Morning Ramble for May 2nd, 2017: Gods and Angels

Morning Ramble for May 2nd, 2017 in which I get my first disconnect in SMITE, I’m queried by HiRez about how I feel for obviously mismatched games, and I look back at the month of April for my Angels…they did pretty good surprisingly.

SMITE

Today I experienced a disconnect for the first time and of course it was not fun. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I was simply playing Ra in the mid lane and about 5 minutes into the game, I was staring at a black screen. I alt-tab’d out and back to no avail and when I tried again, I saw some dialog with an Anti-Cheating failure asking me to click. I suppose the anti-cheating app crashed and that screwed up the game. I closed everything down and restarted and got back into the match without any further issues, but when I got back in, I saw that I was in base, facing away from the game and I had 2 other teammates sitting there as well. Loki seemed to be stuck partway down mid lane and a minute later – he disconnected. Only one of my team didn’t disconnect and I wonder if perhaps they were the cause of the anti-cheating crash, but who knows.

So I go from that game to one in which it’s pretty clear the Match Maker screwed up. HiRez even asked afterwards what my thoughts were on the balance of the match. We lost something like 7–33 and it was a clear rout. There was never a point in the game where we had any chance to even feel like we were competing in the game. It was 0–7 before 3 minutes into the game and they had 2 of our towers down by 5 minutes – it was crazy.

Two quick surrenders and I finally ended up in a game where our team had a chance. I played Ra mid lane and did pretty well. I didn’t rack up many kills – only 3, but I had the fewest deaths on our team – 5. We were dominating for most of the game and I feel I was contributing with lane control and vision – I actually purchased wards and started learning where to place them. It helped but it wasn’t enough since we had a 0–14 Cernunnos on our team. Even though we lost, it was a fun game since we were competitive as opposed to the previous 2 games.

Angelic in April

I have to say I’m surprised that my Angel team pulled off a successful April. They eked out a win the last game of the month against Texas to take the series and their 3rd series of the month. Sadly they lost 4 series including a 0–3 match to KC and a 1–3 set to Houston. They did finish the month with a winning record at 14–13 though and they sit in 2nd place in the AL West. With so many injuries – Richards on the 60-day DL, Skaggs out for 10–12 weeks, Cron and Bedrosian on the 10-day DL, and Tropeano and Heaney not even expected to pitch this year, it’s surprising they can field a full team some nights. Trout has really carried the team so far with his best April ever. His 7 HR, 18 RBI, 2 3B, 9 doubles and his .364 average and .707 slugging percentage are all tops for him in April and he’s near the top in many categories in the AL. Hopefully he can continue to carry the weight of the team while the injuries heal – perhaps they’ll then have a chance to play like I really want them to.