I Found the Pot of Gold...
At the end of the s**t rainbow that is Ranked queue in the summer.
You know what I mean, guys. The time of year when everyone is released from school and they all jump into League Ranked queues. Some are good. Some are bad, but willing to learn (For example, in an ARAM where I got Leona and built SuperTank, our Aatrox had no clue how good an early Thornmail is against a team composed of primarily AD auto attackers, and was thankful for the advice.), and then there are those who can best be described in words I am unwilling to use on these boards. The ones who populate low-ELO soloQ, and say stuff like "MID OR FEED". Yeah, those ones. But when you get the good ones. The ones who do things like Diana mid against Heimer (Admittedly a bad matchup), then go shove his turrets right where the sun doesn't shine.
Yesterday, I queue'd for Ranked because "F*ck it, I'm Bronze V, I've seen quite a bit of the worst this game has to offer, I'm at fairly low LP, and I've been feeling too good about myself lately. Why not?" I figured, "I'll call support, since nobody takes it, and I've gotten pretty good again with Sona lately."
Then we load in, and I'm first pick. "Crap." So I ban Thresh (Still too good at the role, and they had banned Blitz), Yi (Because Riot broke him again with Sated and didn't learn their lesson from Feral Flare's debacle.), and Kat (Because it's Kat.), and take Sona with Lucian ADC against Nami/Vayne. And then it happened. Just pure domination on the laning phase. The Lucian was even using his trinket as well! We had them forced under turret with them too scared to even try to farm for fear of a Sona Passive+Q Auto (I build AP support Sona) combo and Lucian counterengage. Granted, I made a mistake and dove the solo Nami after we had forced Vayne to back, with the two of us trading kills. Later in laning, I was warding their tribrush, when I see our Jungle Yas dive the Nami under turret. I was low on mana, but I REALLY didn't want Nami getting too far ahead (more like ahead at all). The Yas died to the turret while I finished off Nami with an auto.
"WTF, Sona."
I simply told him I was sorry, but I was OOM, and couldn't throw a heal. He looked at me when I was backing (it was just before I bought my Tear), and said "Oops, my bad. Should have checked before I went in." In the back of my mind, I was shocked. I was expecting an amount of flame that would have put a California wildfire to shame, and he'd actually apologized. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Diana is making Heimer's life MISERABLE in mid, and top was just about even.
By mid-game, their team's in complete disarray. Vayne's not fed and raging at the Nami in all chat, the Nami's more or less given up by this point (Seriously, FQ rush? Of all things? And a Nashor's as well? If you need CDR, hon, there's better choices. And no wards or Sightstone?), and even Aatrox is feeling the pressure.
At 26 minutes, we decide. Time to put them out of their misery. We start the final push, and they start falling like dominoes. One minute later, the enemy nexus is destroyed.
Postgame chat went about as well as you expected. Their team's raging at each other "Report Nami for feeding" "Report Vayne toxic", etc. Meanwhile, Yas and Wu (Who were scared of Vayne getting loose and getting fed) were congratulating us for keeping her and Nami in check, and honor was given out all around.
Am I going to expect this every ranked game from now on? No. I know there's going to be some days much worse than this, and others that will be better. But that game was like walking through a desert and stumbling upon an oasis with fresh spring water in it, and has actually given me hope about a portion of this community. Who knows. If there were kids on my team, I got some of the good ones, and actually hope they do well in their future endeavors.
Here's the game in Match History if anyone's interested:
