so current pacov tracking - 2/8/2013 - bronze 1.  2/22/2013 - silver 1.  Ending the night in silver 1 with 1 game played and won at this tier - 21 lp.  Those best of 5 promo series were a real bitch for me going from bronze to silver... guessing I might have to try multiple times to hit gold.  Surprisingly to me, I don't think I've had a repeat a best of 3 promo series yet... 5 times on best of 5 bronze to silver though.  trouser got bumped to gold 3 and 2 wins away from a promo series to gold 2. 

hunny is silver 3 in a promo series atm to bump to 2. He's 1/1 atm though.  karl only popped on for a min tonight and then buggered off.  Doesn't look like he's played another ranked.  He's still 1/0 in a promo series to silver 3.  bryff is sitting on 35 lp in silver 2.

muhaha

You started bronze 1 pacov, not bronze 5

And I've got 35 wins, not 35 ip also, didn't play a ranked for a few days and so not sure if the first game in the division will demote me if I lose.  Waiting for a duo queue.

i'll duo w whoever wants tomorrow - just hit me up if you see I'm on. 

I decided I'm going to start working on other carries that I blew a bit with before.  I think I'm starting to get the hang of vayne now.  If anyone has any tricks or pointers, I'm all ears. 

Did not play any ranked today.  Was busy most of the day, played some practice game against the ai as vayne to get a feel for how she works.  Then managed to get on at like midnight for the some games.  Anyway, I was kind of rot with her at the start, then actually learned a little and progressed in skill.  Still a ton to learn.  Feel like I need to get better with the hyper carries.  Really trying to work blade of the ruined king into her kit.  I played some and tried to rush it.  For instance, I'd start sword + 2 pots, then try building it as 1st item.  Didn't work - too squishy to make use of it (or rather, the cutlass) during laning.  So, I've switch to my standard adc build - rushing bt, greaves, then pd.  THEN going botrk.  The point of botrk is dealing with hp stackers.  Vayne can deal with them reasonably by ulting, etc.  botrk adds that 5% current hp dmg (per hit on basic?  me thinks so).  Sadly, I think a better approach would be bt/greaves/pd - then frozen mallet - then botrk.  Mallet means I can pick off anyone if they do something stupid and can more safely disengage (+ bonus hp).  Still trying to find a sweet spot.  But I think botrk is the solution for hp stacking - and your lifesteal gets just sick with that and bt.  I think I end up with like a 56% chance of crit's along with true dmg on every 3 hits (eg completely need armor pen).

I've found I can mitigate some of the early game suck farming by being a bit aggressive and pushing the lane a smidge.  Other weird things I'm trying.  So, I have a standard adc page - its red ad, yellow arm, scaling blue, quint ad.  That's pretty much the most common setup.  I read a guide that actually made a weird suggestion, but I think its quite intelligent (to a degree).  He'd drop 1 point of scaling mr for a blue crit chance.  Now, the crit chance is incredibly small (like .25% to crit or something stupid).  BUT - he was trading off something that isn't insanely useful for a random chance to criting early game.  I decided I'd do something similar, and just dropped 1 red ad for 1 red crit (1.25% chance or something).  it's completely unreliable, but if you hit one, it gives you some crazy all in odds if you are fast enough to pick up on the crit early game.  So, considering you could get like 1-2 AD dmg from that 1 rune per hit early game or have a random factor that could be instantly worth 40-50 extra damage, well, it actually makes great sense to me to go for that silly ass 1% chance of criting.  You could get 0 crits, or you could get a stupid amount of crits.  It's just the lottery.

Other thing that I haven't decided if hits stupid or not - on vayne, I'm not using mr blues.  I'm running AS blues.  It makes a little sense, at least, in that I can get true damage on my w for 3 consecutive hits.  This makes me more of a threat for kills in lane, but much weaker against traditional mid ganks. 

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the best combo.  My premise is that she's a hyper carry.  As long as I can get some farm and money going strong, I can do stupid amounts of damage.  Side note - won't be playing her in ranked for quite some time. 

edit - honey made it to silver 2 btw.

the reason for this (and i keep forgetting to do this - been meaning to for months) isn't because you randomly get a crit when trading and you can all-in.

The reason is because of the mastery "Frenzy"; each time you get a crit you gain 10% AS for 2 seconds.

If you are playing Caitlyn, and you get a Frenzy proc while last hitting, you suddenly have a brief window of opportunity where you can go aggressive and have a slight DPS advantage over your opponent. (2 seconds isn't particularly long, afterall. It probably isn't enough to actually have a "real" DPS advantage since that 10% for 2s isn't enough to actually gain another autoattack over your opponent and an actual DPS lead, you just get to have your second autoattack hit a little bit earlier which makes your opponent think you will win the trade).  

Season 2 Ramble:

Crit % runes are also actually pretty good runes for those with stronger early games and who don't need the extra AD to last hit (so Draven - also works with his passive - and Varus).

i used them a lot on S2 but stopped in S3. Obviously, they are pretty worthless early on, and only start doing work once you have a real item. In S2, Crit% chance runes were a way for you to sorta keep up in damage with an IE build when you went BT (IE > BT, even though BT had a timing window where you had it completed and your laning opponent didn't, also the lots and lots of LS). 

Crit % chance runes scaled really well. i ended up switching to AD/lvl reds instead though, because AD/lvl reds were better level 1 than Crit and were really good level 18 - they were better than Armor Pen with a LW before the penetration changes. With the changes to AD price, though, AD/lvl is pretty bad so stopped using that. 

Anyway:

Nowadays, you're better off with ArPen reds instead of anything-other-than-AD-to-help-you-last-hit.

They don't fall off endgame, they are the best anti-champion runes you can have as an ADC. AD reds are obviously better 1/2/3 and help you last hit, but ArP is better against champions after a few levels - they just don't help you CS. 

The only real exception to that is those Crit % "cheese" runes. 

Also there is a big conspiracy theory that way back when when Riot "normalized" Crit so that it is more predictable.

Supposedly, if you have 10% crit, you autoattack 10 times without a crit, your chance to crit goes up up up.  It is also true the other way around (if you have 10% crit, and get an early crit, you won't crit for another 10 times). 

i have no idea how true/false that is - i'm partial to believe it is anecdotal nonsense.  

Anyway the theorists say that if you have a % chance of say, 8% (Brawlers), the idea is if you count your Autoattacks while you are CS'ing, if you hit say, 10 autos without crit, you should go in because your next few autos are bound to crit. Very much gambler's logic. 

AS blues are one of the best blues you can go for if you're doing damage. They are actually really really good on junglers, the problem is just that most junglers cannot afford to give up MR. 

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i was being a little bit "too" generic regarding ArP reds - Kog'maw as an example is probably better with something else. But he is weird. 

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re: Vayne's W

Tumble is an autoattack reset (auto > Q > auto) applies 2 stacks really fast and isn't affected by AS since the reset.

Condemn also applies a "ring" so auto > Q > auto > E is the best burst Vayne has for quick trades (and pushes the opponent away so that they can't counter).

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re: AS as a dps increase versus other marks

AS reds only improve autoattacks. AD/ArP improves autoattacks as well as abilities (unless you're Kog). 

AS reds only have very specific increases in damage if it isn't a very prolonged engagement. 

It's a piecewise function. 

As you can see, you increase you damage for brief parts of a second, then your opponent "catches up". 

That graph was assuming a default attack speed of 1 second, and a 10% AS boost. The exact numbers don't really matter - they will all look the same. Higher % increases will obviously converge faster to their "true" value. 

That function is also comparing to someone no red runes, no abilities, no ignite, no repositioning. 

AD/ArP runes are stronger with abilities, Ignite allows for "overkill" where very small increases in damage end up not mattering, and AS runes lose more damage to positioning. 

To clarify, between the .9 and 1.0 second you have double the damage, because you autoattacked twice when they haven't yet. However, between the 1.0 and 1.8 second, you both have done the exact same amount of autos, so there is no damage difference. 1.8 - 2.0 seconds, you have auto'd 3 times, but they have only done it 2 times. So you're 50% ahead. Then they autoattack a third time and you are equal again.

This graph gets a lot more sad against people with actual runes.

You start out behind (at the 0 second mark when you both auto'd, their auto hurt more). 

At the .9 - 1.0 second, you have like a 90% increase in damage. However, when they get their second auto, they are ahead from 1.0 - 1.8. 

Then you pass at 1.8, so you're say, 40% ahead. Oh, but they catch up at the 2.0. Now you're behind again. 

2.7, you pass again. Say, 28%. Then at 3.0, they are ahead again. 

Abilities make this even brutal. 

yay!  karl has been promoted to silver 3.  Just won his last promo series game.  grats!

I played one game against an AP tryn and I laned against him. I fucking raped him so I was incredibly unimpressed. Nasus to stronk. AP tryn = zero damage tryn. Zone him away from creep so he can't build rage.

yeah - its always a matter of who's playing him.  I've only encountered 1 copy cat recently and he covered the annoying angle quite well.  I think I was jungle vi in that game and he just kept split pushing over and over.  You go to deal with him and he just runs around like a jackass.  Almost a more mobile nidalee that reappears with full hp if you don't kill them 20 seconds later.  The guy wasn't particularly smart or amazing, but made a nuisance of himself.  Again - why I'm not a fan of folks on reddit posting about shite like that.  That said, it got riot to address it pretty quickly.  I get a feeling that All I do is Win will be losing soon.  He's the real loser with the nerf.  Everyone else gets to be a winner by not having to deal with that rot. 

other thing - I wasn't 100% sold on breaking away from the AS rune setup I was using on vayne, but I think I'm sold now and will just adapt to the slower AA's at level 1.  I don't think the payout is worth it.  I'll probably just go back to AD runes, but might go for Armor Pen as I'm already used to farming as her with the lower base damage. 

I guess in the tournaments, its become really common for adc's to start with dorians blade, which I found interesting.  I was starting with that quite a bit but decided to skip it some time back in favor of long sword + 2 pots.  Not sure if I should rotate back to using it or not or make it situational.  Typically, when I'm adc, I won't even pick up a single db and will just wait out for a stronger item.  Not sure what I'll do, but I'll probably start going dorians if I'm with someone that has a heal mayhaps. 

Also - karl needs to start playing vi in jungle while she's still on the op bandwagon.  Any jungler that has like an 80% of securing a kill should be used imo.  I expect we'll see some sort of nerf on her, but not sure what.  CD on the ult prob needs to go up a bit.  Range on ult prob needs to go up a bit.  Honestly, I think if you remove the knockup on her ult for anyone she passes thru on the way to her target (or substantially reduce that damage), she'd be more in line.  Really surprised I haven't read about proposed nerfs. 

So thunder, when are you going to be back playing again?  I know you said your net blows where you are, but I didn't catch how long you are where you are.  Haven't had a chance to play with you in a long time.

@Pacov

The way I look at it is that DB is the best if you can get away with it, as in you won't get beat up and zoned by a stronger early game support/ADC combo... and if you do, you have a sustain support who can at least get you to a point where you can get enough health back to safely use the DB on hit sustain to get back in the lane.

Since you like to play Draven, I'm guessing you might not appreciate DB as much as you could since forgoing one and just buying boots and Vamp first trip back is fine on Draven cause of his Q, when rushing Vamp without a DB is not always the best choice on other ADCs IMO.  

And in Chaox's opinion as well.  Or maybe I just copy the pros like all the other sheep who play this game. "800G is a huge sink, only get it if you absolutely need sustain to survive in lane. Otherwise just sit on the Long sword."  

But yeah, think about what you're getting for 400:  10% Lifesteal  For 475? 5 Health Lifesteal and lotsa other stuff.  Sure, that 10% will far outscale the DB eventually, but not as soon as people think.  Say you have 100 AD (You'll have less when you first get back to lane assuming an early shopping trip), that means the Vamp gives you 10% LS and DB 5%?  Only if the opponent doesn't have armor, so yes with last hitting but no with trades and harassment... unless you're Draven and do crazy early damage from spinning axes.

Yeah I get massive lag spikes at my parents house every once in a while, even when plugged in to the modem direct... but it's mostly some other things going on too.  My situation might be changing soon, but in the meantime I'll mostly just be lurking around since I can't really commit to an uninterrupted game.  If you're getting into Vayne, we should try her and Thresh out.  I hit a chain, send out a lantern... all of a sudden you're in perfect Condemn position?

@Cow

Having counters doesn't mean balanced.  You need in game counter play and counter building, and it is simply not fun to have a situation where you're saying in the loading screen "Well... we don't have one of the few champs that can handle Champion X, so we lose.  This is such a fun game..."

Sure champs counter other champs all the time, that's part of the game's strategy... but it has to not get out of hand.

she can with lifesteal quints - not sure if that's even remotely optimal - still playing around.