Eventually is a nice, vague goal. I haven't seen a free Akali or Anivia in nearly a year. Still, it's nice that the newest champs are free two weeks after being released.

 

This. I can understand wanting to keep some champions as sleepers, but this is beyond ridiculous. Akali is common enough in play that she should be brought into free week, because not a week goes by where I don't play against at least one Akali. Anivia, I see one maybe every month or two.

I really want to see Fizz and Lux on free week, and Riot would've made a killing on Fisherman Fizz if they'd put Fizz on free week at the same time, since I guarantee there are people like me who are interested in the champion but don't want to blow 6300 IP on him and then not like him.

Then again, the above is true for every single 6300 IP champion who hasn't been on free week in a while.

 

eventualy ill get the 10 or so champ I dont have and will stop caring about free week champ

 

So... Spectator Mode Patch Notes

A few things worth noting:
1. "Spectator Mode" not "Varus," and the lack of Varus information in the notes is a firm indicator that he's not coming out quite yet.

2. Mundo's Ult has a longer CD... yay, and Irelia getting buffs to base HP/HP-lvl/HP-Regen/AD.

3. Most of the changes from the unofficial notes seem to have gone through, although some of the numbers on Ryze are just slightly different. Ryze's auto-attack is also going from 1400 to 2400 projectile speed, which would make for significantly easier last-hitting, I imagine.

4. Soraka's Silence/Mana will no longer activate on allied minions, which will help prevent some unfortunate mistakes. Also, her heal will only scale 20/lvl, rather than 25/lvl now.

5. Zilean NERF!

6.

May or may not have any noticeable effect on tower-diving, but perhaps more importantly, I wonder what effect it may have on timing last-hits at at the tower. Likely balanced to come out roughly the same, but I do wonder.

7.

This one will be interesting, as you will no longer have such a notable indicator of when a portion of the enemy team might have lost their spirit to continue.

8.

So, a miniscule cost differential, and a loss of the 12 MP5, but 20(26 with Rabadon's) more AP. Also, the active effect is somewhat weaker, now equalizing and even surpassing the prior effect if for some reason you meet and exceed 1,000 AP. Perhaps most importantly, the active effect has a range increase of 100.

9.

Since presumably the max level value remains the same, this means that it will be slightly weaker across all levels up until max level. Most notably at the earliest levels, of course.


:EDIT:
Apparently they intend to release Varus outside the normal update schedule, next week. Well, according to this Riot post at least:
The Post

:EDIT^2:
No Athene's Unholy Grail... if it even exists(?), but perhaps with the Varus patch it will be released.

 

I honestly don't understand the Ryze changes. I get what they were trying to do and I agree with it, but the only thing this changes is I'll consider upgrading Tear into Archangel's before I have 5 other completed items, and I won't feel quite so annoyed about the AP on Void Staff and Will of the Ancients.

 

Trooper's games make my head hurt.

 

What?

tenchar.

 

Spectating his games. It hurts trying to figure out why they're doing some of the random crap they're doing that's getting them killed.

 

Love the champs this week , I just started so Ive only gotten to try Udyr but he was a hell of a lot of fun once I figured out what I was doing. Im trying Brand now and Hecarim later.

Edit: Just finished playing a few rounds of Brand, I love playing him so much it borders on unhealthy. Double digit kills and first place on the winning times for five matches in a row, if I could just figure out what to do about my squishiness I doubt Id play anyone else.

 

Stop building pure squishy and tank up.

No one builds pure AP in Dom. Everyone gets maxed CDR and Tanky AP items on mages and rely on base damage.

Brand's role in Dom is to be the AOE Brazor. Keep chucking fires and keep your passive up for insane DPS. CDR and durability helps that. Once you get maxed CDR via Boots + FHeart + masteries, you start building the AP items like DCap.

 

Well yeah Im just not sure what items would be best for it and what mage items I should get. This is literally the first time I've ever tried Brand or even read up on him, so far I like to get Deathcap/Void Staff/Will of the Ancients/Mercury's Treads/Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Or well I should say the next few matches I play I will, I'm doing this sort of trial and error at the moment.

 

...Has it really been that long since you played solo-q all by yourself without anyone you know?

 

It's been that long since I've had to play at 1.1k solo Q instead of 1.7k.

:awesome

 

Random streams make me rage when i see Taric.

The purpose of Taric is to dominate the lane. He is super aggressive, and in order to sustain he has to push lane. For SS, you want exh/flash. Anything else (i've seen ignite a shit ton) is fucking terrible.

I build him 3 gp items, and I have money equal to the jungle in most games. He is tanky as fuck, use that. Boots at start, then b for philo and ward, then b for kage and ward, b for heart and ward. Continuosuly rape their AD carry, even if you have to force trades. His naturally ridiculous AD damage plus the armor debuff makes him win, or almost win trades if you build philo. That's if you AD carry doesn't help with an auto.

And please learn to W before you auto attack ffs.

Hilarious troll lane for Duo queue: Heimer/Taric mid. Push lanes all day.

 

Troll Eve, a Malphite that leaves, and an AD Kennen that tries to use Ulti to run into fights vs Fiddle, Ryze, Lux, Alistar, and Poppy.

Why do I only run into these types of matches when I team with someone?

 

I main Taric support and I never played like that :| I take CV/flash with faerie charm, wards and a pot, sometimes a pink, then build typical support shit like philos->shurelyas, heart of gold, aegis. My carries almost never follow through when I stun-ult-shatter, even though I ward the fuck out of everything. Usually I end up scrambling to save their asses when they finally move out too far and burn all my spells then.

I hate how many people seem to think having support means "yay, free heal, time to just auto attack minions and generally be retarded."

 

I feel like this applies.

 

Been playing a load of Gangplank recently (admittedly against Inter bots because I dread playing normal games vs other players when I get people that can feed Inter bots all day long) & find myself enjoying it.

Admittedly I still get blown up by AP chars (Vlad & Karthus spring to mind) but outside of that I'm not having too much trouble learning the ropes (again, only bots so this probably isn't all that surprising) - I'm thinking of playing against other players once I hit level 12 & get Flash. Should probably learn some other roles and characters too I suppose.

 

Been playing a load of Gangplank recently (admittedly against Inter bots because I dread playing normal games vs other players when I get people that can feed Inter bots all day long) & find myself enjoying it.

Admittedly I still get blown up by AP chars (Vlad & Karthus spring to mind) but outside of that I'm not having too much trouble learning the ropes (again, only bots so this probably isn't all that surprising) - I'm thinking of playing against other players once I hit level 12 & get Flash. Should probably learn some other roles and characters too I suppose.

 

So in regards to this spectator mode...what's to stop it from being exploited all to fuck?