It's more the fact that most other supports got nerfed (in exchange for better scaling, and increase gold gain), while Alistar stayed relatively untouched. So his rise in popularity again is not surprising.

 

I just got 2 pentakills in the same soloq game as ziggs. I think I might be dreaming. Also getting +25 lp for a win so I should be out of plat 5 soon now I've started playing ranked again.

 

Headbutt, followed by a Sheen-empowered auto while they're flying away. Or at least that's how it used to be done, not sure if the changes made to stop Vayne's Condemn-auto messed with it. Since Headbutt is targeted, there's zero counterplay other than 'never be within 650 range of Alistar'. Which is bullshit.

If solo lane (or jungle) Alistar gets popular again, he'll be nerfed. Again. God help him if he ever sees professional play, because he'll be nerfed so hard that pre-rework Evelynn will look like a tier 1 champion.

 

The Headbutt-W still works. You don't even really need a sheen to trade favorably, it just takes you into the realm of 'making your opponent stay the fuck away' as opposed to 'making your opponent somewhat wary'.

EDIT: I mean, of course you want to build into a Sheen, but you can trade well even before you pick it up -- in case that was unclear.

 

Plat is the new silver. I hate my life. I miss gold.

 

Anyone play their placements yet? Everyone seems to be complaining about the soft reset screwing with them.

 

Played one as jungle Shen, wasn't my best game but we still won, thanks to the gold Gragas. It also helped that they had a Nasus while we had a Nunu top. Didn't come across any trolls in either teams.

I'm hoping it'll be bit different in this season.

 

I've gone 5-0 so far. I'm just trying to abuse the op's as much as possible for the placement games. I'm hoping to get somewhere in plat.

 

I'd love to, but EUW ranked has been down for two days.

 

0 and 3 so far. Nothing but duo q trolls and Mid AP Teemo's so far.

 

Yesterday, ranked queues were disabled from 16:00 to 20:00 with maybe half an hour where they were open in the middle of that downtime. Today, ranked was disabled from 14:00 to 15:00, came back up for an hour, then went down again at 16:00.

So it hasn't been down all day, I suppose. But it's been down at the times I'm free to play, which is the same effect for me. Even if ranked came back up now, the servers have been having lag issues for the last two days so... I'm not going to queue for ranked anyway.

 

Finished my placements. Ended up going 6 wins, 3 losses and one loss prevented and got put into Plat 5, so exactly where I was before. I'm pretty happy after hearing all the horror stories of people getting placed in like bronze from plat and I managed to dodge the worst of the EUW server shenanigans.

Now to start the grind to Diamond.

 

Well, people only drop like that when their MMR sucked for their division I know someone that dropped from Diamond V to Silver 4 after placements because of how bad their MMR was.

 

Played my very first placement match ever after 850 games in intermediate AI in the stress-free grind to level 30. Walked into the ranked match with 2 quints, and a full page of tier 1 runes. Last role to be (not called) is top. Giggity, I love Renekton.

Renekton vs Singed. 9/21/0 vs 21/9/0. Unranked S3 vs Silver 3 S3. Proceeded to beat the shit out of him (and getting caught being way too over extended once). Was a good game filled with somewhat obvious internal flaming on the enemy team. Now to wait out the nerves and anxiety attack that came with playing(winning) ranked before trying again.

 

Er, you might want to fill up your rune pages properly before doing your placement matches. It will make a pretty big difference and you don't want to get placed lower than you deserve because of something like runes.

 

Bitches ruining my awesome jungle Gragas game D8. Even with trolls in the team, I managed to go 9-3-11 on a sadly lost game. Jungle Gragas stronk.

3-2 on my placements, currently. Eh.