I don’t think I’ve read better news today (granted, most of my reading to this point has been focused on either games or gadgetry, so it kinda makes sense). I found a thread in which Zileas said he would be adding feeder/carry consideration to the ELO calculations at the end of games.

This. Is. Huge. This is at least a step toward addressing the individual performance in a team setting and the penalties/benefits some players reap as a result. As a for instance, I had a game today in which I played Shaco. I got a slow start, mostly because I was on the phone and not focused on my jungling, so I didn’t gank much early. I did try for one big gank on our 1v2 lane and sent them back to base, so it wasn’t a horrible early game. Well, not to me anyway.

My teammates, on the other hand, would not stop berating me for being a terrible Shaco and a waste of a team slot and on and on. Our Olaf kept insisting I was going to be useless late game because I hadn’t ganked. As it turned out, I went 11-2-15 with two tower kills before the other team surrendered. Regardless of what my team thought was going on, I was largely the reason behind the victory, or at least the very heavy piece of leaden straw that broke the camel’s back. Our Olaf slightly below 1.00 in his K/D ratio and our Mordekaiser was 1-9. For the other team, that can be an extremely frustrating loss. They likely could have beat our team with a different player. My understanding, then, is that their ELO will not be as negatively effected because we had a strong carry. Likewise, my own ELO should receive a slight bonus for carrying.

On the flipside, if Kaiser had somehow lost us the game (which he almost did), we likely wouldn’t be as penalized because we had a heavy feeder on our team. No word on when these changes will come out, but I’m really excited about them.

A couple weeks ago I went on a tear. I had been somewhere around 50 games over .500 for a little under a month and for whatever reason it seemed the stars had aligned. I was getting matched with smart teammates who could communicate and move as a group. Even when my teammates left a little to be desired, my opponents were always in far worse shape. My win count climbed and climbed until I plateaued sometime last week at 69 games up.

I should have seen it coming. Over the course of the past two weeks I’m now down 16 games, back to 53 over even. I know, that’s still 3 games positive, but when the swings come in batches of 15 games or so, I don’t really know what to do. As it stands I’m about as frustrated as I’ve ever been with the game. As my friends and I like to say, I seem to be losing the teammate lottery time and time again.

Once my score dropped below 60 games up, I decided I would go tryhard, choosing only the strongest toons for the map at hand. I rolled a bunch of games as Jax and Poppy on TT and had my first Twisted Fate match on SR in a long, long time. None of it seemed to matter. I carried the SR game handily, with 2 legendary streaks and a handful of turret kills. The rest, though, were mostly losses. I’ve had teammates AFK, teammates leave, teammates who start fighting with one another before the game even starts. The latest trend is teammates who refuse to get survivability. Two games in a row I played with an ally Morgana. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Morgana dominates on TT if she’s played well. The spell shield alone is enough to make any DPS champ climax with glee. Throw her ultimate down in a team fight and you’ve got nearly guaranteed victory.

There is one caveat: she has to live. You know what doesn’t help her live? All the blasting wands my teammates keep buying. Then there was the Ashe that refused to buy any health items against Sion, Nasus, and Shaco. I’m sure you can imagine how that turned out.

By this point I’ve given up on the tryhard comps. My last game I played Yi. I was legendary. We still lost because of the aforementioned Ashe. I’ve got my fingers crossed for some good action in the next round of games I have time for. I’ll be playing whoever strikes my fancy until I can turn this ship around. At the very worst, I figure my ELO will drop to the point that I can just steamroll some opponents and hope that the streak will turn in my favor.