Rambling about League, The Rook, Nasus, and Democracy in America

Placement Recap

Yesterday, I mentioned how I went 8–2 during placements and ended up in Bronze IV. I didn’t have access to my screenshot machine, but now I do so I can put up a few images.

Here is the breakdown of the 10 games.

I thought I did pretty well, only losing the 2 games where people went AFK, but they still counted as losses. Somehow Riot needs to figure out how to accommodate the people who stick around in a 4v5 game – it’s really unfair that they get penalized in MMR, LP, and Rank when someone bails on a match…and if its a placement or promotion match you are especially screwed.

In any case, I ended placements with a 2.1 KDA and a 56% kill participation and landed in Bronze IV.  I’m starting to think that trying to rank up as support may not be the best approach to a speedy climb.

The Rook

This book is really cool. Now that we know a bit about the protagonist, she has to go into work and learn about the people she interacts with regularly. I think its pretty neat how we are learning about the world just as Myfanwy is. It turns out she’s a Rook, a high ranking member of the Checquy, who deals with running the supernatural CIA type of organization. She’s got a counterpart called Gestalt who actually inhabits 4 different bodies…did I say supernatural? We actually get to be there when one of Gestalt’s bodies engages in an assault operation on some cultists and I think the way O’Malley describes the interaction among the 4 components of Gestalt works pretty well. The letters keep coming too – each one opening up a new part of the world or Myfanwy’s history. I’m still really enjoying this book.

Nasus scripting

I am pretty sure I encountered someone running scripts in League this morning. He was playing Nasus and I got the joy of seeing him play 2 games…both against me. It could have been worse, I suppose, but they games lasted about 20 and 22 minutes so it was not a long waste of time, but it was frustrating.

The reason I think he was running 3rd party software was his complete dominance in 2 different games and his uncanny ability to not only hit with every auto attack, but hit creeps with every Q, and he somehow always had his Ultimate ready before 2, 3, or 4 of us were able to kill him with our ultimates. In the 2 games that went 20 and 22 minutes, he had 18 and 19 kills and a total of 3 deaths. He won every fight – 1v1, 1v2, 1v3, 1v4, and 1v5. Basically there was no reason for any other player to be on his team. And this was NOT ranked. This was on an account that I am leveling up so no one was level 30 yet.

For any one player to go 37–3 in 2 games…in 42 minutes, is impossible without some outside assistance. He didn’t have a ton of CS, but when he got over 150 cs in each game of about 20 minutes while spending most of his time racking up 18 and 19 kills, it is just not possible.

In any case, I am almost certain this guy was using a script…funny thing was, he was boastful and texting “lol” all over the place until I mentioned that I thought he was scripting. He didn’t say a thing after that. Not even to deny it.

Crazy length of the introduction

Reading Democracy in America is pretty daunting. As I mentioned a few days ago, I am reading this for the History Book Club I am participating in, but I have to say it’s been a long trek so far, and I haven’t even got past the Introduction. I am reading the edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthorp, and the introduction is huge. I don’t have an actual page count because I’m reading in the Kindle app, but the app says it takes up 10% of the book. That’s a pretty big introduction, and it covers basically the whole book. I almost wish they had broken it down into mini-introductions for each section rather than throwing it all at the beginning. There’s a lot of information covered, and I don’t feel that reading such a wide ranging introduction does the book justice when I’m wanting to read the book to get my understanding level up to the point where the introduction would make sense. In any case, I’m finally up to the first part written by Tocqueville himself finally.