Yeah, I get that you have to know whether their team is continuing the invade or not cause hanging out at the enemies Blue can be a really scary thing otherwise.

My issues with what happened were that no one rushed center to scout the quick invade which would kept the whole mess from occurring IMO.  That's really basic shit right there, but mistakes happen no big deal.  For me, that and your points about warding Amumu's Blue bush are the live and learn moments that needs to be discussed after the game.  There should be no bitchiness in game about someone giving up first blood after the ENTIRE team got lazy about protecting the jungle from an invade.

Going to lane without summoner spells is pretty much suicide against two Diamond players, so Nades may as well have gotten his death out of the way before the minions spawned.

I few quick thoughts, then I want to address something Thunder said regarding the team.  1st - re: the game I griped about in particular.  Yes, initial jungle setup was awful.  I should have simply warded blue and buggered off.  End of story.  I'm not even all that mad about the dumb first blood (though saying its better to give fb to the enemy adc than to flash to safety because the enemy bot lane were both diamond players... well... that's a silly thing to say, don't you think?). 

So, I went back to make a video and within the first 10 minutes, watching only bot lane, I counted like 8 very poor decisions that resulted in bad things including losing dragon dragon and blue buff.  Then I thought - the only point in making a vid would be to help someone learn.  As I don't think that would serve any purpose in this instance, I decided against making a vid (don't even think nades follows the thread).  I'd gladly make the vid if that would be helpful, though.  For the sake of discussion, though, yes - I absolutely think its better to flash to safety on a busted play than to give first blood to the enemy team - even if you think you are going to get wrecked in lane.  There are 6 other poor decisions to discuss during those 1st 10 minutes (the 1st was my failure to ward blue at the start), but again, I don't think there's much point in doing so.

Onto what I wanted feedback on:

Thunder provides a fairly realistic picture of the team... which, to me, is kind of sad.  It is, for the most part, a coalition of the available.  I have a few thoughts on this.  1 - is anyone interested in having a more committed team that actually does some of the things thunder suggests - practicing from time to time.  Having specific game nights where folks indicate they are in and show up?  Or do folks just want to stick with the current - well, if we have enough people on, then I guess we'll play some ranked 5's?  2 - is it really that difficult to get folks on board with the whole we are a team - 1 guy calls the shots - do what that guy says concept?  Do you want to play with folks that refuse to do work as a team (eg I'm gonna do what I think is best - bugger off)?  If not, why do you?

Yeah, it's absolutely a stretch and mostly an attempt to be the glass is half full guy.  To be fair, I doubt not burning his summoners was a decision.  My guess is it was just a misplay.  I personally tend to play my worst mechanically when I'm following instructions I disagree with.  It's not a conscious "This is fucking stupid, and I'm going to show you how stupid by dying while I do it." sorta thing, but more of a "Well, I'm going off to this bush to die and that's probably what's going to happen." mentality which is a mindset that really doesn't help my reactions.  Maybe that's just me, or maybe that's what happened to Nades.  Or maybe shit happens.

As far as the video goes, I'ts probably best not to make it.  A lot of bot lane is more about lack of synergy than mistakes, and I doubt you and Nades will be laning together again in the near future.  You and I are more likely to be bot lane partners if the team continues on, so any effort for us to get on the same page would probably be more worthwhile and appreciated.

I'm not sure whether NinCA can ever be anything anymore than what it is:  Where we do our best playing with 5 of our friends.  Let's say we go up against not scrubs, not Diamonds, but 5 other people with the exact same talent as us?  We lose.  We can't pick and choose ideal team comps, we don't have dedicated roles, we don't have fantastic communication/coordination. 

If we want all those things, I just don't think we have the personnel and that would be a goal to shoot for by making another team.

I don't feel that playing ranked 5's sucks though.  I'ts fun for me at least as it is.  I like having five of my buddies with me on TS3, all doing our best and following the leaders calls... most of the time.  Then we discuss things after instead of queuing right back up.  When we have 5 people in a queue together normally, there is usually one or two players who are not nearly at the same level as the rest or someones trying out their shitty SupportGot or some other fucked up experiment or trying to learn a new role/champ in an environment they won't get yelled at.  Our Ranked 5's team is a completely different feel, and I have a lot of fun.  Plus it's kinda cool getting whooped by pros and future pro teams.  Gotta admit it's gonna be kinda neat to see Lucian Robbed Me playing in the LCS next season right?

yeah - that makes sense.  I'm the same way. 

I agree.  I do find it a bit frustrating to hold myself to a much higher standard than others do though.  Eg if we are playing ranked 5's I'm going to do my best and be serious. 

I agree its a different feel and that's good.  On an unrelated note, I very much dislike having a classification of great with cait/janna.  It's a compliment, but I certainly want to destroy folks with other champs. 

On a completely different topic, please look at the picture below.

The RP is what about $80-$90 worth... that I paid nothing for. 

And so, I shall once again endevour to explain you can do the same thing as a service to you kind folks. 

You get a serve account.  Go here.  This isn't a referral link (eg I get nothing - just helping you folks out) - https://www.serve.com/leagueoflegends/

K.  Register for an account.  This costs zero and they do not run your credit (eg no ding to your credit score for a hard/soft inquiry).  Follow the instructions and associate your account with LoL.  Boom.  You now have 1,000 rp for about 5 minutes worth of work at zero cost.  Stop reading now if you don't want to go any further (but you will get 11,000 more rp if you do) - or just enjoy the 1k rp for your 5 minutes of time.

Now, if you have a pay pal account, add $20 to it using your bank account if you don't already have money in your pay pal account.  This can take a few days, so I recommend doing it right away.  After you have set up the transaction, you need to add your american express card rp + card.  Log into your serve account (this is your american express rp + card account website):  https://www.serve.com/.  Once you are logged in, look around on the page for info about direct depositing and click the link.  This will provide you with the routing number and you account number.  Now, back on paypal, click on withdraw (you can and SHOULD do this right away).  Then click on transfer to your bank account (american express and paypal SEE each other as banks).  Click on add new bank account.  Enter the information you found on the serve page and verify.  This can take a few days.

So, 5 days go by.  Your serve account comes in the mail.  Activate the card - I think you do this by phone, but its automated. Now, a transfer of $20 on the paypal side of things (eg log into paypal and transfer to your american express).  This counts as a direct deposit.  This will take a few days.  Once that goes through, your LoL account is credited with 11,000 rp.  1k for for depositing $20.  10k for the direct deposit. 

So boom.  Now you have 12k rp.  Use your serve card with $20 on it for 10 more small purchases and you get another 1k rp.  That's it.  Once the card is used up or has next to nothing on it, destroy it or file it for safe keeping.  There are no fees for the card.  I think I've put about 2 hours total time for this (1 hour or so was figuring out how to do the direct deposit trick... and there were no directions I could find anywhere). 

So, do this if you like.

#ranked teams:

originally we thought that climbing up to plat would be pretty easy  - Dan was pretty adamant about that fact. Turns out that Silver is really hardcore. About half the games are serious teams trying to climb.. the other half are scrubs. We assumed a much smaller percentage of that fact.

However, that was also one of the reasons we started the team late in the season - to explore and try things out with no real consequence since S4 is a few months away.

Dan is a very "problematic" person to play with because while he takes everyone else's mistakes really seriously - just not so much his own. i played a tournament with him and his friends a few weeks ago and let me tell you it was ... interesting.

Anyway, if you want to actually be serious about the team that means:

1- we need to get people who have diverse champions and are willing to learn new champs that are strong and diversify your champ roster. That doesn't mean everyone has to learn and only play:

Zed/Ahri/Fizz/Kass/Orianna

Corki/Twitch/Caitlyn/Varus

Zyra/Thresh/Sona

But you gotta be able to play several strong champs that have different roles.

2- we stop playing with lower skilled players in Normals. We queue as 5 together 3 days a week and we choose our roles and we only play those roles. New champs are okay to learn and we can try different arrangements of roles and iron that out in normals.

3- then, finally, we move to Ranked 5s

However, i don't think that is gonna happen and, while we might be a "casual" ranked 5s team who never hits gold. It is fun to do and it could slowly evolve into a stronger team with time.

yeah... would love it if we could move towards the direction you describe, but I also don't really think that will happen.

So, I spent the majority of the nerd portion of my day watching zen god play his gold I to plat V promo series.  This was his 6th try to get promoted.  He managed to win his 1st 2 games pretty easy.  Then went on a 3 game loss.  I was going to shoutcast the match as I was pretty into it, but I felt pretty bad for how things kept going for him.  He ended up going mord in his games.  Game 3  went poorly.  Game 4 he was trolled by his mid that pretty much fed all game. Game 5 he gave 1st blood.  His team had a heavy engage comp, but I don't think mord was good pick for it (or any comp imo... not a huge mord fan).  His team had some excellent engages early/mid though.  Dominated in tower control.  But the enemy team had a much higher skill cap.  The game went on like 50 + minutes.  Everyone had full builds.  That's when you could really see how poor the adc on his team was - guy couldn't even attack move or kite for anything.  Zen's team, really, really, really just needed to put the game away earlier... which I think they could have done.  Anyway, zen ended up losing his series again. 

you cannot defeat the zen god.  Do you know why?

He is

PLATINUM

Anyway - seriously - I'm really proud of you guys shooting for higher ranks this season and getting it done.  Hedgie pulling off the earliest plat and inspiring folks to push on.  Karl getting through silver hell with 2000 promo matches from like silver III to II and eventually hitting gold.  Bryff hitting Gold.  Pacov hitting plat. Thunder hitting gold.  Cow hitting plat and shooting for diamond.  Zen with his 6 promo series to hit plat.  Most of us went in and put in a ton of work to hit our goals and most of us hit them with quite a bit of work.  Great job everyone and I'm really glad so many of you have made it to where you want to be this season.

Hey brad wong-  you need to get a decent net connection and try to finish out your placement matches.  Pretty sure you don't get anything without placing.  Good odds you can place in gold after X games and that will be that. 

As I said - I will try, but next week is midterms and I have a lot of homework to finish up this week. I could try and finish my promos over spring break probably. My break starts on the 3rd and goes to the 13th~ so I will have my computer back home on a stable connection for like a week and a half.

OK - so I've been toying around a bit with support Annie and have had mostly success.  You need a non awful adc to make it work as you provide no sustain.  Let me go over the concept/philosophy and then provide me with feedback and thoughts.

Why Annie? 

Well, she pretty much has a sona ult every 7-10 seconds once she's level 5/6.  She also has a 1.75 second stun starting at level 1 that you can charge at base if needed/desired for no mana cost.

Build philosophy 

So, I'm playing Annie a bit different from my typical supports and also a bit different than I would play an AP carry sort of support.  I'm focused on move speed.  Keep in mind I'm not 100% set on how I'm doing everything... this is just what I'm trying out.  The basic goal is that higher movespeed = stronger zoning with her AA range and stun.  Her AA range is the highest in the game.  Being able to move in and out quick AND having the threat of that stun means that you tend to get a bunch of free dmg from AAs.  While the build doesn't have a huge amount of dmg on those attacks, its still quite an effective threat for zoning for your adc. The short version of the playstyle is speedy, zoning support with increased kill/save potential (eg gank coming... stun.  3 chasing down your adc, stun all 3 of them). 

Build - Masteries/Runes

Here's what I do.  I'm running 5/4/21 masteries.  1 point in enhanced exh/ign, 4 in cooldown.  4 added health in the def tree (this is flex imo).  21 in utility taking the 3% bonus move speed along with the out of combat movespeed bonus.  I do not take any of the gp/10 masteries for bonus gold.  I believe I took pickpocket, but can't remember.  For runes, I get also a bit crazy.  I take move speed quints (forgoing gp/10 here as well), and some mixture of armor red/yellows... a little flat blue mr runes, and everything else into mana regen.  The goal being having mana up as often as possible for abilities and charging her stun.  I have a total of 10% CDR from the masteries.

Build - items

I start with boots + 2 green wards.  So far this has been adequate.  I typically rush philo stone after this and just keep on getting green/pink wards as needed. I try to be a smidge stingy with ward placement and utilization when i play Annie as you are lacking all the bonus gold you'd typically get from gp/10s.  That said, that stun comes in pretty handy for saving your adc.  I'm actually more likely to start building kage's lucky pick next for the bonus AP gp/10 and then work on sight stone.  Everything after completing philo is in flux though. I like to get mobo boots on annie.  The sooner I have that in lane the better, so I might actually rush philo and go directly into mobo.  You end up with like 475 MS compared to the enemy adc/support being around 375 or so MS at the time.  In short, you are going to land your stuns to initiate without requiring a flash open.  After that, I get morellonomicon and then w/e.  Still very undecided.  I think the mobo boots early is a gamble as it sets you back a smidge and keeps you from getting another gp/10 or sightstone... but that would immediately pay off if you land some kills with your adc.

Build - abilities

I start with incinerate.  This isn't ideal, but its the only way you can come to lane with full mana and a stun charged.  You get the ability, cast it once, then buy your items, then cast it until the stun is up.  The group stun is useful for engage/defense at level 1 in the jungle and seeing an annie come to lane with stun up is a visible threat to the enemy bot lane which aids in zoning.  You don't want to use that stun at level 1 unless you see a great chance for harass with your adc adding or if the result is decent zoning.  Just hold on it until you hit 2 as possible as it costs quite a bit of mana to recharge that stun until you hit 2.  At level 2, I immediately get molten shield.  This serves 2 purposes.  1 - you take less damage when you cast it and are hit by the enemy (and you damage them as well) - so it aids in zoning.  2 - more importantly, its only 20 mana per cast.  So, you cast it extremely frequently to build up stacks to charge your stun.  At 3, I get a level of disintegrate.  After that, I max r when its up, and I go back and forth between putting points in q and w.  The reason I choose not to max q over w or w over q is that you do more damage by hitting with both abilities than with just 1.  And when combat begins, you are going to be spamming all of those spells, not just 1.  I typically don't put any more points into molten shield until everything else is maxed, though. 

Pros

• Sona style ultimate stun with high availability - every 7-10 seconds at level 6 or so
• Easy harass and zoning against many matchups
• Good save potential
• Easy to setup damage for your adc
• High magic dmg burst at level 6 even with 0 AP - more impact as well if the adc goes scaling MR runes early

Cons

• No sustain provided for ADC
• Kill steals more likely due to ability spam to get out stuns in heated battles early/mid
• Weak at level 1 if not played well due to the item setup - you don't have a ton of health and you have zero health pots (just a biscuit).
• Late arrival to the jungle at level 1 due to charging stun.  If you teammates aren't covering entrances to the jungle, risk of death by inv goes up
• Not as many wards available at start due to boots start.

Many fairly unfun games tonight.  I ended up going on tilt a bit after playing some games with hunny and listening to his logic for awhile.  Kind of a bummer.  I'll see if I can troll him a bit less in the future.  Karma and shit.  Ah well.  Ended on a nice note.  I played like crap as ahri mid and went like 14/4 or some crap.  Always nice to end on a win anyway. 

Pretty good break down on korean mastery setups.  Worth a look.  Most interesting is that they all pretty much run the same support page... which is more tanky than I'd have expected for ALL supports

http://www.team-dignitas.net/articles/blogs/League-of-Legends/3903/A-glance-at-Korean-Pros-and-masteries/

1/13/16 has been the standard support page ... forever?

I'm trying to remember the last time I used another kind of support mastery page... can't remember.

Edit:  Actually, I think I might have tried 0/9/21 for a couple Janna games a few months back.  Didn't like it.