oh. and i added some of you , or tried to anyways. sorry if the random add weirded you out.

OK - so got some fun games in this weekend.  I decided to drop a little bit of my rp on a 3 day IP boost, so I've been trying to play the crap out of LoL this weekend.  Managed to get 2 move speed quints (2000+ ip a pop), so apparently that went ok.  My rune collection is looking better and better.  I really need to get 3 health quints soon as well.  Anywho...

I did get to play some games with Plaguespreader (cheranumir) and one of his buddies last night.  Good fun.  We had a couple of really easy games where we just worked the other team over.  Anyway, he's a solid player and fun to play with, so I recommend adding him for games if you get a chance. 

Got to play several games with hedgie.  All fun as well. Oh - and I got one game in with dark.  Haven't bumped into her in quite some time, so that was cool.

My last 2 games were just pugs as everyone was in games when I finally got back on last night.  Super annoying couple of games.  The 1st game I was a tank and did my job well.  But we had a "pro" lee sin on the team that kept refusing to join in on team fights and kept getting singled out and killed... so it was listening to 2 guys on my team bitch him out, then him bitch those 2 out, and so on.  A real hoot. 

The last game I actually kinda deserved to get trolled a little as I was somewhat god awful.  To be fair, I had more than a few tasty beverages in me at this point, but let's just say my judgement was a wee bit off.  Anyway, I was stepping into traps as singed over and over... like every form of bait I was taking for a solid 3-4 minutes.  It was god awful.  Anyway, because of my idiot performance (and then pretty solid performance later, I was trolled by a couple of jerks for a bit until I muted them.  To say they were all that good would be a bit unfair... anyway, super annoying for everyone involved. 

Is your math right there?  Just 375 ip total = 1 random t3 rune or quint?

Anyway, I decided to pick up Lee Sin last night.  I remembered seeing something impressive that someone did and wanted to try to replicate it.  Anyway, if you haven't played Lee Sin, he has an ability (his q) where he shoots out like a directional pulse some distance - if it connects with a target he can do a long range kick to their location.  Anyway, what I saw was someone do this once, then immediately afterward perform another kick.  I'm not quite sure how that was possible though, but, in my recollection, it was 2 kicks back to back (but perhaps he cast the pulse quick and then kicked the 2nd time).  Anyway, there couldn't have been more than a second between kicks - so either he had a crazy CD reduction, there's some item that instantly can refresh CDs once, or I simply don't understand the ability.  Anyone have any ideas?

Sigh - I live 15 minutes away from work.  Traffic was jacked to hell today - took 2 hours to make it here ffs. 

edit - oh, had some good games last night.  I haven't caught up with my buddy from high school due to timing lately, but it sounds like thunder has gotten to play with him a bit, so that's good.  Had some fun games with shiro and his crew.  One game I jungled as trundle was fun, but really difficult.  We had like no cc vs 3 on the other team having cc.  Such a bad idea for us to skip cc.  Oh well, still got a win and it was a fun game at any rate.

Yeah, what you do is ...

Buy 25 of the cheapest T1 rune (I've been using the Seal of Clarity). They cost 15 IP each, so 25 * 15 == 375. 

Combine them into T2 runes (5 T1 -> 1 T2). Since I don't have very many runes yet, I keep the T2 rune if its good. 

Then combine the T2 runes (5 T2 -> 1 T3). 

If you get crappy random T3 runes, you can recombine 2 T3 runes to get a different T3 rune. Not very cost effective at this point but it's still cheaper than a 820 rune. 

I def think it's better for people who are just starting, and can't even purchase T3 runes, or people who don't have a large variety of runes yet, or don't have Quints since the good Quints are so damn expensive. Well, some at least. So if you need a specific rune then I think just saving for it and buying it is the better way to go about it. 

Also I've been mostly incredibly lucky with it so there's that too. 

Well - I tried the lottery - didn't really pan out so well for me, but only cost me 375 ip like you said, so not a big deal.  Completely agree that this is a great idea for folks that are new to the game and want to get some tier 2 or tier 3 runes quickly (or are not high level enough to buy tier 3 runes).  If you see one of our lower level pals, please suggest this - I think schyster has crap runes, so it would be good to suggest to him if anyone bumps into him before I do.

Played the most annoying bot match last night.  I was trying a teemo build out, so I figure hey - give this a go and knock it out in 20 minutes or so, good stuff.  Nope... not by a long shot.  Managed to bump into 2 leaver jerks - one drops after playing for 10 minutes and just afk's and pops back long enough to make sure he doesn't get disconnected.  The other fellow needed to "take a shit" and was gone for 25 minutes.  Anyway, having to 3 v 5 with the ai well fed by horrible play resulted in like an hour and 10 min game.  What a treat.  Anyhow, reported the annoying bastards.

Had some fun games with jona and karl as well.

And who might that be, zen?

So - I got to play with my bud schyster a couple of games last night.  We won the first one, but he made me a little nuts.    He played GP and apparently still has a lot to learn about early game pushing and the best ways to use gp's ult.  I'm sure it will come to him in time, but I found myself shouting out loud to myself more than a few times.  He was nonstop over extending level 1-6 or so, like to the point where he had like 100 hp and he'd try to solo dive 2 of them.  Anyway, I couldn't figure out his rhythm.  Did better after he leveled up a smidge, though.

The other game I played with him was fine.  That said, I want to smack lol's matchmaking system in the face.  From the end game stats, it turned out that my team had all players with right around 100 games (with shyster at like 50-80 games or so I think).  The other team had 3 with like 125 games, 1 with 19 games (so obviously would die a wee bit), and a 5th with 890 games.  Predictably, the guy with 890 games got to have some fun.  Didn't help that 2 of the guys on my team would not respond to pings and "MIA CARE BOTTOM" messages and fed the guy with 890 games 8 times  (the guy with meija's soulstealer) over a 10 minute period.  Drove me nuts that I'd call mia, pig the map, do whatever I could to make sure these goofs would know that they should back up, and they'd just stay where they were every single time and die. 

Oh, and I told shyster about the 375 IP route to runes.

I haven't played skarner yet.  Looks like fun, anyway.  Lately I've been focusing on getting good with brand. 

Thanks for the teamspeak info.  A good amount of us use the lagwars ventrillo server as a carry over from playing Demigod.  You are welcome to use this as it a public vent server, but I have channel admin rights.  Just look for a channel towards the middle called OH MY DEMIGOD

Lagwar's Ventrilo Server
oxygen.typefrag.com
Port: 50216

Skarner looks fun to use.  I don't really even care if he's supposedly UP, I like his style so I might buy him.

@Pacov  Yeah... I like your friend, seems a cool guy.  Just a bit... well, he's just got the dreaded Its Always My Teammates/Champ Suckinesses Fault attitude thats not going to let him get much better I'm afraid.

I consider myself a patient guy and was looking forward to helping him learn the ropes, but it was a little frustrating.  I don't mind losing at all, but jumping from game types over and over when I'm trying to explain the meta strategy of 5v5 classic Blind Pick doesn't help.  I'm thinking to myself that I'm barely capable of playing Draft Mode myself, so why are we playing that when he's level 18? I can't help him understand different roles of champs if he keeps picking different ones each game and playing them like a Tanky DPS no matter how squishy they are.

@Rune Gambling Addicts and Saving All My IP For When I Reach Level 20 Hoarders

Not a big fan of either method.  A extremely cheap T1 rune that is a good Primary rune like Flat Armor or Magic Penetration is way more useful than a 375 IP random t3 rune that may or not be useful... probably not useful.  Theres a lot more piece of crap runes out there than not.  And buying cheap T1 runes that help you win will help you get more IP so you can buy as many or more T3 runes when you reach 20.

I wouldnt worry too much about runes.  And I wouldnt buy anything other than T3 runes when you hit 20.

Really, you can get by with a basic set of flexible runes.  So get:

Armor Pen reds, Magic Pen reds, Mana /5 /level yellows, and flat CDR or flat MR blues, plus flat health quints.  You might need flat armor yellows to jungle with some champs.

With those runes you are going to be able to play most champs very close to ideally.  Yes, there are some champs which want very specific runes and you might need to get somewhat specialized to properly jungled some champs, but you can worry about that later.  If you get the basic t3 runes above you can do what needs to be done with most champs.

Plus, unless you have quite a few runes pages, its not worth getting super specialized to play a specific champ unless you plan on playing them A LOT. 

@Thunder: Or you can be like me and get a 1000 IP and an 820 IP rune as your T3 :3

Also also I have like zero bandwidth ah mg, so I won't be able to play so much. I'm going to be going to the coffee shops some and we'll see if I get get LoL to work on WINE and bear playing it on my notebook somehow - crycry. 

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Since DoW's patch notes makes me rage I probably won't be playing that over the next month or so, so I figure this'll be my competive online game I've been missing for awhile, so I'm more considering plopping down some cash for RP. Mostly to save IP for runes because ah mg. 

Though I'll probably still preorder SotS II for offline single player play. And I have Disgaea IV to play. 

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Riot knows how to price their RP just to be annoying though. Seriously, it's redic. I want 3x 975 RP champs but then... there is no way to fit that into a $20, because you need like 150 more points, THEN you are like "oh but buying $5 of RP is such a terrible waste of money, so I might as well go get the $35 deal".

THEN you have all this leftover points so you're like hmmm well this Skin looks alright, but THEN you don't have enough RP for all the Skins you discovered. 

Then you're like OH BUT I NEED RUNE PAGES.

Fuck me.

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Anyway, for the purpose of discussion and dismissing all your monetary and playing advice because I can, I'm thinking:

$35 pack + $10 pack == $45 for 6380

- Skarner + Runetech Skin == 1950

- Renekton == 975

- Twitch == 975

- Anivia Runetech Skin  (I'm a sucker for steampuck fml). == 975

- 2x Rune Pages == 520

(I currently have Cho'gath and Anivia unlocked thru IP). 

That leaves me with a few hundred left over. Just enough so that if I something /I must have/ comes out, I buy the $5 RP pack and have exactly 975, so enough to get whatever it is. 

On the other hand it's like "oh $5 more and get the $50 pack, and get 780 points more points, which is cheaper than $5 later on for 650!". Which I could get another Rune page + the purple Cho'goth skin (because Purple is way better than Red, but that skin is so overpriced for just a palette swap).  

And it's not like I'm really strapped for money that badly anyway.

Then I get to focus on spending my IP for runes, not champions. 

Though my IP list would just be:

- Teemo - 1350

- Warwick - 1350

- Kog'maw - 6300

- Ramnus - 3150

- XXX 450 IP champions so I qualify for Draft.

- Would probably grind out an IP rune page after this point

Mostly just to round out my champion stable (with stuff that could actually lane bottom).

Since I'm pretty interested in the champion and laning meta right now actually, even though I'm worrying about that a little too early at this stage (baby hedgie). 

However, I'm not sure how necessary those Rune pages are, especially while I don't have anything to really put in them. But I'm such a terrible min-maxer that just "reading" this

Makes me cringe. How on earth could you let yourself have an inferior rune selection, crycry. Even though runes aren't even that big of a deal in the scheme of the game itself. It's the concept, man, how could you let yourself not be the best you could be. 

ANY COMMENTS IONO RAMBLERAMBLE 

Had a blast last night with a few of yall.

Even though we sucked it up. Minus our Yorlick/Zil.

Maybe next time, Carbon wont be such a noob.