Reign of Gaming

because it is against competent lane opponents. Not that I play at a level where it is too difficult, but Scarra said that Cassiopeia is really strong but so incredibly hard to play that she isn't worth it lol

If you're playing AP Janna, I'm going to assume that you're running a split push/poke strat. If you're doing that, I'd say Lich bane is actually a great call to help take down turrets. As Mockstar said, I'd drop the abyssal since the aura is too short to help you too much. AP Janna, likes lots of AP, not a ton of durability, and is one of the few champions where penetration isn't that great on (Mostly because you're primarily going to be split pushing so you want as much damage on the turret as possible). Seraph's wouldn't be bad if you could get it stacked. If stacked, it's the highest AP item in the game (ignoring rabadon's passive) in most cases. The concern is stacking it. CDR is terrific, so Morellonomicon is great, Zhonyas is good too (high AP, if people do get to you, you can blow some cooldowns and delay for your team). ROA is just an overall great item; I'm not sure if I would build it on her though. If you're planning on building rylai's, rush a ROA instead. Obviously rabadon's is core. DFG isn't that useful for the active, but CDR and high AP make it viable on her (she doesn't have huge single target burst to amplify, and she shouldn't be close enough to utilize the active anyway). Anyway, just my thoughts, good luck!

So I read through all of these last night (there are more now but I'm too lazy to go through them), and there were a couple things I noticed. Obviously there's the huge Viktor argument. Acerunner brought up the LCS a few times throughout his posts, and while I don't consider Viktor to be particularly good, I would like to point out that NickWu played him for complexity in a huge AoE comp near the end of the season. He ran into the problem of not being able to clear fast enough in a 2v1 lane. Nevertheless, he was played in LCS as a niche pick.

The other key champ who has been ignored on the list despite LCS play is AP Janna. Complexity ran it, and it was successful through the first 30 minutes or so before they got out team fought. Now, at this point, you might think that it's just complexity using wacky team comps; however, Velocity also ran AP Janna in the promotion series to pick up the win against Marn.

Another argument I saw was against Eve. Acerunner said something about jungle eve being better than mid eve and that no one ran either. Diamondprox, widely held to be the best jungler in the world, recently ran eve jungle (I think twice) in their best of 5 against Fnatic. Its hard to argue that he doesn't think she's viable when he's using it in the championship. As far as mid eve is concerned, I think she's a bit weak, and they need to revert the ult nerf to % maximum health, but Scarra just went 11/1 with her in their promotion series and carried a losing game to victory. Clearly she has a place.

Oh, and there is still Nunu. Both Alex Ich and Soaz have run Nunu in the last month. He was primarily used to get early 2 man barons but was effective for that at least. Alex Ich went primarily tank, and Soaz threw a little ap in there (both got spirit of the spectral wraith).

I realize that all of my arguments are predicated on the LCS, and if this is a solo queue tier list they might be less valid. I also apologize if I come off sounding purely negative and overly critical; that is not my intent. I just wanted to address a few things that were brought up. I main mid, and don't play ranked (I played the minimum number of games to place, and then let it decay a couple of tiers and a league), but I'm mostly basing this off of analysis of professional play as opposed to anecdotal experience anyway so it isn't that relevant. Anyway, there are some minor placements I would argue but as a whole it isn't a bad tier list (although I would be more comfortable knowing what each tier represented).

I guess I wasn't entirely clear. Assists should correlate highly with winning. The distinction I was trying to draw is that they don't necessarily imply that you're contributing to your team winning. I was basically trying to say that assists generally mean your team is doing well, but not that you are. The removal of that variable would be through a comparison of your assists to team assists. I do agree with your analysis, I just think that this part has some flaws that lead you to make some slightly stronger statements than you might have otherwise.

An example would be something like being an underleveled akali who shrouded in the middle of a team fight but blew up immediately due to AOE before doing damage. Your team is doing well though so you ace them. You get 5 assists but didn't contribute to your team's win in the team fight in a substantial way. I'll admit that I picked an extreme example, but there are certainly games where our teammates carry and we pick up tons of assists without contributing that much to the team.

The only complaint I have with the article is the assists correlation. Its interesting to see that there isn't a huge correlation between kills and winning (sort of makes sense) though. Here's my issue with the assists thing; I've found that my assists correlate strongly with my teams total assists (and thus teams total kills). The issue with this, is that there is a possibility of a lurking variable in team-wide kills/assists. Not to say that your analysis is invalid (in fact I don;t really disagree with any of it), but just something to think about. If you play on  a ranked team, it might be possible to alleviate some of this effect using the team wide stats for each game (or just keep track of everything manually for a while).

I've had success against Fizz as Ryze and Lux. Ryze is primarily strong against Fizz due to his ability to hold him down to actually deal his full combo. Play the matchup safe early and poke when he gets in range (I'm not sure if I have to say this but cs with autos! Save your spells for harassment, at the very least until you get tear). Also be wary of his level 6. The lux matchup is incredibly difficult but you can win very hard. The key in this matchup is to save your spells for his all in. If you waste your binding trying to poke him, he'll troll pole it and burst you. The name of the game is kite. I'd be careful picking this unless you're very comfortable on Lux as a single mistake can allow the lane to snowball in his favor. In both cases, ward, and follow your lane. Counterganks are often more effective than normal ganks.

Well, from a math perspective there are a couple of different ways to approach it. Let's assume that you get the 40% AS from stinger (instead of the 30% on Trinity Force) and the CDR instead of crit. Assuming you build it on a bruiser with no other crit or AS items:

Using Darius as a typical bruiser (although not necessarily someone who would build tri force, I'm just using him for his AS which I would assume is fairly typical), you have:

.679+(2.6*18)% AS at level 18

So using the formula for DPS: DPS = AS(AD)(1+Crit)

Current Tri-Force: DPS = (.679*1.76)(AD)(1.1) = 1.31*AD

With Stinger: DPS = (.679*1.86)(AD)(1) = 1.26*AD

However, we're not accounting for the additional 12% AS that you get when you upgrade Zeal to Tri-force currently, if you include that you get:

With Stinger+Bonus: DPS = (.679*1.98)*AD = 1.34*AD

In this case, stinger out DPSes the current zeal version slightly, even without including CDR. The tradeoff comes with not having the extra MS anymore.

TL;DR: Stinger out DPSes zeal assuming the upgrade bonuses remain. You do sacrifice movement speed for cooldown reduction though.

Ask PR0LLY :P he kinda carried with Ziggs for Complexity in the LCS. Granted, I think Xerath or Lux fills the role that he does better in most cases, but there are enough differences in their kits that might make them fit a person's playstyle better. The problem is that no champion is exactly the same, which is sort of the crux of your argument...honestly, I'm only responding because your reportable comment bothered me, and 2 of the three champs you mentioned are niche picks at high level play (Ziggs by PR0LLY, Nami by Bloodwater and the koreans)

SHe was being seen in the LCS as a not uncommon pick actually. Most notably by MegaZero, Voyboy, and ZionSpartan. She wasn't common but it wasn't strange to see her either. She also did really well in the LCS (especially in the hands of MegaZero)

Caitlyn is actually only considered strong late game due to her safety and poke. She outdamages very few adc's due to the lack of a built in steroid and lack of quick animation ad scaling abilities (while her Q and R both scale with ad, her Q actually lowers her DPS late game). She outdamages ezreal but only due to the fact that she builds more multiplicatively (Tri force/ Frozen Gauntlet don't stack particularly well with other adc items), and ashe due to the steroid on her passive. Her real strengths are safety, poke, and strong laning.