butch....

answer my ryze question and stop being a feral cat...

For Ryze, the Ult doesn't work off AP.  Only the other three abilities have AP scaling, and q is only .2.  It's all but pointless to run up just AP for Ryze, because that q is the one you're going to be doing most of your damage with, it has a 3.5 second CD.  The e and r aren't terrible, but they aren't good either.

Where it really gets tricky is that you can drop your cd's by one with each cast, so that q needs to be cast as often as possible.  At 70 a cast, you'd need huge mana regen to keep it going frequently enough to see the benefits from your passive.  By building mana, and using an Archangel's Staff, you can do both, and make your q and w immensely powerful, which in turn makes your r all the more powerful as well.  The only ability that doesn't gain immensely from building mana, is e.

A Tear should be your first purchase.  You'll get more spell damage out of Ryze from 4k mana than you will 500 AP, and 4k mana is a hell of a lot easier to get, and will come with half that AP anyway.

Archangel's Staff, Rod of Ages, Frozen Heart, and Banshies Veil will make you downright tanky, and give you more damage than you'd manage stacking AP items without armor.  Not t say a Rabadon's isn't a nice buy after your mana pool hits the 4k range, but you want to stack mana for that 3.5 second q to hit like a truck at 8% damage from max mana.  With such a fast firing ability, you can get the max stacks on the Archangel's staff a lot faster than most as well.

ok thx... this is the idea I have been working on and the items you suggested are what I pretty much get. I just don't seem to get much out of the ult at all - even when the person targeted just sits under the aoe until it expires in the middle of a creep wave - like no damage at all. It needs to be buffed. I guess I need to start looking at the tankiness of Ryze aswell as the damage. I do spam the q as often as I can...

Not relevant to any games played recently, but I'm seriously thinking of having a "I blame doggu" t-shirt made.  I mean, c'mon.  That's good stuff even if it means nothing. 

edit - looking for suggestions on tweaks to my ram build as a jungler.  See my last few games.  Anything you see as off or something you'd suggest?  I don't need playstyle suggestions - i get that - just build suggestions.  I'm using a VERY HEAVY armor build for runes, etc, and masteries. 

Let me go on a little rant here.  If you want to ignore it, thats fine. 

The easiest way to win a game of LoL is to play as a team.  Now I realize that in normal we all play more loosely and try out weird champs.  But even so we need to look at playing as a team in game more.

Once the game the laning phase, you have to realize that if you leave your team you are basically saying "the other 4 of you cannot cross mid".  You are really hosing your 4 teammates by either getting them killed if they get in a fight without you, or you are forcing them to play ultra defensively.  Plus, your team can't achieve team goals (pushing towers, controlling  jungle objectives) because 4<5.

So I guess that what I'm saying is that you need to be conscious of what you are doing if you go and do something on your own.  And you have to decide if what you are doing is worth basically forcing your 4 teammates to do nothing.  Killing wraiths is not worth freezing up your 4 teammates.  Neither is killing 10 minions top or whatever.

Now there are times to split off and farm it up even in mid game.  But as it is somebody always seems to be doing their own thing, which hoses the rest of the team.  Either everybody should be doing their own thing (which should be rare) or you should be with the team in general.

Now I know that there is such a thing as split pushing.  But the bottom line is that it is MUCH more difficult to actually win via split pushing as opposed to just getting together as a team and beating face.  In games that arent incredibly organized, its just easier to get in a blob and crush something.

Split pushing is tough because you are really counting on your 4 teammates to not get caught (1 gets caught for any reason and your team is hosed hard) and you have to be able to efficiently push towers without getting caught.  You should NEVER be split pushing if you can't efficiently take down a tower.  For the love of god, dont split push as Annie or Janna or something like that.

So yeah, I guess my general point is to not get into these games where 1 person is perpetually wandering off to kill 10 minions top, or to buy something, or to kill some wolves or whatever.  Its not that its always the same person who is leaving, but if each player leaves the team 20% of the time, you will almost never have 5 people together as a team.  I just think that games would go a bit better if we spent a much higher percentage of time playing as a team and not playing as individuals. 

I dont want to whine at people too much because I know that nobody likes that, but I really do get frustrated when I get locked down by my own team from about the 20 minute on because somebody is always doing their own thing.  The last game tonight there was a 10 minute stretch toward the end of the game where I literally couldnt do anything even though I was semi fed because there was no team.  I just had to tread water in mid watching somebody clear something in another lane, and its really frustrated to be locked down like that. 

Pacov - I like how you build Rammus in general, but I like building HoG a lot and Philo Stone not so much.  Rammus really needs the HP from HoG anyway since he is a low HP/high armor tank.  Plus HoG builds into Randuins which is still a good item even after being repeatedly nerfed.

Very well explained. And this is why i almost never played 5v5s and have pretty much stopped playing LoL altogether. A team game where, from minute 10 (or even earlier) on, you HAVE to stay together with all your teammates, and it all revolves around who wins the clusterf*ck 5v5 teamfights are holds very limited interest to me.

I know, i'm simplifying it a bit, but in the end that's basically what LoL games are all about. I guess it's a (sad imho) testament to the state of online multiplayer videogaming.

/whine mode = off

I was frustrated by that game as well and it is mainly from things that I don't think are that hard to fix. It's all about prioritizing and thinking in terms of the team. Clearing a creep wave only benefits you, unless the tower is getting hit hard. Killing the dragon gives the team 950 gold. If there looks like a fight could happen at the dragon, you should already be on your way there.Defending a low hp tower probably isn't going to help as much (although I'm guilty of that too, but I can shield the turret )

If their whole team is there and there are only 3 of us there you can't just engage and hope for the best. Trying to steal the dragon is fine, but there is a good chance that person will die. You should safely try and help that person get away, but NOT engage. Better to have the one person die than all three. It's all or nothing really, especially late game when it's easier to get caught. Just let them have it and avoid a big push.

As a support, I'm going to try and do all I can to help you get away. The problem is, you need to know when to start running. Hesitating gets us both killed. I'm happy to sacrifice myself for another player so please, abandon me (I'm assuming you are atleast 1/2 health).

Another thing is when ganking, pay attention to how healthy your co-gankers are. You might be at full health, with red/blue, but if I have no mana, I really can't do much. Lay on some damage, don't push the advantage too much unless a kill is certain and then cover the lane briefly if needed.

It's not all bad though. I learned some valuable things. Janna and Malz aren't the best combo for team fights without good timing/communication. Janna's ult can't blow people out of Jarvan's terrain. Fizz is really annoying to play against with Janna, because I.can't.@(*#@.target him with tornado. I'm still working to improve my timing on ults. Sometimes it isn't enough to be slightly in front of someone to knock them back which is super annoying and hard to judge. I also think there may be a slight delay in the knockback(can any Janna players verify this?) I think I had a few decent ults. Maybe I should be building more AP? I find Janna more useful if she is able to tank a little and live to cover escapes though. 

Sorry if I sound preachy. I think there is lots of potential to make a solid team here. We just have to organize better, which also comes with more experience playing together. Sorry if I snapped at anyone.

More runepages!

course.... you have to pay for them... but still.

screenshit butch

Well, you eventually get to a point that the whole team understands when to split up and farm and when to be together.  Its just that you have to have a solid foundation of understanding when and how to play together before you can add the complexity of knowing when to split off to farm gold/xp.  Basically I'm saying that our understanding of how to play as a team isnt good enough to play like a very good team where the players are able to split off a lot more and still be together as a team when need be.  CLG doesnt have to be together as a team very much because they understand when and how to break off and how to quickly get back together.

For example, right now we have people just randomly clearing waves or grabbing minor objectives.  Its like the team will be saying we should set up at baron to stop them from getting it, and one person goes to clear bot real quick and another person goes to grab blue and tells the team to wait.  In the meantime the other team plows through the baron before the people who left can get back.

Or the one we had the other day.  We cleared baron and had the buff.  So we all gathered mid well past the river and were ready to push.  Then one person said they wanted to go B to buy an item.  Thats just not a good choice to leave the team there.  You are locking up 4 people on your team for over a minute each with a baron buff to get 40 AP or whatever.  Those 4 people now have to sit around doing absolutely nothing for a minute because one person left.  Its just not worth it.  That kind of stuff is just killing our teamwork because somebody is always doing stuff like that.  Its not one person, but like I said, if everybody does this 20% of the time, we are basically never going to be together as a team doing team things.

Once we get used to being together more as a team people will start to figure out when they can break off to quickly grab a buff or clear a wave.  But right now we just spend almost no time together, so we need to establish that being together is the norm, not the exception. 

I'm thinking of making the t-shirt and then touring the US, having my picture taken at various landmarks. 

For your part, I fully expect to see pics of "screenshit butch"

W does not do a lot of damage to a single target.  Single target hits from 4k mana and 300 AP would only be 235, from q it would be 520.  W only dishes serious pain when in a tight group of enemy champs, where they get nailed by the direct hits.  Splash doesn't make the spell equal killer damage values from some of the more dangerous single target nukes.  It does mean late game Ryze with Will of the Ancients can drop three thousand hitpoints off the enemy team and take himself from near death to full health inside two seconds.

Your real boost from the ult against a single target is going to be the spell vamp.  You can walk right up to a Kog or something, bitch slap him in the face while he's snared and chewing your ass down, and walk away from the creep wave at full health.  You can kill the typical carry with your second q almost as fast as you can cast it after initiation, picking up a thousand hitpoints from your w during the interim.  With a CD under 3 seconds, q is back in action almost immediately after casting w and e.  Your burst damage is horrendous, your sustained damage approaches AD carries.  Throw a Lich bane into the mix, and you're pretty much alternating AA's and q's for 400+ damage when team fights start, with the full treatment every eight seconds or so from w and e.  Things die fast.

I don't play LoL, but I saw something rather funny...

My friend was playing as Fizz and was getting absolutely raped by the opposing team, so he tried to take on their Kog'Maw in order to get an easy kill. He took one step to Chum the Waters and died from a blur of autoattacks...

Their Kog'Maw had 4 Phantom Dancers and an Infinity Edge...

I don't know how the equip for LoL works, but my friend thought that it was rather hilarious...

Is this even a viable strategy?

I've actually been just getting into Kog since he is free this week. 4 PDs on anyone shouldn't happen. He had to have been insanely fed/farmed to even afford that, assuming the game didn't drag on.

AD Kog is usually a fairly typical Ranged DPS build: AS Boots, Inf Edge, PD, Last Whisper, BV, situational. I went 16-8-18 once I got the hang of him last night. Some people prefer to rush Madreds, but I think it is too expensive going into mid game. Late game vs warmog's would be sweet though.  

He is really squishy, has no escape mechanism and the W range nerf hurt him, but still a great champ from what I can see.