yeah - I skipped a tier as well.  I don't know how generous they are with skipping ahead (maybe your link indicates, but I can't read lol forums at work), but maybe they only bump you ahead once?  I'm not really sure.  Anyhow, that means I'll likely promote to silver 1 on my alt account shortly, which I'm not all that excited about (sorry if that sounds douchey to anyone struggling to get promoted).  The whole point of my alt account (at least in my mind now) is so I can play with my lower level pals without having them get matched against gold or higher opponents.  From what I've seen, if I were to duo with a bronze level player on my gold account, the bronze level guy would be up against folks closer to my level resulting in a much more difficult game.  Anyway, I'm not willing to tank random peoples ranked games so I can be at a lower level, but at the same time, this alt account of mine is pretty useless imo if I hit gold with it.   First world nerd problems.

I think the way it went for me on my primary acct is that I went from bronze I to silver V, then went from silver V to silver 3 immediately... or I went directly from bronze 1 to silver IV, can't remember.  I moved through the ranks pretty quickly, but had some losses after I was bumped, so I didn't get double bumped (eg win at silver 3 did not then bump me to silver 1).  It does stand to reason that I'd hit silver 1 for sure if I win my next 6 games anyway.  Kind of hoping that doesn't happen, but I'll do my best to win, ofc.

Still really surprised about my penta nonsense lately.  I get 2 in a week after having 0 in all the time I've played lol.  The enemy team even gave karl a penta the other day by running into our fountain, so mr karl now has at least 1 penta anyway. 

I really need to put some time into my main account for ranked.  Haven't really been all that motivated as my original goal was to hit gold and I pulled that off.  I'm literally 1 win away to starting my promotion series from gold V to gold IV.  I really don't care that much atm.  Maybe I'll just play the next time we duo on my main account and we can see how we do.  You will def be up against stronger opponents at the very least.  Now that you aren't in a promo series its less of a big deal in my mind anyway. 

so, last I checked, pbe was all jacked up.  They reverted to a previous build to try to hotfix something (or so it seemed), but we haven't seen a hot fix.  Not sure if they reloaded the changes since then.  Anyway, the new champ is one I think most folks are really going to like.  Really like the idea of playing her as an AP jungler, but her home is very much mid/support imo.  Great kit and a viable ult.  Easily best champ I've seen in some time.  Highly recommend picking her up when she's released.  No idea if she's back on pbe atm, though. 

Riot really jacked up pbe with the rollback/hotfix thing.  I'm a little lost as what all the actual changes are for the next patch... or even wtf they were trying patch.  Shame as the patch stuff is what I'm typically most interested in.  Haven't read any real interesting stuff from red's recently.  All talk on reddit is mostly repeats of old info, ama requests for folks I don't care about, and lots and lots of tourney talk.

As a side note, I'm thinking about reinstalling lolreplay.  Apparently someone found a fix that supposedly solves the random crashing problem.  I really miss having replays and will likely make some more quality vids once I get that functionality back. 

I'm currently having a lot of problems with the client.

EDIT: I might not be having client problems... my roomate has taken it upon himself to download wrestlemania (sp?) on our crappy internet with crappy router... so i don't know how long THAT will take... still might be client side

twas the night of many arse whoopins - the summary is really the night of trying to figure out how to place folks well when we have a lot of mids, etc.  I think folks playing w me went like 1/5 all said and done.  More commentary in the AM.  Regardless of the pain, thx for the games everyone!  Night!

something going around about pentakills lately.  I get 2 in 1 week after never.  karl gets 1.  And now thunder is also in the club. 

Side note - I AM SO FREAKING HAPPY THAT I DIDN'T GET THAT KILL ON AKALI!  You are actually quite lucky that you got the last hit in on her (look at how close some of the kills were!)  I was not paying attention that you got all the kills, so I almost shit on your moment there bud.  Anyway, congrats on killing 5 of them and stopping my best attempt to get a kill.  You win this round. 

Here's your vid.  Sound is missing sadly - I'll upload to youtube and add in some music anyway later

http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2135657

and here's the youtube link - should be up with sucky song in no time at all - night!

Thanks for posting that man!  But now I feel guilty for all those times I KSed you...

if someone comes across jona, would you share this link with him?  http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=326034

Anyone that streams might benefit from it.  Its just a simple program that shows you the best twitch server to use based on ping.  SHOULD reduce some latency/drops.

I'd like to make some notes about team comps from a junglers perspective.

I don't really like telling people what champions they should or shouldnt play, and I'm definitely not blaming anybody for anything.  But I would like to give some of my thoughts.

Most teams require 3 things:

1) Damage

2) A reasonable amount of hard CC

3) A front line that can start fights and soak up some damage

If you are counting on your jungler to be almost all of #3 and most of #2, bad things are going to happen (with a few rare exceptions like Amumu).  Your jungler is poor - the position pays out about the same amount of gold as the support.  This means that expecting one of the poorest people on your team to fulfill a huge chunk of what your team needs is probably going to lead to problems.

Take the first game tonight.  Our front line consisted of me playing WW, with maybe a little bit of help from Ryze.  WW is actually a terrible engager in the teamfight phase - he can ult in, but it will always get invalidated by CC if you use it as the initiation.  So we had this game where we didn't really have a great poke team and we couldn't engage in teamfights.  So it was just people getting picked off over and over since we really didn't have a winning path.

The second game also had me as the only front line member.  It went a bit better, but there was definitely a problem where we just had to kind of fold back on our team and couldn't really do anything to the enemy damage dealers because of a lack of a front line.

Basically, in my opinion, tops need to be tanky most of the time.  Tops who are not tanky and do not have hard CC put a lot of pressure on the rest of the team.  They can certainly be played well, but if a team uses them, the rest of the team has to be fairly carefully selected.  There probably needs to be a tanky support like Leona.  Or we need to call a total poke team ahead of time so that we can pick appropriate champs for that.

Basically, Karl gets grumpy when he is the only front line member and playing champs like WW.  I can't poke and I can't engage.  Not good.

Once again, not blaming anybody for anything.  Just saying how I see things as a jungler.

Oh - and I'll add this slight change as well - when thunder and I are sorting teams, I might still keep the stream up, but I'll kill the audio going forward.  I guess I could just add a big delay on the stream too.  Some of you folks might be a smidge more sensitive than me on this, but I think its fun to get to hear what people think during those decisions and what we are mouthing off about during game/in champ select.  That sort of stuff is very entertaining to me, but I get that folks don't want to hurt other's feelings, so fair enough.  If it was me getting trash talked and I heard it, I'd just do everything I can to destroy whoever is running their mouth and make them eat crow.  Anyway, I'll either kill the stream completely during thunder and me sorting teams, kill the volume, or add like a 5 min delay on the stream.  If it seems to be a very sensitive thing, I'll just kill the stream tho.  At any rate, you won't be able to hear thunder and I sorting teams live going forward.

Re: Picking Teams

Sucks that it took so long... but it sucks worse wasting more time playing a stomp and then having people not amped on accepting in house invites in the future right?  If I'm going to be in a sorta team captain role, I'm going to have to insist on one person dividing up the players into two teams, and the other picking which one he wants to be on.  I'll either divide or choose, don't matter.

I just feel too awkward discussing the playing faults of my friends (or anyone for that matter) and I don't like being put in the position of saying "I'll trade you Player A for Player B" because if my team wins, it feels like it's because I essentially chose the teams in a way.  My method isn't perfect, but it's at least fair and expedient.

If that's not how you want to do it, it's fine... but I don't want to be in charge of balancing teams if it's not.

Re: Karl's Teamcomp Seminar

Karl, I respect your knowledge of the game and you make some great points.  I'm going to work on my champ selection top to try and get some more tanky people in my stable.

But.

It's strange you put the onus of losing those games on the champ selection of the top player.  In the first game you chose WW, a tanky "second in" champ when your team needed an initiator.  Why don't you learn to play J4?  Where's your Maokai at?  Not telling you what you need to play... but... ain't that what you're doing?

In our second game we had a poke comp and didn't play it well at all.  We didn't ban a champ that could easily dive us, and we simply just didn't have the teamwork and coordination to pull it off is how I see it.  If you see it as "Jayce is too squishy" was our main issue, I guess we'll just agree to disagree.  

Though to be fair, when they were running through us like nothing I really wish I knew how to play WuKong or something...

but - jayce is too squishy.  I think I was 3 hitting you any time you got near me.  That means something if jayce has to be a front line champ and where you need to be is close enough for the adc to hit ya.  If he doesn't need to be front line, then hey, no worries.  I went through an I jayce phase playing him out of top lane only for awhile.  It gives you an incredibly safe lane with pretty solid kill potential - and really fun damage potential for late game.  I stopped playing him when I decided that he wasn't bringing enough to my team.  I could carry and play him how I wanted provided things we're even or in our adv.  If that wasn't the case, though (eg team is losing), ranged poke is not enough to justify having him late.  I think if you have a jayce, you actually need to have a comp that has an initiator and tank for him to work well.  But picking jayce removes the character that would typically tank.  Anywho, I actually really like playing jayce and he's fun to use, but that's why I stopped using him.

You and I should both learn how to play wukong.  I screwed around with him a bit ago.  Just need to learn how to lane him properly.  He's an excellent bruiser/tank/intiator/peeler.  I could play malph out of top lane all day... so freaking boring though... but usually worth it for the team.

re: creating teams - yah - I still really don't care how we get it done and agree with wanting quality balancing over quickest hit - still kinda wish we could do things faster - that's just me griping though - we really don't have to change anything.

@vlad - yah - I think we will all take some time and talk team composition before we play another and make sure we are on the same page.  That's really a big missing piece and we need to do it.