Anyone watching/watched any of the Extreme Masters Tourny?

Ive learn a bit from it.

Shame most PUG's dont follow the feel of these.

so that 4 game IP bonus I mentioned you get for referrals - just played and won a game with it enabled.  Got 145 IP for that bonus alone.  Not sure if that's just a static number or what exactly, but if it is static, then referring a person that gets to level 5 gets you 580 IP.  Not exactly awesome, but its something anyway.

Random blahblah - so, I've been playing a variety of characters lately and am starting to get quite decent with several imo.  Been toying about in the middle lane with reasonable success (mostly as Brand).  Brand is excellent for team comp imo.  Very squishy if the other team can get at you in a team fight - but if they can't, the damage output is through the roof. 

Another character I worked on a bit (name elludes me atm, but she has a magician costume that you can buy and her ult is to cast any of her abilities a second time that does substantial damage - she also has a unique standard ability that makes her invisible for like .5 seconds and makes a duplicate appear in her place.  Anyway, she's awesome at nuking single targets and ok at chasing, but that's about it.  Super great for dueling and you can accomplish a hell of a lot if you are middle lane with meiji's soulstealer.  But if you don't rack up some early kills, I find her to be way too much of a waste.  She's excellent for roaming as well after level 6.  Anyway, seems HIGHLY dependent on those early kills (even without the soulstealer).  I think brand is a better choice due to being able to nuke AOE vs her ability to only nuke individual targets.  I really enjoy the playstyle with her, but its just not as good a choice as brand imo (if you had to pick one). 

Other random stuff - if i do get a chance to play a bit today, I'm only about 500 IP away from my 3rd health quint.  I'm looking forward to doing some jungling with that quint so I have enough durability to 1 side in like 5 minutes or so.  Without those quints, its pretty difficult to do so on many characters.  Anyway, I expect to start working my jungle again.  I played some with jungle trundle recently with quite a bit of success anyway; gotta say, though, jungling isn't my fav thing to do anymore.

AP sion - love it.  Was in a game with vlad and one of his buds the other day.  Vlad went tryn and his bud when ap sion.  At the end of the game, sion and tryn were soling their entire 5 man team multiple times.  They were even challenging the other team to meet in front of baron and whooped them there while we watched on and worked the lanes.  Anyway, this got me interested in playing some ap sion.  I've actually had alot of success with this too, though I'm still settling on the build I want.  Anyway, most games with me going AP sion have resulted in some pretty big wins.  That said, sion is currently my fav so I'll probably be playing alot more it. 

LeBlanc is the one you were trying to think of.  She is really strong early but really weak late, which means that not a lot of people like playing her.

AP Sion is somewhat easily countered if the other team knows what they are doing and suffers from the problem that he doesnt fit into the meta real well.  He generally doesnt have the burst to really do a good job against the tanky DPS/sustain that gets put top, gets outranged mid where you cant really use bushes, and people want to put ad carries bot.  Back in the day when people put squishies top a lot he was really strong, but now its tough to say where he should lane.  If you can convince an ad carry to go top, he is really strong in bot lane with the right teammate though. 

yup - spot on.  Be nice if they gave her some patch love. 

Re: AP Sion - I generally take the lane guesswork out of it.  I've just been beelining for bot lane immediately at the start - haven't had anyone complain to me about that yet.  Having a teammate that understands Sion's abilities makes it VERY easy to get early kills and get some additional AP into the build.  And having that stun is great for killing ults off (like kat, for instance).  Anyway, I've had mostly success - the only times when I've had issues so far is at mid during large team battles where I'm toward the front.  An 800 hp shield is great, but can only take so much nuking.

WTF with the hardcore nerfing on the Gunblade.

Not cool.  Outside of pure hybrids like Akali, I can't imagine being dumb enough to use one, and it's probably still sub par on anyone but Akali.  Bilgewater Cutlass is a lousy ass item, Blowing another 600 for a slightly better one isn't an improvement.  You're better off taking WOTA and stopping at a scepter till you can afford a Bloodthirster, it was already a hard choice to make.  Now it's just plain sub optimal, instead of just a long time coming in usefulness.  An end game item for when someone else already has WOTA.

At the normal ELO you are around people dont really care much about lane assignments.

Once you start playing ranked (assuming that you can get to a reasonable ELO), people will NOT be OK with AP Sion beelining bot and you will get yelled at for doing it.  Generally there is a lot of discussion of lane assignments before and during the picking process.  Most AD carries will not be OK with being forced out of bot lane (with the exception of Caits), which makes playing Sion more difficult.

In normal you can do whatever you want really, but its a different beast in ranked where people are trying a lot harder, which means maximizing lane assignments. 

quick caveat before this picture - we got destroyed in the previous game (we were mostly just randomly mixed in the previous game, but my team got whooped).  That said, look at all the DG folks playing up some LOL.  We did 2 5v5 in house games tonight.  Was alot of fun.

Pacov - you might want to think about building Lichbane after Deatchcap on AP Sion.  It greatly increases his damage output since he is one of the few casters to get into melee range.

yeah spend your 16.7k gold smarter next time

oi guys i play LoL too!!.......am level 28 but cant say how skilled i am, winning a few, losing a few ....pretty good with chogath and kogmaw (too bad they nerfing him)

Well, to be fair, I went pretty far from what I do in normal games with sion, though.  I typically don't get angel or the veil on this build, I just chose to because we were pretty far ahead and felt like we needed a little more tankiness to end the game.

But that said, I don't ever get lichbane after deathcap on my normal build, so I'll give that a go and check out the stats.  Thanks. 

You are welcome to join in if you like.  Add me (pacov).  I'll get you into a some games if you are on when I am.  I'm in EST and typically play between 7pm EST and 11PM EST or so weeknights and fluctuate quite a bit on the weekends. 

I'm really starting to jones about forming a competitive team.  The idea of having a badass team and actually competing in tournaments becomes more and more appealing. 

I think its about time for me to start playing ranked solo queue.  Question - can you play a ranked game with just 1 of your buds?  Eg I invite someone to a lobby then launched?  Or is ranked solo play truly all random people without any of their pals playing?  Can you only play ranked 5 man games if you have 5 of your buds?  never done it so I'm not sure how it all works.

90% sure you can duo-queue for "solo".