I recommend for all new people at LoL to finish second tutorial match. It gives some nice info + ~500 IP. However it only works for people below level 10 (maybe 10th also) and only once.

*looks at doggu*

Whats Doggu's LoL name?  Someone playing on the Aussie time zone who won't get me matched up with all level 25-30 people might be my ideal laning buddy.

Sorry Thunder , but you did well all things considered.

I've been gone a while. What's with the new "Champion Level" stat?

I have no idea, louist.  One of these pros might, though.

Just had a very gg.

[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/7/lolhpx.png/]

You can press and hold the tab key in game.

You may need to click on enemy chars to update their items but you can do this quickly on the mini map I think. Then when you die hold tab and check them out.

Summary of nerddom today:  5 games or so with sarmis - destroyed everyone on all but one.  1 game with cow.  We lost.  Cow swore off playing with me or sarmis or something as we had a retarded team.  I destroy in a pug.  I team up with wallstop and his crew (wallstop is higher ranked than anyone you know).  We get destroyed.  Wall says it would have happened either way with our team, but I feel like I was too crap.  I was 1v1 as akali vs the best tryn I've ever seen.  Got destroyed more than few times, but started playing cautious to not feed.  Not a gg.  Anyway, maybe I'll jump back to tryn at some point.  really impressed by the last person I saw playing him.  Literally tore me to shreds... consistently. 

Kinda how I feel when I play in a premade with... well, anyone.  It is a little bit touching when people lie to be nice.  Speaking of which, thanks Shiro.  

Anyone got any advice on who I should be playing around with until I get level 20 and can buy runes?  I feel I can't efficiently jungle that well without them so Warrick is kinda out unless I want to lane with him.  Everyone and their mother wants to play the ranged Carry and my favorite Champ Urgot is good at preying on them early/mid game... but since everyone in my team wants the mid lane its kinda hard to take advantage of a 1v1 matchup in pug games.

I found that I could jungle just fine with nocturn without runes - perhaps unlock him next (or puchase the melee dps bundle like i did ).  Anyway, as long as you get a leash, and cast a health pot almost immediately, you'll be able to take out blue without an issue.  Then just keep popping those health pots as you continue to jungle.  Oh - and I think you should wait to finish the kill using smite on blue.  You'll get like an extra 5 gold for it and its safer to wait (imo) in case someone is counter jungling you. Then, ofc, there are other routes (start on golum or wolves), but I'm pretty confident you can easily jungle with nocturn (its easier than with amumu anyway with no runes). My amumu route didn't even go for blue until later (I'd start at the enemies witches, then goto our wolves, then to our witches, then to golum, then base - quick shop and then blue, etc).

I'd say just play who you want and spend some time learning how to jungle.  About 90% of the games I play in pug do not even have a jungler, so you can typically go that route.  Then, I'd suggest working on tanks.  Seems like the least favorite roles are tank/jungler based on what I see folks playing.  Or you could go the route I'm going and just play whatever the crap you want to (currently working on akali as a main)... this is what pretty much everyone seems to do in pugs regardless of what the best team composition would be.  We could do a short custom game if you want (you and me vs 2 AI or w/e or we can just queue up together for a match and I can walk you through exactly how to jungle without runes in vent).  Took me like 10 games to do it properly, but I've got it down.

Sarmis (he's an old dg player that I've been queing up with as a 2 man pre) had some really useful tips for me also.  CS (creep score) is very important.  We already know that.  But monitoring your CS is pretty important.  You can do this by pressing tab.  You never really think of it if you have a nice AOE for farming, but if you don't or are forced to stay at range without an AOE, it becomes exceptionally important.  Here's how I was playing Akali.  I'd typically be soloing top.  So, I'd just last hit for a bit and go back and forth with whoever was in the lane with me.  Well, if its 2v1, last hitting can be a bit more challenging early.  Anyway, I'd last hit as best I could, but eventually would fall behind on CS (last hitting any creep gets you 1 CS).  If the creeps ended up being pushed a little too close to the enemy tower, I'd generally go on a run and attempt a gank at mid.  This sounded smart to me as it could be dangerous to push out too close to the enemy tower if I'm solo and dont have a ward going (I typically don't shop until I'm like level 8 or 9).  So, I'd leave the lane and go for a kill.  If I snagged a kill, then great - that's equal to like 16 cs.  If I don't get a kill (I'd get one out of like every 5 or so on early ganks), then I've missed all the xp and CS from my lane.  Anyway, I'd repeat this process, occassionally getting kills, but generally having a pathetic creeps score for it.  Anyhow, I'm going to adapt my style of play a bit and stay a bit more often in a lane and change the way I handle 2v1 matchups on top (if I'm soloing).  Bottom line is that I need to work on my cs alot more.

Had a much more respectable game for CS with akali.  I was in mid lane vs ezreal.

played a lot with sarmis and a few with futile emotion on their vent tonight.  Was quite a bit of fun.  Our last game was super entertaining.  I'll jibber jabber about it in the morning.  Night!

OK - so yesterday Sarmis invited me to jump onto his vent sever, so I popped over there and played some game with him and futile emotion. They were folks that played demigod as a premade back in the day with socialist ryan and I think another (can't remember off the top of my head).  Another old dg player jumped on the vent as well - hellabadass.  Anyway, we had several fun games.  One where sarmis had some ungodly amount of damge + crit stacks (think he had like 499 AD).  He was single hitting most of our opponents and dropping them to like 30-40% hp.  Was crazy.  Another game where he and I were the only players doing anything useful and managed to carry the team.  The last game, one that we lost, was the most entertaining.  We had a lousy player that just quit after 5 minutes or so.  We did so so for a bit, but then it was clear tha we were pretty well sunk.  It got to the point where we were trying to do the dumbest thing we could think of at any given moment.  3 of us were in vent and we had 2 pugs (1 of them quit early like i mentioned).  The other pug was good spirited and figured out the nonsense we were doing and then just joined in.  Towards the end of the game, I was threatening the other team that I was going to solo baron.  I'd go in and hit him a few times, then dive into 5 on the other team.  Then one by one each of us would flash in and hit baron and then die.  I add that at this point, we had like no inhibitors and half of 1 turret covering the base (eg the game was over).  Anyway, the guys on the other team were being funny and playful as well saying things like this after they died - "I can only kill 3 of you at any given time."  To which I respond, "l2p noob."  Anyway, it was just a silly good time with everyone being really good humored about it.  It's a bit rare to have so many good humored folks in 1 game, but everyone on our team (but the leaver) was cool and the same goes for the other team.

Oh - so I'm getting good with last hitting middle lane and being disciplined to stick with the lane.  I'm still absolute rot if I'm paired up in a 2v2 or a 1v2 in top or bottom, though.  I always end up getting aggressive and changing focus to one of the weaker characters and then neglect last hits... going to keep working on that.

My stats are getting much more decent with Akali, though, and I'm understanding when to dive and when to stay back MUCH better now. 

I'd love to learn to Jungle and how to Leash at least, so if you got some time I'd appreciate it man.  I don't care what everyone tells me, I started buying T1 runes so I can do better Jungling and just playing early game in general.  They're about half as good as the T3 runes I can't buy and cost a tiny fraction of the price. Plus I can recycle them anyway so whatever.

Yeah, it takes some getting used to, all the DG/LoL differences.  Feels like in some ways I'm ahead of all the other beginners strategy wise, but its balanced out by all my bad habits.

"2v1 next to their tower but I got a good chance for a kill... totally worth it!  Gottem!  Gotta get away... oh well, tower got me.  Huh.  I get a kill, and the champ I just killed got a kill as well and his friend an assist.   Ooops..."

Getting the hang of the differences though.  Harassed the hell out of an enemy squishy the other night and made their laning a miserable experience.  Had them zoned out most of the time, down on life so they couldn't last hit, was wonderful.  Then someone snuck up from another lane and helped him gank me.  Was bummed that all that hard work and aggressive play went to waste... but did it really?  I denied my laning adversary last hits and xp the whole early/mid phase and scored non-stop last hits myself. Think that outweighed my getting ganked mid game especially when you take into account the few fail attempts to gank me that wasted precious laning time.

That one game sounds fun... usually there's a mix of cool people and... well... you know how some are, so thats pretty rare. Generally I've been surprised at the general good naturedness of my allies and opponents in random pug games.