The Reality of League (TL;DR at bottom)

Now that I think about it, maybe I never deserved to be in diamond. Even if I did get there by solo Q only, I'm starting to realize it may have been cheese over skill using the old rune/masteries system and certain champion mechanics.

For example: taking a full page of tier 3 armor flat and scaling runes on 0/12/18 masteries as Malphite top lane was freelo.

Life steal quints on Olaf with attack speed marks. Literally by starting Doran's blade, LS quints and masteries, you had 10% ls at start of game as a marksman. Talking infinite lane sustain from level 1 as Vayne. Use that on Nasus/Olaf and GG.

Spell vamp quints/masteries on Morgana/Vlad/Fiddle with WotA and Spirit Visage

Actually being able to clear jg with Wukong effectively by taking flat armor seals/quints and 18/0/12 masteries.

pre-rework Rylai's Amumu jg

Abusing old kits like Talon mid. Or pre-nerf kits like Riven top (before shield duration change and longer CDR on abilities) when rushing Ravenous Hydra into Blood Thirster was a thing.

The oppressive days of Darius Q not having a delay and getting his ultimate reset on kill at level 6 without an expiration timer.

Diamond was me being intelligent enough to cheese the old League. I might actually have to settle for being silver/gold in this new League of Legends.

There is the other method to rising through elos which is going Olaf/Tryndamere/Udyr/Master/Shaco jg and being a split pushing maniac. You can actually cheese all the way through gold with that method using Smite and Teleport. That plastic just isn't fun. My Yorick has a high win rate, but that playstyle also isn't fun.

So I decided to be ok with being permanent low elo. Why? Because win or lose, I have fun when I'm playing Sun Wukong, The Monkey King.

TL;DR League is in a much healthier state than it has ever been and I love it. It's far from perfect, but is way more balanced than the good old days. I do miss old match length, though.