You will have to start with fillers, it will auto pick the best people if you pick no one.

I will probably be late.  Or maybe not.  We will see.

I have to patch. I am here though if you are still ready to draft.

So... I've been spamming top a bit now.  I started thinking about playing top a bunch again when I saw wukongs win rate in top floating around 54%... which reminded me I had a decent skill level with him, BUT little experience playing him top.  I tried that, but didn't really feel like dedicating a bunch of time to him... now anyway.

But - I did want to give Illaoi a shot again after the changes.  Now, someone posted a vid about advanced illaoi strategies and tactics.  I learned 2 things from this - 1 of which is actually pretty game changing for me.  The person making the vid said ALWAYS have a red pot post level 9.  

That one thing makes a HUGE difference and I really recommend trying that out - probably on many diff champs but DEFINITELY on Illaoi.  30 bonus dmg + healing for 15% of the physical damage dealt for 3 min for 500 gold.  This amps up her survivablity a ton and gives you an added power spike at level 9 that is not anticipated.  The downside, obviously, is the cost, but it works extremely well.  

There are 2 main builds with her - 1 tanky, 1 dmg danky.  I'm focused with the dmg setup going arm pen runes.  cleaver,steraks, that AD item that gives 10% cdr and lets you take dmg as bleed (forgetting name).  After that you can rush GA or w/e.  

So I think Illaoi is in an interesting spot.  I think her tenatacle mechanic where you pull their spirit and echo damage, etc, is kind of awful in design and not fun to play against.  It was insanely awful at release when it lasted a super long time.  Now it lasts like 12 seconds and often forces the a really dumb, but necessary counter play.  Folks often RUN away whenever you land the spirit grab and take the echo'd effect where tentacles spawn for 12 seconds.  This effectly zones them from farming a bit, but fug if it isn't a horribly designed and very unfun mechanic to deal with.  It's nice there's some small counter play in there with being able to kill the tentacles to end the effect early, but seriously, how fun is it to get hit by an ability then have to run around like away like a jack ass and putz around with tentacles for 12 seconds.  It's just kind of awful.  And I find is pretty freaking easy to hit.

Currently I think top lane is super snowbally.  You get ahead and its snowball city.  Illaoi is actually one champ that can actually pretty easily shut down someone that has a lead against her early/mid.  She has gets a huge power spike any time you properly use her combos - and folks still have kind of a low skill level against her and don't really understand just how strong she is, even if behind.  That's all just learning curve junk, though.  I really think her spirit grab is one of the worst mechanics in the game, though.  So many more matchups for me to learn though along with top lane gameplay.

Looks like Illinois was used in LCS?

https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/4nog6b/how_quas_builds_illaoi/

I picked up dead by daylight yesterday.  Let me know if you'd like to play it if you got it ($17 on steam).  It's a survival horror sort of MP game.  4 victims and 1 serial killer.  The victims try to work together to escape.  Seems like it has an ok perk system, etc.  Not sure how much I'll get into it, but I'll play it a few more times anyway.  Some folks are streaming it, so give that a look to figure out if it might be something fun for you or not.  

I'll probably put some reps into league tonight.  

Took me a second, but then I remember what you were talking about.  I dug around and found this from a tourney we had:

Demigod Selection

Each 3 man team must use the following formula to make their Demigod character selections based on a 7 point maximum.  Be aware that no duplicate demigods are permitted on the same team.  This means you cannot choose random.

• Demon Assassin/Regulus - 1 point
• Oculus/Queen of Thorns/Senda/Torch Bearer - 2 points
• Lord Erebus/Oak/Rook/Unclean Beast - 3 points

Not sure if its worth it, but here's the thread I found the info in:  https://forums.politicalmachine.com/396231/page/7/

I played through the recently released DOOM (single player only).  It was hands down the most fun I've had with a game in years.  If you haven't checked that out, I really recommend it if you enjoy FPS.  It was a real treat.  I really enjoyed the story and pacing as well.

Anyway, this got me thinking about playing some older version of doom.  I had the doom 3 pack or w/e from a steam sale sometime back.  Only like 2.75 gigs for doom 3 and doom 3 resurrection.

Doom 3 was a bunch of fun.  It has so many jump scares in it along with a PDA system that forces you to use it and read along to get ammo/better weapons.  The story was fun and immersive as well and the game was a reasonable length.  Doom 3 resurrection was... well more doom.  It was fairly short, added a few new weapons (which were fun), but the story was just kind of lame and it ended really abruptly, which made the expansion feel very tacked on (which it was).  All in all, Doom 3 was a bunch of fun to play through, but the expansion was kind of smeh.  

Anyway, after that, I fired up LOL and was pleased to see they enabled champ mastery on ARAMs.  I wasn't in the mood for rift games, so I just spammed some ARAMs and had some fun.  

Currently enjoying taliyah top or mid.. which likely means she's border line op.  She's genuinely fun to play for me anyway.  love her w/ thunderlords and really enjoy her ult.

Finally caught up w/ boaz again.  He was on for a bit last night, so hopefully I catch him again soon.  He's been busy, but it sounds like things are going a lot better for him now.  Says he's enjoying the 75 degree weather in alaska.  

Played a bit w/ madcasters again last night.  ol soup hit me up with an invite for a normal, which was what I was in the mood for and saw LT, naiya + some new fella.  MC games are still pretty much what they have always been.  Downside was we couldn't get soup and I on carry roles w/ our crew, so it kind of fell to me to do so out of top, which I needed to do much harder as things were not good elsewhere.  Ended the night doing a few arams with em after I decided no more SR w/ em - I had my fill.

Looking forward to some gaming tonight - long week.  Basement flooded yesterday and to sort that for most of the day.  Pretty tiring stuff.

RANKED OVERWATCH TODAY.

I'm pretty sure I'm a Diamond Overwatch player, so this will be easy.

Hey all,

i won an Ashes of the Singularity key. All my friends either aren't interested in the game or don't have a computer that can run it. If you have a nice computer and are interested in an RTS game, let me know and i'll send it to you. i'm posting this to a few places so i get to choose favourites (muahaha), but, realistically, you can probably have it if you want it.

So... I spam played RUST and will probably do so some more.  Really enjoying my time.  Here's a quick run down on the game, what you do, what's good, what's awful.

So, you start out recovering from being unconscious on a beach.  You have a rock and a torch and are naked as a jaybird.  You are injured, hungry and thirsty.  Survive.

So, you find some wild mushrooms to eat.  Chop down some wood and stones.  Immediately you make a spear to protect yourself.  You make a crude hammer and pickaxe from the wood and stones.  Now you can more quickly harvest wood/stone and you start to have a little more security.  Did I mention, if you die, you lose all your crap and spawn at a random location on the map?  Eventually you get enough tech and wood to build a house after you find an ok spot for it.  You build small because you need to get a shelter in place ASAP.  You build a furnace in your house and use it to melt down some ore you found when you were mining the stones.  You build a sleeping bag (which is a spawn point in the game) and place it in your house.  You create a lock and key and call it a night.  Your house is still really weak and could be broken into, but its all you could do.  

Anyway, there's a bunch of progression.  You explore and build a proper base in a better spot, you hunt, you find spots with blueprints of guns etc and build them.  You group up with folks if you can find some that don't try to kill you.

Onto the bad stuff - folks say the community is straight awful.  Like camping spawn points and shooting you, taking all your crap, and verbally taunting you while they do it. So, you literally can show up naked with a rock and a torch and a guy with a machine gun levels you.  Or an organized group appears with c4, destroys your house, kills you and takes all your stuff that you invested hours into.  

I chose a very low population server to try things out so I haven't run into many people, which I really like while I'm learning the game.  I find it really enjoyable overall.

Still $10 - give it a try if you want and I'll let you know what server I'm on, etc. They have a nice system where you can have your pals spawn in your base so its easier to get going if you are already established.  Games seeing updates weekly and I guess they are working on a level up progression system.  Its fun as is imo.