Ideal time is sticking with 11 minutes... but that's literally doing nothing for the team with minimal, if any, counter jungling outside of the open.  With how game 1 went, if I hit 19:55, I'm impressed... but its kind of my thought that ff isn't worth it if you don't have it early enough for an impact early mid game.  Perhaps that's an incorrect theory, but that's where I've found the biggest initial power spike. 2nd game was prob a bit more tight in the jungle unless that's the game where both their bot lane and mid lane rotated twice in short order to try to save their junglers buffs - that might have been 1st game tho. 

You go back and watch it.  Then tell me that game 1 was lost by my udyr and that i was out jungled.  I thought you said it yourself, but there was a slim to no chance we were winning that game.  That goes back to my point about it being silver and the odds of having a good or crap team.  I do get your overall point, but in that specific instances, I do not think any character with any style of play as a jungler was going to win us the game.  You toss yourself in my shoes and you'd have lost the game.  You just wouldn't have been ff udyr... that's about it.  Lost game is lost game.  Definitely not the example I'd site for why ff udyr in this style is bad.

That's a fair criticism/observation.  But again, that 15-20 afk farm is on me for failing the strategy.  The goal is 11 min.  I maintain that if it takes 20 minutes, you should not be doing this.  That's literally farming up the jungle for 9 minutes of active game time, getting a damage boost from a completely ff along with a level advantage (I'm likely the highest level player in the game at 11 min - generally at least 2 levels ahead of most/all. 

heh... true...

This all comes down to a risk/reward assessment.  You prefer to be a tight poker player, while I'm a bit more loose and am willing to gamble a bit more.  The reward for this type of udyr is the ability to carry a game and create pressure anywhere on the map.  The risk is your team baulking early/mid due to no ganks from you and/or ganks from the enemy jungler. 

You can say, ok pacov - do your feral flare thing, but you need to have more flexibility so you can gank/defend yourself better if you are counter jungled.  I say - ok - I'm thinking through ways to do this, but my goal is still getting feral flare farmed up as fast as possible.  I'm not married to the play style - I'm working on it and trying things out. 

I also get the general thought -  its silver - stfu and gank/countergank.

ooo - braum is out now

Right, but my point is that you are evaluating the reward incorrectly.

Currently, you are taking games where you win with big stats and say "hey, we won and I had great stats.  Obvious it was worth it".  This is questionable in most cases.

In those games, your lanes generally won or at least held even 4v5 where they had to go up against substantial jungle pressure.  In such games, your team is simply better, so you are going to win those games the VAST majority of the time.  Your team doesn't need a carry to suddenly appear out of the jungle at 18 minutes and carry them to victory.  They had it already.  So it is not a reward to win that game.  You could jungle almost anything and have won the game - jungling that Udyr build and getting huge stats is just classic "win more" scenario.

On the other hand, you are actually risking quite a bit as discussed earlier.  You can provide no help to your lanes for 15-20 minutes most of the time in games that are in doubt (e.g. games where your team doesn't crush on their own without your help).

So, in fact there is very little reward to be had.  After all, there is a very very narrow spectrum of games where your team will come out ahead in lane phase playing 4v5, but needs help from a super carry jungler despite being the better team.  You are just going to win those games harder and with better personal stats.  On the other hand, you are risking quite a bit by sacrificing a hell of a lot of early game power.

Then you fail your strategy ~2/3 of the time - I'd suggest that you go back to your records and actually look at your times.  The only time I see you get FF at anything close to 11 or 12 minutes is when your lanes just straight up win 4v5.  And as pointed out earlier, if I know going into the game that my lanes can win 4v5 WITHOUT my help, I can virtually guarantee that we will win the game WITH my help.  So playing that Udyr build is just a classic "win more".

I'd say that your build gave your team a 0% chance to win that game.  I might have been able to give that team a 5% chance to win the game.  Now, mabe that doesn't seem like a huge deal.  But over the course of 100 ranked games, that is going to work out to something like 200 LP difference between our respective strategies.  2 full divisions over just 100 games is a big deal.

So this is exactly the kind of game I want to be talking about - this Udyr build doesn't allow you to sometimes scratch and claw bad teams to a win like good junglers should be able to.  It only allows already good teams to win harder.

And my objection isn't all about taking FF.  I sometimes take FF on Udyr.  Its more about taking Phoenix at level 1 and Tiger at level 2, and then doing a bunch of stuff which makes it difficult for you to fight champions until around level 10+ (including sometimes building both Wriggles and Spirit Stone).  Oh, and while you are doing all this non fighting stuff, you insist on taking all the blues, while their mids are often getting blues.  But you won't be using the blue to fight the other team.  Its just being used to farm harder.

Good poker players vary their style of play depending on their relative chip count compared to the rest of the table and their position in the particular hand they're in, just like good LoL players vary their builds depending on how they're doing in a game and what their team needs from them.

You continuing on the build path that Karl is so fond of while you're doing poorly is like the short stacked guy at the table drawing dead, who is bluffing the guy who is already committed.  Sure he was short stacked and probably going to be knocked out, but that's no excuse for blowing his small chance on winning by wasting the rest of his chips on a play that circumstance doesn't allow him to make.

Also, my major objection to playing that Udyr build in ranked -

It is easy to play that Udyr build.  After all, you spend the first 15-20 minutes of the game running around the jungle farming.  This is very easy.  Sometimes you 1v0 a dragon.  Also easy.  Finally, you emerge from the jungle hoping that your team isnt way behind.  You are now way ahead and should have easy fights.

The hard part for the team is the other 4 people playing the game who have to survive while you farm up.

You get to do all the easy stuff, while your team is left with all the hard stuff.  So what the build does is it shifts the skill burden from the jungler onto the other 4 people. 

I do not believe that you should be shifting the skill burden from yourself to your teammates if you are playing in Silver I.  If anything, you should be trying to relieve the skill burden from your teammates (which is essentially what a ganking jungler does).

So,,, Braum - thoughts anyone?  I really, really enjoyed playing him last night in the one game where I could.  That lucian, Braum combo is nearly a must pick in my mind anyway.  Lucian passive is just way to strong with him.  I really like the peel/escape potential he has as well.  Mana costs feel a little high early, but its fairly manageable.  His ability to negate all ins during laning is good too.  Bottom line, I think they came up with a really fun character and I'll be playing him a bunch as support.  Could probably use him fine as a top laner, but I don't think I want to do that - he'd make a decent tank at any rate.

Sorry I didn't want to get into a 5v5 in house last night, fellas.  We needed to talk some things out as a team as it was our first time playing together with the latest iteration of our team.  More on that later prob. 

Going to rant a bit about my ranked 5's team - so, we went through the process of dropping our mid player from the team.  This was.... not a pleasant experience.  There were a few reasons for dropping the mid, but the main one came down to this fella and I not getting along and getting into really annoying (for everyone) arguments, etc.  Now, I know myself.  I know when I'm being a douche and when I'm not; sometimes intentionally, most often not.  That said, after realising my douchey ways, I make quite a bit of effort to avoid behaving that way and try to be more sensitive.  No one really wants to play with someone that is being an arse consistently.  I mention all that to point out that over time, it was pretty clear that our mid did not have a process like that in place. 

Anyway, after quite a bit of self examination, it occurred to me that I really wasn't enjoying my ranked 5's team anymore and why - constant bickering with another fella, resulting in folks on the team not having as much fun, less intelligent calls/decisions, folks going on tilt.  It got to a point where this fellow and I were really negative disposed towards each other and that any time he made an error, he'd pass the blame onto me.  At times, I'd argue which only made things worse, of course.  The root problem is that we created a toxic environment that I couldn't really fix myself.  At best, it seemed as if the only way I could potentially continue would be to mute the guy, which is not a good solution.  That said, it was the only solution as the constant complaining anytime a game wasn't going well had about a 100% chance of occurring.  This took us to a place where parting ways seemed like the only solution as there wasn't much left I could personally do and little to no effort ever came out of this guy to correct the behavior, apologise for it, etc. 

Anyway, as this guy had been with us since the start of our team back in Nov 2013, I didn't really take the idea of dropping him lightly, but as I'm the team captain, it fell to me to make a decision.  So, I check with my teammates and explain my thought process.  They agree with me that this is the way to go.  So, I contact our mid and explain things as best I can and tell him he's off the team.  He shoots me a message apologizing and asks for a chance to correct the problem.  Then, literally 3 minutes later, he goes into a tirade about being betrayed, blames me for all his problems, tells me people leave the team because of me, and is genuinely wounded that I've made it clear that I no longer want to play with him on the ranked 5's team.  All in all, I spend about 3 hours talking back and forth with him. 

He wraps up things nicely in a final post to the team where he says he's leaving the group because he no longer wants to be associated with it, goes on another rant where he insults me some more, and finishes by insinutating that the team has been tricked by me and is blind to it. 

Anyway, holy shinto.  Suffice to say, our recruiting efforts for both adc and a new mid have been focused a bit around personality and attitude.  It seems like we are on the right track so far.  Moira's really pleasant and seems to be a good fit for the team as adc.  We're talking with alan about becoming our mid which has a lot of good potential for the future as his skill cap in mid is pretty high.  I wanted to transition out a bit from the shotcalling role and with Alan, I think we can work something out with me calling the shots early and move to him calling shots later.  That's just going to take some getting used to. 

I'm actually looking forward to playing with the team again - sadly, its been months since that was true, but its nice to finally get back to a good place. 

Oh - and thanks again, Bryff - really appreciated you being willing to help out by subbing last night!

Some changes on the jungle - more HP for big camp creatures - details here at bottom:  http://www.surrenderat20.net/2014/05/513-pbe-update.html

This will slow down early clears.

Those are Twisted Treeline changes.

oh - well then who gives a crap, eh.  The Udyr stun indicator change is a nice QoL change at any rate I suppose. 

Well, the roster on my ranked 5's team is set now.

• saiyan = top
• alan = mid
• pacov = jungle
• moira = adc
• rife = support

Well, I'm 2/2 in my promo series - will prob play the final game tonight and lose.  I did really well in games 1 and 2.  My team in game 1 did everything they could to try to throw.... asking them repeatedly if we could end the game now eventually worked.  Game 3 I did ok.  Game 4 I played kinda smeh and was not a good teammate.  I should have done much more aggressive ganks early and instead farmed things out a smidge - worse as there was a ww on the other team - kind of needed to put more pressure on the map early.  The jax on my team getting his butt whooped by vlad and refusing to build any mr did not help.  I busted that guys chops a bit too much and that certainly didn't help.  I pretty much deserved to lose that last game.  Didn't do enough to gank. 

Good call on busting chops not being a good idea.  I got a little tilted the other day playing J4 top against a Teemo when our Lee Sin criticized my building Tiamat first.  "You're not going to win your lane building damage."  Well... I was actually 10-20 CS ahead of The Devil even though he had somehow come into lane at one point with Red Buff... through some dark haxxor magic, and I had only died once due to a tower dive from a gank which netted our jungler a clean-up kill anyway.

So I was a little pissed off the rest of the game even though that well meaning comment had come from a Lee Sin who at least tried (and failed completely) to gank my lane pre-mushroom forest of doom, not some Xin who was playing PvE.

At the point you're at right now it's going to be very tempting to give build advice since your game knowledge will be way ahead of your allies in most cases, but the problems are:

-If they cared more about being good, they would already know how to build when losing lanes, etc.  So they probably don't want to hear how they're not supposed to build glass cannon Jax even when losing lane and it's just gonna tilt them.

-By the time advice is given, it's too late to help.

-Criticism on losing ones lane is rarely welcomed from PvE FF junglers in my experience.

Anyway, I've been failing miserably in ranked recently so hopefully you play against me later cause it'll be a free win for yah!  Seems like everyone wants to play support now so I've been re-re-learning how to do other things good too, as Zoolander would say.

Sorry about the bad luck in ranked lately.  I'm sure I'll be joining you in sad town later tonight when I lose my series.  I'm pretty damn determined that if I lose tonight, its going to have nothing to do with me playing poorly at any rate. 

re: that jax - he, without TP, decided to steal the enemy team's red solo, then go to top lane without backing and, predictably, got zoned out by a vlad... that, ofc, has sustain.  As the game progressed, he strangely had issues farming and was dying a bunch, but continued to buy dmg.  We finally managed to take out his top tower at 28 minutes. I just was too much a jerk to the guy all in all, though.  I was ganking lanes plenty, btw, but I failed with a dumb decision early to slowly farm out my jungle for about 3-4 minutes instead of ganking a bunch early... which is what I should have done.  I didn't afk jungle farm at any rate - just was kind of a dick to the guy.

I'm actually starting to consider banning ww.  I saw him in at least 2 of the 4 ranked games I played last night.  Really low skill cap on the enemy ww's as well, but still having a meaningful impact as tank/initiators. 

darkliath the sweet girl from DEMIGOD reach plat today afternoon europe

http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/20516004

gg dark 2 best regulus after me