"Hope you all enjoyed playing Azir after his release." - riothue

And now in idiotic news...

"On September 15th, 2014, Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen used racially insensitive language while interacting with players on the Taiwan server. He adopted the summoner name “TaipeiChingChong”..."

http://na.lolesports.com/articles/league-legends-competition-ruling-dennis-%E2%80%9Csvenskeren%E2%80%9D-johnsen

So, here we have a kid doing something stupid.  Then his team does something stupid by apologizing for same stupidity and indicating that they think their apology is enough for this behavior (they worded their post making it sound like they would suspend him from the team, only to go on and say that he apologized immediately, and now we as a team apologize and hope you will accept (eg we won't be doing anything other than apologizing here fellas). 

Anyway, in comes Riot - 3 game suspension + fine. So, dumb kid will get the message that he did something dumb.  And his team will also suffer due to dumb kid.  huzzah.

lol

Sorry about that game last night. My internet completely shit the bed so I played some Sims Theme Park while I waited for my ping to even out.

No big deal.  Man last night was just a ton of crap games for me.  I think I lost all but 1 game.  T'was a magical night.  I'll tell you about my 1 win as it might be slightly interesting

So, for my 1st game, I play team builder where I run Azir as a support.  Oddly (hue), that took 9 minutes to get 4 other people willing to play w/ me.  And then like 5-6 more minutes to have the game actually find a match (was kind of weird really).  Anyway, my team was lucian/azir bot, poppy jung, kass top, yas mid vs a fairly normal team comp that included a blitz support.

Anyway, I thought azir support MIGHT work after some modifications - specifically, I needed to take gp5 quints (which I don't really do on any supports anymore).  Reason being he's pretty much trash as a zero cs support if you are buying support items - and that frees me up to have more wards, etc.  Anyway, early game he was reasonably strong (ran him with mpen reds).  Basically, you can zone the crap out of the bot lane (sadly a little more difficult with a blitz matchup (his soldiers do not block creeps or grabs).  The way to zone to the adc and support is to place your soldiers well behind the creeps and hit some aa's.  Having spell thief is nice here as you proc the dmg bonus when you hit AND get the bonus gold.  All from a very safe distance - once your soldiers are out.  The zoning is strong enough that your adc will have time to cs easily all while you are putting out some dmg on support/adc.  Anyway, level 1 was reasonably strong. 

I fell off quite a bit due to lack of experience with the champ, ofc, though. Another thing to note... that resulted in my death like 2 times until I figured it out (I thought I was just up against players that stunned me mid dash) - you STOP whenever you hit an enemy champ with your e.  Super important to understand if you are trying to escape or reposition.  I had 1 situation where I could have easily escaped an incoming riven but instead decided to try to dash through her (think j4 mechanics) to get out - had I gone around her - no problem.  Anyway, learning experience.

Overall, I'm not so sure about azir's power level.  It's another fun champ to play with unique mechanics, but I can't quite find the sweet spot other than to say he has a really nice power boost when he gets nashor (which obv happens super fast for a support build eh).

There are quite a few easy to use laning tricks but I don't think I can describe them super well without a visual aid.  Lev 1 - you need to position the soldiers back row where you expect the enemy champ will be - just spread out a bit to zone him quite a bit.  As a support, easy to do - you just start dropping the soldiers quickly before the enemy bot lane is ready to start csing.  Mid lane you can prob follow the same tactic. The lv1 risk is that you can't reposition your soldiers and you want them in the the same place mostly (deep back row w/e the enemy adc/mid is).  And the cast range is small, so you literally have to walk all the way up to place them then back away (eg you'd take dmg against anyone experienced). 

When you get level 2, put it into your q and you can reposition the soliders.  Now, you can drop soliders into better locations or safer ones and reposition.  I'd suggest focussing less on trying to dmg with your q and more on repositioning the soliders with it.  ex - place 2 soliders on your left and right near the front line.  when you cast your q aim it so the soliders end up in a similar location in the back line. 

Figured out where hedgie has been

Anyone else getting into worlds?  Been watching a bunch of the rebroadcasts. 

http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames

also rui - I think I have it sorted so you can post links again on my stream.

So I'm curious.  Does anyone know the following for sure?  Karl hit plat early season 4.  Then got knocked back to gold I due to some bs (says dr karl - he didn't play ranked for 23 days and was demoted vs the 30 normal demotion). Anyway, karl's gold I 99 lp now.  Here's the question - will he get plat awards (banner anyway) for season 4 if he stops playing ranked now or does he have to promote up to plat again?  Pretty confident dr karl would like that banner.

for me, I'm gold I - hit it yesterday.  Played 3 boozed up games tonight and went 1/2 - result is that gold 1 24 lp. Probably going to keep putting time in ranked and try to hit plat for the border. 

I am fairly confident that whatever league you end in this season is the award you get so get your asses to plat boys. 

So, you are confident that this year is different than other years then, right?  Because that is different.  hmmm...

No... the only season that had the "best ranking you've had this season" was Season 2 after they weird half-reset thing with Elo.

Beta/Season 1 it was the threshold of whatever Elo points you were at

Season 2 was going to be as Season 1, but then they did a weird half-reset about halfway thru the season and made it so that whatever your highest Elo was the rewards you got (to minimize end-of-season rank anxiety).

Season 3 you had to actually have Plat at the end of the season to get it. The only way to "lose" Plat was to decay, so it didn't happen very often. But it was possible. Look at least how Challenger worked, only the top 50 players got the border, not every player who had hit Challenger at any point of the year.

Season 4 is the same as Season 3 but it's possible to de-rank by having sufficiently low MMR to stop V-division trolls.

ah ok - thanks fellas!

Side note - there's a mod that enables you to use a very recent version of the new updated SR - http://yurixyworks.com/2014/06/27/play-in-new-summoners-rift-on-your-live-server/

I've installed and it works fine. 

I hear Janna has made some shockwaves through the community in Worlds. I just fear she might receive the nerf hammer soon because of it.

Anyways, I have no clue why[probably lack of chemistry/synchronization], but I lose my games in premade groups a hell lot more than I do solo-queuing, even amongst closest of friends, so I'll probably not be joining you guys anymore as I felt like a third wheel in the games we've played, being pretty useless or worse.

Oh and about Azir, maybe its because hes a new champ and few knows how to play him, but I've found that hes extremely vulnerable to bursty champs. I've beaten every Azir with Lux I've ever played against/ Even as support Lux against a mid Azir.

Oh, and Banner of Command doesn't give the Aura to his soldiers.

he is pretty squishy - thank god. When you have long range, consistent dps, escapes, CC and shields you better blow up when your shits down and you get caught

Well, honestly I think its a perspective problem.  You and I, for instance, have played a total of 3 games together (1 win 2 losses about 1 week ago).  Now I'm not a statistician here, but we've both played about 3k + games.  Going to go out on a limb and say there might be a sample size problem based on the conclusion you reached. I certainly don't think you are bad or a third wheel (but its def fair to say that it takes a little bit of time to get to know all the various folks I play with... and a few likely did whine about the voice chat deal).

Anyway, without really diving into things super hard outside of that quick stat look up, let me put it to you like this - if you'd like to get to know a broader group of people, I'd encourage you to give it a bit more of a go.  You are already coming in as a bit standoffish by not wanting to speak in voice chat.  That's fine, but also unique amongst the folks I play with regularly.  Also, I don't really know if you actually prefer to play support in games, hate certain game modes, etc.  I only know whatever info you've offered (which is "add me if you want a support" and "I tend to win more when I'm solo").  For instance, if I knew you only liked playing SR draft, I'd only invite to that etc.  If I knew you actually want to play mid, I'd offer you up that role, etc. You can clarify that to me here or privately if you like.

Last, it could just be that you got a negative vibe from certain folks (possibly even me).  Things like that are typically addressed fairly quickly if I'm aware there is an issue.  Only join us if its fun for you and if its not, then no hard feelings, eh. 

I swear banner of command did on PBE when I tested.  Could be I'm crazy though.  Either way, I'm down with believing you.    I currently think azir is kind of crap.  Think that might be for the same reason you pointed out - no one really knows how to utilize him right.  I've found it easy to whoop him mid with burst champs as well.  We'll have to see re: janna nerfs.  I thought she had some ridiculous win rate at worlds so far.