Re: bryff

I think we need to make more decisive decisions with Bryff's teleports. I think that is more my problem then anyone else's. I have started to expect Bryff to just know when to TP and when not to and that has been leaving us with bad dragon fights or other objective fights. I need to be much more decisive with my TP calls instead of either not saying nothing or being unassertive with the calls. 

Other than the pacov lag and Karl getting counter ganked/jungled at what appeared to be perfect moment we played fairly well. 

Yeah, I had the same lag in the next game that pacov had, so I don't know what was going on last night.  I didn't notice it while playing Vi, but when I played Cait the next game, some of my shots would hit on time, but a huge number of my shots would hit ~300ms late.  It made last hitting really hard, and trying to poke anything was also really tough.  My ping was perfectly fine, but something was up.

Yeah, maybe some combined issue.  Folks in other games were complaining about lag as well.  My ping was going up and down very frequently which changed the timing of what I saw on the screen over and over.  That I cs'd as well as I did (not well at any rate) was pretty good imo. 

I'll telling you, though, I think we need to be a bit more sensitive w/ Bryff (IN GAME) when calling him out on perceived mistakes.  Call him out, but discuss it at the end of the game or over here on the forums as needed. 

Anyway, if enough folks are on tonight, hopefully we can get more reps in. 

I was thinking last night after I had played a ranked game with gragas top (now that he is strong top) and it went pretty well we might be able to shake up our lanes a little bit if people want to do different things. We could get bryff some reps as Sona or Kassadin, Hedgie some mid lane, and pacov some more caitlyn games if I am playing gragas top.

Otherwise I am of the mind to keep playing the way we have been since we have had pretty decent success.

So, I figured out some things about my internet connection and the problem appears to be two fold.

Symptoms of issue:  frequent ping fluctuations in LoL resulting in frequent, variable lag in game.  Also, sometimes the lag is static for quite some time.

Now, ping fluctuations indicate (to me anyway) bandwidth concerns.  But, the thing I noticed - my stream isn't lagging and is processing as expected (eg upload bandwidth is fine).  That points to a download bandwidth issue.  Which makes little sense as I have 30 meg dl, 3.5meg up. 

Anyway, last night if you recollect, I left before we played a game and I restarted my cable modem.  Then I ran a speed test.  Boom, fluctuating dl bandwidth that is capped at 3meg.  So, I kill my router to end traffic on the network and isolate my pc.  My MAJOR lag issues are gone, but the riot based ones remain (higher than avg ping due to net traffic routing).  Anyway, its playable compared to what I was dealing with earlier in my thresh game.  Also, I check my speed test after the last game of the night again.  Suddenly, its running again at 30meg dl, 3.5 meg up again.  So, at a minimum, my isp was having issues and gave me a credit for that.  Worst case, there is intentional throttling that is taking place... which will result in me tearing my isp a new one and changing providers. 

For those that don't really pay much attention to bandwidth, lol requires a very small amt of bandwidth to function properly (well under 1 meg download, .5 upload for a 5v5 game).  I was experiencing god awful lag last night because in additional to lol, my wife was running netflix and we were limited to a 3 meg pipe.  So, anytime netflix would attempt to buffer or adjust its visual quality, I'd hit a see saw effect as my bandwidth was gobbled up.  Its my theory that my net's been jacked and limited to 3meg up until last night after our games.  I'm going to closely monitor my bandwidth to see if throttling is occurring. 

Anyway, I should have skipped the last game of the night at any rate.  Decision making process turned to rot and was doing way too many stupid things.  My bad

Have you tried to mess around with your router's QoS?

I hacked into the neighbor's router that we share internet (and pay half) with, and found that he put every priority to high besides gaming.  So, the reason that I would get massive ping spikes was apparently because god forbid that someone loading up a porn video should have to wait an extra split second before Shaved Asian Invasion IV would start loading.  I'm wondering right now how many games were ruined for me because someone simply looked up any website and the router needlessly gave them priority when there was plenty of bandwidth to share.

I'm especially bitter since I would've gotten my own line a while back but didn't want to get my neighbors in trouble with their illegal cable splices and all.

Anyway Pacov, have you messed around with the QoS settings yet?  If the issue only happens when something aside from LoL is going on, maybe that would fix it.  I assume that since you're in the business so to speak (and might now refer to simply opening your router's webpage as "hacking") you might have already checked into that.

I lol'd

I've toyed with Qos settings in the past including killing my cable modems built in wifi in the past.  Qos (if its properly implemented in my modem) might solve the rare problem when I'm somehow throttled down to 3 meg download, but it really should be a complete non issue when my bandwidth is as it should be... and I already have a non qos solution in place - turn off router, yell at cable company, then switch.  That said, I'm going to poke around for a few min with the qos and see what's what. 

Lots of insightful stuff in the Riot Statikk q/a.  Worth a look.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/live-gameplay/xAQdUGK8-statikk-qa-begins-july-21st-but-submit-your-questions-now

Sorry for the sour attitude in twisted treeline tonight. I get that way when I lose to golds :/ 

On a happy note we got some more practice in with pacov and are starting to see what kind of comps are played. 

I also got Diamond back. Not sure why it was easier this time but whatever. 

holy crap did you trigger ocd in me thunder.  I've been like nonstop obsessed with qos and toying with my network tonight. 

On the bright side, I streamed a game w/ karl/cow and noticed a pretty big problem on my stream with hopping about tha ti think I have sorted/improved at least. 

More details on my net setup... running ddrt on my router now though

Played around and beat Naxx + Heroic Naxx today. i was careful to avoid any spoilers, but here's how i did it if y'all are interested. Otherwise, feel free to figure it out yourself! It's a fun deckbuilding excersize.

All bosses have 45 HP, and OP hero powers.

Wing #1:

He is similar to a Warlock. His hero power is 2 mana for a 4/4, and he is very smart about spamming that shit. He has Mortal Coil, a flamestrike that heals him, Abominations and Frostbolts.

The first thing that i tried was a Watcher Druid. The brand new Nerubian eggs are really good with Watcher, and i figured with Argus Defender you're able to get a lot of positive trades. i also had a lot of hope with Poison Seeds when they have a large board + Abomination, but that doesn't work . The problem is that you'll never ever be able to wrest board control from a bunch of 4/4s that get coined out turn 1. You also can't just try to rush the face, since the +15 hp and the huge 4/4 minions will just outpace you.

i ended up switching to a sort of Midrange Beast hunter. The hunter hero power is able to put the enemy "kind of" on a clock, which is generally in your benefit since you won't win the board war. Their hero power also tends to spam the board. Mind Control Tech is 100% a necessity in order to win this, since it allows you to negate their hero power for 2 turns (effectively) and get your own 3/3 on the board for 3 mana. Houndmaster + Oasis Snapjaw creates a formidable 4/9 taunter that i dub "The Nerubian Slayer". If you're able to get your Savannahs on the board, you can just ram those guys into the face (for the most part).

The AI are pretty bad about killing buzzards (except with Mortal Coil) so they form a critical component to your draw. You'll usually get 2-3 cards with your buzzard where an human would only let you get 1 at most. Deadly Shot is always killing something valuable. Explosive trap is really "eh" unless they get an Abomination, but you can combo it with Explosive Trap if you must. If you see one, Hunters Mark it and then drop the explosive. Misdirection is also super essential, since it allows you to not only 2-for-1 but also prevent 4 face damage. Finally, Emperor's Cobra and the new Spider Legendary are your value machines. Cobra is the only practical way to deal with the 4/4s with 3 mana (other than a beast + kill command) and the spider is your value machine once you get her out.

The first time i tried this deck, i used UTH, but that's utterly useless since the 1 damage doesn't mean anything and the "draw 4 cards" comes too late at 5 mana, since you'll die the next turn. My final decklist was able to win after the 2nd Heroic attempt, with 2 prior deck list attempts (one including UTH), and about 5 attempts with variations of Watcher Druid.

Wing #2:

This is more of a Warrior. Hero power is 1 mana "do one ''''''random'''''' damage per card in the opponents hand". They've got Inner Rage, and the +3/3 to a damaged. They also play this OP 2/4 minion that gives the hero +3 attack for each copy on the board. i used my original decklist and was nearly able to clinch out a victory the 2nd game (a sudden +3/3 Nerubian Egg got me with the final HP as i had lethal on the board). i then tried like ... 10 freaking times, but wasn't able to get even kind of close.

So i made some tweaks. One big change was i swapped in Snipe. Snipe is pretty much the only way to answer the Cultists, and occasionally it works against the Deathchargers. i also decided to get rid of the Mind Control Tech, since getting to 4 minions means you pretty much already lost against this guy. i also reduced my draw engine (no buzzard) and decided to drop my overall mana curve, so that i'd have less cards in my hand. Another big change was replacing Scavenging Hyenas with River Croks. The extra 1 hp makes a huge difference. Finally, i switched my 2 Explosive Shots with 2 Stampeding Kodos. Sometimes you get unlucky with the Kodo and kill and Egg but your Emperor Cobras + Maexxna can deal with the spawn. The 3/5 is also a good health distribution since you can absorb a few more Fire Circles.

Wing #3:

This is like a shitty Zoo. Hero power "ALWAYS" fires and it returns two of your minions back into your hand. Therefore, this makes any 5+ cost minion unplayable, as well as making taunts nearly useless (unless you play 3 minions in one turn). You're completely reliant on battlecry minions, charge minions and spells in order to win.

So, i did an old-school UTH face hunter and was able to beat it on my very first attempt (although i got really lucky with my draws). One thing is that the enemy also starts with 2 of the 1/2 spiders that spawn 2 more spiders. This is easy UTH bait. You'll want to mulligan hard for UTH, Explosive Trap, Tracking. Use Tracking to dig for your traps and UTH. You can tank a little bit of the baby spider damage. Once they have a bunch of the 1/2.. play explosive trap. They'll flood the board with a bunch of useless 1/1 spiders. Then play UTH and your second trap. Your hounds will slowly just get bounced back to your hand, but they just become 1/1/1 chargers, so it's never a waste. Proceed to run at face. i got really lucky with both of my Animal Companions being the 4/2 Boars. You can use your Buzzard as a very simple draw engine since your bounced hands means no problem. Just be wary of getting "too" big of a hand since you might burn cards if they get bounced to your hand and you don't have room.

So... super exciting networking update, etc.  Recapping my problem again - frequent spikes in ping in LoL resulting in lag.  Also, higher than avg ping.  The 1st problem appears to be bandwidth related (in my experience, ping fluctuations (up/down a lot) typically are).  The 2nd is LoL traffic routing related and its doubtful I can do anything about it. 

Anyway, while I have plenty of bandwidth, I believe the main source of the problem for me is netflix.  My upload bandwidth is not impacted in the slightest (which is why my stream still works while I'm lagging in game).  Its my download bandwidth that takes too big a hit (30 meg dl) as netflix attempts to get max bandwidth or any other video that is loaded.  When the request for additional bandwidth is made, I'd see an increase in my ping and depending on the intensity of that request or series of requests, my lag would get worse, etc.  Note, that this is all theory btw.  Anyway, there's also a possibility of additional latency with my isp during the times I play most nights.

I decided to tackle the problem believing that netflix in the main problem - specifically, devices on my network try to use more bandwidth than is available when buffering videos.  The solution is to limit the total bandwidth available to netflix. 

I believe that can be done on the devices directly, but am not 100% sure, so I'll look into that later perhaps (I know I can on my pc anyway).  I tried to figure out a much more complicated solution instead related to my network infrastructure. 

My network map included a cable modem, my pc connected directly to the cable modem, and then my router connected to the cable modem providing wifi to the house.  My cable modem does not have any QOS functionality baked in.  My router does, but that requires moving my pc to be behind the router instead of directly connected to the cable modem.  I didn't want to go that route, but I did.  Testing indicated subpar performance when I moved my pc behind the router.  So, I updated the firmware on my router and toyed with settings including Qos.  QOS implementation on the router was garbage and ineffective.  The Qos would actually work on a Mac address level, but only after it allowed the initial burst of data through (eg let's try to play netflix at max resolution - it works a moment, then qos throttles the available bandwidth).  In short, not a solution as it doesn't solve my problem (still would have lag spikes due to fluctuations).

So, onto ddrt.  Worth reading up on if you aren't in the know.  The short version is that you can update the firmware on my router to use the ddrt firmware which adds a bunch of functionality that most routers do not have including more than a few customization options.  So, I successfully flash to the latest ddrt build for my router.  Without tackling my problem at first, I already see some pretty big improvements in throughput even with my pc behind the router. 

Anyway, that's about as far as I got last night.  My problem still remains for now, but the solution I'm looking into is connecting via ssh and locking down the total bandwidth available to specific devices on my network that run netflix.  That's something you can do with ddrt, or so I've read.  This should end the heavy spike problem. 

I was totally expecting something more original than a hunter deck from you hedgie! 

I beat the first two bosses in the heroic wing with a Naxxramus esc warlock deck. I ran nerubian eggs, and the new spider that gives you 1-1's with void terrors. It worked out exceedingly well. 

The last boss I had to adapt because of the obnoxious hero power. I ran a priest deck with Alexstraza. It also had some fun cards like elven archer and voodoo doctor to take advantage of there battle cries. I tried to fill my opponents board with the 1-1 spiders by kill the 1-2 spiders and activating there death rattle. This way I would just be taking 1x#ofspiders damage instead of getting destroyed by bigger creatures. Once I had that accomplished I had 2 sea giants in my deck that I could get out for free and start to wrestle board control from the boss. I also had minions that would provide a secondary minion like murloc tidehunter and razorfen hunter. I also included some knife jugglers for extra synergy. It took a few tries with this deck but it felt good when it worked.