f13.net

but still pretty beta. No more resets. No store until the 17th. You can build up IP to buy stuff starting now though. Double XP for us pre-order people (along with other stuff whenstore comes out) and people can purchase game for most of the same perks.

I picked up a box at Gamestop on Wednesday. When I mentioned that I had thought it was still in beta, the clerk said it had been released last week sometime and that they couldn't keep it in stock.

I like it. It's DOTA. I suck at DOTA but it's a nice lil' diversion. Now if only someone would make a dedicated Footmen game.... :heart: :heart: :heart:

I'm getting curb stomped in every single game I play. I somehow made it into the top tier because I played a lot, and because their matching system is broke as fuck, I end up soloing against a premade every single time with worthless feeder teammates.  FFFFFFFFFFF

Roll a new guy maybe?

That sucks man...feel free to hit me up if you see me online.

Same here. It seems like I end up with just terrible teams. Just a couple of nights ago, I went 20-5. The total kills we had as a team? 28. Needless to say, we lost horribly. I guess there's just a big enough influx of new players that they can't really avoid having a couple get into games full of veteran players. I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks down the line when a lot of these new players aren't so new anymore.

Odd, I have my occasional curb stomped matches as well but I've been doing fairly well latately queueing up for normal games by myself.

Seemed like as good a thread to put this as any.

Do you guys find that games seem to be tanking FAR longer now than back in beta?

I'm talking in beta games tended to be fun, fast paced, 20-30 minute affairs. But now my games seem to drag on for 45 minutes plus while everyone farms and runs away from the other team.

Maybe I just suck? Maybe you guys like long games? Just wondering what your observations are.

I've still seen many quick games but mostly through surrender.  I think you'll see mostly 45min games once your ELO gets to the right area because the games should be evenly matched and that is how long an even game should take.

Yea, it's basically a case of "The first team that makes a catastrophic mistake loses."

So, chess really.

I guess I haven't noticed game lengths lately.  But I have noticed almost every time I solo queue I am winning, not really "pub stomp" but winning.  Every time I join a 5 man pre-made, we get matched against a team that just absolutely destroys us.

My last few games have been in the 45 minute range, but I suspect it is because at my rating no one is good enough to take advantage of the other team's mistakes.

That sounds about right. Thanks for the comments.

I always found DOTA games to be about that long. Always played LAN but 45min to an hour was about normal.

Heh, still no store.  "Retail" game still has less functions then the beta did at an earlier point.  Still only one map for normal games, still only blind pick game mode, no runes, etc. etc.  Game breaking exploits are popping up more and more and Riot is being very slow to fix them.  I really enjoy LoL more than HoN but Riot needs to get their act together.  Good communication with the community doesn't mean much if they can't follow through on much.

In other news, nothing swings a game like a good baron steal.  :awesome_for_real:

Store launching today. Guess I'll buy Kassidin, Teemo, an AP book and a crit chance book and be done with that.

Store is up and running, but pretty hard to use, really really slow.  I'm assuming it will smooth out in a few days though when you don't have every single player at once trying to browse and buy stuff.

Most of the pricing seems pretty good except champion prices are all over the board.  If I want to unlock Ashe it would cost me 450 IP, if I wanted to unlock Blitzcrank it would cost me 6,300.  Heimer is a higher ranked champion then Nasus and Cardmaster, etc..  It's a random crap-shoot of how much the champions you want will cost.

They are attempting to sale the champs like you would cards for a tcg. They have a pretty arbitrary common/rare/ultra rare tier system.

They should be encouraging the newbs and the kiddies to play easier champs but the pricing does a horrible job of that.  I have no idea who the mastermind behind the current price system is.

It's funny because some of the cheaper heroes like Ashe and Yi are considered top-tier. And, Tryndamere is wAS O.P.

EDIT: im retarded

I disagree, I took a fight alone against 4 of the opposing teams champions at once the other night, near their nexus in range of two turrets.  I was only able to kill 3 of them before I died, Trynd needs a buff.

You sir are correct in every way.

ps: im a ninja

The sarchasm claims another.

I've been pretty successful recently trashing Trynds with a DPS spec'd Alistair. They have no idea what to do when the cow starts hitting them instead of running.

If you bust out a Warmogs, then Atma's impaler, then Sheen, and possibly a Last Whisper, you're all set. And if you still have money and a game to keep playing, finish it up with a Frozen Mallet. You'll be really nasty as you spam your heal and smack people for double damage.

Yeah, I'm rolling sheen, atma's, and last whisper most games. Meki->chalice and boots to open. I still think the way the game is designed it doesn't make any sense to play champions other than the big DPS folks, but I like my big bull, so fuck what is most efficient.

I agree. Damage seems to simply be superior to survivability or support in nearly every situation. However in the latest patch (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=35042) they saw fit to...

What do you guys think the reasoning behind this might be? As it is DPS heroes often get NO defensive/health items and tanks are already focused down in seconds. Or at least I usually am.  It just seems unnecessary and a move in the wrong direction in a currently physical carry dominated game.

I switched to Silvir this weekend. She's less fun to play than Alistair in a lot of ways, but damn if she isn't an amazing lane pusher. Now if only I could get rest of my team to understand that killing towers is important...

Saw an ability power built Sivir a few days ago. Her boomerange ability just absolutely destroyed people.

FOTM champ, I've read the patch notes twice and I get how it was a boost but I'm shocked at just how stupid her damage gets quickly.  It doesn't help though that there is almost nobody in the game that can even sort of deny her.

Think I'm going to be giving HoN another shot.  LoL is fun but it just has so many issues that are so frustrating.

Hm, that was short.  Swinging back to LoL already I think.  Ended up with mostly the same opinion I had last time.  HoN is a decent game, but LoL is just more fun for some reason.  If I want to play a serious business competitive DotA style game I'll play HoN.  But if I want to have casual fun with buddies I'll stick with LoL I think, even if it does have some issues.

good, now play eve some since im back for my usual month

I had a team that surrendered after 25min when we weren't even losing.  "we weren't pushing" was what one guy said.  I think the real reason is some people are looking to run as many games as possible win or lose to farm xp/ip.  When they see that this game is going to take a while, they want to end the game.

I was in a 5 man premade for a few games last night that tried the promote/rally rush. We were literally standing at the other team's nexus at 9 minutes two games straight and had to retreat to waste 2 minutes so we could get the full IP/exp for the win. Both games ended at just over 11 minutes.

I'm pretty damn glad they removed promote in today's patch. I had no idea how powerful that was.

I'd only ever seen it done once and it was by the other 4 people on a team I solo queued onto, they told me to take promote at character select and as soon as Sivir got her ult we all pushed mid.  The end result was pretty much the same as your experiance.

I wonder if the patch today also applied the nerfs to Trynd people have been talking about.  I'm curious to see if they overdo it, he is for sure OP but not insanely so.  A few minor tweaks would bring him in line.

From the rel notes:

Hm..doesn't seem too bad.  The Battle Fury bonus crit is the big change I think, 25% less damage at max level could be a bit much.  Will have to play it and find out I guess!  :oh_i_see:

Ooo, also found -

Twisted Fate had gotten annoying as hell lately. Hopefully this will help with that. It always seemed like I'd get low on health against a neutral creep and he'd magically know that he needed to use his ult and then teleport right on top of me to kill me. It happened ALL THE TIME.

Me and my friend call him the Twist of Win  :drill: . Gate in pop you in the face and keep strolling, the man is basically a pimp slapping all his bitches.

You and your friends aren't funny.

Just realized this was F2P; downloaded it and I'm checking it out now. Seems like a nice new version of DotA. I'm liking Fiddlesticks a lot so far, but I am still trying out others to get a handle on them all.

I see I have some Champions temporarily unlocked; when will they go away?

Edit: Another question: are there other game modes besides "Blind Pick"? If so, how do I go about unlocking them?

Champions rotate on 2 week schedules.

Blind pick is it right now and it's BULLSHIT.

Seems about right.

Next item in need of a nerf...Sivir's spinning blade thing.  :ye_gods:

sivir is kind of meh for me. She has this practical requirement to farm the shit out of the game just to stay on par with the powerhouses.

She needs some adjusting, she seems a bit week late game as a carry other then her ult.  But early game her spinning blade thing does stupid amounts of damage.

If you unlock them with points, do they stay unlocked forever?

Yes.

Ask and thou shalt receive. It got nerfed in today's patch.

god i miss twitch.

Is the any way to disable the gradual increase in volume in the client right before a game starts? The sound is otherwise at a tolerable level, but right before a game begins it gets a LOT louder, to the point of drowning out everything else.

While I'm asking, is it just me or does the client run like ass? Playing the game is fine, but everything else (dragging runes, loading the store) is generally slow and unresponsive.

Adobe Air was a mistake they can't fix.

Is that a no on both counts?

Pretty much, yeah.

I had a dream that I was good at this game, but then I woke up and realized I suck.

lol

Lost another one with Yi, eh?

I have had a hell of a win streak going with Sion lately. I'm pretty pleased with a physical build on him. You hit your shield, catch them with a stun, hit your ult, exhaust - no one gets away from that and if others try to help? Good luck with my ult up and me swinging fast enough to stay at full health.

I bought the Old St Zilean skin this morning. I'll definitely have to bust out some Zilean tonight and take it for a spin.

I'm trying to play every champion at least a couple times so I have a feel for all of them.  Tried Mundo last night, super easy to play but just didn't think he was any fun.  Tried Katirina and she drove me nuts, she is the ONLY champion I have played so far where I just can't seem to play her right no matter what I do.  In three games my total record was probably like 5-30.  :heartbreak:

Gave Veiger a spin as well and really enjoyed him, think I'll be playing him some more in the future.  He's so squishy and Banshee Veil really screws him, but it's so much fun to unload everything on a champion (including your click stick) and just watch them explode.

Trynd and Alistar are probably my "main" characters right now but that seems to rotate on a weekly basis.

Kat build:
heart of gold
boots
heart of gold
bf sword
bf sword
bf sword
turn bf swords into bloodthirsters 1 by 1

GG

She really is one-dimensional. I went 0/10 last night as Yi. He's f'ing boring.

New rotation is out, played Mundo, that shit be fun but he doesn't add much to the team at all.  Too bad.

He's an unstoppable menace when built right. IMO one of the best initiators. Easily one of the best tanks for pure tankage.

I thought Mundo was extremely boring to play when I tried him.  Very easy to play though.

Mundo goes where he pleases  :drill: . Tank mundo, you could but your missing out on "eat babies" mundo that will crit you, cleave you, than burn you to ashe.

He can be unstoppable but you can win the fight around him, I think the trade off in unstoppableness for power in a teamfight goes in Cho'Gath's favor in a big way currently with silence, knock up/stun and feast.  Compared to that Mundo is pretty fucking one dimensional.  I think Mundo with the right lane partner can boss pretty much any other pair in the game and if you plan around that he works but for the more sloppy mid-range elo stuff he just doesn't add enough to the team fights.

So I made it to level 30 mostly as Teemo.  With some help of Janna, Singed, and Veigar.  Janna is fun to knock people around.  Singed and Veigar have such slow starts and I still don't quite understand them.  I have just started using Cho'gath.  Even without any tanking runes, I have had descent success.  I am really surprised I made it this far in the game.  I really expected to quit in frustration quickly.  Although LoL is still for assholes.  It seems almost every game has a couple people who piss and moan when we lose.   I have seen people who start crying before the game has even started or when we are winning.  It's crazy.  Lately I started voting 'no' on surrender when people pitch a fit.  Choke on your tears crybabies!

We had a game last night where we started out down 0-9, then 3-14.  We ended up winning that game, no leavers, no afks, just beat them down and won.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, many/most of the games I play have at least one asshole in it...which is my only real complaint of the game.  I've been playing a lot, I've recently discovered the amazing awesome which is Rammus (OMG TAUNT).  But yeah, my main complaint is that you either a) Single queue and deal with assholes, or b) Queue with people you know and then get wtfpwned because their matchmaking for teams is fucking whack as hell.

They boost your relative elo scores so drastically when you queue as groups I'm incapable of grouping with people I know because it puts me against people I stand no chance whatsoever against.

I only really have that problem in 5 man queues for some reason, usually I win my solo queues, do well in 2-4 man queues and get crushed in 5 man queues.

That was a fun game...

and yeah, in 5 mans I seem to win then lose over and over.

If I'm queued with someone of like-level, it's like you say, 5-person queue sucks balls, less is mostly okay...but lately I've been trying to join forces with a buddy who's just starting out, and for some reason I get 5-man pre-mades that are all my level...so we lose....badly.

THat's where I THINK their bug is.  It doesn't look at relative levels for queue purposes to avoid exploiting of having like, a 5-man team where one player is low level to bring down the average level of the group...but in smaller queues (2 or 3) it doesn't go over so well.  I need to grab Feak and bash some sense into him and see what they're doing.

Man, I was just in the same boat over the last couple of days. I had a buddy come visit and we played a lot of LoL. We'd just arrange a 2 man team and hit the queue. In the 14 or so games we played, I think we won 2. I have no idea how that even happens, but it sure as hell did. And it's not like it was us two sucking really bad and pulling the entire team down. We're talking EVERYONE being low leve/terrible on the team we're on.

I'm level 30 and he was level 6ish when we got started. That has to be where the issue is. His level seems to match us up on the same team with other low levels, but it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on the levels of the other team.

Make a new guy and PUBSTOMP

I've seen people post that for premades the highest ELO is weighted much more heavily, its not like a straight average.  But I like the MM system, its a hell of a lot better then not having one (dota) so I never bothered to slog through the How Matchmaking Works thread.

I've seen the complaint several times though that training new players is impossible in normal games because the MM sets you up to get faceraped.

So I made a few posts in various places today that basically commented on how Riot has released lots of champions and skins in an effort to sell as many riot points as they can.  But 3 months after "release" if you are playing normal games you still only have one mode of play on one map.  I didn't consider any of the posts to be flaming or trolling, I wrote them out fairly civilly and every one was removed in probably less than an hour from posting.  :awesome_for_real:

Did you make any on the only site that matters (the official one)?

Sorry, thought that was assumed.  All of the replies were on the official forums, I just meant in a few different threads when I said various places.

Odd, Pendragon doesn't normally just delete stuff. I wonder what set them off considering half the posters are quite obviously illiterate.

Neato, I do like the new "Most Played Champion" info thing.  I'm 59 - 29 with Alistar  :awesome_for_real:

So, I just got going with this game, and while I played a bit of DotA, the guides I'm reading (and even the Riot store) use a lot of jargon that I'm not familiar with.  Some of these things I know from other games (tank, mage, etc.) some I can guess at (jungling means creeping, basically?) and some I don't really know (pusher?  carry?).  Anyone intro guide for this game?  Or have any obvious tips for newbies that I may have missed?  I hit up a few wikis, but they generally just have hero specific strategy guides and builds, and don't cover much of the basics of the game.  Plus, a lot of the specific stuff (as far as I can tell) is a few patches out of date.

Carries are in DotA too...basically high dps, squishy characters that are meant to "carry" the team to victory mid-late game.

Pushers are really good at lane pushing...basically, pushing towers.

Jungling is indeed creeping.  Just like in DotA, there are some characters (Warwick is a good example) that can spend all their time in the jungle early game and level and obtain gold just as fast as they could in a lane.

As far as basical skills/suggestions...look at the suggested items for your characters you pick.  They're not always right (and are often not totally the best builds) but in terms of starting out, it's awesome for figuring out what items live where, and what builds into what.  Unlike in DotA, there's no denying...so focuis on harassing and last hitting enemy creeps in lane basically.  There's a much heavier emphasis on harassment in LoL than DotA IMO, although I know some would disagree with me.

Carries don't have to be squishy. I guess many of them do stay kinda squishy, though.

About the nearest thing I can find is this (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/learn/new_user_guide) from the main site.  It's a bit on the basic side though.

Okay, this "matchmaking" stuff is bullshit.  Putting aside the fact that having individual rankings in an "unranked" 5v5 pug only game is completely  :uhrr:, I had a ten game winning streak when I was level twelve.  Hit level thirteen, and immediately lost my next game, and every game after that so far.  If this game is supposed to be based on a 50/50 chance to win any given game, the odds of my getting the same ten results in a row is something like one in five hundred and twelve, it shouldn't be happening every fucking time.

I think 13 is when you leave "newbie island." Up until then you are matched mostly against other newish people. Now you're in with the general populace. As you get better and the system figures out generally what you can handle it will even out. When a lot of us started newbie island only lasted till level 7 or 8 I think, so we were introduced to the ass kicking majority a bit sooner.

Wish PRTSCRN worked in game, just played a game against a very pink haired Tristana.

Ahhh, the Facebook skins are rolling out. I need to go friend them.

Oh yeah, fuck.

Facebook skins? I'm a Facebook luddite! What do I need to do? Become a fan of LoL there?

Damn, forgot how much I enjoy this game.

I'm curious, anyone as an idea of how much money they are making?

Flash range is being reduced AGAIN in patch notes, they should just get it over with and remove the spell.

Shaco is also getting increased range on two-shiv.  :headscratch:

Wow really? Out of all the champs that don't really need love.......

I mean, Eve coulda used some more range on her hate spike maybe!

I present to you...what I believe was my first ever game as Shaco -

Love the capes :)

It's amazing how effective it is.  Shaco with 3-4k hp, doing 240 damage passive damage to you per second with his clone up before he even starts dropping jack in the boxes or two shiving you.  No one on the other team could touch me and I took them mostly 3v1 in one fight near the end.

Some people are saying the clone doesn't carry the sunfire damage but we saw for sure it does this game.  Mord escaped me one fight only to have my clone chase him and kill him with passive damage.

Makes me wanna try em...sounds too fun.

It seems that almost any character that can be hard to kill in 5v5 and can do damage is almost broken in 3v3.  Shaco, Mundo, Jax, I'm guessing Cho would do very well etc.

So our joke about running all tanks in Sunfires.....could work??? :) Oh wait, you said can do damage.

Chogath, Mundo and Rammus with sunfires could be very fun.

I'm staring to wonder if Riot honestly realizes how bad their uptime is and how amateur it makes them look or if it's just like a joke around the office "LoL guys, servers are down again!"

Then you can't even check the server status forums because they are borked too.

I wonder if something in the last patch borked it; I hadn't noticed it being this bad before then.  Maybe the game just hit some critical population threshold or something.  But yeah, this is getting bad.  What is it, four or five of the last seven days it's been down?  You'd think this would be a priority fix for them, not just "sorry, any boosts you purchased will be extended for two hours to cover the downtime, see ya".

I've heard many a Riot fanboi scream that boost time isn't lost when the server is down but I've never checked it myself.

They SAY they extend the boost timers every time the servers go down, but like you, I haven't checked.  But then, I don't buy boosts anymore either.

Also it's definitely something in the last patch.  Downtime this iteration is terrbile, but it's been really good before this.  Before it was scheduled downtime almost 100%, they had very few unintended downtimes.

Apparently I can watch both golems at the same time now if I have wards down, who knew?

How'd they do that resolution hack?

Who's they?  That's an in game screenshot I just took.  :oh_i_see:

Thrawn and I just played with one of the worst Jax's ever. He disco'd and we were like "yay!" And then he came back and solo'd baron at 14.

We're still trying to figure it out.

His equipment was Doran's Ring, Ninja Tabi, Atma's Impaler, and Guinsoo's Rageblade. I mean, good equipment on Jax, but like:

What?  :| :facepalm: :headscratch:

He had rally as well but yeah....  :headscratch: seems appropriate.

Also, he didn't just kill Baron, he beat the shit out of him. He had half-health left. It wasn't even a close fight. His Q was wrecking Baron's shit.

Dodge is hella imba versus creeps, Jax can jungle so hard because of it.

Did you have a red pot?

Ouch, just got rolled by a nasty team comp I want to try.

Shen, Rammus, Soraka, TF, Sivir

TF and Sivir are probably swappable for any high ranged dps.  But you just can't ever get at them and you can't get at Soraka so Shen/Rammus never die.  It was crazy.

We beat them in lane very solidly, I got 4 kills against TF/Sivir as Rammus before 10 minutes.  Our Annie beat their Shen mid no problem getting a kill or two and we pushed their top lane back taking the tower.  But once they grouped up and started team fighting we never were able to push against them at all and lost steadily.

Ahhh I need more good people to queue with.  Solo queue makes me cry.

Just played with a team I knew I should of dodged since it was too many mediocre characters but wasn't sure I'd have time for one if I did. (Ashe-me, Kennen, Kayle, Malthazor, Olaf)

I got 1-0 mid farming just fine and pushing their Ez out of lane multiple times, our bot lane goes 0-5 and spends most of the game saying thats my fault.  I end up like 3-6 because every fight I arrow initiated my team let me go in and die before they took the fight and Kayle never ulted anyone but herself.   :mob:

The only upside to the game was getting to the score screen.  Most of my team rages that our mid lost it for us (me) and the other team tells them that I probably would of carried them to a win if they supported me because I was our only good player.  :awesome_for_real:

I have been really impressed with Shen lately.  Balance wise, I feel Shen's ult needs to be much more visible on his target.

I think Shens ult is almost too good.  I don't think his shield should apply until after he finishes his cast, not instantly at the start.

Morons aplenty in this game. I can't help but rage as well when we lose horribly due to them not knowing to follow my Rammus initiate. I'm going to learn to use AP Rammus to help if we end up with a second tank.

This is pretty much my experience of picking a tank too.  I also find bad players tend to rage at the tank if they lack the awareness to see what's actually going on in team fights.  Especially as Rammus, the lack of a glaring neon spell effect when taunt goes off leads the unobservant to believe you're not doing anything and think the reason we lost the team fight is because the tank sucks rather than the dps all focussing the 3.5k health cho-gath on the other side.

Sweeet, just got what I think was my first penta-kill.  We then proceeded to lose the game.  :awesome_for_real:

I just had my first three-game losing streak. About to hit Lv. 20. I think the good times are over.

Everytime I was grouped with chucklefucks and everytime the opposing team had at least 4 or 5 competent members.

I should probably stop playing Rammus... or stop playing.

What is your build for rammus? At the pre-30 range some builds are simply more champ. If you prefer to play tanks in general I mordekaiser, shen, tank eve (laugh is TERROR), tank nunu are pub crushers. also you may want to stop playing solo que summoners rift...it ain't worth it.

Yeah it is a psychic assault on my mind. My last game was just a major failure in analyzing the enemy properly. I have a difficult time telling if enemy damage is coming from Physical or Magic Champion. I got Banshee's veil first instead of armor against a Mundo / Shen / Rammus / Janna / some other physical type team.

I need to study other champions more. I always assume the bulk of the damage comes from magic attacks even from melee DPS heroes. I'm feeling a little better from last night, but man it's demoralizing.

League art.

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=25734&d=1271684308 (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=25734&d=1271684308)
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=35492&d=1276611067 (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=35492&d=1276611067)

well shen, rammus, and none fail janna is magic damage. Mundo and a real carry is physical. Does two physical warrant building mostly armor? 7/10 yes. Shen, rammus magic damage is negligible and doesn't have magic pen so why worry? you don't. Janna is scary but the trick to fighting 1-2 casters as the tank is merc treds + health. You get 2 items that need ruby crystal in them and wham your unkillable. Casters simply can't blow through alot of health, they simply can't. you put just 2 pieces of magic resistance (not banshies veil and not natures) + being rammus and your an unkilliable god. you get a banshies late game to better tank, getting it early just gets means there is a large period of the game where your very underpowered.

I'm learning tossing on a Negatron Cloak early is what I mostly need for Rammus to build MR. Building a Catalyst for a Banshee's is a huge money sink I don't need; it's far better to build everything BUT the Catalyst for top tier items in most cases given the amount of money you toss into some HP and MP when you're still as tough as tissue paper. Anyway, I'm better served building towards something that provides me something more helpful, like Omen, Glacial Shroud, Aegis, and Guardian Angel.

There's talk I've read, especially with an AP Rammus build, about how too much armor is actually a negative when you would be better spent getting health boosting items at some point. I still need to research this and what items are available.

I believe about 200 armor/MR is what I have seen recommended on the forums, although I switch to health items after 100 armor/MR. 100 armor is 50% damage reduction. 200 armor is 66% damage reduction. If they stack flat penetration items I occasionally go for 150-200 armor/MR, but if they go with Last Whisper or Void Staff I just stack the hell out of health.

Pasifist twitches and rambo sorakas are really starting to get on my nerve.

rambo soraka is  :drillf:

Just a note on AP Rammus - I tried it early on when I picked up the character, maybe I'll give it another shot now, but I was /not/ impressed. Here's the current item build I work with - assuming optimal conditions - mostly physical enemies, no early-mid lane shut downs, good lane partner, etc. I'm always ready to switch it up, depending on what my current situation is, for example, I'm up against a good harassing magic DPS, I buy a negatron cloak early, but don't upgrade it to nature's wrath until mid-late game.

I start with a ruby crystal and build it into a heart of gold first off - but my summoner spells are flash and ghost, so I don't really suffer from the temporary loss of mobility, or (USUALLY) the need to pop early health potions. And I do have to specify "USUALLY" here, because if I run up against a pair of good ranged DPS in my lane, I will kill enough creep to afford some pots, and visit the store after the first ass kicking that occurs. Of course a good lane partner can correct the situation, but I pub a lot, so I can't always count on that.

I almost always go ninja tabbi because my yellow runes are dodge. My other option here are mercury treads vs. a heavy magic team.

I build my first sunfire at this point. I tend to get a lot of mid-late game mileage out of stacking 2 sunfire capes on Rammus - it fixes one of his major problems of not being able to creep or jungle for sustained periods. Aside from never having to worry about your cash income again, and building up both your armor and your HP, strategically you're taking a character who is already a good anti-pusher with strong tower munching ability and high survivability, and turning him into a good pusher as well. The enemy is going to be hard pressed to come up with a solution for keeping you from pressuring their unguarded towers if your allies are also pushing hard.

At this point, the build becomes a lot more fluid, so depending on what I am up against I will:
-Build my second sunfire, assuming everything is still going well
-Convert my heart of gold into an omen, assuming I'm in need of some additional snare/AC/HP (which is always likely)
-Build a nature's wrath, if the magic DPS is starting to increase (which isn't always needed)
-Build a banshee's, if the enemy team is going with disables and/or the magic DPS is strong (also not always needed)

If you get this far, chances are you've already won the game. You may want to get an Guardian Angel for the resurection - enemy teams have a habit of making me #1 on thier hit list by now, because of all the towers I have eaten, and all of the times I have been in the middle of the action stirring things up as their team gets destroyed. This is good because it makes your initiate attempts SUPER EFFECTIVE, but it's also bad because sometimes they do actually succeed in killing you with retard rage, despite the best efforts of your team.

I  :heart: Rammus.

Matchmaking is still so damn random.  I get so rolled in two games last night that my ass hurt.  Including one where my favorite moment was our Amumu saying "Our Trist getting ganked out front was initiation, why did the rest of you pussies back off?"  The other game had us against a team with Kat and Twitch and NO ONE else on our team took anyone with any way to break their ults even after I pleaded for more people to take someone with a stun or disable.

Then I play a quick one this morning and we rolll them 16-5 in 18 minutes.  :uhrr:

Yeah. This is my experience as well. Sad really, the occasional balanced games can be quite fun.

Just for you Hoax -

I'm really tired of Shaco and Garen. I can't wait for the hard nerfs next patch.

I had a team that let Shaco rape them in all lanes for a good ten minutes. I was the only one that didn't die because I knew all his tricks.

The problem with Shaco and Garen both is just that they can do WAY too much damage at the first few levels, I think they are fine later.

Also the Heimer nerfs look to be way too much, I think they are going to make him almost useless.

Considering people were screaming for his removal, maybe that's a good thing.

Heimer properly supported is still a bitch.

So how pissed would you be to be on the losing end of this RANKED game?

(http://i54.tinypic.com/2q07jh4.jpg)

Someday I will learn that "one quick game" almost never end well.  Our only tank, Alistar, builds Razor, Beserker Greaves, Sheen etc... while our pirate kept acting like he was the tank initiating fight by walking into the other team and getting owned.

I feel terrible I haven't played this in over a month but between PAX and getting involved in some start-up ventures my free time is gone. When I get back home I can't think at all and just want to relax.

And now Civ V is out and Dead Rising 2 is next weekend. Wooooo.

2nd day, play "just one game", we have a DC and lose 4v5.
3rd day, play "just one game", our top lane of Vlad and Kassadin gives up SEVEN kills to Miss Fortune 2v1.

Had a pretty good run with a healer heavy team a few nights ago. I was playing Soraka and was teamed up with Taric, Sona, Morde, and then the last guy was usually a random. While we didn't have much killing power, when we all moved as a team, we were almost unkillable. We basically ignored the other team and just healed ourselves/each other while we took out their base.

I want a spell that is a reverse taunt; it would force my teammates to attack the person of my choosing. Astorax and I had a team last night that was hell bound and determined to kill Amumu while Twitch danced on our heads.  :oh_i_see:

In anything sub 1600 elo good tanking really just means making sure you get dropped to at least 60% hp to start the fight since bad teams will refuse to refocus onto the real targets because they can't ignore those half dead tanks in favor of champs like Kog or Fortune.

Game 4...well....we probably could of won game 4 if I was playing a decent carry instead of Tryndamere because I could of carried our bad Yi.  :awesome_for_real: