The 2017 season 3 did not start great. Placements were rough: 4-6 placed me at gold1. A 4-7 stretch directly out of placements dropped me to gold2. 8-13 to start the season... super duper awesome. Considering the 1-7 slide at the end of season 2 and my not-so-great start, being placed in gold wasn't surprising but none-the-less frustrating. At this point it was time to do some soul searching (i.e. replay reviews). What was working? Unfortunately, not much. I was 3-2 on Gul'dan taking him mostly on ToTSQ. There was this gem of a game that made me laugh:What's amusing about this game was that I lagged in the draft and was auto-selected Hammer. I was able to get reconnected before game even started and apologized to the team. They all noticed I had DC'd and said they were just happy I made it back. We stomped. Game was never close. Seeing their draft explains some of it (Raynor!) and the other note I have (besides the DC-pick): "Jaina a non-factor". I hadn't played Hammer in months. Good times. Aside from that I had a win on Nazeebo and Jaina. About the only good I could latch onto was that my mage game seemed to be intact. What wasn't working? I lost both of the Dehaka/Sonya games. I watched the Dehaka match and while I didn't play terribly it didn't seem like any of my engages were having a good impact... Leo also fed his ass off, so there's that. I did have a very tasty flank in which I tongued their Tyrande and while we secured the kill, Leo died as well and Sonya/Brightwing executed a nice dive into teleport/wind that split us in half. Game snowballed after that. I also lost my first 4 games on Malthael. I wanted so badly to make this hero work. It wasn't, and worse still, it didn't seem like I was playing the hero well (too many deaths and in particular too many deaths near the start of a fight)I haven't said much about my hero pool so maybe now is as good a time as any. I like Gul'dan... a lot. Coming from WoW playing warlocks from the beginning I think the HotS team did a great job porting a locks kit into the game. He's my go-to mage with Jaina as a backup (sustain and burst). For my chair league team I mostly played off-lane bruisers like Sonya and Artanis and more recently I've been playing Varian. I also have a ton of games under my belt with Xul, Illidan, Arthas, and Tyrael. If AA is needed, Lunara is my pick though I've recently spent more time practicing Valla and drafted her in a couple matches. If a solo tank is needed my first choice is usually Muradin but I also can play Johanna. Recently I've been practicing Garrosh and Diablo with an aim to put more time into ETC. However, the hero that I mostly want to play right now is Malthael. I love his kit and playstyle. His talent tree has some great choices in the level 7 & 13 tiers and I like that you can build him for more single target DPS (Q-build) or more AOE (trait-build). Blizz nailed the feeling of impending death with this hero.You may have noticed my lack of support heroes. It's not that I can't play supports (my preference is for Rehgar, Kharazim, and Malfurion) but in 75% of drafts there's someone showing support right out the gate. The few times where I may be in a position to support I'll throw a message out there: "hey team, willing to fill, but supports probably my weakest role, fwiw". The result is I haven't played the support role once this season. This is one of those anecdotes that doesn't quite jive with general perception - in my experience there's almost always someone willing to support. This is certainly a weakness of mine in terms of drafting since there are spots where taking a support would probably be the ideal pick. I've definitely been practicing more supports of late (Uther and Morales in particular). With the recent Suppocolypse, I'm eager to see where this meta takes us. At the very least, I recognize this is an area of my game that needs improvement.Back to Malthael. I needed more information because I knew this was a strong hero and one I enjoyed playing immensely. I started watching Psalm (he has a great guide on Malth ) and Fan play him a lot. I asked questions in stream about their talent choices. He was also seeing quite a bit of play in the pro scene so I was watching the VODs of those games from MasterLeague. I played some more UR/QM with him and decided I just needed to keep grinding.I came out of my analysis and back into games with a 4-game win streak and a decent 9-4 run that got me back into gold1 and had me sniffing the butt of platinum. I only had one game on Malth, but it was a win. Most of it was going 4-2 playing Nazeebo. A heart ripping 5-11 run had me once again staring down the barrel of a demo into gold2. 3-3 on Malth during this run with two of the game's notes both the exact same: "late game throw - should have won." In fact, that comment occurs exactly four times during this 16 game run. Ugly. All of a sudden Gul'dan just wasn't working (0-3) and my attempts at playing Artanis, Lunara, Kel'Thuzad, and Illidan came up short. I spent another night watching replays. One of the "throws" was literally us dominating the entire game and then getting wiped on an ill-conceived boss play. One of the many, but seemingly very popular ways, to throw a game. Of the wins I watched, one was us getting our butts handed to us for the entirety of a Warhead match only to defend a core attempt and then push top with a boss FTW.. At that point my season record sat at 22-28. 50 games played and I'm still wallowing in gold. FML.Wasn't this blog supposed to be about plat hell? Well yeah... and a sweet 20-8 run got me there and then some (promo into plat3). 12-3 on Malth. The most interesting thing to note about this particular run was that I only won 1 of the 4 games that I "filled" in the draft. That note is reserved specifically for drafts where I'm trying to respond to our picks to make sure we have a complete comp. Hmmmm, something to consider. More then anything, this run just felt like a string of good luck - good drafts and good teammates. Plus, I was starting to feel it on Malthael. I was taking him almost anytime I could regardless of counters. A couple days later I had a 4-1 night and was into plat3. My next 26 matches I went 15-11 and was in plat2. 99 games; 61-48; I was back home in the friendly confines of plat2. During these matches I was typically winning more points (205-215) with the personal rank adjustment than losing (190-195). I was 26-13 on Malthael. Death himself was indeed a major component of my climb. Gul'dan, Nazeebo, and Jaina were nice contributors as well - all had >55% win rates.So there you have it, my not-so-epic climb out of gold and back into plat2. The thing is, as I'm writing this, I have 213 games. So the remaining 114 games is pretty much me just wallowing between plat2 and plat1. Like I've said before, I'm probably living right where I need to be. But I want so badly to hit diamond. I remember the feeling of doing so in TL and I want it again. Part of my process here is to just watch more of my games and to be critical of my play while also trying to analyze what went right or wrong from a macro perspective. In future posts I'll talk more about specific games. I also need some coaching to catch those things I simply don't see. Just last night I got to sit down and go over a replay with Kala . If you guys don't know this dude. You need to. In my next post I'll discuss "The Coaching Session".CheersouroborosEDIT: Shout out to the redditor that noticed I had confused gold1 with gold5 and gold2 with gold4. I'm dumb. What's worse is that this is exactly how I have it in my notes. /face palm.