Okay, lots of plans for my League of Legends play moving forward! But first, some history...
I've considered myself to be more-or-less an Irelia main since very early on, when Irelia was one of the free champions for the week I started the game on. My builds were horrible - I'd build multiples of Wit's End because I didn't know what a unique passive was, generally just loved anything that gave attack speed, and built Phantom Dancers for the movespeed - but Irelia being Irelia, I still managed to do well in the majority of my games, even having a 3v3 match at one point where my kill count was well over 25 (a game I eventually lost because of really poor objective control, and also the fact that I was preying upon two of the opponents while the third - another Irelia - was basically doing the exact same to my two teammates).
In any case, despite the fact that I quickly became enamored with Akali and thought I could follow in Westrice's shoes, when I did eventually save up the IP and buy Irelia, I slipped right into the playstyle like it was second nature. About two years later, and though I've played many champions off-and-on, Irelia is still my most comfortable pick.
A good portion of this time has been spent playing Co-Op vs. AI games (2425~ wins, 50~ losses thus far), watching streams and tournament coverage, and theorycrafting endlessly about build orders and matchups and team combos. I get a serious case of the jitters when getting into PvP matches and it used to be even worse, but after playing a fair number of Team Builder games lately, I've been getting through all that. I did briefly attempt to ladder climb in Season 3, but after getting placed into Bronze after a 2/8 record in my placement games, I just didn't have the motivation to put myself into Silver (though I had a very respectable winrate of about 65-75% during my following games).
But there's only so much theorycrafting and studying one can do before it gets tiring. I love to analyze everything, and consider myself to be fairly well-versed in even some of the intricacies of game strategy, but I don't really have friends who care for critique nor anyone who'd want to even craft for-fun team comps. They just want to jump straight into games and play as individuals. (nothing wrong with that, it just didn't mesh with what I'd really like to do.)
So forget that. Time to put my money where my mouth is and prove, if only to myself, that I can take all of that game knowledge and apply it in real-time. I don't expect to make it to Diamond or even Platinum - my mechanics still aren't that strong, and I make bad decisions in-game - but I'd like to finish out Season 4 in at least high Silver or Gold.
I'm a competent player in all roles, and have a decent champion pool, but the tried-and-true method of ladder climbing in Ranked is to main just one or two champions. Being skilled with your champion gives you an edge in most matchups, even ones that counter you; in fact, it's not uncommon for opponents to see your pick and focus too hard on the counterpick, when they themselves are not good at that champion. (my brother already made it to Gold in S3 playing mostly Ryze, even against the champions that were supposed to counter him, simply because he knows what Ryze can do better than his opponents.)
If you hadn't already guessed, Irelia is my main going into this. I do have some "pocket picks" for games where I'm forced into another role or banned/picked out of my main, but all I really need is to get top-lane Irelia for about 50% of my games, and the odds are in my favor to move upwards.
So, look forward to some more posts on how that's all working out! I've been playing Team Builder and the occasional Draft Pick game to practice, with the former providing blind-pick practice to hone my skills against varied matchups, and the latter giving me more experience picking around my opponents and teammates. Ranked promotions are the next stop though, and I hope to have a much better showing in those ten games this time around as opposed to last season.
Also maybe some Irelia fanart sometime, too.
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
snowghoul
janainaart
dededos
