I finally got my launcher up and running and popped into a quick solo ranked game to try out the new system. I was so glad to see that the ban system was indeed implemented for solo queue that I said out loud, “oh, thank god.”

My first impression – my god are people tryharding. Bans in my game were a little silly, but the first three picks were Shaco, TF, and Sivir. It’s actually nice to see some well-rounded comps for once, but I have a feeling I’m playing against some pretty low-ELO folks. The other team ended up a mish-mash of toons – TF/Sivir/Kayle/Warwick/Mundo, while my own team looked a bit better at Shaco/Ryze/Xin/Heimer/Kaiser. Not a lot of stunning but there wasn’t much need.

I really like the pick interface. It’s a bit confusing all at once, but the tips were helpful and once I got my brain around all the graphical prettiness it was a smooth system. In game, though, I was experiencing fairly heavy server lag. With a ping of just over 100 I had a full second of delay, in some cases more. I’m guessing this is due to severe server overload but it still sucks. Hopefully things will improve as the night wears on.

UPDATE:This is looking like a sure victory. I’m 8-1 presently and they have a level 7 Warwick while I’m level 13.