I’m pretty sure that, in return for everything bad I’ve said about League of Legends and how much better Heroes of the Storm is, Riot has basically applied some sort of curse onto me so every game of League of Legends I play becomes the newest worst experience of my life.

Out of my last five ranked games:

• 3 have had at least one person disconnect or ragequit
• 2 have had two people disconnect or ragequit
• 2 have had allies who have typed out very elaborate death threats (more detailed than the standard “go kill yourself” that you see every game)

During one of the games, after being called a homosexual during champion select for a reason I wasn’t able to catch, we went in game with a Draven who is also an aspiring comedian.

After our Leona accidentally uses her Flash and announces it in chat, Draven intentionally uses it, and re­plies, “same.”

Four minutes later, he leaves the game.

(Click to enlarge)

Not that it would’ve mattered anyway, seeing as now both our jungler and marksman were disconnected, but the enemy jungle Trundle then proceeds to run figure-8s around my lane, avoiding my wards and thrusting his club up my anus.

(Also, notice how in the second screenshot, my ping has mysteriously gone up to 47ms when it used to be 18ms at the start of the game. I basically live next door to the new Chicago servers.)

…

I can’t wait for Heroes of the Storm to become more popular so I can just quit this game entirely, instead of being forced to play LoL anyway in order to be a well-rounded caster for the world’s most popular game.

(This post isn’t endorsed by Riot Games and doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of Riot Games or any­one officially involved in producing or managing League of Legends. League of Legends and Riot Games are trade­marks or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc. League of Legends © Riot Games, Inc.)

Our prayers have been answered, at least temporarily.

Riven, the most overpowered champion in League of Legends, and one of two champions that does not be­long in the game (the other being Yasuo), has been temporarily disabled. It should obviously be per­ma­nent, but I guess the world isn’t perfect.

With four gap closers, two forms of hard crowd control, a defensive ability that scales off of an offensive stat, a basic attack modifier with every skill, a mechanic called animation canceling that makes her look buggy and isn’t described in any tooltip, burst damage equivalent to an assassin, and unlimited sustain­ability at no strength reduction after purchasing life steal due to no resource limitations – it is as stupid as it sounds.

Xypherous, the designer responsible for giving birth to Riven, seems to really enjoy making changes to the game that piss people off (or at the very least, me).

He’s the creator of Nautilus, the tank with four forms of crowd control and an ultimate that basically crowd controls someone for several seconds as they watch in terror at the advancing depth charge that’s about to throw them airborne. Not to mention most people running away, behind their allies, and screwing over their entire team in the process.

He’s the creator of Lulu, the wildly underrated support that’s just as good as Janna at denying the ene­mies, but also deals several times more damage than her.

And of course, he’s responsible for reworking Heimerdinger and changing the champion that I loved.

I miss you, pre-rework Heimerdinger.

(This post isn’t endorsed by Riot Games and doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of Riot Games or any­one officially involved in producing or managing League of Legends. League of Legends and Riot Games are trade­marks or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc. League of Legends © Riot Games, Inc.)

For the past week or so, every time I went on the League of Legends subreddit, I saw people discussing the pool party event thing, where if the community collects enough points, they get free stuff.

One of the posts talked about how, at this rate, it was impossible for the community to reach the grand prize, and they would barely even earn the first few prizes. Of course, this fellow failed to realize that the point of this event is to make people play more in order to get the rewards, not to just give them out at the rate the community is already playing.

Somehow, the community managed to reach the reward of everyone getting a free mystery champion.

I’ve been playing League of Legends for a pretty long time – I think I started sometime around 2012. In that time, I managed to collect a lot of champions. But, unfortunately, I don’t play quite enough to be able to unlock all the champions worth 6,300 IP.

With this mystery champion gift reward thing coming around, I wanted to make sure that I got the most value out of it as possible. I was stockpiling a bit of IP because I wasn’t really interested in buying more champions at the moment, but I decided that now was the time to spend.

There were two low-cost champions that I did not buy until this point.

One of them is Poppy. I hate Poppy. I hate how she looks, I hate what she is, I hate how she’s played, I hate her abilities, I hate her skins, and I pretty much hate everything there is to hate about Poppy.

The other is Taric. He is just too fabulous for me, and it’s irritating.

But, I decided to set aside my grudges and think realistically. What if Riot decides to gift me Poppy or Taric? Not only would that forcefully put into my possession a champion I dislike, but it would also es­sen­tial­ly waste my free champion mystery gift. So, I went ahead and spent 1,800 IP on Poppy and Taric.

Then, I went on to buying as many 4,800 IP champions as I could, effectively lowering the possibility that I get a gift of less value. I bought a few before my stockpile ran dry.

Today, I signed in to discover that my mystery gift was…

Azir.

I’m pretty satisfied.

In order to stay relevant as an entertainer in League of Legends, I decided to play a few ranked games to keep up with the game and see how it’s evolved in the months during which I haven’t really played the game seriously.

It would be fantastic if I could continue being a caster without ever playing the game, but unfortunately, doing so leaves me in the dark in a lot of areas, so it’s critical that I continue to play the game first-hand to collect personal experience.

I am proud to announce that the game is just the same as it used to be before I quit to move on to Heroes of the Storm.

(Click to enlarge)

Compared to this, playing Heroes of the Storm is like gliding through the heavens while cuddling a cloud.

Edit: As a disclaimer, I’m all for a triple marksman team composition (even though it would probably not do too well against a dive composition like the one the enemy team had).

I love innovation, and would like to see Urgot in a solo lane and Ashe as support being thrown in by Kalista’s Fate’s Call, only to crowd control them even further with a point-blank guaranteed Enchanted Crystal Arrow.

What I’m pointing out in this post is the attitude that our Ashe brought into the game, as you can see by her chat messages and summoner spells.

I’ve had a lot of problems playing League of Legends. I’ve completely stopped playing it for months at a time, and when I do end up returning, I do it very reluctantly.

I absolutely love watching it – I think it’s a great spectator sport, and love keeping up with the professional scene. I watch a lot of the games, and interact with the eSports aspect of it quite a bit.

Unfortunately, actually playing the game is a completely different story.

Out of all the games I’ve played, League of Legends has literally the trashiest community. Notice how I said “the trashiest,” and not “one of the trashiest,” because I literally do not know of any group of people who are as bad as the group that make up League of Legends players.

(Note: I do not play Counter Strike, Call of Duty, or any first-person shooters, but still, I included them in my judgment. Sure, you might have little boys screaming and swearing at you through their headsets, but they’re just that – little boys. They’re children who are growing up and having an identity crisis, and not necessarily bad people.)

I have quite a few friends who successfully and profitably produce content related to League of Legends. I help them out a bit in particular areas, and it inspires and motivates me to start doing that kind of work independently rather than just being an assistant.

But, if I’m going to make my own content, I obviously need original footage to use, which means I need to play the game. (Yes, I realize that I can cast other people’s games, and I already do that, but the best way to raise your popularity is to use your own content and build yourself up as a personality.)

I decided I was going to try and turn “Heighlights” into a series. I was somewhat satisfied with how the first episode came out, and I had some aspirations for what I would do for future episodes.

On this mission, I played some more Heimerdinger games, when this happened:

If you’re not familiar with League of Legends’ advanced play, you might have some difficulty figuring out what’s going on.

In the current meta and state of the Summoner’s Rift map, a very easy way to get ahead in top lane is to do a jungle camp. There are two different ways you can do this – you can either take Teleport, kill the camp at level 1 and hit level 2 off of it, recall back to base, then Teleport back to top lane … or, you can be Heimerdinger, set up turrets, solo the camp, then walk to lane with Ignite instead of Teleport.

I was being Heimerdinger, obviously, so I was doing the second option.

Unfortunately, my pants-on-head retarded jungler by the name of “TopCarriesU” didn’t understand that.

Normally, I kill Gromp when I’m on the southwest side of the map, and the golems (or whatever their new names are now) when I’m on the northeast side of the map. My jungler generally has no problem with me doing this because he can very easily start on the opposite side of the map (where he will get the help of both his ADC and support), and because there are plenty of camps to go around at level 1.

But for some reason, my Kha’Zix had a problem with me getting ahead in lane.

Instead of just going to bottom lane and starting his golems, getting the help of his ADC and support, he instead decides to sit on the other side of the wall as I do Gromp. When it gets into Smite range, he takes it, reducing the amount of XP I get from it so I don’t hit level 2 off of it.

The worst part is that I didn’t even all-in on the Gromp, because I assumed that Kha’Zix would also be attacking the Gromp. I never realized someone could be so spiteful that they would sit on the other side of the wall to make sure they could screw over their “ally” to maximum efficiency.

(Note: All-inning a jungle camp means putting down all three available turrets before it spawns, then juggling aggro between yourself and the turrets just enough that by the time the camp dies, you re­gen­er­ate to full health and walk back to lane completely healthy at level 2.)

Needless to say, after this had happened, I instantly left the game.

I see no reason to play with someone who wants me to do badly.

This isn’t a rare occurrence either. I just happen to be using this example because I was streaming at the time and was able to take a screenshot to accompany my story.

And if you’re considering playing League of Legends, this is something you should take into consideration. Sure, anyone could “deal with it,” but the real question is, do you really want to?

I sure don’t.