Did not receive a response from server on NA.  Runs through 5 times then craps out.  Can log into PBE and LAN.  No idea...

Did a ton of things to resolve - thing that fixed was repairing within the client.  Issue might be related to the SRVU Mod.

Kudos to hedgie for playing that last game of the night.  I was actually really surprised you didn't drop based on the crap people were saying and ended up doing.  In my experience, sydragon really, really, likes to pick silly things.  So him wanting to sona/raka top was painful... I managed to steer him away from that and then we get an azir support.  Sighpants.  Can't convince everyone, but I gave it go.  Anyway, kudos for being a good sport. 

Lost 1 ranked tonight with my duo queue pal.  He kind of went on tilt super quickly.  We did have an awful mid, but he was super chatty/bitching at our team.  Kind of created a toxic atmosphere.  Honestly, w/o that, our mid still would have been bad enough to cause a loss (he was ziggs.. early/mid game he ulted several times to clear waves while the enemy mid did useful things).  I chatted my pal up re: that.  Anyway, we'll see if he can handle losses more gracefully or just insta tilts.  I think this insta tilt might be the reason he's only gold III right now, though.  Honestly, his skill cap is at least mid plat if not higher as adc.  Mentally not there though as I think he kind of gives up when he takes a loss and then doesn't want to play ranked. 

Night all!

Just a heads up to anyone using the SR VU Mod - I think you will have to do a repair every time a new patch comes out and it seems like each patch breaks the map mod.  Still worth playing that map, though - riot did a great job and are still tweaking things.

Didn't play any ranked last night - just putzed around a bit and played games w/ pals.  FYI - OP GG had its database reset.  Not sure why but it went into maintenance yesterday. For those that don't know OP gg is a great site for tracking stats.  It can also be used to record live games - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=pacov

Anyway, hoping to get through my promo series shortly.  This trick guy might be too volatile though.  Going to give ranked another go with him when he's not so exasperated.   

c9 vs ssb games sooo good.  Live now - replay soonish.  Super good games though.  Night all!  Karl appears to be staying up for this... 3am = pacov pooped. 

:/

grats

mmm... promo'd to plat.  The dumb ass mental struggle is over for this season.  Going to just accept that I'm fugged after placement matches and grind to DIAMOND.  We'll see if I can do it...

note to self-  talk about drop hacked and best movie I've seen in a long time.  Night peoples.

So 1st - movie recommendation - if you have netflix, check this out:  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/headhunters/

Its available for instant streaming.  I watched it twice over the weekend.  Really good flick.  You start off interested and then it sucks you in completely after about 30 minutes and it just gets more and more intense.  Suggest you take a look and see what you think.

Yesterday I met my somewhat depressing goal of getting back to where I was last season - platinum.  For any that don't recollect, I hit Plat IV last season, had that stat reset at the beginning of season 4, went 5/5 or so in my placement matches due to dcs/trollings, and placed into silver I.  This completely demoralized me and resulted in me not really wanting to grind out stats in ranked just to get back to what I earned in the previous season.  It just stuck me as crap to have to spend a bunch of time to get back to where I was.  Anyway, I'm over that now and next season I will be spending a bunch of time in ranked.

I did decide to look up my ranked stats to get an idea of how much I played.

• Season 2 - 74 ranked games (no win/loss stats available) - end season Gold.
• Season 3 - 172 wins, 147 losses.  Total games 319.  Win rate 53.9% - end season Plat IV
• Season 4 - 93 wins, 79 losses.  Total games 172.  Win rate 54.06% - end season Plat something

As you can see, pretty sizable drop off in games for season 4 due to that whole demoralization crap (147 fewer games as of today).  But like I said, I'm going to choose not to get into that crap in season 5 and just plow through things even if I have a smeh placement series.  The goal will be to hit diamond which I think will be a little bit challenging.  I feel pretty confident I can get to high plat based on my skill level, but we'll see. 

I will be playing some more ranked this season, but really just to help folks out now that I've met my goal.  Figure I'll do what I can to help my buddy trick get to plat if he's motivated.  That will likely result in me hitting mid plat.  Let me know if you want help in ranked and need a duo buddy.  Will do what I can to help as adc/jung/support.  I know a few of you are trying to get back or up to plat before the season ends.  Let me know if you think I can help you out. 

I'll talk about the drop hack in a little bit and my experience in ranked last night.

So - my ranked games from last night.  I spent some time in 2 of the 3 games managing my team.  By that, I mean helping folks untilt.  I do have a nice advantage here as I have been that tilted guy many times, so I get it.  Anyway, in 1 game, we had a really trollish top laner.  Goes liss top with ignite.  The enemy team gets both trist/yasuo.  Anyway, our jungler ganks for top lane and takes a few cs.  As a result, this liss player (I think this liss is actually just a lousy player tbh) over extends, dies several times, runs her mouth in chat, and is generally a shite.  Anyway, the liss keeps feeding and doing nothing useful for the team resulting in 4v5 on every team fight.  But my jungler can't help himself - he keeps going on and on with liss (I muted her when it was clear she was going to be a nuisance and encouraged everyone else to do the same).  Eventually I call out my jungler and put it clearly that him going on and on with her is hurting our team and distracting everyone.  Please mute now and be done with.  He apologizes and mutes her.  We go on to beat a late game team, that has baron buff, 4v5, by out playing them. 

I was 0/1 in my series and got into that game with a trolly POS.  I helped calm folks down, played best (worked super hard) to help win that game.  Honestly, I think if the lee kept talking w/ Liss, we would have lost that game.  Anyway, just says a bit about being positive and helping people keep from tilting.  I was super happy getting a win on that game though.  Extremely difficult, but a win that put me to 1/1 in my series. Not at all surprised to check that liss's stats and see her at 3/7 for last 10 games in ranked. 

Anyway, we win the next 2 games due to surrenders (I go 0/1/10 and 1/2/17 as janna respectively).  Both pretty solid wins. 

So, I'm super happy, but my last game is stuck at the waiting for stats screen (the game I would have promoted on).  Next thing i know, hedgie pm's me and says that he thinks my game may have been drop hacked as he can't see the stats.  I whinged for a bit on stream and was pulling my replays to open a ticket with riot (that probably would have gone no where).  I queue up for another game and play a fairly trolly zilean as I'm done w/ ranked, relaxing, and starting to tilt a bit due to the drop hack bit.  Well, my normal game ends and I'm greeted with the "congrats you've been promoted to plat" message.  Turns out the servers where just slow or w/e and there was no drop hack.  So, I go back to being happy and play a bit better. 

Side note-  hedgie put in some time on gnar.  Feeling good about him now?

New riot servers for NA targeted for this November:

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/riot-official/0YOGUwHG-stability-upgrade-and-planned-migration-for-na-servers

Not east coast servers though - still LA based so no ping change I think...

yeah i suck a bit less. There's a lot of intricacies about top lane that i'm not aware of. But i've certainly lost lane and been able to transition much better than someone like Quinn or Teemo, even putting out reasonable KDA by the end of the game. Brutalizer + 2x Dorans means that you can usually get 4-5 CS a wave just with your boomerang, so he's very difficult to zone. i think that he also has a lot of trouble against Ranged Tops, similar to Teemo (Ryze, Liss, Quinn, Rumble).

Quinn in particular is a difficult match up since she's able to massively deny Mini Gnars W and very easily kite Mega Gnar (and % hp execute to counter the bonus hp on Mega form).

And once you get your first big defensive item (Banshees or Randuins) you really are able to brute force most lanes with Mega Gnar, regardless of how far ahead the enemy is. That's been my experience, at least. Even when i was ~2.5 kills behind that Quinn the moment i got my Randuins she really couldn't do much to me if i got do a double-bounce E as Mega.

i will say that you're "probably" better off just playing Irelia or Jayce if you want a reasonably competent laner who is very difficult to deny and scales well into teamfights, while also being good at split pushing. In particular, Irelia is very easy to play in teamfights, as opposed to trying to manage Gnar's transformations.

But he brings good poke (which Irelia doesn't really have without ult) and he brings good tankiness (which Jayce doesn't have), so he does have his own unique advantages. i def don't consider him bad, the build paths seem to have been figured out and the latest set of buffs really helped him. But there are some more straightforward champs with more consistent results. Which has been pretty much the story of my league career, haha. Why play the hard inconsistent champs when you can just play the straightforward consistent ones?

wow - didn't know he'd clear that quick - good to know. 

Nah you don't one-shot the wave. That's usually not good if you're behind because it lets them freeze it on you.

If you catch the boomerang everytime, with just the CDR of Brutalizer, you're able to last-hit every minion as it dies from safety.