prophetik music

the problem with kat is that all of her artwork looks great - only new janna has a better 'figure' - but all of her in-game artwork is basically a palette swap. it's kind of great because they make her look like this death goddess and then all you see is this crazy hair-scarf-thingie. i don't play cait enough to want a skin for her, as ranged AD champs represent my worst gameplay in LoL. i used to have a yearly subscription to PC Gamer for roughly 3$ a year, but i got sick of the useless articles and the fact that - gasp - game informer was usually better researched, had more information, and better and more introspective commentary...which isn't saying much, i know. plus PC Gamer feels like it's written on toilet paper, and is clearly marketing to underage boys (see above picture).

you'd be able to see more if your computer wasn't made out of rich mahogany. or a toaster, for all we know

i wish they'd give you a vote to replace leavers after a few minutes with bots that were worth little gold upon death. it means that the other team can get kills, and that your lane isn't completely hosed if you have someone DC.

to be honest, the fact that it's about teamfights and not your one star overpowering their one star is a good thing. i feel it makes for a game where everyone is contributing the whole time. while you still have teams built around one character like karth, sion, or kog'maw, everyone is still a critical member of that team, and any of those players can significantly increase your chance at winning with a skillful play. i don't feel that that is represented in what little i've watched of HoN or DotA. edit: yeah, andy, i know. i don't choose to play tanks in pub games - i usually get stuck with them because i don't jump in and auto-lock my favorite character. singed, however, is someone i'm really looking forward to getting. i think that i'd be pretty darn good with him just because all you need to do is toss shit and stack belts the last few games i've led my team in creep kills, so that's definitely starting to help. it's always hard to farm early-game with tanks, but i'm getting better. udyr and amumu can annihilate creep lanes by level seven or so, so once we're out of the laning phase and the rest of the team is ratballing i'll usually stay in lanes and farm up so i've got my thornmail/frozen heart and FoN/banshee's as soon as possible. i've been getting both by level 12 or 13 lately, which is awesome. it's just that anyone can farm with special attacks like udyr's tiger stance or amumu's tantrum/despair. i'm just not good at using auto-attacks yet. sooner or later i'll get it =)

i've been having the same feeling, zircon, but for different reasons. i think we all know that i have very specific limitations in-game - i'm not the greatest farmer, and i have trouble communicating sometimes - but my frustration is that i tank in pub games, which is apparently something that doesn't happen often. most games i'll wind up with a score like 2-6-6, with a surrender at the 30m mark, and have most of those deaths come because i initiated when told to and then everyone backed off. then at the end-game screen, people will tell me that i did terrible, even though i farmed pretty well and had the items i needed at the level i was at. clearly the defining trait of a tank is not dying, and i understand that - but no character tanks well at level 12 when your team doesn't output damage. the point of a tank isn't to survive no matter what, it's to survive just long enough. if i play as udyr, it's even harder, because i'm expected to spend the whole fight using bear stance to stun everyone rather than using turtle stance. i had two players 'yelling' at me because i was trying to stay alive in a fight rather than using bear stance so they could fight without fear of getting caught. we then went on to get wiped, because i stopped using turtle and almost immediately was focused down and slaughtered. i also have unreasonably bad luck with pubs. i've had seven straight games with at least one member of my team either unable to speak english (and being the jungler, or something communication-critical like that), or AFK for a significant portion of the game. particularly when i tank with a character like udyr, who is so dependent on not getting poked hard early to really be able to tank mid and late game, being stuck in a lane where my gold is exclusively coming from a HoG and a philosopher's stone really gets annoying fast.

most of those links are dead, unfortunately, but the few i got to see were pretty cool.

i'm not much of a mage player - my only AP carry is fiddles, who i play because he's a jungler - but i think that i'd like ryze. he's so obnoxiously dangerous if you are a melee character, because he can root, pop all his spells, and be gone by the time you can move again.

just had a great fiddles game, first with the pirate skin. went 18-13-19, with most of those deaths happening in teamfights where i'd crowstorm in, use zhonya's, and then immediately die. got a triple kill post-mortem, which was awesome. i spend 20% of the match dead, which was not awesome. i had rabbadon's, zhonya's hourglass, rod of ages, rylai's, morello's, and sold my spellpen boots for a rod (ideally going towards void staff). i was well over 800ap, but i only had 319 movespeed =) i would stand in the middle of the map, wait for both teams to show up, and cacawcacaw into them. i had to use both ghost and flash to keep up with them, but i was doing 2000+ damage to everyone on their team except singed. it was pretty hysterical. my team had to escort me around the map because i was going to be melted if i got attacked. if they got too close and udyr or nas got in first, though, it was insta-die for them. very fun, considering we got aced twice and almost didn't survive long enough to push back. we got lucky, but it was a good game. survived early feeders to win, which always feels really good.

i saw this at geekologie, but i thought it was cool enough to link here. basically someone took classic video games and reimaged their boxart to be all minimalist like the criterion collection boxarts on hulu. the original pages include the contents of a fake special edition. they're pretty funny/weird/cool. here are a few. what other games should they include?

zil would be a riot, because of udyr's stun/DoT from tiger stance combined with two zilbombs dealing stupid damage early and mid game. not to mention that udyr could lane and farm pretty hard. i outfarmed our teemo in lane, so it'd definitely be doable.

no samples, even with other instrumentation to hear what they sound like? not cool.

the nidalee one had me laughing so hard.

even with the nerf to his turtle stance - which returns way less mana now, not enough to sustain it indefinitely - he's still very viable in lane. i'm interested in trying him starting in lane with either a mana manipulator (if laning with a character with heavy mana requirements) or a meki pendant and two blue pots, and having him going back to grab philosophers stone and boots on his first back. since he can hop in the jungle basically whenever he pleases to regenerate mana and health, i think he'd dominate in the lane near the blue golem. he can get it without smite at level 1 without a leash, so i'm assuming that he could just sustain indefinitely either way. laning him with any ranged AD carry would be domination, because he can just keep stunning and doing his DoT Q while the carry just pokes away.

just played a game with amumu, irelia, garen, karthus, and annie. i went 7-1-22 as amumu, with a final build of FoN, merc treads, thornmail, abyssal scepter, and warmogs. didn't have time for the rylai's. i had philosophers and heart of gold for almost the entirety of the match, and it made a huge difference. i'm not a great farmer as most of you know, but amumu's AoE damage abilities make it really easy to chew through waves of creeps. i laned and roamed with karthus and annie (hence the scepter), and by the end of the game i was able to sit in a teamfight and take virtually no damage when focused. we aced them twice with no losses to our own under one of their turrets, and after my initiation and tower aggro we were able to just melt them almost instantly. it was a good game on a day full of bad games =) i also picked up udyr yesterday and went 4-4 with him on the day (with one of those losses involving me disconnecting at 4 minutes thanks to client issues). in the losses, we got pushed hard early and lost several towers before 20 minutes, minimizing my effectiveness ganking. in the games where we were able to hold towers for a reasonable amount of time (as in, solo top didn't suck), i went 2-6-15 (primary tank) and 7-2-8 (offtank). he's such a great bruiser, able to wade in, stun everything, deal some crazy damage with tiger and phoenix stance, and then get out and heal up almost instantly with turtle. as i'm getting the hang of his abilities, i'm really learning how to build him in different situations, and i'm liking it. he's got so much versatility in the jungle, too - he can start with regrowth pennant, longsword, vampiric scepter, cloth armor, or dagger and be totally comfortable. i still need to try him in lane from level 1 as either melee DPS or tank (likely tank, since i'm terrible at judging timings in-lane for a melee DPS character), but either way he still winds up being an awesome ganker, has excellent staying power in the lane from turtle, and is easily able to chase anyone in the game, ghost or not.

this is hilarious.

there were some pretty significant changes to her =) i've been getting cut up by her in lane a lot lately, so i'm ok with it.

perfect. i knew it was possible, but i didn't know how to do it. this is great =) less memory usage, here i come! and neblix, that's what i usually do with more complex stuff. like, i've got one for gofriller cello, to make the aftertouch and vibrato work properly in FL, etc.

holy crap i love to tank but i hate shen. at least with amumu, rammus, and cho you're doing some damage once and a while.

is it possible to route individual instruments in Kontakt 4 (or Omnisphere, for that matter) through the fruity wrapper into separate mixer channels? being able to split instruments so i don't have to load four separate instances of Kontakt for shreddage would be absolutely spectacular.

here's an idea i hate - that tanks are only good if they get assists. i played a game today with some of the worst pubs i've seen - jarvan was 1-7-0 at 25m. i was amumu, went 3-3-0. we surrendered at 25m because we were getting annihilated. when we got into the late game, i asked the other team to report jarvan and another character for unskilled/feeding, because they were so bad. i was told to "tank more", and "stop qq'ing". their reason? i didn't have any assists. our entire team had four kills. i was three of them. they had over thirty, at 25m. tank more? naw. more like pubs are terrible, no matter what. i hate random games sometimes.

yeah, i'm not blaming you. we got outplayed hard, and rumble's definitely more DPS than tank. as for runes, i bought t2 stuff and then used the combiner to get several t3 runes i needed. it worked out ok. i've got a full set of flat magic oenetration reds, flat AR and flat M/5 yellows, scaling MR and flat CDR blues, and flat health and flat cooldown quints. working on the last one or two that i need there, then i'm getting some ArP and ability power runes (for when i play AD carries and AP carries, respectively).

updated to today.

then you went 0-5-5 =(((((( we had an up and down night overall, though. that one team that we trollrolled was pretty hilarious, but our last game we just got outplayed.

=D good to hear someone liked that one. i sure did.

i have the worst of luck with pubs. i also have a smurf account. username is p00d1ck. play with me! i am level 2!