Reign of Gaming

Not sure who's brackets were shattered by TSM being out already, but they clearly don't follow the competitive scene. Not only is it not surprising they couldn't outlast the top European and Asian teams, its not that shocking that they couldn't outlast other NA teams if you've watched recent performances. The biggest surprise was how long they lasted in their 0-2 loss to Azubu Blaze. Awesome games today though. Sadly two of the top 3 teams are for sure in the losers bracket, although Fnatic is really impressive. Still won't be surprised to see Azubu Blaze vs World Elite finals.

My advice for LoL. Play whatever champion you enjoy and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you aren't playing this game to have fun, I'm very confused by your motivations. You only get better with skillshots by using skill shots, and if those are your favorite abilities, don't play Ryze to grind elo. Playing LoL shouldn't be like "putting in time" on a job to grind out a living. Go play Brand, Lux, Amumu jungle or whatever else you enjoy. If you have fun, you will put in more time, and if you put in more time you will be making the skill shot plays that get on Protato monster highlights.

It made the Ryze player in me happy, but I don't think I get tear on ANY other champion unless I'm going manamune sona in an ARAM.

The thing about evaluating these items is that you are evaluating them within the framework of the current meta. Until we see months or maybe even a year of these items being out, we won't know if they are actually superior to current items like tri-force in different metas (and if I could be more specific, I'd be the coach of a top team).

If you get good enough Hashinshin. If you get good enough...

(Watch Curse NA run Akali Diana assassin comp, but work on your skills before trying it at home)

Stonewall, despite the presence of all these sexy new jungle items, do you think going ruby sightstone (kind of seen as a support item) might be viable in arranged teams at the least? I'm imagining 6 wards on the map always with no cost to team between the support and jungler. After 6 minutes (assuming you are using the wards) the item has better than giant's belt gold efficiency with the money you save on warding. After 15 minutes, you've received enough wards that the item has more than paid itself off and you just have free 300 gold. I'm thinking top and mid lane NEVER have to buy wards the whole game, so its kind of more the support jungler mentality (although the new jungle will make carry style junging more fun too). Seriously, you ward top brush near enemy turret and both enemy river entrances and top and mid just won't die to ganks. With oracle being nerfed so hard (plus, having wards killed doesn't lose you money since you just place another free ward) I think this is actually overpowered on the right kind of junglers, likely the junglers who used to go philo into HoG anyways. You are getting an unbelievable 12 GP10 worth of wards with ruby sightstone.

HoG vs Ruby Sightstone: ruby sightstone costs 475g more but gives you 100 HP more AND 7 GP/10 more than HoG (essentially only spent on wards, saving top lane money for his build). The downside is that very lategame this item might feel like a waste of item space (but when do junglers get 12k gold?) whereas HoG becomes a very useful item.

TL;DR: Stonewall, what do you think of fitting the more expensive, but higher GP10 (12 GP10 in ward value) Ruby Sightstone (in lieu of HoG) on the old support style junglers like Maokai, Skarner, and Chogath? Are the new jungling items just too lucrative to get that "support" item? Can you really help your team more than ensuring top and mid never ever get ganked though?

Wow is Olaf ever strong. As red side, I got a smiteless blue, buff to buff, ganked top at 2:57 (when my first axe hit their top laner). This is so strong especially since people are under the impression that this kind of early double buff gank isn't common with the new jungle. Continued the world tour down to mid lane and was 2/0/0 3:37 in. I botched the gank on bot lane by coming through tri brush instead of coming right out of the river since they were pushed so far(should have seen their support started doran shield to know they weren't warding) Suddenly I realize the power of season 3 Olaf. Yeah, I get that it was one game and the players were bad and overextended, but getting double buffs and level 3 while lanes are level 2 and having enough hp to gank twice is in itself very promising for Olaf. We might see more overextended lanes since people aren't expecting these ganks. Anyone else having luck with the old smiteless buff to buff routes with other champs?

Here's really the problem of objective timers. It was one of the key measures of "macro" awareness in the game. Why not have autopings when enemy champion enters or leaves minimap vision? After all, is it really a test of skill to have wide enough peripheral vision to see that kind of thing? And have an alarm that not only lets you know dragon is up, but remind your team that its time to go there cuz they might be sneaking it. And also have a tooltip pop up saying you should have 3 push top right now because you aren't in range to contest dragon. Oh, and give us the cooldown timers on the other team. Accounting isn't a measure of skill right? Give us flash timers, oh, and, why not just show the cd time on every skill of enemy champ if you click on them.

Yeah, objective timers are that ridiculous. If a player has the multitasking to just type any of this info in team chat, let them use that to their advantage against more narrowly focused, less skilled players.

Really? Objective timers? Please no. The less there is for a player to do, the less there is to differentiate players, and the less fun the game is.

You know what this means? NA and Europe are screwed. Think about it. The one thing that they had over Asian teams is that they've been playing the game longer, and while there were plenty of tweaks, there were never huge overhauls for the game like there is now. Now all the creative and dedicated Korean teams get to start fresh at the same time as NA and Europe. That is scary. Oh, and I think more than ever people are going to be copying builds, just the opposite of what you say. What did Cpt Jack build? OK, done. Lilballz jungled what? Ok, standard now. People are going to be so unsure of what builds are optimal that there will be a LOT of imitation. I can't wait though. It should be fun, and if the game turns out a lot less competitive (which I've already noted there is a possibility for based on decreased importance of last hit mechanics as well as near impossibility of roaming/ganks with two red sightstones on team+Oracle nerf) Riot can always revert, although that may get more of an uproar than some of the current changes are getting from people who can't handle change. Then there are pure ragers who just want attention like Hashinshin.