2 things

1 - my ranked 5's team will be playing tonight at 9:30PM EST.  Will be streaming in case anyone wants to check us out. 

2 - there's a tournament coming up on 12/15/2013 (Sunday) at 7PM.  MadCast is hosting.  The catch - you need to either be a candidate to join MadCast or be a MadCast member.   Here's a link to the tourney page.  Currently the #3 viktor in NA is enrolled as well.  Should be fun:  http://www.madcastgaming.com/ips/topic/14129-yordle-conquest-continues-5v5-event/

A few things about MadCast.  1st - most nights I have a minimum of 5 people to play with now.  Varied skill levels, mind you, but I like about 90% of the people I've met.  In short, its a pretty good group to belong to and I very much recommend getting involved with them if you are interested as well.  Side note - I'll probably be moving my blog over there at some point - will let you folks know what that happens.

Anyway, if you are interested in learning more about MadCast, ask her or chat with me.  You can also check out their website:  http://www.madcastgaming.com/

Becoming a candidate is incredibly simple.  Create a forum account over there.  Read this post on how to create an introduction:  http://www.madcastgaming.com/ips/topic/10868-how-to-post-an-intro/

Last, post your introduction here:  http://www.madcastgaming.com/ips/forum/5-introductions/

You do that and you are on your way to becoming a member.  And if you and I play together regularly or semi regularly, you'll have an easier in for becoming a full member as I play a bunch of game with MadCast people now.  Pretty easy to meet new folks and get to know them.

re: the skill level of MadCast folks.  2 things with this.  1 - I played with any and everyone I could when I was a candidate to get a feel for the community, etc.  This meant good players and bad ones.  Their in house games generally aren't like ours as everyone is generally welcome.  That said, it is completely possible to get in games with higher skilled people on a regular basis without having to put up with billy herp derp.  You'll still have the occasional weaker player pop in, but its as simple as finishing that game, taking a quick break, and then queuing up with another group of Madcasters.  I actually hated some of the games I got involved in during my candidacy because of low skill cap city, but now I'm pretty comfortable navigating (eg I don't feel like an ass if I bugger off because I don't want to play with X person because there are so many people). 

I personally think Bryff/karl should consider joining up.  Hedgie as well if he likes ofc.  Zen would probably join.  hunny I'm thinking maybe not. 

nerf rammus more plz riot

start of an article re: jungling...

When/How to Invade - a discussion on the best way to start as a jungler in season 4 on SR

So, before I get into any of this, I want to clarify that I believe junglers should decide and dictate the flow of the game for roughly the 1st 2 minutes.  This post is primarily going to be about those first 2 minutes of gameplay (though I might touch briefly on strategies after the initial invade, etc).  This will only focus on the Summoner's Rift map.  I'll cover some basics 1st.

When to make a call

• If you are playing with pals in voice chat, you can discuss the invade at any time - I recommend doing so before the game loads so people shop quickly, etc.
• If you are playing in draft mode, you should start discussing invading in the lobby if at all possible.  If that did not happen, at the very start of the game, the jungler should immediately ping a spot, indicate invade, and move as quickly as possible to the setup point.
• If you are playing blind pick, you have limited intel prior to the load screen of what enemy jungler you are up against.  I find its best to make a decision based on the enemy team and yours during the load screen.  Then, as soon as you get in game, ping a spot, indicate invade, and move as quickly as possible to the setup point.

Goal of the Invade

It's fairly important to understand that there are a few different reasons for invading the enemy jungle. 

• Buff Steal - the goal being to steal an enemy junglers red or blue buff camp in order to set them back.  This is actually the easiest type of invade to pull off, but there's actually quite a bit of strategy that goes along with this.  I'll get into that in a bit

• Pick off/burn summoners - here the goal is catch someone on the enemy team off guard.  The primary goal is to get a quick kill to set an individual player back, but even if you only get a summoner spell from the enemy, that's still a pretty big win provided you capitalize on it.  There are 2 general methods for a pick off.  One method is to group together and attempt to catch someone out very early (between 40 seconds - 1 min 20 seconds in).  This is actually the safest method.  The other method is more risky and more costly - attempt to pick off someone while the enemy team is trying to acquire a blue/red buff. 

"Overrides"

I believe that the jungler should be making the call on the invade.  But, what if you make a call and folks don't show up and show up late, etc?  In those instances, you need to quickly decide how to play things.  Perhaps you just skip the invade, perhaps you still go.  Depending on your jungler, a botched invade can be very costly.  If you experience level is low, I recommend you just abort the invade if you are missing folks that you believe you need.  In those instances, you probably just want to secure one of your own jungle buffs.  

How do I know what call to make?  5 Factors

Now, this is actually where the most thought is required - and you have a very limited amount of time to think through things.  In short, you need to learn to run through the following things very quickly.  The 1st point below is the most important imo, though. 

• What champ is the enemy jungler using?  Add quite a bit here...
• What is your team composition?  Quickly think through what the odds are of your team securing a quick pickoff kill.  Here, hard CC is king.  Also, consider what your teams level 1 will be like in the form of burst/damage. 
• What is the enemy team composion?  Do they have hard cc?  How strong is their level 1? 
• What side of the map are you on?  This is important to consider because it can indicate the maximum number of defenders if the enemy team does not invade.  EX if I'm blue side, I have most potential defenders at my red buff (mid/jung/adc/support).  If I did a blue start, I'd have (top/mid/jung).  This is really important to consider if you are doing a delayed invade (eg invade when the buff spawns or just before).
• Do you believe the enemy team will attempt an invade or just try to secure their blue or red buff?  This generally comes with experience, but there will always be a random element to this. I'll provide some examples below

Some examples

Let's say there is an enemy amumu on the other team and I'm shyvanna.  Now, amumu is pretty weak at level 1, so I wouldn't expect him to invade.  I also know that if I take blue away from amumu, I've hurt his jungle quite a bit.  So, just based on the enemy jungler alone, now I want to invade to set amumu back.  If I've got also have any sort of hard cc on my team, I'm suddenly super motivated to go for an invade. That said, there are 3 strategies I can now go for. 

1 - skip the invade.  Instead, attempt to kill amumu when he goes to his red buff.  This has the most devastating effect on him.  If I get a kill, he loses his blue and is severly gimped.  His best case scenario is to escape but will have to use his flash.  You might be able to steal his red as well, but you need to keep a very keen eye on the mini map - if folks come to assist him, you could have a very bad time. The downside to this is that you are literally waiting on amumu to show up.  If he does not show, you lose time. 

2 - steal his red.  You are reasonably confident that amumu won't be at his red.  It also might be undefended.  So, its the easiest place to go.  That said, if the enemy team sees you doing this, they amumu will likely just bounce over to your red to steal it.  The result is a bit of a wash as you just swapped buffs.  That can also be good, though, as you know where the enemy jungler will be and can gank either top or bottom without the jungler interfering. 

3- invade the enemy blue and force a fight.  Things to consider - if you go too early, sure, you can push them off their blue, but the enemy team will just try to relocate to your blue.  You just end up swapping buffs.  If you decide to go for a delayed invade (eg you move in so that there is no possible way the enemy team could relocate to your blue buff - or just before/after the blue buff spawns), you gamble with more.  The more people you have, the stronger your invade/kill potential.  But, the longer you stay, the more xp/gold is missed in lanes. 

streaming a little tourney - starts in at 7PM EST

Oh good - I'm a slum lord on the other side of town, so that works.  What does business have you doing in cbus, karl?

I'm training some people through Wednesday.  Originally I was going to be up north in Dublin, but then I got moved down into the Southeast part of town which doesn't seem quite so nice.

scaling back my game time a smidge.  Think I only got 2 lol games in tonight.  Had a nice evening, though. 

Merry Christmas to you and Karl and Bryff!  And anyone else who still reads this blog now that you do most of the posting on the MadCast forums.

Congrats on the non-smoking thing, that's awesome.  Patching it or cold turkey?

Been watching your ranked team play when I'm at work sometimes and you guys have been doing super good, but you might find some fiercer competition when you start playing Ranked.  And I'm not just talking about the 5X Diamond teams.

Here are my unsolicited suggestions:

- Try and get Kit to stop playing with Gold Quints AND Seals.  Just not worth the huge laning disadvantage now that supports get a lot more gold IMO.

- Every after game talk I've been privy to you guys have, all have revolved around "We should have pushed when-" or something like that.  You're pretty much the coach, so start coaching some fundamentals instead of just big picture tactics.  You have the Showdown available for another week for some 2v2's and 1v1's to improve peoples laning, you can help people expand their champ rosters to improve team comps.  Not every loss can be explained away with "We should have ___ed when they ___"

- The few seconds it takes for the enemy to jump out of the fog of war and kill you while you're split pushing is not the huge opportunity for your team to take objectives that you think it is.  It was fun playing with you the other day, but it was interesting to hear you say "Well, we drew two of the other team's heavy hitters down to us but I guess we're not going to do anything with it."  We don't know you're about to die 2v2 because their are less wards now, and that still leaves 3 of the enemy team to deal with.  Exactly how many towers and inhibitors do you want us to take 3v3 with while you're dying?  It's amusing for those of us who are used to playing with you, but in a more competitive Ranked 5's environment it might get a little obnoxious to have a team's shotcaller have that perception.

never really been a fan of patching/substitution.  The addiction is to nicotine - so just changing to something else in a smaller dose just makes things agonizing.  Besides, I'm more of a pull the band aid off quick and just say "ow" instead of doing it slowly. Thanks for asking.

I'm not really concerned about facing better teams, etc.  We'll fight em and win or lose.  No biggie.  My goals are pretty simple for the team.  Meet consistently, sort through personality conflicts, get better as a team - kind of in that order, I think. Anyway, I'm not going to exactly be surprised if we get our arses handed to us. 

Kit's off the team.  Our new support is hyndesyte and he'll be initially running more ap carry style supports.  We're going to discuss that concept more as a team and move him towards more common supports based on bot lane chemistry and how he performs as AP carry support (are we still getting wards, pros/cons, etc).

re: me being the "coach" - well, I don't know so much about that.  I guess a little bit.  Think of it more like football if you want to go that way - I'm probably more of an offensive/defensive coordinator and you are talking about a quaterback coach, etc.  I'm not really lasering in on individuals outside of things that hurt the overall team strategy.  Things like you need to rotated to here if X happens, you need to back door now while we X, you need to not run around their jungle for inexplicable reasons, and you need to drop off that tower immediately to attack dragon... or other stuff like I should have made this or that call for X reason. 

Well... all of our loses I can explain why we did lose, though.  So far anyway. 

Comments like that from me are usually pretty disingenuous or at least prove to be incorrect on reflection.  I wouldn't really take me seriously in such instances and I really should just keep my mouth shut when I make goofball decisions like that.  I try to stay away from such things with my team as I do tend to f around quite a bit less there.

onto mr karl!

I really should - of all the vid's I've made of the team, I've only looked back on a few of the games.  Wish I had LoLreplay installed/it worked as I'd enjoy reviewing a game with the team.  It would probably be really beneficial for us to take a look at what I'm doing in the jungle and what each lane is doing to explain the thought process, etc.

Definitely something I'll keep in mind and take a look at (and mention to the team). 

Thanks for the thoughts/feedback, fellas!  Hopefully catch you in game soon (I'll be on some tonight). 

Cigarettes are smelly so hurrah for tons of lifes

I learned that red trinket will disable traps for the duration.  Irelia vs teemo lane?  Wait for the blind harass, then jump to a minion and ew on him, when he puts down a shroom you just trinket right there, or if he runs you can trinket and ignore any shrooms he has set up.  Make sure there are still enemy minions in lane and you have r before going in, or he'll probably still manage to kill you in a full on fight in mid laning phase.

AP teemo just died.

Yeah, too bad Kha sucks in jungle.  Or more precisely, he is a very niche jungler who is a "get good stats, lose game" champion in most comps.

Yeah, you will kill people out of jungle.  But you have no CC and no front line presence.  So you put a massive burden on the rest of your team to fill those roles or its a complete disaster despite your nice looking stats.  Its very similar to playing Jayce top back in the day.  If you can get a front line/CC from elsewhere, Kha is great.  Otherwise, its a huge mess.

We saw this twice last night.

Game one of jungle Kha we had you jungling him and a Vlad top.  Our team CC consisted of Vlad pool and a Karma slow.  I got the privilege of being the ADC.  Its not exactly fun going up against a Vi and a Zed when your peel consists of a Karma slow and your initiate consists of...maybe Vlad pooling in?  Kha going on a suicide run?  I don't know what the initiate was supposed to be.  I mean, I came out of the laning phase substantially up, and then just repeatedly died.

Game two we had you as Kha jungle and Dan went Nid top.  I saw this and went Leona jungle since I had complained about the lack of front line/CC the last game.  Unfortunately, I was going Leona into a double Diamond bot lane.  Who both mained bot lane.  And were an organized team.  And my playing partner was also not a bot lane main.

Now, this is where you need to look at the team comps again.  You choose to camp mid.  As I said after the game, I do not believe this was the right decision.  Yes, you started 6/2/x.  But as you also repeatedly pointed out, your stats quickly went downhill after that.  You know why?  Because you were playing an assassin on a team with no front line/CC.  As you said above, you want to wait for the engage, then go in and kill.  You know why we had no front line/CC?  Well, you essentially triaged bot lane at level 1 in favor of going elsewhere, which left your only front line threat way behind, which meant you couldn't do your thing late.  Instead, you camped a second assassin lane.

This is what I was trying to explain - I think that you need to look at team comps and realize that you are gimping the team comp in some respect by going Kha.  So you REALLY need a tank from somewhere.  So you MUST give some help to your (only) tank lane if they need it, otherwise you just auto lose the game if that lane fails.

Now, we were obviously going to lose anyway since the other team was just better and more organized, but the game would have been closer IMO if you had chosen to get your only tank stronger rather than work on getting a second assassin up and running.

Basically, its hard to win a game without any CC or tanking or ability to initiate.  REALLY hard.  Yeah, you can try doing some kind of all out split push.  But good luck with that.

So yeah, if you have a Leona bot and Renekton top, Kha is great in jungle.  But he just doesn't work in a lot of other comps.  Of course, you could pick Kha and hope that the rest of your team will pick around him appropriately, but that just isn't how things work out usually...

What?  Lee and Elise have lots of front line presence and initiates, and Elise has CC, so they fit into like every team comp.  Thats why they get pick and banned so much at every level.  They work in pretty much every team comp.

There aren't that many more options for front line champs this season - its just a few supports like Leona.  The main difference is that junglers can effectively choose to build more damage (on champs like Vi) or go full tank.  But they still carry a lot of front line pressure/initiation responsibility in most lineups.

But anyway, the main reason that Junglers get stuck in fairly generic tank/CC roles is simple.  They only have to worry about team comp.  Laners have to worry about team comp AND they have to worry about lane matchups.  So it is better for the jungler to take a generic team first role and leave as much flexibility to the laner as possible so that the laner can pick appropriately into their lane.

If the jungler takes a niche pick, they greatly restrict the laners' picks, especially top.  This is especially bad since top is currently a very heavily banned out lane.  So now you have a top lane who probably has several picks banned out, and has to fulfill a very specific team role, and still has to worry about a lane matchup.  And he has to worry about his champion pool.  That can get into a nasty situation for that player very very quickly.

Once you get to Diamond/Challenger, yeah, maybe people can handle it.  But at Gold/Plat, its not a good idea to pray that your lanes can play the perfect champ that you cornered them into.  Especially if you don't give them help if they try and do it.

I don't have a problem with Kha as a 4th or 5th pick in the right comp, but jungle Kha as a first pick really messes with the whole team unless is well coordinated ahead of time.  I also don't have the problem with trying it out a bit last night - the first two games we did it it was fine.  But its a bit harsh to try it on in a 5v5 inhouse game when we are playing against a team with 3 diamonds and 2 plats.  I think that we should try and have a reasonable team comp there.

When facing 3 Diamond/2 Platinum teams, it is usually best to go with champs that you know well and have build options that go beyond Glass Cannon. Not really the case with Pacov's Kha'zix choice I'm sure.  Musta been frustrating, but no need to let games like that color your perception of Kha'zix.

Obviously Elise and especially Lee have a lot more utility and build options, but let's not get carried away.  A single target skillshot doesn't let Elise fulfill all your team's CC needs like Nautilus and if I had to choose between J4's ult and the faint hope that your Lee can pull off Insec-ing the opposing teams carry as my team's late game initiation choices, well yeah.  I lumped those 3 together because when you pick them, you're planning on trying to snowball yourself and/or your lanes with early ganks. Nobody chooses Elise thinking "I like playing her cause she has such a variety of build options!"

I'll grant that mentioning him with two God Tier junglers that have a chance to excel in/against every team comp is silly.  As silly as calling one of the better junglers in the game currently a niche pick.  One of the few that is capable of carrying a game from the jungle, which is rather appealing nowadays.

If it was a matter of some meh carry jungler, then yes it's totally not worth forcing one into the line up.  But a well played Kha'zix is really worth having on your team IMO, and I'm not sure if you've seen a really good one in action yet.  No offense, but Pacov playing him and ending up with a positive KDA as his tankless team weeps silently doesn't count.