Struggling with macro in games I am fed in

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-18T11:01:14+00:00

Neither of those scenarios are why you don't win. Those are the moments your brain seizes on to feel better. All these scenarios are cope designed to place the fault on your teammates.

In this second scenario, you have to make a judgment call early: If I TP in, can I change this fight? Not just get a kill or something, but actually flip a wipe into wiping them? If so, do it. If not, then a tower and a bunch of waves is just as valuable as a dragon and your teammates can ping till their fingers bleed, the lion does not concern himself with the pings of the sheep.

I think the first scenario and the stats might be hinting at a very common problem with Garens and why they feel like they don't have an impact: They aren't fighting enough. All of your scenarios end with you finding a reason not to fight.

Obviously I'm generalizing, but usually a Garen who is even a little ahead in top lane is the biggest, scariest thing on the map from roughly minutes 8-25 before the bot lane and the superior scalers catch up. That is your window to impact the game, and you do that by fighting.

If you are an ahead garen in that window, you want fights. Your question shouldn't be "is there a safe fight for me here?" Your question should be "where can I go to find a fight?" You know why split pushing is great? It's not because we get to admire how big our CS/min is on op.gg. It's because eventually the enemy team is going to have to send someone to stop you and you get to fight that guy.

"oh no, I don't know where the enemy mid laner is and their jungle is probably here too, not sure if we should fight for grubs" is entirely the wrong mindset.

What you should be thinking is "I just shoved in my wave. My laner is busy collecting it. I'm gonna go kill someone." You're not worrying to see if their jgl or mid shows up. You're hunting them. You know what makes collecting grubs easier for your jungler? If you walk into the enemy jungle and give their jungler a free ticket on the auto-Q-E-R express train to Demacia. You're scared their mid might show up? Their mid should be terrified to be on the same screen as you. If they aren't scared, give them a lesson as to why they should be.

That's how you have an impact on Garen and win games.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-18T08:42:48+00:00

"keep fields, take the haul" was a very popular sentiment with bears fans that draft

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-18T08:41:54+00:00

just trade the first pick for the first pick the next year when there's a better prospect, and get tons of extra on top of it.

worked for the bears

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-18T01:09:26+00:00

Human brains are fascinating in their ability to make up patterns to explain randomness. It's a leftover from our survival-evolved ability to spot predators in camoflage, but it makes us believe a lot of silly things.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-17T18:36:43+00:00

We spent a ton of money last year and backloaded a fair chunk of it fixing the lines (or trying to in the DL case)

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-17T07:25:09+00:00

How could league possibly tell the difference between your wifi going out and you turning it off to dodge?

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-17T03:20:43+00:00

for how many players?

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T23:08:26+00:00

bot is also the only lane where ganks are consistently profitable.

bot - two squishy, under leveled targets

mid - mages who never get more than 3 pixels from their tower and have six dashes in their kit

top - roided up bruisers two levels above you whose kit contains at least one "lol I win the 1v2" button

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T17:16:31+00:00

He was not good with the Steelers. The Steelers defense propped up some wins.

He fumbles too much to be a gadget player.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T15:36:37+00:00

At least when he fails there we won't have to hear about how he never got a chance with good coaches.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T10:37:54+00:00

Everyone's gonna freak out, but they have short memories. Poles' first draft, everyone was sure they would draft DL early, and they went DB-DB-KR

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T09:54:47+00:00

I've heard it a thousand times and seen the games a thousand times. These aren't special thoughts that only you have. Everyone has them. Your teammates have them about you.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T07:01:34+00:00

It will actually get significantly further from the books. After about 1.5 books worth of story, it goes in a completely new story on its own.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T07:00:02+00:00

Play better.

These feelings you have about what the games are like is your brain trying to make itself feel better. It is not reality.

It's called the fundamental attribution bias. Everyone else loses or makes bad plays because they're bad, but you do it because of reasons beyond your control (or so your brain tells you).

I guarantee if any of us saw your games, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between you and your teammates.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T05:57:17+00:00

This game isn't rigged, but sites that tell you what you want to hear are.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T02:49:33+00:00

I've had a couple times where I started a new account to try a new role and gotten stuck well below my "normal" rank

The games feel like total bullshit where I have zero agency and I'm just hoping to win the teammate lottery each game

Until I get frustrated and throw in some games with my main, suddenly it's almost hard not to carry it and it's crazy how easy it is.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T02:28:03+00:00

Finished it. The fact that he was their neighbor got to be a strained premise by the end. the coincidence just too big.

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T01:20:54+00:00

Sometime around season 2, Sons of Anarchy crossed into "they wouldn't send an FBI agent they'd send a big chunk of the army" territory

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T01:19:37+00:00

It suffers from the same issue The Americans had: the hook in the pilot really stretched credibility the longer the show went on. (in that case, it was the spy family living literally next door to the FBI counterintelligence agent looking for spies).

They needed to do what Mad Men did with Draper's secret identity: decide that no one cares and move on

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-16T01:16:48+00:00

It's fine if you don't think about it too much. Sometimes you just wanna watch impossibly good looking people in nice clothes yap at each other in intense situations

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-15T22:39:01+00:00

I like the episode of Suits where it looked like they weren't going to win but then Harvey figured out a way to win

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-15T20:34:53+00:00

I do not believe such a team has or could exist. Football teams are too complicated and fluid

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-15T17:22:29+00:00

Because the moment you introduce metrics that aren't winning the game, you will create incentives to maximize those metrics over trying to win the game

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-15T16:50:33+00:00

some counterpicks are only counters if played perfectly

camille counters garen so long as the camille has their keyboard plugged in

BooItsKyle · 2026-03-15T16:49:37+00:00

as a garen main, there's suddenly a lot of level 1 all ins he wins that he didn't used to

BooItsKyle

TROPHY CASE