All hail lord karl of the plat V's.  May your reign be merciful. 

k - playing ranked tonight at 7 or 8 PM.  Will be streaming if anyone is interested.  Prob just 2 games total. 

k live now

good luck!

i missed most the first one but it looked rough!

You should do better Leona builds in ranked.  Maxing Q first over W hurts me.  I can kind of see not taking Doran's Shield to start I guess, but not having any points in W until like 30 minutes is kind of crazy.

We can discuss tomorrow mr karl.

Anyway, 2/1 solo ranked.  My ranked 5's team finished our placement 5/0 - we hit silver III.  So there's a quick benchmark for you folks.  Perfect series as a ranked 5 team = silver III.  I really enjoy making the calls for the whole team when they have to listen.    I know not all my calls are good, but this means we are unified and odds of success go up even on bad calls imo.  Anyway, off to bed.  Planning on playing my last 2 ranked placement matches tomorrow and then being mocked when I place in bronze.

If things go according to plan, I'll play those ranked games starting between 7-8PM.  So, tune in if you want to see the finale. 

edit - also - bryff - thx for the write up re: the irelia post.  I'll do a call back to it soon and post the contents.  I'm actually quite interested but frankly, I need to play a few games as irelia to catch myself up to think things through. 

anyone know off the top of their head my placement series stats?  I'll have to look it up if anyone doesn't know.  I've played 8 games.  2/1 tonight.  Previous 5 games = smeh if I remember right. 

You are 4-4.  I believe that you are right around Silver I right now from what I can determine.

4/4 - ugh.  Oh well.  Guessing we'll see where I end up tonight.

Quick recap from solo ranked yesterday

Game 1 - thresh support (last pick = no option re: role) - Loss

Game 2 - Jungle wu (2nd pick - got the role I wanted) - win

Game 3 - leona support (last pick = no option re: role) - win by seat of pants

Game 1 - team just did not execute.  Not a heck of a lot I could have done to help the team as support.  Played just fine - could have hit a few more hooks, but the other team was obv much better than mine. 

Game 2 - so/so start for me, decent mid/late game play for me.  My mid was a bit of a bitch.  Complained about me not ganking and apparently had zero awareness of what was happening around near her.  Determined she was going to be an annoying fug after a few comments, so I muted her and then took pretty much every single blue.  Generally not a good idea to complain about your jungler if you want something from them.  What mostly pissed me off was that I was counter jungled by lee and forced to flash to safety... pretty much immediately after that my mid starts bitching about me not ganking... having no idea that I was just countered and had to blow flash to get out.  That tells me zero map awareness and that my mid is also going to complain about nonsense.  Overall it was a pretty easy win.  My overall performance wasn't anything to write home about, but we got the job won.

Game 3 was the most interesting to me... I continue this in a bit...

So, karl mentioned my leona setup in one of my ranked matches (game 3) and I wanted to discuss this a little more. Here's a summary of the game to start out with.  My adc is rot in lane imo.  My jungler is outright trying to throw.  We make a huge comeback and eventually win.  My adc has an EXCELLENT late game.

So, in the lobby I see I'm up against a bot lane annie.  I get leona.  Leona with a halfway decent adc craps all over annie early/midish.  Once we hit level 2, barring a damaging gank, we should have lane control and be zoning them out.  I run 2 types of runes/mastery setups on leona.  One is for absolute tank engage.  The other is more suitable if you are going to be playing passive.  Knowing its an annie lane, I run my tank/engage setup so I get no benefit from gp/10 or masteries.  This is fine, provided my adc makes  use of my engages and sunlight procs. In this game, my adc maybe proc'd 4-5 sunlight procs during the laning phase - that might be exaggerated, but there were more than few instances where she did not land a single hit. I'll add that I don't really feel like I was overextending, but probably once or twice.  Anyway, this is a lane where the enemy has no sustain, I have a sivir that has a spellshield into annie... and he refuses to get into AA range when I land my combos.  You literally need to be close enough to me, have me hit my combo, and use your shield while we drop massive dmg on them.  And the damage output is even more sick when you successfully land all 3 sunlight procs. 

That said, instead of pressing the advantage we have over the enemy bot lane, my adc decides to play passively... which is pretty rough for my tank/engage setup.  Also, not backing an engage, of course, results in lower hp as they wail on you.  Last, it took us a smidge to get on page with hitting the same target.  Bottom line, we did not have good chemistry in lane and I felt like my adc misplayed the laning phase.

re: the skills I level as leona - I vary that based on game as well.  Why do I occasionally put more points into q/e over w?  cdr + dmg.  I'm already pretty freaking tanky with runes/masteries on that setup.  I suppose its arguable what would be better take, but honestly I think it was pretty negligible in this particular game. Anyway, all that said, the adc performed like a champ with positioning late game for team fights - without that, we would have lost the game.  The enemy team obviously helped us a bunch by keeping us in the game as long as they did.  Felt like quite an accomplishment when we did win.

Final thoughts - 2 games where I had to play support.  1 game where I could play w/e I wanted.  Easiest win of the night was when I was running as jungler.  real bummer to be dead last pick in 2 of my 3 games though.  I like supporting, but I still believe it makes it way too difficult to carry in ranked

targeting between 7-8pm for my last 2 ranked games tonight.  After that, I'm up for games with you fellas if interested. 

Not really.  You keep insisting that "Leona counters Annie", but then I see people pick Annie into Leona all the time in LCS and Diamond streams.  I just don't see it if you have Annie v Leona where both are close to the same skill level.

At level 2, Annie has equivalent CC to Leona and quite a bit more damage.  Maybe Sivir can SS off the Annie stun, but maybe they choose to target you instead when you go in without your W (and since your Sivir took a defensive spell, they have a big damage advantage if they don't target her).  So I think that they actually might be up on you there. 

You might be able to do something since you don't have to charge stuns and Annie does, but thats a pretty narrow advantage to use against a damage disadvantage if you want to claim that you are going to be completely dominating at level 2.

You aren't running a tank/engage setup since you didn't start with Doran's Shield.

You shouldn't expect your ADCs to play super aggressive if you start with the item that screams "DONT PLAY AGGRESSIVE".  If you want to play early aggressive from randoms, start Doran's Shield - I think that any ADC with a clue would play passive if their support doesn't take Doran's and the other support does (I don't recall if Annie started Doran's or not).

I mean, come on.  You wanted to go super aggression when you didn't have your W yet and you didn't have Doran's Shield.  You aren't tanky at that point if you don't have either (it doesn't matter what your runes/masteries are).

W gives you more damage per point than Q.  You cost yourself quite a bit of damage if you put points in Q in the vast majority of cases.

With points in W, you get more damage per point (and its AoE!) , armor, MR, and it doesn't cost you more mana per point.  With points in Q you get 1 second reduced cooldown.  It's not a contest.

there is higher dmg potential at level 2/3 over annie, but it requires actually making use of leona's passive... which can be proc'd by any dmg... including a long range q from sivir... 

re: leveling her w - yeah - my math was off there.  lowered cooldowns on q/e are nice, but I should be putting more points into w earlier (at least at lv4). 

dorans is not required for tank/engage imo.  I've actually been back and forth a bit on starting item for her.  I almost always end the game with medallion... I believe its more cost effective to just get that early as its primary support benefit is during laning.  And that I'm already running without any gp/10... ZERO passive income if my adc is rot isn't desirable. 

re: timing tonight - I am way off schedule.  Earliest I might be on is like 8:30-9 at this point. Might not end up doing ranked based on timing... we'll see

At level 2 with no AP, Annie QW does 165 damage.  Leona QE does 140 even if you count both sunlight procs.  If you want to count AP -  Annie has roughly double the AP scaling (and Leona isn't likely to have any anyway).

Oh, and did I mention that the cooldown on Annie's skills are like half that of Leona's?

Conclusion: its crazy not to wait til level 3 if given a choice.  Especially if you don't take early aggression items like Dorans.

Think we are just going to disagree here - you aren't factoring in all the variables.  1 - you will have more hp than annie without dorans shield.  You have it from health quints.  2 - annie will use her stun when you engage on her at lv 2 - she'll either use it on you or your adc - with someone like sivir as your adc, you literally need to press q once and have that land over a stunned/snared annie to get 2 sunlight procs (timing means you get both procs).  3 - annie won't have another stun up and you now have a window where you have control of the lane.  If your adc pussy foots about while their team coordinates effectively, then you are sol.  I very much like leona into annie and think its a favorable matchup PROVIDED there's some basic level of coordination (in the form of - oh - leona has engaged, I shall now hit this person she has engaged upon).