Final Fantasy XIV - Dungeons with Penny

Penny and I have been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV over the past few months.  It got to the point that my wife decided (on her own with no convincing from either Penny or me) to join us as well.  She's a level 50 Bard now and slowly progressing through the post-50 story quests like Penny.

At some point I decided to record some of my dungeon runs with Penny.  What follows below are the first 3 episodes of our YouTube series Dungeons with Penny.

Episode 1 - Halatali

Episode 2 - Tanking Thousand Maws

Episode 3 - Haunted Haukke Manor

We don't really have a set schedule for when episodes get released simply because it was hard to find time to edit the videos during the school year and the last two months were super busy with end of year stuff.  However, with summer coming up I think Penny and I will be able to put out a more regular schedule.  Going to try 1 video a week so one Dungeons with Penny episode each week!

Anyways if you enjoyed any of them, please subscribe to the channel and comment on the videos!

Final Fantasy XIV - Family Adventuring

In my last post I posted a picture of my character Mialee Liadon in her new look as a Miqo'te.  Considering how much time and gil I spent trying to find a look I liked for her when she was an Elezen, changing her race was not a snap decision (see post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4 for the evolution of Mialee's look as an Elezen).

A few weeks ago Penny watched me play and then asked if she could play too.  She had made a character on my account when I first started playing and although she didn't get too far she remembered she had one.  The combat mechanics were too complicated for her as she was only 4 I think so she spent all her play time just wandering around looking at things (and dying to high level things when she found them).  Now I didn't want to give up my play time so she could play so I made her a trial account.  I figured why not since it wouldn't cost me anything and she would have plenty to do while on her way to level 35.

So she made a new character on my server (Exodus), a Miqo'te named Luna Khaleesi (named after our two cats, Luna and Khaleesi).  She was annoyed that my character was not a Miqo'te and kept wanting me to change to one.  Penny wanted my character to be the same race as hers so that she can pretend our characters were sisters.  I didn't think much of it at first but eventually I came to the decision that this might be funner for her so I surprised her during one of our gaming sessions with the new Mialee and she was very happy.  I think that simple change made Penny connect with both her character and my character better and as a result she seems to enjoy the game even more than before.  And, like me, she likes looking for nice outfits for her character.

Luna (on the left) and Mialee (on the right)

After trying out the Marauder first (mostly because that was my main class) she eventually settled on the Arcanist because it has pets.  She liked the carbuncles and when she made it to 30 she got access to the fairies which really made her like the class.  I ended up gettting her a 1 month subscription as a treat for doing well at a recent violin competition she attended and as of this post she's a level 40 Scholar.

I truly don't know if this was a good decision on my part or not but wow is it ever fun being able to share my Eorzean adventures with her!  She loves exploring all of Eorzea and because she's playing on my gaming laptop the scenery looks amazing and the gameplay is smooth (compared to my old bare bones desktop at least).  Penny especially loves night time in the La Noscea region as she can see the stars so clearly and often just wanders around at night following the stars.

One really neat thing is that she is learning how to play in a party and learning the different roles.  She's a fairly proficient healer but does spend most of her time DPSing and letting her fairy handle all the healing.  I have to remind her for tougher fights to pay attention to the tank's (me) health bar because if the tank (or healer) dies, so does everyone else.  It does help that I'm an experienced tank so there's a little more room for error but I am wondering how she'll handle the more mechanically intensive fights as she continues her adventure.

I guess only time will tell if this is a good thing for her or not.  In the meanwhile we get to enjoy a hobby as a father daughter tank-healer team!

Final Fantasy XIV - Revisiting Eorzea

First let me say that Facebook ads work (at least some of them do on me).  I think it was a Facebook ad that got me into playing League of Legends for the first time so many years ago (before Season 1) and it was a Facebook ad that rekindled my interest in playing Final Fantasy XIV again.  Can't quite remember what exactly was in the ad but it got me all nostalgic about when I used to play the game with my friends a few years back.  The last time I played FFXIV was when the Go Go Posing Rangers event was on back in 2016.

So I started up my subscription at the end of December and have been playing daily since.  I hadn't finished the main Heavensward story so that was my first goal.  To be honest I'm still not done that part yet.  On top of the main story in the original expansion, Square Enix added a few patches worth of additional main story since.  I just finished the 3.1 scenario "As goes light, so goes darkness" and now into the 3.2 scenario quests.  After the 3.2 scenario quests, I'll move into the 3.3 quests followed by the 3.4 quests and finally the 3.5 quests.

It's been a little slow as I don't want to outpace my healer friend who I convinced to resub and join me.  He's a dungeon or two behind me so while I wait for him to catch up I'm doing a bunch of side things.  Mostly crafting.  Prior to my return to the game I had 5 of the 8 crafting classes at lv50 so I started power leveling them to 60.  That task blew through a tonne of the gil reserves I had.  I think close to 3 million after all was said and done!  While doing this for my 5 main crafting classes I quickly realized I needed the other crafting classes at lv50+ as well so I could access certain reagents that they could make.  I could buy everything off the market board but that was getting too costly as my levels increased.  This also led me to pick up the botanist class and to continue leveling my miner so I could access more raw materials for my crafting.

So that's where I'm at right now in my journey in Eorzea.  Waiting for my friend to catch up to me in the story and spending gil leveling my crafting classes and gathering classes.

P.S.  Finally used my Fantasia potion and turned Mialee from an Elezen to a Miq'ote.  Why did I do that? Stay tuned and find out!

Mialee as a Miqo'te (with the Tidal Wave axe from Leviathan)

2016 and 2017 Years in Review

The last two years were busy to say the least.  I'm going to blame all the other stuff on why I didn't write anything about my gaming those years.  It's not that I didn't get a chance to play games or be involved in the gaming communities in town, just didn't have time to write or reflect about it.

Here's a brief run down of what occured

• Started an Esports club at NVSS.
• Even competed in the High School Starleague
• Penny and I played the Pokemon TCG competitively and regularly placed in the top 8 at our local events.
• Once she could read better, the decks we played got more complicated and we started buying singles and building meta/net decks.
• Finally reached Gold rank in League of Legends in Season 6 (2016)
• And got the shiny gold border for all of Season 7 (2017)
• Sadly I didn't play much ranked in Season 7 and ended up in Silver again.
• More board games!
• Got into cooperative board games big time.

Back From the Void

I have not paid much attention to this for a year and a half now.  I did not die and I did not stop gaming.  Just got busy and fell into a rut with regards to chronicling my journey as a gamer and geek dad.

Anyways, I neglected to do a Year in Review post of 2016 like I did the years prior, so I will post a Years in Review 2016-2017 later this week.

Lots of cool things happened in the last year and a half, the most significant of which being that Penny learned to read!  That opened a lot of opportunities to show her various games and what not.

So stay tuned as I chronicle my continuing journey as a gamer and geek dad.

Video Games - League of Legends Highlights Sway

This past Tuesday was a Professional Development Day (Pro-D Day) for my district and rather than drive 2 hours to the town where the various Pro-D sessions were held, I instead opted to submit a self-directed Pro-D application to learn how to make a Sway.  Sway is a new presentation app that Microsoft developed as (I guess) an answer to Google Slides and Prezi (both are presentation apps that are natively online).

I originally wanted to learn the program at another Pro-D day but that session was full.  The app did interest me so I briefly looked into what it actually was and initially dismissed it until now.  Neat little program and in my mind, the biggest advantage over PowerPoint is the native online presence Sway has.

However, since I'm not supposed to be making lesson plans or other lesson related activities during my Pro-D day I instead learned how to use Sway and created Mr. Arocena's League of Legends Highlights.

In the process of learning Sway I also inadvertently ran across HitFilm Express which is an amazingly powerful free video editing software package.  I'll end up using it for all my education videos as well as it can do things that Movie Maker cannot.

The only flaw I found (and it's a major one in my mind) is that for some inexplicable reason Sways cannot be grouped into folders.  So for example if I make a bunch of League of Legends Sway presentations, they will just be sitting there ungrouped and unorganized in the My Sways tab of the website.  Huge flaw and the only reason I'm not going all-in on this new tool.

In the meanwhile though, Sway is great for special projects like the one I made.

Video Games - New Gaming PC Built!

My birthday came and went and with it an opportunity to build a new gaming PC.  I hadn't actually built a new PC from scratch since my university days, instead relying on pre-built systems and just upgrading the video card from it.

That sufficed for the most part but recently I've been experimenting with streaming and recording my gameplay and the pre-built systems I had been buying just weren't up to the task (part of the reason I haven't posted many video game related things or even streamed any game play).  With the opportunity to build my own PC again I spent a few days researching parts and finally decided on the following build
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/md3sHx

I scavenged the case and HDD from the existing computer so that saved me a bit of money.  Although in hindsight I should have picked up a new case anyways as I could then have a 2nd PC.  What I would do with the 2nd PC I have no idea but it would at least be working.  Maybe sell it or give it away to someone I guess.

Anyways, the new system was arrived last week and was fairly easy to put together compared to when I last built a computer.  Installing Windows 10 wasn't too bad either and I managed to activate it with an old Windows 7 key I had from an ancient laptop we had kicking around.  The computer operates much quieter than the previous one and is ridiculously fast in comparison as well.

My old system (running on an AMD A8-6500 with a Radeon R7 240 graphics card and 6gb of RAM) struggled to play Final Fantasy 14 at 1080p resolution on ultra low settings with an average of 20 FPS.  My new system runs it on maximum at 1080p while averaging 60 FPS.  There is no noticeable drop in FPS during gameplay while recording or streaming either so I think I'm going to be more inclined to stream/record my games now.

Obviously the PC is nowhere near top end but man is it ever a huge improvement over what I had before.  I have a potential significant upgrade path as the 7th generation Intel processors will use the same socket and I have a power supply large enough to power a beefier graphics card if I need to upgrade that later.  Given the current benchmarks though, my system should last a few years before needing any major upgrades (so says every PC builder).

2015 Year in Review

This year has been a busy one.  Both in terms of gaming and life in general.  A lot of highs and one gigantic low at the end of the year.

Here's a brief run down of what occurred this year.

Video Games - Fantasy eSports and Alpha Draft

While watching some League of Legends videos on YouTube an ad popped up for the fantasy esports site Alpha Draft.  The ad basically said, if you like esports come make a fantasy team and see if you can win money.  I clicked on it to check it out thinking I'm a fan of esports (League mostly) and maybe I can generate some free money out of this much like I did with Diablo 3 a few years back.

I've been playing on Alpha Draft for about 2 weeks now and so far after an initial investment of $15, have been making money each week.  Not an appreciable amount mind you as I messed up the first week and used the second week to make back what I had lost and initially invested.  However, much like selling stuff on Diablo 3, small gains eventually lead to larger gains and as long as I am growing my funds each week, I'll be happy.

So far the experiment is working and I'm curious to see just how much I can make by the end of the summer.  Might post my thoughts on how I pick a team later as I get more experienced with each game.

Final Fantasy XIV - Mini-Games!

The Golden Saucer was recently added to the game and boy is it ever fun.

For those unfamiliar with the original Golden Saucer, it was introduced way back in Final Fantasy 7 (and to my knowledge was never re-introduced in any other Final Fantasy game).  It was a giant amusement park and acted like one in the game with all manner of mini-games.  It also had some interesting rewards like Cloud's final limit break, Omnislash, in the Battle Square mini-game (fun fact, my brother managed to obtain Omnislash on the first disc of the game by grinding out 50+ levels in random encounters and then taking his super powered Cloud to the Battle Square to win the Omnislash manual).

Many of the mini-games recreated some of the sequences in the game like the bike battle (my favourite) or the submarine battle (also a favourite of mine) while others were more traditional carnival/amusement park games like basketball toss or strong man games.  And don't get me started on Chocobo Racing and breeding.

In FF14 the Saucer pretty much does the same thing.  It has lots of mini-games, a bunch of random events, chocobo racing and Triple Triad!  I never played Final Fantasy 8 so I had no idea what Triple Triad was other than it was a game within FF8,  It's fun and you get to collect cards and use your cards to win more Golden Saucer points (the currency within the Golden Saucer).

At the moment the rewards at the Golden Saucer are cosmetic items, chocobo racing items or Triple Triad cards.  I got lucky and managed to win 10,000 golden saucer points from a mini-lottery and bought a new hair style (only available at the golden saucer).

Then I spent the leftover points on racing feed (though I still have to actually race my chocobo).  I won another mini-lottery and will probably save the points for some of the cosmetic weapons for my other classes when/if I get them to 50.

Little things like this definitely make this game nicer than other MMOs I've played.

Final Fantasy XIV - Glamour System

I spend way too much time using the vanity system on MMORPGs that have them and I try to avoid the ones that don't. #GamingConfessions
— Mr. Arocena (@MrArocena) January 26, 2015

I tweeted this when I saw the #GamingConfessions hashtag earlier this week and boy is it ever true.

It all started on SWTOR and when I got enough Social points to get the first set of social armour.  I liked the top and since I could swap out the Armour piece, modification piece and enhancement piece I stuck with the same top for most of my leveling experience.

Once I hit end-game I had accumulated a huge number of social points and my social rank was fairly high so I had access to a lot of the social armour sets.  I bought a bunch of them and started mixing and matching to find a look that I liked (thankfully the social armour is cheap).  There were other pieces of customizable armour as well so I spent a great deal of money on the Galactic Market looking for interesting pieces.  This was made even more expensive by the fact that I could customize the appearance of my companions so I had 5 other people to customize.  Took a while and a lot of credits to give my main character and his main companion a look that I liked.

This extended to a lot of other games that have vanity systems like League where I've spent a large amount of money picking up skins that make my character look cool (or skins that are limited edition).  The skins have absolutely no practical purpose but they look cool.

So this brings me to Final Fantasy XIV.  A game with a really robust vanity system known as their Glamour system.  In some ways not as restrictive as SWTOR but in some ways more restrictive.

Final Fantasy XIV - Reborn Enjoyment of the MMORPG

So as I mentioned in my 2014 Year in Review, a friend had bought me Final Fantasy XIV - A Realm Reborn (FF14 for short) while it was on sale at Steam a few weeks (or maybe months now?) back.  Surprised me as I was going to buy it the same day he bought it for me.  Anyways, I didn't really play much of it for the first couple of days of my subscription because of school work and I think I was focusing on improving my League of Legends play as the season ended.

That changed once Christmas hit though.  I had no incentive to improve my League play until the next season started so I picked up Final Fantasy again.  At first I wasn't too impressed as the combat was identical to every other MMORPG I had played and there was no voice over in the cut-scenes.  SWTOR I think really set the bar for general questing as the voices added character to the quest givers makes the game that much more immersive.  Mind you there are some cut-scenes in FF14 that have voice-overs but they are kind of random and seem forced at times (not as good as the voice work in SWTOR in my opinion).  I stuck with it though as another friend picked up the game as well and we sort of leveled together, him a healer and me a tank (just as we did in SWTOR).

A couple of things stood out as I leveled.

2014 Year in Review

2014 was an interesting year.

• Taught in a distance educating school
• went on strike for 4 weeks and a bit,
• went to London and Paris with the family
• and played a lot of games (both digital and non-digital).

Overall a good year even with the loss of a months salary and stress caused by my work strike.  Now on to some more specific accounts on various gaming fronts.

Video Games - Adventures in Disney Infinity 2.0

My wife has the fortune of working for a company that was kind enough to reimburse her for some of the cost of completing her registered pharmacy technician program.  Most of the money ended up going into savings but she decided to set aside a chunk of it as some fun money to sort of reward herself and her family for putting up with her horrid schedule while she was studying, working and being a mom.

She bought herself some dishes as we needed new ones and the rest of the money went into an Xbox One, some accessories and games.  One of those happened to be the new Disney Infinity 2.0. I had written about my experiences with Disney Infinity 1.0 on the Wii earlier this year and I was looking forward to see what the new version could do, especially on the more powerful Xbox One.

League of Legends - Quest for Gold Division still ongoing...

Season 4 is almost over and unfortunately no luck in getting to Gold division.  That's ok though I'm still happy with where I got to (Silver 2, and almost Silver 1 mid-season, sadly dropped back to Silver 4 late in the season) and I'll try again once Season 5 starts up.  Starting to realize that what separates me from Gold is that I just don't play enough games of League.

I think my mechanical skill with the champions I play is good but I don't understand all the match-ups that well.  Match-up knowledge is really only gained through a large number of games played.  For example I play Jarvan IV a lot so my skill with his kit is pretty good.  I know his limits and when I can and cannot start a fight or when I can dive and survive.  But I don't know his lane match-ups well enough to dominate my lane when I play him top or who/when to gank for my laners as I don't know some of their matchups that well either.  I can get a general feel like who has an escape, who has CC, whose lane is pushing, where will the enemy jungler be, etc. but little things like when does a certain champ hit their power spike still escape me especially if I am unfamiliar playing with or against the champion.

So for next season, I think I will just focus on my three best champions, Leona, Jarvan IV and Thresh.  Since I already know their kits well, I can focus on understanding the match-ups in the game and hopefully get to Gold in season 5.  I still need to find a mid-laner though and an ADC that I can play comfortably so that in those odd cases I get stuck with that role I don't feed and can at least go even in lane.

On an unrelated note, I think I'll start streaming my game nights as some pretty cool/funny things happen.  I almost got a hexakill in my last game night (with Yasuo no less) but wasn't streaming/recording it so lost that moment.  Similarly there were some funny moments when my friends and I were playing co-op Interstellar Marines against the freaky robots.

Video Games - XCOM Ironman mode

The 2K Games Humble Bundle came and went and I made the decision to purchase it for the $20 price so I could get X-COM: Enemy Unknown.  I got a bunch of there top notch games as well (the entire Bioshock Series, more X-COM games and Spec Ops: The Line) and most of the money I donated to charity so in my opinion a very well spent $20.

Anyways, I've never played any X-COM games before but I read about the Ironman mode and it intrigued me.  Basically you can't reload your saves and the game saves basically after every decision you make, whether it is buying a new gun or moving a soldier on the battlefield.  Also since soldier death is permanent, you can't reload your save to try a new strategy.  Very reminiscent of old games where you had a limited number of lives and continues to go over a level.  The game has a warning that you should not attempt Ironman mode if you are new but I did anyways as I fancy myself as a decent strategy game player and I wanted a more difficult challenge considering most newer games give you an infinite number of retries to do something right (see Assassin's Creed 3 or the Arkham games that I've been playing recently).

The first few maps were quite interesting as I did not get the tactical strategy quite right and I ended up positioning very poorly so lost quite a few rookies and later some of my higher ranking officers (though I swear it was just unlucky crits that got those officers).  As my troops died I found myself getting more attached to the ones that did survive because I did not want to train a whole new one (it takes a lot of missions and kills to get a high ranking officer especially if they get injured).  When I started giving them my own nicknames (soldiers get nicknames once they hit Sergeant rank) it really made me want to ensure they survived each mission.  Not that I cry over every death, but it does hurt a little when one of my soldiers dies because I ran him/her out a little too far or forgot a muton was on overwatch or something equally silly.

I managed to keep one of my soldiers from the first tutorial mission alive (of the 4 that are deployed only one of them survives) over the past 11 hours of game play and if I lose him that would be quite sad.  Not only because he is the highest ranking officer I have but also because he's been with me since the beginning.  Still slogging through the campaign and I've no idea how far I am in but I'm hoping this soldier makes it until the end (I think I get an achievement for it).

Travel - Civilization 5 World Wonder Tour

While planning our summer vacation this year my wife asked me if there was anywhere I would want to visit in the world.  I thought about it for a brief moment and told her that there wasn't anywhere in the world I really wanted to visit for the sole purpose of just visiting.  I mean I like travelling, but if all I am doing is just sight seeing, it's not that great for me.

I like attending events so a lot of my previous travel plans were centered around events, whether it be family reunions, funerals (these are unplanned by the way in case anyone was wondering), gaming tournaments or whatever.  Case in point, for the past few years I've tried to plan a summer trip to Edmonton because of a big annual Warhammer 40k/Fantasy tournament (It Came From Out of the Basement) arranged by some former Prince George gamers (hasn't worked out yet though as things always seem to get in the way) and late last year I thought about going to Seattle just to attend PAX Prime 2014 or to see We Will Rock You.  This year I was even considering trying to go to Cologne because Gamescom (and coincidentally the League of Legends EU LCS Summer Playoffs!) happens to happen after our week in Paris is done (though not sure if the rest of my family would share my enthusiasm about the event)

A few moments after my wife asked the question it dawned on me that I could relate our travel plans to some of the games we play and I suggested we do a Civ 5 World Wonder Tour - basically visit every World Wonder in Civ 5 that still exists.  This would help us plan future vacations and for me it wouldn't just be sight seeing; we could actually visit the wonders we build in our games of Civ 5  (we play Civ 5 together a fair amount)

It's going to take a very long time though to hit all the Civ 5 wonders (here's a list of all of them http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_wonders_in_Civ5) but it's an interesting family goal to have.

This summer we'll be heading to London and Paris for two weeks so we'll hopefully be able to cross off the following:

• Oxford University
• Stonehenge
• Big Ben
• Globe Theatre (though the original doesn't exist they did reconstruct a new one not too far from the original location)
• Eiffel Tower
• The Louvre
• Notre Dame

Penny probably won't understand any of our plans but she'll have fun regardless (she's only 3 at the moment and she likes going places outside her house).  As she gets older she might have a better understanding/appreciation of why we our vacation plans are the way they are.

Video Games - Adventures in Disney Infinity (Wii version)

This week Walmart had a big sale on all the Disney Infinity starter sets (normally $75 but this week was only $49).  So we made a fairly impulse buy and picked up the Wii starter set (and Rapunzel and Woody as Futureshop was selling them 2 for $15).  This was mostly because my wife realized I like to game and wanted a game that the entire family could enjoy.

A little more background about our gaming environment at my house.  I am a big gamer and no matter what my wife tries, she cannot stop me from gaming.  I've tried to get her to game with me with mixed results.  Tabletop wargames were totally ineffective and MMORPGs too.  We did find some common ground in Age of Empires 3 (and Age of Mythology before that) and the Civilization games (when Civ 5 went on sale a few weeks ago on Humble that was a godsend!)  Unfortunately Penny couldn't really join us when we played as she just didn't understand and couldn't really participate in any way.

One thing Penny did like was Disney movies though and she knows many of the characters that are available in Infinity.  We figured Infinity would be a good way that we could play something that Penny could relate to.  Unfortunately the Wii version is kind of limited as there is no online capability but we could still build stuff in the Toy Box mode and at Penny's age (she's only 3.5 years old) she won't know any better.

The game plays very much like any 3d platformer just with Disney characters.  My favourite aspect of the game so far has been the world building in the Toy Box.  Penny watched me play as Rapunzel as I worked through the Mastery challenges and really wanted to play but the Mastery challenges were out of her league.  So I fired up a toy box and built her a simple cave complex (we managed to land the Cave of Wonders entrance so it looked pretty cool) with a room full of smashable crates at the end.  I told her she had to get through the cave and then smash the crates (she liked watching me smash stuff while I played through the Mastery challenges).

She was quite frustrated at first as she wasn't holding the controller properly and couldn't maneuver Rapunzel the way she wanted to.  I showed her how to hold the controller properly and how to use the analog stick to move Rapunzel and what button to press to smash things and before long she was able to move through the cave to the room of crates and start smashing.  When she cleared the room she asked to do it all over again.

Her video game skills are still developing but seeing how quickly she learned to move Rapunzel around was encouraging.  As I play with the Infinity Toy Box I'm excited to make more challenges for her.  Penny on the other hand is more excited about getting Anna and Elsa after I ordered them online as no stores in town had any.

My Gamer Bibliography

On the drive to work one morning I had some time to think about being a gamer.  It amazed me at how long I have been playing and the types of games I have played in my time as a gamer so much that I tried to chronicle when I started gaming and what I played throughout the years of my life.  I came up with the following list.  The list is by no means complete nor accurate but gives a sense of what I have been playing all these years.

League of Legends - Duo-Queuing

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Grouping Up) my friends and I started grouping up in League of Legends so we could avoid some of the toxic behaviour from grouping up with random people.  As a result I've been duo-queuing with our Blitzcrank player a lot.  Mostly in an effort to get him up to lv30 and maybe we can start duo-queuing ranked games or something.  At the very least our group will be completely lv30 so everyone should be on a level playing field.

Due to LoL's matchmaking mechanics it is sometimes awkward when I play with my lv30 account and he's only lv10.  Pairs us up with a bunch of 20s who are way more skilled than he is.  So I made a second account to level with him.  However because he plays Blitzcrank support almost exclusively (he does a good job at it), I've been playing ADC a lot.  I normally jungle when I solo-queue but there's not much to coordinate between jungle and support during laning.  Not a total loss though as it has improved my last-hitting skills and positioning skills and if someone else jungles when I solo-queue I will have another role I am decent at.

My ranked play has been really good lately.  I'm currently on a 4 game winning streak for ranked games and I'm only 25 league points from my next promotion series (promo from Silver V to Silver IV).  Haven't been grinding as much as I used to but work has gotten in the way lately.  End of semester is coming up so lots of last minute marking and catching up of marking because of students panicking.  If only they just did the work when asked.  Once this friday hits, no more assignments will be accepted as that is the end of the semester.  Which means more hobby time!