well... won some ranked and lost some.  started 90 lp g2 and ended 88 lp g2... w/e.  My kha = much work required.  Off to bed. Night!

streaming now with dadyrus - dyrus's dad courtesy of dr swan.  Legit and live

I watched Swan play with him one night on Dadyrus' stream.  He played Rammus and counterjungled DEEP constantly.  Then he complained about his team not backing him up by doing damage when he just blazed away and left them far behind.  Then he got mad cause all the people he fed started doing well, and got mad at all the people who lost their lanes... even though they hadn't really.  Then he got so mad at his team that he got off TS3.

So pretty much I'd rate his Rammus a little better than Karl's.

How'd your games with him go?

Oh - you must not have seen my rammus then - much better than both of them (I just wait for drag to spawn and solo).

1 - dadrus is a mid level player.  It's k.  Nice enough guy. 

2 - he's somehow a worse rager than me.

We played a game with my bud that wanted to only play sej in all roles (rage inducing). His sej support CAN work with me as lucian, but is just awful for vision control (think player that wants his own items as support and would rather not buy team items).  Anyway, he played sej support 1 game.  Dadyrus lost his mind, eventually muted us all because there weren't good wards (bleh)... and then stayed muted for the following game refusing to communicate.  

Bottom line, not fun experience.  Neat meeting the guy, but my impression is that he's guy that enjoys playing league when under the influence.  He's mostly interested in doing w/e is fun for him.  If its not fun for him, gg cya nerds.  Eg - bad teammate.  We'll see.

Anyway, night all!

Yeah... dadyrus is pretty selfish.  He's a fun guy when he's in a good mood though.  Once he starts losing a game and the rage kicks in... that's when you have a problem.  

In my recent experiences with him... he suddenly has played a LOT better when he plays feral flare junglers (jax).  He just started doing that like two weeks ago.  Either way if he starts raging he starts playing bad either way.  

hi come play ranked 5's people. 

Been playing a little more ranked - slow progress.  Been duoing up with von snow of MC of late. Typically good results.  I'm back in my promo series to gold I, but am 0/1.  Had a really winnable game but a jackass jungler that threw it pretty hard.  He started 1 v 5 engages, by himself as amumu, with his team no where in site... where he'd just picked off and blow his ult.  Bugs me when folks don't understand that they are really the reason for a loss.  Anyway, quite a winnable that ended up being a waste and put me to 0/1.

Oh - my current ban list is a little skewed, but not much.  1 - if I'm 1st pick, I'm typically going to try to get yasuo for myself.  I'm nothing special with him, but the potential to carry or win a game with him is just too high imo.  So, if I'm fp, I don't ban him and force the enemy team to do so.  I think typically ban out j4, zed, and trist.  In solo queue, I'm currently gunning for mid or adc for picks.  I only take mid if yas is up.  Adc I'm running with lucian pretty consistently. 

re: the j4 ban - honestly, I don't think j4 is incredibly strong as a jungler, but I've been seeing him a lot lately and he's typically working over mids which causes a bit of a problem.  Not sure why the resurgence of popularity on him, but more often than not I'd see him with a zed mid just trouncing the mid laner.

OK - so the new champ... I'm not really sure what exactly to do with him.  He strikes me as being along the same lines as gnar - fun ideas with so so practicality.  His movement and mobility is very fun though.  So, you are forced to stat with your w.  This is your summon soldiers ability.  Soldiers are stationary and attack any creature that you also attack with aa's.  I don't think they have hit points, but they vanish over a small duration. 

Anyway, your q repositions those soldiers and they attack wherever they hit.  Its a decent size range that you can move then, but it does take a small amt of time to have them move from when you issue the command (ain't crazy slow, just not instant).  Then your e moves you to your soldiers and performs a knockup like j4 for any thing that comes between you and the soldiers.  His ult  knocks back and grants a speed boost to your team if they walk through them. 

His passive is interesting. He can summon turrets over destroyed turrets that last about a minute - once every 3 minutes.  These turrets he summons have similar power levels to that of normal turrets from what I've seen.  This could make him a very intersting laner.  As a jungler, his mobility is really, really good.  Anyway, overall fun to play - but I just don't know where he fits.

Also, any of you following the cass changes?  Her passive currently looks... well... really, really OP. 

He was pretty OP on the first release onto PBE. He could kill a tower without creep waves with fog of war in about 30 seconds with a Nashor's Tooth. (He could spawn soldiers over walls and autoattack towers and just spam them). They bugfixed that (i think).

There was also his ability to teleport to enemy dead towers and instantly proc the passive. Which i think got fixed as well. He's going to be really strong though. Champions who are able to create void zones at range with relative safety have proven themselves to be pretty strong (relese Heim, Syndra, Zyra, Orianna, reworked Heimer, Lux, Anivia).

His ability to scale hard with autoattacks will give him some unique scaling not typically found in AP champs that aren't Kayle.

Anyway, i think he has a kit that is going to have various bugs and tricks that can be exploited. However, he's going to be very relient on his numbers. Too much range or damage and he'll be oppressively strong. Too little range and he won't be able to do what he needs to get rolling.

i think playing against him is going to be really obnoxious as well. Pretty much in the same zone as Morde/Malz or a Athenes+Blue Ziggs where there is very little interaction and pretty much you just dodging skill shots and trying to keep creeps off your tower while they have all the fun.

Then he'll get nerfed and be weak.

He seems toned down a bit on PBE now - dem bugs be gone as far as I can see (well, I was able to turn invisible at one point today during a jungle run...).

If you did run him as a jungler, he could do quite a few useful things early.  One, if an enemy tower is taken (bot or mid), his passive would likely draw 1 when using those towers... which I think would open up drag more.  Best case would be bot lane tower dies, cast passive on tower, go drag.  If they contest, enemy bot lane is out like 1-3 waves - AND added pressure from the tower frees up the bot lane to push mid or another lane.. or do a lane swap from top to bot.  I think it opens up a ton of strategic possilbilities.  I can't stress enough that the tower in its current form feels very much like a BRAND NEW TOWER.  You pop that up in enemy territory at the right time and good things can happen.  Same diff if you want to baron. Pop that passive on a turret to push a wave along.  Honestly, I think his passive (as it is on pbe now), might merit putting him into a team comp by itself.

Cannot stress enough that I think it must be used strategically.  3 min cooldown from when it is DESTROYED. 

Other stuff - last game of the night I got to play yasuo.  Yasuo is such a dumb champ that I am a decent yasuo.  He's not like other hyper carries imo. With like a yi jungle, you have to dedicate a bunch of time to getting strong.  Then you can carry as long as you don't f up your early post 6 ganks.  With yas - he requires very limited itemization to get to that power level. IMO you only need to be semi competent and you are set (hi - I'm semi competent with yas). 

He's PROBABLY going to get nerfed.  70% ban rate.  That said, only a 51% win rate.  So either just poop people get him when his not banned or folks are overly scared of him.  He's in must pick tier for me currently.  Just way too much swing potential (eg I have the dmg and the cc to get a win by myself - 1 good pick and I can get the team back in it or adv us).  I can't think of any other champ with as much value for turning a game by themselves.  Seems a worthwhile risk to pick him.

I ended last night with Peterdumptruck ARAMing Gnar for the first time hes played that champion. Peter proceded to spam laugh the entire match and building full MR tank. It was fun playing the game though because Peter would frequently say in voice chat things like OH MY GOD he can DO THIS????!??!? or "why doesn't he talk he just grunts!" It was a good thing the ARAM gods bestowed upon me Xerath or Ziggs (can't remember which game he got Gnar in) to carry the game with like 20 kills.

Now imagine that game and your stuck w/ garen.  Ah well - miss dat pete.

re: new champ again (not gnar), I'm thinking through rune setup for him and even toyed a bit with cdr mastery maxing.  The other part of his passive is that it gives you 1% of attack speed for every 1% of cdr.  This means that if you get 10% cdr from runes or masteries, you get a 10% as buff.  So, on a jungle build, it probably makes more sense to put points/runes into CDR instead of AS runes.  He feels really underwhelming in the jungle early and seems to spike hard mid game.  Not sure though.  What I tried out was less than optimal - like a 4/6/20 or something silly like that to get max cdr from masteries.  As my rune pages on pbe are a little jacked up, I could only get 7.5% cdr max from runes.  Anyway, I start the game with like 17.5% cdr and immediately jump to 27.5% with blue buff.  So, 27.5% AS bump out the gates.  We'll see, but its kind of smeh.

Oh and we got to play some games with our new pal from the forum here: replicators aka cataphrat1 ign.  Had some fun games.  Did not get to play with dudernerdrage as of yet though.  Anyway, hope to catch you all again soon.

I'd think max CDR is so easy to get that it's a bit of a waste to do that.  You'd hit 40 with Blue just running your jungle item and banner of command or nashors tooth.  Those both seem like perfect fits for the guy with him being an AP caster that gets minions and AA boosts.

Really curious to see if cass is op or not... also, looks like ascension is live.  Is it weird that they patched on a Tuesday?  Anyway, looking forward to checking things out tonight. Let's all get an ascension game in eh. 

So, I generally don't really care much about in game lore, but Riot did a really good job with this.  Check out the vid if you have not already.  Worth a watch.  Really well directed as well imo.