Diamond is doing an ama on reddit  http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1c4xth/ggbenq_diamond_ama/

He's m5's jungler (or ggu or w/e they are calling themselves now) and quite, quite, quite good.  AMA actually has some useful info and doesn't appear to be rubbish atm.

Re: Picking Teams

Sucks that it took so long... but it sucks worse wasting more time playing a stomp and then having people not amped on accepting in house invites in the future right?  If I'm going to be in a sorta team captain role, I'm going to have to insist on one person dividing up the players into two teams, and the other picking which one he wants to be on.  I'll either divide or choose, don't matter.

I just feel too awkward discussing the playing faults of my friends (or anyone for that matter) and I don't like being put in the position of saying "I'll trade you Player A for Player B" because if my team wins, it feels like it's because I essentially chose the teams in a way.  My method isn't perfect, but it's at least fair and expedient.

If that's not how you want to do it, it's fine... but I don't want to be in charge of balancing teams if it's not.

Re: Karl's Teamcomp Seminar

Karl, I respect your knowledge of the game and you make some great points.  I'm going to work on my champ selection top to try and get some more tanky people in my stable.

But.

It's strange you put the onus of losing those games on the champ selection of the top player.  In the first game you chose WW, a tanky "second in" champ when your team needed an initiator.  Why don't you learn to play J4?  Where's your Maokai at?  Not telling you what you need to play... but... ain't that what you're doing?

In our second game we had a poke comp and didn't play it well at all.  We didn't ban a champ that could easily dive us, and we simply just didn't have the teamwork and coordination to pull it off is how I see it.  If you see it as "Jayce is too squishy" was our main issue, I guess we'll just agree to disagree.  

Though to be fair, when they were running through us like nothing I really wish I knew how to play WuKong or something...

I can see why you would have trouble bring up people's faults, Thunder, but if people do not know where they are lacking then it will be difficult to improve. I myself love hearing what others think of me, but I can see why you guys might not want to broadcast the decision making process.

@Karl's teamcomp post

I see that as one of the two biggest problems I have noticed with this group. We almost never have good teamcomps, instead choosing champions we like that fit poorly in the composition. I think (even if it lengthens the time before a game) that we need to actually look at our team and decide a general comp instead of trying to counterpick and end up with an awful synergy,

The other problem being too many people trying to call the shots. We need to decide on the overall shotcaller before the game starts, and regardless of how awful the plays sound follow through with them.

but - jayce is too squishy.  I think I was 3 hitting you any time you got near me.  That means something if jayce has to be a front line champ and where you need to be is close enough for the adc to hit ya.  If he doesn't need to be front line, then hey, no worries.  I went through an I jayce phase playing him out of top lane only for awhile.  It gives you an incredibly safe lane with pretty solid kill potential - and really fun damage potential for late game.  I stopped playing him when I decided that he wasn't bringing enough to my team.  I could carry and play him how I wanted provided things we're even or in our adv.  If that wasn't the case, though (eg team is losing), ranged poke is not enough to justify having him late.  I think if you have a jayce, you actually need to have a comp that has an initiator and tank for him to work well.  But picking jayce removes the character that would typically tank.  Anywho, I actually really like playing jayce and he's fun to use, but that's why I stopped using him.

You and I should both learn how to play wukong.  I screwed around with him a bit ago.  Just need to learn how to lane him properly.  He's an excellent bruiser/tank/intiator/peeler.  I could play malph out of top lane all day... so freaking boring though... but usually worth it for the team.

re: creating teams - yah - I still really don't care how we get it done and agree with wanting quality balancing over quickest hit - still kinda wish we could do things faster - that's just me griping though - we really don't have to change anything.

@vlad - yah - I think we will all take some time and talk team composition before we play another and make sure we are on the same page.  That's really a big missing piece and we need to do it.

If you want me to pick early so that solo lanes can choose counterpicks, I can't also be held responsible when my early pick doesn't mesh well with later picks.  It is the job of later picks to mesh with early picks, not the other way around (unless people say what they want ahead of time, which people generally don't do since they want to counter pick).

Essentially, I can pick late, at which point I will pick based on the needs of the of my team, or I can pick pick early, and it is the job of late pickers to fill what the team needs.

In most games, I will go out of my way to pick early because our solo lanes want to play matchups.  In both games last night, I was picking second, well before my top lanes.  So I didn't know that WW wasn't going to work out in that first game since the pick was made early.

But my main point was that "jungler as the only non squishy" is often a fundamentally flawed teamcomp in most cases.  Basically, its asking a lot to get a jungler to do all that on a consistent basis considering that he is one of the poorest people on your team (top lane as only tank is a bit more viable, but still not ideal).

In the second game, I took a champion who is just as good as anybody (other than maybe Amumu) at being the only member of the front line.  But 4 squish+1 tank teams are usually going to have problems in teamfights.

There are exceptions to all this, like super poke teams, but that requires that the entire team is on the same page, and I need to know before I make my pick so I'm not Udyr or WW or something like that.  Top need not always be a tankier champ, but if they are going to go squishy, we really do need to know early so that mid or support have a chance to pick up some tankiness with their picks and so that I can make sure I am playing a champion that can handle that.

I'm also not saying that losses were all due to tops last night.  I'm just saying that team composition was one of many contributing factors (and really, it was a much bigger factor in the first game than the second).  Since it is also a relatively easy thing to improve on, I think that it is a good thing to discuss when talking about how we can improve team success rates.

skin price changes:  http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=11168003#post11168003

re-roll for aram queue per riot - good idea says pacov

While the random element is a really fun part of Howling Abyss, we also understand there are times you simply don’t want to play a particular champion. That’s why we created the reroll feature specifically for this queue. When you’re really not in the mood to play your particular champion on Murder Bridge, you can reroll and get a different random character instead.

Here’s how it works. As you play matchmade games on Howling Abyss, win or lose, you’ll earn points you can save up to purchase a reroll in champion select. You’ll earn a base number of points every match, along with some bonus points based on the number of champions you own. While there is a cap on the number of points you can store up, you’ll be able to reroll multiple times in a single champion select if you’ve got the points.

And don’t worry about wasting your hard-earned points on queue dodgers. If someone leaves your match at champion select, everyone in the game gets a refund except the player who dodged.

edit - i'm going to play an aram game on pbe in an hour or so with the new re-roll feature.

edit edit - max of 5 health pots on live in pbe soon

They re-enabled lissandra on pbe.  Anyway, I'll be playing/streaming an aram on pbe in about 10 minutes for anyone that is interested.  I'll probably be on my normal acct in about 45 min.

re: in house games yesterday.

In general notes:

   - cellone was kinda erratic. In game #1 he had a ton of really clutch bindings + shields + good farm (though Morg beats Ryze). Game #2 he just kinda farmed mid lane all game, pushed to tower, farmed wraiths, went oom, recall, "waste" TP to go back mid.

Although Lux + Anivia is a pretty stale farm lane, Lux has a bit more roam potential with laser, esp when she has TP. 

  - it's hard to balance teams when people pick characters they don't play much/at all (Gotnades plays Zed, Pacov plays Ryze) out of choice rather than because of strategic bans. 

  - in retrospect, the teams may have been a little stacked (if we consider Brad and Thunder golds because they were gold last season, the winning team had 5 golds each time, while the losing team only had 3 - while i don't consider gold to be everything, there is one particular silver player in the group of 10 that is a little below the rest of us. Additionally, even though Karl is a great jungler who absorbs a lot of bans, jungle is his only 'real' role besides Taric/Chogath). 

#1:

i don't think that game was 100% a problem with team comp.

If you had decided to use Malphite, you would have had nothing to kill the Kog (Morg shield shuts down Ryze). Trist is obviously pretty awesome end game too, but she still isn't a Kog. The bigger part of it was more that our comp countered yours: 

  Lulu v Warwick

  Morgana v Ryze

Keep in mind that Malphite is also a really shitty laner now, and that you would have drawn (at best) top lane. Although Zed fed in teamfights, he did really well in lane and ended up 30 CS ahead of Darius despite losing the game. Not to mention WW + Malphite isn't really enough damage to kill people top lane ganks, you can't gank Morg, which left only one gankable lane (bot). 

Finally, even though Morgana bindings&flashult + Trundle pillar is far from the best inititiaion, it was mostly just a matter of waiting until Morg hit a binding then going all in. Malphite counterinitiating a binding on a carry would have resulted in Malphite having to ult only 2/3 people and briefly be 1v5. We didn't spend much of that game sieging, so it's hard to value a flash + ult. 

#2:

Problem that game was Gotnades afk farming bot lane, and Lux afk farming mid lane with ult + TP on CD, while Jayce took tower early and tried to roam until he fell behind.

Purple team had an awesome poke comp (Lux + Jayce + Nasus + MF + Sona is a redic poke comp), but refused to group. Although we did have hard engage with Naut and Anivia wall + Anivia R to stall i think it would have been better to group and force objectives rather than farm. 

tl;dr Gotnades didn't play that great in either game, Cellone was inconsistent, people probably shouldn't play silly champs

re: increasing skin prices

i actually kind of like it. Honestly, all the (to be) 1350 skins have been on sale at least once, so if you cared about the skin that much, you should have bought it. Sucks for Zyra though. i expect that she'll have a skin really soon though.  

The target of this initiative isn't old players like us. We've probably spent a ton of money each, and we've been around long enough to easily take advantage of sales / bundles (remember that huge sale in January that put basically every to-be 1350 skin on sale?). 

It also means that new players can basically have a cheap skin for every single champ. 

There will be a much more enjoyable "staircase" of skins now (esp consider that most games cost $30-40 anyway which gives a decent RP budget, esp if you are willing to wait for sales).

You've got your entry-level 520/260 that pretty much everyone could afford.

You've got your 750/375 skins that are alright. Nothing special but it's still pretty affordable.

975 skins are pretty good nowadays anyway. It's certainly possible to insta-buy these skins when they are released.

1350 skins are basically those awesome "cheap legendaries" that are just really fun skins. Going on sale they aren't "too" badly priced, and it feels really fun to have these. It'll also lead to a feeling of exclusivity for the owner (oh man they must really like Lulu if they got Dragon Trainer). 

Legendary skins are legendaries

It's a much smoother progression, compared to today. You have some pretty sucky 975 skins (cough purple Zac), some awesome 975 skins (Hunted Maokai from Halloween). But it's still a much smoother progression that lets new players buy into the game a lot more.

The only thing i ask is either they do a huge sale the day the prices get raised (so you can buy all the currently 975 skins @ 675  if you really want as a final thanks). 

But even then... if you've been around this long and you liked a skin... should've have bought it. If it was too expensive then, still too expensive now, so it's a "neutral" for you. 

also holy shit pacov you bought 11 wards that game as Ryze (though you ended with at least 1 in inventory so don't get too grumpy ).

Also Trundle is good against single-tank teams so there is that (also if you had Malphite - lol Trundle ult. We did actually talk about the possibility of Malphite when we were picking champs so).

grrr... pacov goes to sleep annoyed after that last game.  looks at hedgies posts tomorrow.  night all

to be fair, 3 out of 5 of them were Plat IV. We only had one Plat V at 4 LP, so might be one of those "got plat and then lost a lot".

pictures make things easier - pulled from reddit

also

Players who purchased the Astronaut Teemo, Lion Dance Kog'Maw, or Piltover Customs Blitzcrank skins will be receiving a refund of 470 RP

playing ultimate bravery n streaming

message me in game if you want to play ult bravery w me.  link to site

http://www.ultimate-bravery.com/