Yeah, I can pretty much tell where it's going early on.  Either they suck, and blow the advantage I hand them, leaving me to walk my ass back across the map at an xp and cs loss over and over, or I end up having a massive assist score by the end of the game.

Yeah - that's the rough thing about shen.  Some characters are just begging for you to be on voice chat.  I was trying out kart again yesterday and sure, you can do well enough by just watching the map, but how much better would it be on a full team with someone calling for the ult in advance.  Seems like it would be really easy to set up kills with him... same deal with shen just by baiting for someone with low hp that knows you are on your way.  Or soraka's ult, etc. 

In that game I mentioned early with the troll yi on my team... I went from like 10/1/9 to 11/9/11 or so by the end of the game.  Would have been such an easy game if the guy had half a brain. 

RE:  kart - does anyone that uses him choose not to get mejias?  Seems like he's a character that you would be a goof not to take that imo.  As long as you aren't getting destroyed early/mid/late, you are sure to at least get some assist stacks from his ult and likely some kills.  Just curious - though I haven't really seen many of you bothering with kart.

I played fairly meh all night yesterday.  Think my best game was as a lane/roaming skarner.  I was considering jungling him, but I wasn't sure if my runes were sort for it, so I just laned it up.  He's still a lot of fun to play, anyway.

@ Pacov

Those were some lopsided games! Stupid AD Sion...

@ -Ue_Carbon

I love Maokai, but his ult is definitely hard to use. Sometimes I focus it more on my own team for the 20% dmg reduction or judge if the team fight is going to be retreating or moving forward. How do you build him?

I find it easy to use, and totaly awesome. Maybe the rest of my team is scared b/c of the swirlly FX's and just the sheer rawr of a living tree. *shrugs*

I usually go Rod of Ages first, followed by Ionian Boots of Lucidity, followed by Eleisa's Miracle. The rest of my build depends on other team, but usually Frozen Heart, Force of Nature, and Warmongers.

Typical tank build for me. Im sure it expensive and not perfect but, it works for me when I get a semi cordinated team.

I would really like to play him as AP caster one time...Oh the horrors he could do.

And playing this a Galio would be sweet to stack ults. Nuke the whole damn team.

Stacking aoe ult's with a proper Galio is just sick...

Yeah the solo queuing is not good.

It doesn't really matter for me yet, as I haven't started ranked games but I assume the problems are the same. I just went from 7/0 mid as fiddle vs cait + tower down about 15 mins in to 8/7 by the end of the game once team fighting started - and then the shit slinging started which is always fun. For some reason I find failing teemo's in pugs to be  the worst kind of trolls in general (or maybe twitch). I'll be up for team games but likely will be only able to play on weekends due to time zone crappeh.

screenshit butch...

Me = wants to get the team stuff going soon.  We really should be able to set a time sometime very soon, get on vent, and play a coordinated game.  We could do some normal games and then eventually get into ranked as a team.  I agree that solo queue is so hit an miss ranked/unranked.  It honestly seems like 1 of 3 things happens - I get the terrible player that feeds; the other team gets the terrible player that feeds; there is a semi balanced game.  It's probably like 45%/45%/10% for a break down.  I don't really feel like I've had many games where everyone was performing great on one team of another.  So then it just comes down to the question of if I get the feeder or the other team does. 

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be on some at some point tonight.

Side note - even though we don't have a ton of folks that actively participate in the discussion here, we certainly have a few lurkers.  Getting around 300+ hits per day. 

My other theory is that hedgie refreshes the page 290 times a day. 

Mejeis on Karthus is bad.  Generally Karthus dies A LOT because he is very suicidal, and him dying in a teamfight isnt bad due to the fact that he can keep on dishing out damage.  He just generally takes too many deaths to really be able to build up stacks.

Karthus's real value is his ability to take Dragon and Baron VERY quickly.  This is a big deal with higher ELO games where you dont get so many dragons and barons for free.  He is less valuable at lower ELOs and in more disorganized games where you can simply pick up jungle objectives by walking up to them. 

I try and race to hourglass with karth as he is targeted so hard.

Why is this? I find it easier with fiddle than karth...

His Q has insane single target damage and his AoE does a good amount to anyone who doesn't move out of it(Both of which makes his damage godly vs. Baron and Dragon). He can even secure them if he dies in a fight over them to the enemy team thanks to his passive. All fiddle has is drain which in a fight at either objective is interupted with ease.

I refresh the page about 10 times a day to see if anything comes up Pacov.

Late game, karts dmg output is insane.  You just walk by stuff and it dies.  I like fid a little better.  His ult is easier to be spot on with... you only need line of sight near you to pop a good ult.  With kart, you need solid full map awareness... so fids a little more effective for that. 

Anyway, I'm not really sure if I agree with karl re: meijas and kart.  I supposed I should just do the math.  Odds are he gets good stacks early/mid... mejia is like 1200 gold or w/e... so its like a temporary buff if you are expecting to lose it, but go up to at least 12 stacks... then it might be worth it... probably something good to sell mid/late if you are dying... but I think early/mid, it pays for itself for the extra dmg output on your ult/other abilities.  Anyway, that's my take.  Go mid as kart - get meija always - then adjust if you are sucking it up by selling or keep it if you are kicking ass.  Even a crap kart will probably have at least 6 stacks methinks. 

heh - shut it.  even if its true - I'm holding onto my hedgie 290 theory.

Last game of the night - we had TERRIBLE team comp, but pulled out a win... janna/bitz bot/AP yi mid/grag top (pacov)/jung chog.  Our dmg output was so crap the majority of the game.  At one point, I used my ult and tossed swain directly to my chogath when swain had 50% hp around level 7 and we couldn't do enough dmg to kill... It was quite miserable. 

I really hope swain comes up as a freebie so I can try him out.  I really need to get a feel for his abilities to be able to counter him (as I have no idea how often he can ult, etc).  I think the only reason we magically won was that their ash thought she could kill me multiple times (so I ate) and their urgot (thought he stuck with the team well enough) got manhandled over and over.  If they didn't have that urgot, we probably would have lost. 

I'm a little surprised we were able to win it. I died too much early game thanks to that Annie. She had over 1800 wins! Not even sure how that is possible. Fiddle had a few devastating ults on us. Cho is a pretty weak ganker when he doesn't land that knockup. It's hard to get good comps with randoms.

Swain can ult pretty much whenever the hell he feels like it, 10 second cd.  It's a toggled ability, a lot like defile, but with a progressive mana burn.  The cost gets downright horrendous if you use it for long.

So - who is a good combo to play with janna bot lane?  Seems like aragorn mains janna from the games I've played w/ him.  I'm just not sure who would be a solid lane partner for her, though.  Any thoughts?

2nd thought re: mejias and karth - So, essentially you are paying 800 gold for what will be a decent buff that likely lasts for a bit of the game.  But its 800 gold... which you could use for other items.  I'm not sure what the sell back value is, so I'm not really sure what the true cost would be. So, maybe its useful... maybe its not.  Math shall prevail if one of us ever does it.