Flamin

I wonder if SKT could clean sweep the tournament if they played Faker every game. Chinese final seemed a bit too close, and I doubt TSM/Fnatic will come close to beating SKT in a BO5, 1 game is possible though.

I do enjoy the autoattack Falstad build. I've found an appreciation for Nova as well, she feels super rewarding if you make catches appropriately, and her AoE ult is fantastic in teamfights. Her DPS and low mobility (within a fight) does leave a bit to be desired, but obviously you can't have it all.

I've been playing this game quite a bit recently. I do like the team play aspect, though its very frustrating playing traditional carries (they call them assassins, which honestly doesn't make sense) like Valla, Tychus, or Falstad and just get completely shit on by a tank since you can't possibly kill them.

I think tank support could be fun to try. Starting with machete would be lane suicide though, being down a summoner spell already. I actually like the tank meta as a mainly AD player. Champions like Shyvanna pretty much my wet dream to play against as an AD since they can rarely ever reach you.

I haven't played past my placements this season so I'm currently plat. Been playing way too much HoTS so my view on the game is kinda fucked right now.

He's a super solid champion because his wave clear (past early game) is really good and he's extremely difficult to 1v1 due to his sustained damage and invulnerability. His teamfight is absolutely ridiculous if you land the ult properly. That being said, my main problem with him is the relatively low kill pressure. Hard to kill anyone if you run TP and have next to no CC, although they probably won't kill you either.

Sion is fucking annoying. Between him and Maokai I pretty much just despise playing AD nowadays. Its not fun to waste 30 seconds trying to kill someone who just runs at you all day and isn't useless enough to completely ignore because of the constant slows/stuns. The purpose of playing these super tanks (and getting fed/farmed on them) is to outlast your enemy's tanks/front-line so your team eventually overwhelms the enemy's in a team fight. Also because you're practically unkillable by 1-2 people if you splitpush with TP since you have like 4500 HP.

I suppose you're right to an extent, there are many people who are "stuck" at certain elos because of their mindset (and I personally believe that's the only thing holding them back). That's why this is interesting to me. For every bronze stuck after thousands of games, you're also going to find people who played thousands of games at an elo that's "good", maybe in low diamond or something, but they still can't reach the top, and I refuse to believe that its about physical limitations or some bullshit. I think its still just mindset. I think grinding games makes you better, but the improvement is extremely small if your mindset isn't correct. Depending on how "bad" someone is in terms of their ignorance/stubbornness it'll take them more games to improve enough to move up a rank, and maybe its a bit far-fetched but it could be anywhere from a few to a few thousand. Obviously I don't agree that the best way of improving is just spamming games, cause obviously that's very ineffective if you don't actively try to improve, but I think it has an undeniable effect on people, no matter how minor it is.

I'm going to disagree and say that grinding games should make you better in the majority of cases. I think its pretty rare that people who play a shitton of games are stuck in bronze. Most people I play with (myself included) only really play because playing 5 person pre-made is fucking fun. We don't necessarily actively try to learn the game, but playing a lot gives you a good feel for things such as when to buy items, when to go back, what the enemy team could be doing, the capabilities/damage of each champion, etc. A lot of those things really come only from practice, and although I probably improve at a much slower rate than people who go and actively look for their mistakes and fix them, there's a lot of things that just become second nature if you play the game enough. Its the reason why you see a lot of people walking in straight lines in low elo, and why people actually try to predict/dodge skill shots in higher elo. Yes, its something you can train yourself to do, but I'd like to believe that the majority of the human population has the mental capacity to learn that you can actively dodge shit in this game after playing a couple hundred times, rather than having to go online and have some stranger tell them that's the best way to play the game.

I'm D5 (though I only play ranked at the end of the season) and wouldn't mind watching a replay or two occasionally. I play mainly bot and mid lane, though I'm competent on all roles (though less confident).

I feel like I have a lot of trouble remembering to ward when playing carry-type roles. I'll ward fine when playing jungle or support, but most games I won't even buy one ward the entire game as AD.

I'm not saying specifically Kat, but for any of those "niche" champs - there's "OP" meta picks and they're there for a reason. Its just a good idea to pick them up as long as they're not perma banned. I'd also suggest that if you're playing alone most of the time, just grind ranked instead of normals. You might lose elo if you play badly but the higher pressure will probably cause you to tryhard a bit more. I play like 20x more normals than ranked but I'm pretty sure that the stretches where I spam ranked give me the most improvement. I can literally feel myself starting to push champion limits after a couple games on the same champ, but it might also be because I play random shit in normals.

You can probably "stomp" with any champion but not because people are too dumb to drop one of their 50 CCs on you in a team fight, but probably more so because you killed them 10 times before you even started fighting and you hardly even need your ult to 1 shot someone. I think Kat is pretty one dimensional and while kind of a pub-stomp champ, there's stronger roamers which are more valuable to learn if the goal is purely to get better at solo queue. LeBlanc, Ahri, Fizz, TF, etc. Anyone with higher mobility, higher burst, or has CC. Still, play whatever you're comfortable with, but if you're going to pick up a champ, might as well pick up an OP.

You win by playing what you're most comfortable with. I don't personally mind early picking a solo lane if I'm forced into the role (I don't really care about pick order since I think I can play every role) though I only feel truly comfortable on 1-2 champions in roles that I don't play often. You can always shitstomp lane and snowball the game, but even if you lose or go even in lane there's a lot of opportunity to make plays around the map, so you don't necessarily have to win the lane. If you lose in CS, are dying in lane, and getting outroamed, then you have a problem that extends beyond your champion pick. Of course, if you're hoping to win the vast majority of your games (like 80%+) then you should smash your lane every game, but you only really need a decent (60%~) win rate to climb steadily.