What are you even saying?

So I'm about 6 games into my placements, and while it's been fun to play against tougher opponents, I am starting to see that toxicity this game is infamous for in full.

Now, I could spend this little post just ranting at these people, but I'd rather do something a bit more productive. Namely I want to know what people are saying when they say "you need to learn League!" because this statement baffles me to no end. My main issue with this is that no one ever specifies what is considered to be "knowing league". Is it going on a perfect 100 win streak before playing ranked? Is it owning and mastering 30 champions? The number of hours it takes just to gather levels, characters, and runes (especially me since I bought Cooldown Reduction glyphs) feels like enough to know all the baseline facets of the game needed to start playing with the tougher kids. What am I missing?

One other thing I'd like clarified is why people say normals is the place to "learn League". I find this counter-productive to the goal of playing ranked because normals is WILDLY inconsistent when it comes to skill levels. Meaning that practicing there feels like half the time I devote to mastery isn't fulfilled because the other players leave themselves wide open to counter plays. I feel that going into ranked sooner than later will help me adapt to the higher difficulty better because I'm getting exposed to the conditions often. Sure my rank will look like poop but I think thats a good thing. It's a picture on a computer screen that nobody cares about in the long run anyways. Why stress over getting it super high when the most important thing is the little improvements?

And you know, I completely get it. I haven't sunk 1,000,000 hours in this game, and I'll probably never sit at one of those LAN parties on a stream with millions of viewers cheering me on. It's a hard game that I have plenty of room to grow in (and i mean PLENTY). But what's the big deal? Why should you label players as "uneducated" based on one match? And what's wrong with wanting to play a mode for the sake of adding extra challenge and strategy?

To everyone who reads this with an open mind, thank you. I'm not really a complaining type of guy, but I really just needed to vent a little bit. Your view, wether it leaves you sympathizing, or annoyed, means a lot.

-PeaceRibbon The only support to ever take Heal to every game. Always.