Do League of Legends placement matches even matter?

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My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I’ve heard of people who used to be Bronze IV last season who went 8-2 in placement matches and ended up … in Bronze V.

On the other hand, I have a secondary account that I use to duo queue with friends, which was in low sil­ver last season. I purposely lost all my placement matches and went 0-10, but for whatever ridiculous rea­son, it placed me in Bronze II.

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Do placement matches even matter?

How am I going to live the Bronze V dream life if the game won’t even let me drop that low, even if I go 0-10?

 

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Hey look it’s Coco

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Coco the Yorkshire Terrier

 

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To make up for all those 4v5s, I got to play a 5v0

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A lot of League of Legends players will complain about how the troll or AFK is always on their team.

If you’re not already aware, that’s a psychological phenomenon where you’re more inclined to remember some­thing bad happening to you, than happening to some­one else. If you lose a game when your team has someone AFK, it’s the AFK’s fault; if you win a game when the enemy has someone AFK, it’s because you’re skilled.

If you actually think really hard about it, as long as you’re not the one going AFK, it’s more likely for an AFK player to be on the enemy team than your team, because there are four public slots open on your team for an AFK player to potentially fill, while the enemy team has five open slots.

Apparently, the game was making up for all the 4v5s that I was having during ranked a few years ago (which was a contributing factor in the culmination of me quitting taking League of Legends seriously) … by giving me a 5v0.

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Yes, that is correct. Literally all five members of the enemy team were AFK. The enemy Shaco came back about half a minute before we ended the game, but he obviously couldn’t do anything while he was level 1.

Laughing at the absurdity that had just happened, we queued up again. In the next game, I guess the en­emy team might as well have just all been AFK, because apparently, matchmaking doesn’t work too well.

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Quinn OP.

Particularly OP against AP Ezreals who are gold league in ranked.

 

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Taking advantage of HotS Training Mode AFK XP Farming

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My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I used to play Heroes of the Storm pretty obsessively a handful of months ago, but I’ve recently toned down my playing.

Yes, one of my jobs (specifically, the one with Tempo Storm) involves me directing and producing content related to Heroes of the Storm. But, that can be done without playing as much as I used to, because I still keep up with game updates (and my writers are keeping me knowledgeable by submitting articles to me, for me to review and edit).

Because of this, I apparently hadn’t posted any screenshots of achievements for a pretty long time – since reaching Level 10 with Nova, to be exact. While I was going through my old screenshots and backing up and archiving them, I decided to post a few of them on my blog, like the old days.

Back in mid-October, I finally got around to playing Hero League again after the soft reset and required 20 placement matches. I don’t remember anymore what my win/loss ratio was during my placement matches, but I ended up placing decently high (I think in the single digits), and the climb back up to Rank 1 was a breeze.

Heroes of the Storm - Rank 1

Since then, I also leveled three heroes to Level 10: Kael’thas, Valla, and Nazeebo.

Heroes of the Storm - Level 10 Kael'thas

Heroes of the Storm - Level 10 Valla

Heroes of the Storm - Level 10 Nazeebo

The funny thing about the last two Level 10s are that I didn’t actually play real games to gain experience for those heroes from Level 9 to Level 10, but instead, used Training mode to turn them gold.

This was a result of the huge smurf leveling craze after the refer-a-friend system was released. Apparently, people found out that they could enter Training mode and go AFK to gain free experience and level up their accounts so they could “earn” the Vulture on their main account.

I personally don’t have an interest in gaming the referral system to rush a mount, because I’m confident that, over time, I’m going to genuinely refer at least four real new players to the game. However, I didn’t want to miss out on this finding.

I loaded into many Training mode games with Valla and Nazeebo to farm experience and get them to Level 10. Apparently, in Training mode, you don’t get kicked out of the game for being AFK, so I left the game running in the background to harvest my rewards while getting some work done.

 

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Taekwondo – Tornado & 360° Back Kick – Demo vs. Sparring

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My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Some of you may know that martial arts is one of my hobbies. Although I took it a lot more seriously when I was younger compared to right now, I still stop by a martial arts academy close by our family busi­ness.

Although I don’t really train that much anymore, I still coach students, and I’m friends with the owners. The head master of the school wanted to start making some videos for the academy’s YouTube channel, and being a content creator, I decided to help them out.

The first video we put together was a guide on how to modify tornado kicks and 360° back kicks when using them for demonstration (performance) purposes, as opposed to sparring.

The head master is obviously a lot better at taekwondo than I am, by a pretty significant margin, so he was the one actually showing the kicks. I have more experience with presentational speaking, so I added in some commentary in between his demonstrations.

Chris would love to hear your feedback, so if you have any comments, feel free to leave them on the video. He’s also in the process of brainstorming ideas, so if you have any requests, those will probably help him out quite a bit.

 

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