u/ZaRazza14

Just spewing my thoughts. Anyone relate to this?

I’m probably as introverted as it gets. I grew up around extremely introverted/agoraphobic parents. They never really left the house, did everything by themselves, and never had friends over. Through them, I’ve learned to do, and pretty much enjoy, doing everything by myself. I often joke that I’d be the perfect person to survive an apocalypse. Survival requirements outstanding, I genuinely think I’d be relatively happy.

The thing is, I’m uncharacteristically socially aware. Ironically, my social capabilities, ability to understand people, and ability to alter my personality to fit situations are off the charts. Socializing is probably my greatest skill. My career is revolved around people management and I excel at it.

Despite all of this, I have no friends. It’s too exhausting for me and I enjoy my time alone too much. Because I’m socializing, leading, and directing others for 10 hours straight at work, I’m absolutely drained afterwards and on my days off. I don’t have friends, it doesn’t bother me, but I feel like a weirdo. Everyone else I know has at least one friend. I feel uncomfortable with how I will be judged by others if this comes up. I’m liked by all but not close to anyone

I play Zed mid, granted it’s G1, and have a 66% wr in my last 15 games. I know that’s not a lot of games to base this off. Besides the point, is that good? I win a majority of the games playing him but also recognize my overall wr isn’t that high either.

I assume a similar post has been made in the past; however, this is my take. I want to preface that this may not be applicable to everyone reading this. Now, before continuing, I want you to ask yourself “Why did I start playing and what made me fall in love with the game”? Answer that question and hold onto that answer.

Context:

Personal Life: League offers a plethora of reasons for people to fall in love with the game. For me, I fell in love with its highly competitive nature, its emphasis on efficiency, and its nagging stress on optimization. In my personal life, I value, and am all of those things. To provide more context, I’m an ex D-1 college football player. During my time playing football, everything was pushed to the extremes. Everything I put into my body had to be nutritionally optimized, my workouts had to be efficient, my sleep, my heart rate, the way I took this step here instead of there, the list goes on. How else was I going to make the NFL (I can now say with full confidence that I was delusional). In result, I wasn’t PLAYING football. I lost touch with the game I loved. I wasn’t playing for FUN and wasn’t playing for the reasons I did when I first caught my dad’s spiral in the backyard of our house. I wasn’t playing the GAME, I was playing SUCCESS.

League History: I first started playing in S2. I immediately fell in love with game. More specifically, I fell in love with playing Zed. From S2-S4, I quickly climbed to D4 OTP Zed in Korea. I was having so much fun. As life went on, I slowly lost touch with the game and officially stopped playing in S7. Between S7-16, I found myself periodically redownloading the game chasing that unequivocal “high” the game gave me. One can guess, I fell short every single time. I’d constantly find myself fighting the urge to throw my PC off the balcony as I lit it on fire with a blowtorch because I just got chain CC’d for 27 seconds. The game changed and I did too. Instead of focusing on what I originally enjoyed, I fixated on my past success… the competition, the efficiency, the optimization. How else would I climb? In order to climb, I tried every lane, every champion, and every build because clearly X isn’t working or X is too weak. My google search was riddled with questions like:

“What champion is best to OTP mid/jungle/sup/adc/top”
“Who’s better between X and X”
“Best secondary champ for X lane”
“Does X scale well or does X have a strong early game”

The list goes on. I was asking myself all the wrong questions.

Now: A couple of weeks ago I found myself redownloading the game. For the first time (yes I spent nearly 10 years incrementally rage queuing this game), I found myself having fun. Lo and behold, this had a direct correlation on my performance and results. What changed? This time, I said screw it and went back to my roots, Zed. Within a month, I went from S4 to E1. The craziest thing about it was I didn’t care. I didn’t care about my rank, if I was winning or losing, if I was optimizing X, being efficient in X, or competing at the level I expected myself to. All I cared about was that I was having FUN!

Takeaway: Yes, league is systematically set up for rage queuing. Yes, the game stresses competition, optimization, and efficiency. Don’t let these values manipulate, divert, derail, or change the reasons why you first started playing the game, what made you fall in love with it, and why you enjoy it. The one word I have religiously used in this post is the word game. I mean, aren’t games meant to be fun? Now, after reading this, I want you to go back to my question at the very start, remember your answer, and ask yourself “Am I playing and doing things in this game for the reasons I did when I first started”?

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

As the title states, how do I recover from an invade at level 1? I feel like I have mastered most of the basics in jungle (G1) but consistently find myself falling extremely behind when I run into level 1 invades. I tend to waste a lot of time after I find out I’ve been invaded resulting in bad clears/less gold

I really appreciate any help/tips as I really want to learn!

I currently main Lee Sin / Diana jungle. Looking to add a 3rd champion to my champion pool to give myself diversity, more game/champion understanding, and for a solid back-up in the off chance both my mains are banned (don’t want to wing it like I have had to). I understand the easy choice is “who I like more”; however, I like both and just wanted a different perspective to add incentive to one or the other

Based on kit, ability to excel in most elos, and champion interest, i’ve narrowed it down to Zac or Briar

So, Briar / Zac mains, convince me? Thanks everyone!

Narrowed down my 2 mains to Diana and J4. In the off chance both are banned I’m looking for a 3rd rotational champion. I’m seeking something ideal that will be consistent across metas/ranks.

My current options consist of: Jax, Lee, Nasus, and Zac

Really curious on your guys insight but specifically the “why”. If you could give suggestions with some detail on why, it’d really help better my understanding on the game/champion itself. Thanks everyone!