Today marks the official start for League of Legends competitive Season Two. If, like me, you aren’t on a pro team or striving to become one, the launch is a bit anticlimactic. All except for the introduction of Ranked Teams.

With the arrival of Season Two, Riot has released the Ranked Team feature. Through the Summoner profile pane you can now create and join Ranked Teams, all of which will hold a separate ELO. It’s a nice feature for allowing players to get ranked with various groups of players at various skill levels. The teams come free-of-charge; all you need is an account with Summoner level 30.

Each Summoner can be a part of up to five teams, which seems generous. I know I definitely don’t play with enough people on a regular basis to get on five teams. It’s pretty nice to have the extra headroom, though. Riot also added a special “Ranked Team Draft” to the invite screen, making it somewhat easier to invite just the people from your team.

Along with Ranked Teams, Riot has put together a competitive minisite for all the competitive news. Check it out when you have a chance.

Will you be making a ranked team today?

I was worried this would happen. As the end of Season One drew to a close, I had a goal in mind: I wanted to get gold rating. There wasn’t really a personal reason, either. There was a reward; a reward that I wouldn’t use very much, but still, it was something I could point to and say, “I got that because I did X.”

It was a grind, too. I had to play a lot of games to hit gold. The grind pretty much killed any desire I had to play Lee Sin beyond the finish. I got incredibly close to the 1520 mark and then dropped ELO several times. But still, it was a goal. It was something to shoot for. It was a lot of fun.

Fast forward six weeks or so and I’m having a little trouble enjoying the game like I used to. There aren’t any in-game goals for me to strive for. I could try to rank up my solo queue ELO, but to what end? More ranking up? Not exactly a compelling sales pitch.

I know League can’t always be my number one game, but I do think there’s a lot more to be done to keep veteran players interested in the game. The Jarvan skin was a great idea – why not produce more skins that could be tied to certain achievements. Win 250/500/1000 ranked games, get a cool skin. Play 10 ranked games, get a one-time, one-day IP boost. These kind of things don’t cost a lot of money to put into the game and encourage more players to try more things. My assumption, which I suppose could be totally wrong, is that the more time players spend enjoying games, the more likely they are to spend on content.

Even if that assumption can’t be backed by data, it certainly breeds goodwill with the playerbase. Why not reward players for spending time with the game?

What are your thoughts? Are you still going strong with LoL or are other games starting to steal your attention. Has Dominion been enough to keep you coming back?

Five days ago I was totally content to stick with my silver ranked rating. I had silver in both 3v3 Team and 5v5 Solo, which meant I had a little extra leeway to try my hand at a gold rating. I thought it was impossible. I mean that. I’m not trying to say I did something amazing, just that I was so used to losing because of things outside my control. My teammates would feed or get caught way out of position or ignore teamfights. It’s a mess I usually avoid because the combination of trying to rank up and watching a team fall apart ends nowhere good.

I couldn’t help thinking, though, that I would like to get that Gold rating. There’s not really a reason. I don’t play Jarvan. I don’t post on the forums much, if at all, so the rewards don’t really hold anything for me. I think I was just happy to have a goal in the game, a benchmark with some sort of associated reward (more on this in a post later today). In a game that I thought would be a tough match, my team steamrolled to the final victory that put me over into gold.

Most of my wins happened because I focused on the following four things. They didn’t work in every game, but they were key to most of my victories. If you’re trying to rank up in Solo 5v5, these are four things that can help.

Planning in the Pre-Game Lobby

I know. I know this one is nearly impossible. I know this is extremely frustrating. I know. But try to keep your cool when you queue up. There are enough people shooting for rewards that most of them will try to cooperate. Some of them might even pick for you and trade. I started entering games and immediately saying what I do best – jungle/AP carry/AD carry. Those are my strengths and I know it. I play a decent support, but plenty of people are better than me, so I’m willing to let them take a shot.

Playing Aggressive Junglers

Ever since my Champ of the Week with Lee Sin I’ve been in love with the guy. He can come out of the jungle incredibly early with enough damage to snag a first blood or force the use of Flash from an opponent. If you want to rank up fast, play an aggressive jungler. From what I’ve seen, players above the 1300 mark mostly know what they should be doing, they just tend not to do it. They overextend. They don’t ward or they ward too little. They don’t know jungle routes well enough to CV you or know when you might be ganking.

Aggressive junglers – Lee Sin, Udyr, Xin Zhao, Fiddle and even Nocturne – can come out of the jungle before level six with tools to secure a kill. If you can support your team with ganks, you can help them win the early game, even against champions like Singed and Mordekaiser, which can often win the game.

Buy an Oracle’s Elixir

Vision is everything. Being able to see and predict what the enemy team is doing makes your team’s job much easier. You’ll know where to gank, when an enemy is overextended, when they’re trying to secure dragon, and what sort of items they’re buying. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve tried to avoid putting much stock in my ranked ELO in the past. While it is fun to try to climb the ranks, it can also be maddening, and I just don’t have that special sauce that helps people jump past the 1500 barrier and continue to climb. When I found out there were some summoner profile perks, though, I though it might be cool to try to snag at least a silver rating. As you can see in the picture above, I’ve managed to secure silver in both 3v3 and solo 5v5. Silver summoner profile frame, here I come.

Alright, it’s not that exciting. I would love to hit gold status, but that feels pretty much out of my grasp, if I’m honest. I’ve been stricken with the typical trolls and ragers in much of my solo experience lately, so I think I might just stick to silver.

I know some of you sitting pretty at gold status, ready to rock your fancy Jarvan skin. Anyone out there going for platinum? Any of you close to reaching one of the status benchmarks? If you haven’t heard, you can find out more about the different status levels on the official forums. You better start playing some ranked, though. Season One will be officially capped off at the next downtime.

In between my Vayne testing and the occasional Kog’Maw game, I’ve been keeping up with my quest to get the 76/76 ranked champion wins. There have been some tedious games and I’ve had more than one Ryze win snatched out from under me by leavers or sheer foolishness. After picking up my Karma win this afternoon, I’m up to 74/76 champion wins, with just Ryze and Vayne left on the list.

My hardest won victory has definitely been Jarvan. I know he’s strong but I just couldn’t seem to get him to work with my team comps. I’m not really sure what it was, but since I first made the post about this little challenge I had to try six times before I finally managed a win.

Here’s a look at the champion list I started with. The crossed out names have been accomplished and the number denotes the attempts made, including the victory game.

Alistar: 3
Eve: 1
Jarvan: 6
Karma: 3
Karthus: 1
Lee Sin: 3, but I fed hard in the win game. Totally got carried.
Maokai: 1
Rumble: 1
Ryze: 4
Soraka: 2
Vayne: 1

My one Vayne attempt was nothing short of infuriating. I was up against Soraka and Alistar, with Tryndamere, Kassadin, and Rumble to support them. It was utterly impossible to get a kill. At one point in the game – mind you we surrendered at like 23 minutes so this was early – I think I counted 17 turret hits on Alistar in a row. All the same, this has been a lot of fun, even with its frustrating moments.