adc and support to clear wards provided the adc adds 1 autoattack. 

This also changes the way you want to drop wards as support.  You can't just toss them into a bush without a risk of the enemy adc/support clearing it instantly.  Folks don't seem super in tune with the change yet, so I thought I'd mention it here in case anyone hasn't picked up on the change. 

Oh - and something else I learned - you know how you can upgrade your yellow trinket at level 9 for 250 gold?   Well, you can use that to place MULTIPLE wards like a mini sightstone.  The wards last 3 minutes each and the trinket recharges every 1 minute.  What I didn't know is that you can apparently place a new 1 every minute and the old one does not disappear unless you have 3 wards out.  So - mini sight stone.

Lv 2 dragon cheese - so, what do you think about these strat?

It's cheese, but again, people aren't really looking if the top laner and jungler are missing this early.  Worth for the early dragon?  You could also pull in the support to do this and just send the adc solo bot.  I'd imagine this will actually have a pretty high success rate.  Cost to top lane is teleport.  Cost to support (if used) is low xp.  Cost to adc is zone/cs/xp.  Cost to jungle is slow start and potential counter jungle.  Win to team is that early drag buff that does work all game.

Ofc after 1 day of LCS play I had the pleasure of running into one of those, "I SAW IT ON THE LCS GOTTA PLAY IT" people. Cassiopia top is not good for solo queue, please stop doing it, thanks in advance.

Anyways there is quite the mixed bag of players in Plat II right now. There are golds mixed with Diamond II-III's almost every game. Gold players that did well in promos and diamonds that did poorly are often playing together resaulting in some really lopsided match making. I have had a few games with Gold mids and ADC's playing vs Diamond players, they did not end well.

That being said it should be fairly easy to move up in solo queue at the moment for me (as long as I get mid which has been a whole 3? times in 14 games.....).

Also I am 3-0 with thresh. New main?