Thunder, i LOVED Soraka (the unicorn bitch) who, IMHO, was better than sedna:  a quick direct heal, a quick mana recharge spell then when cast on teammates replenished your own mana and when cast on an enemy - silenced them, a full team heal regardless of map location and a weak direct damage spell.  Too bad they nerfed her last week, luckily Deus Ex was released on the same day lol.

Anyways, im RagnarDanneskjol in LOL.  Add me if you want to type that much or let me know what your names are lol.

j

oh also - getting a copy of the collectors edition is not quite that simple nowadays.  I went to best buy and target on lunch today and neither had it.  Also you can't get it online anywhere I've seen (unless you are a silly person and want a "used" copy from amazon or to spend $50 on it there as well). 

Yeah, you should save your IP for tier 3 runes until you get a few full pages.  Jungling without proper runes is especially difficult - I dont recommend it since your jungle will just be too slow.  You should be hitting level 4 in the jungle at about 4 minutes to keep pace with lanes btw.  You might be a bit slower with a tank like Amumu, but it shouldnt be that much slower than that.

Typically its best to just play the free champs until you really know what you want.

And yes, Amumu is strong.  He is often banned in ranked because people really dont like playing against him.  But you really do need to be jungling with him since he sucks in lane.

And no, Soraka wasnt nerfed to whoever said that.  She was changed, and probably became stronger.  In fact, she has now gone to a common ban in ranked (at least where I am, which is at 1500+).  She does SUBSTANTIAL damage now, and is actually one of the stronger solo laners now.  She will shut down most AP carries in a solo lane, including typically strong ones like Morde.

But I would expect a substantial Soraka nerf soon since she is completely out of control if you know exactly how to play her. 

Ranked works pretty different from the normal blind pick.

The top slots are assigned captaincy of a sort, first thing done is they ban two characters each, then champs are selected by both teams in turns, with them visible to the opposing side, and from a single pool as well.  No duplicates.

Ranked would be bleeding wonderful if it weren't for an even higher number of assholes.  Just lost one this evening because a guy goes Alister, gives me shit all game for daring to have hexatech when I'm the AD carry(hybrid kog has utterly badass AD carry potential), and never knocks xin off me.  I managed the only even score by a wide margin, and the loser was still cussing me out for not knowing how to build kog after the game was over...

Get a team that doesn't feed, or give you endless shit when you're doing just fine, and it's wonderful.  I'm up to 12 games though, and half of them were populated by at least one twelve year old raving like a lunatic over stupid crap.  Perhaps if I ever play enough to make it out of ELO hell...

Pacov:  Yeah, Shen can be a Jungler but its not ideal I know.  I've been reading some guides on the whole process but its kinda pointless when I'm so far behind before the game even starts... all those T3 Runes and the extra 23 Masteries people have make it an even more uphill battle.

I've been trying to play Taric but its very counter-intuitive.  I'm kinda a Tank and my auto attack gives me mana back and lowers my heal cooldown... but I'm just told to go hide in the bushes over and over so I feel like I might as well just be playing Not Sedna.  Also I think the Taric guides I'm reading assume I've got a bunch of Runes to keep my stun powered up which don't feel like its the case... just ask poor Rawwr.

Think I'm going to find me a jack of all trades hero and just play bots until I've got the juice to not be a complete liability to your guys team.

Yeah - it would be nice if there was an all mute button in chat if people were just being obnoxious.  One of my games last night just had 2 guys on flaming one guy on my team (in a pug) over and over.  I didn't care that they were busting someone else's chops - it was just annoying to have these idiots prattle on and on.  I'm sure having a 12 year old do that to you because you didn't buy the item the little fool wanted you to get made things even better.  Oh well.  Still happy to say that the majority of my games haven't been full of shites.  I can think of maybe 4-5 games altogether now that had some idiot like that.

Anyway, if its just one guy being annoying, I just mute then out and get back to having fun in the game. 

No worries.  And yes, you can buy it from Riot, but its not as good a deal as just paying $20 outright.  They give you like 1200 or 1800 riot points after you make the purchase, but you have to cover the full 3900 riot points at the onset.  Anyway, I've already unlocked all but like 5 of the characters in the collectors pack, so its not that big a deal - and I had zero of the characters I unlocked in that bundle last night, so its all good.

What I wasn't aware of:  you can't purchase runes with rp unless you want to buy the "7-page rune bundle" and it provides no description of what that is - though I'm guessing it gets you all of the runes, etc.  That's like 2600 rp, so I'll probably just keep unlocking them with ip. 

edit:  oh - and that rune page bundle i mentioned just gives you additional pages to store runes... it doesn't actually give you runes.

I do like nocturn - he's a bit squishy for my tastes, but quite useful.

oh - and that rune page bundle i mentioned just gives you additional pages to store runes... it doesn't actually give you runes. 

Yeah - took me a little bit to get this one as well. 

The items I've seen on her are some combination of Deathcap and Rylai's early, then Deathfire Grasp after those two items.  The basic idea is that Deathcap gives her big damage (and heals), and Rylai's gives her some survivability, plus a slow on top of the silence on Starcall.  That makes that skill REALLY nasty.  Once you add Deathfire Grasp on top of that, you make the lives of the opposing carries a living hell since you can silence them, slow them, and do big burst to them, all while healing your team and yourself. 

"Carry" as its used nowadays, is basically synonymous with "damage dealer".  It used to mean something a bit different, but thats how the term is used in LoL now.  So a carry is a very different role than a tank (whose job is to start and control teamfights) or a support (whose job is to buff and heal their own team).

You can either be an ability power (AP) carry or an attack damage (AD) carry.  Hybrid carries generally do not exist.

AP Carries become stronger by stacking ability power.  Common items here are Rabadon's Deathcap (pure damage), Rod of Ages (mix of damage and health), Void Staff (damage and magic penetration), and Zhonya's hourglass (damage and defense).  AP carries are generally strong early game and fade late game unless heavily fed.  They generally, but not always, do their damage in large bursts.  The damage from AP carries is mitigated by magic resist, but NOT armor.

The most common AP carries are: Annie, Brand, Orianna, Fiddlesticks, and Malzahar.  Morde is usually built as an AP Carry/tank combo and Akali is usually built as an AP carry/assassin combo.

AD Carries become stronger by stacking attack damage.  They usually rely heavily on autoattacks,  so getting attack speed and crit chance increases is also a good idea.  Common items are Infinity Edge, Last Whisper, Brutalizer, and Phantom Dancer.  Madred's Bloodrazor also works and allows the AD carry to hybridize a bit by doing some magic damage.  AD carries are generally weak early game and get stronger late game.  They generally do sustained damage over time instead of in bursts.  The damage from AD carries is mitigated by armor, but NOT magic resist.

The most common AD carries are: Ashe, Corki, Vayne, Tristana, and Caitlyn. 

Teams generally should have at least 1 AD carry and 1 AP carry.  That way the other team can't mitigate your damage by only stacking armor or MR, but must stack both to really reduce your team's damage.

Ranged AD carries are usually preferred to melee AD carries since they are more difficult to kill.  You should be identifying and trying to kill the other team's carries first.  They do the damage, but typically dont have many defenses, so kill them fast.  At low levels of play you can play melee AD carries and get away with it (the classic example being Master Yi) since teams dont target carries as well, but at high levels of play somebody like Yi will get targeted and focuses too quickly to be real useful to the team in most cases.

AD is for Attack Damage, AP is for Ability Power.  A carry is your typical glass cannon, rapidly dishing out horrendous damage and walking all over the enemy team if they're kept safe.  Characters that specialize in rapid damage output make good carries, fast firing ability combos like Annie can pull off, or high attack characters with good bonuses like freezing arrows from Ashe, or the firing speed and damage increases many characters have.  When they build all ability power or attack items, they're doing a carry build.

The idea is the rest of the team uses stuns, slows, knockbacks, that kind of thing, to keep your heavy hitters safe from attack while it mows down the enemy heavy hitters.  Crappy teamwork just makes for a free kill though.

Realistically, the carry is just the character doing most of the damage.  You can have a lousy carry that doesn't get much accomplished and end up carrying with the tank.  Diversity in damage type is the main thing to watch for.  If you're all AP, one decent magic resist item nukes the whole team.  On the Reverse, Rammus with Thornmail will just destroy a team that lacks decent AP.

Edit: I type too slow...