So, i'm not "blaming" the game on you, and i'm under the assumption that you are not blaming the game on me.

i will point out that obviously, it's my job to smite baron and missing a smite on baron does lean more on me making a mistake than anyone else. However, Elise does have much better burst than a 130 AD, 30 AP Skarner. So we're looking at a 70-30 sort of odds. Even though that's in our favor (and my screw up if i miss the smite), turning on the 25% elise when she walks on a trap + not attacking baron when she's about to E in drops that risk to extremely low. Remember also that suppression stop smite so if she comes in, i can ult her and then we're safe to kill her and then baron (i had ult up).

Additionally, i tend to focus much more on tower + kill rotations over dragon rotations. i'm sure you noticed this in my Fizz game as well. Dragons are not "free". There's a pretty heavy risk associated to doing dragon if you're not sure where the entire team is. Generally you end up losing half-2/3rds a creepwave + some health/mana. Many games are lost due to bad dragons. Many less games are lost when you trade a kill + top tower for a dragon.

A TF + TP top against our ignite top means that pressuring botlane just isn't going to work very well. Additionally, since it's Annie, not a "true" ADC, tower and dragon pressure is a lot less important right? If Annie does well in lane (2/0 kind of well, not 10/1), she's going to get kills and have a CS advantage over you, but she isn't going to transition them as much into dragons + towers.

Additionally, even if Annie gets really fed, Skarner really isn't a champ that can do a lot about that. If i ult her, she's probably already unloaded everything onto the team, so it's kind of irrelevant if she's strong/weak. However, a Lux is going to be able to waveclear and keep them from pressuring towers. A good bind is on either TF or Annie should pretty much instantly wipe them.

This is kind of how that game went down:

1- We've got an Annie/Thresh botlane. You start traps, which means your level 1 is super weak. Not sure if that ended up mattering.

2- First ganks:

  a- i go top while Bryff is extremely low hp. Bryff kinda just suicides into Darius for the "free" kill. Darius is smart enough to not burn flash, so he's not a free kill. Since Bryff has no TP, and Darius does, Bryff dying is in Darius' favor. Darius gets to TP to a huge creep wave (perhaps my fault for not pushing it into tower correct), and after i do golems/wraiths i come back top and Bryff is level 5 to 3. i manage to burn flash but that is. However, the level descrepancy is a huge issue and will plague bryff for the rest of the game.

  b- meanwhile, Elise ganked mid twice. Lux drops down to ~10% hp and loses flash. Elise and TF flashes are down. i end up scaring TF to base. Afterwards, i intercept Elise on the way to ganking top and kill her.

At this point, Lux and TF end up hitting 6 (i give Lux first blue). Even though Lux is a kill + assist up, she's equal in farm.

There's three lanes. Right now top lane is doing pretty bad. i've got a few options:

1- i can continue to camp TF/Lux. (espiecially since Elise is focusing midlane).

2- i can try to recover botlane

3- i can try to recover toplane.

i focused on #1, with a second emphasis on #3.

There is a huge, massive risk with going botlane because of the 4v3/5v3 potential. In fact, the two big mid-game plays that lost us a huge amount of tempo was because i went bot. (once when i came to "protect" you while killing bot tower which just lead to false confidence and us overextending, the second time when Lux+Zyra fucked around with red for half a year while we were dragon and we got aced).

Trying to help Rengar has some of the risks as going botlane, but not quite so bad. It's a 2v2 or 3v2 at worse. Of course, Darius is really good at turning that into a double kill, but we were lucky enough to not have had that happen much that game.

Really, i just should have stayed mid /even more/. This at least would have let us keep some additional dragon pressure (compared to going top) and i could have tried to take early towers mid and hopefully Thresh or Annie would have rotated out of your lane and given you some room.

i do know that your logic that "Rengar is behind, Darius has teleport, we should do dragon so that Darius 'wastes' TP and then Rengar can catch up" is not a very good argument, just because that's a really good way to give Darius a triple while fighting 4v5 + dragon. The only way that could have happened was with a bajillion and a half pink wards, and nothing stops the support from throwing down a ward midfight.

It sounds like I misunderstood your original position.  When you said going BotRK after IE was inefficient at best, I thought you meant that it was a bad choice or worse.  It sounds to me now like you were talking about it from a gold efficiency standpoint, which is a theory crafting tool I care very little about.

Now the way I see it is that if my previous assumption of what you meant held true, it would be the opposite of what was quoted above.  If someone tells me something isn't good and I see an example of one pro using it and dominating a high level game, I think to myself "Well... there's at least one person out there who knows a little more about playing ADC than us who seems to feel differently.  So..."

Now if someone tells me that buying BotRK after IE is bad and points me to an example of a pro buying a different item after IE, I simply just say to myself "More than one way to skin a cat."  Doesn't really make me feel any differently about the BotRK option.

But anyway, if I accidentally wandered into a debate about gold efficiency of items I've made a terrible mistake, because I really really don't care.  At all.  I'm more interested in what actually works the best currently for different champs and different situations.

Welp, I guess I do have a Stardock account already LOL.  

Might've been from when I got Political Machine.

But anyway, with all the hullabaloo about BT, IE, and BOTRK...

I interject with, BT vs. BOTRK.

well, well... mr fancy has appeared at long last.  All hail dan Kuh Knee. 

yeah - after playing some more, I was already starting to lean more towards skipping BT.  Numbers help. Thx

In other news, I've left my MadCast ranked 5's team.  I'm actually pretty happy about that.  Was really not a fan of when we had to meet to accommodate other people amongst many other things.  Good stuff as far as I'm concerned.  Shortly after I made my cya nerds post in our team chat, 2 other people resigned... so it looks like the team is now RIP. 

Fun games last night - thx everyone.  Will be on again later tonight. 

Well, I tanked my promo series last night in a completely winnable game by playing like crap.  We had a couple people being a bit toxic (didn't really impact my play) towards each other for a good chunk of the game.  And I decided to experiment with my adc build order - not really a good idea in ranked and that likely actually led to the loss imo.  I played so so during team fights (awful in 1) and did not have the dps to wipe some characters.  Anyway, I definitely deserved to lose that game for how I played.

So, I'm in gold III with 90 LP.  1 win away from restarting my promo series.  I'm quite confident I'll get bumped to gold I (I'm gold III and playing mostly against plat players in ranked regularly now due to mmr.  I just need to get my head in the game and play well.

Not really sure why its difficult for me to get my head around, but even though I don't like BT as much now, I've decided I really should continue to play champs like lucian the same way with respect to build order.  That's been highly successful for me in ranked.  These variant builds just result in crap.  Not sure why I'm having such a tough time with this last patch, though... feel like I need to adapt my builds quite a bit. 

side note - just picked up awesomenauts for $.99 and forged on steam flash sale

So... it sounds like riot is adding jungle timers to the ui... I think... but only based on the teams direct knowledge... or something... meaning warding the enemy red and seeing its gone gives you the actual respawn timer?  Maybe. 

Anyway, article is vague, but it sounds like we will be getting timers.  I'm both for and against this change.  I'm for it, because I think its absolutely stupid to have to scroll through the dumbarse chat to calculate how much time until X is up.  Now, that doesn't mean I'm in favor or ui elements (depending on how they work), but there obviously must be a better way than having to scroll through an entire chat list to find the number you are looking for.  On the other side, me being better at that stupid task gives me an edge in the jungle. 

Anyway, here's the article I'm talking about:  http://na.leagueoflegends.com/node/17908

The functionality is a duplication of what happens in the mini-map.

That is, you only see the (accurate) timers if you see the buff/objective die (it would show a timestamp in chat). Otherwise you'll only see a "dead" indicator.

Furthermore, the timers are only visible when you hit tab, so you do still have to consider the timers, they won't be 100% in your face all the time.

It'll make denying enemy vision while doing an objective (since the auto-timer will help the enemy recover from the objective - secret blue trinket buff?). It'll also free people up for timing stuff like enemy summoner spells and wards, rather than just ob/tr/dragon. And you'll still have to manually estimate if they go and kill dragon while you don't have vision.

All-in-all, i support it. While timing cooldowns and stuff gives a tangible advantage that gives you "skill", it's pretty monotonous. And since it's only visible while you hit tab, i'm pretty fine with it from an ethical point of view.

Did you read that from riot somewhere or see this?  Applogies if I overlooked it in the article if its there.

I did just try this on pbe:  http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/b/541262393

But - its only single player - so I simply got to see how it worked that way.  The only thing I'm concerned about really is what the enemy team gets to see.

ah

"What if the camp/monster dies and I don't see it then I walk up and see it: "You'll get the timer for a camp if you have vision of the camp when it's cleared, if not you'll just know that it's not up, but not when it will come back (same functionality as the current minimap icons).""

TheGame0fThrows: PRINCE ALI FABULOUS HE ALIABABWAH

That's how I ended my gaming night anyway.  Fast aside - hedgie (or anyone) if you are really wanting to play a specific role before playing a game, just let me know via pm. 

Anyway, just fun games tonight (no ranked for me anyway).  I think I'm getting about due for a vlog... been a long time.  Quite a few updates here and things to discuss here.  Might just do bite sized pieces on the forum.

Actually... I'm going to do a vlog now... live in a couple min... prob 10-15 min. 

Good way to end the night haha

No direct link atm - vid is processing.  Check it out soon if you like (see past broadcasts):  http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1

Not a super exciting vlog, but I'm out of practice.  I do shed some light on DanKuhKnee's interview process, though.  Will post a proper link sometime tomorrow perhaps and send to youtube.  I think we will have a dramatic vlog of interest soon though. 

edit - ah here we go:  http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/b/541318179