Random pacov jibba jabba.

By and large, I've really been enjoying my time in LoL lately.  With pals or solo.  Often solo.  Currently working on mid laners and a little bit on the jungle.  Seems like I'm going through pretty quick rotations now on what I roles I'm feeling proficient in.  Usually when I decide to work on a role its because I fee like I'm crap at the role.  Now I'm kind of getting to a point where I'm feeling more and more confident, so I'm picking roles based on what I can carry out of or what sounds fun to me.  Still learning, but I'm developing an ok skill cap on ori now. 

I managed to avoid tilting last night.  I was playing a few games with hunnybadger/karl when a madcast affiliated fella wandered into my chat room looking for a game.  I chatted him up and invited him to play as I'll often do when I notice someone in my chat channel.  Anyway, he joins us and plays support.  That goes fine for game 1.  Game 2, he decides to go teemo top and gets crushed.  I note that I'm getting really, really pissed off.  Not just due to a new guy taking a good role, running teemo, and getting stomped, but I'm having issues in lane as I'm working on a mid I'm not really good at (xer).  I've done similar things to your peeps, so save your breath fellow nerds.  Anyway, I handle myself ok I think.  I, noting that I'm getting to the point where I'm going to start complaining and then bitching and so on, mute ts (in/out).  I do my best in a losing game, pop back onto ts and say gg catch you fellas later and take a few min break. 

After that, I fire up LoL again and play a game with karl... in which we have ranged adcs and no tank.  We end up losing, but I was able to recover from a near tilt, which is pretty good for me. I go on to play 1 more game solo as j4 jungle and I do a pretty good job overall.  Tilt recovery is a pretty great thing for me.  My pattern is typically to tilt, get other folks worked up because I'm tilting, then they fuel the fire, and on it goes.  Managed to step outside of that.

Oh - and I super want to play ranked now... BUT - I'm having a little anxiety.  I'm like 0/3 after placing in plat V.  I really, really, really don't want to get demoted. Which, AFAIK, could easily happen with just another loss.  I really don't know how that works, so I'm a bit nervous.  Getting demoted (never happened to me in any tier as of yet...) sounds quite awful - EXCEPTIONALLY awful if its from Plat to gold and you have to redo your best of 5.  So, I'm really hoping I can get a couple wins soon... which should end my anxiety. I'm going to get more and more on edge if I lose another.  I probably just need to get over it though and press on.  I'm actually starting to feel like I would prefer to play ranked more than norms now... barring that SOB for the love of god win the next game. 

also - pete is in his promos from silver V to silver IV

Yep, the change is in.  Don't play weak early junglers in ranked any more.  Udyr and Pantheon should be monsters now though.

Man thats a terrible change.  But I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be able to absolutely murder people with a counterjungling Udyr now.

Patch notes are up.  The first machete upgrade is 100 gold more expensive.  So going back after 3 camps is not an option any more.  You have to do at least 4 camps, which can't be done on a lot of champions without a fairly reasonable leash (unless you start taking weird runes like Lifesteal, which messes you up later).

Am I reading this wrong?  fizz's w is as follows.

W - Seastone Trident

ah - ok re; fizz.  makes sense and thx.

peter finished his promo series in silver V and was bumped directly to silver III.

She only has one AD ratio and it's bonus AD...

It's 220% bonus AD.  Sure, she only has one, but for an AD champ with an epic 70% AS booster that already scales amazingly, 220% AD on an AOE is a pretty huge thing.

AP Trist at least had to rocket into the enemy team to do a large part of her damage, AD Trist doesn't.  AP Trist was only a nightmare when she was fed enough to one shot people and jump back out immediately.  AD Trist can run without a purely defensive item and stack up 400+ AD on a fast attack speed to do plently of damage at range after she sets off her nuke, and at 220% bonus AD, that charge is going to do somewhere north of 800 AOE damage as soon as she gets through firing off her 2 per second 400+ damage shots.

She's Graves with a skill reset, higher range, and better mobility.  She's going to be OP as fuck, which is Riot's usual modus operandi anyway.  They specifically nerf her AP ratios at the same time to prevent her being a high mobility burster that can chunk people from perfect safety, for huge damage.  The irony is impressive.

yeah - we'll just have to see how it does in reality now.  Could end up being pretty strong and obv adds a new mechanic (ala zilean bombs - delayed explosions outside of full stack). Her being able to cast the explosive shot on tower or an even larger aoe pop is of interest as well.  That should make laning a little more interesting as well.  Anyway, we'll have to wait and see.  Could be really strong... might not be so much. 

So I think I am going to start banning Katarina. I have laned vs her in my last 3-4 ranked games and have lost every time. Not sure if people are just that good with Katarina or what. It is nearly impossible to outplay Katarina late in the game when she can kill you in fractions of a second. Early game doesn't even matter. Sure you can make her life miserable for a few levels but it doesn't matter when she hits 6 and roams the rest of the game. Not sure what her win rate is right now or how popular scripting is with her but I have seen SO many highly skilled Kats lately its unbelieveable.

My current 3 bans:

• kat
• ahri
• leblanc

Katarina's mid and late game are absolutely out of control.

Ahri is so safe in lane its not even fair. She pushes harder than most farm mids with her low CD Q and the damage it does. The sustain she gets from her Q is also bullshit. As soon as you get some nice harass down 2 Q's laters shes full health. 4 flashes make her nearly impossible to kill without chain CC or her making a terrible play. Her kill potential at 6 is through the roof.

Leblanc has a fairly safe lane phase since she can still do about 1/2 your health by level 4 if you get to close. Her mid and late game just becomes 1 shotting people with strong roam capabilites. Regardless if you shut her farm down she will still be problimatic from roams. It takes literally 1 kill to get her rolling

Atleast with Fizz you can sort of out play him especially if he uses trickster to CS. Zed is easy enough to live through his ult if you can get far enough away from him so he doesn't deal damage while you are marked since the mark itself doesn't do THAT much damage by itself.

All of these champion share the same problem. They snowball so hard its nearly impossible to stop them.

copy/paste from reddit re: the jungle change:

In response to the jungle changes (namely the increased gold for tier 2 items) I just wanted to remind people about your friendly little crab in the river.

People seem to forget about this little bugger in the early game, and a lot of folks who do remember him have some original release woes of when his healthpool was bonkers.

Fret not my friends, he's really easy to kill early game now! Even easier if you have any form of CC in your kit!

Crab has 750 HP and 60 AR/MR at the beginning of the match. In addition he takes 25% extra damage when CC'd. He spawns at 2:30, right after your first buff clear/second camp if starting golems/gromp.

Crab provides the following benefits:

• 50g+15g from machete (Why hello again first B potions)
• 35 EXP to offset the time spent killing the creep (For comparison first blue gives 100 EXP and his sentries each give 50)
• Vision to respond to early drag or ganks for bot lane (top to, but I prioritize bottom river crab).
• Makes it easier AND safer for your support to roam mid early when lane is shoved.
• Bonus 30% movespeed when crossed for 10 seconds (12 seconds with runic affinity mastery) which is excellent for both the above mentioned roaming and invading the enemy jungle to ward/steal wraiths/wolves.

haha - do it karls!  What, you don't think its cool to be running around out there with low hp and to also use some cc to speed things up? mmmm...

I don't think you have enough money for the jungle item on 2 camps and having just 1 pot with the 100 gold increase.  I think you could do that before the 100 gold increase.