I get that - I'm assuming they are launching all the season 3 changes tomorrow though - new jungle, masteries, etc.  Hopefully that's the case...

fun games tonight - thanks for carrying in our 1 ranked jack!

sigh - they hit the new champ with the nerf bat... ah well

"Hey folks,
As recently outlined, we’re going to be taking the opportunity to roll out some gameplay changes during the Preseason that we think will make League of Legends even better. Overall, we’re really satisfied with the diversity of champions that are viable at all levels of competition, and the variety of winning strategies that are out there. But we think there are ways we can still improve game pacing, champion diversity within roles, and customization options. The Preseason gives us an opportunity to look at some of the underlying systems that define the game, and make improvements there.
Items: One of the biggest places we feel we can add some interesting strategic decisions to is the item system. Many of you have told us that you’d like to see more build variety, and more interesting gameplay on items. We couldn’t agree more!
You’ll see some rebalancing of the existing items, but there’s also a slew of brand new items to spark your imagination and reward your ingenuity.
Xypherous will be giving some juicy, juicy details on this, but here are a few things to expect:

• Underserved classes (AD Casters, for example) will get more items targeted specifically at their role
• Most of your old favorites will be sticking around – we want more options, but we don’t want the item shop to be totally alien
• A few items that have been challenging to elegantly balance are being removed in favor of the new options
• We’re taking a look at overall gold and stat balancing
• Many old items have received new upgrade paths or additional upgrade paths
• Supports are getting some items to help ease the ward burden in longer games

This is the biggest change and, frankly, it’s pretty damn exciting. We’re really interested to see what people discover, and we’re confident this will help add some diversity and interesting choice to how you’ll be building your champions in the future.
Jungle: Much like we did at the start of Season 2, we’ll be featuring jungle mechanics changes for this preseason as well.
We liked a lot of the flow and feel improvements to the jungle (opened up non-safe junglers, more ganks, etc.), but there’re some things we can still improve. We had two major goals here: to add to the number of viable junglers, and to change the gank flow to ensure that the jungler isn’t the only role that defines the flow of the game during the laning phase.
Statikk will be revealing more complete details on the changes, but we believe this will have some positive effects on the metagame and improve champion viability, even in lane. We’ve even included new jungle-specific items (now there’s more than just Madred’s!)
Masteries:Another big opportunity is masteries. While we want to add variety to your mastery choices, there are also few specific areas we want to improve:

• Going deep in the Utility Tree is currently underwhelming
• Early flat Magic Resistance and Armor prevent people from being killed even if they get really outplayed in lane
• There aren’t enough “cool” masteries

To this effect, FeralPony’s been busy taking a jackhammer to our masteries  to fix these problems – all the while looking for opportunities to add more interesting things to mastery builds. He’ll be on hand later in the week to talk about the changes in-depth, and to dig into a few specific examples.
Summoner Spells:Last, and definitely not least, we’re taking a look at our summoner spells. A couple sneak peeks:

• We’ve raised the cooldowns of popular summoner spells (Flash, Ignite, etc.) in lieu of nerfing their power
• We’ve added a certain shielding spell from Proving Grounds, and made it so Heal is actually a support skill
• We’re generally buffing some of the weaker skills up!

It’s our hope that these changes will give you more options for customizing your spells to suit your own playstyle or the needs in a given matchup while keeping the cool gameplay of the existing favorites. While I’d love to take credit for actually buffing stuff, good guy Roku is heading this up, so I’ll save the grand reveal for him.
This is an initiative we believe will add even more strategic diversity to League of Legends, and introduce new gameplay to master.
Let’s be clear: this will be an iterative process. We know that your games are going to play out differently than you’re used to and we’ll be watching like a hawk for any issues that we need to patch. If there’s something that’s really breaking your game experience, we won’t be afraid to hotfix things under extreme circumstances. Be sure to keep your feedback coming throughout the preseason, and look for more specifics on upcoming changes from Xypherous, Statikk, FeralPony, and Roku in the next few days!"

-Morello

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2770017

rough night for games.  never quite got a full team going.  And when we had folks, it was frustrating.  Ah well.  Thanks for the games at any rate.  I hoped over to my alt account and spent some time playing ai matches on tt.  Ai is not so good still.  I wish.. I really wish... they'd open up the code so we can mod it.  I'm not amazing or anything, but I figured out and coded a good chunk of the demigod ai mod.  I could easily do that for LoL if the code was out there.  And the bastards won't dedicate a resource to it.  If I get inspired, I might actually hit up some folks at riot and see if its possible to get access to some of the AI code for modding.  I'm glad they coded a LITTLE bit for comps focusing on objectives (they did not do this on SR).  Anyway, had some fun killing dumb bots I guess.  Opportunity for raising team elo gone for tonight i guess.  mayhaps we all already have the gold rewards anyway. 

So - I'm guessing we see patch tomorrow then.  Boring patch, but patch all the same.

"i feel" that our country will continue to do amazing things for the next 4 years... by that I mean that... well, hey - we've got a black president.  And... you know... that's something.  I wonder if he will get another Nobel peace prize for "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". pacov's political moment - I'm pretty disappointed.  I completely agree that Obama inherited a terrible economy.  But 4 years is a lot of time to make progress.  I'm clearly missing what the progress is.  The slogan for his reelection isn't "forward" is it?

Anyway, negative spin aside, I'm very happy that the election is over.  I'm super happy that folks that should be responsible for the country can now get back to their damn job.  Side note - our system is rubbish - we waste so much time with campaigning, etc.  2 years ago Obama should have been more effective than he was this past year because of reelection nonsense.  If you tell me I have to spend a huge chunk of my time trying to keep my job instead of doing my job - well, of course I'm less effective.  pacov lobbies for a single term for presidents - even if they are amazing.  That way work gets done and a good chunk of a year is not lost.  Let America hire a new leader every 4 years.  At least its 4 years of productivity instead of 3. 

Amen to single terms!

I had hoped for a lot better results after four years but he did inherit one hell of a mess.  I heard one Republican pundit say "The country is a car and Obama drove it off a cliff!  We're going to let him keep driving?!"  More like he was in the passenger seat when Bush opened the door and jumped out right before the car went off the ravine.

Also it seems like everyone's forgotten the "Rule Or Ruin" philosophy of the right wingers.  For the past four years seems like people on the opposite side of the aisle have been doing their best to hamstring Obama's efforts to fix things and now they're saying "Golly jee wilikers, we sure were hoping everything would be better by now but..."

Having said that, I'm kinda bummed Romney lost cause I think he had a much better tax plan to put into place but whatever.

I think I may, just completely concentrate on Support. I don't mind the role that much and only thing that I really hate about support is having to play Soraka once in a while. She is really damn boring at times.

My GOD!  An educated voter!

I weep for our country...  So few of us.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the direction of the country!

It's an excellent tribute to AC/DC.

Ignorance is the primary problem with our country.

Progressive income taxes are stupid.  Why?  Boom and bust economy.  Business is the lionshare of revenue under our idiotic model.  When business is good, you have high revenue.  When business is bad, you have low revenue.

Tax revenue typically swings between 14 and 22% of GDP, with the average around 18%.  Irrespective of tax rates.  When I say irrespective of tax rates, I'm not saying tax rates don't make a difference, they do, it's in the opposite direction.  What I'm saying is that the business cycle makes an impact on tax revenue from year to year regardless of whether the tax rates change or not.

In the 90's, when we did the unthinkable and actually balanced our budgets, it spurred massive investment growth.  We had an absurdly loose monetary policy, deregulated the banks, and created a bubble in the dot coms to go with the growth.  That bubble gave us tax revenues above 20%, 2 points above average, a typical boom.  Booms are followed by busts.  Between the bubble and 9/11, tax revenues dropped to 16% over the next couple years.

Normal.  Tax revenue during the Bush presidency were in line with historical norms.  Revenue was virtually identical to the sixties and seventies when tax rates were much higher.

Why are they so low now?  We're in a deep recession and we never left it.  It's probably a depression.  No surprise really, you can't spend your way out of a spending problem, and our monkey in chief followed Bush's lead and tried to do just that.

The government releases various statistics on what GDP growth is, what inflation is, etcetera.  They're lying.  Anyone that believes inflation is near zero is a bleeding idiot.  Our money supply has been tripled in four years time and the cost of various goods are going through the roof.  We're suffering a massive contraction right now, GDP is going bye bye.  The gain is a myth propped up by massive inflation they're pretending doesn't exist.

This isn't to say I like the Bush tax cuts, they're a fucking disaster.  Every year since I've gotten most or all of my social security withholdings back.  That's where the real damage is, social engineering at it's worst.  Give people things for free and make someone else pay for it.  Bush was a bleeding heart liberal, a quasi socialist dunderhead that sold us down the river in the name of compromise.

Romney's tax plan...  He was a terrible candidate, cautious, generic.  His tax plan was rational though.  The president doesn't write legislation.  Congress does.  If you send congress a list of demands, congress tells you to go fuck yourself.  I can name hundreds of loopholes that need closed without needing a reference.  That doesn't mean I could get congress to close them all.  When he went with his proposal, it would be quite simple.  This is where I would like to get the tax rates, these are the deductions I'd like to get rid of, what will you ass monkeys in congress let me have?

Quit talking about politics... I'm the only one from the political machine here