finally saw swan again tonight.  Got in a few games w/ him. 

Currently playing my worst adc graves with success and goofing about with jungle malz (side note... very high kda with him - I think there is something to him IF YOU ARE SMART ENOUGH TO PLAN AROUND COUNTER JUNGLE EARLY).

Had a few magical Pacov games and then Swan got online last night and we played a few. Ended with a disappointing game where I was super fed on EZ but it didn't matter.

yah was good to finally see swan again. 

Anyway, I've been playing quite a bit of graves lately (not sure why I'm all into all of a sudden), but I'm rolling with a 90% win rate over 10 games now.  I'm getting a little better with concentrating/focus after all the exercising, but still had a few moments last night where it was quite tricky to figure out what to do.  Getting better anyway. 

THE SWEET SMELL OF SCIENCE

Science OP.  Nerfs to science already on the PBE.

New skins + game mode live.  We shall summon the poro king together tonight methinks... followed by me complaining about how I hate the mode later. 

Really like the poro king mode.  Fun stuff.  Ali's currently on my must pick or ban list.  Anyway, I enjoyed the added mechanics and will be playing some more tomorrow.  gj dr riot

from someone's tier list on reddit for poro king:

The Gods, The Bans, The Brokens

Those guys are ban or pick if you want to ensure a victory. But mostly they tend to be unfun for the enemy team.

Galio. Imagine Galios ult flying up close to you across the map. Terryfying, isnt it? (Acutally its taunting) His dmg is getting out of hands fast and 5 man ults should be pretty easy because the ultimate covers very much of the path, so there is only running to the front or back. His other abilities also work extremely well with the whole setup.

Nidalee. Its Howling Abyss after all. Shes super strong in Aram, shes extremely strong in Poroking. Her heal + spear are strong, but now she has her cougar stance q at a very strong gapcloser.

Katarina. Kata ult with a biiig gapcloser pretty much ensures no cooldown ults. Its just too powerful to leave it open.

Zed. With two possible shadows and two great range dashes, he is out of danger in pretty much any situation. His mobility just destroys the enemy team.

Skarner. Ulting people and then gapclosing back to the poroking is basically a one click person kill. Thats just lame.

I really like Karthus on that map. Land your Poro Lee sin Summoner, go in with defile and lay waste, kill two people, die, kill more people in passive, profit.

I like lee sin on this map. Its like having your Q up all the time.

I like blitz on this map. Land a hook while you have poro king, use your summoner to pull people back to poro king. You have to have excellant timing but its pretty great when it works.

Fizz is extra annoying.

Shen is pretty solid with his taunt being nearly free to land.

Amumu has an extra bandage toss

Sion gets in your face easier.

Those are the champs I have been most impressed with so far out of the ones I have played/seen. I think Karthus has been the most fun for me.

Oh and fiddlesticks is redicilous. I saw some one that would channel ult, land a poro and use it to bring his ult right to them.

oh - and sej was really good on the map as well.  I think sej + karthus would be freaking brutal.  sej aoe is kind of big when you are instantly on them and able to gap close immediately with q then. 

Sorry pacov, I didn't see your comment last night about me not being flexible or having map awareness, so I'll address it here.

To recap the game state:

I had been invaded 3 times before the 3 minute mark.  I had gotten no help initially from Boaz since he as waiting for an extra pot instead of helping or leashing for me.  I came out ahead of Lee because I was better than him, but was behind the level curve due to no leash and having to constantly fight.  On the other hand, I had mid way ahead since he got a kill on Lee and I was able to gank for him.

Shortly after this happened, you started complaining about me not giving you enough attention bot since you were getting crushed.  I knew this, but I was behind in levels (although ahead of their Lee).  Your lane was way behind and you did a short disconnect and had some backs bot.

At that point, I could have either:

1) Ran all the way across the map to temporarily cover a lane.  I would have lost a ton of xp and gold, but kept up your tower for another few waves.  But the tower would have soon been lost since there was no way you could have held bot tower.

2) Let them take bot, but take multiple buffs myself (including one of Lee's, which I knew was free since I knew where he was), then gank mid.

I chose option 2 since it benefitted the team in every way.  Every competent jungler above Gold V or so would do the same.  The general idea is to get myself and mid ahead and put their mid and jungler further behind.  We lost a tower we were going to lose anyway.  They now have to now play a very long bot lane when we have a Pantheon and fed Katarina.  Its not a terrible situation if people don't tilt.

With regards to why I wasn't ganking much for you earlier: as I said, I was getting constantly invaded and I was behind in levels.  You don't gank when you are behind in levels and the lane you are ganking into is also substantially behind.  Especially when Peterdumptruck is in that lane.  Its a silly thing to do.  You have the flexibility to get somebody else ahead and deal with it when you are better able to.

I don't appreciate being harassed for 15 minutes straight by you for making a relatively straight forward decision.

aw... karl - its prob best not to address things if I'm clearly being a goon about (unless I'm gooning it up here for all to see - though its k).  That said, tonight was delightful and hopefully we'll continue to enjoy such things.  Sorry for any bad feelings generated on the previous night though!  My bad and a bad situation over all.

I'm just glad peter finally has the correct runes as a support.  Side note... seriously try to pay attention to some of the shit peter's been saying lately. He's actually going to become a better player.  Honestly, he was stagnant for quite some time but now he's picking up on things and learning.  He's still pete, but tonight he actually had good response time to correction while playing as a support.  He's improved a bit from when we played a bunch with him last imo.

I've been paying a lot of attention to what he does as a support.  The shortest recap is that he now runs exhaust because he gets its a better support item and hurts his team if he doesn't.   And he's also getting runes that are proper as support.  My prediction is that peter is going to start working on playing commonly used supports.

only 1 more icon to get in the magical poro game.  Think I'm at like 91% (you can check your stats on the LoL site in case you didn't know (open client, top right corner box)).  Anyway, really pleased with the game mode - prob one of my fav modes.  Shame it will vanish after the snowdown though. 

Karthus is certainly fun. Had a monster game on him last night playing the poro mode. I completed all icons after 12 games.

Well, I think I now might be the best Jarvan NA.  Top 5 anyway.

I think we all secretly knew that, but wanted you to discover it on your own.  Also, I will allow you to duo with pete to Diamond now. 

K - new prog I'm using. Makes lol replays and archives online.  Small footprint.

Here's the program link:  http://dries.io/projects/opggrecorder/

Download, enter username and NA for region -leave running when you play lol.  It signals OP.GG to make recordings for you.  OP gg has a setting in place to use its own bandwidth to archive replays - this just triggers that for you. 

I've been running it a for a few hours tonight.  Check my profile here and note the replays. 

http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=pacov

I'll prob use this as long as I remember to as its a pretty much no bandwidth way to archive your replays and share.

HAHAHA, CLG v Gambit game 2 was amazing at IEM Cologne.  Base race!

rito's disabled logging in atm.  You can still bypass with the urf code...

also... this just happened

server's kaput.  even w/ urf code u can't authenticate atm

servers back up.  Login queue + some instability logging in.  Some streamers already successfully logged into NA. 

the trick... sadly - seems to be trying over and over.  If you are in a loop (eg reach 1 and have it doesn't kick over right away), log out, then try again.  Do not wait if it's started to loop.  Pretty lame over all... ah well...

well.. server issues were a hoot. I spent some time playing some other games for a bit while I tried to log on intermittently.  All said and done, 3 hours before I could connect.  Got in some fun games though w/ madcast folks + Boaz. 

As of today I will have minimal computer access until the 10th of January. I will be doing Christmas things and I will be visiting Soccermom/Thundercles in Hawaii (still need your phone number Thunder skype me it or pm me on forums I will be calling you to arrange things). I will miss you all greatly and if I do not return its because Thunder got me killed doing some extreme lava tube surfing or whatever it is you do in Hawaii. Also my GF dumped me so I will have lots of free time again :/