Yeah... old man pacov really shouldn't stay up super late and then head in to work on 3 hours or sleep.  Not such a good idea.  What I wish is that we could get our games going earlier.  That said, I was really happy we could have have those in house games.  My fav.  I think we all would have been on board to finish the best of 3.  I just generally try not to start a game after midnight on week nights. We've sadly been trending towards starting in house games around 10:30-11PM EST, so my time gets a bit limited.

I've never really seen a blue ash build before.  That definitely did not help the cause, but we were working them over pretty well.

I shoulda banned irelia... bryff running away from giving me a penta kill.  bush league.  Anyway, yeah, I was super pissed that you folks handed us our arses in game 1.  Getting to use my best adc did not bother me. 

I see what you did there.  Or if you didn't do that, I see what I thought you did there.

Uploading these both to youtube as I type.

Game 1 of yesterday's in house - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2752741

Game 2 - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2752755

duo'd w hunny and streaming some gold II ranked.

somehow managed to pull out a win with a spectacularly dull team.  Could not even fathom the logic of the hive mind... must have run down mid for no reason at least 3 times (already took their inhib, but no chance in hell of ending... and other outer towers still up). 

I don't have a jungle setup for eve where my mastery pages include the word "trol" and appp f u.  I do not. 

Anywho, I fugged around with eve tonight in a couple of normals.  Low skill cap on mr pacov for eve.  Semi successful.  Was completely amazed at the absolute shit leash I got both games at blue tho.  Game one it was down to like 1k hp when I was left.  Game 2 was slightly better getting it down to 600 or so.  Still kind of shitty.  Even worse that my setup is all about super early game ganks.  I couldn't do that at all in game 1 due to the shitiness of the leash.  Game 2 I was able to pull it off.  Anyway, I prob shouldn't play eve, but it was nice to mix it up in the jungle for a change for the night.  Hint - if we ever duo and I play eve in a ranked, I probably hate you. 

oh - and I only played 1 ranked game at gold II tonight.  Got a win and 35 lp... so if I keep that rate and can win 2 more games, I'll be in my promo for gold II to gold I pretty quickly.  I was a bit nervous to get this last game in as I had lost 2-3 in a row and hit 0 lp.  Not sure if I might have been demoted, but I'm glad we pulled it off.  Night all!

So, I wrote this some time back and wanted to revisit it:

pacov

reply 1

How do you get better in roles that you are not good at? - Well, here's what I do.  And this is really what I do on a regular basis.  I think about what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.  For instance, I realized that I don't play any hyper carry ads.  So, I read up on hyper carries like vayne and kog maw.  I look for guides on how to build them (most adcs are the same btw ), I look for vids on how people play them (eg how do I all in with a specific champ - is there a combo - when do I all in - what's the best way for me to burst - how should I behave in lane with this champ).  Then, I fire up a custom game and try out the mechanics of whatever champ vs AI.  Usually I learn a few tricks during that custom on how to position myself, etc.  Then, I'm off to normal games where I'll request the role or character I'm trying out.  Now, people still report your for being awful in normals, but it really is where you need to try out characters to see if you are any good or not as the bots are useless for proving your skill level to yourself.  So, fire up that normal and ask to play a role (again - after you've tried out the champ against bots).  If you don't know anyone you are with and you are quite awful, I suggest muting everyone at the start of the game.  Then, do your best.  Continue with this until you feel like you have a serviceable skill level in whatever role.  And keep in mind what you need to work on.  For me, I noticed I didn't really have alot of mids for ranked, so I started practicing some with gragas against and karth.  That way, I'll be able to get the job done if I need to play mid.  The next thing I need to do is put more time into being better top lane. Again, because while I prefer adc/support, I might need to play top for the team.  So, best to be ready for it.  Put your time in and practice roles. 

One last thought - there are certain things you can generally expect in ranked.  1 - if you are 1st pick, you generally can call whatever you want.  Common knowledge, I'm sure - but I'll add - CALL WHATEVER YOU WANT.  2 - if you duo queue, you generally can lock down both adc and support.  It works best if your adc is 1st pick, ofc.  I've bumped into like 10 random dedicated supports in all of my games of LoL.  People generally aren't going to call support. So, if you are 1st pick and duo'd, just call adc and then your duo partner can almost always get support.

OK.  So step 1 - get inspired.  It sounds a little lame, but here's how it almost always works for me.  I'll be watching someone play LoL and be impressed by how they did this or that.  It's typically me seeing someone whoopin on someone else.  This can happen in a game I'm playing in, but most typically happens when I watch higher level players in tourneys or on stream.  I don't typically check out vids like that on a daily basis, but I do take a look at many different vids per week and occassionally something catches my eye.

OK - so now that I'm properly inspired, I'll do some research.  If I was wowed by a certain player's performance with a given champ, I'll see if I can find a guide written by them or try to deduce their runes or build based on the vid.  Another great resource that I'm turning to more and more is www.probuilds.net.  It's just another site that shows player builds, etc, but the cool thing it does is that it appear to pull in top players builds by game.  So, you can search by the pro or by the champ.  For instance, I can search for ezreal.  It will pull up a good amount of pro players games where they took ezreal and you can see, at a glance, what they are all building, along with whether they won the game or not.  Then, you just click on a particular game and it provides you with the runes/masteries/ability order and even their very specific item order per shopping trip.  In short, its a very valuable resource.  Just knowing what a final item build is fine, but seeing when folks actually get various items is helpful. 

I'll continue this in a bit...

OK - continuing.

Now - what I typically pay attention to when I'm watching the vid or game that got me exciting to work on my skills with a certain champ, is how do they combo, what is their typical playstyle, do they have a strong engage, etc.  I don't theory craft any of this initially - I just look for solid play and then seek to emulate that.  It's kind of like when you see a fort pot riven.  Well, you play fort pot riven a bit differently than you would a normal riven.  For pot rivens will be hyper aggressive, typically running ignite, and be looking for any quick opening to kill you off quickly.  So, I pay attention to that playstyle and I see how they accomplish that and when they go ape shite for the kill. 

After I've done a little bit of studying, then its time to fire up a custom game against bots. 

AI match setup

Now, you can't emulate a real game regarding laning/playstyle.  Here are some tips, though.  If you want to practice mid, you can load a full custom game with as a 5v5 with bots on all teams.  Just head to mid and you will be 1v1 mid.  If you want to practice top, load 3 AI's on the enemy team and 1 or 0 bots on your team.  Your team's bot will head to bot lane.  If you have any other number of bots, one bot will go top with you and you won't be 1v1.  For practicing the jungle, well, you don't have any leash, so here's what I do.  I'll load the game 5v5 with bots.  Then immediately head to red/blue - wherever I'm going to start.  If you are in a lane when the bots start moving, well, they might readjust and you could end up with no one covering mid.  So, just be out of sight in the jungle and you'll have 1 ai go top, 1 ai go mid, and 2 go ai.  That doesn't really matter much - just an FYI.  Anyway, you don't have a leash, so you typically have to play your jungle a bit differently but can end with the same basic result provided you weren't going to do an immediately red/blue or blue/red gank.  Basically, I just pick machete + red pots and go directly to blue or red.  I'll smite immediately when it spawns and then cast a health pot or 2.  Once you clear it, just proceed to the smaller jungle camps while you wait for your smite to come back up.  Just work the jungle over.  Then, when smite is up again, smite the remaining big buff and clear the camp.  You should be in decent fighting shape at that point with good health/mana.  Then, just continue your jungle route.

OK - so why bother playing against AI at all?  Well, 2 reasons mostly.  1 - to familiarize yourself with the champ including what abilities you will get at what time, what you will shop for at what time, and, quite importantly in my mind, to get a feel for your damage output and what you can do.  If you don't have a good understanding of your burst, you are going to suck if you try to all in.  See, its often super obvious when you can pull off a kill - the enemy is low hp, flash it down, no barrier, w/e. You just go for the kill.  But what about if you are top or mid lane and the guy you are laning against has 400 hp.  Do you know for sure that you can kill them early game based on your potential dps?  You probably don't unless you are very familiar with the character.  Anyway, in short, the bot setup is great for figuring out your early game damage potential.  That's something I'd always prefer to know going into a game instead of learning on the fly.  It's also excellent for working on last hitting with a champ you aren't familiar with.  Also something that is very good to know before playing a normal game. 

Now, I'd think it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway - bot matches don't really make you are better player.  Oh great - I just got 42 kills in my bot match.  This means both jack and shite.  Bots are stupid and 100% predictable.  If you play enough bot matches, you can easily pick out the patterns.   Kill a tower and the AI will drop what its doing to swarm to that tower.  Do this, ai does that.  Racking up kills means nothing and those kills don't really translate over to normal games because people generally aren't that freaking stupid. 

Anyway, to summarize this section, I think its a great idea to fire up a custom game against bots to try out new builds/characters or refresh yourself.  You can get a good idea early game of your damage potential, can practice last hitting, and can practice combos, etc.  Outside of that, the bot matches aren't all that useful for training imo.

Theory crafting

Well, this still fits a smidge in the AI match section to some degree, but its a lot more work, but is exceptional at improving your understanding of the game, items, abilities, and characters.  The goal is to find the best possible build, ability order, runes/masteries, shop times, item purchase order, for a given champion.  The complexity occurs when you try to do that in detail.

So, we'll start with a basic general premise and build from there.  Good players likely have some idea on what they building and why.  This isn't always the case, but you see certain setups become the standard.  A 21/9/0 adc is likely the most commonly accepted adc setup.  Most folks know this so they simply emulate it because that's what X player does and he's good.  With further thought, you see why X player chooses that setup.  You see the benefits gained from these points in the mastery tree over that point and come to agree with the setup (provided you thought things through this far). 

Ok - so then you get into alternative adc setups.  I've played and tested out 2 variant adc setups with mixed results.  One is a setup that doublelift often runs on a vayne where you go 21/1/8 and get bonus cooldown reduction on your summoners.  You trade off early game tankiness for increased odds of winning a fight after you've burned the enemy summoners as your summoners will be up more quickly.  This setup is best if you are confident you can outplay a particular player.  BUT - you maintain the same AD burst potential.  It's a situational pick.  Another setup I tried was X/X/X (can't remember, but went pretty deep into support maxing out the greed setup).  The advantage to this particular setup was primarily for early/mid.  You extra money would allow you 1-2 pots (can't remember) and potentially a biscuit.  This = more sustain in lane and better recovery if you blow it.  The bad tradeoff with this is that your damage output  is lower late game as a result.  For me, this was a decent setup at one point while I was weaker as an adc.  It gave me enough staying power to safely farm and potentially lock down a kill.  PLUS - added money for more quickly buying items. 

Anyway, my latest theory crafting experiment was all about Galio.  What peaked my interest was the horrible thing that brad was doing to me when I was goofing around with ap corki.  He took galio and came up with a basic setup that pretty much completely countered my silly arse corki build.  The concept is that galio's bulwark combined with spirit visage provides a stupidly ridiculous amount of healing, particularly if anyone uses dots like liandrys against him.  With corki, that pretty much meant that every 4 seconds I'd be healing him past any possible level of burst.  It was sick.  Anyway, the underlying concept started with figuring out if galio with spirit visage would be practical in a normal game and under what circumstances.  I won't cover all the details here, but through theory crafting, I figured out the optimal runes/masteries, the optimum ability order, and a good chunk of the best itemization for him, and general rules re: when to play pick him.  All of that took many custom games and quite a bit of thought of where galio fits in a team comp.  But, as a result, I know the champ pretty much inside and out and my skill level with him has improved tremendously. 

Game Time

After all that (I don't always go so deep as to theory craft up a storm, mind you - its pretty time consuming), I fire up a normal and try out what I've learned/crafted.  Based on the results, I might adjust this or that.  Normal games are very useful for better understanding when you should buy what item.  For instance, on galio, I learned that I would always rush chalice, but there is some flexibility immediately after that for a certain period of time.  Anyway, that's about it.  Thanks for reading.

Other random stuff...

So - when I run support, I'm typically going 4 greens, 1 pick, and depending on champ, a blue and a red pot or getting 2 of the same.  I think this is pretty optimal for most supports now.  This start usually results in vision dominance.  What I like to do is actually use one of the green wards to ward for jungle and mid.  If you are the blue side, you place it at the river entrance towards the top.  This is extremely useful for giving your mid added protection if they didn't start with a ward or giving them the option to ward the other side or just refresh the ward when its down.  In addition, it helps you see if the enemy is counter jungling so you can quickly respond to stop them. 

Other things - if you are running a support like leona (somtimes sona), I recommend starting with health quints.  The extra durability is great and you an still do the 4 green ward start if you like.

Last, be very thoughtful where you put your 1st pink ward.  Check the enemy support the moment they come into view to see what items they have.  If they have a pink, well... you don't want them just re-pinking you and then you lose yours. 

On mids that build chalice, I really like the following start - 2 of those 180 gold mana regen items (name eludes me), 1 green ward, and 1 health pot.  It's pretty legit and lets you rush chalice pretty quickly even if you have a crappy start.

streaming in house 5v5 in a few minutes.

Fun games - got whooped in both of them, but had fun.  Felt like I had a decent showing in game 1.  Even made some good calls here and there.  Game 2, I did ok with kills.  Crap farming on and off (was down by like 13 cs at 1 point due to poor mechanics). I came back and farmed like a champ later (without fing my team I'll add ).  I felt really overwhelmed in the team fights, though.  My ult requires either pick off or clean up, and they had a shitton of cc.  I think we made a few bad calls in game 2 here and there.  Def don't feel like I performed well enough.  If I could have pulled off some big plays towards the end, I think we might have had a chance, honestly... but I REALLY needed to pull off some big plays.  And did not.  Ah well. 

OK - stay tuned.  I'm going to make the 2 vids tonight then hit the hay.  Will post links here when done.  prob 5-15 minutes from this post.

game 1 of in house - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2759210

game 2 - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2759223

Uploading to youtube now

I think I'm a bit more "vocal" in game 1.  If you can only watch one game, I'd recommend game 1.  I think its probably a bit more entertaining overall... at least from a yelling pacov POV. Night all!

oh - and I really enjoyed getting to run my shy against karls udyr in game 1.  I actually think zac/shy are my strongest atm and don't think I could have kept up with karl as well without both of them.  Felt like I kept up ok though, but fell behind here and there.  He was spot on with the jungle timers for red and I compensated as I could.  One time I knew he used smite to steal my red like a jerk, so I went right back at him and stole his blue right in front of him and then ran like a bitch (a dragon bitch).  Anyway, I think karls a good jungler and don't think I could have kept up with him as much without all the time I've been putting into jangle.  Was nice to see I've learned some anyway. 

oh - and I think in the future I'm just going to mute the audio on the stream when I'm talking with thunder or we are plotting strats.  I've killed the stream in the past and just restarted it, but I bet that sucks balls for anyone viewing.  Anyway, I think just an audio kill should be fine going forward.  I'll just announce it to folks watching and they can wait it out instead of refreshing or w/e you have to do to pick it back up when we are live again. 

Great job coming up with teams yesterday, Thunder.  First time in a bit where I didn't have a strong leaning on one team looking stronger than the other.

For anyone that's curious, the method we've been using is that thunder forms 2 teams as squads of 4.  Once he thinks those 2 teams look good, I pick the team I want.  Then we just alternate sides of the map (eg game 1 pacov's team is team 2, game 2 pacov's team is team 1 - even if we make new teams up).  The logic of thunder's system is that he wouldn't logically try to stack a team as I might just pick it and he'd be left with a weaker setup.  He and I don't see exactly eye to eye on player skill levels, etc, but I think we generally agree.