This game has become boring

I don't know if it's my attitude, but I'm starting to not enjoy playing this game. I feel like it's the same thing over and over again, and that by playing I'm just going through the motions. This will be a bit of a long read, but I want people to hear my story and help me out if they can.

I started playing League on January 17th, 2013, at the end of the Pre-Season before Season 3. My friends kept raving about this game that they were playing and wanted me to join them. Myself not being an experienced MMO, MOBA, or any kind of online game-player, I was reluctant to play and I was even uninterested at the time. However, that Thursday night, I installed the game.

My very first game I had no idea what I was doing. I clicked the "I have had experience with RTS games in the past" button, and therefore skipped the tutorial. I went into a co-op match on the Twisted Treeline (because I wanted to start off with an easier match and I thought 3v3 was easier than 5v5) and in champion select, the other two guys on my team picked and . I started clicking on the champion icons until I found and literally went full-geek mode over his selection quote.

In game I sucked. Really, really sucked. I died a lot (16 times?). I was last hitting well because of his Siphoning Strike, but I had no idea what the heck to build or what skills to pick at what level and all of the other complicated strategies and actions that comes as second nature to me now. Being a co-op, we won after about 15 minutes and I decided to put the game away for the evening.

The next day at school, I found out that my best friend had an account as well. He started playing the week was released, but he never regularly played. He and I agreed to play online together that night. We had a ball.

I'm going to jump ahead a few months.

August of 2013, I'm level 30, 4 fully-built rune pages, played most every champion at the time except for and . I only owned about 23 champions or so, my favorite (even to this day) being . My brother played with me every day, my dad played occasionally, my friend played every day, and it was amazing. Every game, win or loss, we would laugh and have a ball. Every champion was being played, I never once saw the same champion more than 3 times in a row. It was great. I never complained about any champion being OP (except for the old AP , because that was so dumb).

Skip ahead again.

Present day. I play as if I have to. Not nearly as much time is logged in for me every day compared to 2 years ago, but I'm still playing. I see the same champions every game. More champions than ever feel obsolete and unplayable, unable to win or compete against the top 20 or so that dominate every single game. At least it feels like it. Never before in my League life have I ever felt like (who should I play so I don't feed miserably? Who would be fun to play as?) when I'm in champion select. I hate it. I don't know what happened.

Now some could argue that because of the level that I'm at (currently Gold 1, was Plat last season) I'm facing much more advanced opponents. Which is true and may very well be the case. Some could argue that because people watch the LCS, they play only the champions that they see on the professional scene, and therefore master them and only play them. Which could also be the case, but only for some of the player base (keep in mid that each of us only see a tiny fraction of a sample size of the entire League community and player base).

The fun is gone, disappeared before my eyes, and I don't know why. I hate going into champion select with the thought of "Who should I play to win?" instead of "Who would be fun to play right now?". The latter mindset is still a relevent one, but when you lose over and over and over again with very little wins in the middle, it becomes a bit demoralizing, and the want and desire to win becomes more overpowering than the desire to play my favorite champions ( to name my top 5) because I know that my chances of even enjoying myself anymore, even in losses, are going to be slim because I have a high chance of getting roflstomped.

So what happened? Is anyone having the same problem? I love this game, I really do. I want to see it go places, I want to keep spending money on it to see it improve, I want it to last a long time. But I have started to hate it, and I don't want to.

(TL;DR): Is the game really changing in the way it feels like it? Or, because of the higher level of play that I'm at compared to my pre-level 30 days, has the game caught up to me? Or am I just being nostalgic and missing the days where every champion was "viable" and where the laughs were more common than the rage?