It's working for me now.

 

Yeah, working for me too now, though I was still geting Server Busy errors when I last tried an hour ago, though the forum posts seem like it's been fixed for a couple of hours. Huh.

Edit; Wow, an Annie in the NA LCS. Shezza would be proud.

 

JUNGLE ANIVIA, MY LITTLE BUNNIES.

http://i.imgur.com/1fmRAv5.jpg

 

Normals count now?

 

I'm pretty sure that Bots are the only thing that truly doesn't count. You can still have some fun and/or challenging matching in Normal just fine.

 

Well, you can't count out intermediate bots completely though. Dariusbot op!

 

Darius, Annie, Cassio... God, I hated every Inter bot game with them in. Well, I've not played since they implemented Darius but still, you were fucked as soon as Annie or Cassio hit 6. Dat burst.

 

Intermediate bots are odd. You can walk all over them early game, but late game, if you let them get fed or have full builds, their perfect, split-second teamwork can be a real bitch to fight against, sometimes. Especially since they ALL build Defense while still being able to deal a fair amount of damage.

The funny thing is, you can tell when their programming says "you're going to do something dumb now" Because it's always INCREDIBLY Dumb. And the rest of the time they're pretty cautious opponents.

 

Most of my RL friends don't particularly enjoy standard 5v5s, so when I get them together we do bots or Dominion a lot.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, play intermediate bots. The rules are,

1. You may not kill the bots until 40 minutes.
2. You may not take a tower until 40 minutes.
3. You may not take the bots' jungle.

It is surprisingly fun. I just wish there was a way to skip to this point in customs, rather than having to wait it out. But still, bots can be enjoyable if you work at it.

 

So lately I've been debating what to do with my IP now I've finished off some pages I was putting together revolving around mana regen for better sustain for some champions.

I'm currently broke on IP though feel like I've got two real choices at the moment - either save up and buy cdr quints & blues as you can get 10% cdr off runes alone, or save up & get Elise.

I'm really leaning for the runes because I rarely play top, and Elise seems oddly difficult to play well even though she can face-roll most tops, I don't like how she jungles having spectated a few games but she's one of the few champions left that I wouldn't mind having in my pool, and after all, having another semi-AP carry support is never a bad thing, especially with her execute in spider form.

Rune-wise, I've been watching some streams and thinking on it, and cdr on champions like Renek and Vlad early have the potential to do really well. The main problem is of course you become vulnerable as Vlad, but you can effectively get something like 17% cdr at level 1 on Vlad and 11% on Renekton. To me that seems huge, especially if you go for something like Spectral Wraith early, you just become a sustain machine.

Just a thought, and of course it has its weaknesses but I feel like it allows you to get stronger items in terms of scaling AP at least.

 

Elise is brilliant in the jungle. She can clear taking almost no damage using her spiders to tank it all, her ganks are great from level 3 onwards with a stun, gap closer and great damage with no items. I think she's probably the best damage dealing jungler at the moment.

 

I'm not a huge fan of carry junglers though, much as I want to play Hecarim (yes, even with his nerfs) and Vi recently, well, Zac too, but yeah, I keep falling back to the old favourites of Cho & J4 just because I feel comfortable having a sort of support/initiation role & I generally peel every TF unless the enemy ADC can't position for shit. That said, I really want to try Nasus, but I keep getting Nasus' top lanes lately so, won't complain.

Also lacking hybrid pen runes which I think would have a much bigger impact on the lane, not so much the jungle but still.

 

Magic pen is better for her than hybrid pen, I think. Your Q harass is what makes her so strong in lane, not her aa's.

 

Well, I can't recall if her spiderlings benefit from penetration, but if they do, then it's probably worth while. Since if you can stick to a target(Rylai's says hello), they are the largest portion of her damage output overall, despite being physical damage.

 

I figured her spiderlings do benefit from it but I can't find anything that proves it so, probably don't.

Oh well, not to worry. If that game was a sign I should only play Leona in future I dunno what isn't... Well, actually no. Other lanes getting shat on because they can't ward ain't my fault, so fuck 'em. Serves people right for first-picking things like Udyr & Gragas. Warding should be taught to people early somehow, the tutorial needs a revamp or at least some kind of newbie friendly FAQ regarding ranked. Made an account on NA recently and was kinda saddened by how bad it still is.

 

While they do scale with her armor pen, I think that most of her damage, particularly in lane comes from her Q/W harass, and the execute on her spider Q. I might be wrong, but it's pretty rare that I find myself trading enough autoattacks in spider form for the spiderlings to do significant damage.

 

This is a public service announcement that Poytin ditched a Civ 5 game with me and Aek Mish an hour into it to go play LoL. Fuck you, Poytin.

 

:awesome Obviously his taste in games spontaneously improved.

 

For the damage on Elise's spiderlings, her W in spider form is a huge chunk of damage if you ever find yourself dueling with somebody(top, mid, jungle). If your spiders do more damage, then all the better. So if you run ArPen runes or HybridPen, then your damage in spider form will be improved.

But, in reality, it depends more on personal playstyle than anything.