Working is lame so happy 1001 comment.

Bonus rp is live now

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/store/sales/extra-bonus-rp-here-limited-time

To waste 100 dollars or not to waste 100 dollars... hmmmm

Waste - pfft.  You are investing in your future... or something.  Besides - unless you are expecting to become bored of LoL, you'll... you know... use it and benefit from the bonuses.

Random rant - I've been a bit more prone to negativity lately.  I try to keep it in check, but we just had to put our dog to sleep this past Saturday and things were moving in that direction for a bit now... so... I've been a lot more tilt prone.  My apologies for being quite rotten here and there.  Not cool of me.  But hopefully I'm about done now.

Other stuff - I really like Boaz but I'm kind of getting sick of his setup.  He seems to be consistently having some sort of issue every game that always sets us back.  Hoping that stuff ends soon for him or I'll just stop playing with him for a bit.  Sucks, but I don't think he's tech savy enough to solve his problems and I guess shipping of computer parts to Alaska is somewhat expensive. 

Cow - did you actually think that kat from last night was scripting?  I didn't really get to pay much attention to tracking any of that.  Riot's been banning alot of accounts lately for scripting  - would be pretty easy to get that person banned if that's true.  Pretty sure I have a replay as well, but don't really know what you experienced or if you were just salty. 

Anyway, I'll be on tonight probably a little earlier than normal (7PM or so).  Happy to get in games with folks that are around.  My mid is still kind of rubbish but I'm improving alot now and moved over to a more consistent mid - syndra.

like 75% sure that Kat was a scripting. the kill at baron was redicilous, the insta kill she pulled off in less than a second at the inhibitor. The fact that shes was plat V and never plays kat is another dead give away. There is a small chance she was playing absurdly well but I highly doubt it. Plat V players are really bad (no offense to any of you guys that are there right now).

The level of skill that the kat played at was on par with Dan's kat and imo Dan is absurdly good with her.

reported cow for insulting plat V players and scripting.

ranked reset date confirmed - Jan 21st - placement matches required as per the norm BUT - the weight of the games is much lower this time around, so even if you don't do incredibly well, you won't get completely wrecked. There is a soft reset as well. 

http://eune.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/competitive/get-ready-2015-ranked-season

Hrm yes, looking her up, she is a 320+ win Plat V.  Really the number of wins matters in things like this since there is a big difference between people who have to get up to someplace by grinding there over a million games and somebody who just doesn't play ranked much.  That kat certainly didn't play like a 300+ win Plat V player.  And she did have really really quick reaction times.  With that being said, she did also go in at the right times in teamfights, which isn't all scripting.

Was bored at work and spectating that game.  When Cow called 'scripter' I checked out a slo-mo replay of her using some pretty fast combos of all her abilities. Could have been scripting, could have been just good button mashing.

The 'fight' at Baron was perhaps a bad example to reference.  Baron's MR/Armor shred made it easy to erase three non-fed players, though I'm not sure she would have needed it with some of your team being at extremely low health to provide helpful resets.  A Kat of any skill level would have gotten those kills as long as she had either four working fingers or a face IMO. If someone has the replay, look more at the team fights in your base for suspicious behavior.

Sorry bout your dog Pacov.  They're part of the family and it's tough saying goodbye. 

Anyways... Its that time of the year again when LCS starts up. I had a blast playing fantasy LCS last season and would like to do it again. If anyone is interested I have created a league: http://fantasy.lolesports.com/share/join/league/430055/6umwfWu13hkpYmycUNrV 

We can draft players when all the spots are filled. 

In case some of you have not seen this, its actually a really cool mod.  Ice rift.

http://yurixyworks.com/2015/01/03/ice-rift/#more-4528

oh and dfg just said cya nerd - http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/GinIa17t-52-live-gameplay-patch-forecast

I loves it

So, what do you fellas think about the screw with the enemy jungler start?  I'm obviously goofing about with it, but I really think the way people are currently starting the jungle just opens things up wide open for shenanigans.  I'll back up a sec though...

yesterday I watch a vid that was on reddit showing a fairly legit jungle invade strat based completely on taking advantage of the way junglers are starting.  In the vid, the guy starting his own blue or red buff with a leash (and using smite) and immediately went directly to the enemies red/blue buff (whichever is closer).  There the jungler would wait until the enemy jungler was low from soloing their red/blue, then go in for an attack or kill knowing the enemy junglers smite is not up.  If the enemy jungler did not ward, they won't really be expecting it.... and also people aren't even typically pulling the jungle creep into the bush, so you can literally walk into the bush, stand right beside them, and wreck them.  Best case you get a kill and their buff.  Worst case the enemy team somehow knows you are there and collapses, but the timing is so early and vision has almost always decayed by the time you go in with folks just using trinkets.  So, you probably get a kill, or you get a flash and set back the jungler... AND you can go at it with your support to increase the odds of a kill.

OK - so, that strat works, but it does require knowing where the jungler has started.  You get that wrong (and often you are just guessing), now you are behind and in a bad position (eg you are  jungler that just came to a full hp buff camp and your smite is down - and the enemy jungler is likely on his way towards you). 

K - so the next cheese strat I've been doing with blitz.  The goal initially is to steal the jungle camp, but depending on the jungler, you can opt for a kill if you have ignite.  You simply wait until 1:50, then run where vision has like a 95% chance of being expired, and toss a ward into the jungle camp you are looking to steal.  Just wait there for the enemy jungler to appear (usually around 2:05 or so).  Pay attention and realize they have no smite and have a good idea of how much damage they do.  IF they are pretty low hp themselves and not pulling the camp into the bush, either try to get an angle where you can pull the jungler or go stand in the bush next to them.  Once they are a couple hits from getting the buff.  engage hard on the jungler and pop ignite.  You play it well enough and you likely get a flash and a kill.  At the very least, you've set their jungler back and they will have to base.. which should buy your jungler time to steal their other camp (or, if they are smart (hue) realize that its probably worth their time to join you when you do this and just take the buff for themselves, back and then bee line to take another buff camp). 

Barring that, you can fairly consistently pull off a very easy buff camp steal just by timing your pull and landing another auto attack after grabbing. 

I'm also thinking you can just run in like a thug as most supports (provided you have ignite) and just go for a kill or steal while they are attacking red.  Obv that works better against some junglers than others. 

Last - the obv trade off is that you force your adc to be solo lane vs an adc and support.  It translates in about 30 seconds of along time for your adc.  that's not as big a deal as the other downside - you come back to lane more than likely down in levels and smart enemies should take advantage of that offset.... which puts even more pressure on your adc. 

Anyway, do you think its worth putting your adc a little behind to set the jungler behind?  I'm leaning towards yes.  All the more so if you can get your jungler in on it, so that the enemy jungler gets counter jungled on top of whatever nastiness happens to him at the start. 

I'll be on tonight and tomorrow if anyone wants to play.

Re: Blitz Invades

Sounds fun but it has some risks.  Let's make a deal?  If you pull it off (hahaha!) then we will praise you appropriately.  If bad things happen, then you don't get to complain about how the rest of the game goes if you give up FB or your ADC get's zoned and loses bot lane because of the invade.

1) Most of this stuff isn't going to work that well as of 5.1 since junglers will have a second early smite, which greatly eases 1st buff pains I believe (not sure of exact mechanics).

2) This is mostly low ELO stuff probably.  The cost/benefit analysis of the strategy is entirely dependent on how well bot lane notices a missing support.  Good bot lanes will quickly notice a missing support (ESPECIALLY if its a blitz), ping like crazy to notify of possible shenanigans, and completely zone out the ADC.  Your level 1 ADC probably can't even get xp 1v2 at that point against most combos, so your lane is WAY behind.

Now if you play against a bad bot lane, they won't see what is happening and play normally.  So your ADC doesn't lose much CS and actually gets bonus XP.  But this is a strategy that counts on bad opponents.  It works well if you play with Boaz/Peter a lot who brings down the average opponent skill level.  But, my general argument on this kind of stuff still stands - it probably isn't a good idea to invest in strategies that only work against bads.  You should invest in strategies with good players in mind since you should be able to beat bads anyway.

3) The cheese invade that works at high ELO is usually done from jungle from what I understand, and I've talked about it before.  The jungler starts sword instead of machete, does one side camp, then immediately rushes to whatever buff the enemy jungler is doing.  Then its a fight.  If its a Udyr/Pantheon/Lee with Longsword vs somebody at a buff in a surprise attack, it should be a kill.

@thunder - I'll be around and hope to catch ya.  I don't complain if my strat fails as I get the risk.  I will add that I have an extremely high rate of success (min requirement is costing the jungle a buff - like at least 75% of the time)).

@karl - can't argue the its a strat that works really well in lower elo, but to be fair, it also should work reasonably well in solo queue - it usually does take a small amount of time to realize the support is not present and a delayed invade is generally not expected. 

Here's a vid that is worth taking a look at re: a jungle invade strat.  It goes into detail of when to attempt this sort of thing including that take your buff camp and immediately go the enemy buff for a kill route. 

I don't even know about this... anyone else know what karl's on about? 

back to the lower elo thing - the result of me doing this against a skilled bot lane should be my adc getting zoned and losing some cs as a result (dying/losing summoners if he's bad).  The question is, is it worth it if I kill the jungler?  What if I just steal a buff? hat if I just force the jungler to base?  You can add the lower elo math in there and go with is it worth either of those if my adc isn't super impacted - THAT makes it a pretty easy decision for me (I think its worth). 

Honestly, I'd really like to get to a place where we can come up with a complementary jungle plan to go with an invade like that.  Even the jungler showed up right I as forced the jungle to back, that's a free camp and you can likely defend your camp by basing immediately or steal/gimp another camp as your smite will be back up shortly.       

Smite charging is in this patch.

Anyway, the problem isn't CS.  The problem is most lane combos can deny XP on your ADC if they realize what is happening.  So you will have both members of the bot lane down levels (and CS) even if you get a kill in jungle somehow.  It might be marginally worth it if you get a kill, but its a really low probably kill, and its DEFINITELY not worth it if you don't get a kill.

Levels are important early game.  Being down levels for the entire early game on both members of bot lane is very bad.  VERY BAD.  The probable gold disadvantage probably isn't good either.  Junglers being behind a bit is something that they can usually overcome more easily.

I drop my wards late specifically to guard against junglers that come after their buff, trinket is more than long enough to do the job.  I can't be the only one that does this.

Nothing is worse than getting your ADC behind. Except maybe ebola. Dictategood!

Smite is going to have up to 2 charges that can be used within 15 seconds of each other.  Kinda this season's version of Conservation.  You'll have more route variety, able to build up charges while you gank or use a charge to gank right after clearing a camp with smite.  Really good change IMO... that kinda fucks up your tactic.

Actually from patch notes it looks like the second charge only starts building at 1:40, so starts are the same.  So things are the same.

Yeah, looks like routes aren't going to change unless the jungle AI change makes some sort of difference... but maybe it's a little better for the jungler who gets invaded.  You'll get 2 smites to get back into the game when you're trying to recover after getting killed or sent back to base by Blitz shenanigans.

I don't think so actually.

This is kind of a weird change for Riot.  If you just farm the jungle (usually what you do for a bit if you get behind), these changes are actually a pretty big nerf.  Smites will be up a lot less often if you are always using it on cooldown.  By my math, if you do everything exactly on cooldown, the 6th smite in this system will be up at the exact same time as the 7th smite would have been up in the old system.  Losing a whole smite by the 475 second mark is pretty big.

This is just nice if you aren't using smite on cooldown - basically, it helps for ganking junglers.

So this is kind of a snowbally change too.  If you fall behind, it will be a bit harder to get back in the game, while if you get ahead, you can stay ahead better I think.