Season One Details

[LK]

Vlad's a bit of a beast, but he's easily focused and goes down even faster if he uses his abilities since they are based off his HP. A Vlad that opens with his "Can't Target Me" pool doesn't have it for escape afterwards. Though it's a bit of a bitch that he can use it to get pass towers.

Though, three Sunfire Vlad... not sure that's the best tactic?

[Prospero]

Seems pretty solid. Health, AP, and armor all in one. I think 3 is probably overkill; at 2 you have more than enough armor. An Aegis would probably be good to throw in there to get some magic resistance while still stacking health and AP.

[tazelbain]

My new favorite asshole is kill-whoring Garren.  Doesn't help during team fights except at very end to get kills after we are mostly dead. Calls us noobs and points his K/D as proof of how awesome he is.

[LK]

Garen is ridiculously fucking hard to kill, I've found.

[tazelbain]

So Rammus' against heavy magic item build, so far I have: mantle + 2 pots, magic boots, HoG(need the cash), banshees, FoN.  After the I am confused.  I don't really like any of the other resist items.  So I am divided between stacking hp or guardian's for the extra survivability.  Any thoughts?

[LK]

You'll be hella gimped on doing any type of damage outside of Tremors and Powerball. Also, ability damage doesn't do that much earlier on. Here's something I was trying to figure out on SomethingAwful, but got no responses:

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Rammus just has a rough time period against AP teams. I can't seem to get the right tactics to take them on. I want to contribute more, but stacking MR leaves him gimped in most cases. Maybe... would doing AP alongside MR make him better?

Proposed Build Order: Sapphire Crystal + 2 Health Pots -> Catalyst -> Boots 1 -> Negatron Cloak -> Treads -> Rod of Ages (?) -> Force of Nature -> Rylai's

I really fucking hate starting with Catalyst and prefer HoG, but building Catalyst seems critical as you need to get RoA fast.

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I felt like Rod of Ages should come earlier after reading that and you'd need *really* good farming / ganking to get that going. Cooldowns would be an issue; Rammus needs to get at least one Mana and one Cooldown item to be really viable, or just hog the Golem rune.

Banshee's Veil is great and all but I think I'd rather have the health regen and AP to make up for lack of armor than one spell from one champion that could be knocked off with the right poke hitting him. The high regen works with the extra health RoA would provide, and Rylai's is there for survivability and ass-kick and a way to mop up at the end. But man you gotta be a good farmer and Rammus just isn't that most of the time.

The thing that nixes that all is if you have one physical high DPS on their team. At that point, I guess it's standard HoG -> Boots -> Aegis -> ?

Oh, things I've learned today: All of Katarina's abilities do magical damage. She's a caster.  

[Astorax]

Oh, things I've learned today: All of Katarina's abilities do magical damage. She's a caster.  

But her abilities scale off attack power as well as ability power.  Only shunpo has a better ratio for AP than AtP I believe.  The bigger advantage is that AP Kat, once she shoots her wad, does exactly dick to anyone, and can't push towers to save her life.  AtP Kat still hits like a truck auto-attacking, and can push towers pretty well.

Having said that, rylai's is actually a pretty amazing item on her.  Extra health for survivability, and the slow means no one ever gets away from you.

[LK]

Your WoW accent is showing.  Common abbreviation is AD for Attack Damage in LoL.

[Astorax]

Your WoW accent is showing.  Common abbreviation is AD for Attack Damage in LoL.

Yeah yeah, you play a game for years and it rubs off on ya, what can I say. :)

[LK]

Coming down the pipe:

Galio - The Living Guardian

Runic Skin:  Galio converts 60% of his Magic Resistance into Ability Power.

Bulwark: Galio shields a friendly champion, reducing all damage suffered by that unit and converting a portion of the damage into health for himself.

Idol of Durand: Galio assumes the form of a statue, taunting nearby enemies and storing concussive energy as they attack him. Galio then bursts from his statue shell, releasing the stored energy to damage surrounding foes.

Resolute Smite: Galio fires a concussive blast from his eyes, slowing and dealing damage to enemies caught near the impact point.

Righteous Gust: Galio claps his wings, unleashing a gust of concussive wind that damages enemies and leaves a directional draft in its wake that increases ally movement speed.

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So, an Anti-Magic Rammus, seems like.

[MrHat]

Seems like a fantastic tank.

He has 2 great tank abilities: a shield for an ally and a taunt.

Depending on the range of the taunt, he could be pretty fun to play.

[LK]

I DON'T UNDERSTAND how I could have played 200 games, be decently ranked in ELO, and still get matched up with pieces of shit not fit to come out of my ass. Other team is always on the ball and sticks together, my team is always spread out, terrible at their characters, and infighting is unstoppable.

[Kail]

I DON'T UNDERSTAND how I could have played 200 games, be decently ranked in ELO, and still get matched up with pieces of shit not fit to come out of my ass. Other team is always on the ball and sticks together, my team is always spread out, terrible at their characters, and infighting is unstoppable.

Same thing is happening to me, and it's become more mystifying than frustrating.  My Elo isn't super high or anything (like 1100) but I'm still on a massive losing streak, much of which I don't think is my fault.  I'm not carrying the team on my back or anything, but generally my k/d/a is comparable or better than everyone on the rest of the team, we've just got one or two people that are completely useless.  Last game, our solo mid spend the entire match raging at the rest of us, then went 1/5 before disconnecting, and my lane partner went 2/6, while I was 8/8/8 as Blitz.  Match before that, I went 3/5/6 as Ez (my first game with him in like two months, I guess they removed his heal which pisses me right the fuck off, but that's a rant for another day), but I was still at the top of our team, the bottom of which was inhabited by a 1/12 Xin.

This has been happening over and over and over again for like twelve games, it's starting to get weird.  I'm not pissed anymore, I just wonder what the hell is happening.  Something is fucked up, either I'm screwing up in some way that I can't figure out, or I'm getting some kind of insane chain of bad luck, I dunno.

[LK]

I'm finding a lot of power in getting Veil, Treads, and then stacking HP and AP (Rylai's) as Anti-AP Rammus. But you do have to rely on your teammates, have to have the game last a bit, and get boatloads of cash.

[Miasma]

Have they ever said how their matching system works?  I wouldn't be surprised if people with high rankings were dropped in with lower ranked players in a misguided attempt to bring up their average rank to a level close to the other team.

[LK]

I have seen 2000 + 1200 somehow equating to 1750 for the other 3 members. Thing is everyone needs to be on the same page; one suckass teammate is all it takes to ruin a game.

[Kail]

Have they ever said how their matching system works?  I wouldn't be surprised if people with high rankings were dropped in with lower ranked players in a misguided attempt to bring up their average rank to a level close to the other team.

There have been some posts about it on their official boards.  The way the dev explained it, the MM looks for ten players of roughly the same Elo, assigns them to a game, and then assigns them to teams so that each team has a roughly fifty percent chance of winning.  Most of the really extreme stuff I've seen has been due to friends playing as a partial team (e.g. one friend with 800 and one with 1500 join a game, it finds a group somewhere in the middle, but a bad player can drag a team down a lot more easily than a good player can pull it up).

What I assume is happening is that Elo is not really a great representation of skill per se in mid level solo queue games; since players are gaining and losing ranking based on their team's performance rather than how well they personally do, I suspect there's a lot of randomness in the ratings of pug players based on who they get assigned to play with.  Get four amazing players, and your average self can probably sit in the back and coast to victory.  Three or four noobs and the best player in the world is going to lose.  And when your personal rating is a bit skewed, it uses that skewed rating when it's determining the performance of everyone else you're playing against.  I dunno.  It just seems like it's got a lot of room for error.

[PalmTrees]

Once I get on a losing streak I just go do something else. I go solo que and my win rate is around 50%, just like they're shooting for. However I feel like my wins and losses come in streaks, 3 or so wins followed by 3 losses. It's probably more a feeling than statistical fact though.

[Hayduke]

Are you guys talking about ranked games?  Normal ELO rankings didn't carry over for ranked ones so it'll take some time for things to settle.  It's also probably very dependent on time of day since the MM system needs a big pool of players.

[tazelbain]

Lately I have been encountering a dramatic decrease in leavers and significant increase in 60+ minute games. Some have been so balanced that our team stayed within 2 kills of each other until the very end.  Something has changed in the last week.  Less leavers is better, but 60 minute games can be very frustrating.

[Prospero]

I think it's the new metagame of 3 tank/2 carry team comps. You end up with two teams with a ton of health and little damage. I also blame Heimer; his turret nests tend to turn into tea parties.

[tazelbain]

and poking teams, and new veigar.

[LK]

I need to get at least one win a day and sometimes that means Solo Queue and sometimes that means grouping with people who just aren't really good at the game despite having played it a lot. I had two games with two very successful side lanes / early lane ganking going on (including a jungling Xin Zhao we killed not once but twice at Golem before Lv. 3), but a mid-Vlad completely wrecked our Ezrael and then our Tristana, and despite having four awesome people, that was it. Mid fails, everything fails.

Second game went wrong not only because of Ez failing but WW was left unchecked and just wrecked. Warwick + Garen is usually a strong team combo because they don't die.

[Thrawn]

I'm seeing a LOT of Garen playing today and he's usually doing pretty well.

[Prospero]

Yeah, Garen is a beast. I've seen him clear even a cautious lane with nothing more than a Doran's Shield. He's up next on my buy list.

edit: I take it back; the Sion I played with that game was anything but cautious. Still, a beast.