IPL 5, day 1 results

Interesting results after just 1 day of IPL. 24 games have been played and the results are stark for some characters

Lessons learned:
1) If you don't have first pick, ban Diana: Diana has been banned 15 times and picked 8 (yes, in only 1 game was she ignored). In the 8 games she's played, she's 7 and 1. She's that good.
2) Lee Sin is nearly as important. He's been picked in 9 and banned in 12 and gone 7 and 2 in the games picked.
3) Apparently you have to play Lulu. Lulu has only been banned 4 times and been picked a whopping 17. Her win percentage is only 9 and 8, however. She appears to be the "standard" support. Not necessarily the "best" support.
4) Maybe you shouldn't ban Orianna. She's the third most banned champion (11) but her record has only been 1 and 5. So maybe she's not quite as good as people thought.
5) Holy balance batman!. 56 Champions have been played so far and 39 champions have at least one win. That is REALLY good balance for a game with 105+ champions.

Vlad theorycrafting

Ever since I first played Vlad, I was intrigued by his E ability, Tides of Blood. It's a full AoE (i.e it hits everyone) with a pretty good range (620). It has a stupidly low cooldown (4.5 seconds unbuffed) and gives you a 10 second buff that stacks 4 times. That buff makes the spell do 25% more damage (per stack), the spell COST 25% more health and your health regen increase by 8%.

Here's the thing about Vlad, his passive really incentives having a giant health pool. It's not unreasonable for him to have 3500+ health at full build and he'll have 2k at a fairly early stage of the game. Throwing something like Warmog's and Spirit Visage on him makes certain that he'll have beefy regen as well.

So it got me thinking, at what point in the game should you just walk around spamming your E ability because, over the next 10 seconds, you're going to regen the health anyways?

Let's assume that we're not l33t pros and we can't cast the spell EXACTLY every 10 seconds. Assuming we cast it every 9, that means we're going to be spending 70 * (1+4*.25) = 140 health every 9 seconds. We need our HP/5 to be at 156 or better to payoff. As it turns out, Warmog's and Spirit Visage take care of that problem by themselves (with a full stack of Warmog's buff)

Realistically, Spirit Visage and the Warmog's buff aren't really necessary. Your Q ability has a lifedrain and, most Vlad builds have a spell vamp (through either Hextech or Will of the Ancients).

So the answer is, as soon as you get your Warmog's (or Leviathan or whatever), spam the E button. It's net positive for you and a terror for your enemies.

The power of a good jungler

Last night, I played a game with a Cho-Gath who quickly called for the jungle. He needed a hard leash on blue buff to start but after that, he was great. I was in top solo. If you haven't played much Summoner's Rift, at least at the level I'm at, the "standard" arrangement is 2 on top, 1 in mid, 2 on bottom. So my top lane Malphite was against a Blitzcrank / Pantheon duo. As a result, I was kept nearly completely locked out of minion farming on the top. This isn't "bad" per se but it is difficult. If you find yourself in this situation, here's some tips:

1) Build a little bit tankier. Malphite was really good for this because you naturally want to build him that way but Galio, Vlad, Warwick, etc could all be good in this situation.
2) Pick someone with some ranged abilities: Either a ranged auto-attack or 1-2 ranged attacks are going to be very important. For me, the only reason I was able to get ANY kind of farm was that I could throw the rock or step closer and use the PBAoE shock wave to pick off champions.
3) Pick someone who scales well with levels and less so with gold: I had 3 champion kills 5 minutes into the game. It was bad. But, because I was 1v2, I was at level 6 while they were at level 4. That's a big HP/Armor/AD advantage that can make up for some gold (especially if they haven't gone back and spent it yet!).
4) Talk to your jungler about a gank at 6. Your jungler should be 5ish when you hit 6 against 2 lvl 4s. If you're smart about it, you should be able to get a kill at that point.
5) Don't press. You're 2v1. If you push past the river, you're really just exposing yourself to ganks from them. This is ESPECIALLY important if you're purple side where it's easier to slip behind your opponents. It's also important if they are making heavy use of the bushes. Stay aware of where both your opponents are.

It's not a lost cause but it's going to feel very desperate for the first 10 minutes. Just stay calm. Farm as best you can under the turret and work towards that lvl 6 gank (which you should look into snowballing into a 3v1 middle lane gank after that).

I'm not sure who the best champion is if you think you're going to get 2v1 on the top. Malphite was OK but with someone with a little better range, I could have had a better amount of farm early (not MUCH better but better than 3!). I think Vlad would work really well in this situation but there's probably others I'm not thinking of.

Hybrid Zilean

When I started playing League of Legends, I purchased one of the bundles because it seemed like the most efficient use of my time and money. As a result, I ended up in ownership of Zilean one of the few support characters in that bundle. I'm actually pretty good with him. He's an odd character with only one damaging ability but some weird utility abilities on top of that. The typical build path for him is to focus on AP to make the Time Bomb deadly. It's a .9x scaling AoE attack (one of the only ones in the game) so focusing on AP and CDR results in some pretty good damage. But you've got huge swaths of time that you're not doing alot in a fight.

Enter the new talent tree. There's an ability deep in the utility tree that grants 3gp (5gp for melee) for each basic attack that hits an opponent champion. And it got me thinking. I started looking around for support characters with decent move and good range. And what do you know, Zilean is the fastest support character (speed of 310) and has the longest range of any champion not named Caitlyn. So why not build a sort of pseudo-hybrid Zilean.

Guinsoo's Rageblade
Hextech Gunblade
Lichbane

The lichbane in particular is a great ability for AP champions with spare cycles to throw basic attacks (it really should be built on all Zilean builds). The fact that it also boosts movement speed really puts a lock on this as a fantastic item.

Items to build after this are somewhat opponent dependent. Probably early, you're going to build a sightstone in the new meta. But later you may want a Mordred's Bloodrazor (against high HP opponents) or a Frozen Mallet (against faster, squishier opponents). Both of those boost your auto-attacks to do really powerful things (4% max health or 30% slow respectively).

This is one of those, "Theory may not meet application" type things. It's also entirely possible that the Hybrid DPS part is so good that going Utility tree for pickpocket and support is less optimal then just building for offense. But it's an interesting idea that creates some really clever game play. Note, the play style for this would be to try to really lean on the opponent carry and zone them out or even force them to recall. You need to be conscious of how heavily you're pushing so you don't leave yourself exposed, however.

When S3 comes out, I'm going to try this (hopefully I'm level 17 by then) but it's an interesting possibility and it "fixes" an issue with Zilean (too many wide open cycles of time to do stuff).

On a side note, this type of play makes Zilean's early game ridiculous. I already get lots of champion kills early by throwing a time bomb, rewinding and throwing another time bomb. A lot of that is inexperience of people. They don't realize that they're sitting there with 15-20% less health than they THINK they've got because my time bomb will go off soon. By pushing for a lichbane early, you create a situation where you can put on significant pressure to an opponent who probably neither expects it nor RESPECTS it. That's potentially very powerful.

New Jungle, New Items, New Masteries

You can go online and find a number of resources outlining the new items and new masteries. They're beefing up the jungle as well while also pumping the gold/xp payout for them. The really interesting thing is the types of junglers that will be spawned by two items:

Hunters Machete (300gold) - 10% more damage to monsters, +10 true damage on basic attacks to neutral monsters

and

Crystalline Flask (225) - 3 charges of 100hp/40mana regeneration. Rechargable every time you visit a shop

It seems to me that the champions WITHOUT sustain (think Amumu, Alistair, etc) will go 14 points into the new utility tree to start with +50 gold and buy both of the above.

The champions WITH sustain (Warwick, Fiddlesticks, Vlad, etc) will go Hunters Machete and either save for boots or (probably more likely) buy a ward and (if they use mana) a mana pot.

What's interesting is then how those two champions evolve. The latter group will get their boots first and have a little more money long term from not having "wasted" the money on the flask. On the other hand, the former group is going to have better sustain early on and may feel more willing to engage in earlyish (sub lvl 6) ganks.

It'll be interesting to see how the meta moves to accommodate the Flask. It's too expensive to go boots/flask so characters in lanes will have a real decision (vs. the situation now where if you watch top pros it's always boots + 3x health pot except for the support which buys boots, pot, ward.

Crystalline Flask doesn't build into anything and sells back for less than half of what it cost. The Machete builds into one of three items. Two of them are essentially perma versions of the red and blue buffs. I can't remember what the other one is.

There's also an item that works like the flask that drops wards. It's somewhat expensive (700gp i think) and has 4 charges and 100 health. It lets you have 2 wards simultaneously (so you can't use charges 3 & 4 until charges 1 & 2 are gone or you're willing to kill those wards off). It has an upgrade to 5 charges, 3 wards and 300 health. I'll be interested to see how that one works out. It seems weak to me but maybe it works if you buy it early (you have to play 7 wards to get it to payoff).

So if you're looking to jungle, the Winter patch (supposed to happen December 11th at the earliest) should be interesting for you.

Sometimes playing well involves bad kills / death ratios

I played a game (as Diana) that we comfortably one. I was surprised, therefore, to see my stats at the end show 3 kills, 9 deaths, 6 assists. It was a really weird game, however. Our team went 45/60 but only lost one tower on the way to destroying all of the other team's inhibitors and (as well as their nexus obviously). It was as lopsided a victory as I'd ever been in yet had that bizarre k/d ratio. But it got me thinking. There were two specific deaths in which I got a little overzealous at the end and probably shouldn't have attacked. Those two instances aside, all of my deaths were in skirmishes in which we killed people and/or towers. My CS was the best in the game with a wide margin between our 2nd person (only slightly behind me) and their best person. We killed Baron twice and Dragon once. The game went a relatively long time (37mins i think) largely because the other team was more fed than us (leveled faster but didn't have nearly as much gold as it turned out) and the last 15 minutes of the game were fought in their base almost exclusively.

So did I play well? I don't know. I completed dominated the middle lane (I was 3/1 by the time we started downing towers) and while I didn't get many kills, I was doing a ton of damage (most on our team) and generally making sure that their team stayed under 60% health and vulnerable to our other players. So I think I played well. But it was a game that emphasized to me the trickiness of making that determination.

Free Week #2 Analysis

New free week characters are here!

Here's a helpful guide for you to pick your new character

Amumu: What a cute, sad little mummy. This is my daughter's favorite character (the fact that him crying a puddle of tears is his best attack is hilarious to her). He has a tricky skill shot to master (bandage toss) but when you get it down, it's one of the best ganking abilities in the game (gap closing stun on a character with primarily AoE attacks). He's very good as a jungler. You want to build him with AP and tanky items (Frozen Heart, Spirit Visage, etc). Typically a jungler in Summoner's Rift.

Blitzcrank: One of the most prevalent support characters. He's what I'd consider an "aggressive" support. If you can get past his annoying waddle, he's very good. His Q is like Amumu's bandage toss in reverse (pulls an enemy towards him). He's a tricky character to build for as his Q and R scale perfectly off of AP but most of the rest of his damage is physical. You also want to have a decent health pool to increase your survivability from his passive. One note, with a modest amount of AP, his ultimate will instakill all normal creeps. So use it to clear out massive waves late game.

Evelynn: A melee assassin with innate stealth. Her abilities scale off both AP and AD (SLIGHTLY better off AP) so you can build her how you wish. She's got good MR and AR scaling innately as does her hps so she starts out slightly tanky to start. People seem to really like her in Twisted Treeline but I don't often see her in Summoner's Rift as the "assassin" type character doesn't really fit the meta particularly well at present.

Warwick: Used to be a top tier jungler but not an occasional top lane bruiser pick. Warwick has great sustain and relatively straightforward, simple playstyle. With only one ability that scales off AP (albeit, his most frequently used ability with a 1/1 AP scaling), I suspect he's typically built AD but I can't really say for certain. I know he hurts me a lot if he gets fed early.

Udyr: I don't know a lot about this guy other than he USED to be a really strong jungler. He seems really flexible with the ability to switch his stances as needed. His sustain seems ridiculous (Turtle stance granting an early 10% lifesteal and 5% "manasteal"). He is largely an auto-attacking monster though he does have a couple abilities (the shield from Turtle and the attack from Phoenix) that scale slightly off of AP.

Miss Fortune: A very popular AD carry. Milking her passive is a big part of success. She gains speed as she avoids damage. Keep it in mind, however, that if someone hits you with a slow, your speed is going to feel like it dropped to "walking through quicksand" level very quickly.

Vayne: Another AD carry that's popular right now. Very much a rhythm character. She's great in pursuit (with tumble and her passive). One of the things you want to avoid is throwing condemn all willy nilly. I made that mistake a couple times the one time I played with her. Chasing someone down and throwing condemn at them is a bad idea unless you can be certain you're going to knock them into a wall.

Leona: Okay. You may not play as Leona (or maybe you will) but you sure need to know how her passive works in case you play with her. Her spells (but not her auto-attacks) apply a mark to targets that will proc additional magic damage when someone ELSE (not her!) attacks that target. That magic damage counts as the OTHER person's damage (not hers) so she's a great support for getting lots of last hits.

Riven: Between her and Ezreal, sometimes it's hard to tell Japanimation girls from boys. Riven is a girl with a HUGE sword. She has a really great set of skills for an AD carry. A gap closer with a shield, a PBAoE stun and a small aoe chain attack that she can use frequently. She scales really well off AD and you want to grab a little bit of cooldown reduction and attack speed in that mix. She doesn't use mana (which is a little bit of a shame because Manamune would be easy to cap with her) and she doesn't have any health sustain so some lifesteal is probably also a good idea.

Xerath: I'm eager to try this guy. He looks like the definition of artillery. He even has an ability that roots him in place and extends his range of his spells (but not his auto-attacks, apparently). His Q ability already has a very long range and his chains give you the ability to really put a hurt on people. His AP scales into armor so you probably don't need to buy any armor items whatsoever. One note, his anchor ability gives % based magic pen that's fairly significant. Because of the way the coding works, that means you want to avoid things like Abyssal Scepter and focus on things like Void Staff. With a high end spammable ultimate, he's also a mana hog so Archangel's staff is also advisable. So a full build probably looks something like, Void Staff, Athene's Unholy Grail, Archangel's Staff, Rabaddon's Deathcap, Mercury Treads and either Lich Bane or Will of the Ancients (depending on whether you need the health sustain or if you want the raw damage). With that setup, you're at 662 AP before runes/masteries/etc. and 722 with basic masteries. You'll also be at 90% magic penetration when in stance (and 50% when running around). So you're essentially doing true damage. Your full combo would be Mage chains (847 damage), Arcane Barrage (dealing 708 + 1.5 stun), repeat arcane barrage two more times, fire an arcanopulse for good measure (668 damage). So a single target probably takes at least 2972 damage and everyone else in the area takes about 2100. Yeah... you probably want to be shooting from a bush or tree or something because you are GOING to be primaried.

Advice against Diana

At some point, she's going to come up in the free week rotation and you're going to see her a lot. Given what I've seen from high level games, I suspect you'll see her alot there too once you start playing ranked. Here's some advice against her.

1) Dodge her Crescent strikes: They come from her right side in an arc so the movement to dodge is different than other casters' skill shots. You want to move at a diagonal. Furthermore, if she's tossing them near  max range, you can probably just step back. if she's tossing them close, a good Diana will aim PAST you. So your best bet is to be already moving back and at an angle or closer at an angle to dodge. The Strike isn't super fast so constant moving is your friend.

2) Monitor your health: If you get hit by a Crescent Strike, back off and heal a bit. I will jump in if I get a second hit on any kind of squishy target so keep that in mind. If that second hit looks like it's going to tag you, start running away BEFORE the lunar strike. She doesn't have much of a close except for it. However, a REALLY good Diana (not me) will use intervening minions to "leapfrog" to you and catch you from MUCH further away then you realize. I've watched people do this and it's awesome.

3) Watch their build: If they've got magic pen boots and Abyssal Scepter, you may want to just build +health items. If they're going with a tankier build with magic resists, you can probably build your own magic resists. Also, the first trip she comes back with an Abyssal Scepter, Needlessly Large Rod or Rabaddon's Deathcap, you need to recalibrate your safety zone.

4) Watch the trees: If Diana's MIA, every hedge row needs to be considered unsafe. I'm not just talking about the bushes either. Crescent Strike plus Lunar Rush can have her leap over anything.

5) Once she snowballs, stop feeding her: This is probably the hardest skill (outside of last hitting) to master for anyone. But it's especially important for Diana. Once she shows that she can gank you solo (which she WILL do), you need to make sure you start fighting under your tower until you can get back in the race. This goes hand in hand with #3 above as the first kill she gets on you probably gives her enough to buy that shiny abyssal scepter that will make the NEXT gank even easier.

6) Harass early then fight under tower: Diana has no range and, until 6, her ability to gank you is very limited. She also has mana issues for most of the game. If you see she's mana low, push hard. She won't build AD and she only has Crescent Strike. Push her under her own tower. When she does hit 6, let her push you back and fight JUST outside your tower. You ideally want to make it so that IF she jumps in, she'll be getting hit by the tower. Watch for pushes from her that get her minions under the tower also, however. This is a good time for her to dive you. To pull off her full combo, she needs around 345 mana (at ~lvl 8). If she's not bought +mana items, that's about 50-60% of her mana. I can't count the number of times I've WANTED to gank and couldn't due to lack of mana. If she's sitting on 20% mana... just push her until she recalls (or, better yet, bait her into jumping in and gank her with a friend).

LoL new meta predictions

Season 3 isn't quite out yet on LoL but we're already seeing cracks in the current meta. At present, the meta stands this way

Top lane: Generally a bruiser type or other character with good sustain. You're expected to stand on an island for the initial 10 minutes of the game. Prototypical example: Malphite, Yorick
Mid lane: AP carry. That's a magic focused burst damage character. Prototypical example: Diana, Avinia
Bottom lane: AD Carry (physical, sustained DPS) and a support character. Prototypical example: Ezreal, Soraka
Jungler (roamer): Generally some sort of aoe damage dealer because that's what the jungle favors right now. Also important to have a good initiate. Prototypical example: Amumu, Nautilus

The reasons are thus:

Dragon is the more important early game objective to control. Baron doesn't spawn until 15 minutes in and usually isn't reasonably killable until 25 minutes or so. Dragon, on the other hand, can be killed pretty much at anytime if the team gets the chance. So you typically want to have two people in the bottom lane. The XP gain dynamic is different then the gold gain dynamic. Gold gain is binary. if you kill the creep, you get the gold. If you don't, you get nothing. XP gain, on the other hand, is given to all champions within a rather long range and its split. So you want characters that scale well off experience in solo lanes and ones that scale off gold in duo lanes. Generally, the AD Carries (which are TYPICALLY auto-attacked focused) scale better off of gold while the AP carries (magic based burst damage) scale better off of levels. Additionally, the middle lane is the easiest to retreat from while the top lane is the most "isolated".

It's not without merit to mention that the top/bottom symmetry created by Baron/Dragon also has a (smaller) bit of left/right symmetry created by the red and blue buffs on the respective teams. The red buff is on the "bottom" for the blue team (the team in the bottom left) and it's on the "top" lane for the purple team (coming from the top right). The blue buff is opposite. The blue buff is a big Cooldown / Magic regen buff while the red buff is a big buff to auto-attacks.

What's going to change in Season 3?

Well, the jungle is going to be "less focused on the AoE champions". They've specifically said they want Fiddlesticks and Warwick back in the jungle (specifically calling them out but presumably other single target champions with sustain would work too). They're introducing Hunter's Machete (extra damage to neutral monsters) and a refillable potion chalice. Those two items can BOTH be purchased to start the game. That should make pretty much ANY character capable of soloing the Jungle which means that the primary jungle attributes going forward will be ability to gank and movement. Bursty champions. Champions with CC. Champions with a good initiate. All of those will be important.

Predictions: I expect to see Warwick, Fiddlesticks, Nunu and (maybe) Diana being the kings of the Jungle. At least at first.

Gold changes. They're tweaking down slightly the gold from creeps and tweaking UP the gold over time. The net affect of this will be that, support characters get a little more gold and whomever they were supporting will get a little less. It will also reduce (but by no means eliminate) the importance of last hitting. So you'll see slightly stronger support champions and slightly weaker duos (AD carries if the meta doesn't shift). It also MIGHT create more assymetry between sides with the buff emphasis mattering more. This would be great because in standard play, you don't know whether you're going to be blue or purple going in so if, for example, the meta shifted to this.

Blue team: Unchanged team composition but red buff going to the AD carry on bottom and blue buff going to AP Carry mid (after the first time) means the jungler is somewhat XP starved. This could result in blue team focusing on counter jungling (stealing the opponent's jungle) or the jungler jumping into the top lane more often to leach some xp and pressure top. It also means that the red team will have a big advantage over the purple team as a result of the red buff.

Purple team: The purple team gets a bit more changed. Possibly the purple team wants a more AD focused jungler to take advantage of the red buff. Possibly they send their AP Carry bottom lane to take advantage of blue buff. A tankier ranged AP carry (Swain or Gragas for example) could pull this off. A hybrid character may take over as Jungler and claim both buffs (think Jax). You could also see early, and rapid, lane shifts as AD carry and support go top with a bruiser on bottom fighting essentially under the tower. That kind of lopsided game (1v2 on top and 2v1 on bottom) could allow for really scary ganks (particularly with the new single target focused junglers lurking).

I can see a meta revolving around really strong junglers (both the player and the character) and trying to constantly create 2v1 opportunities by shuffling people around. I think you'll see this play style more from the purple team than the blue team as the blue side has a much more "stable" setup (with red buff and blue buff being naturally in the places you want them).

But then, what do I know ;)

Character balance

One of the great things I've noticed about League of Legends is the balance they have managed to achieve with a pretty diverse cast of characters and rolls. There are no less than 6 distinctive roles (i'm sure a real pro would count more) in the game and, in watching 4 or 5 top games, I've seen xx get used

Malphite

Anivia

Yorick

Blitzcrank (never played but always banned... so I'm counting him)

Katarina

Graves

Lulu

Jax

Ahri

Amumu

Ashe

Annie

Caitlyn

Ezreal

Evelynn

Dr. Mundo

Maukai

Cho-Gath

Irelia

Janna

Karthus

Kog-Maw

Lee Sin

Lux

Miss Fortune

Nautilus

Nidalee

Nunu

Twisted Fate

Orianna

Rammus

Singed

Sona

Vayne

Trundle

Xin Zhao

and that's just the ones I remember... That's a pretty incredible diversity considering... 

League of Legends - Too Grindy?

This is not a complaint, per se, but an observation and question.

It takes ~40,000 xp to gain level 30 (about 15,000 to get level 20). There are two ways to play. You can do "rigged" games vs. the computer (rigged in the sense you you set it up so that you have a champion you know and are comfortable with and a good match up against an opponent of your choice). This will allow you to get about 95xp per 20 minutes on Twisted Treeline. But that trick only works until level 15 (8676 xp) which is about 90 games over 30 hours. For the next 31,400 xp, you have to do it the grindy way. That means playing 3v3 games and earning 110ish for a win and 65ish for a loss and games taking about 30 minutes. Assuming you get roughly equal of these (I've been getting consistent wins with fiddle/yorick and consistent 50/50 when I experiment with others), you're looking at a gain of about 90 xp per 30 minutes.

So that's 348 games to get to lvl 30 and about 170 hours. If you play 3 hours a night (a lot), 7 days a week, you get there in about two solid months of playing.

Why are these important? Because the level is a hard cap on your rune slots and mastery points. In fact, until 20, you can't buy the "good" runes at all (there are three tiers of runes and the top tier is available at 20). So no matter how well you play, you're always at a disadvantage against a random opponent until you get to at least 20 and really until you get to 30. This is why solo ranked queue isn't available until lvl 20.

Fortunately, you do hit lvl 20 with reasonable swiftness (probably 12-13 days of heavy play).

And, of course, all that assumes you go with optimal play (grinding 3v3s instantly with your best characters). If you stop to do something "fun" you take time off of that schedule.

Here's the question though, since the community is relatively mature, is that totally fair to new entrants? Everquest quickly got to a point where, after only a couple years, the number of new players was anemic because it was very difficult to get into the game. There were so few new players that you had to either solo or play with twinked out alts. If you played with the twinks, you leveled a bit faster but you were a boat anchor for them (and thus they were unlikely to accomodate you). If you soloed... well... soloing in EQ was no fun.

In LoL, there's no real way to "Power Level" your character. You can purchase double xp time. The best buy is probably the 7 day for 520 (there's a 10 win for 350 which isn't bad for Summoner's Rift players but kind of sucks for TT players). Assuming you play two hours per night and get 4 games in, the 7 day one is good for an extra 2,450 xp over a week (4.7 xp / riot point). The per win bonus would be 1980 xp if you played Summoner's Rift exlusively (about 5.6 / riot point). However, the 7 day one looks a lot better if you play the game heavily during that time.

So, I'm still left with the notion that the game feels a bit "grindy" to me given everything. I wouldn't necessarily have minded if they made me grind up individual characters a little bit more and my summoner a little bit less. I think that would be fair. But the simple grind to 30 the way it is now feels a little bit like a return to EQ in some ways...

Still gonna play, just some thoughts.

First 5v5 played. Ouch

I got on the chat room with the lowelo guys and joined a 5v5 game. Due to my limited champions pool, we played blind which is not the ideal way to play, apparently. The consensus was that I should go ap carry mid lane and they suggested choosing between Vlad and Twisted Fate. Not knowing TF really well and knowing that he's somewhat difficult to play, I opted for Vlad.

I got trounced and so did our team. To be fair, it wasn't all my fault, there was another guy on the team (lvl 30) who was NEARLY as bad as me. But it was mostly my fault. The skills required for 5v5 are significantly different than in 3v3. Last hitting is much harder because the towers are closer (in the middle at least) and you don't have the option of popping in to the jungle to get three kills to catch up on gold like you do in TT. Not having flash also hurts. It's so ubiquitous that it's, frankly, a little annoying they don't give it to you earlier.

I then played another game this morning (random solo queue this time). This time I was Lux because no one wanted to support. So I supported in the bottom lane like I'm supposed to and then when it was obvious our top lane was non-existent, I went up there to at least harass and deny them a free tower push. I ended up killing Wukong 4 times and eventually going on a rampage before my (largely incompetent?) team finally fell apart. I finished 6-4-8 with more creeps killed than any of my teammates. Good thing I picked a support character!?!

It was an interesting game, however. I may play more 5v5. You get more xp and influence points but the games take ALOT longer. I'm also clearly not as good at it (yet?). The next game I'm going to try playing either Fiddlesticks or Yorick since I know them a lot better and see how that goes. Should be interesting.

More thoughts on Fiddlesticks

I played a couple more games as Fiddlesticks last night and I really like him. I also bothered to read his "lore" section which is very interesting as well (and might actually make me read other lore sections). I'm, once again, impressed with the world that Riot has created. I wonder if there's plans to do books about some of the big favorite characters. It seems like a really obvious secondary revenue enhancement and there's certainly a big enough audience for it.

The character himself really surprised me and I wanted to offer up some additional hints/tips:

1) Drain is sufficient that you don't need Smite to kill things in the Twisted Treeline Jungle at lvl 1. I assume this is the same in other game modes but can't be certain. As a result, I'd drop Smite and replace it with something more useful for the rest of the game. Ghost / Flash once you hit 12 would probably be my preference. That gives you two escapes.

2) Take advantage of the bushes in combination with Crowstorm. If you hide in the bushes and then Crowstorm out, there's no visual warning for the opponent. Just BAM, you're there and nuking the tar out of them.

3) Crowstorm is a channeled ability to teleport. But you DON'T channel when you actually do the damage. So a good plan is to Crowstorm into a group and then IMMEDIATELY hit Terror so they can't escape. Throwing Drain on someone can then cover for the fact that you're probably standing in the middle of a ton of minions and at least two players.

4) Dark Wind does 5 bounces. I think as long as there's three, it will guaranty 5 hits (bouncing between them and hitting two of them twice. Keep that in mind.

5) I would suggest speccing for Ability Power and raw health with perhaps one armor item thrown in (Frozen Heart which gives a bunch of armor, mana, cooldown reduction and an aura slow looks tempting). Items like Rod of Ages (+health, +mana, +AP) and Rabadon's Deathcap (+ alot of AP and a % boost to AP) are really strong. Also strong is Hextech revolver (which essentially increases your draining ability by 1/3rd early on) and then later upgrading either to hextech gunblade or (if your team is heavily AP focused) Will of the Ancients.

6) Your passive is easy to forget. It knocks back the opponent magic resist by 10 in the area. That means a couple things. First, you should pal around with another AP character to share the buff. Most AP builds include a little bit of magic penetration so with this (and a likely Abyssal Scepter which gives AP, MR and a magic reduction aura of 20) you can really neuter the defense of a team. Alternatively, you may force them to REALLY increase their MR itemization and change their builds to something less optimal. Note: This does mean that if you're playing characters that always prioritize health as their primary defense, you may be at a slight disadvantage. I don't think Twisted Treeline has any items that knock % of life off of a target (Like Madred's Bloodrazer and Kitae's Bloodrazor).

7) The guides online say that you're weak if you prioritize AP but I've not experienced that. There are sufficient +hp, +AP items out there that you can be reasonably comfortable. The build I've been playing with has 173 armor, 122 magic resist and 2710 hps (again, all without runes and masteries). That appears to be generally sufficient.

The build I'm playing around with has 474 spell damage at level 18 without masteries or runes. That gives the following:

Drain: 1966 damage over 5 seconds (1573 healing). Must channel in range to hit that.
Dark Wind: 358 damage. Hits 5 targets.
Crowstorm: 2691 damage over 5 seconds (pbaoe). Must stay in area to hit

So a Crowstorm, Terror, Drain attack will likely land for somewhere around 4000 plus a couple random affects from items that you may have going on. I've not seen a champion in the game that can take that kind of damage. The fact that they can do little about it is only icing ;)

So go out and play with Fiddlesticks. He's fun.

LoL: New Weekly champions

The new weekly champions are up as of yesterday. I played around with them a bit last night (and two quick games this morning). The ones that interested me are the "Jungler" ones and the "Ranged DPS" ones because both of those fit my playstyle well at the moment. So with that in mind, I played Vlad, Fiddlesticks and Twitch.

As an aside, it's absolutely INCREDIBLE, the flavor diversity they've got with over 100 characters in game. Both their abilities and their general look and feel are fairly unique on almost every character. That's pretty incredible.

Here's my thoughts on the three I tried so far:

Twitch: Wow is he a damage boat. His passive is a true damage DoT with a stacking component. He will single handedly make you want to initiate lvl 1 team fights on Twisted Treeline. The reason is that at level 1, you're going to get an extra trailing 12-60 damage above and beyond what they're expecting. So they need to disengage quicker then they think. Twice last night, I watched as someone popped ghost to run away and then I got the message about their death after they were out of sight. It's pretty wicked. He's an AD Carry so make sure you spec accordingly. As a result of the itemization, he pretty much becomes a glass cannon. I'd like to fix that a bit but it's hard to find items that work really well (it may be time for me to familiarize myself with the item shop). You really want to get the poison dot on there so attack speed buffs are great. You also want to be skirting on the edge of fights so run speed buffs are nice. His Q ability (Ambush) is a nice little escape and attack tool but use it carefully. I'm unimpressed by his Ultimate though.

Vlad: He's the first "non-mana" guy I've tried. He's unique (I think) in that he uses his HPs as a resource. So he has an single target drain (Q) and then his E ability is an AoE attack that damages him but gives a buff to his regen. I find that at 4 stacks (its max for the buff side), I'm regenerating health as fast as it takes it. So there may be some logic in keeping it at 4 permanently (i.e. using it even when not in combat). I'm sure someone's done some theory crafting on that. While visually it launches an attack at a number of opponents, I think functionally it's an AoE hitting everyone around you (without a max?). One other note about his W ability. It's weird. It makes you sink to the ground and you become a movable PBAoE damage and slow "pool" of blood. It's not REALLY an escape and it has a long cooldown. Kind of an odd power, frankly. I ended up using it as an escape mostly but it's only "okay" in that roll. So I'm torn.

Fiddlesticks: This guy was a revelation. He's a goofy scarecrow guy but he's a whole lot of fun. His Q ability is a somewhat short duration fear. It doesn't have a terribly good range and I probably didn't use it right but it's fun. But the real power is in his WER abilities. W is a channeling drain life. And it drains a TON of life. It also doesn't channel like WoW spells as it's not breakable by simply damage (you can stun/silence/fear people out of it though). Your character stands still and just starts sucking the life down on people. This single spell makes him a Jungler par excellence. On Twisted treeline you can easily clear the first two spawns without any help at level 1. You probably don't even need smite but I'd use it just in case until you can confirm it's safe to not use it. Remember when you use this on minions, you want to hit things that have a fair clip of health. So always hit the big guy in a jungle mob or one of those little tanky minions with a lot of hps to steal. His E ability is a chain lightning-esque silence and damage spell. Not sure if it really is chaining or if it's an targeted AoE with a weird visual. But the nice thing here is that it does a fair clip of damage and silences. A perfectly legitimate fight technique is to terror, drain life, silence, chase down. That will probably not kill a lot of champions but it will essentially force them back to base. Finally, the piece de resistance. Murder of Crow's the ultimate. This is a stupidly, ridiculously, awesomely powerful spell. It works this way. Click R. Point to a spot. Channel for 1.5 seconds. Teleport to that spot and nuke it for 300+ DPS. It will kill anything in the area almost without exception. The teleport component makes it a nice surprise if the other team isn't expecting. We were in a game last night where we were all killing their nexus and the other team's Fiddlesticks respawned, teleported into the middle of us and proceeded to kill EVERYTHING before we knew what was happening. Awesome little spell.

Anyways, so those are the champions I played with last night. Generally, I think they're suggested itemizations are pretty good (except maybe for Twitch who might need to take some defensive items along the way). None of them were QUITE as tough as Yorick, but Fiddlesticks and Vlad were close.

League of Legends

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been playing a lot of League of Legends and I'm very much enjoying it. The terminology is very dense and somewhat arcane so I wanted to give a brief little primer for anyone looking to play. This will be equal parts "guide" and "dictionary" for people.

League of Legends "Classic" game mode is a tower "push" game based on an old Warcraft mod (Defense of the Ancients or DotA). I never played DotA but it was obviously very popular and people say it's a good reference point so I include it here for that purpose only. You have a base that you ultimately need to defend. These bases generate "creeps" which are little computer controlled robots that run towards the opponent's base. They followed predetermined paths or "lanes" through the map (2 on the 3v3 map and 3 on the 5v5 map). These creeps inevitably meet their counterparts and, eventually, towers. That's where the players come in. Each player controls a "Champion". At present, there are 105 champions and they're constantly releasing more. These champions each have four abilities. In general, these abilities are referred to by their default key binding (Q,W,E,R). A few abilities are passives that are always on but most are active abilities for which the keystroke label is a convenient reference point. In general, Q/W/E abilities are the "primary" abilities and the "R" ability is often referred to as their "Ultimate" (or "ult" for short). Your goal as a champion is to push your creeps to the opponent's towers and take them down with the eventual goal of eliminating all of the towers in a lane and pushing to their base ("Nexus") and destroying it.

One other critical layout aspect of the boards before we move on. In between the lanes are "Jungle" areas. These areas don't have the base created creeps. But they do have static spawned monsters that can be killed. This type of game play is called "Jungling" and is a critical, somewhat esoteric, aspect to the game play.

Each creep (or jungle monster) killed gives experience and gold. Experience allows you to level up which gives you hit points, mana and a skill point for one of your four skills. Gold allows you to buy equipment. The equipment is critical in this game as is leveling, obviously. This is the reason that "Jungling" is so critical. It's extra income for your team (because otherwise, income just comes from time and creeps killed). One other note about killing creeps. You only get the big gold boost if you get the last hit on them. So if your tower kills them or one of your creeps kills them, your income is greatly diminished. This "last hitting" skill is really important.

The stats for each character are fairly straightforward but can be modified in intriguing ways.

Each character has the following:
Movement speed
Mana Pool
Health Pool
Armor
Magic Resistance
Mana Regen
Health Regen
Attack Damage (AD)
Ability Power (AP)

Attack abilities generally come in two flavors. Physical damage attacks and Magic attacks. Physical attacks are mitigated by Armor and generally (but not always) are boosted by AD. Likewise, Magic attacks are mitigated by Magic Resistance and generally (but, again, not always) boosted by AP. All of these stats can be boosted by various equipment in some way. The equipment builds on itself in a modular fashion too so you can customize your states quite nicely as a game progresses.

There are a number of roles that get played a lot and you'll hear reference too.

Tank: Someone who can take a lot of damage. Generally they also have some sort of crowd control as well so they can protect their teammates.
Bruiser: A somewhat tanky person with good DPS
Jungler: Someone who specializes in fighting in the Jungle. These characters generally have some kind of AoE attack and the ability to Sustain their hit points without help (generally referred to as "sustain"). They also generally have heightened mobility in some ways because they're expected to pop out and double team ("gank") the adjacent lanes at appropriate times.
AD/AP Carry: The term carry comes from their late game ability to "carry" the team on their shoulders. Generally these are characters with some sort of game breaking ability (generally in the form of crazy high DPS).
Support: Certain characters lack a lot of damage abilities and instead get various buffs/debuffs/heals, etc that they can use. I wouldn't recommend using these characters as a beginner because they really struggle without knowing a fair amount about their teammates and various champions.

There are, as far as I've seen and read, four main strategies in the 3v3 map (Twisted Treeline).

Bruiser/Bruiser/Jungler: Generally this setup wants to have one guy in the top lane, one guy in the bottom lane and a jungler in the middle to add income and pop out for ganks.

AD Carry/Bruiser/Bruiser: Two on top and one on bottom with the top bruiser occasionally dropping into the jungle for the altars and for extra income. The Bruiser on top has to make sure the AD Carry gets the lion's share of the experience from the creeps in the top. This setup also wants to 2v1 the big boss at the top of the map once they're high enough (11ish?) because it gives a big global buff for the whole team.

3 man gank squad (tank, bruiser, AP Carry): This team eschews lane control to try to kill the opponent champions as much and as often as possible. It's a high risk, high reward play style.

Bruiser/X Carry/Support or Tank: This goes one top (Bruiser) and two bottom. The bottom lane is a bit shorter so tends to be a little more action packed. As a result, having two people down there can effectively push the opponent into making mistakes more easily. To do this, the team has to be comfortable that the guy on top can basically be on an island. His goal is to fight just inside turret range and still manage to farm creeps (rather than losing them to the turret). This requires a very high level of last hitting skill.

McConnell should step down

I kind of like Mitch McConnell. He seems like a nice enough guy. But his senatorial strategy has been unsuccessful. The most glaringly obvious point has been on "Repeal and Replace" for Obamacare. Remember that? Sadly, there's been no "replace" on that issue. And that's because the part of the Republican caucus that WANTS to pass stuff is being stifled. They're afraid of an idea being co-opted and granting a legislative win to the Dems.

No offense to these fine gentleman, but does anyone think that McConnell and Kyl are the harbingers of great policy ideas? The senate has become a place where ideas go to die. Anything that conflicts with the status quo is viewed askance.

McConnell, for both the good of the part and the good of the country, needs to step aside and let someone knew step up. My personal preference is Marco Rubio. He's conservative without being bombastic. He has ideas that are new without being a mad genius (a la Newt Gingrich). He disagrees without demonizing. But there are others. John Thune would also be a fine choice if someone slightly more tenured is desired. Heck, I'd even be okay with Rand Paul (who I disagree with on many issues) or Rob Portman (who is almost painfully bland but understands the issues of the day). Any of those gentlemen could give the party a break and divorce them from old positions that are no longer tenable.

A guy can hope right?

Unfounded conspiracy theory? Or great book plot!

This whole thing with General Petraeus got the wannabe author in me thinking. What if it's all a plan? What if this is a way to get a plausible asset into the Lebanese government (the girl he had the affair with is Lebanese)? What if it's a way to make Petraeus look flippable by Chinese intelligence? What if this is the greatest spy story that will never be written?

Too bad real life intrudes and it's (likely?) just a run of the mill affair with a run of the mill high ranking intelligence official. What a missed opportunity!

On the plus side, I really can't imagine how that conversation with his wife would go if it was all fake, "Honey, some stories are going to come out tomorrow that I'm resigning due to an affair with a very pretty Lebanese woman half our age. Don't worry though. It's all fake and part of my master plan."

What wife would doubt that?

League of Legends

It's funny the way things snake in your life to take you down paths you'd never have expected.

I updated apps on my phone and one of them was twitter (which I almost never use @Econoclast).
On a whim, I opened twitter.
It happened the be the day that The Mittani first pimped out themittani.com (I was a follower from back to the Jita riots)
I looked at themittani.com and got sucked back into EVE
I also got the MWO beta (which is being covered by themittani.com)
I started reading themittani.com everyday
They started covering League of Legends
I tried it and didn't like it
They KEPT covering League of Legends including an article designed for EVE players as a primer
I tried it again and LOVED it
So all because I updated my phone, I've now got three hobbies pulling on me and, frankly, MWO is suffering (partly due to technical problems on my computer), EVE is in the middle and LoL seems like the most likely recipient of my limited time.

Bottom line, I've gotten sucked into League of Legends and spent the better part of last night (till 2am, I'm ashamed to say) reading about Jungling, AP Carry and item trees for Yorick. If those words mean nothing to you, it's because you don't play LoL. Maybe you should.

Interesting news from the Real World

Much has been, and will continue to, be written about the "fiscal cliff". I doubt anyone reading this is unfamiliar with the term but just in case, here's the run down. Within the next 90 days, the following happens if nothing is done.

1) The AMT ("Alternative Minimum Tax") snaps back to where it is by law: This is probably the stupidest problem we've got. Every year, congress "patches" the AMT rather than just fixing it permanently. Literally, Congress has a form pre-printed with the terms of this adjustment. It's a rote, mathematical adjustment. Why it's not made permanent is a question that congressional insiders ask and fail to get answers for on an annual basis. This one will get fixed without controversy (at least for another year).

2) SS Tax rebate goes away: If you didn't realize, pretty much since Obama took office, you've been paying less into Social Security (essentially your government managed retirement) then you should have been. This amounts to about a 2% rise in take home pay for every employed person (up to the SS cap which most people don't hit). This one likely expires (it needs to... we're underfunding Social Security at a time when we can't afford to). So everyone prepare for a 2%, highly regressive, increase in taxes. I say that not picking a side but just pointing out the practical impact of this reversion.

3) Bush Tax cuts expire: Obama wants to keep them on just the upper income. That requires an actual law being passed which would require the House Republicans to actually go on record supporting that position (at least some of them). There are three, equally unlikely, possibilities. 1) Obama gets his way and taxes go up on those making more than $250k but stay low for everyone else, 2) Boehner gets his way and all of the Bush tax cuts get extended (not a tax cut... just a continued low tax rate) or 3) Neither side gets what they want and they lapse for everyone. This one will be interesting to play out. As a side note, these are the tax cuts from 2001 so a reversion of these returns us, essentially, to the tax policy under the Clinton years. That was demonstrably NOT too high a burden but the marginal affect given the economic weakness could be severe. There's a fourth possibility as well, massive tax reform to clean up the system. I question whether this could be done in a fairly caustic environment, by a lame duck congress, within a relatively short window.

4) Debt ceiling: Yup. It's time to talk debt ceiling again. We'll hit the limit sometime around Christmas (Happy Birthday Jesus, hope you like controversy and vitriol!). Part of the lunacy last time was that the budget had been done BEFORE the debt ceiling debacle so it was a stupid, pointless, idiotic fight (the real fight SHOULD have been the budget). Since then, however, we're flying without a budget. So this time, the fight might need to be real simply BECAUSE we don't have a budget and the debt ceiling represents the only legitimate budgetary mechanism right now. A lot of house members who just won reelection (most of them!) are going to feel empowered by THEIR constituencies to continue to stick it to the President and push for reduced spending.

5) Fallout from the failure of the super committee: Yeah. Remember those guys that were supposed to come up with a grand plan to reduce the 10 year debt projection by $2T? They failed. And the consequence of their abject failure is sequestration. That's roughly equal components reductions in Medicare (and certain other entitlements plus a little bit of discretionary spending cuts for good measure) and military (which would be about a 15% cut in the military budget). The cuts are $110B in each of those two broad categories. Very few people want those but they look entirely possible. Expect stories next year of ex-military folks being unemployed and doctors turning down highly unprofitable medicare patients.

So you've got a very real possibility of drastically (10%+) reduced spending, increased taxes (~5% or so) and a whole lot of uncertainty. Yeah. Wall Street is going to love that :(

One interesting note, however. Boehner said this the other day, "Mr. President, this is your moment. Let's challenge ourselves to find the common ground that has eluded us."

For those that weren't paying attention the first time. When we went through this before, Boehner and Obama were close to a $4T "grand bargain" deficit reduction plan. There would have been slight tax increases and fairly massive tax cuts (it's unclear what the ratio was but the lowest any Republican has stated that I've seen was 3:1 spending vs. tax. Obama has repeated the claim that it was 10:1). Accounts differ on why this fell apart. Republicans blame Obama for a moving target that was constantly moving towards the President's position. Obama blames the right wing side of the GOP for denying votes for anything that had ANY kind of tax increase. Whatever the reason, it fell apart. Now Obama is in a stronger position and, more recently, has articulated his desire for a 2:1 ratio. The big GOP concern is that the tax hikes will happen and the spending cuts won't materialize (or will get countermanded in the future). That's a legitimate concern, but to NOT do the right thing because you're AFRAID of what future congress's might do seems to me to be borderline insane. Do the right thing. Then put some mechanisms in place that at least make it more difficult for future congress's to undue it. At a bare minimum, why not establish this parliamentary rule, "Congress shall maintain a 2, 5 and 10 year budget. Spending over the budgeted spending amounts shall require a 2/3rds majority vote. Amounts within 1% shall not be subject to this requirement." Wordsmith to suit. Granted, each congress technically gets to establish their own rules. But the filibuster has survived multiple congresses out of sheer momentum. I suspect this rule would survive as well (particularly in this day and age when it's hard to unwind these things). I'm also for a LIGHT TOUCH balanced budget amendment. Let the states vote on that as well (not the heavy handed variety though... *shudder*).

As a followup on the "Peregrine"

I did some rough math. I don't know how to hack EFT enough to test to make sure these fit so this is probably a theoretical "perfect" but you can drop to meta LMLs and get everything except the Fury specs below, I believe. I think with the 5% implants you can probably get everything or close to it.

The ship is going to be frickin' ridiculous in RvB fights and even fleet fights. For about 12mil isk (meta 3 launchers are nearly as good and save you about 7mil on the fit), you can fit the following

7x Light Missile Launcher II
2x Ballistic Control System II
1x AB II
1x Sensor Booster II
1x utility mid of some other flavor (Warp Disruptor is ideal to slow down MWD powered interceptors)
missile velocity rig
missile flight time rig

That ship with a script for targeting range can target out to 90k (with max skills) and project damage out to just under 84k (again with max skills). The alpha strike is 1240 (without a damage rig) with a dps of 169 (using faction ammo).

sliding in fury ammo (if you can make the fit work) allows you to unscript the sensor booster so your lock time gets better at 73k distance and you can fire up to a hair under 67k doing 1386 alpha and 188 dps (again, boostable with a damage or ROF mod).

Those numbers are INSANE for the price and size of ship. You will one shot any untanked frigate instantly (you have to use kinetic to make it work so maybe it becomes two shotting). Either way, as long as you can dictate engagement range, there's nothing other than an artillery fit specialty thrasher that can come close to your range. Cruisers are going to need to be really fast to get into their engagement window too. If you're smart, you probably get off 2-3 volleys before they get their first into you. Granted, the high alpha cruisers CAN one shot you. But everyone else will need two shots with no transversal and that's only if they can fire at that range. A Railgun cruiser is going to be firing at you in falloff.

A truly terrifying ship. And you can get pretty impressive numbers and keep the bill under 2million if you just fit meta 3 stuff. Not bad at all.

Things I want to try with the new destroyers

December 4th is like Christmas for the EVE player that likes small scale ship explosions. With the majority of frigates, cruisers and destroyers getting seriously retouched, things are going to be very exciting for awhile. Additionally, CCP seems to have finally made the commitment to ongoing ship tweaks so if any of these initial tweaks really miss the boat (by either being too good or too weak) then future fixes are likely. With that being said, the things that really intrigue me are the new destroyers. These ships are designed to be seriously brutal, particularly against frigates but also against cruisers if uncountered. I expect destroyers to be called primary in a lot of fights now and small scale engagements are going to get very interesting as a result.

They haven't announced names yet so it's hard to reference them by much other than "Caldari Destroyer, etc" but here goes

"Caldari Destroyer" (Should REALLY get the name Peregrine)
This will be the longest range of all the new destroyers with the ability to project damage out to about 60k if I'm doing my math right. The most likely build with this will be something like this:
7x Light Missile II
MWD II
Warp Disruptor II
Sensor Booster II
2x Ballistic Control II

it will have a pitiful tank but the alpha from 7 missile will insta-kill any frigate short of an interceptor without a tank and two shot any frigs with a tank regardless of other factors. I expect to see this ship used as a second wave of attack by clever fleets. Warp in the heavy tackle and/or speed tanking ships then warp these guys in 30 seconds later after your opponent has called primary. The sensor booster is necessary to be able to target out to their max engagement range (~63k without rigs... not factoring for missile acceleration which is supposed to drop to near instant come December). If you rig the thing up, you should be able to get nearly 83k of distance out of the thing (you'll need a scripted Sensor Booster II to manage this). Is there a an interceptor that can cross that distance fast enough? You'll probably get two volleys off on an interceptor burning straight at you... So just as the interceptor is pointing you, he'll explode. If you're fighting largely one v one or even one v two, this ship should be absolutely WICKED. Note that 83k is outside the range of a lot of cruisers too. That gives it a lot of game against those ships as well. Drone boats that can burn to within 50k will be dangerous because they can dictate an engagement window that's bad for you but most cruisers can't take more than 5 or six volleys of LMLs anyways...

"Minmatar Destroyer"
Where the Caldari ship is all about range, this ship is a speed tanking destroyer. Yeah. I'm intrigued and frightened all at the same time. This one seems like the most likely to scare the crap out of cruisers because it might not be hittable by them. With the bonus to MWD sig bloom diminished by 3/4ths, this ship could still be small enough and fast enough to avoid fire from Cruisers. Testing will tell us whether that's true or not but I expect many ships to die finding out.
7x Rocket Launcher II
1x MWD II
1x Warp Jammer
1x Target Painter or Named Shield booster
1x Power Diagnostic II
2x Ballistic Control System II

This little guy will put out over 300 dps at 12k and be nearly unhittable and, against anything except an Afterburnered Interceptor or T2 ship, completely able to dictate range. The option is also there to drop the BCSs (cutting DPS to more like 250) and instead fit a modest armor tank. I don't like that but in the roll of frigate killer, the damage might be overkill and, therefore, lost a lot of the time so it could work better that way.

"Amarr Destroyer"
The weirdest ship by far. 3 Turrets and 3 Launchers but with a range boost on NOS / NEUTS. It really wants you to field 3 cap destroyers. This ship might be the most powerful in 1v1 because of its ability to fit a wicked tank and just wear down frigates and, possibly, even destroyers. I think they have to give up on the idea of tackle (maybe a web?) and just kill things and/or hope they can neut them to where they can't warp out. Even with the range boost to the Neuts, your'e still going to be engaging at around 10-15k. A webifier might work to keep MWD brawlers at arms length or a tracking disruptor could help against things with similar engagement range... Not clear what's best. This ship is also ridiculously cap stable due to the weapon loadout so it can fit a pretty wicked tank.
3x Neut
3x Rocket Launcher II
1x Afterburner II
1x Webifier / Tracking Disruptor
1x Damage Control II
1x Drone Damage
1x EANM
1x Armor Repairer II

"Gallente Destroyer"
Gallente's get another drone boat with a tracking bonus for their 5 turrets. Kind of an odd ship and feels like it somewhat counterfeits the Catalyst (although they've said they're going to tweak the Catalyst now... ) Given that the tracking bonus is basically wasted on blasters, it seems like the bang for your buck is to kite at range with something like:
5x 125mm railgun II
I have no idea for the utility high... NOS / NEUT seems useless because you should be pushing optimal of over 20k with Spike ammo. There's some discussion on the Jester's blog about keeping empty spots in the middle of the gun racks to cut down on heat damage... Not sure if that's still valid info but might actually be the best choice. Barring that, small remote armor rep to fix drones and help other ships in a pinch might be right.
1x Afterburner II
1x Sensor Dampener
1x Webifier
1x EANM II
1x Damage Control II
1x Named Explosive Hardener

Like the Minmatar destroyer, there's also the possibility of "cross" tanking this ship in a fleet environment where tackle isn't important. Namely this,
Railguns
MWD (or AB)
EM Hardener
Shield Booster
Drone Damage Mod x 4 (or x3 with Damage Control II)
That has some pretty wicked DPS (I haven't done the math but it has to be through the roof)

Anyways, at some point, I'm sure I'll end up flying all of these, they all look awesome and should produce quite a splash on small scale PvP and even some larger fleet ops given that the engagement envelope on a couple of the ships pushes well into acceptable doctrinal ranges (particularly the Caldari ship)

What to make of the election

So merely a day off of my gloriously correct prediction (Rush Limbaugh style, I'm going to call that an accurate prediction... it was well within my hedging language), I wanted to offer some commentary as to "what we can glean" from the election. A couple big points stand out.

1) Running as a moderate is the way to win elections: In the last two elections, the Republicans have nominated moderates and then forced them to run to their right. That is NOT the way to win an election. We can argue over whether Obama is an idealogue or a pragmatist or whether he's truthful or a pervasive liar. But what is inarguable is that his campaign rhetoric was HEAVILY slanted towards the moderate stance. His STATED POSITIONS (and note, I'm very clearly trying to differentiate from what individuals THINK he's actually going to do) are those of a left-leaning moderate. Romney's positions on the other hand were much more in the middle of his own party and well to the right of the middle of the national spectrum. Romney didn't really run as a right wing nut job (as much as the Obama camp wanted to paint him that way) but it was occasionally easy to paint him into that corner. This is the real true strength of the incumbent. The incumbent can ALWAYS race to the middle early (while their opponent is still muddled in their primary battle) and then the contender is forced to run right or left of middle to create differentiation. Elections are won in the middle and future candidates set that wisdom aside at their own peril.

2) Apparently Americans like divided government: No, really. What else can you glean from the fact that the turnover rate for house and senate seats was at an all time low and the Presidency was unchanged? The Democrats are going to have a couple higher seat count in the Senate (thanks largely to Akin and Murdoch giving away their races) and a couple higher in the house (largely thanks to the statistical unlikelihood involved in 435 events turning out the same way twice consecutively) but this will essentially be an unchanged government in every way that matters. Expect a lot of press noise with the same underlying current, "What were people thinking?"

3) The market hates Democrats: Already the trade publications and even some of the big media players are connecting the dot on the market's down turn today with the election results. Consider, however, that the market is actually reacting to the reelection of the same people that brought us such hits as "Debt Ceiling '10" and "2 and a half years without a budget". The prospect of seeing Boehner, Pelosi, Reed, McConnell and Obama "fixing problems" for the next four years has the market spooked.

4) We're going to find out how political people are: Particularly McConnel, Boehner and Obama. One school of thought is that Obama is a reasonably pragmatic non-idealogue (left leaning, yes, but not a wingnut) and that he pushed left on certain things (KeyStone being the big one that gets mentioned) to shore up his base before the election. Another school of thought is that he's a powerful ideologue who got pushed to the middle by the Davids (Plouffe and Axelrod) in order to secure election and that the shackles are off and he can push the left leaning agenda that he REALLY wants. We'll find out in the next 6 months which is true. Similarly, Mitch McConnell famously stated that their number one legislative goal was "making sure that the President didn't win a second term." Now that that goal is lost and there's no "third term" possibility on the table will McConnell move to get stuff done (a budget would be a GREAT first start guys!) or will they continue the obstructionism that has plagued our fiscal house for the last 2 years.

5) At least the people who made the problem have to fix it: The flip side to the above is that at least with this election, we don't have to worry ourselves with lots of lame duck shenanigans and political football ducking. Largely the people that leave at the end of the year will be coming back in February. They can't punt on these problems and they can't hide behind a "voters have spoken" dodge of their responsibility. How they fix things is a big, open ended question. But they have to address them nonetheless or they face very, very serious blowback.

As my friend said at lunch, "The next 6 months will be 'stab yourself in the eye' interesting." Yup. That's about right.

New Destroyers, Gallente and Missiles

The tiericide going on with Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers got me thinking about Gallente and their use of missiles.

Part of the revision has the Tristan becoming a true Drone boat and the only frigate able to actually field 5 small drones. The other comparable frigates are all various flavors of missile attack boats.

The new destroyer also has no love of missile launchers (while the other destroyers are all either missile boats or, in the case of Amarr, partly missile boats)

So where does that leave the Gallente with Missiles?

The Nemesis looks more and more out of place in this context. In fact, it's now the first Gallente boat that requires (or even vaguely encourages!) any kind of missile training. I'd guess that the next generation of Nemesis pilots will actually be Caldari pilots who decide that the training time for Gallente Frigate V is worth it to get the Thermal Bonus rather than Kinetic.

Here's what I'd suggest, make the Nemesis actually fit the doctrine for the Gallente

Roll bonus
+50% MWD of Heavy Drones
Level Bonus
+20% per Covert Ops level of Heavy Drone Thermal Damage
+10% Drone Hitpoints per Covert Ops level
Strip it of three high slots and give it +1 low
125m3 bandwidth and 250m3 drone bay (note, if this is too much, add the roll bonus to make Heavy drones smaller... the goal is two full flights of heavy drones)
Rip away the PG and CPU needed for the three launchers

With perhaps some other tweaks that I'm missing. The bottom line is, make it a drone bomber! Then us Gallente pilots would actually have something to skill up into ;) and the last Gallente missile ship would be gone.

What are people fighting for?

I realized this weekend that the primary difference between alliances like -A- and alliances like Goons is the answer to this question, "Why are you playing the game?"

-A- likes fighting. They like blowing things up. They own Sov to provide a safe space to make some isk (because then they can replace losses and buy new shinies) and because it creates a focal point for fights. Ultimately, they're only slightly different then RvB. They play to blow things up.

Goons, on the other hand, are playing to change things. They want to put their stamp on the game. They want to change things. Taking huge swaths of Sov is the major thrust but things like Burn Jita and Ice interdiction are every bit as important. They talk a good game about "Harvesting Tears" but ultimately, I think, it's all a means to that end of "I want to matter!"

Listening to the Makalu soundclouds for -A- drives this point home. The fleet members are perfectly happy to dock up for the night when it's 800 vs. 100 because blowing their fleets up is not their idea of a "fight". They lose ships and destroy almost zero of their opponent's. Likewise, while the Goons like to fight, shooting structures is a morale boosting event for them because it's meeting their goal.

And the BIGGEST difference in all of this is that I get the distinct impression that the Goons fundamentally get this difference and -A- do not. Goons (and TEST) have created a war strategy specifically designed to keep their own morale high (by constantly having extra space being gained) while keeping their opponents from getting anything resembling a fair fight. Goons come out in force for strategic operations (those designed to take or defend sov structures) while smaller stuff is skirmish stuff with their FCs flitting about and refusing to engage. It's the warfare equivalent of trolling the forums and they're very, very good at it.

Listening to the comms, I don't think -A- gets this difference. They feel like the CFC and HBC are going to get burned out shooting structures "any day". The problem is that they're almost playing two different games.

Election Predictions

It's always nice to go on the record with elections so I won't be any different...

My current estimate is the following

Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, DC, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii go Democrat (221)

Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia, Alaska go Republican (191)

That leaves
Nevada (6)
Colorado (9)
Iowa (6)
Wisconsin (10)
Florida (29)
North Carolina (15)
Virginia (13)
Ohio (18)
Pennsylvania (20)

My best GUESS is the following
Nevada, Colorado, Pennsylvania go Democrat (+35 = 256)
North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa go Republican (+34 = 225)

You need 270 to win
so Florida is a must win for Romney, as is Ohio. Wisconsin he could lose as long as he wins the other two (resulting in a razor thin 266 vs. 272 Romney win)

Note, it's possible that Nevada and Colorado fall Republican allowing Ohio to be expendable (if he wins Wisconsin). I think Pennsylvania is a stretch for Romney and I think North Carolina is a stretch for Obama (i.e. if the "wrong" guy wins that state, it probably just means a giant land slide across the map).

If Romney picks up Florida and Ohio, the only way for Obama to win would be to flip a state like Iowa, Idaho or Arizona. Note, however. Larry Sabato (a VERY well respected wonk) thinks Iowa is Democrat leaning. I don't see it but he has access to data wayyyy better than I do and he makes it his job to actually dissect the polls and then run them through his own numbers. He has Romney losing 290 - 248 but flipping Ohio would make it 272 - 266 and then basically ANYTHING else would be a Romney win.

Because of the map, we'll know an Obama win early (if Romney doesn't win Ohio and Florida it's pretty much certain to be over) but we won't know a Romney win until late (because there's some toss ups that matter in the west like Colorado and Nevada.

Eve Politics

I haven't written in a bit due to vacation and then the inevitable slam of work when you return from vacation (as a side note, is it purposeful that corporate America trains you to fear taking vacation?). But I've still been following the Eve news world and politics. I'll give a free plug to the Lost in Eve podcast. It's run by an alliance leader in the HBC (Honey Badger Coalition) and a line member of -A- (aka "Triple A" / "Against All Authority"). They do a really good job of laying out the politics of their respective regions. And that's what this post is about. Currently, the politics of null-sec are tough to pierce. But they're critical for industrialists to understand because they really affect building strategies on a powerful level. I made a ton of money (nearly 300mil isk) building Zealots during the northern war between NC. and CFC. Then I got whacked hard because the war basically came to a close overnight and I was stuck with 3 zealots in flight that are going to lose me about 10mil isk each.

So, for other industrialists who don't have the time or inclination to read the Mittani or listen to soundclouds of alliance meetings, here's the primer on current state war.

The big players:

Goons: Owners of the largest segment of Tech mines in the North. They are a vastly wealthy alliance and the "lead" alliance in the CFC (a coalition, or collection of alliances). This coalition is what I'd call a "true" coalition. They are a collection of alliances that share offline infrastructure that keeps them with a unified identity and culture. Right now, they are the biggest hitters in all of EVE by a wide margin. Their opponents tend to deride their tactics as "blobbing" but, as has been said, "quantity has a quality all its own". Goons are predominantly a US TZ alliance though they also have a significant EU TZ presence.

NC.: This was a coalition combining Northern Coalition and Black Legion. They recently broke up leaving NC. as a coalition in name only (really just an alliance now). Black Legion moved over to join SOLAR. They pushed off Ewoks /Evoke as well. Both can only really be described as "failed" internal diplomacy.

SOLAR fleet: A largely Russian TZ alliance. They have good relations with Triple A though they don't represent a "coalition" per se. They essentially control the galactic eastern front with some northern Tech holdings scattered in.

Southern Coalition: As much as they protest that this is "made up" it's clear from listening to their coms, that it's a real entity although not in the nearly the same integrated way as the CFC. Led by Against All Authority, this is essentially a military alliance (Triple A) and a collection of renters that may or may not come to -A-'s support when fleets are called (and -A- may not go to their support either). Nulli Secunda left the aegis of this arrangement after getting fed up, purportedly because CTAs (Calls to Arm) were getting called and Nulli was contributing half or more of the fleet count but when they called for help, -A- didn't show up. There's some bad blood here now.

Nulli Secunda: They were previously in the South with -A-. After getting fed up their, they left to go to Factional Warfare. Doing this, they managed to increase their PvP chops and also their wallets. They then showed up to fight for NC. against the CFC and now are forming their own coalition. The bad blood with -A- and the impending CFC vs. Solar fight in the northeast have prompted them to go after -A- territory in the south. Recent NC. news indicates that they might be joining up with Nulli Secunda in this southerly move.

TEST alliance please ignore: Leaders of the HBC (Honey Badger Coalition). They are the largest single alliance in the game and a very close competitor to size with the CFC. HBC was formed largely from TEST (providing numbers) and Pandemic Legion (providing FCs and supercaps). They control most of the west and have embarked on a string of carnage against -A- that is impressive.

PL: Co leaders of the HBC. I don't know who is actually pulling the strings or if this is a true marriage of equals. PL is a very well respected PVP focused alliance with a long history of being space PvP nomads. They own some tech moons (I don't know where) for income but have historically not been a Sov focused entity (despite being in a coalition with TEST, they own none of the territory). They're also much, much, much less friendly with Goons then TEST. They're largely the reason that the HBC is a separate coalition from the CFC.

There's a couple other important players on the fringes:
Gypsy Band: The best, most respected stealth bomber pilots in the game. They've formed their own mini-coalition with RED alliance and are on the prowl for good fights. They have good relations with NC. and have largely shown up fighting CFC and Solar fleets but have popped up in other places as well. This has been called the NCC (Neo-Curse Coalition).

Intrepid Crossing: I know very little about these guys. I assume they have a stable relation with Solar (they're kind of in the NE corner) but very little has been written about them. They control a lot of space.

Razor Alliance: I fairly large, well established, alliance. They're nominally members of the CFC but they probably represent the largest contingent of independence in the Coalition. It would not surprise me to see them break off from Goons like TEST did.

So you've got four primary coalitions and one giant alliance right now:
CFC (led by Goons)
HBC (led by TEST + PL)
SoCo (flailingly being led by -A-)
SOLAR (and their renter family)
"New SoCo" (unnamed coalition led by Nulli Secunda)

How does this affect you?
Well, knowing the fleet doctrines of these guys is important.

CFC: Heavy use of Drakes (although expect this to change in December). They primarily use T1 ships although they have a Tengu fleet doctrine that shows up. They make pretty good use of Stealth Bombers as well.

HBC: I'm not as plugged in on these guys but the coverage from en24 and mittani seems to indicate they primarily run Hurricanes / Tornados / Drakes (similar to the CFC).

SoCo: They have run Loki and Tengu fleets in the past. They also use Proteus as heavy tacklers. They've toyed with the Navy Apoc fleet to try to make up for lesser numbers.

SOLAR: I have no earthly idea. The coverage of SOLAR is essentially nothing.

Nulli Secunda: NC. ran Zealot HACs almost exclusively. This got them shredded pretty hard by CFC due to the predictable nature of it. They went toyed with Ishtar HACs but the CFC fleet comp made that a pretty undesirable strategy. Nulli hasn't announced their fleet doctrines although they sound like they're definitely going to have a Tengu doctrine (doesn't everyone?).

So building Tengu's, Nemesis/Manticore, Drakes and MAYBE Zealots if Nulli adopts that portion of the NC. doctrine (although they indicated it probably won't be frequent).

Here's the relationship chart for reference:
CFC likes HBC and has courted (unsuccessfully) Gypsy, Nulli, Black Legion. They are still trying to finish off NC. and may come to blows with SOLAR very soon.
HBC likes CFC (strong allies) and NewSoCo (soft allies). They pretty much hate -A- at this point.
SOLAR has been at war with NC. and likely will have some kind of skirmish with CFC. They are allied with -A- and are likely to be in a very solid war with the NewSoCo soon (both carrying over the NC. war as well as jumping to defend the -A- remnants).
SoCo likes SOLAR (sort of) and hates the HBC and CFC. They really, really don't like Nulli and won't like Nulli coming after them in this new war for the South either.
NCC: They just want good fights. They are ABSOLUTELY amazing with bombers (I've never seen a battle report that shows them getting smacked around). They whelped a 200 fleet of the CFC with perhaps the best bombing run in Eve's history (popped a dictor bubble then bombed just as the fleet lit their MWDs).