yeah - fair point.  Definitely something I hope they tweak quite a bit - spike the damage a little or at least keep the tower damage effect going until you've half capped.

Free alistar unchained skin:

http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/45610/t1685348-free-unchained-alistar-skin/

Worked for me.

Unlocked Kog tonight - he's on sale for like 400 or so riot points.  Figured I'd give him a go again as he costs about 6300 ip - 400 sounds like a decent deal.  Anyway, I disliked Kog in the past - if the person using him is crap at anticipating where someone will be, he's pretty close to completely useless.  But if you are good at that... well - that's where the fun begins.  Anyway, played 2-3 ai games to get the feel for him, then played 1 pug vs humans.  My team tore it up.  Game ended with me having a respectable 7 or 8 kills, 0 deaths, and X assist (can't remember).  Not bad for my first live game anyway.  I dig playing as kog (tonight anyway) and I understand the required playstyle.  For some reason, keeping a reasonable distance is easy for me with him.. and if I get up close mid or late, I completely shred whoever tries to target me (as I'm quite squishy early, I tend to get targeted mid/late thinking I'm still only good at a distance). 

edit - oh - and played 1 game of dominion with broken and obi - we tore things up.  I feel like I'm getting a decent handle on logical strategy for it.  I even get flame+exhaust on akali in this mode - something I'd consider idiotic in a normal game.  That way if I die, I can pretty much guarantee I take at least 1 one with me.  I certainly enjoy the freedom of being able to cut loose to knock off someone.  In normal lol, if 2 people are together and I try to pull that crap, I'm likely dead (if its a true 2v1).  In dominion, I can always lock down 1 and maybe even get 2.  Forces are split, so I usually don't have to worry about 1 player appearing out of nowhere.  I'm looking forward to trying out kog in dom next - I play him as support artillery, and being able to stop a catpure from a big distance is quite useful - its like having 2 gp's on a team (except I have an exceptionally low cd). 

Had some unique games last night.  I think we won all but 1 game (the last one of the night).  1 game was just nuts, though.  The enemy team had like sorka, 2 or 3 of them choosing heal as an ability, and almost all of them taking teleport.  Plus their team comp was something silly like 2 support and 3 AP or something like that.  Anyway, these goofs decide they are going to tank mid tower immediately.  They do a decent amount of damage here, but 2 of us were able to fairly easily hold off their entire time at level 1.  Anyway, the whole game was full of crap like that.  Just over and over with these weird pushes (and nothing they tried to do being all that effective.  We end up winning, but every one of us was like WTF after that game... as it was soo freaking strange.

Last game of the night was god awful.  I ended it with like 8 kills and 11 deaths or something crap like that.  What completely threw me (and still does) was how I was getting ganked multiple times.  It got very frustrating.  I was playing kog and this USUALLY means that i keep a good distance from most battles and use my artillery, or if there are just a few enemies nearby, I move in to support with AA.  Anyway, the enemy team has an ezreal and catches me, completely offscreen with his ult and kills me like 2-3 times.  And these were instances where I'm like far enough away from the battle with no line of site, but the bastard catches me over and over.  There's no CV on the other team (that I remember anyway).  Then this one time was just way over the top.  The enemy blitz is attacking our 2nd tower on the bottom solo.  I move up behind the forest stuff where he'd have no line of site and I was going to start wailing on him.  Instead, he uses his grab through the forest (no line of site) and nabs me and kills me.  This annoys me, so I get oracles elixer and look around for sight wards.  I don't find any.  Anyway, that's how the game went for me.  Constantly getting ganked because the enemy always seemed to know where I was.  Very annoying, especially considering how cautious I usually play with kog (eg - I usually end with 1 or 2 deaths tops - though, to be fair, towards the end of the game I stopped being exceedingly cautious).  Anyway, the team likely lost because of me and Pete (his stats were pretty damn close to mine).  I just got really frustrated with the "magic" ganks that were happening over and over.

Oh - and it looks like dominion is now live officially (no more beta)

A lot of the time you were firing random ults into the opponents.  Once they see that, they know that there is only a handful of places where you can see them well enough to aim close to them and still be in range.  So their Blitz was just guessing where you would be.  Its dangerous to give away the fact that you are nearby if they have champs like Blitz and Ez.

Anyway, that Riven who wasnt part of our premade cost us the game.  He was completely unaware of what was going on around him.  For example, I flash initiated a fight top as Annie, knowing that I would most likely die as a result.  But I knew that with the team around me, that we would kill them all with probably no casualties besides myself.  So I do my initiation...and Riven sits there farming and doesnt come to the team fight.  Since we had to fight down a person because of that, they won the teamfight (barely) instead of us beating them down.  He was doing stuff like that all the time.

But anyway, that stuff happens in normal at the ELO that we usually end up at all the time.  Its really drives me insane because I take a few deaths many games where I was anticipating that my team would do something different.  Sometimes its hard to go from a reasonably high ranked ELO to a fairly low normal ELO since how teams behave can be goofy.  But anyway, a lot of that will be fixed in time as people get more experience, so its just a temporary annoyance anyway.  I cause us to lose enough matches anyway since I usually try out new champs/builds in normal (jungle Akali did not go well last night, lol) and am therefore hardly playing at my best either. 

Well, the one time I was referring to I had not even fired my ult at blitz and was out of sight - I get your point though - was just annoying at how consistently I was getting killed off without line of sight.

I suppose so.  He certainly went off on his own a bit and wasn't all that helpful - still not all that excited about how i did any way.  Ah well, win some, get destroyed some.

I'm about halfway through level 29, so I'll be able to get in on some ranked games soon - I imagine I'll experience similar pain.

Their team was Alistar, Karma, Soraka, Ashe, and Tryndamere. 3 teleports 2 heals and 1 revive. That's all I can remember.

I

h a t e

d o m i n i o n.

Period.

I refuse to play it.

I love dominion. Just don't solo queue always 5 man it.

Yeeah...I mean I want to like it. Its fun in theory. But 25 games in and ive only won 4.... I know Im not that horrible but good grief.

Carbon - so here are the possibilities:

1. You are bad at dominion
2. Everyone you get matched with is crap (and you are good/decent)
3. Random crappy odds

If you think the problem is lousy teammates - we can fix that.  If you think your strat is crap, we can fix that by playing some games in vent.  All of that said, some people just don't like certain modes and that's all there is to say.  I've never played a single game on the 3v3 lol map because the folks I play with hate it.  Could be I'd love it, but I haven't given it a go. 

Anyway, I'm sure we are all happy to help out.  Pugging in dominion is ok for me (because I go strong FU character AKALI for this mode). If I played anything but a gank player, I would ALWAYS want to play with folks I know. 

Heya butch... Ok I'll give Dominion a go I guess - I didnt know it was live now. Seriously there are SOOOOOOOOO many griefers in LoL when you random pug it. And the shit thing is that if you respond in any way like leaving the game you are the one that gets cut = fail system for dealing with griefers.

Just my time zone means I'm not going to catch you or most dg players for many games.

When da hell is Dota2 beta gonna start so LoL can catch a venereal disease and die a slow painful death..

Ah - just like I never caught you for any Demigod games, eh? 

Last I read was that they were going to launch "soon" - my guess that translates somewhere over the next 45-60 days.  I think they indicated it would start having a wider beta invite in the meantime.  Just don't expect the griefing in dota2 to be less than what you encounter in lol. If anything, I'd wager it will be worse.

"/ignore all" should solve any issues you have with people being obnoxious. 

Played a bit yesterday.  Think I played a couple pugs in dominion, then the rest in normal 5v5. 

I'm not quite as excited about dominion as I thought I'd be.  I think its fun and I like that the games are short.  I think you get the same roughly the same IP if you win or lose.  Anyway, I'm going to stick with the formula of playing it from time to time and play normal games for the majority.  I agree that playing with friends is superior to pugs in dominion, though. Anyway, several fun games and got to play with carbon again, so good stuff.