Won't launch game because Patcher Service Unavailable

I joined a ranked game, everyone picked characters and the game started. Unfortunately the loading screen never appeared. After a while I restarted league only to find I had been put in a lower priority queue for 'afk'. I tried to launch a new game and was met with this error: "We can't queue you right now because the patcher service is unavailable". I'm not sure how related these are, but I've bumped into this a few times now and it's endlessly frustrating to be punished for something I have no control over. Is this a known issue? How can I avoid it? Is there any way I can dispute this problem? I haven't played on my main or played the game seriously in years because I can't find a way around these client crashes. How do i troubleshoot this? Is there no logging for this kind of thing? Wtf?