well, stream worked fine for last game.  We had a loss.  Hunny had to jungle and got counter jungled by a really good shaco... REALLY hard.  And our mid and top refused to help him. Did not go well. Me and adc won bot lane easily, but the ass whopping shaco put on hunny caught up to us.  So, I end the night in gold 5 with 0 lp.  Hunny ends the night silver 1 with 1 loss in his promotion series.  Really hoping we get some less douchy folks for our next game (or his if he plays w/o me). 

folks to help rank up - bryff, karl, sharpy.  All of them are in lower divisions than they should be imo. Hopefully I can help hunny hit gold - I'm a bit nervous after the goofs we got last game. 

random ranked thoughts - so, obviously I'm really happy to hit gold.  It's been a goal for awhile now and hitting it on my first promo series was better than I expected.  Out of my last 10 ranked games, I've had 8 wins and 2 losses.  The thing I most proud of recently?  5 (4 maybe?) were solo (4 wins 1 loss or 3 wins 1 loss).  I hit gold in season 2 by just duoing with vlad and playing support.  So while I like having my gold border, I never really felt like I earned it.  Seriously - getting gold for playing like 10 games is retarded.  So, failing my placement matches in season 3 and having to grind my way up to gold really made me feel like I deserve to be where I am instead of just ending up gold. And I'm motivated to see how high I can climb.  So, my 1st major goal of season 3 has been hit:  prove to myself that I deserve to be gold.  upward and onward and all that.

oh - and here's a rough version of the vid I was working on.  It's just highlights from my glass cannon fid game... pretty funny imo... due to how terribly bad it is. 

oh and everyone of our pals that hits gold from now on gets one of these

fyi most days i'll be available past 11:30P ET 'cause that's about the time i get home from work... my next day off is thursday, so i hope to see some of you on

'

worth a watch

If anybody gets around to doing dominion ever hit me up.  Contrary to classic where I'm not good, I am 132-82 in dominion.  Yay!

hunny is now 1/1 in his to gold promo series.  game 3 comin up 2-3 min

hunny is GOLD

went 3/1 in promo series.  We're playing some normal drafts now - waiting on some folks to get out of games.

Here's your deathcap

lol running sluggish for others atm?

So, experimental adc page.  Still testing and tweaking, but I think its quite good atm.  The primary reason for this is so you can get a dorians blade at the start + 1 red + 1 have the cookie as well.

The 1 point in runic affinity is nice as well for when you get your red or kill a jungler.  in offense, cdr is more expensive than AS, so that's why I went that route.  You miss out on a little killing potential without the point in executioner and missing a point of frenzy hurts a smidge if you get that early 1% crit, but not that big a deal.  Anyway, this setup emphasizes early lane control and is paired well with barrier imo.  You lose the 30 hp from the defense tree at the start, but dorians compensates and your sustain goes up as well due to dorians/pot/cookie.  And last, your flash will be up faster than any other adc with the 15 second reduction + the 10% summoner cdr as well (and barrier will be up faster as well).  Suggest giving it a go in a normal and see what you think.  I'm also toying with a small change to this where you drop 1 point in brute force (you lose 1.5 ad) and pick up a point in pick pocket.  If the lane is even, you come out ahead due to pickpocket + the gold per 10, which means you win the item war if played right. 

So - its an early/mid game trade off.  You are stronger in laning (imo) but a smidge less lethal late game. 

That blows.  Let me know if you want to duo.  I'm about to go into a promo series and see you are at 90 lp - I'll be sufficiently motivated at the very least.  I'm assuming if you get 1 win you'll hit your silver III to silver II promo match.

dat  butch.  how dare you.

anywho - in my promo series from gold V to gold IV at - about to play game 1.  duoing w mr bryff.  Bryff needs 2 wins in a row to qualify for his promo series. 

So i read the discussion where i think you got this from.

Most ADCs start with Dorans right now anyway. Generally, my opinion is you only go Longsword + 2 if you are inconfident in the lane. (eg, Sivir/Quinn/Graves/Vayne against Caitlyn where the poke is brutal and you have no range). 

The typical AD carry page is 21/9/0. (i personally go 21/6/3 with Barrior/Cleanse and 21/4/5 with Ignite)  

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Analysis:

21/9 + Dorans versus 14/0/16 with Dorans + Pot

Lost:

5 ArP - best case 5% increase damage against champions. More realistically half that. 

5% Crit Damage - inappreciable until 25 minutes. After that it is like a 1%-3% increase in damage depending on your crit.

Frenzy - potentially lane-winning with a 1% Crit, basically zero effect otherwise - if you have a 30% crit with a 1 AS (low AS but lets assuming you are kiting), this is a 5% increase in end-game damage though

Executioner - Worth 4 AD for last hitting. Basically ~3% increase in damage in teamfights once you figure AP burst. Also works on towers.

108 HP @ 18 - not super dramatic but useful

3.5 Armor / 3.5 MR - again, not super dramatic but useful (also "counters" 2/3rds of the ArP points in offense tree). Scales well with Veteran's Scars and Durability though.

30 HP @ 1 - really useful for level 1-3 all-in, less useful otherwise

Gain:

15 Seconds off flash - Generally you don't use flash off-of-cooldown so it doesn't have a huge effect, but probably 1 out of 10 games having this mastery does save your life

3 MP5 - useful early game for people with good waveclear like Cait/Graves to push towers. Very little effect endgame if you aren't Kog. 

10% reduced SS - see above about flash. Does create 10 second windows of opportunity to all-in though

2 GP 10 - it's nice when you are doing baron dancing and stuff - however if you miss just one CS every minute due to not having executionar/etc then it is worse. Esp if it is a Cannon Minion. 

+50 gold - having an extra hp pot might encourage you making bad trades (oh i have an hp pot that i switched around my masteries for, if i didn't use it, all of this was a waste)

Buiscuit - See above

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In Summary:

Losing nearly 10-15% potential damage endgame against champions (2% + 2% + 5% + 3%) mid/endgame

Harder to last hit 

Weaker all-ins

Losing 5% survivability against divers

If a bad-trade happens level 1/2/3 you don't have to go back to base because you are zoned and can't LS

Some gold when wandering around midgame

Better early game push (good against weak anti-push or 2v1 lanes). 

High sustain from harrassment

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Conclusion:

All-in-all your first few minutes you have the advantage with sustain (biscuit + hp pot + mana regen). However, due to the fact you don't have Executioner, or the defense tree, your "all-in" is much weaker.

This might be great for someone like Caitlyn, who only all-ins by making the opponent frustrated about being poked down to nothing. Otherwise... 

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Suggestions:

Personally, if you were going to do this, i would have gotten +3% LS in masteries, 6% LS in quints and sustain that way instead. And then get the +6 HP5 in the defense tree. (14/3/12 with 1 leftover point, not getting gold masteries).

That would be a total "sustain" bot lane with a lot of HP5, but you'd never win an all-in with that.

Still going to think through all your feedback, hedgie.  only had time to skim it.  I'll respond tomorrow re: that. 

Wanted to do a quick recap of tonight.  So game 1 - I duo with bryff ranked.  We end up with me as adc and bryff as support.  We crush it.  Side note - this was with me using my new rune setup, but playing as cait.  I've also come to appreciate barrier quite a bit.  Might be my new goto item on adc. Anyway, this win puts me into my promo series for gold IV. 

Before I get into game 2, a few notes on what happens when Bryff and I queue up together.  I'm almost always 1st pick and Bryff is almost always last.  Now, Bryff prefers mid and is stongest there.  But, what happens the majority of the time is that I'll call adc so I can carry.  Bryff will either be silent or call mid and someone ahead of him in pick order will call mid.  Thus, Bryff becomes mr support.  This is generally fine.  With the exception of game 2.  Where... things happened.

In game 2, I'm 1st pick - do all the bans, call adc, and lock in cait after a short wait.  About this time, we discover that apparently no on can jungle... well, the 2nd pick guy can, but refuses to do so because he needs to play akali awfully in mid.  Anyway, Bryff eventually offers to jungle - and then pulls out jungle leona as he has no other junglers apparently.  Anyway, long story short.  Ouch.

I decide I'd rather not duo up another ranked with Bryff during my promo series and we host a normal.  Now, I'm bent out of shape from that debacle (see what I did there, Thunder?).  Our next game we have Bryff jungle again and he does not have a good time of things.  Like the ranked game, it wasn't 100% Bryff fault that we lose - not by a longshot, but now my mood worsens.  The next game, we rotate Bryff out of jungle and things go well.  Then we continue on and win 1 or 2 more then I call it a night.   Anyway, the only thing I was really bent out of shape about was that ranked match.  Pretty sure Bryff got the message that I'd rather not ever have a last resort of Leona jungle.    No hard feelings bro.

Moving on - holy crap did I hit my promo series quickly in gold V.  Hunny and I were doing quite well as a duo.  We were both quite motivated for a bit as we both were fighting to hit gold.  The interesting thing to me (and probably only me) was that Hunny and I were duoing on and off before with god awful results.  We had like a 25% win rate together (which led me to hitting Bronze 5 out of my promo series).  Now, we play extremely well together.  Personally, I think I'm a better adc than him (not by a lot, mind you) but I'm certain I'm a better support.  He almost always gets the job done as adc, so me running support is a great combo for us.  Other thing - when he and I duo, we are always at the bottom for pick order.  This makes it very easy for me to call support and ask someone to pick taric for me and (oddly) makes it easy for Hunny to get adc.  No idea why folks generally let him play adc out of last spot (outside of me calling support and folks knowing they wont have to do it - maybe that's all there is to it).  Anyway, more often than not, we get to duo bot. 

Thoughts about my current elo/rank - I'm still convinced that games are getting easier the higher up I go.  Not that I stomp more or anything like that - its that the skill level on my team is higher.  This results in fewer dumb ass plays.  It also GENERALLY keeps folks from calling it gg at 8 minutes in when there is plenty of game left.  Always a bit discouraging when folks want to throw in the towel when other lanes are doing well.  I think one of hunnys promo matches to gold had like 2 people whining on our team because mid and top weren't going well... they just didn't factor in that we were light years ahead bot lane.  So.. we get to waste a small amount of time giving a pep talk to our teammates and move along to a win.

Anyway, I spectate some games from time to time and what I see just blows my mind.  I've watched a few games where Bryff was doing a ranked and literally everyone on his team was having a derp party.  I couldn't win that game.  Wallstop couldn't win that game.  No one I know could win that game.  That just solidifies my idea that it gets much easier as you move along (obvious caveat being your individual skill level - but bottom line - you lose less games because of some jackass wonders off and gets killed by themselves at the very least).  A lot of this is likely why karl is so frustrated with the league system.  I think he's getting closer to a non derp level, but not quite there yet.  Honestly, I didn't start to see the derp factor start to wear off until I was like silver 1 with a decent mmr. 

Random stats:

I'm 81/63 (per lol king anyway) now in ranked - which puts me at at a 56% win ratio provided i can do math... which i might not be able to do.  Hunny is at 132/112 - 56% win rate.  Bryff - 43/42 - 50.5%.  Karl - 32/27 - 54%.  hedgie - 12/13 - 48%.  wallstop (gold 1 atm) 23/14 - 62%. 

Random observation - when I duo'd with Bryff in that second game, the players on my team were a bit toxic and referred to our current elo as elo hell.  kinda weird, eh?  Anyway, I currently think I'm most likely to win games with folks either at silver 1 or gold level as it removes quite a bit of the derp factor. 

Anyways, I end the night 1/0 in my promo series to gold IV.  I'd love to get promoted or at least not lose another game in the series due to herp derp.  I'll find out tomorrow if I can pull it off. 

When you duo'd with Bryff, they probably were in ELO hell.  With his 50% win rate, he's playing with the new joins to ranked.  How much ranting happens is usually evidence of frustration at recent trolling, or just an inability to admit they suck.  I'm there myself, there's usually one or two recent converts to ranked in every game, and they tend to swing them quite violently towards horrific losses.

While I understand how playing support is not a good idea in ranked(I main it after all) I disagree with your reasoning.  When I play support, I am a major advantage to my carry.  If they are even just decent, it turns into a route in short order.  The enemy ends up zoned out and regularly bushwhacked, ends the laning phase 50 cs down and a level or two behind.  When they're good, we usually have a perfect lane.  I'm at least gold, and maybe platinum in this role, but I will probably never get there.  If I started playing top and jungle exclusively, I expect I'd make gold easy enough, but you can't carry bot with your support, even if you are the most valuable member on the team.  Once your adc proves useless, it's a hard game to win.  Your primary function has been removed.

I've had carries so bad that at the end of the game I had more money without farming.  If you have an outstanding team aside from that, you can turn it around by keeping other people safe, but you're essentially down one glass cannon adc.  It's the role most dependent on being well farmed, so when yours is rot, you're losing more end game power than you are with any other role.  Everyone else gets a higher percentage of their damage from levels.