Thx cow!  Now to address my other friends...

tl;dr:  Thunder - if its within your power to be friendly with me after we've played together for so long, please contribute in this thread.  If you need to be the perpetual hypocrite police, ever there to put me in my place if I dare speak out - please find something else do to with your time.  I'd appreciate that.   Thanks! 

1 - hedgie... allow me to clarify.  I did not "lag" into the enemy turret.  I thought i was clear and that I indicated that it was a pretext (the whole "lagging" thing).  

See this and add the word "lagging" to get exactly what I meant.

Also, rekt, rekt, rekt.  That's silly and rude, rude, rude.

Here's my response to thunder - you need to calm the fuck down. You need to get a tougher skin apparently.  Lordy - pacov explained a circumstance where he got mad at someone and then trolled them. pacov is a hypocrite and I shall now attempt to put him in his place by jibbering on and on.  I'm going to get all "openly hostile" and clarify the difference between being "openly hostile" and passive aggressive.  Perhaps hedgie will even be inspired to say "rekt, rekt...."  hue.  Yay!  I, did it!

The only request I have of you is that you resist the urge to try to "put me in my place" over and over.  I state my opinion.  If your opinion is constantly "you are a hypocrite" or "how dare you" or blah blah blah, super.  Noted.  You don't need to chime in because its tired, annoying, contributes absolutely nothing other than to stir up idiot drama about absolutely fucking nothing. 

Furthermore, when I state my opinion about something - take for instance the whole pal of ours elo boosting but not elo boosting and state my opinion on that.  Your tendency is to turn comments i make about things into something personal and then attack me (continuing the hypocritical line of vomit).  I (kindly I might add) try to be patient with you, but it takes quite a bit of time just to get you to cease being hostile towards me. Wasted time.  I usually do not insult individuals, but I'll make a clear exception right now, though - you are an ass if you believe calling someone a hypocrite is not insulting. 

Seriously - I post a comment about one game where I'm a bit of a dick and this is the rubbish I get to listen to. I get to hear again from thunder that I'm a hypocrite, I apparently troll my pals by faking lagging, and whatever other garbage you might dream up. So, in response to your list, I've FTFY by adding number 4

Hope that helps. 

Doom Bots are live, do not take them lightly. 

w.e i'm done. Check edits of last posts if you're that interested.

Doom bots 5 was kind of tough. Took me two tries to beat it with randoms. Both games were filled with mostly bronze/unranked with maybe 1 gold player. I had to put my carry pants on. 

Holy crap was last night rough.  My ISP had a complete outage.  Lost the net at 12AM or so and that lasted a until at least 4AM.  Not a big deal on a weeknight... unless, of course, I have to late night remote work... which I did.  Anyway, so my plan was to force myself to stay awake until the work started at 2AM... and I entered a net free zone at midnight and I was already tired.  Ah well.  Managed to stay awake and read a bit.  Fired up the 'ol wifi hotspot so I could do the remote work at 2 (which thankfully went smoothly).  Anyway, that explains my abrupt departure last night anyway. 

Re; doom bots - beating the level 5 doom bots was pretty freaking exciting for me anyway.  I played 4 games total of db.  Game 1 I was invited to a level 5 game to start out with and we lost.  Game 2-4 we just started back at level 1 and worked our way up.  Doom 1/2 was easy.  Doom level 5 was fairly challenging.  I was super excited when we managed to beat it.  About the same level of excitement as getting promo'd from gold to plat, etc.  Super pumped.  Anyway, was a lot of fun.  Also, I completely and immediately lost all interest in playing against doombots right after that level 5 win... strange, but true.

I got in another rango jungle game (going the damage build).  Was really easy as we ended up against a very clear mismatch, so I pretty much learned nothing new.  Be on later tonight most likely.

Lucy stats - http://www.lolking.net/champions/lucian&region=all&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=platinum#statistics

At plat level in ranked solo queue, lucian jumped from a 47.85% win rate to 53.39 due to the change last patch.  Pretty big hop (its a pun because he has more mobility!).  I kid... I kid...

At the diamond level, he also jumped up from 48ish% to 51.25%. Challengers trend is closer to that of plat level (still up)

So, a min of a 3% increase in win rate. 

In other random stat news - talon is continuing to be a really strong pick at the diamond level.  He's picked only 4.4% of all games, but has a win rate of 55.43% for the past week (highest win rate atm). 

I might be knee jerk reacting, but I'm leaning towards banning out lucians in ranked/draft pick.  Even when he's outclassed, the mobility can be a bit of a pain. 

Random neat thing on pbe: 

Name Tag Display

In an earlier patch this cycle, the option to change your name tag display - either showing you the usernames of your allies any enemies or just their champion names - was added!

So just to kind of put my observations from tonight in written form this is kind of how both games went down:

Game 1: Kog, Nami v Trist, Leona - Botlane is Silver/Gold. Mid/Top/Jungle are Plat/Diamond/Diamond

We leash, they do a really shitty level 1 push that puts the wave in a bad spot so we escape the level 2. We end up doing pretty well and we nearly get a kill level 3, but Maokai shows up to back us off, but no wasted summoners. Around level 5, we end up going 2-for-1, though Nami gets both kills.

Maokai keeps coming bot. The 2nd gank was foiled by a great bubble from pacov, which prevented an easy death. Gank 3 was avoided with a deep ward + summoners. Gank 4 was the straw that broke the camel's back, resulting in 2 kills. WW then kind of wanders down, but is seen backs off, Maokai does an aggressive tower dive with Leona. Nami ends up picking off a kill on Trist in the aftermath, so it ends up going 1-for-1 in the long run. While we're doing reasonably well (in terms of KDA) against the super-heavy gank pressure, i am down about 10 CS, and i'm down about a level due to kill distribution or staggered basing (the kill on Trist under tower that Nami got, Nami kind of slow pushed and even though it denied them a little bit of CS to the tower, Nami took so long to get back to lane i just kinda had to sit around for 30 seconds getting nothing).

Midgame, it seems like Lux kept getting chunked. i'm not exactly sure how, since i never saw it happen, but Cow mentioned he was frequently oom. Maybe the enemy jungler was doing some really good counterjungling. i also know that Jayce has pressured mid a lot with a few ganks. One blue-steal in particular, i come around "flanking" them but end up walking into a 1v4. Oops. We probably could have gotten 2 kills if i walked the long way thru tribush. We do one "kinda" greedy push really deep mid and we almost get a tower but then it goes badly (don't remember exactly how).

We really tunnel hard on dragon that whole game, but it never really works out. Maybe the Jayce + Mao poke is too good compared to Nami heal + Lux shield/poke. One time Maokai manages to do 900 damage to me with Thornmail. i didn't expect it, i guess the lifesteal nerfs buffed that item considerably. Few times Ahri gets some good flash + charms. i think Nami was a little slow on some Nami ults, and i mention this to pacov in post-game analysis.

Post-game charts shows the enemy team had a huge gold lead thru most of the game.

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1459900685/40443430

Game 2: Kog, Thresh v Lucian, Nami - Enemy team is mostly Diamod/Plat.

We do a really slow Red invade. i'm worried about being level 1'd in Tribush, so i stick around for a long leash and ask Karl to walk us back. He does an early gank and gets chunked to 40% but blows flash. We still get 2v1'd though (i'm not sure how to avoid getting 2v1'd. No matter what we do we lose. If we walk to lane fast, they can hide in the bush. If we walk to lane slow, we get level 2'd). Nami E + Lucian E is just too much for poor Kog. We end up missing 2 kills on Lucian by literally 20 damage.

i ended up going LS quints that match up (because Thresh versus Nami). Sort of regret it in that particular case (LS wasn't enough to save me from Lucian and the lack of AS quints resulted in two missed kills). i also walked into an ass-ton of bubbles.

At one point we end up having Bryff + Thresh botlane while i get a few waves top. It seems to work out okay because when i return botlane we stop feeding since i was able to get a level or two of solo EXP. Enemy Renekton luckily didn't able to get much farm because we catch him in our jungle. It's a 3v3 and we end up going 2-for-2.

We end up getting a good "free" bot tower and Renekton wastes TP on a cancel. Bryff is toplane and still has tele (i think). We end up posturing around dragon since Hecarim is low + no ult. We end up posturing too long, however, as people were able to heal. i know that Bryff kind of chased Nami pretty far south of dragon, but Nami was also chunked to like 30% so i understand the greed.

Cow calls for a surrender, and we end up voting for it.

i think that we should try to early-pick Nami because if we need to we can swap ADC/Support and i can play Nami and Pacov can play Caitlyn if it turns out that the enemy comp is going to wreck Kog.

For example: AFAIK Caitlyn is really the only good ADC against Lucian since Lucian is very similar to Vayne now (a short-ranged, generally weak level 1-2). And Kog can't really abuse Lucian's lower range. Maybe the whole enemy team is assassins and Kog's low-mobility just isn't going to work, etc.

PS. Note: Also i'm not a huge fan of Gragas mid unless it's against an Assassin.

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1459926765/40443430

Grats on your promo pacov, seems like it turned out to be quite the tough game lol.  

Unfortunate that you only went up one, but better than nothing right?

Really happy to see all the feedback from hedgie.  Will read all tomorrow.  Hoping we can talk about our wins and losses more.

Dan - you have won the contest.  I will actually gift you a mystery skin this time instead of champion (maybe).  Gift is otw now... here's hoping I don't derp again. 

Short on time atm - played my promo series last night.  Was gold III.  Expected to get promo'd to gold I.  I played a total of like 8 games in gold III and was up against all plats and Gold Is for both my promo games... and I had got jumped up from gold V to gold III last time. 

Anyway, kind of bummer that they didn't bump me to 1.  Means more time I have to waste to get to plat again.  Anyway, games were actually pretty unexciting.  Both games had my teams adc crushing it.  My 2nd game was much more challenging due to our top laner being a goof.  No tp split push tryn that did not want to group.  His contribution was running in after a fight and typically picking up 1 kill and dying instead of helping us end.    Anyway, pretty easy wins.  I went my support jungle and did moderately useful things, but secured dragons every time they came up in both games anyway.

Saw this over on reddit:   http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2b5aj5/jax_has_the_10th_lowest_winrate_and_4th_highest/

Just going to dig through this 1.  What I want to do is to try to learn from things so we can play better.  Not exactly sure what all our take aways will be. 

So - perhaps we need to think more about when we invade with respect to lanes if we are concerned about the level 2 power.  We can probably decide that in the lobby in advance.  We just need to evolve the usually lets go poke their red and perhaps just ward it (map side dependent ofc). 

Also, I don't think I did any intentional ksing (nor do I think you are indicating that btw) - it was just unfortunate that the kills fell to me.  Obv better than folks getting away.  Not sure what I could have done differently to avoid that, though.  If you can think of something, do tell.

The bot lane pressure certainly did become intense.  I don't feel like I was in a position to try to clear out vision or anything based on the pressure.  Not sure what we could have done differently other than sending ww down earlier to camp with all the heavy pressure. 

w/ re: to me pushing the lane which denied but also left you unable to do jack - well, what do you think?  Better to just leave the lane as is so I can back more quickly or push to deny a bit?  Seems like you'd have preferred me to leave the lane as is and back.  I'm cool with that, but my instincts were to push to deny.  I'd have backed if you asked me to pull and really just didn't think of it. 

Yeah - it seemed like we just kept making bad decisions.  I wanted the dragon for the team, ofc, but I think I let karl make all the calls re: it.  Perhaps I was speaking too much?  Not really sure re: that. 

re: nami ults - maybe I'm off on my judgement for timing.  To me, it just feels way to freaking slow for the wind up and its move speed.  I generally feel like I'm not going to catch a trist with it if her hop is op due to positioning.  I can try to go more early with the ults - just expect some whiffs. 

Anyway, I'll be on later tonight.  Hopefully enough folks are around and we can try some more ranked out!

There's other ways to play around the enemy level 2. Other supports (Thresh w/ Flay level 1, Morgana) have pretty decent pushing power level 1 and can help. Even just autoattacking the melee creeps one time as Nami can usually help with the level 2. You usually don't want to push TOO hard level 1 or else you over-push and the enemy gets to freeze next to tower (like what happened that first game). Usually the trick is to push really hard just as the second wave starts coming into lane.

Nah, i wasn't whining there, just giving a game summary. Those fights were close and trying to give me 150 more gold could have resulted in the enemy getting 150 more gold: far worse.

i think that we played the lane alright. i think by the time the fourth gank happened it was something like 3/2/2 for me and 3/0/1 for you, against a 3/1/1 with a 10-15 CS deficient (although the CS deficit ended up growing really fast after that fourth gank). i mean four high-pressure ganks for the first 10-15 minutes is a lot of pressure.

Remember that Bryff and Cow are both extremely consistent and strong laners, and WW is really good at ganking sololanes. Karl may feel like getting Bryff + Cow is better, especially since i am only really trying to "draw" botlane since i'm generally pretty confident in my teamfight positioning. We may want to consider trying some more "independent" support. With the upcoming Nami nerfs + Janna buffs, Janna + Kog might work out fine. i know you dislike Janna due to how weak she is in ganks, but if we decide to run WW and have Karl focus on sololanes, going Janna should be fine. i can also play Janna and Janna + Cait is a pretty decent lane in that we'll pretty easily take their tower early and Cait + Janna can do pretty safe 15 minute dragons.

i think in that particular case that would have been the best thing to do. Or rather than trying to push all the way to tower, try to either reset the lane 100% in the middle or freeze it a little bit outside tower. i know you tend to play better "pushing" supports and Nami is one of the worst supports when it comes to pushing (assuming you go E W Q. You get a little better pushing if you go E Q W at the cost of a bit less lane sustain. Q second is really only good against melee supports tho), so that might alter how you perceive push timings.

The gank botlane where Trist still had jump and you didnt' use Ult and Karl wanted you to ult... pretty sure you not ulting was fine. i'm almost certain you would have wasted ult if you tried it out. Maybe you could have ulted really early to give me the passive and then Trist would have had to jump early, so i could ahve ran forward, oozed, and Karl could have gotten in range to ult that could have worked.

i'm talking more just general teamfights. Remember that your ult also applies your passive to the teammates so ulting kinda early as initiation is happening helps because it's like a weaker talisman, even if you CC either stacks inefficiently or only hits 2/3 people instead of 3/4 people.

Ranked Post-Mortem

Today we tried swapping out me to support and pacov to Caitlyn ADC, due to our issues last night with being level 2'd.

Game 1. Nami/Cait v Ezrael/Thresh - Team is a premade team of diamonds with the same nametag

We end up poking them really hard level 1. We put a lot of damage on WW, but we forget he's actually WW-top and not WW-jungle, so it doesn't really matter since he just TPs back and walks to lane rather than being slow to first buff. Level 1, we end up doing pretty well, we chunk Ezrael pretty hard and from there we are able to establish a significant health advantage thru most of the first 4 levels. Unfortunately, we end up playing a little bit pushed, and i know pacov misses some CS that is just out-of-reach since we weren't quite resetting the creepwaves back into the middle. Nidalee ganks mid. i predict her coming back botlane, but we don't have any wards. Cait ends up dying about 30 seconds later.

Bot lanes ends up staying in lane a really long time. We end up taking a the tower to really low because of it, which does result in us taking the tower a few minutes later. However, they do end up building a CS lead since they are staying in lane longer. Karl tried to gank them while they were both ~40% hp once, but since it's Ez/Thresh, it was unsuccessful.

Enemy jungle Nid is really wrecking with Karl, with huge pressure mid and top thru the first 10 minutes. i end up getting caught around the 9 minute mark at the river when Nid ends up unexpectantly coming from our blue buff. This ends up in them getting a dragon. Then later they do a TP to a ward and WW flash-ults me. Thinking i was safe, i didn't ult the narrow corridor behind me, which would gotten all 4/5 of them and gotten me out. This ends up transitioning into mid tower falling. Luckily, Bryff is able to get two towers toplane. So, while we're behind in CS/kills, we seem to be doing really well in tower.

From here, it just kinda starts slipping out of our grasp. Their team cohesion and general superior skill results in them really choking us by setting up in our northern jungle and denying a lot of vision. They get to invisibly deny us a lot of farm because of it. Team in general does a pretty good job countering by buying pinks/sweepers but it seems too-little-too-late. They methodically bleed us in gold and we end up surrendering after a unwarded 100% desperation Baron that we almost manage to pull off goes badly.

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1461022719/40443430

Game 2. Nami/Cait v Corki/Morgana - Team is mostly high gold - mid/high plat with one diamond

Corki ends up disconnecting level 2, so botlane is smooth sailing. We get a really early tower. Then we overstay despite already having the gold for a BFS and end up giving Xin kills. This is the start of a terrifying DPS Xin. Irelia is having a hard time top lane against Gragas. Since Cait just bought a BFS, i say that we should do an 8 minute dragon. Karl is ~50% hp, and only level 5, but i'm confident that we can 3-man it since i have a pink + the Corki is disconnected. We end up arguing for a bit, and then Cait and i walk allll the way to toplane to do a lane swap against Gragas.

The lane swap seems to work pretty well. Cait + i are able to work Gragas and get top tower. They try to gank us but it doesn't really work since Gragas does an awful flash - bodyslam into creeps. Irelia is able to easily catchup botlane against Morgana. During this time, Corki reconnects. Then we go back bottom for a dragon, which was a much cleaner rotation.

The third dragon, we kind of throw, giving them a near-ace and a tower inexchange for a dragon. Then they counter-throw. It just kinda goes back and forth over and over, eventually they get an inhibitor. From there, Gragas and Xin alternate split pushing while Irelia and Vi keep ganking them. We're able to keep Baron pretty safe, so they don't sneak it despite double ADC.

In general, we seem to have a hard time initiation. Obviously Ez + Corki + Gragas + Morgana is a slippery team. They end up starting baron and we get the catch, so we're able to restablize the gold. We end up losing one Nexus tower (we tunneled about 15 seconds too long on a kill). From there, we are able to get a few catches and finally start sieging Nexus towers. We dance in front of the nexus towers for like 45 seconds but are able to pull out the victory.

We probably would have lost this game if it wasn't for the DC, and these people weren't exactly stronger players (mechanically). But they did seem to consistently put us on the backfoot with splitpushing. Even though we seem to counter 4-1 splits fine, we (as a group) seem to struggle with 3-1-1. Of course, Corki/Ez/Morgana is very difficult to initiate on.

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1461061835/40443430

So - something I need to work on.  I already chatted with cow about this offline, but I def need to work on not singling out folks for picking a certain champ.  Last game of the night cow 2nd picks gp.  We have a botched jungle start primarily due to me, karls running adc, and we have a lulu top.  Well, top lane is garbage and bot lane is struggling quite a bit.  Meanwhile, I'm running support nunu jungle which means our dps primarily will come from gp.  Anyway, long story short, its a rough, lost game, but I tunnel in on the fact that cow went gp.  Cow did just fine playing gp btw, but I fixated a bit on that wishing he had gone a champ that might have more carry potential.  All of those thoughts of mine are quite stupid.  We lost because he had a shit top, bot had a rough game, and I was a jungler that really can't carry or gank super hard.  Not because cow picked gp.  Anyway, my bad - awful tunnel vision.

Back to hedgie's analysis - thanks for looking at things again and doing a break down.

Oh - I didn't know that was the reasoning.  Seems excessive to swap players instead of just adapt strats to avoid level 2 concerns.

I'm skipping out on game 1 completely.  Karl was worked over in the jungle by the nid and we didn't do good enough in other lanes (+ all diamonds).

Game 2 - completely impossible from a mechanical pov for me as adc.  Easily one of the worst games from a lag pov for me.  If you take a look on the stream, you might get an idea (side note - lag not caused by stream or I'd just kill the stream).  Anyway, them having a dc bot lane obv helped a bunch, but I couldn't cs all that well due to see saw lag, so no major adv.  So, I'm off kilter because of that, eventually make 1 or 2 just bad moves (not lag related), and finally my lag stabilized about 35-40 minutes in the game. 

I felt like karl was way too cautious on some dragon calls.  That said, I don't care - he's the jungler and can make the call. Felt like I made a good call re: the lane swap to top. 

Hedgie - you called out that moment where we gave up some deaths to xin bot.  My b ofc - made a bad decision.  I don't mind you being very direct if you are running support for me and being like - we NEED to back now.  I'd probably have listened. 

Also, we need to watch how much we harp on bryff when he either makes a bad play or bad decision.