Seven

Kog is a common pick in OGN, and I've seen a handful of Velkoz supports in OGN as well (not sure if they've done that recently though.) Ashe is just outdated. She has one damage spell pre-6 and you spend the rest of the game as an ult-bot. Her attack animation is also horrendously slow - even when you have a range advantage it seems like you spend so much time winding up your auto-attack they can move into range and out-trade you. Her passive is also one of the worst in the game. I remember around the time Heartseeker Ashe came out, on a whim WildTurtle decided to play Ashe and titled his stream "Ashe Only" or something, only to get destroyed and change his mind about playing her. "It's too hard."

Huge mistake here. Ghostblade should be built as your second item after BotRK for a massive mid-game powerspike (further accentuated by stealth and Spray and Pray during mid-game map movements), or passed up for Shiv. His laning got hit, but as you pass into the early-mid game you have the potential to build up a huge advantage because BotRK is cheaper than BT (which got nerfed anyway) and IE (which requires a PD/SS to scale up). This can give you a pretty big window where you're sitting on a finished BotRK and they might only have 2 or 3 components of IE, or a BT which is weaker in straight-up fights.

I think Muramana is a great situational item, I meant that Essence Reaver seems really weak without it. The items seek to do some of the same things, but Essence Reaver is just a waste of a slot as the game progresses as you mentioned. And buying both just makes it take forever to scale up, as well as delaying Brutalizer/LW among other things for AD casters (Jayce). On a related note, I believe they added 10 AD to Essence on PBE. BT also gives 10% bonus AD, kinda like a mini Zed passive. They are also redesigning Ancient Golem, there are some really interesting changes that might help bring tank junglers up to speed.

Essence Reaver is an interesting item but it felt kinda underwhelming the few times I built it. It seems to synergize well with Muramana, but I feel like these items sort of overlap in strange ways. It reminds me of the weird interaction/synergy between Nashor's Tooth and Malady (before it was fused with Nashor's essentially). You want both items, but one of them (Malady or Essence Reaver) isn't exactly cost or slot efficient and is only strong with the other (Nashor's or Muramana). I'd like to see a similar tweaking/combination of Essence and Muramana but that may not be viable realistically. I've been meaning to try out Blue Ezreal with Reaver/Iceborn/CD boots for a relatively fast powerspike and 35% CDR, sounds good in theory now that BT takes longer to build.

She's still pretty broken. Remember Elise when she came out? Pretty much like that, except remove the CC from cocoon and replace with high damage spears, and give her unlimited mobility. Much less annoying to play against late game, but much easier to snowball and get kills with earlier.

http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02293 Skull Fortress by the great Sixto, from MM9!

I got more hype from the SR VU than from PKMN OR/AS, which is saying something.

Blasted technomanga musicians.

The only problem with these type of posts is the primary intended audience will never read it. Very well written post, but I think it might actually be more useful for someone trying to learn the ins and outs of jungling as opposed to inbred laners (as Bardic mentioned). Points #5 and 8 are the most important, especially in the Feral Flare jungle meta. If your top laner is down considerable amounts of CS and/or kills and is just getting pushed around in general, don't waste your time trying to get them back into the game. Get yourself a sub 15-minute Feral Flare and start farming and killing everything afterward.

I own 71, and the ones I play regularly recently are: ADC - Jinx or Cait Top - Nasus, Malphite Mid - ??? (My worst and most random position) Jungle - Amumu, Udyr Support - Leona, Thresh, Nami, Lulu I wish I could refund champs for a percentage of IP back, don't see myself ever touching an overwhelming majority of the others.

The Greninja hype is real doe.

Best of luck with everything, Jeff. We only played a few games together but it was fun (even though I've played really bad in games with OCR peeps so far xd). Also, am I the only one who doesn't enjoy the alternate modes? I know they're for fun and whatnot but I prefer plain ole' Summoner's Rift. Might've been trauma from playing against Jayce and Lux the two times I tried One For All, though. I would really like to see a capture-the-flag mode, or something like hero siege or footmen wars a la Warcraft3.

Servers have been trash-status last 2 days again...

I don't think he's that bad, but he does seem to have some hard matchups. Haven't played him yet, but I imagine you just wanna farm and stall out the laning phase. I'm not convinced that you'd have a ton of reason to pick him over Karthus to fill a similar role, though.

I see him more as a mage, and there are reasons why you don't really see traditional mages anymore outside of Ziggs. Banshee's is also a huge deterrent to his whole kit as well. He is still playable, but off-meta champs are as such for a reason. You have to master these types of champs to consistently break even against some of the overbalanced FOTM picks like Ziggs or Gragas.

The Veigar vs Kayle feels. =(

I should have specified that they both placed into BronzeV, starting out with the same MMR and therefore being placed with comparable teammates. And maybe change the number of games to 2000 so that we can eliminate the chance that player A got feeders/trolls on his team 200 times in a row. As far as trolls/feeders/AFKs go this is only an excuse over a long enough period of time. Granted, you may have a stretch of several games where many games are ruined by other players, this happens to everyone and is not avoidable. One could argue that, assuming you indeed are NOT a troll/feeder/AFK then there is a higher chance of there being a troll/feeder/AFK on the enemy team because there are 4 potential trolls on your team and 5 on the enemy team.

Your arguments are well thought out, but this is where I differ the most in opinion. You have to win more games in order to rank up, so what makes you think that what league you're in isn't some fair indication of your overall skill level? Let's say two players of unknown skill A and B are placed into Bronze V. After playing 200 games each, A makes it to Silver3 and B makes it to Plat5. The only thing that decided where they landed over the course of those 200 games was how much they won and loss; can you draw any conclusion other than the fact that B was a superior player to A? I'm not sure your example of Faker or Piglet is appropriate, these players are only on a team because they made or are able to make it to D1 or Challenger SoloQ to begin with. They already worked their way to the top of the system in place; it's not as if they were Silver or Gold players in SoloQ, got placed into a team environment and became Challenger+ level players. If you watch Faker stream and he goes 0-20-0 one game, no one (other than trolls on Twitch chat) would say he's worse than a Plat player who just won 6 games in a row. This part goes over my head a bit xd. I do agree that more in-depth and comprehensive stats to track would be interesting, and help point out what we can work on. In SC2:HotS it tells you your average unspent resources each game (which is the most important statistic until you reach the equivalent of Diamond1 in the game) compared to your averaged unspent resources over time, so you can see if you managed your resources more or less effectively than your overall pace in a given game, among other stats I believe. Due to the fundamental differences between the games these type of stats may not be translatable directly, but it is something to think about. Off-topic, what is the source of that gif in your sig, relyanCe?

Definitely should've went with that one. I think the larger issue at hand is that there are a lot of different definitions of what 'skill' is. If you feel you're more skilled than players you're matched with, then it just comes down to your definition of skill and whether you feel the matchmaking system correctly accounts for and represents your skill. Some players can CS really well and don't know what else to do, some players know how to duel in lane and get ahead, some players know how to teamfight etc. As you learn to do multiple things at a higher level on a more consistent basis, presumably you should move up the ladder (in the long run). I personally feel that this is the case at the moment.

Again, this is going to sound kinda douchey, but if you think the current system is broken it just sounds like you think you 'deserve' to be placed higher than you actually are. Last season I raged and tilted and trapped myself in Silver. Over the preseason I learned roles other than support and played more relaxed when the season began, and now I'm GoldV. Maybe I can make Plat, who knows.

I typed up a response and my browser wonked out, but Neblix pretty much got the same point I was going to make across. How would you weigh different statistics against each other? Is 50 CS equivalent to like .7 KDA? I don't think there's a reasonable way of going about that calibration process. You would just end up enforcing or encouraging a certain playstyle or strategy based on how much value is placed on a given variable. That said, I wanted to pose a question, and I hope it doesn't come across the wrong way: do those in favor of weighted LP distribution (I guess talking about relyance and Derrit here) honestly feel it is too hard to rank up? Marginal skill increase may not result in significant LP gains, but if you truly are improving then you will move up at some pace no matter what. A friend of mine moved from Silver to Diamond in a fraction of the amount of time I spent streaking my way up and down Silver last season. When I play normals with him, I can just feel the sheer difference in mechanics and decision making between us. Situations that I would run away from, he goes in and gets a triple kill. I guess what I'm getting at is that while weighted LP is interesting, I don't believe it is necessary in order to help move players where they belong. You will move up or down based on your play relative to those you're playing with, it's just a matter of how long it takes.

I may be misunderstanding what you guys are getting at, but I don't think it's that Riot thinks W/L is the only important factor to LP gain/loss. The problem is: how do you even begin to quantify the countless number of variables into a tangible ranking system? For example, if high CS counts could earn you potential LP, junglers and especially supports would get shafted in this regard. High KDA rewards? People arguing even MORE than they do now to go mid, playing snowbally champs and being toxic to try to get that bonus LP. Objectives? You can lose the game with a 11 to 5 tower advantage, should your LP loss get cushioned because you got out-bruteforced by the enemy team? As a player who is stuck with awful hardware (getting a new PC soon), I prefer a split-push oriented style: drawing people around the map, rotating etc as opposed to team fighting. I've had a number of 0/X/0 games where the enemy team praises/curses me for carrying just by constantly pressuring lanes. Do I deserve less LP because I had no direct kill participation?

I know the feeling all too well X_X. It's much easier to say 'just shrug it off and move on' than actually doing that. Frustration builds up and it just comes down to finding a way to deal with it. If you're genuinely improving then it's just a matter of time before you move up. It's so infuriating when you can feel you've improved, and you outplay your lane opponent, but it's not quite enough to outright carry a given game. I was a Master player in SC2 (in WoL) and while the mechanical complexity of League is lower, the team aspect of the game makes it so much harder to see tangible results of individual improvement. It was irritating how I could be in the top 1-3% of SC2 players in NA but stuck in Silver in League for so long. "The best part of team games is that you have other people to rely on. The worst part of team games is that you have to rely on other people." I could be wrong, but I've read (and experienced, after a ton of duo games with my brother, who reached Gold2 last season) that duo queueing makes ranking up considerably more difficult. From my understanding when you duo queue, the matchmaking system gives you extra MMR and puts you with some combination of lower MMR players on your team or higher MMR players on the other team in order to 'compensate' for the potential advantage duo queueing can give you to begin with. Edit - It can be quite difficult to carry as a support in lower division just because of the nature of how ADC/Support picks work. You have to work with someone you don't know in the laning phase, and even if you get ahead the ADC often becomes cocky and makes stupid mistakes. Mained support last season and just could not move up from Silver1. If you get stuck supporting I highly recommend Annie, Thresh, Lulu or Leona as these champions are somewhat failsafe. Nami is my favorite support (my most played champ by far S3, followed by Lulu and Thresh) but the one bubble you miss can cost a fight or the game.

kekekeke. Just half-kidding, winning games when you're down players is so satisfying! Couple weeks ago I won a normal game 4v5 playing as Nautilus. Still did near top damage cuz people just let me sit on them with sunfire + W damage. Jungle Kass: When you're playing these type of non-playmaking junglers, it's really up to the team to either make/help it work or the enemy team to let it work. I don't know if Kass could duel someone like Amumu in the early levels, let alone Vi/Elise/Lee/KZ etc. In my opinion Kass is essentially a high-risk, high-reward jungler like Jax or Riven. You can carry the game, or you can fall flat and be a non-factor as well. Zircon: The key is not to tilt. Always take a 5-10 minute break to reflect and wind down after each game, especially a loss. If you lose two or three in a row, take a break for at least 20-30 mins. I walled myself into Silver last season and ragequeued from Silver I to Silver V on 2 or 3 separate occasions; this season I recently hit GoldV just by fixing my attitude. As far as in-game advice goes, try to be vocal if you are in the position to carry a game. Give your team directions, both in terms of general game plan and specific things as you rotate around the map. If they ignore the plan or make stupid mistakes there's nothing you can do regardless. As qtpie recently said- if you're 20-0 then the onus is on you to close out the game from that position. Granted, some games are just unwinnable and you have to take them as a lesson and move on. Also from what I've gathered Kitty is a relatively high-level player so listen to him. xd Edit - My summoner name is Bironzu, I'll add you guys!

Kitty: Your second point hits the nail on the head and more accurately describes what I was trying to get at: I'm comfortable enough on the champ to the point where I haven't been punished by matchup(6-3 so far on Nas this season), and have won or stayed even in every laning phase. I just don't feel like I can be punished for the pick in and of itself. Two of those losses were largely from me tunneling on my Q-stacks in the mid game instead of TPing or grouping to join teamfights. I guess the whole original question of whether or not he would be a good pick for OCR's ranked team kinda got derailed by my own bias and opinions towards the champ. After all that rambling, what I wanted to say was: He scales extremely well, and is not necessarily as punishable by matchup or early jungle pressure as people may think. Sorry for hijacking the thread with my doge-bias. Xd