oh and I mentioned this re: jungle changes for tank (either item or champ buffs) - its worth poking around if you have not (see red posts in particular:  http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/5a7EEEsB-meddler-whats-the-status-tanks-and-jungle-can-we-get-update-that-silence-is-sad-please?comment=0001

off to bed - night folks!

I think I forgot how to win a ranked game. pretty sure I have lost like 10 or more in a row  

EU LCS is so random.  I'm beginning to believe that Elements might not be the best team EU...

My thoughts on the Ranked 5's games:

My performance sucked.  It's been too long not having good internet.  When you get older it's really hard to get any traction in this game unless you play somewhat regularly I think.  Going over a week at a time not playing then binge playing League for a day or two has not left me very sharp, and I only just got the internet set up at my GF's house.  Poor DanKnee was explaining how to help last hit ranged minions under a tower like I was a Silver.  Sad days.  I'll be more dialed in next time I play with you guys.  If I do.  Am I still on the team Cow?

If so, I think I should start playing Leona when I go bot with Pacov.  I appreciate him having a positive attitude while laning with me, but he was right after all.  It is a bit of a distraction trying to work around the whole CS thing when we're on TS3 and are in a heavily competitive environment. Thresh is more versatile, but our team seems tend to be very Win Early or Mid Game Or Vote Yes Late Game When Cow Calls To Surrender Comp.  Pacov knows how Leona is played as well as anyone and is into aggressive ADC's right now so I think maybe the Graves/Leona lane is the one to go for?

If anyone should be benched it should be me. I played poorly. I am not sure I know how to win a game any more. If you look at my game history I have probably won like 3 games out of my last 20

If any of you like gambling and have enjoyed the fantasy league check out Vulcun: www.vulcun.com you try to create the best fantasy team for that days games and if you end up in the top whatever percent you can win some money. You have to pay to get into some contests but others are free. If you use my username (TheGame0fThrows) while signing up ill get 20 bucks if you put money into your account. I know Rawrrr has already won some money playing. 

Not for me... I'd rather drop 1k on my cat today... kloajsdlkasjdlkasjdaklsjdlkasjdklasjdlkasjdlkasjdlkasjdlkasj aklsjdalskdjaklsdjaslkdjasdklasjdlk aklsjdlaksdjalksdjalksdjaslkdjasld aklsjdlkasjdklasjdklasjdlkasjdklasjdkalsjd alkjsdklsajdlkasjdlkasjdlaksjdlkasjdlkas akljsdlkasjdlaksdjalksjdsa

There. Done now.  Took some time today to set up my replacement mobo.  Kind of should have done this when I replaced the faulty one, but oh well... caught up now.  One thing I've noticed on these higher end machines - they all (eg any one i've built) have been set to auto oc the processor.  My processor runs at 4ghz natively.  Depending on the mobo, it might throttle up to provide some extra juice.  It's... never really needed on my setup, but the mobo/OS will attempt to ramp up the voltage, etc, under "heavy" load (read - temp spike in utilization).  Now, ocing a pc is nice if its a lower end system or nice if you are just a nerd trying to get your 4ghz processor up to 5.5ghz, but the real performance gains are kind of smeh. Games look pretty on my setup as is and I could stream at any rez - a faster cpu does jack for me... YET - these mobos are setup to allow the OS to control the overclocking out of the gates.

Overclocking can and often does result in instability.  Back when I actually cared to oc - you'd test out voltages and eventually achieve a stable speed (eg no crashes) after a burn in (ex I come up with settings, run prime and ensure its stable under varied loads of X duration (min 8 hours)).  Now, the OS just does as it will and triggers the OC when the system is under heavier load. This means when the system is already being pressed, it attempts to bump up voltage, etc... Where in times past, you'd setup your system, find a stable speed, and it would run at that speed quite stable.  Now, its whoopie, I'll instantly bump the voltage and see if that helps.  Welcome to the world of efficent instability. 

Anyway, you can make some changes in the bios to prevent this oc. You can also still set a static voltage, etc, like times past.   Just not a fan of the auto oc BS.  I've only ever found it moderately stable on multiple setups and I'm really, really surprised its enabled by default on my past 4 mobos or so. It seems kind of dumb and I can only assume it results in problems on many setups. 

Oh -and cow is off the ranked team and I'm the new mid - welcome to challenger boys. 

probably a good idea, maybe I should just retire like scarra and coach you guys! 

Well, we won 3 out of 3 ranked games yesterday fellas.  Nice.  Replays are on my op.gg page for any interested - https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=pacov

Had a decent night going 6.33:1, 11:1, and 9:1 kda.  Dan kind of killed it from a kda pov - 20:1, perfect, 11:1.  Cow completely killed it in game 1 with a perfect kda.  really liked him on mao.  Overall, we did really well as a team.  Hunny got himself clipped a few times in game 1 and 2 specifically because of poor decisions I think.  Game 3 there was a time where I set him up and another time where the whole team kind of set him up (by that I mean a play could have been made to work with him and help him and instead pressure was put onto a tank).  Feel like I off a little bit in game 2 specifically, but everything came together well.   karl did really well also .  I think he statistically does best on j4 and that should pretty much always be a #1 pick if he's available. 

I think sticking Dan mid was the right thing to do. He plays mid in solo queue mostly and has a more meta champion pool than me. I also have a pretty meta top champion pool at the moment (missing gnar though), I have played a ton of mao and renekton before I went so hard on mid lane. Unfortunately I do not think me playing top will happen often with the people we play with unless Dan is available to take over mid. I believe Dan is a better mid laner than me and it's a hard thing to admit but I my ego isn't really that important to me. I want us to win games and if sticking Dan mid is a way to do it I will do it every time.

Lane swaps:

It was fun to do it and the Nasus pick presented a great opprotunity for it. I thought we executed it well enough but we could have denied the nasus more farm as he was tied with me in farm during the swap at one point which should not happen in my opinion (me dying shouldn't of happened either and it was my own fault for taking to much poke). Talking to Thunder after the games he mentioned that having a ranged support would have made denying Nasus much easier and I couldn't have agreed more. If we want to run lane swaps again (nasus, rumble, gnar, riven come to mind), we could try to pick up a support later in the draft so we can see there top lane pick. There is also two ways to play the swap: freezing lane close to our side tower or hard pushing and taking there tower fast after a dive by jungler. One of these two options should be picked and voiced before the game starts so both the duo lane and the jungler are on the same page.

There is a third option as well and that would the top laner and karl duo jungling for a 4 man dive top at level 2-3 after the duo jungle clear the two buffs and the duo lane pushes the top to tower. This would hopefully end in a kill of the top laner and a tower. I feel this stratedgy is very advanced though and could back fire horribly.

Dragon fights:

I think we did very well in this department last night. There was one fight however we nearly lost because I couldn't TP immidiately. If we are doing dragon a ward needs to be right infront of the dragon pit at all times so the top laner can TP right into the middle of our team. Dragon fights have been lost in other games because of awkward teleports from our top laner because our wards are either in weird spots or the top laner just choosing to flank instead of TPing to the team. In my opinion TPing into the middle of our team is always the best option for the TP. This prevents them collapsing on the TPing person or rushing the 4 man squad before the TP finishes.

That lane swap was also a huge part of us winning that game.

Anyways I also wanted to mention that I think Pacov + Hunny bot is a winning formula for us. You guys definitely play well together. I am sure the duoing in solo queue is a big part. Even though you are not the biggest fan of playing support Pacov its working very well for us.

yah - being familiar with your adc does not hurt.  Hunny just needs directed a bit to keep him from doing goofy things - and its often a question of how much he'll be steered (eg that one play last night where I told him there was a threat, told him to bugger off, and he stayed which resulted in a dbl kill for the enemy team + a tower.  He's got decent mechanics and decent instinct/positioning, but its those goofy arse moments where he starts a dragon, or goes deeper than is smart.  I'd like to see him start getting better kda as I think it is a good measurement of how often you get into bad positions as an adc.  Obv you can still win with weak kdas though. 

I enjoyed the lane swap though.  I also very much enjoyed playing liss the other night in ranked and crushing it.  Fun game there as well. 

we could take like 6-7 minutes and just run through a comp and the scenario in a custom when we have the numbers.  Considering its only 6-7 minutes, I wouldn't think folks would be against it.  Just need to decide on the jungle route based on side of map for the top/jung, and have the adc/supp head top.  Should be reasonably easy to determine where the vision is unless the enemy jungler wards out for them.  You'd want to think through the specific champs we'd need as jung/top to make that viable though.

I think doing like 1 drill against bots would be more than enough to get a feel of how the jungling will go and about what in game time the gank would happen but to really get the dive right you would have to play a few normals versus real people. A study on how turret aggro works will have to be done as well. I think Phreak explained it really well after one of the CLG matches last week where Zion got dived as rumble and managed to pick up a kill and not die during a 3 man dive.

patch 4.5 going live tomorrow (2/25) morning.

No official patch notes as of yet.  This should be the dj sona patch at a min and will likely include the zil changes.  Some balance changes, possibly morde/veigar reworks, but I'd doubt those.  Nothing super exciting that I'm aware of.