You might be interested to know

Heimerdinger's missiles count as single target

Rylai's + Liandry's

Total cost: 5800

700 Health
150 AP
15 Spell Pen
35% slow on three targets
10% of their current health over 3

You become a MASSIVE poke threat and actually a pretty good initiator... Played a game last night where I just setup shop in the middle and everytime they came to gank me I threw my missiles, sent my turrets into overdrive and walked away leaving them with 30% of their health gone (often on 2 or 3 targets) with no ill effects for myself. I literally didn't die until they sent all 5 around the river behind me and ganked me as a team with nowhere to run. It was awesome ;)

Just a thing to try out.

Thoughts on Urgot and Gragas

These champions are... uhm... weird.

Urgot first because this will be the shortest.

His rocket is a auto-smartcasted skill shot that hits a single target. It costs very little mana and is spammable (40 mana, 2 sec CD) but does very little damage (base 10 + .85*AD) which will is rigged to do more damage at lvl 1 then your auto-attack although this reverses with runes and masteries. However, at level 5, you'd need over 800 AD to get your auto-attack to outdamage it. What this means is that if the field of fire is clean, you should be spam casting this as fast as you can click Q.

It has a curious interaction with his E. That's a ground targetable smallish AoE (much like Twitch's) that will poison and armor debuff everyone in the area. Targets with the debuff can be "locked on" by the rocket. What this actually means is that you can use it to avoid hitting other targets. You lock a target and fire. You can get 3-4 (depending on CDR) rockets in per E.

Lastly, his ultimate. In theory, you can use this to start team fights. But it's better to trap isolated opponents or to counteract mid lane flanking by their team. A lot of teams will try to bait you in and have 1-2 people circle around through the river so that they can get at your squishies. The instant you see this happening, you need to tell your team and fire your ult at the biggest flanking threat. This will have the affect of removing you from the direct threat and also dumping their (probably squishy) would be assassin right in your team's midst. It CAN be used to start team fights but you need a really well coordinated team. Because what's going to need to happen is that you snag a squishy and, within 1 second, your team moves up to keep your new position safe while also clobbering the trapped character. Works best with a Malphite, Karthus or Anivia who can exhibit some sort of crowd/zone control as soon as they see your ult get channeled.

Now let's talk about Gragas.

He's, ostensibly, a melee AP champion. You're going to build him a little bit tanky due to his melee nature. His W and E both encourage being in people's faces but his Q and R give him nearly unparalleled ability to control zones. In particular, an early R can get an oppponent under a tower in a completely unexpected way. It also has a very fast animation so isn't easy to dodge. On the other hand, his Q has a slow animation and can't be detonated while it's still moving. This makes it fairly easy to dodge. Some tips.

Push hard for the Archangel's Staff early. You have the ability to spam W (to replenish mana and buff attack speed) and E (to speed around faster) and with higher mana it makes it even easier. You want to get that Staff converted over to Seraph's in case the game goes late and this will also help feed his AP without additional gold expenditures.

The real key here is the ultimate. The barrel has a HUGE knockback dispersion affect. You want to use this to break up enemy teams and isolate champions. It can also be used to knock them into your turret. The animation is very quick and difficult to dodge too.

Both very interesting champions. I think I like Gragas enough to put him on my "eventual" buy list... but Probably not a priority. Urgot, I need to play another game as / against and figure out  where I stand.

What will the new meta be?

Metas (i.e. standard strategies) change in League of Legends. But they change very slowly. The current meta is probably best described as

Bruiser - AP - AD/Support + Jungler with Red side frequently doing lane swaps to bring their ADC up top.

The new meta has a variety of possibilities.

1) The most recent two tournaments have shown the strength of a Zyra in support because she has the ability to grow into another Carry in the late game. If you're CLG.EU and you plan on taking games long, Zyra is very powerful because of that. We may see an increase in these "carry" supports in this role.

2) Dovetailing onto that idea is that there are some supports that are very strong when partnered with AP carries instead of AD carries.Morgana is the quintessential one but there are some others.

3) Jungling is harder but the rewards don't REALLY kick in until about 10 minutes. One possible adaption as a result is less time spent by individual people in the jungle at lvl 1.

Imagine this setup

Vayne: Relatively self-sufficient ADC who can get out of trouble when needed.
Morgana: AP Support and good AoE damage for team fights (as well as a nice CC)
Nunu: Ability to Consume for sustain and an ADC oriented attack speed buff
Diana: Powerful late game initiate and early - mid game lane presence
Malphite: Powerful late game initiate and ability to farm and builds armor

Malphite goes top
Vayne goes bottom (note, these are inverted on red side)
Diana is in the middle
Morgana goes blue buff side jungle
Nunu goes red buff side jungle

Malphite helps Morgana leash blue. Morgana takes blue and wolves (in some order)
Nunu goes Wraith, Golems, Red buff
If they do this right, they're finishing around the right time. They then do one of three things
Gank together in a lane trying to create a 3v1
Go separate to support their lanes (with Morgana synergizing well with malphite and Nunu with Vayne)
Go together to counter jungle
As the game progresses, Morgana is responsible for cleaning out wolves and blue buff while Nunu continues to farm Golems, probably leaving Red buff to Vayne and Wraiths to Diana. Once Morgana/Nunu hit 6, they're responsible for making a call on Dragon

That's a team plan that seems reasonably consistent while also maximizing jungle xp. Yes, your ADC will struggle more than normal. You shouldn't try this if you don't have an ADC comfortable last hitting under tower. On the other hand, the other team can't afford to push super hard because you've got two junglers running around.

Under this scenario, Malphite really becomes the primary bruiser in game since he's so encouraged to stack armor and he's (likely) against an ADC on the other side. However, certain other characters can work too. Xerath, for instance, has the range to poke an ADC and keep him under control. Ditto for Heimerdinger (who's passive will also helm him sustain in lane). It also makes sure that the team isn't reliant on any one individual making team fights significantly less "do or die" for the team (yeah, losing Vayne hurts, but we've got Morgana and Diana to help. The one drawback I see to the above team comp is a bit of lack of AD damage. Nunu should probably build hybrid to provide SOME diversification of damage types.

Top roles for League of Legends

For a variety of reasons, your teammates should make sure that they're always familiar with at least 6 champions in any given position. That sounds absurd but it's relatively easy to imagine a situation in which the team first picking bans three champions in one position in an attempt to completely screw a lane on the other team. If they pick first and pick that position, it means your team got their 5th choice. If your team ALSO banned a player in that position (which is easy enough to do) then you're getting your 6th choice. So who are the best options in each role? I'll provide the best options based on the most recent tournament

AD Carry: Ezreal, Graves, Corki, Vayne, Ashe, Caitlyn
Jungle (old, unclear on current viability): Cho'Gath, Amumu, Dr. Mundo, Maokai, Skarner
Jungle (new, projection without evidence): Warwick, Nunu, Amumu, Fiddlesticks, Lee Sin, Olaf
Support: Zyra, Lulu, Blitzcrank, Sona, Leona, Nami
Mid: Diana, Orianna, Twisted Fate, Katarina, Karthus, Elise
Top: Lee Sin, Rengar, Olaf, Shen, Malphite, Yorick

Those are based on the "traditional" roles. However, there's some other roles that should be considered that don't QUITE fit the meta right now but COULD come back.

Assassin: It's unclear whether these are best in the middle or coming out of the jungle (or in a support capacity?) but there could still be something here.
LeBlanc, Akali, Diana, Ahri, Shaco, Evelynn, Kassadin

AD Jungler: There's some logic in having some sort of pseudo double jungler where one jungler takes the red side and one takes the blue side. The red side jungler is the "kill" jungler and the blue side is the "support" jungler. Under this setup, the red side would be a more AD focused jungler. Examples are:
Yorick, Zed, Warwick, Udyr, Olaf, Nocturne

AP Jungler: These are expected to jump out and support. Examples are:
Nunu, Cho'Gath, Skarner, Alistar, Rammus

AP Support: There's a few support characters that really help AP characters (generally through reducing MR and /or providing some CC)
Morgana, Soraka, Fiddlesticks, Ryze

AP Counters: There's a class of characters that are very much designed to kill AP characters or otherwise neutralize them
Galio, LeBlanc, Kassadin, Talon

AD melee carries: For a variety of reasons, the current meta strongly discourages these but that doesn't mean they don't have a place. Note, the characters with good sustain are typically considered "bruisers" and found in the top lane (Yorick for example). These characters are ones that need a support character to excel
Darius, Fiora, Tryndamere, Riven

AD counters: There aren't too many of these but a few characters have innate abilities to counter traditional AD carries, at least early on.
Fizz, Poppy, Sion

Split Pushers: Some characters make it into current lineups for OTHER reasons and they end up split pushing frequently but few teams FOCUS on split pushing in the current meta
Shen, Heimerdinger, Sivir, Ziggs, Nasus

So those are the traditional roles that get filled and the rough list of people who fulfill them. If you're asked to play a role, make sure you fully understand at least 3 of them enough to work around bans and preemptive picks. You should endeavor to learn 6 of them and i'd also recommend learning at least one other position inside and out (ideally you'd know all positions). Lastly, it's worth playing at least a little bit as the champions that typically counter your favorite champions. If you love Katarina, learn to play as Diana (for example). Most people are under the perception that Katarina is almost hard countered by Diana. Knowing how to play against a Diana can be very useful. Sometimes just knowing a champion's inherent weaknesses can allow you to be aggressive at times when you wouldn't normally have been.

League of Legends: Free Week Analysis (Week 4)

New champion rotation. Here's the rundown on them.

Jax: One of the "noobkillers" along with Master Yi. He's an absolute brute if he gets out of hand. Most players build him HP tanky too so by the end of the game, he's really hard to kill and can fearlessly jump in and stomp people. Typically played top lane, he will help make your ganks scary if your jungler doesn't have a really strong CC oriented initiate. Alternatively, if your ganker DOES have a good CC (like Amumu) then you can keep someone chain stunned for 2 seconds which can be a really big deal. You're going to see him ALOT this week and understanding how his counterstrike works is REALLY important. When you see yourself start to miss, STOP ATTACKING HIM. You're only investing in hurting yourself.

Kassadin: He's a mage assassin by design though he doesn't really excel in that role until he gets two points in his ultimate. The real power comes later when you can speed quickly to a fight by chain teleporting and boosting his teleport to the 3-4 stack range. At that point, it's going to hit for ~700 damage with a followon for ~800 damage. The silence has a good duration. He has really good mana sustain through his Nether Blade passive but he has to farm in melee to use it so keeping pressure on him will be a big help. If you have good range, I'd suggest aggressively farming at least until lvl 6. He'll silence you occasionally but at those early levels, you're not comboing people so it's not that big a deal and you have ranged poke that trumps his melee. If you can stay ahead of him, he wont' really become a terror until late game.

Singed: One of the weirder champions because he doesn't really have any traditional abilities. Beware the poison trail. He also can fling you over his head and slam you behind him. Be aware of the tower positions as Singed has a very specific area he wants to fight in where he can grab you and pull you into tower range.

Taric: An aggressive sustain support character. He can heal both himself and his carry simultaneously and he has a 1.5 second stun that can really be scary. He will also be constantly in your face attacking you because his auto-attacks give him mana back and refresh the CD of his heal thus allowing him to CONTINUE to fight in your face. I suspect also that good Tarics will take that point in pick pocket so that every auto-attack that lands on you gives him 5 gold.

Nidalee: I don't know a whole lot about her so i can offer only limited advice. The spear does ALOT of damage if it lands at max range (more damage at longer range) and you're going to want to dodge it because losing 30% of your health in one shot hurts.

Gragas: A "melee" champion with a whole lot of ranged abilities. He throws a beer keg to do a variety of things. He also heals himself every time he uses an ability (by drinking beer!). His ultimate is the real icing on the cake because it does a DISPERAL aoe (with a pretty big range). Don't use this in team fights early because it will screw up your team mates AoEs. Use it late to zone out key players (tanky characters that get out of position for example).

Akali: Melee assassin character. You need to learn how her shadow works to play against her properly because it's the key to everything she does. It gives her an 8 second zone of terror in which she slows, stealths and gains MR/Armor. She also has a stupidly quick cooldown on her ult which she can cast for free (it accrues charges like Teemo Shrooms and costs her no energy). It has three charges that she will likely use in quick succession (1 second CD at lvl 3 but 2 second CD at lvl 1). So stay out of her Twilight Shroud (20 second CD) and pressure her. She typically builds hybrid and so you're likely to face a Hextech Gunblade as well (meaning a lot of lifesteal and spellvamp). You don't want to get in a war of attrition with her. You need to outburst her. Typically played top lane but occasionally you see her mid.

Vladimir: He will build health. And then he'll build more health. And when he's done, he'll build more health. It's not uncommon to see a Vlad player with 4k health by the late mid game and a full build Vlad will have well over 5k (with respectable amounts of armor/MR taken on the side). That doesn't gimp him because it gives him 1.4 AP per 100 health. He wont' get to 500AP most likely but he'll be at 300ish without trouble and VERY survivable. His pool will make him untargetable and immune to AoE damage but it will NOT wipe out DoTs. Also, early on, his drain has a very long CD (10 seconds at lvl 1, declining by 1s per point put into it). So he can't do very much damage early and should be pushed aggressively before he hits ~5ish.

Urgot: Apparently used to be a premier AD carry but gets less played now. His autoattack has really good scaling and his abilities have good synergy launching rockets at range. One of the problems is that he doesn't have a really good escape and his auto-attack range is on the short side for an AD carry. Those two issues combine to make him not ideal in the current meta. Having said that, it doesn't mean he shouldn't be respected. His ult is a body switch which is frightening against isolated opponents. If you can snag the enemy AD / AP carry, by all means do it. Just make sure your team understands what's happening so that when the switch happens they're ready to pound the enemy.

Nautilus: He's an odd mix of tankiness, ganking and aoe. He doesn't QUITE fit in the jungle and he doesn't QUITE fit as a support so it's not totally clear on where/how he fits into the current meta. An interesting character though and you'll run into him alot. His initiate is unusual in that it's dual modal. If he hits a person, it works similar to Blitzcrank's with a less damage and a little bit less stun (it also pulls him and his target TOGETHER rather than a one sided pull) . If he gets a wall, he pulls HIMSELF towards it. You can take advantage of this by staying near walls and dodging because it may result in an initiate for your team rather than for his.

Bought LeBlanc last night

She's on sale for 487 RP but I went ahead and bought her with IP for 3150 since that seemed "cheaper" in the long run. Played a bot game with her to get the timing down (she's a very combo oriented champion) and then played a game of Dominion.

I gotta say, there's NOTHING more fun in League of Legends then seeing someone who thinks they're safe because they're at 80% health learn the hard way that 80% health is NOT safe. As best I can tell, the "easy" combo (QRW) will kill any champion of comparable level that hasn't bought some tank if they're ~80% or lower. Now you have to make sure you hit with the teleport to trigger the mark and the teleport has a lower radius then the Q. So I wouldn't throw the Q right away when you approach, get a little inside the radius. Conversely, if you're playing against LeBlanc and she tags you with her Q, RUN AWAY. It doesn't actually do much damage without triggering the second half of it but if they get off QRW then your BEST case scenario is that you're going back to base (you're facing 2 seconds of silence so retaliation is unlikely... plus, they've probably already snapped back to their starting teleport point).

A REALLY, REALLY bursty champ. The biggest challenge with her is recognizing that you're not a carry late games in the sense that your combo is likely to only take out one opponent every ~20 seconds. So a fed LeBlanc isn't actually that scary because late game it won't be as influential as (for example) a fed Karthus or Diana. The real power with her is to get a bit ahead in mid, and then leverage that advantage onto the rest of the  board. Gank bottom and take out the ADC or support and THEN LEAVE. That way your bottom duo can bully the remaining player and either get a kill or keep them under wraps.

One other note, I wouldn't bother with blue buff. Yeah, the mana regen is niceish but you don't HAVE to have it and you can't kill blue without taking a fair amount of damage, even late game. On the other hand, the Wraith camp is an insta pop with your teleport so you should kill it regularly  to up your CS by a fair amount every 60-90 seconds.

Really fun character and an absolute terror in lane.

My "Want to Buy" list

I mentioned the expected cost to my champions but I didn't actually mention the champions. I've categorized them into four categories.

Definitely going to buy: These are ones that I'll windmill slam the "Purchase" button as soon as these guys go on sale.

Yorick: Played him on free week when I first started playing. I love him. He gives me a good top lane option as well as a really strong bruiser. I suspect he can also jungle respectably though I haven't run that experiment yet.

Vladimir: Also played him on free week. I love the idea of stacking HPs to ridiculous levels and he has some really interesting, but straightforward mechanic. Another top lane option (it looks like I'll need a couple because my "team" needs a top laner).

Orianna: Her mechanics are really interesting and difficult to use. A good mid lane option that can fill a lot of roles.

Malzahar: I like pet classes. He summons a beastly little guy every 4th spell. His spells also bring some good utility with an AoE silence and an AoE health % damage.

LeBlanc: A bursty, mobile champion. She's not a HUGE help in team fights but she has some really interesting abilities and the ability to burst down anyone who's even a little squishy. I'd also like to try her with Liandry's where, if I'm not mistaken, Ethereal chains will hit for 20% (+ the normal damage) and then comboing into her ultimate for another 20%. That's really powerful.

Kha'Zix: I really like how this guy can customize himself as the game needs. In particular, his wings give him a long leap that's just terrifying but there are other ways to tweak him during a game. A nifty character with interesting mechanics.

Galio: Another unique character with an ability unlike anyone else's. He stacks MR to become really, really tanky and can work top lane or mid lane. His ultimate is pretty powerful in a team fight as well.

Ahri: Has really nifty mechanics and is very bursty. Has a whole "power of threes" thing going as well as one of the coolest taunts in the game. She blows a kiss and you walk uncontrollably towards her... that's just cool.

Leaning towards buying but want to play them on free week first:

Gragas: Oozes flavor. He walks around with a keg. When he uses his abilities he takes a drink of beer which heals him. He's also got some nifty abilities that let him influence a wide swath of the battlefield with very long range skill shots and an ultimate that has an explosive dispersal that can be used to separate a team very well.

Nami: The new support champ. Her ultimate is nifty and her heal/damage bouncing ability gives her a lot of versatility and poke.

Urgot: An AD carry that used to be considered overpowered. He has the best scaling auto-attack in the game and his abilities give him some interesting damage options. He's relatively bursty for an AD carry which is interesting.

Xeraith: The only one of this category that I've actually played. But I only got to play him against bots. He's walking artillery with the ability to essentially go into siege mode and lay down long range fire for 8 seconds. He also has some built in tankiness (converting AP/Armor) and magic pen (when in siege mode) to where he can guaranty he'll basically be doing true damage to his opponents.

Interested in buying but definitely need to play them first:

Cassiopeia: She's an AoE mid laner with a supposedly very high skill cap. I'd like to try her and see how she performs.

Graves: I've played as him a couple times on the free week. He feels pretty cool but there's nothing about him that screams, "You must play me!". Still, I'm looking for an AD carry that I like and he's been the one I liked the most so far.

Irelia: I've heard people talk about how versatile and solid she is. You see the pros play her alot. I'm intrigued but not sold.

Jayce: Lots of versatility but not much flavor. It's funny but I'm not normally into the flavor and yet this guy's complete lack of flavor bothers me a bit.

Leona: I meant to play her on free week but the opportunity never came up and supports are tough to test against bots. She's a hyper aggressive support with a passive that's very strong in tandem with another champion. Could be very interesting.

Maokai: The premier jungler of the end of Season 2. I don't know how he'll do in the new jungle but his abilities are interesting (the little sapling he throws is awesome AND hilarious).

Mordekaiser: Looks very cool and has an interesting suite of skills. Very tanky but can be a pseudo-support (like Morgana) or a rock hard top lane bruiser. I've gotten pounded by him once and would like to try him myself.

Characters I'm vaguely intrigued by but are certainly not on my "Must buy list". I'll play them on a free week and there's a possibility I'll change my mind:

Hecarim: He's a beefy, melee centaur. Definitely worth checking out.

Rumble: A yordle in a power suit. He gets played in top lane with some regularity by the pros and he has an interesting assortment of abilities. Also worth checking out.

So those are my "interested in" list. If I bought everything on a sale week, it would cost me over 10,000 RP (~$70). If I just bought the ones I REALLY want, it would only cost 1,950 (of which I already have 1,100). I could then pick up the others over the following weeks with IP (which will, admittedly, take a good long while).

Planning your IP purchases

I got to talking to a couple guys last night, one of whom is a few levels behind me and one of whom has already hit 30. I was looking at picking up LeBlanc for a fairly reasonable 3150 IP and am sitting on about 11.5k IP. I've been saving my IP for lvl 20 and the "good" runes that you can buy at that point. I wasn't sure exactly what that would cost, however. He estimated roughly 9k for a full rune page but I realized that at 20, I can't do a rune page. So I did a little bit of quick research this morning and came up with the following.

At lvl 20, you have 6 mark/seal/glyph slots and 2 quint slots. If you want a "generic" AP page, you would have something that looks like this:

6 Glyphs of Scaling Mana regen: 205 each
6 Marks of Flat Magic Pen: 410 each
6 Seals of Flat Armor: 205 each
2 Quints of Flat AP: 1025 each

Grand total cost of 6970 IP.

If you're like me, you're probably earning XP at roughly a 1 : 1.1 ratio of XP : IP. I think generally it's a 1 : 1 earn rate modified by the first win of the day bonus. So if you play a bit less frequently, you actually will end up unlocking people faster (relative to your level gain). Lvl 20 is achieved at 15676xp so that's ~17243 IP that you should expect to earn in that time. If you just want to fill out an AP rune page, you're looking at about 7k. If you want to fill out both an AD and AP, it's more like 15k (AD oriented quints are a little more expensive then the flat AP quint). conveniently, you'll probably share your armor Seal (either flat or scaling) for both.

So MOST people can probably get away with spending anywhere from 3 - 9k in IP before they hit 20 without causing themselves problems once they get there. Thought it would be useful to have a goal.

So I'm going to probably buy LeBlanc tonight. She's the cheapest (IP wise) champ on my "definitely want to get" list. That will leave me with sufficient IP to fill out two rune pages at 20. Not bad.

Now to grind out these last 40 summoner's rift games... yeesh!

The new jungle

The new jungle is hard. There's no two ways about it. My experience is based on NOT having a full rune page or mastery tree so it should get a little bit easier but, at this point, I've only come across one champion that can jungle consistently the way many of the season 2 junglers could. And that's Fiddlesticks because his Drain is particularly ridiculous for this purpose (and synergizes amazingly with Hunter's Machete). I'm going to try Nunu tonight because, I think, he might be solid too.

So let's discuss the "old" standard and what the new standard might look like. The old way to do it optimally was to go Wolves at 1:40, Blue at 2:00, Wraiths, Golems, Red (or, a very few champions could go Red, Golems which made it slightly faster). Generally, the good junglers were doing this with boots making them that little bit faster.

So far, I've found very, very few champions that can go Wolves, Blue, etc. There are a fair number that have spammy attacks that can do Blue, Wolves and on because they then have the mana to make it work. This means you don't start your jungle until the 2 minute mark when blue buff spawns. Throw on top of this that leashing is more difficult now and you have a more difficult environment for lvl 1-3 characters. So what do you do now?

1) Get a leash. Leashing isn't dead, it's just different. Where before it was about tanking, now it's about doing extra damage. So you get a friend to throw some damage down on the wolves so that YOUR kill of the wolves is much quicker. If they can stick around and do Blue with you as well, then you're probably all set. But that does two things, first of all, it probably siphons at least a little bit of xp from the wolves. Second, it keeps them out of lane and they have to rush to top lane (if blue) or bottom lane (if red) to start farming. One interesting option for red is to have the support do the leash so that the AD Carry can continue to farm.

2) Go slower. Anyone (pretty much) can jungle if they go Blue, Wolves, Wraiths, base. This isn't optimal but it is "doable". You'd buy boots on the way back and then race to do golems, Red, Wraiths and then gank. The one plus to this is that you probably don't have to buy Hunter's Machete if you don't want to. This means that your lvl 4 gank (boots, doran's?) will be better than the other team might be expecting. If you have a really good early ganker (Amumu for example) then this might be an option you can do.

3) Counter jungle hard. One, somewhat unexplored option, is to counter jungle hard core. Don't worry about the buffs. Leave them for your teammates. Focus on running a circuit that steals the enemy wraiths often and frequently and looks to steal golems when their jungler shows up on the other side (Wolves are pretty unsafe to steal).

4) Double jungle. This has been floated in some areas. A "top" jungler and "bottom" jungler who also support the lanes. If more aggressive supports (Zyra, Nunu for example) become more common then this might be a really good solution. It does raise interesting questions about the lanes and where the buffs go though. But it opens the option for HYPER aggressive counter jungling. If you have two junglers and they have 1, clearing your jungle by the 2:30 mark and then team ganking the jungler at lvl 3ish at their wraith/golems would be really disastrous (not the least of which it also sets up a lvl 4 lane gank that could truly snowball the team. I think if this becomes a thing, you'll want to see AD junglers differentiated between AP junglers and you'll also see AD vs. Bruiser mismatches in bottom and top because the AD will now want to be near the red buff no matter what. The funny thing about this is that I can't see it working really well against a team with a single jungler. But against a team with NO jungles (where the top/bottom lane are responsible for keeping the jungles farmed) it might struggle. So it's some interesting game theory.

Who you should play... and when?

There are a wide variety of champions in LoL right now. I'm finding they fit a broader mold than the standard "AD Carry / AP Carry / Bruiser / Support" buckets that people tend to put them in. Not a lot of people are writing about this and i wanted to give it a try. Let's assume you're "newish" to League of Legends and you've bought the two champions bundles. That gives you a stable of 40 champions to choose from, each with a pretty wide variety of strengths and weaknesses. I wanted to give a quick breakdown on WHEN you should choose each of those champions and what you should look out for as well as possible counterpicks to avoid. this will be a fairly long post so I'd advise reading it as more of a reference:

Alistar: Alistar typically gets played as an aggressive support, a jungler or, occasionally in mid lane solo. He's very tanky and designed to get in people's faces. He's ideally suited for playing with ranged AD Carrys where he can run interference in front of them and provide knockbacks and knockups (that your AD carry can continue to shoot at). If you use him, try to initiate with headbutts from the side so that your AD carry can continue to shoot at the target and then move for the pulverize for additional CC. Your spam is spammable but don't waste too much mana on it early on.

Amumu: A very good jungler in season 2. He's especially a good choice if facing high hp opponents. His ganks are strong but his bandage toss skill shot is slow and somewhat tricky to hit with. All of his damage is AoE around him so you'll want to be built a little tanky to take the inevitable damage you take. Also, make sure you're familiar with the jungle and what's expected before you start running him.

Anivia: In pro play, he's exclusively run as an AP mid but i think there's no reason you can't run him as an aggressive support with slows and the wall. If you do, he's probably best with a melee character who will get the biggest boost from you having those two abilities. Try to get to where you can quickly cast the wall to break two enemies apart. This can be really powerful if you trap a carry or melee character on the wrong side of a 5 second wall. Note, if you think you're going up against a champion with a repeatable flash affect (Ezreal, for example) then your wall will be significantly less useful with that character so try to catch out other characters or pick someone other than Anivia.

Annie: Pretty much the definition of AP. She's very bursty. With proper timing she can get a large cone aoe stun with her incinerate synergizing with her passive. I don't see her get played a lot and I'm honestly not sure why. She's tankier than most AP Carries, has spammable abilities and a really nice team utility (aoe stuns??). Her mana costs are a bit on the high side but other than that, it's hard to find fault with her. One note about her Q. The mana cost is refunded if she kills her target and it only has a 4 second CD. This makes it perfect for farming and last hitting with.

Ashe: Typically built as an AD carry. The thing about her is her ability to slow you with regular shots. Keep this in mind and recognize that champions that rely on mobility are going to be at a slight disadvantage. Her cone is a big aoe spread but hits the first target so you can make it useless with minions (same with her ultimate... or you could just sidestep it). She has a vision utility power that you can't do anything about but you can keep in mind as well.

Blitzcrank: Another aggressive support. Blitzcrank's signature ability is his skill shot which will grab you, pull you close to him and then stun you. When picking him, you probably don't want to be up against the more aggressive melee supports (Leona, Taric, Alistar). He works well with a melee or a ranged AD though you'll need better team communication if a melee carry is in his team. He can keep a character locked down for 2+ seconds with his grab and then followup Power Fist. He's designed to support a kill lane, however. If your carry is a late game character (Graves, Ezreal, etc), he's not nearly as ideal.

Cho'Gath: Lately, he's seen pretty common use as a jungler. His kit is unique. He has a very powerful, but somewhat hard to hit, delayed cast aoe knockup as well as a aoe cone silence. What really sets him apart is the fact that he'll grow to be gigantic through his Feast ultimate. He can add 900 health this way with a full six stacks. You want to make sure that this is nearly always maxed and you also want to make sure it's up for Team Fights as it will deal a HUGE chunk of true damage to a champion (650 + .7x AP). He has very good sustain with health and mana getting returned with each kill (minion, monster or champion). Ganking with him is as simple as hiding in a bush, waiting to land rupture and coordinating with your laner.

Corki: A very popular AD carry. The real power he has is in his spammable AoE ultimate. He's far and away the most "aoe" focused AD carry with Gatling Gun and his ultimate allowing for AD scaling AoE damage and also phosphorous bomb scaling off AP (an aoe Damage and reveal). He's slow and has no CC so a support that covers that deficiency and/or an opponent without a lot of mobility is a positive.

Dr. Mundo: Gets used as a jungler alot but I'm not a big fan. He's tough to kill and has a deceptively slow cooldown machete throw that serves as a slow. It's a sufficient initiate but not nearly as good as Blitzcrank or Cho'Gath. He has a PBaOE untargeted ability that does well later... especially if you also build a Sunfire cape. Did not perform well in the latest tournament. It remains to be seen if he'll fit in this newest jungle or not.

Evelynn: An assassin par excellence. She is typically seen as an AP mid. If you want to watch how she should be played, watch Alex Itch playing her for Moscow Five. He's scary. She's a somewhat fragile champion and you need to learn exactly how much damage you can do in a burst with her because if you can't kill her opponent quickly, you're probably going to die yourself. One of only a few characters with built in stealth capability, she's very useful if up against relatively squishy targets that are likely to push. Catching them out of position becomes almost easy. Watch out for pink wards being purchased.

Fiddlesticks: Originally a very good jungler. He fell off in Season 2 due to the perception that he had insufficient AoE capacity (which is debatable with Dark Winds). I've run him through the new jungle and, even at my summoner level of 15, he appears to be able to jungle just fine. I cleared the jungle with no support in 4 minutes. With a bit of leashing help on golem/wolves, that would easily have been in the 3:30 range which is more typical. His ganks are ridiculous when he hits 6. You should crowstorm in slightly behind your opponent, terrify, dark wind and then drain. This will be insufficient to kill most opponents but with ANY kind of support, it will get you one to two kills. Some people play him as a pure support for AD Carry's. I don't know much about this but the multi-target silence and terrify give you sufficient CC that i can see this being a reasonable alternative.

Gangplank: Yarrggh! He's a pirate. You play him when you need a pirate. He accumulates gold quite quickly with "Parrley". Some people have already begun to talk about a Bankplank build that uses Parrley and Pick Pocket to accumulate massive amounts of gold while playing a sort of harassing support. I think his general kit is a little niche at present (self heal, aoe attack speed + movement speed buff are somewhat niche powers). His ultimate, however, covers a very large area and is great when either sieging the enemy base or fighting off a siege of yours.

Heimerdinger: He's a funny little guy. I actually think one of the new changes in the meta may give him a role. I want to play some games and confirm this, but I suspect he'll be very good in a 1v2 role if left up top (or on the bottom against a support/AD Carry combo). Be sure if fighting against AoE champions that you put your turrets out wide to minimize the AoE damage but put them clustered in the minion line if they have single target skill shots (like Ezreal's Q). Also, their range is quite good at 525. This makes him a good choice against Graves (525), Kog-Maw (500), Sivir (500) and Urgot (425). He's not bad against Ezreal, Miss Fortune, Corki or Tristana who all have 550 range either. Two other notes, his W auto-targets the three closest enemies with a HUGE (1000) range. This lets you stand very far back and hit people with impunity. It will NOT let you fire if there's no one in range so you can use that to judge distances. Also, his grenade is hard to hit with but when it does, it gives fairly decent damage and a decent length hard stun. Keep this for when your jungler is ready to gank and try to help them out when the time is right. Note: He can support given his stun and aoe heal. If you do this, be stingy with your turrets as they suck a share of xp and can result in a starved carry if you're not careful.

Janna: Another support. While she has some aggressive capacity, she also has more "standard" support abilities with a shield and an ultimate that is almost entirely support in nature. The trick to her is maximizing her knock up. It's very difficult to use against fleeing opponents and much better to use as an initiate. This means you want throw it out there at roughly the same time as your AD Carry initiates. Her shield works perfectly with melee characters by both shielding as well as buffing AD. This allows her to throw the hurricane, shield and then slow an opponent all in a relatively short time to, hopefully, setup a kill.

Jax: One of two melee "noobstompers" in the game (along with Master Yi). He is a beefy snowballing machine. I'd tend to use him if you know you're up against a similarly beefy solo top laner or a squishier assassin type that you can out sustain with your attack speed scaling. In a pinch, he can also do a decent initiate with his leap strike and a prematurely activated counter strike. That can be used to start a gank if your jungler lacks a good initiate.

Kayle: I like her but I'm not totally comfortable playing her. Her heal lacks the oomph to really give her sustain in lane although it's secondary ability is quite good (allowing her to get BACK to lane quickly or give someone that speed boost needed to finish a fleeing opponent). her Q and E abilities are great, however. Late game she can clear waves very, very quickly and her ultimate allows her to keep anyone safe in a team fight for 3 seconds. Her ability to debuff champions combined with her E ability makes her very good at softening team targets late game, as well. In the current meta, she works well as a support or as a solo top laner and (I think) she can handle the 1v2 situations that the latter is likely to entail frequently.

Karthus: Almost always played as an AP mid. The key to him is to watch your opponents and look for making his ult matter. The other thing is to not be afraid to die. You have a PBAoE big time damage spell that continues on when you die. Make yourself just a little bit beefy and don't be afraid to die in a team fight. Follow that up with a Requiem (don't get interrupted!) and you can manage to get an awful lot of kills and assists.

Kassadin: This guy is a hard core mage assassin but he is all about the late game. Because his ultimate starts at a relatively long CD, he can't really do his thing (chain Rift Walks) until he's gotten it to at least lvl 2 and realistically lvl 3. If you're going to go this route, you need to have crazy high mana regen so that you can get the rift walk up to 4-5 stacks (at which point it will cost you 400-500 mana but also be doing nearly 800 damage). The tooltip says stacks 10 times. I don't think anyone realistically gets to that, however. Shoot for 4-5 chaining up to 6-7 as you stalk an opponent. His Q also gives him a relatively long duration, hard hitting silence as well. You probably also want to talk to your jungler and make sure it's okay for you to take blue buff as you're going to need the mana. At least you can get there and back quickly with Rift Walk.

Katarina: The poor man's Diana, at least that's how I've started thinking of her. She is significantly easier to get around with because her Shunpo is more flexible (anyone... not just enemies) and a lower CD (without Crescent Strike). She's also a better AoE damage dealer. But she trades out having the durability of Diana as well as the utility and sheer raw damage. Still, I've seen people snowball hard with her. She's especially deadly against more squishy mages in the middle (Twisted Fate, Karthus, etc).

Malphite: He's big and beefy. You're going to build armor and hit points almost exclusively with him. His initiate is, by far, the best in the game with a large AoE charge that results in a big knock up. With a modest amount of coordination, you can have your team killing people before the other team hits the ground. Don't focus on getting the whole team in the AoE. Focus on getting the right one or two people isolated. If you can drop 2 people in the first few seconds of a team fight, you're going to win. Your job with Malphite is to start those fights and take damage. I typically build Frozen Heart, Sunfire Cape, Abyssal Scepter, Aegis of the Legion and Guardian Angel. That insures that I'm very, very difficult to kill while also allowing me sufficiently decent damage output to where I can't be completely ignored like some tanks can. Remember that your Seismic Shock siphons speed (slowing an opponent and speeding yourself). If you hit someone with a phantom dancer, you WILL go very fast. Your ground slam decreases attack speed and late game will do ~400 damage so use it immediately after charging in.

Master Yi: The other "Noobstomper". Master Yi is very, very dangerous once he gets a little bit fed. He's been used to good affect against squishy AP Mids as well as top lanes that lack escapes. Look to trade kills if you have to. You're going to scale better with kills than most people will.

Morgana: She's a bit of an odd duck. Kind of an early game AP Mid that transitions into a late game support. Her abilities are on very long cooldowns and her built in spell vamp means that early game her sustain is decent but late game (when most everyone else's cooldowns are declining) she's relegated to using her shield more. She's also best when supporting an AP carry and not an AD carry because her aoe lowers magic resist. If you're not running a jungler, she's a good top support for an AP bruiser / AP Carry.

Nasus: This guy is the definition of the solo top bruiser. You are going to want to farm, farm, farm with him and get that Q up. If you're going to be harassed, you don't want him. I would never pick him in draft but against another top lane champion with relatively limited ranged attacks (Malphite, Rengar, Olaf, Shen, Jayce even before 6). You have no poke but your spirit fire is not insignificant and your wither will make ganks easier. Just make sure you keep last hitting that Q. You want your damage with it to be 600+ by end of the game.

Nunu: He has gotten played solo top, jungle and now, frequently, support. He's another aggressive support. The combination of blood boil and ice blast helps to make your AD carry very scary. On the other hand, consumer is a fantastic tool for maintaining your fighting form up top or in the jungle. If Jungle transitioning into Support is a thing your team is going for, he could be very good. Note, he's also a very good counter pick for anyone with pets (Yorick, Malzahar, etc) because his consume will take off significant portions of their DPS if times right.

Rammus: He's a little rolling ball of armored death. His Q will chase someone down with frightening inevitability and knock them up. It's a great lead in for your AD carry. You can then go defensive and taunt which has the added benefit of lowering the opponents armor as well. Again, another aggressive support and one that we haven't seen enough of, I think. Dropping an opponent's armor to essentially zero early game can be devastating. You should look to focus on W and E if you're playing support.

Ryze: Lately, he's started seeing play as a counter to Diana. I'm not entirely convinced he does that but the pros seem to have faith in it. Ryze scales off his mana pool making mana runes, masteries and items really important. The important thing to remember with him is that you want to go all out. A lot of other characters have to conserve their mana early. But Ryze gets better with more mana and better with more casts. So cast everything and cast it often.

Shaco: I don't know a lot about Shaco. He's a hard core assassin which hasn't been fitting in the meta game very well lately. Some people use him as a jungler but that doesn't seem to be very common. He's tricky in that he produces little jack in the boxes that fear while he also hops around and backstabs you. In reading about him, he somewhat lacks the burst potential of other assassin champions and so has been a bit eschewed by the pro community.

Singed: A very odd character. None of his abilities feel like normal abilities for LoL. He doesn't shoot anything at you. He is more of a strategic player with a potent acid trail and a powerful fling. His abilities all scale really well off AP but typically, i think he gets build AD because his only real attack in combat is his autoattack. His slow is the strongest slow in the game (75%). You want to make good use of his poison trail and slow as well as his fling. Look for opportunities to fight under your tower and fling your opponent into your tower. Not a champion I'd suggest for your first game, however.

Sion: The undead lumberjack. He's a melee beast with a power that drains his health and ups his damage but also permanently increases his health with each unit kill. His passive gives him strong resistances to AD carries (at least early) and he can be a pretty hard counter to them. If a team looks like they're picking an AD heavy champion for top (Yorick, Rengar, etc) he could work to apply very strong early pressure to them.

Sivir: Widely acknowledged as the best lane pusher in LoL. Her Q and W allow her to clear minion waves better than almost anyone. Her spell shield is tricky to master but can be used powefully against certain people. Anyone with an AoE over time ability (Miss Fortune, Ziggs, Gangplank, etc) can look forward to her nullifying a tick of it and gaining 75 mana. It's powerful against anyone with a predictable ability (Cho'Gath's feast getting shielded away is fun). Because it stops an ability cold (without regards to damage) it's nice against any channeled ultimate you can see coming (Karthus, Nunu, etc). Her ultimate will greatly benefit other attack focused champions so teaming her with a top lane Lee Sin and a AP Mid Teemo can be brutal.

Soraka: The most passive of supports (outside of Lulu perhaps). She really is what you traditionally think of as support. She can heal, give mana, buff armor, debuff MR and her passive buffs nearby MR. Her ultimate lets her heal everyone on the map (her teammates at least). She's support all the way. Late game, her starfall will greatly help the AP Carry to deal damage (and possibly the bruiser top if he's someone like malphite who wants to deal magic damage). There's a reason that she currently has the highest win rate of any champion on the NA servers. If you play her, it may feel like you're taking a bullet... but you're REALLY helping your team.

Taric: Yes another aggressive support. With a stun and the ability to replace his own mana and heal two people (himself and a friend), he can help a carry stay in lane a long time. The fact that he has high armor and he boosts nearby armor of allies passively just puts icing on the cake of him being a great AD Carry support. It's not hard for a Taric / Graves combo to have the AD carry with 60+ armor during early fights. That's a 38% reduction in damage taken which is huge in early fights.

Teemo: There are two ways to build teemo. AP + Attack speed or AD. Of those two, most people greatly prefer the first. Some people feel its cheesy. Other people like putting invisible poisonous mushrooms all over the map. The people that play Teemo are the latter. His unique, when pumped with sufficient AP is scary. Those mushrooms also serve as mini-wards which is not an insignificant bonus.

Tristana: I know very little about her. She used to be a very popular AD carry. Her auto-attack increases in range until its just over 700 at lvl 18. That's a unique ability that no other champion has (Xerath has an activated range boost for his spells). It also makes her the longest range AD carry from levels 12 on. If I'm understanding her passive correctly, she also turns a wave of minions into a liability for the enemy (exploding minions cause damage to other minions that makes them explode ad infinitum. You could build her as a straight AD carry or you could mix in some AP items (Hextech Gunblade and/or Guinsoo's Rageblade). Also interesting would be Runaan's which would put you pretty close to the attack speed cap when you activate Rapid Fire (2.5 attacks per second). Given the long range, that could be a real advantage in team fights.

Tryndamere: I hate this guy. He's a ridiculously invincible team fighting machine. He has an unCCable ult that makes him invulnerable to death for 5 seconds (on a relatively short, 90 second cooldown). You want to stack ridiculous amounts of crit, AD and little bits of attack speed on him. He'll be more powerful earlier in smaller team fights where you don't have to worry about getting burst down despite without a chance to pop your ult. He's also better against AD heavy teams with a more dependable (i.e. timeable) damage stream.

Twisted Fate: Probably one of the highest (if not the highest) skill cap character in the bundles. Twisted Fate has really amazing lane presence through his ability to clear minions easily and sustain through blue cards, harass through gold cards and aoe damage with reds. There are a number of ways to build him as his abilities scale well enough off AD that you can go that route. Most people choose to go AP, however. One note about his ultimate. It takes two button pushes to get it off. The first grants stealth detection and the second lets him teleport in a pretty wide (but not endless) area. MOST people send him mid now so that he can take a few steps out of lane and get to the top or bottom lanes with the teleport. Don't discount the stealth detection as it can help against people like Teemo, Evelynn and others with built in stealth abilities.

Twitch: I like Twitch a lot. He applies a True Damage DoT that can be pretty brutal and his abilities synergize very well. I think the new Runaan's Hurricane is an item made almost especially for him and gives him a powerful presence in team fights (allowing expunge to be far, far more effective). The True damage is especially nice if you're up against opponents that are likely to stack MR (think Galio) and Armor (Malphite, Xerath).

Veigar: The AP Carry version of Nasus. You want to farm like a champ and get your Q powered up to an insane level during the laning phase. He has very good synergy with certain supports (Morgana!) and Junglers (Amumu!) but can be a little fragile. I'd use him if you have opponents that are a little squishy and/or lack flash like escapes (Graves, Corki, etc). His AoE stun can be very powerful against those types of characters. In conjunction with a character like Trundle, Ziggs, Anivia, Caitlyn or others that have the ability to mine out certain areas,  you can really control the shape of the battlefield where you have your team fights.

Warwick: Great sustain and the ability to either jungle or top lane makes this one of the more flexible champions. He hasn't seen a lot of play at the pro-level because his jungle time hasn't been very good but with the Jungle changes, I suspect that will change. His jungle ganks can be terrifying and, once he starts accumulating attack speed and AD, he can carve through enemy champions very quickly. Be careful about using him in the jungle if you have an AD Bruiser in the top lane as this could make your team somewhat unbalanced towards physical damage. A very good option if you're facing a slower than normal team too (particularly one without the ability to control the field of battle like Anivia).

Zilean: The oddest support in the game, IMO. His early game burst damage is ludicrous. It's not uncommon for a time bomb to hit someone for 25% of their health early on. Late game, he becomes more difficult. His "support" is in a difficult to time ultimate. He has a dual purpose slow/speed boost but it's on a lowish CD. His CDs in general are very long (although he has an ability that will shorten them). He actually has good speed (310) and good range (600). I'm curious if anyone has tried to grow him into a hybrid AD carry (with Hextech Gunblade and Guinsoo's Rage Blade). He would never have the raw damage of someone like Twitch but it seems like it might catch some people by surprise.

Anyways... I know that was long but it should give you some thoughts on how to build/pick/maintain a good team comp with these champions that almost everyone should have.

Twitch + Runaan's = Drool

So the new Runaan's is a pretty crazy (and relatively cheap) item for AD carries (and for Teemo!). It sends two little shots out for every autoattack you do. And, critically, those shots also trigger on-hit events. It also grants a pretty obscene 70% attack speed. So if you build this as soon as team fights begin happening, you essentially guarantee that your team will win team fights if you can stay alive for 3-4 seconds.

At lvl 18 with this (and the 4% attack speed mastery) you'll be 2.04 shots per second when you come out of ambush and hitting for at least 187. You're also applying a 6 second true damage dot that will hit for 6*8 (48) damage per stack and stack up to six times.

So in the first 3 seconds of an engagement, you'll hit for:

187 * 6 (base attack)
(10 + 187/2) * 12 (your Runaan's)
18 * 48 (with some of it already applied and some of it lasting over time)
80*3+(35+187*.25)*18  Popping your E (this is actually the low end as it assumes your venom is only on three targets)


That's 4939.5 damage in 3 seconds to 3 targets. You probably have a little bit of armor pen from runes and masteries but even if your opponents have ALOT of armor, you're probably doing (by yourself) 300-400 damage per second per target to ~3 targets. You've also got a bit of life steal in there just to make it harder to DPS you down. I'm not sure whether black cleaver (reducing their armor) or Infinity edge (20 more AD and spiking crit damage) is the better next purchase. I suppose it depends, ironically, on how much armor they have (because of the quirk in the system that makes flat armor pen matter LESS when they stack armor... not more). If they have modest amounts of armor, the Black Cleaver is probably better. If they have lots and lots of armor, it may be better just to focus on raw DPS (I don't know the crit system well enough to know how this fully works though).

Either way, Twitch could be downright frightening if he gets the Runaan's (presumably, he'll complete with a Blade of the Lich King and Frozen Mallet)... At a final build, he's doing 7500 damage per 3 seconds + crits + 4% of the health of the targets (which gets applied 18 times) + 30% slows to at least three targets. Knife through Hot butter is the phrase that springs to mind.

DC comics... I see what you did there

So I kind of poo-pooed the DC Comics "Earth 2" concept when they first started it because I felt that they'd just cleaned up the metaverse. But now I think I understand what they're doing. First, some comics history. DC comics has had two "major" super hero teams. The Justice League and the Justice Society. These two teams were actually the primary source for the major continuity "kerfluffles" that DC has had. The Justice Society had different members and spanned a period starting with the 2nd World War. So on the one hand, it should be easy to hand wave them away as "different" people. And this works for the Flash and Green Lantern. Their powers were different. Their names were different. All in all, not a big deal. But you run into problems when both teams have a Kal-el who's from Krypton and now goes as Superman or both have a vigilante Batman whose real name is Bruce Wayne. And the one from the Justice Society (the team with the older / longer history) was already old at that time (which in his hair, for example). So either we come up with some convoluted way to de-age superman in the 70's, send him back into space to re-land as a baby and grow up. Or we create a separate universe where he came to Earth sooner.

So that's the history of this issue. Fast forward to today's reboot. DC has rebooted the DC universe and the Justice League. They've stripped down the League to the core members of old (Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman) and added Cyborg for reasons that are not entirely clear. But where does that leave the old guard? What about that OTHER Green Lantern? What about Hawk Woman? The Atom? Mr. Terrific? Those characters don't have a place now. Sure, we could create a "retro" story for them and push them to World War II. But that probably wouldn't sell well. People tend to want to save retro things for small doses of flashback. Not to mention, having two Green Lanterns floating around with different Mythos would be a little weird (Why is this guy calling himself Green Lantern? Sure it works with his powers but there's ALREADY a Green Lantern).

Instead, they've chosen to do "Earth-2". This is a universe designed to be concurrent with the DC main timeline and "main" universe. But it lets them recreate the Justice Society as they want it. I think you'll see very few "identical" characters from the Justice League after these first two (Flash and Green Lantern). They've already brought Mr. Terrific over to that timeline. I suspect you'll see Dr. Midnite before too long and we know that Power Girl and the Huntress are trying to get back (I suspect they will within the next 5-6 months at which point they'll role into the Justice Society and Worlds' Finest will become a story about someone else on Earth-2). At some point, we'll likely see Dr. Fate, Sandman and likely some others as part of this reboot.

It also gives them a safety valve for future continuity snafus. They can always say that a certain story has actually been on Earth-2 and not Earth-1 if they find themselves in a bind. Having established early on that they're different, it could make things smoother going forward.

I still don't think it's necessarily the best solution. Spending the time and effort to have decent continuity was, is, and will continue to be the optimal solution. But this is DC... They don't believe in that.

Free week meta

Yesterday I did a little blurb about the free week champions, I thought that it would be good to summarize the impact on the low-level solo queue where you see a much heavier emphasis on the free week champions. Here's what you're going to see this week

Graves/Caitlyn and Rammus/Sona on bottom: Rammus is a really good, really badly understood aggressive support. He is tanky and has a nearly unstoppable knock up. There's nothing more terrifying then trying to run away and seeing a little rammus ball spinning towards you. sona is a much better traditional support type character. Great for solid sustain. Graves is a fairly cookie cutter AD carry. A bit tougher than some with a low cooldown easy to use escape and stacking resists from being "in combat". Caitlyn has the highest range of any character in the game (650!).

Brand / Twisted Fate / Morgana mid: Each of these characters brings something very different to the table. Brand is stupidly high burst. TF is crazy mobility and the ability to sustain with mana, stun or aoe at will. Morgana gives the team some utility and durability as well as good aoe DoTs. TF is probably the one you want to press hardest against in lane. He lacks the burst of other champs. Be wary about getting stunned under turret, however. Also pay attention to which card they're conjuring up. If they're struggling to get the right card, press hard. If they're good enough to get the right card each time, back off and be a little more patient. But your job in the mid is to keep him in lane and not roaming.

Nasus / Morgana / Jarvan IV top: Nasus is a farm all the time kind of top. His Q will get really, really, really good by the end of the game if you let him last hit at will. Pressure him. Get him to press you. You want a low creep count when fighting Nasus because it hurts him a lot more than it hurts you. Jarvan has an ultimate that will isolate people. If you have an escape then great (Ezreal, for example). Otherwise, keep Flash handy in case he jumps on you.

Zed, randomly seen throughout: Zed is not as bursty as I'd feared. He's got a little better sustained DPS then some other Assassins though. His shadow can do funny things so pay attention to what's going on. I haven't played much as him and don't know him all that well but he's reasonably nuanced to play so don't expect players to go all ginsu with him.

Mortgage interest deduction and whether or not it's "good"

This article does a pretty good job of outlining the facts. They sort of gloss by the most important points, however. But they do clip against the edge of it

"It does not subsidize homeownership. It does something else," said Andrew Hansen, an associate professor of economics at Marquette University. "It's more valuable for people at the upper ends of the income distribution. They're not at the margin between renting and buying. They're between buying something and buying something bigger."

Because you can only claim the mortgage deduction if you itemize, you need it to be big to matter. So it does very, very little to incentivize the more low level home-ownership that everyone presumes it helps. It does, however, have a disproportionate impact on purchasing decisions for higher income individuals (particularly if they look at marginal utility of dollars). Additionally, because it's uncapped, it effectively subsidizes high cost markets (California and New York City region being the biggest examples). Lastly, the thing it hinges off of (and therefore the thing it incentivizes) is the LOAN... Not the ownership.

If we REALLY want to incentivize home ownership, give everyone who owns a home a $5,000 above the line deduction (i.e. one that doesn't require itemization). Effectively expanding all of their brackets upwards by $5,000 for owning a house. That's roughly equivalent to the mortgage deduction for a ~$100,000 mortgage although it will scale better for people as they begin to own their homes free and clear and will still disproportionately benefit high income individuals (no real way to avoid that and it's fine from an economics stand point).

If we want to incentivize home OWNERSHIP... then we should actually incentivize OWNERSHIP. No reason that people should be encouraged to leverage to get the benefits. And there's absolutely zero reason why our tax code should exacerbate market imbalances (as it does now by providing incentives for buying bigger and bigger homes).

Note: I understand and am willing to accept that this may crater the high end mortgage market. I think that's a market which is vastly overbuilt (in large part BECAUSE of this tax scheme) and which we should not CONTINUE to inflate because it will make the inevitable "burst bubble" even worse.

Note #2: I offer this up not even necessarily as a revenue raising objective. I'd be fine, conceptually, with picking a number that would result in revenue neutrality. I don't think it's necessary, per se, to go that high. But my goal is to point out that we're incentivizing the wrong thing (high leverage) at the expense of the thing we purportedly WANT to incentivize (home ownership).

League of Legends Season 3 is here

The patch hit the NA server yesterday. The UI changes are a bit jarring but not bad once you get used to them. Ditto the shop which will feel completely alien at first but after a couple games will feel more normal. The big headline changes are in the jungle where the spawns are much more single target focused. I didn't want to try one in a live game yet but I played a little trial game this morning with Fiddlesticks and it's MUCHHHHH easier.

Smite on big spawn, autoattack small creature till dead, drain on big creature (kills it if smite was used), autoattack other small creatures. Rinse Repeat.

I need to play with it a little bit more but, I think, the ideal jungler will be one of three types

Hybrid: Building Utility tree so they can start with Crystalline Flask + Hunter's Machete and put points in the dual lifesteal/spellvamp talent as well.

1 Good AoE (possibly with long C/D) + Good Single target: While the new jungle deemphasizes AoE, you still benefit from an AoE spell of some kind. The BEST AoE is something like Fiddlesticks which will bounce and nearly annihilate the small golem (i.e. scales up and DOWN for smaller spawns). But any kind of AoE will be okay. The AoE HEAVY champions (Amumu, for example) may be too mana-inefficient when the small spawns drop quickly (effectively reducing them to single target damage) but I haven't experimented. These guys might not even need Hunter's Machete and can instead build Crystalline Flask and an early Doran's or something (I ALMOST felt like this with Fiddle).

Good sustain and solid single target: Someone like Warwick probably can just go AD and play ginsu knife in the jungle (I need to try this but it seems good in theory).

On a separate note, I'm at level 15 now with a hair under 9k xp. that puts me at about 60% of the way to 20 and a little less than a quarter of the way to 30. That's nice. At roughly 3 weeks into the game "seriously", I consider that a pretty good pace given the time constraints on my play time. I feel like I'm also gaining xp faster with more wins than losses now when playing SR.

Season 3 is here!

Patch notes got put up officially today. We can all start speculating on the way the meta will change now.

Here's the relevant highlights:
Ambient gold has gone up (From 13 per 10 to 16 per 10) while melee and caster creeps are tweaked down slightly. One note that HASN'T been much covered, however is the BIG spike in siege minions increasing from 27 to 40. The result is that last hitting will be SLIGHTLY less emphasized except on the siege creeps where it really will start to matter (10 siege creeps is now 400 gold... not at all insignificant). The gold scaling for time has also increased for siege minions (doubling) so they will be very real gold income sources in mid game (more on this in a minute).

Kill streaks now matter a lot more (although the cap on them is slightly lower). You get the full bonus at 4 now. That's a big deal as 2-3 kills now matter more. This streak matters in the reverse too so chronic feeding will not be as huge.

Assist gold was tweaked down ever so slightly (from 158% to 150%... i suspect this was done purely to get back to a round number)

Jungle (big changes!): Jungle monsters are significantly tougher overall with more hps and more base damage. They've been redistributed to the large monster in each spawn, however. At the same time, leashing was made much harder (you can't kite the monsters like you used to be able to). Monster "banking" has been removed (although they will scale xp and gold over time so it's now purely time sensitive and not "spawn" sensitive).

Take the wraith spawn, for instance (since it's the most contested spawn):
Old: Big Wraith 400 and small wraiths 275. Big wraith dealt 25 and small wraiths 17.
New: Big Wraith 750 and small wraiths 250. Big wraith deals 35 and small wraiths deal 10.

That's a big shift in how that particular spawn will play out (before, you obviously killed the small ones first before finishing the big one... now, I don't know).

Additionally, the wraith spawn has been made less rewarding (in both gold and xp) while the wolf spawn has been made SLIGHTLY more lucrative (2gp) and significantly more experience (25). The golem spawn is also worth 5gp more and 20 more xp (and is weirdly magic vulnerable now with a -10MR).

New mastery trees

What does this mean?

Let's look at it one at a time:
1) Support will be richer (by a fair clip), Jungler will be richer (slightly) and AD Carry will be poorer (slightly). However, the AD carry can pick up almost the entire amount of lost gold by making sure they last hit the siege minion. Each wave is worth 9 less with every other wave having a siege worth 13 more. So net/net you're losing 5 every minute from a perfect creep score. So a good last hitting AD is going to end up with MORE gold from this rather than less (because they ambient gp/10 got turned up)... Last hitting on the siege minions is really big though now.

2) Kill streaks hitting quicker probably doesn't matter much (other than making certain targets get targeted faster) but deathstreaks mattering less could make a difference in team comp. I can see a strategy forming around big beefy tanky characters with taunts / great initiates. I don't know if Assists ruin death streaks (if they do, this probably doesn't work) but if you can have a designated (you start the fight, tank, and die) then a new type of play style may evolve around trading 2 for 1s and 3 for 2s and denying your opponent the benefit of those death bonuses.

3) They want the jungle to be more friendly to single target junglers. I suspect this will occur fairly organically now. Hunter's Machete emphasizes single target DPS as do the changes overall to the jungle. The increased toughness on golems and magic vulnerability is interesting. I suspect we may see a return of the laners picking up golems and a departure from the mid laners picking up wraiths. At the new reward level, unless you have a very good single target AP mid, you probably can't be bothered sinking the time into Wraiths for a small reward. On the other hand, a machete armed Jungler should make short work of that spawn. I think you'll see ALOT of Fiddlesticks jungle.

4) The revamped mastery trees are really interesting. Two changes in particular are worth mentioning. The flat armor/MR/AP/AD buffs have been moved into the second tier of their respective masteries. This means that you can't just put 6 points in defense to get 6MR/6AR out of it easily. Likewise, you can't throw 4 points in the tier 1 of the attack tree to reap early benefits either. These changes are important and will matter to certain builds on the margins. But the bigger change is probably to the utility tree. This tree now contains some real support gems (pick pocket being the one that jumped out at me) and one key mastery for junglers, +50 starting gold. That may not sound like alot but it's what lets a jungler start with Crystalline Flask AND Hunter's Machete. That start will allow even junglers without real sustain to do jungle clears if they have the damage. Expect to see a renewed emphasis on junglers who can gank with sustain being less important (and AoE being even less so).

So are there any champions that really get changed by this?

I think Maokai in the jungle is significantly less likely now. I think Diana will definitely be a mid lane option though I can see her moving top some now (her ability to snag the wraiths easily was a bonus that means less now). Fiddlesticks in the jungle seems pretty likely as does Kha'Zix. Really most of the assassins with decent initiates should be able to play jungle now.

In support, I think you'll see a host of transition characters. Since the support will now definitely have gold, you'll want to be able to translate that into something. People like Zyra, Zilean, Morgana, Blitzcrank all benefit from this. The more passive supports (Soraka, Sona, Lulu etc) probably fall behind slightly unless they can find a niche in team fights. You're going to want 5 team fighters at some point... Or at least an ultimate that can be swingy (Sona's ultimate for example). In particular, I think a hybride Zilean that gets Pick Pocket in the utility tree and attack speed / AD buffs could be very interesting.

It's exciting times in League of Legends.

Count the problems with this article?

From what I've heard, there are many in the main stream press that feel like USAToday is not exactly a bastion of journalistic professionalism. Articles like this surely won't help.

Here's the things I noted:

1) The headline says 4.6T but the numbers listed are $800B, $900B, $300B and $200B. That's less than half of the supposed total.
2) Medicare is stated to be scaled back by increasing the eligibility age. Is this short term or long term? Medicare's problems are imminent so scaling it back for people like me is probably the right thing to do but it doesn't actually address the "fiscal cliff" nor the current deficit. If it's near term, well, i suspect raising the age for people ABOUT to hit it is a non-starter and politically stupid.
3) Saying that the proposal is "short on specifics" doesn't tell me much and sounds unnecessarily judgemental. Perhaps saying something like, "The proposal calls for $800B in new revenue from the elimination of deductions / loopholes. Specific deductions were not mentioned."
4) Does this proposal address the AMT?
5) Does this proposal address the Social Security payroll tax holiday?
6) Are there any defense cuts? Do they play games like counting the wind down of the war as "cuts"?

This article is really "fluffy" and could use some help. USAToday... you can do better.

Freeweek thoughts

The usual rollover of free weeks characters has happened. Here's my thoughts for maximally efficient picking fun.

Graves: He's a fairly standard AD carry. His popularity appears to ebb and flow but he seems pretty competent. Has a dual purpose inititate / escape as well as a pretty good ultimate with a relatively low Cooldown (80 seconds). I expect to see him alot this week.

Jahrvan IV: This guy is weird. If you're looking for a "diver" that can isolate people, he's your guy. Has a weird little ultimate where he creates an "arena" around himself and whoever else is nearby. Gets used occasionally by the pros so he's presumably not bad. There are tricks he can play with his E and Q to get out of his own cataclysm so it can be used to isolate a melee champ if need be (though that's not ideal). Pick and choose Cataclysm targets carefully as people with easy escapes (Corki, Ezreal, Diana, Katarina) are poor choices. Someone like Karthus will have to burn a flash (although getting in close to Karthus and trapping yourself there may not be ideal ;)

Morgana: She's really interesting. Has a really good shield, an aoe damage / MR debuff, a root and built in spell vamp. Her ultimate is also very good. She's kind of an AP Carry support (which isn't really a thing in the current meta). She gets played occasionally as an AP carry but she doesn't quite fit that role as her main abilities (Q/W) have such long cooldowns (11 and 10 seconds respectively). Probably best if you have an AP Carry top or a Zyra support bottom that can swap Carry / Support roles late game (just make sure to do the mental shift).

Nasus: I like Nasus. You need to be a pretty good last hitter but his Q helps with that. He can single handedly start CRUSHING people late game. It's not uncommon for me to have this at a stack of 60-70 and I'm not the best last hitter in the world (by ANY stretch). At that level, you're probably Qing every 4 seconds for around 500ish damage (200 from this, 116 base, 200 from items). If you're good at last hitting, you could easily double my number meaning you're hitting for 700ish. He's also very tanky due to his built in lifesteal (interesting that we got the built in lifesteal and built in spellvamp champs in the same week).

Rammus: The only champion in the game more tanky then Malphite. He builds kind of hybrid due to his passive. His Q scales ludicrously well but it's really his only thing going. Expect him to roll into fights, go defensive and taunt. Don't primary him. Stun him if he does his ultimate and then move on to a squishy because there's  not a lot he can do to you after his initiate and you'll only hurt yourself trying to attack through his shell of doom.

Twisted Fate: He's fun. If you're good with the rhythm champions, he's a good one for you. The ability to have a relatively strong stun, mana return or aoe gives him all the tools he needs. You can build him AD or AP and both seem to be playable (he scales REALLY well off AD... but AP seems to be more standard). He's fun and his ultimate can be game changing (and is on a low cooldown). Remember for his ultimate you need to R twice (once to activate the stealth detection and a second time to teleport. I'd suggest using the mini-map to teleport.

Sona: Support par excellence. Alternating between Hymn of Valor and Aria of Perserverence gives you two strong abilities (auto-targeted heal + self heal and auto-targeted double attack). She gets played alot in high level play and, along with Lulu, appears to be the support of choice in the current meta. Her ultimate is also a wide range AoE stun and can really shift the complexion of team fights.

Caitlyn: Longest range of any champion in the game for base attack (650). She doesn't bring a lot to late game team fights but she's a monster in lane. Note: Her passives count as two shots for accruing head shot when she's in bush so keep that in mind. Also, her 90 caliber net can be used as an escape and even be used to leap across walls if you get it right. Build AD out the yang and take advantage of her range.

Brand: I know very little about him. I did play with someone last night who played as him and tore up the other team. The key here is that his abilities combo off each other so the FIRST spell you land will do it's normal job and the SECOND spell (within 4 seconds) will do something a little extra (stun, extra damage, adjacent enemies ablaze, etc). His ultimate really shines when confronting two opponents as it will bounce back and forth hitting the main target three times and the secondary target twice (much like Fiddlesticks' silence). In the mid game, this can be really nice so look for chances where there aren't creeps around to really pound your opponents.

Zed: New champion. Was getting played alot but now seems to have fallen off significantly. Where Elise has been accepted by the community and even played semi-regularly at the pro level, Zed seems to be shunned. He's an AD assassin which is a little weird and probably doesn't really fit the current meta all that well. VERY bursty with his passive in place (will do an additional 10% of your health in magic damage on an auto-attack when you're below 50%). That effect only occurs every 10 seconds, however. So if he tries and is short, you have a moment before he can go nuclear on you again. He is VERY bursty, however. Build armor.

Thoughts on LoL game play modes

I've played enough of all three modes to have noticed some things that hadn't really clicked before.

Summoner's Rift:
I now fully understand why everyone buys boots in SR. It's SUCH a long map and the laning phase is SO important that you really need to make sure that you can minimize your movement around the map. I suspect this will change in S3 (they're upping everyone's base speed and reducing the affect of boots to compensate) but until they release that patch (on the 11th?), you're best off playing champions that scale into the late game. Nearly every game you play will have characters at 16-18 for significant portions of the game. Also, you want SOME kind of AoE because there WILL be team fights and AoE abilities WILL be worth their weight in gold in those.

Twisted Treeline:
As a smaller map, you're guaranteed an early fight (if both teams want it). The current "meta" as it were is 2 bottom and 1 top. I'm not convinced this is the "best" strategy. It doesn't make as good a use of the jungle as it could. The game also emphasizes "bruiser" type characters. Champions with durability / sustain and reasonable damage. Particularly good are the more "Tanky" type characters like Malphite, Mordekai, Garen, etc. CC is also important which, I think, is why I've had such good luck with Fiddlesticks (fear and silence).

Summoner's Rift:
The general consensus seems to be that you should go 1 big tanky guy on the bottom and 4 to the top. I think the "optimal" strategy is to have 3 top and 1 roamer with a goal of holding 3 and NOT pushing for a 4th (except perhaps when the guy on bottom kills his opponent in which case you might as well temporarily take the bottom). This map currently has a TON of fighting because no one wants to turtle up and play defense (which, IMO, they should). Holding on 3 is way better than getting to 4 but then getting wiped and going down to 2. You want power champions. People who don't really shine until late game are not optimal (I learned this with Kassadin... I was 1/7 by the time I got to lvl 18... at level 18 I got 5 kills and a couple assists but it was too little too late).

Pro play of the night for me: Playing as Darius (badly), I'm getting dominated by a Mordekai (a champion with which I have exactly zero familiarity). He's rampaging and gets a bit too cocky on the stairs of our altar. I tether him and suck him up to me, wait for the zap from the altar and then leap on him with my ult. Blam.

Pro play #2: Playing as Heimerdinger (well), I'm basically freezing top lane just outside my tower. I have two turrets up (lvl 3 or 4) and I recall. Jax and Kha'zix move in to take out the turrets but I left my camera behind. I wait until one turret is almost dead and then hit my ultimate. Blam, blam. Jax goes down and Kha'zix gets away with a sliver of health. Nice to get kills when you're standing in base shopping!

IPL5... not quite done yet...

It's down to the final 3 at this point with Taipei Assassins and Fnatic about to kick off a game to decide who will play World Elite. The game continues to show how well balanced it is. Here's the relevant numbers

66 Total Champions played
55 Champions with at least one win
48 Champions played at least twice
34 Champions played more than 5 times

That's ALOT of diversity. I did notice a couple interesting things that are worth noting.

Ezreal is, by far, the most popular AD carry. He has been played 41 times with a record of 24/17 (58.5%). What's really interesting is that he's not been banned even once. That's really interesting. The next highest played, unbanned character is Caitlyn with 17 plays.

But that actually dovetailes into a really interesting point, the most commonly played AD carries (Ezreal, Vayne, Corki, Caitlyn, Kog'Maw) have been banned a grand total of 9 times with 8 of those being Vayne bans (1 Corki ban floated in there).

AD Carry is, far and away, the LEAST banned "position". Which is interesting to me because it seems like one that you could fairly easily push someone out of their comfort zone with. If you're first picking, Ban 3 AD carries and then pick your AD carry of choice. Your opponent will have to slip down to something that, hopefully, they're not as comfortable with. Maybe the perception is that they're all pretty similar and Ezreal having the low cooldown excape makes him preferable. But it's interesting, I think.

Diana continues to be the most influential character. She's been banned or picked in all but 4 games so far with 40 bans. She's dead even 12/12 but at least 5 of those losses were in games where the skill differential between the two teams was quite high.

Lee Sin has also been ludicrously important. And, unlike Diana, his win % is unbelievable. He's been banned 39 times and picked 21 with a 17/4 win/loss ratio (81%).

Some really interesting "losing" characters so far:
Lulu: 15/22
Jax: 4/17
Orianna: 8/13
Dr. Mundo: 4/11

Lulu is especially interesting. She's the second most played champion (behind Ezreal) and has struggled alot.

There are a few characters that have been banned disproportionately to their pick frequency. For example, Twisted Fate has been banned 26 times and picked 11 (meaning that he was bypassed 30 times) and Anivia who's been 14 times and only picked 7. In the case of Anivia, it has everything to do with the fact that CLG EU and TPA both have REALLY good Anivia players. So it was an auto-ban against them and not really banned against anyone else.

Finally, if you've watched the games, you're seeing a subtle shifting of the meta here towards the end of season 2. It's becoming increasingly frequent for Red to pick bruisers who can handle 1v2 matchups and then do a lane switch. The advantage of this is that the red buff is then next to your AD carry. It's worth noting that the blue team has won 60% of the matches at this point. Given the rough symmetry of the board, that's startling. I'd offer three possible explanations:

1) The standard team comp (1-1-2 + jungler with AD Carry and Support on the bottom) is not optimal for the red team. Because they have their AD carry so far from the red buff, it results in a disadvantage in lane.

2) Top red and bottom blue are the easiest ganking spots, particularly early on before wards get fully placed. The path through the tri-bush is much easier to take then the crescent bush on the other side (it allows ganks when the champion hasn't pushed much. But a 2v1 gank is better than a 3v2 gank. So the "easiest" gank for blue to make is the 2v1 top lane while the "easiest" gank for red is the 3v2 on bottom lane (and you see both of these alot). So blue gets a slight advantage here.

3) Camera perspective. My brother feels like the camera in conjunction with 3/4ths view combines to give a disadvantage to the red team. I can see this a little bit actually (I think he's overstating the issue). But I do find myself constantly centering my camera a slightly down and to the left of my champion when I'm on red whereas it feels about right dead center when I'm on blue. I'd be curious if anyone else things there's anything to this.

While it's entirely possible that a perfectly balanced map (50/50 chance to win from either side) would produce a 40/27 result through a tournament, it's somewhat rare (occurring about 20% of the time). It's something to keep in mind when watching future tournaments. Note, even if it persists, it doesn't necessarily mean that the map is unbalanced. It could mean that the current meta-game has not evolved sufficiently.