Full thoughts are in the video, but a TLDW.

My duo and I have been playing and climbing. I think right now we're 35-23 after having gone 24-4.

Now, some of this is due to the system correction of the game giving us awful teammates to bring us closer to 50%.

However, IMO I haven't really noticed the quality of the players 'improving' much since gold  (We're in High Emerald/Low Diamond Games rn). 

When we started we did play with some Bronze/Silver players who, in my opinion, were expectedly a cut below. But other than that I wouldn't say I've noticed a drastic difference.

People start to get a little be better at dodging in Plat/Emerald+ but I'll be honest, I think MAIN reason why games have become more frustrating is the CHAMPIONS people play in Emerald+ are much more on-meta, which tend to be very anti-mage champions. At least for 'classical' mages like Velkoz.  


Kayn, Akali, Camille, Xin, Leblanc, Diana, Katarina, Fizz, Nafarri, Nocturne, Yi, Ekko, (there's honestly so many more that have escaped Epstein's island and never got prosecuted but we'd be here all day)

Not all of these are 'meta'. But what I mean is they're either playing something meta (Diana), or something cheesy (Fizz). 

They're always mid/jungle and they ALWAYS get fed. I'm starting to think MID is actually the best role on this champion, because at least you can directly lane against the problem and try and slow it down. Wheras playing bot lane these champions just get Fed EVERY game no matter what by your mid/jungler and just become Thanos by the midgame. And no matter how fed you get bot, most of these champions just scale WAY better than you with gold. 

But yeah, so many of these champions are just completely low effort. Even if they have a theoretically high skill ceiling (Akali) the skill floor is very low and they have high amounts of impact EVERY game no matter what low IQ timmy is playing them, unless they're against like a full tan team. 

The worst offenders are honestly tan supports like Leona/Naut or hyper enchanters like Soraka/Milio/Yumi/Karma. You can shit stomp them in lane and it literally does not matter. The tanks become unkillable and have crazy utility/CC. The enchanters are just complete low effort slop. It's so disgusting and honestly embarrassing for a 'competitive' game. 

Then this smolder champion is in EVERY game and no matter how hard he gets pissed on he starts to do damage at 30. He can literally be 150cs at 30 and he's still a warlord, it makes zero sense. 

The meta abusing of completely degenerate, un-interactive champions is what makes this game feel awful above Emerald, especially for people who aren't playing meta, let alone playing one of the worst champions in the game, Vel'koz. 

Climbing on this Champion has been the most FRUSTRATING Experience EVER...