zircon

Just climbed up to Silver I. Gold here I come! Syndra is my new mid main I think, with Orianna being a close second pick.

I lied, I will be around.

We're having some guests over this evening; I will be a little late (9-10pm). But if someone like k-wix or Bardic are on they can have my spot until then.

S4 ranked might seem worse because of more statistical noise, ESPECIALLY if you're around 1200 elo (which is average). Everyone's MMR is now closer to 1200. That means bad players are closer, as are GOOD players. Greater chance of toxic games or bad matchups. Likewise, since people are dumped at 1200 mmr by default, and many people start playing ranked at the beginning of the season... you have even more noise than you normally would. Give it some time to shake out. My rules for solo queue: * I never rage or flame. It literally never helps. * I don't blame people. If someone messed up I will try to be constructive like, "Leona, let's be less aggressive at bot so we can catch up" instead of "Don't get grabbed like a dumbass" * Pick order > call order. Also, I try to be flexible like "Strongly pref ADC, but can fill" * I always say "glhf" These thinks probably only help a tiny bit but hey... better than nothing.

No worries. Hope everything is OK with you (and Zurken for that matter, he was not around either...) I'm away today + tomorrow so no practicing for me, but Koriantor and I did some duo queue action to shore up our botlane aggression.

We need a replay of Jeff's amazing Yasuo play from last night. Basically at the beginning of the game, he walked up to top lane and said, "There's only one way to find out if top lane is here!" Then he walked under a turret and stood there until it executed him, but RIGHT before it did, the enemy Vladimir burned his flash trying to take the kill. Absolutely beautiful.

Hey OCR Heroes, practice tomorrow (Saturday) night? Even just a game or two would be good. BTW, some thoughts team communication - * Since bot lane needs to communicate closely, I'd ask that we try to pull back our non-essential chatter a bit. Some of us are more prone to this than others, myself included, i.e. raging about dying or gloating over an awesome kill. I know it's fun BUT I just don't want it to override the important stuff. Something to keep in mind. * We should probably have two people designated as shot callers, i.e. deciding if we should do baron or push a tower. I nominate Jeff for one since he is very experienced. If the shotcallers disagree, other people can chime in. The idea is just to make sure we're on the same page with clear plans/strats throughout. * If we ARE all on the same page, then this should cut down some extraneous voice chatter as well and leave the lines open for important calls etc. Sometimes a split second makes a big difference and being able to hear/say that stuff is crucial. That sound good to you guys? I'm not saying we have to be super serious, just taking precautions to make sure the essential stuff can be heard.

There are some problems with Nasus though. First of all, if they pick ranged tops like Kayle or Teemo (as you said) he can be shut down pretty readily. Secondly, he doesn't have a lot of presence earlier in the game. He has single-target soft CC and (mostly) single target damage. No gap closers, dashes, escapes, etc. He CAN be ganked, and he doesn't have the mobility to deal with it. Later in the game, he can become strong, sure. But he's not an unstoppable god either. Again, unlike other strong top lane picks, he has no ability to quickly get out of a fight. If he commits, he can be kited quite readily since outside of flash, he can't close the gap. Compare that to Riven, Renekton, Shyvana, Mundo, Tryndamere (etc) who can either mitigate CC or close the gap very quickly and attack at range. I think he's a *solid* top pick but not a really safe one. Safe would be someone like Cho'gath. It's almost impossible to lose top lane as Cho. At worst you farm at tower, which he is exceptionally good at. You'll always be useful as a CC bot even if you somehow get behind, whereas Nasus with no farm is garbage.

I definitely enjoyed X&Y, though I lost some interest when I lost a save file (I guess I forgot to save for 5-6 hours and my 3DS ran out of batteries, so I didn't want to replay the same stuff again). I never beat the game. I was however ultimately a little disappointed by the low difficulty. When I started playing Fire Emblem: Awakening I remembered how much of a difference difficulty makes. It's nice to play a game with no 'resistance' once in awhile, but I definitely enjoy the mental challenges of FE:A more.

https://www.facebook.com/twostepsfromhell here's the link - LA only though, folks!

There are a couple problems with AD carry mid, UNLESS you run a disruptive/kill bot lane. For example, having Cait or Ez mid can work, as long as you have a strong kill lane bottom, and not a 2x ADC comp. The issue is that champs like Caitlyn and Ez simply do not have the same ability to gank from mid as a traditional AP mid, or AD assassin mid. Also, they lack other strengths such as high burst damage, AOE poke, CC utility, and so forth. If we wanted to run an AD carry mid I would run something like Leona/J4 bot, an AP top like Cho'gath or Zac, and then an AP/CC jungler like Amumu, Fiddlesticks, or Malphite.

Gotcha. We could also try running an unorthodox comp to deal with that, like AD mid for example. BTW, against that team we lost to tonight, I looked up the players... ALL of them were Platinum in Season 3, with the exception of their Thresh, who was Diamond in S3. LKS scores across the board of 1900+ prior to reset. I'm very proud that we put up such a good fight, and only lost primarily due to some mechanical mistakes, as opposed to being crushed in lane. It could have gone either way pretty easily. To put it in perspective our strongest player (Jeff) was at about 1900 ELO in S3, while the rest of us are in the 1400-1500 range. So, that was a pretty enormous skill difference on paper, yet the game was actually pretty close.

OCR Heroes is currently ranked Silver IV with a record of 4-2. Not too bad! I hope everyone is having fun, btw - I sure am. It's much more fun than solo queue, and I enjoy being able to communicate with actual humans, as opposed to a bunch of potatoes with mice & keyboards. Jeff, any thoughts on dealing with Gragas as our midlaner? Can we let go of a ban on him as necessary (i.e. to put on Vi instead?) Mundo & Shyvana are scary, Mundo a little moreso, but at least they don't have 3/4 screen initiations with unlimited sticking power...

Yo Relyance + Koriantor! Where you guys at?

We've also got NEW ALBUMS up today and more coming this week - check out the featured slider at the top! http://overclockedrecords.com/ And if you missed it, we also posted an artist interview & spotlight with Mr. Jimmy "Big Giant Circles" Hinson whose new album The Glory Days is coming out soon. http://overclockedrecords.com/overclocked-records-artist-profile-jimmy-hinson-aka-big-giant-circles/

Congrats Diodes! I really love this song. The writing is awesome and it sounds like the kind of thing that would be covered by lots of bands, sung at karaoke bars, etc.

Been playing some Graves lately... 3 for 3 with him. With the new super aggressive bot meta, he actually works pretty well. Thresh or Leona hook/stun is basically a death sentence at level 3+, and definitely at 6+. That being said, I haven't had an "average" game with him yet where I go even on K/D; my games have all involved a snowballing lead. He might be another solid option.

Nice! Insofar as tops go, I do think Elise and Yasuo are solid. However, neither of them has strong, reliable AOE disruption. IF we end up with an assassin jungler like Nocturne or Shaco, we need a top who can get in the enemy team and disrupt... Shyvana, Mundo and Wukong are current top tier choices. But I also think Lee Sin, Trundle, and Malphite are pretty effective too for their AOE & CC. If you go Elise/Yasuo our jungler needs to be someone like Wukong or Shyvana that can do massive team disruption,. I'm also thinking we might consider a lane swap with Koriantor and SkyRider. Sky is a strong jungler and Koriantor said he tends to play support. Right now, and again this is just my opinion, I think the strongest junglers are Lee Sin, Jarvan IV, Xin, Vi, Shyvana, Mundo. Udyr, Trundle, Fiddles, Voli, Zac are decent as well. Not as big a fan of Noc/Shaco since they tend to be really squishy and don't deal much aoe damage (Fiddles is squishy too but he is exceptionally good at surprise ganks, has good CC, and huge AOE) On the support side, I really prefer Leona & Thresh supports. Blitzcrank is good too if you can get reliable hooks. If you can't, it's problematic. Other good supports IMO are Nami and Lulu for their safety and team utility. I am not as big a fan of Sona, Soraka, Janna in this meta. Taric is solid but doesn't offer the AOE CC and pressure of some others. Not a fan of Annie support either as she gets bursted down fast.

It's a ranked queue team as well

I think he meant the category - Best Dance Recording. HUGE congrats on this, it's absolutely well-deserved!

Well now, lookie here! Dungeonmans is now in CLOSED ALPHA and looking better than ever! We're trying to get the game on to Steam now via Greenlight, and every vote counts. If you have 5 seconds, check out the Greenlight page and give it a vote, would you? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=114781779 $40+ Kickstarter backers now have alpha access, but if you didn't back it, don't fret: you can still get in on the action by donating via PayPal! http://www.dungeonmans.com/?page_id=362

It's hard to lump gamers into one big group. Some people buy tons of games whenever they're on sale (i.e. Steam), others buy lots of mobile games, etc. Others still are very selective with what they buy due to limited time. The reason I'm personally not getting a WiiU is because while I'm sure games like Wonderful 101 and Pikmin 3 are fun, they don't seem like 10/10 game of the year experiences. I don't have all that much free time to play games, and when I do, I don't see any reason NOT to play the very best stuff available. For example, right now I'm playing Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is absolutely incredible. In 2013 I played stuff like Ni No Kuni, which is maybe one of the best JRPGs in the last 10 years. Before that, Skyrim, Skyward Sword, etc. So personally, sure, my standards are high. But why shouldn't they be? There are so many games out there with stellar reviews from critics & fans alike, I'll never have time to play all of them. Why waste time with games that are only "good"?

For what it's worth, I think any problems with the WiiU can be forgiven if it has a killer library of exclusive games. Things like the console UI, or 3DS integration, or marketing, or anything else aren't nearly as relevant as the (relative) lack of compelling exclusive games. Unfortunately, it seems like Nintendo has made it difficult for 3rd party developers. Forget the low market share - the article by a AAA dev who worked on a WiiU launch title was damning evidence that Nintendo did not have the support for said developers. Ultimately, the question is this: if they're not going to put the resources into 3rd party dev support, why invest so heavily into a new console? Why not just develop software for other consoles?

Part 2 has been published. Read and learn! I've been developing Kontakt instruments for Impact Soundworks since 2008, and using the software since version 1 came out way back in 2002. Now that the plugin has become so widespread, it has more users than ever, but many people are unaware of some simple (yet powerful) features & functions to help improve their workflow. So, I've decided to write a series of articles on the topic! Part 1 starts with how to properly organize & load instruments. This sounds fairly basic, but you would be surprised how many emails we get from people who aren't sure of how to best do this. http://impactsoundworks.com/optimizing-your-kontakt-workflow-part-1/ Part 2 discusses how CPU, RAM, HD & audio interface affect Kontakt performance, and covers tips for tweaking/hacking DFD settings, CPU optimization for multicore, and different bridging options. http://impactsoundworks.com/optimizing-your-kontakt-workflow-part-2/ If there's something you want to see in this series, please let me know!

Absolutely. Our agreement is totally non-exclusive.