ArmadonRK

This is exactly what's NOT happening. To fix Lee they need to nerf his high base stats and base damages, but keep high AD ratios to make him scale well with offensive items. Instead they've given him horrible early and mid game scaling, so that there's no incentive to build offensive items. Personally, I would keep the proposed base damage nerfs, but keep his high AD ratios from before. Nerf his base stats to be more on par with other mobile melee champs like Riven and Yasuo. Maybe even swap out his AP scaling on Safeguard for AD scaling, to incentivize building damage over defensive items (like Riven). Basically, load all his power into his kit and scaling, not passives and base values. A Lee Sin that wants to do damage should build damage. A Lee Sin that wants to do well should play well. So that even when he's unloading fighter/assassin level damage, he can be killed just as easily as other fighter/assassin champs. The proposed changes do nothing to fix the problem of Lee Sin having only one viable build path: moar tank. They're just poorly contructed blanket nerfs. The problem with Lee Sin has always been a Fighter/Assassin kit with Tank values. That's what needs to change, not the inner-workings of his kit.

Lee Sin has always been second best. Not saying this is necessarily good, or bad, but he has been great in that he has maintained viability while there have always been better options. He's definitely top tier, but far from "broke as shit". Elise, Vi, Pantheon, Wukong. They're more OP by far as junglers right now. Trundle, Mundo, Shyv, Renekton. Better top laners in almost every situation. But Lee Sin has always held close to the top because of the diversity of his kit, and the mechanical prowess it requires. That's why Lee Sin is great, every match-up with Lee Sin is a largely skill match-up. If you have better mechanics than the Lee Sin you're facing, you will probably win. And you're absolutely right, Lee Sin build diversity is not great. Which is why these changes baffle me. -Nerfing his base damage to hit his early game: makes sense. -Increasing Safeguard cost at early levels to hit his absurd early mobility: makes sense. -Nerfing his AD scaling across the board: Wait, you don't want him scaling with offensive items? -Packing all of his compensatory buffs into his passive: Oh, you really don't want him scaling at all? -Increased Safeguard costs at all levels: And you really don't want to improve his lategame either, I see. -Removing his execute: It says "Fighter/Assassin" in his profile, Riot. Are you sure you know what that means? It's not that I'm not okay with tuning down Lee Sin's early game strength, it's that these changes further cement tank itemization on Lee Sin who is supposed to be a Fighter/Assassin. It's that they encourage less item diversity on the champion, and not more. It's that they turn him into a one-trick utility tank with very little incentive to take risks because of the Safeguard nerfs. For reference, the proposed changes: http://community.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback/jHhmhlGe-lets-talk-about-lee-sin-retune

I guess I just figured people would typically understand when nerfs and changes were warranted, and what kind of changes that would entail. Such as the LeBlanc nerfs, Zed changes, Kha'zix nerfs, Nidalee changes, Yi rework, Kayle nerfs, Jayce nerfs, upcoming Gragas nerfs, etc. The proposed Lee Sin changes are unique in that this is the first time I think people have a right to be baffled by the direction of the changes, barring the Karma-level catastrophe that was, well, Karma.

If you're a Lee Sin fan, do yourself a favor and don't look at Riot's tentative retuning of him. You'll just make yourself mad. Hopefully they'll come to their senses and actually tune him properly instead of nerfing him across the board by sticking random numbers in his kit.

I honestly think [nintendo console] isn't doing well, and this could be the end for Nintendo unless they make some changes.

Teleport helps you impact the game, and have global presence, but there are also options if you really want to carry from the top lane, but I feel like you need a good matchup, or a lot of early game confidence to snowball. Riven, Jax and Rengar are three of the hardest top lane carries I can think of. Of the tanks, Shyvana is the only one I really think of as a solo-carry. So if you're really looking to carry, there are options.

I laned against Vel'koz as Karthus the other day, and found it to be a really tough matchup. His passive makes his harass extremely strong, and his all-in potential is very high against a low-mobility champion like Karthus. On the other hand, Karthus scales better and still wrecks in teamfights with good farm. In particular, Karthus offers more consistent damage and better zoning than a combo-mage like Vel'koz. I think Vel'koz is good, exceptionally so in low-mobility matchups, but he's easily played and picked around. In my opinion, he's viable enough that we'll see a bit of him, but his presence outside of lane is too low to make him a really popular pick. He can play well with lockdown and wombo combo, but those comps do have better options, like Ori and Lulu. That said, I am interested in seeing how Vel'koz plays out as a combo mage. He has a lot in common with Syndra, with the AoE skillshots, the combo, the CC and the damage potential. Though with Syndra's single-target assassination strength, I feel like she fills a more useful niche than just "AoE combo-mage". On a personal note, if OCR Heroes is fielding a second team or looking for subs, I'd love to put my name in the hat. I main mid, off-role jungle, though I can also adequately fill any role but toplane. Keyword being "adequately".

I will attempt to back this if I can get Kickstarter to stop disagreeing with me. Good luck hitting some more of those stretch goals!

This seems like an interesting idea. Dominion does have a stats-based MVP marker. It tracks points for kills, assists and point capture (and, I believe, kills and assists in turret proximity as point defense, though don't quote me on that) and designates an MVP at the end of the round based on those points. It's a rewarding TF2-esque system I wouldn't mind seeing outside of Dominion, as a purely cosmetic feature. On the other hand, a vote based system for MVP would suffer from some of the same failings as the current honor system, which was so heavily "nerfed". Honor ribbons are so rare nowadays I sometimes wonder if anyone other than myself is giving out honor anymore.

There are currently approximately 62,000 players in Bronze V on NA. But you can be matched with players from as high as Gold in a typical match. Let's keep it simple, though, and restrict ourselves to the 315,000 players in Bronze, and possibly the 295,000 in Silver. At maximum diversity, you can be matched with/against up to 800 of those players. So, the chances that both players are matched with "comparable" allies and opponents is actually pretty slim. 300 to 600 thousand players offers a lot of diversity. Actually, you have this backwards. The fewer games they play, the more their rankings are skewed by luck-of-the-draw. After 500, 1000, 2000 matches at the same MMR the differences will normalize and become statistically insignificant. In 200 games, their matchups are more likely to be wildly different. Since I'm not a stats person, I can't explain why this is wrong. But I believe this is wrong. Going to look it up now.

You proposed: 1. B was superior to A I propose: 2. B was matched with superior teammates to A 2a. B was matched with fewer trolls/feeders/AFKs/etc. 3. B was matched with inferior opponents to A 3b. B was matched against more trolls/feeders/AFKs/etc. So, to answer your question: Yes, I can. Typically, yes, a team that leads in kills and/or gold leads the game overall. But there are so many effective strategies contrary to this. I have seen a good percentage of games where the team behind in kills and gold was ahead in turrets, and won the game off of superior pushing. I have been on that team many times. I have been against that team many times. Not to mention, late game aces can lead to tremendous comebacks. If you just stall a team until the 50 minute mark, even if it's 6 to 30, 30k to 60k, those 60+ second death timers mean one unfortunate teamfight can turn a game around. My point being, I don't see a way to reliably measure individual skill in this game. I don't see a way to reliably correlate in-game statistics with the outcome. You can single out such stats for "most of the time", but these are nowhere near "all the time". I'd guess (based primarily on anecdotal experience) that around 10% of games lie outside the normal conditions of how a team won a game, and that's too large a margin to use as a baseline, in my opinion.

It's just simple, logical analysis. It's a team game. It doesn't track your skill, it tracks your win record. There's a mismatch there that means the lower you belong, the more likely you are to get trapped below your skill level. I'm not going to pretend I'm some Diamond god. I don't even belong in Gold. But I'd definitely measure my current skills at somewhere in Silver, though they haven't always been. If I place in Bronze I, like I did last season, I expect to fall quickly to Bronze V and be trapped there. Because I'm not good enough to solo-carry all my games, and the way ranked is gated, that's where many of the most toxic players are trapped. If I were a Plat or higher level player, yes, I'd be good enough to carry my way out of Bronze. But I'm not. I have two RL friends. Both good team-players, of roughly equal skill, both tremendously better at this game than myself. One placed in Silver III last season, the other in Silver V. They both started off on unfortunate losing streaks. Player A dropped to Silver IV, then turned it around and made it up to Gold V. Player B dropped to Bronze I, and fell all the way to Bronze V. Even though they were about the same level of skill, and I believe they both belonged in Gold, the one that got unlucky enough to end up in Bronze was trapped there. So much of ranked matchmaking is luck, especially as you go lower in the standings. The real measure of skill will always lie with premades. Ranked 5s is actually about what League is about: where your team belongs in the rankings.

Oh, are we discussing the merits of the ranked matchmaking system again? I'll try not to repeat myself much, since my stance remains largely unchanged. The ranked matchmaking system is neither efficient nor healthy to the competitive scene. Individual skill is only accurately charted if the skill gap between you and your peers is so high that you can carry your way out of elo hell. Me? After trying ranked for about 150 games in Season 3 I gave up on that pretty much for good. It simply isn't fun being gated into a low elo by the sheer number of trolls and ragers because I'm not good enough to carry my way out. I still play ranked 5s, obviously, given my stance on premade teams. But solo, I exclusively play normals. It's a much more enjoyable experience, and my normal MMR is probably where it actually belongs, allowing me to actually focus on playing, having fun and improving, rather than the chore that is solo-queue. Not taking every match so seriously, not having every loss charted, not having to take a break every other match to avoid tilt. That said, I now see the merits of the ranked matchmaking system that I didn't the last time I spoke on this issue. It seems that most the trolls, ragers, feeders, AFKers and smurfs are so busy in solo-queue that they don't have time to poison normal matches. While I used to believe normal queue was a very toxic environment, relative to ranked, it's a rather beautiful place. All that said, if you guys want to know my suggestions for improving ranked matchmaking, I have none. League is, at the end of the day, a team game. There are no good ways to chart a player's progress outside of W/L. I see no way to improve the way player skill is charted. So, yeah, I still think ranked matchmaking is as much a joke as it has always been, and I don't expect that to ever change. Okay, now that I have once again drawn your ire, feel free to add me in game. Summoner Name: Shreyk

Unfortunately I wasn't able to contribute to the Kickstarter for the album, but I look forward to picking it up now that it's released! Any chance you'll be printing more physicals?

Not what I was expecting. Wow. Just, wow. Absolutely nothing like 8-Bit Pimp... Mindblowing album.

Watched the countdown, downloaded the album. transferred it to my Android. Now sleep. Or I'll listen through the album first.

Okay, so, Savant's new album just came out, and I have yet to listen to it... but I feel pretty confident calling Identity Sequence the best musical release of the year. Antigravity has always been one of my favorite albums, but Identity Sequence doesn't just blow Antigrav out of the water, it really demonstrates you taking your music to a completely new level. I absolutely love the track Identity Sequence itself, and everything from Colossus to The End has me floored. The new master of System just gives it so much new life. It was a track of yours that underwhelmed me a bit when you first released it as an EP, but now I can't get enough of it. The new version of Just Hold On is... perfect. It's just perfect. Just Hold On was already my favorite track of yours, and now it's just... It's perfect. Anything more I tried to say would just involve more ellipses. No Regret is everything I never knew I always wanted from Antigravity. Seriously, Without Regret was excellent as it was, and not only did you make it unbelievably more addictive, I'm now completely in love with Chris Gordon's voice. The End is just glorious. It's big, it's elegant, it's energetic, it's beautiful, it's just plain awesome. Eventually I'll find the words to properly describe the experience of listening to Identity Sequence, but until then, the album is even more than I expected, and more than I could have hoped for. Utterly phenomenal music, not as always, but even above and beyond your usual exemplary work.

Gray has always existed in TF2 alongside Red and Blu. Spectator team, uncaptured points, basically any neutral element has always been gray. I don't think there's some special new gray team or 'horde' mode approaching. Just Valve lore-ifying some existing neutral element in TF2. I'm sure Valve has something in the TF2 pipeline, but I think people are reading too much into the 'Gray' thing.

I felt the same the first time I watched it, but Bebop gets better each time you watch it, especially the later episodes. There's something new to notice with each viewing, it always impresses me. It's definitely a series that rewards rewatches. A show that I can't get out of my head is the Ghost in the Shell series. I mean, I first saw Stand Alone Complex a few years back when it aired on AnimeCentral, but it used to come on late, and I'd fall asleep watching it. I'd miss episodes, or not give it my full attention, and it felt too heady and philosophical for me. I watched it properly this summer for the first time, giving it my full attention and oh, wow! It's got to be one of the most impressive things I've ever seen, period! I mean, ever since I finished watching the series a couple weeks ago, I've just been itching to watch the whole thing again... I mean, I've loved series like FMA and Bebop, but this just felt like a peerless classic. I mean, I think I still like FMA a bit more, but I feel like this ought to have the status in anime that The Wire has in western television. I also finally got around to watching Samurai Champloo, which was a fun set of 20 or so stand-alone episodes, but I felt like it fell apart in the final three. It just felt like a huge misstep, ending the series like that. But aside from that, it was a lot of fun. Which reminds me of Trigun, which I watched much earlier in the year. Like Champloo, that was a lot of fun when it wasn't bogged down by the overall story and it focused on standalone episodes. Then it unraveled quite spectacularly in the story-&-character-burdened latter half. It just lost its charm and got tangled underneath a bland story and tripped its way to a bland ending. Still, I hear Badlands Rumble is good, so I'll have to watch that.

I thought this was big news, but I guess not everyone heard it. ScienceDaily: Students Discover Batman's Cape Gliding Technique Is Fatally Flawed Just to speak to what I mean about the reality of the movie being different from the real world. The cape was based on actual technology being developed in real life, but its application in the film isn't technically feasible. I think we're just divided along the line of fully buying into the premise or not.

Yes. They are impossible, with current technology and obeying the laws of physics of the real world. Which is why Nolan's trilogy has taken place in a world that is different from ours. Not the real world. Nolan himself described it as a "heightened" version of our reality. The cops and the army/National Guard are sweeping the bridges and tunnels as well as orchestrating a mass evacuation of the city, and no one notices a mountain of explosives on the only two ferries carrying people across? I buy the premise, in Gotham City, a Bastion of Corruption and Incompetence. In reality? Simply couldn't happen. Sure, if you wanna climb a mountain, or invent a more efficient car, or develop nuclear fusion. Not if you want to parade the streets in a mask beating up thugs. I will agree that TDKR amps it up from Batman Begins, but it's a bigger story and a bigger movie, and I bought into it. TDKR was a movie about the death of Batman, and the resurrection of Bruce Wayne. What's great about TDKR, I thought, was how it showed Wayne had forgotten what Batman was about. He did precisely what you said, and went in half-cocked looking for a fist-fight rather than playing the intelligent hero, rather than being the world's greatest detective. The point was that the character was going backwards, which I thought the movie communicated well. At the end of the day, he lost the fight with Bane. He lost the fist-fight. But he wasn't the endgame. He was just the symbol, just the distraction. Blake and Selina getting everyone off the island, Lucius, Miranda and Gordon disarming the nuke, the police and people of Gotham overthrowing the mercenaries, that was the plan. That was a big picture strategy, not a fist fight, and that was a worthy plan for Batman. And save for Talia's betrayal, it might have succeeded. Then we had our gushy heroic self-sacrifice moment. In real life, that's not possible. But in the movie, it felt possible. But it's not something that is possible in our reality. But that's what TDK was. It's just close enough to reality that we believe it. If he died from being pushed off a ledge, then the guy who did the pushing killed him. I think that's pretty straightforward. Batman even says it himself, "The Joker won." Because he realized that the Joker had gotten him to break his one rule and kill a man, exactly as he said he would.

You haven't embraced the premise, you haven't suspended disbelief enough to buy into the movie. That's fair. But let's not pretend TDKR isn't living by the same rules as its predecessors. If you bought into Batman Begins AND The Dark Knight, but you don't buy into Rises, then you're holding this latest film to a higher level of realism than its predecessors. A cape that let's you paraglide, an aerosolized fear toxin that has to be inhaled, a giant microwave emitter to vaporize water from a distance, a man who can fall from any height, take any number of blows, be shot at, stabbed, yet only twice be seriously injured... And there was that time a psychopath enacted a logistically impossible attack on a city. And then in the next movie, when that happened again. A mini-tank like vehicle that can jump across a river and drive across rooftops. The technically infeasible motorcycle that jettisons from said vehicle's remains. There's the psychotic billionaire who decided to become a vigilante in the first place, and the even more deranged old man who thought, "This could work," and proceeded to support and enable him. The problem with Rises is that TDK made people think the world of the story was so very realistic, and then Rises didn't deliver on a realistic world that the series had never actually promised us. I can accept that TDKR was hard to embrace in that way, but let's not pretend that it is somehow the sole and egregious trespasser. The storytelling in the series was, actually, very consistent. But your expectations were not. That's not unreasonable, but it's important to identify.

The Pit is where Bruce is healed, both physically and spiritually/psychologically. It's also where Ra's al Ghul's immortality is hinted at, both matter-of-factly by Bruce's hallucination and then at Ra's living on through a child. Healing and [through that] enabling Ra's's immortality are key characteristics of a Lazarus Pit, so The Pit struck me pretty quickly as Nolan's interpretation of a Lazarus Pit. But I made a distinction between Pena Dura and The Pit, since The Pit seems to be in Morocco, while Bane retains a Caribbean accent, which would only make sense if he grew up not in Morocco.

I interpreted it as, yes, he was "born in darkness", he just wasn't the child we were led to believe. From his Caribbean accent, and the fact that he claimed to be born in darkness, I assumed that Bane's origin was roughly the same as in the comics, but somewhere along the way he was moved from Pena Dura to the Lazarus Pit. It also makes his motivation for protecting Talia clearer. Seeing another child born in a prison like he was, and seeing something kindred in her to protect. But a lot of that is interpretation and extrapolation on my part.

I don't have one, I'm not looking for one, nor do I think we need one. I'm not asking for more. What you've stated, it works. That's what I'm on board with. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think ranked matchmaking is trying to fix something that isn't broken. Competitive play worked before matchmaking, and I don't think ranked matchmaking works well enough to warrant the effort that goes into it. I think the ranked matchmaking and tribunal system is noble, but futile. I appreciate that they exist, and that they are options for those who want them, but I think players would do well to explore options outside of Riot's limited ranked system for a better competitive experience. That's all I'm saying, really.