I DID have queue problems (TT OR SR) a week ago, but mine have all resolved by now. Riot thinks they are as well - everytime you have a really long queue if you could submit your logs to Riot after it resolves, and note that that is the reason why, that'd be great.

@Vaultboy: If you were each level 4/5, at least one of you was detected as smurfs by the matchmaker and kicked out of newb island permanently. You were given a (small to large) Elo bump matching your presumed skill, and basically you're going to be in a (very slightly) lesser Elo bracket than your main, with a massively less powerful account.

For pleasant smurfing I recommend creating a new account each time you are kicked out of newb island, so only a handful of games per account. Do note that you're screwing over the games of 9 (or 8) other people when you do this, as you get kicked back to the first time players on each reset, so proceed with as much caution as your honor allows xD.

I'm sorry your ISP has been so shitty, I've missed playing games with ya. I really don't blame you at 500ms though.

When you're playing on a smurf, earlygame is the MOST painful part as Lasereth mentioned. The level difference often makes the most hard difference here and often compensates for less skill. Also, a newer account has MUCH more variance in its win ratio. A level 5 account has what....a dozen games on it? Having a lot of losses is just a factor of chance really at that point. MM is still out to give you a 50% ratio, but keep in mind it doesn't have you accurately pegged at that time yet, and possibly your allies or opponents either.

It does the best it can :P

Sweet Jesus Singed is REALLY good on TT. Been playing with him recently and it's been a blast. Take ghost and whatever spell you want, go defensive masteries, buy doran's as first item, HP quints, show up with poison to level 1 team fight and almost 800+ HP, win. Then the rest of the game is hilarious of course. Buy Rylai's and just press R and ghost and run around like an idiot with poison on and GG.

Singed has always been underrated IMO.

Singed is definitely fun. I am really loving playing poppy. She's probably my new favorite hero to play as of late.

Garen comes out today. I hate to repeat what others are saying but he DOES appear to be what Tryndamere should have been. Trynd is getting buffed though so we'll see if he's viable after today.

Hah, yes. And trynd barely got buffed. More like bug fixed. I don't know why its so hard for them to change trynd. Just a few simple buffs would fix him.

So how is garen? I'm debating on whether to buy him. I like mana-less heroes, but he seems boring for some reason.

So is the 3rd ninja next?

And this a random thought, but doesn't it seem like ezreal should have been manaless? No idea why I feel that way, i don't play him, just seems like his design was originally manaless.

Its amazing how Riot can get some heroes so right immediately (Mord, Nidalee, Garen) and take so long to get other heroes right (Udyr, Trynd, and even Ryze). I don't remember such imbalances in hero design in DotA, even when Icefrog and co completely redesigned a hero.

Udyr is OP as all hell.

But Udyr was extremely UP before they fixed his stance dance. The fact that there are heroes that are still not properly balanced is a slight concern, especially since all LoL games are still blind "all picks". I've been complaining about the lack of a counter-picking mode (e.g -cm and -rd in dota) and a random pick mode for sooooooo long. A counterpicking mode at least gives you the ability to negate an OP enemy, or to compensate for an UP ally.

At the very least, it adds yet another strategic element to the game, which cannot be a bad thing.

@Zeraph: The reason it's so hard to buff Trynd is we've seen what a MONSTER he is when even slightly OP. He's very, very snowbally. They're exceedingly careful about buffing him for this reason.

I also find Garen boring.

I believe the third ninja is next.

Ezreal needs a mana system in his current incarnation, he'd need several nerfs to go without it. As of right now a viable build on him is heavy on the regen so he can spam, but that takes up precious gold.

@Vaultboy: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha (I mean no offense). No game gets everything right the first time. Tauren Chieftain is the most recent example of this. Dearlord he was OP when he first released. There are STILL an entire handful of heroes hat are so godtier as to be picked/banned in virtually EVERY tournament. Unfortunately, DotA's version of balance seems to be "make sure there's at least 10 heroes at a similar power level, and forget the other 90". Almost.

@YaWhateva: Udyr has counters; he's a viable melee DPS though.

@Vaultboy: Aye, it's one reason I'm cooling my jets on LoL a bit until season 1 (a few more months I guess :/). The other being sc2 <_<.

Garen is fun as hell. I played 3 matches as him yesterday and won all 3.

I also played a match as Trynd and honestly couldn't tell a difference. Garen is so much better than Trynd early game that it's laughable. I will admit that I don't see Garen putting out the DPS of Trynd late game though. But it doesn't matter -- Garen can live through a melee fight, Trynd can't. Trynd has to build early crit to do anything worthwhile, but the funny part is that crit is the opposite of what he needs to stay alive in fights, so there's really no way to build him correctly for games that don't last an hour.

It's comical how OP Trynd was when in reality it was 85% Cleanse being OP, 15% Trynd being OP. He STILL has a lot of work before he's viable. But Joz is right, he snowballs so hard if he gets some early kills and is farmed so I don't know how they can fix him. Maybe if they buffed the range on spinning slash so he could hit and run? I don't know.

I agree with the cleanse comment las. I think buff trynd was mostly only OP because of that. If they returned him to that buff state now that cleanse has been fixed I don't think he'd be anywhere near as crazy.

As it is now though, even with early game kills he still doesn't hold up. I played a game to try the minor changes with him and got the first 2 kills (lucky). A decent garen was on our team and he still ended up with a better score.

On a whim I unlocked ezreal, he is now my favorite champ after I got used to his odd play style. He has serious mana problems, even with a chalice I still end up running dry (and mregen runes and + mana items). They need to lesson his mana costs by a bit and he'd be perfect. Maybe buff his health slightly ...I think he is the lowest HP champ in the game. Not sure why as there are many characters who have either better escapability, better burst, or better sustained damage. He's still surprisingly survivable though considering. Its more of an irksome factor than a true concern. They do need to lessen his mana costs though. Poor kennen seems even worse now in comparison.

Anyone play shen a lot? How is his new feint holding up? I saw a few forum posts crying havoc about the buff on test realm, but now that its out no one is really complaining much.

I'm glad jax got toned down a bit, now we'll see if he needs a bit more (probably but not much.)

PS wtf -30% to TT IP rewards >< Just make IP rewards a per minute thing with a cap around 30-40 minutes. So uncool. I loved TT but now I have to go get my win of the day on slow SR. Plus TT games can still go longer than SR ones. I had one yesterday that went on for ~40 minutes and I lost. I got like 40Ip for that... :(

Oh I know Udyr has counters but it just makes me mad when he throws that shield on early game and my Devastating Blow barely does anything haha. Late game he stops being that much of a threat as far as I've seen.

pot meet kettle :)

(poppy's passive...)

I wholly agree most of the Trynd OP was cleanse.

The IP award nerf is :(, but understandable. It just FEELS pennypinching from Riot's end (couldn't they have buffed SR IP :P?)

Re: Udyr's shield - it's got a very short duration. As Udyr v Poppy, when he pops turtle, wait it out for like 1 second then smash him. Dun blow your big deeps when he's got it up imo.

;)

Yeah I'm not complaining too much haha

Last night I decided to try Cardmaster since his redesign. Holy cow, talk about fun!!!!!!

I sucked as the old version but this version is EZ. All 3 cards are viable now and I actually found myself using all 3 during the matches. I played some practice matches vs real people and did pretty darn good.

I show up at mid with 750ish HP at level 1 with a doran's shield, 24 armor penetration with runes and he's just beastly. I think I may have found my new flavor of the month! He's pretty ridiculous with lizard buff.

Ugh, I just had a terrible losing streak trying to get my win of the day on SR yesterday. It was only a 4 or 5 game streak, but each game was like ~40 minutes and was sooo boring. This is why I hate SR....

I miss the old TF.

Akali is quite fun, for anyone interested. She's the only one that truly feels like a ninja. Shen looks the part but I don't think of tanks when I think ninja. And Kennen is basically a pokemon, he doesn't really have anything to do with ninjas. Her builds are interesting, the abilities require just enough thought to be fun and her passive is neat.

I'm still not sure how I'd want to build her though. When I check stats after a game about 80% of dmg is physical. But building her purely physical loses out on a lot of extra damage from her passive. Not sure what the best balance is. Let me know if anyone has any good item builds.

The enemy Akali just wrecked our team on SR. Our Akali didn't do much. :(

What's everyone's thoughts on manaless champions? There's a huge debate going on about it in LoL right now. They're supposed to be balanced with mana users but I think some champs can simply spam away with no balancing at all (Katarina for example).

I think energy users are at a small disadvantage because there's less itemization for them, and they run out with 1 combo, meaning they can't spam in team fights when it really matters.

Garen and kat are probably also balanced, but I have less of an opinion on them. Garen has no range and kat is squishy without a tanky build.

My main issue is that things like wit's end (not too big a deal) and Veigar (big deal) are much less useful against them. But that's more of a design flaw than a question of power.

Essentially energy/free champs have a small advantage early game, but energy users have a big disadvantage late game. Late game most champs mine as well have cost free abilities with how mana scales and they have better itemization *and* their abilities are often more powerful.

OMG ha ha ha ha ha. I just played against Pendragon. I queued with 2 friends (1 level 30, 1 level 20) and for some reason it put us against him. I went Tryndamere and laned against Pendragon (Akali) and I stomped his ass in the ground ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!! Mordekaiser was my lane partner and Akali had Teemo on his side so it shouldn't have went that well.

I ended up going 15-9-13 and we won the match. It was glorious. I think Tryndamere's recent buffs have finally made him viable (at least with defensive masteries, a good rune set up, and ghost).

Well -done-.

I later found out that Pendragon was actually running a 3-man premade as well. Makes me feel even better!!!!!!

I've lost 13 out of the past 15 games I played. RAGE

I think the game is shifting to mega push mode. Ganks aren't even common now, they just gang up to push turrets. Every match I lose is because one of the lanes loses a turret first.

What's with the patch and the new champ? I wish Riot would say if it was being delayed a week or not so I could spend my saved up IP.

Yup, I'm experiencing the same. I find that Janna is pretty much a must right now.

Even so, games are over either quickly (25-8 mins) if it is pushers vs cc/hero killers, or last very long(50 mins), if both teams adopt a pushing/support base. Just one more reason Riot should move beyond blind picks. Seriously, the ability to counterpick (and not mirror-pick) will change the meta in a big way.

Just had two games that were a huge headache. Guess who was on the enemy team? Janna + Soraka... they both went nearly an hour. The last game I was twitch, had ~17 kills. Full dmg items so nearly the best sustained damage one can get in the game. I couldn't out damage their heal...focused janna... and we broke even! Healing has gotten so ridiculous now. I never understood why they nerfed EC.

Just finished a 65 minute game with Akali. I really like her. Went 21-8. Not bad. Now that summer is here I can start playing more, hurray.

Oh yeah it's all about the healing and outlasting trend now. Janna pretty much wins games on TT AND SR now. Combine it with Soraka and they don't do amazing damage, but they just live and live and live. So your 1 death compared to their 0 from a team fight starts to add up over time. 3 of them should have died but didn't. Then they push your turret down with 1/10th HP left on their whole team while you're dead.

Anyone have an impression on Malzahar? I'm a bit jaded after riots last 6300 ip champ (kennen..)

My standard advice: never buy something until you've played it.

Blah. I used to be +55 wins at one point. Something like 275/220. Now I'm only +30 wins after playing with my premade friends for about 200ish games. My Elo is definitely lower than it used to be. My premade sucks. People automatically assume that if you get on vent with a premade, you win win win but it's bullcrap. The people I play with are like 100-200 wins and I'm at 375 and they just aren't as good as me, plain and simple. They don't push when they should and they over extend when they shouldn't. They are decent at the game but they don't see the big picture. Now I have to make the decision whether to play with them and keep losing (lost probably 35 out of the last 50 games I played) because they haven't adapted to the new LoL strategy (pushing down turrets at all costs), or start playing with my friend again (me and him both got up to +55 wins-ish with just a 2-man, no vent premade).

Which do you enjoy more? Who cares about W/L, it's not even ranked yet. Do what makes you happy.

Hmm. I do rage a lot less when I lose with my premade because they're not obnoxious like the randoms you get with solo queue. I was just really proud of my W:L and now it's embarrassing.

---------- Post added at 12:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 PM ----------

Haven't played him yet. He's the only champ I don't own at the moment. I just now have enough to buy him but I think I'll save for Olaf first. Malzahars seem to be good or really bad from what I've seen. Nothing over the top good, but definitely some over the top bads. He can do some early game odd burst damage though. Within a span of seconds all of a sudden you're at 1/4th from full.

---------- Post added at 12:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 PM ----------

Hmm. I did some forum browsing and it seems like I'm not the only one with a recent huge losing streak. People are complaining that with and without their premades, their W:L have plummeted with the last 2 patches which would coincide with my losing streaks as well. One guy used to be +120 wins and now he's at +50........

It just seems like my opponents are playing perfectly and know something that I don't, and my teammates (solo queuing or not) are back on newbie island.

I know W:L and wins overall doesn't mean you're low or high elo, but when I see someone with 100 wins in the same match of someone with 1000 wins, I can't help but wonder how their elos are similar.

I also think it's odd how MM works in general. It averages your elos together to make a match, but having a 1750 1750 1750 vs 1400 1850 1850 is NOT a fair fight even if the elo comes out to about the same on average. One guy complained about this and Zileas looked it up. Sure enough, there was 2 high elo people on one team paired with a much lower elo guy, but on average it was the same as the other team. Obviously the lower elo guy couldn't keep up and lost it for their team.

I find the whole averaging system to be a little unfair.

On a slightly different topic, another guy was complaining that he was better than his elo showed, but his shitty solo queue teammates were keeping him from rising. Zileas called him out on it and boosted him up to 2100 Elo as an experiment. After like 15 games the guy's elo had RISEN +15. Since then he's dropped to 2050 or so but he's still doing fine. A permanent elo boost to see if your teammates are holding you back..and they were.

What does THIS say about the MM system, particularly with solo queuing?

Elo does not average like that; it only sticks high/low together (and gives them an average+ Elo rating) when they are premaking together. At least, that's how it has always worked. There have been some tweaks lately and I haven't seen that Zileas post.

Season 1 looks amazing.

Yes. Yes it does. I'm a bit surprised by the release date they set for season 1 (I figured it was still another week or two out). I hope this release goes smoother than the other ones :P.

Should be great though :D.

I do believe the S1 release vid is one of the sickest trailers I have seen.

$10 to everyone if the servers are up tonight, period. :)

I've played a few games today. I was getting server busy, but if you put in the contra code it switches that to available. I guess that's a remnant from the beta still.

Edit: that only works for busy. Servers seem to be unavailable now.

Servers are up for me <_<.

They toggle on the busy status to regulate the influx of players right after maintenance to keep the service stable.

Bleh, I was shut out last night - I think the servers were full.

The new shiny client places a heavy drain on my CPU - 30% more than before. I cringe with every update these days - LoL is becoming too bloated.

Really? It's difficult for me to tell as I recently switched computers, but this one is really light on my system. And the servers are going through a bout of growing pains atm, should be ironed out in a day or two. Season one kicked off to a lot of excitement, so they're under really heavy load atm.

I had a blast last night. The servers were stable for me (had a tiny bit of lag). The new interface looks great. I love draft mode in the ranked games. I won my first 4 ranked games weeee ha ha ha ha. The fact that each champ is exclusive is AWESOME. And knowing that I don't have to go against Shen/Soraka/Shaco/Zilean as often now is refreshing.

Yea, I love draft. The service IS pretty unstable atm, but they've got a ridiculous number of manhours pouring in daily on it.

That is a pretty awesome trailer. Was picking apart some of it though.

Well season one is finally here but I'm not playing anymore and not sure if I can get back into it. They sure took their sweet time. Will you guys be getting back into it as heavily as before? I hope I'll be able to.

Bugged out on the loadscreen six games in succession last night. Coupled with being shut out the night before, means I haven't been able to play ranked yet. Bleh. I'll stick to games with better service. There's always an excuse for why Riot hasn't gotten their act together yet, and I've run out of patience.

I never stopped!

I am getting into it more. Solo queue for ranked games sucks though. :(

@Zeraph: Yea, it took awhile, but it seems (to me at least) that the service has totally stabilized. I <3 it.

@Vaultboy: That's odd, I haven't had a single problem today :<. I think last night was the last of the problems.

@Lasereth: Ik, we need to play sometime! Mayhap not ranked (I'm pretty much only solo atm) but maybe you'll let me normal with you?

@Ya: I'm 4-1! It's not all bad! Though I've had some o-O teammates at times. In my last game I was real worried about this guy who wanted to dodge since they took ashe, and that was the only hero he'd played. He took veigar and did decently. Turns out he has over 900 games with ashe, lmao.

Gave it one last try last night. No server problems, apart from intermittent spiking.

Solo queued and it was frustrating: seeing players dodge cuz their favourite hero gets banned/taken. Or ppl "try out" new heroes because the three heroes they can play are taken. Seriously (just like your Ashe, Joz), I can't fathom how these gamers can have such a high saturation point that they dont get bored of playing one hero all the time when there are 55 available. Anyway, ended the night on 2-5. I was lucky enough to have sensible teamies 30% of the time. Can't ask for more when solo queuing, really.

Interestingly every game was still mismatched (player skill with heroes, or wrong bans), but much better team balance than the blind pick normal games. The draft mode leads to longer games. Riot should perhaps revisit their fundamentals. They wanted games that are <30 mins, but the meta is pushing games to be 50+ min. I suppose the "pro-play" emerging from season 1 will give them a better idea.

Well, keep in mind that since Elos were reset for ranked play (you keep yours on normal), pros are mixed in with level 20 total newbs. It'll take a week or two to really settle out imo, but it's not nearly as wtfx as it was on day 1 xD. I had an eve asking me what Oracle's was in the game I lost :/. Both teams were very facepalmy that day.

As for your point about game length I wholeheartedly agree - every one of my ranked games has gone on 40+ minutes, with two approaching an hour.

You can solo queue ranked R with 2 people. We should do it sometime! I'm pretty sure that's the only way to raise your solo queue ranked Elo anyway...I don't see how the big wigs are already in the 1600s by themselves. They HAVE to be double teaming with someone.

so basically every game i play, shaco, heimer, soraka and xin are the chars getting banned. Yet lots of ppl say that none of them are op. Sure, Soraka isn't, but she enables lane control, xp gain and ultimately opness. Any chance Riot will nerf this lot?

I don't think any of them are "op" they all just add a new element to a match that makes it harder on the opposing team.

My question isn't whether they are op unto themselves, it is whether they will be nerfed (or even remade). If these heroes are the only ones that are consistently being banned, Riot may as well remove them from ranked play. A better solution would be to rebalance them.

Those 4 and shen are pretty much the S-tier right now, and Riot is aware of it. Stay tuned for next balance patch!

I uninstalled last Friday. Got sick and tired of being stuck in ranked games at the same Elo. My normal game Elo is 1700-1750 (I know this for a fact) and I can't get my ranked Elo above 1250ish. Ranked games are beyond fucked up.

I also think there's a lot of luck involved in ranked games which also pushed me over the edge. It's stupid that I'm stuck 500 points below my Elo because I get grouped with people who play like bots.

I find Ranked better than Normal. It is to be expected that your ELO should be lower, since
a) you haven't played the same amount of games, so ELO creep hasn't happened, even if your W:L ratio is similar.
b) the counterpicking makes a difference.

So how do you raise your Elo then? It's infuriating that I was close to being in the top 500 in normal games but I can barely stay even in ranked games right now. I was down to 1000ish Elo at one point!!!!!!! No matter who I play (I always choose to help our team, and I know how to play all 55 champions well), I always lose because of 1 or 2 idiots that die before minions spawn or go non-jungling warwick or tank Teemo, dumb shit that just makes no sense.

How many games am I expected to play before I start climbing the ladder? Will season 1 be over before I stay over 1300 consistently??

Reinstalled. LOLLLLLLL

Taking it a bit easier this time around though. Got a little too addicted last time.

<3.

1: How did you know your Elo before? I know a lot of people (not saying you included) thought they were 'high-mid Elo' (so much so that it's kind of a derogatory catchphrase on the forums by now and are finding out that they aren't able to achieve as high a ranking as they thought now that Elos are public.

2: Imo, play hard carries early on. Don't play tanks/supporters until you're in an Elo level that it becomes necessary. At somewhat low Elos where people are more likely to be much worse, it's necessary for you to be the pivotal player each game.

1. Your normal game Elo is flat out given in log files now. Just play 1 normal match, check your log files, GG. I checked yours -- it's like 1650. :) Mine was 1700+ when I checked it, Grooverut (the guy I play with almost always) was nearly the same. I used to be +55 wins and now I'm only +45ish so my Elo could have been close to 1800+ at one point. I also looked up every single person I've been regularly queuing with in the past 6 months and almost none of them were above 1300 in normal games. This would explain why my win ratio decreased with them -- I WAS actually better than them, they honestly were bringing me down.

2. Hard carries only carry when they get kills, and you can only get kills with decent teammates. I guess I could try playing Trist every match though.

Eh, I just started playing this, level 9, playing tank builds with amumu and penetration/haste builds with Tristana. it's pretty fun, made the mistake of making a 5man premade with some friends who were all sub level 8, we got paird up against 30's, it was pretty much us getting rolled.

Sounds cool! (Except the rape part). 5 man premaking won't always be a rape job, so don't give up on it! What's your summoner name ingame?

ShaukDotDJ

hey lasereth, i feel your pain. Went on a ten game losing streak playing solo queue ranked. in all those games our carry failed and/or we had someone trying out a new hero or banning wrong champions. Halfway through i started asking people for their elo. consistently had someone at least 300 points below me in the team. my elo is looking like shit right now at 991. Never ever been sub 1000. My normal elo is still 1300ish.

But w/e.

Imo, play hard carries only in solo ranked until you are at an Elo level where acceptable teamplay is prevalent (as only in such an Elo will playing a tank or support have more benefit to your team than owning with a hard carry). If you're significantly better than the Elo level you're playing at, you should be able to faceroll the opponents with a hard carry.

As to carries getting kills with teammates, I disagree. In an even match this is certainly more true, but when you're trying to farm Elo (supposedly because you are underranked), you should be able to outplay your opponents singlehandedly. Caster carry if you find it easier (I do).

Maybe I should play Morde every match lol. 18-4-11 in ranked last match, triple killed at level 7 when 3 people ganked me (they were all full health).

Ezreal might be another good choice to try and single-handedly raise my solo queue ranked score since skill DOES matter with him.

I've been finding Mord quite difficult as I dabble with him lately. What's a good build?

Heart of Gold x2, merc treads, spirit visage, guardian angel, force of nature, randuin's omen

Go heart + boots + visage first and then whichever you need the most in order after that.

I usually go something like this:

doran's shield
regrowth pendant
boots of speed
negatron cloak/chain vest depending on who's in your lane
finish sorc boots (these are amazing on morde)
force of nature/sunfire cape depending on what I bought earlier
frozen mallet (this is amazing on morde, nobody can escape you)
usually build FoN or sunfire cape depending which I built first
usually another sunfire cape or Randuin's Omen depending how the match is going.

if the game wont end:

Randuin's Omen for strong DPS
Thornmail for heavy dps with low hp
banshee's for AP heavy teams
Guardian's Angel just to be a pain in the ass.

Yeah frozen mallet is great on him too since it gives him at least 1 type of cc.

Yeah and if you kill someone with your ult the ghost gets the slow too, awesome if you can get a kill on a ranged hero.

Rofl yeah. Then put creeping death on the ghost and you'll almost surely kill someone with the ghost alone. People always underestimate the strength of the ghost. Most Morde's don't know how to control the ghost though.

Urgot looks fun as hell but I only have 5200 something IP right now so I won't be able to try him out.

Vlad seems to be owning right now but I suck with him. I just don't get it.

Vlad is the most interesting hero created in a while. Difficult to master, but super awesome.

Galio is just too easy to play - he's like a dumbed down mix of rammus and malhazar, both heroes with a higher mastery threshold.

Haven't really seen much of Urgot yet.

On another note, my solo elo was as low as 920 recently, with my 5v5 elo over 1300. Going below 1000 is a bottomless pit with no redemption - I keep on getting matched with poorer players (captains who ban whatever char owned them last), afker's, rage quitters, and just plain nubs. Hard carrying every game doesn't work.

I haven't been playing many ranked games honestly. I played about 50 and got sick of staying at 1250 and started playing normal games where I get paired with people who actually know what they're doing.

Went from 1450 ranked to 1300 ranked in 2 days. Bleh.

Grats Jozzy on the job!!!!!!!!!!!

Joz what do you think about the current metagame? People have been describing it as the tanky DPS metagame but I honestly think it's gone even further than that now. I think right now the current state of LoL is jungling. Which team has a jungler, which champ is it, if both teams have a jungler then which is better, which team suffers FB to a jungler, etc. The kiting metagame has moved on and the tanky DPS has emerged but I'm finding it directly correlated to jungling. In normal or ranked nowadays you never see a match without a jungler. Usually both teams have one! I remember 6 months ago it was rare to see a jungler period.

Maybe it's due to the fact that there are so many champs that can jungle now? People have started to abuse jungle Amumu (Dragon dead before 5 minute mark). I think the reason he's perma-banned in ranked now isn't because of his "tanky DPS" but because of his ability to jungle and what he does to the game when he does jungle.

I'm not really saying it's a problem but I'm finding a hard time grasping how to put matches in my favor. Buy 3 wards in each lane at level 1? Hell if I know! I can put a ward in the river in my lane and the jungler (who almost always has ghost) still comes out like a bat out of hell and FB. Lanes without a ward give FB every single match to the jungler.

One match I played over the weekend was decided because we DID have a jungler who kept being ganked repeatedly by the enemy team who bought wards at 1.

I'm very surprised that the community hasn't picked up on this meta shift already.

As a note, I junglmumu'd back in like...October. Last October. :P. Jungling is a HUGE advantage at both the mid and top Elos, but at the top Elos it's more about countering your opponents jungler.

The job is awesome, it's fantastic being part of this team (and FIVE GDC awards is simply stupendous, celebration tonight ftw). Sorry I've been missing here, it's so flippin' busy over here at Riot.

There is some stupid awesome shiz in the works for you guys.

I lost 14 matches in a row over the weekend. My new personal record! :(

2 of them were directly related to me (though not entirely my fault) and the rest was simply hey, we lost.

I think I'm gonna start playing ranked only to get my sample size up and maybe my elo will actually raise with enough games played.

BTW Lux looks awesome.

Anyone still kicking around here? I transferred over to the Jozrael name ingame and didn't take my friends list with me. Let me know if you're still around!

Hey Joz.

I still do LoL. Would be great to hook up for a game.

i play every now and again. my sn is EventHorizons. add me!

holy hell.. I had no idea there was a LoL thread on TFP... I've been playing the CRAP out of this game for the last 3 months or so.. about 850 games played.. low ELO ranked at the moment.. :) Arch oni is tag..without the space.

Good to see we have some TFPers still kicking around :D

I still play occasionally but Mortal Kombat has taken up most of my time as of late.

I finally quit after 1200 matches or so last October. I had a blast playing but I also raged more at that game than any other. The in-game community in LoL is atrocious (just like all DOTA games). I really don't know how to fix it. The last 200 or so matches I played, I muted BOTH teams at the beginning of each match (allies and enemies) because it was just pure hatred being spouted from both sides. I don't want to play with everyone muted, but at the same time I don't want to listen to how the last 45 minutes was my fault when it wasn't lol.

I noted your disappearance :(.

I do, however, request that you swing by our Announcement forum this next patch.

My friend Grooverut still plays a lot so I'm sure he'll key me in on any cool announcements.

I also think one of the other huge reasons I quit was because of the 4-vote surrender requirement, and the fact that it wasn't set to 15 minutes. I still think it should be 3/5 requirement and 15 minute.

The third biggest reason I quit was because of the large sample size of games required to prove your Elo. My normal game Elo was 1750ish, but no one could ever see it, and then ranked normal matches are frustrating because yo dawg, I herd you like 1300 elo so I put you at 1300 elo so you can lose while you lose. I don't get why they didn't start everyone at their normal game elo in season 1. New people should certainly start that low, but people who have 1000 games played already shouldn't be paired with lower elo people, ever. It really soured my season 1 experience and made me hate playing ranked games. After a few hundred ranked matches my elo was still at where it started. That's messed up because I KNOW I'm better than that.

On Lasereth's points:

1. I am in favour of the 4 vote, 20 minute surrendering system. I've seen enough games turned around mid game to see that 15 mins is too early, and because you can solo queue with a friend, 3/2 isn't enough. we need 4 votes to save people from their own ignorance.

2. Re: ELO - for solo play, I've been stuck in ELO hell since forever - I cant pick hard carries all the time, since so few players want to tank - in most cases I have to pick to balance the team. My 5v5 elo is about 300 points better, although I haven't 5v5'd in almost a year. I've made peace with it. Just as how I've made peace with people trying out new champs in ranked games the week after champs are released. Ranked is a wasteland that I don't really bother with - its the new normal, and normal is the new practise. I would be happy if Riot releases a draft mode for normal.

3. How do you mute everyone? I didnt know you could.

It's something like /mute allies /mute enemies. It mutes everyone on the enemy or allied team.

Herp. I was wrong, it's not going out exactly with the patch. Grooverut'll let ya know, hopefully tomorrow :D

I am glad that the 25 minute limit was lowered to 20, and I wouldn't be opposed to it being 15 minutes - however, I definitely support the 4 person supermajority being required. I personally don't get too frustrated when 2 people on my team want to stick it out - it's only another few minutes out of my life. However, I get SUPER frustrated if I'm playing with a 4man premade and they all surrender at 20 when I'm sure we have a >30% chance to win the game. Grates on me much more :p

Vault: to ignore a team, just /ignore ally or /ignore enemy. /ignore all might work, now that I think about it.

Lasereth: re: Elo. This actually is almost spot on. Normal Elos are generally 300 or more points higher than Ranked Elos. This is because if you look at the general LoL community, the subset that plays ranked is skewed significantly higher on the Elo spectrum. For arguments sake, let's say that only the top 25% of players played ranked, that their average Elo was 1500, and that the average LoL for the community at large was 1200. This would mean that a 1500 Normal Elo translated into a 1200 ranked Elo. Something similar (I don't know the exact numbers) happens - so your 1750 Normal Elo predicts a ranked Elo of roughly 1450, but this can vary widely.

*fistshake at office power outages*.

IT IS COMING I SWEAR.

(This is why we don't do ETAs, and why I shouldn't hype specific times zzz, lol).

In two weeks we make our move to our new office. Super excited.

I like the avatar Joz.. I've seen a lot of Rumble play in Ranked, and he's the best 2v1 top I've seen thus far.. he has to be hard CC'd to stop flamespitter from ruining teamfights. :)

Lately I've been jungling WW in Ranked and have about a 75% win rate with him. My favorites aside from him are Sion, Renekton and Blitz. I'll play the random carry when my team needs it... but it's so hit or miss with some of them.

What's all this talk about Normal ELO? I've never seen a rank outside of Ranked games..

just had the worst week of noob teamies in a while. qqing, afking, and no bloody LOSS FORGIVEN. Joz, what are the parameters for Loss Forgiven, and are there any refinements on the cards?

I thought loss forgiven was only if there were server issues.

Indeed.

Basically, we have a giant red button with glass over it. Whenever the servers are wonky, we push the button, and all leaves/losses/Elo reductions stop counting until we turn it off (and put new glass in...we go through a lot of glass). Elo gain in ranked games is also halved to reduce inflation. There will likely never be plans to automatically forgive losses based on your teammates' play, as not only is that abusable but would make for some wonky team incentivization.

That being said...cannot wait for Tribunal zzz.

Vampire Hunter V is jizztastic. Just thought I'd put it out there. Great ensemble of skills. Ulti is a bit meh, but well done riot.