A fun LoL game: Build your own OP champ

I saw this on the forums this weekend and thought I'd take a shot.

Pick a combination of Passive, Q, W, E, R abilities to make the most OP champ in the game. You have to respect the ability ratios and QWER assignment of the skill and if a champ is a dual form champ you can't get both halves unless you also take a form changing ability (usually through an ult).

My submissions would be

Darius Passive:
Ezreal Q
Irelia W
Sion E
Miss Fortune Ult

Darius passive applies bleed stacks on all targets hit by attacks or abilities. These also boost his speed. Ezreal Q scales off AD, applies on hit affects (like the passive) and Irelia W provides significant sustain from auto-attacks. Sion's E allows a toggleable damage steroid that will also boost hit points for increased survivability. MF ult will apply darius bleeds to the entire enemy team and can be kept low on cooldown with Ezreal Q.

Katarina passive
Nidalee Q (Javelin)
Ryze E
Karthus E
Lux Ult

Ryze's has a targetable snare. Nidalee spear plus Lux ult then can't miss. Katarina passive refreshes everything and knocks 15 seconds off the already short cooldown for Lux Ult (as low as 24 seconds). Karthus E provides mana sustain as well as PBAoE damage to finish people off and guarantee lots of assists to further reduce cooldown.

Malzhar Passive:
Sona Q
Sona W
Twisted Fate E
Caitlyn Ult

Sona Q and W guaranty that Malzahar voidlings are being spit out non-stop (one every 8 seconds or so). By building AD and taking advantage of Twisted Fate's E, your voidlings will be hitting very, very hard. Caitlyn's Ult has a 2.0 AD scaling and a 700 base damage so can easily hit for 1300+ at the end of a game.

Galio Passive
Rammus Q
Zilean W
Malphite E
Singed Ult

Zilean W allows Singed Ult to be up permanently. Build Runic Bulwark, Guardian Angel and other armor/mr items for maximum tankiness. Malphite E guarantees people can't hurt you much and you can get it off twice in quick succession with Zilean W. If things go bad, Rammus Q is back up and you can roll off.

Ryze Passive
LeBlanc Q
Ahri W
Xerath E
LeBlanc Ult

E into Ult stuns, then cast Q stunned again... then cast W and silenced, at this point E is back up due to passive so stun again then silence again with Q W... if the target isn't dead, you haven't bought enough AP.

Pros can make horrific decisions too

Last night's game of CLG vs. Dignitas included one of the most bizarre champion picks and builds I've ever seen from a pro. You can fast forward to the end of the game to look but essentially here's the decision tree:

HotshotGG is choosing his top laner. So far, Dignitas had picked Kayle, Vi and Singed and CLG had picked Mundo and Alistar and was about to pick Ahri concurrently with Hotshot's pick.

So CLG is already fairly tanky with Mundo and Alistar. Ahri is kind of a hybrid burst/sustain mage who isn't quite an assassin but isn't quite mage either. Presumably they'll also pick an adc. Mundo can do some decent hybrid damage with Masochism and Alistar is mostly magic damage. The other team is looking at a mostly physical jungler, mostly magic top laner and a mid laner who can be either hybrid or mostly AP.

So in that context, why pick Galio? The team is going to be somewhere between 2.5 parts physical, 1.5 parts magic or 2:2. Either way, they aren't going to be heavy magic damage. So I question why the Galio pick unless he's planning on stacking MR right away and being a giant lane bully against Singe. As we'll see, that wasn't the case. Somewhat relevant to the follow-on case is that Malphite was available.

CLG then initiates a lane swap. This puts Galio against Zyra and Draven on the bottom. Now, Hotshot builds (in some order):
Ninja Tabi (1000gp)
Glacial Shroud (1500gp)
Chain Vest (720gp)
Ruby Crystal (475gp)
Locket of the Iron Solari (2000gp)

Take a look at that list. I can virtually guarantee to you that you'd be reported for trolling in solo queue with that build list on Galio. That list gives the following stats:

160 armor
25% CDR
300 mana
580 health
for 5695gp

He's build not MR, not AP and relatively little health. He has 8154 effective health against physical and 3178 effective health against magic and his ult hits for a paltry 450 damage (+ up to 80% if he takes a lot of auto-attacks).

Let's look at a better way for him to have spent that gold. If he's going for maximum tankiness:
Warmog's
Aegis of the legion
Chain Vest
costs 5500 (enough left over for boots) and gets you 8311 effective health against physical and 5305 effective health against magic. It also boosts his ult to dealing 470 damage (not that much more) and grants an aura to your teammates boosting their resists and health regen.

if he was going for some additional damage
Runic Bulwark
Spirit Visage
Ruby Crystal
costs 5875 gold and gets you 5861 EHP against physical, 6588 EHP against magic. Your ult now does 500 damage and you're still granting the aura. Spirit Visage boosts both the passive from Runic as well as the shield that you're liable to get maximum use out of when you ult (further increasing your effective HP).

Finally, it's not really clear what his spare parts were building towards? Was the chain vest to become a Sunfire Cape? What about the extra ruby crystal? Spirit Visage? And the Glacial Shroud was almost certainly going to become a Frozen Heart. Does the following build look like something that should EVER be put on Galio?

Frozen Heart, Ninja Tabi, Spirit Visage, Sunfire Cape, Locket of the Iron Solari? That build would be right at home on Malphite (probably flip the Spirit Visage for an Abyssal or Warmog's but close). But on Galio, you're selling yourself COMPLETELY out for your ult. You want to channel for the full 4 seconds while your team shreds the enemy. And if they'd had Anivia, Miss Fortune and Amumu, it might have worked (once!). But Alistar and Mundo don't exactly put out massive aoe damage. Kog'Maw can shred single targets but not groups and Ahri needs some luck and positioning to effectively apply her damage over multiple targets.

I was just shocked over the badness of that build and can't help but wonder if he didn't get mixed up and think he was playing Malphite or something.

It's telling...

That a civil rights bill was authorized in 2006 (By a republican President, House and Senate) by such a ridiculously high margin

"Reauthorized in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 2006, Section 5 is viewed as a savior of black and Latino voting rights by some and an anachronistic scarlet letter by others. When Congress last voted to extend it until 2031 — by overwhelming votes of 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate — it cited about 2,400 proposed voting changes blocked during the previous quarter-century."

the fact that the supreme court might overturn it in the face of that congressional weight seems unlikely under this court

Next article up

If you're new to LoL, this article gives some good advice to people on some specific champions to at least look at and get familiar with.

Sad puppy today

I finished my placement matches last night for ranked. I went 2-0 to start and finished 2-8. One of the games we won, had an AFK person on the other team. One of the games I lost had an AFK person on our team. One other game I lost had a troll and someone who gave up after getting really frustrated with the troll which is unfortunate because the other team had a semi AFK who kept dropping and reconnecting... In the end, I got placed in Bronze IV which is the second lowest division possible in the game...

So throwing those games out, 1-6 is still pretty bad. I was ADC in four of those despite telling people, "Prefer mid, ADC is my weakest" in the lobby each time. The inevitable conclusion I'm drawing is that I need to find and ADC that I'm comfortable carrying with and I actually have to CARRY. I feel like, at least at this level, the game is a little bit rigged to weed out people like me. I've been playing the game trying to play "smarter" and help my team from the jungler or support roles as kind of a "force multiplier". Unfortunately, that doesn't work at those low levels. You can't reliably have anyone "decent" on your team. Your games are filled (on both sides) by trolls and you need to be able to take the game by the scruff of the neck and identify and farm the enemy trolls while not placing a burden on your team's weaker members.

So my new project is to learn champions in both mid lane and ADC that can carry and carry hard. I've gotten decent with Graves and Urgot. Neither of them is a real hyper carry. I will probably start exploring Ezreal and Vayne now as they are both more hyper carries. Mid lane, I'm going to try to play Diana, Talon, Ahri and maybe Cassiopeia and/or Kassadin almost exclusively... By focusing on a few champions, I hope to get good enough with them that I can reliably carry a game and remove some of the randomness. I'm thinking I'll also try to use Jayce more as Jayce can reasonably go top/mid/bottom...

So the next step in executing the plan is having a clear idea of WHEN to use those champs. My thoughts are this

ADC
Urgot: With a Taric or Sona support and when the team's ADC is a more "passive" ADC (Caitlyn)
Graves: When he's available
Vayne: With a Nunu or Alistar support and opponents that are semi-passive
Ezreal: With a Sona or Lulu support and opponents that are aggressive and/or kill lane bots (volibear + draven... *shudder*)
Jayce: Situational

That doesn't cover every situation (although it will once I own Graves)

APC:
Talon: Against immobile "caster" mids with stuns. Annie, Brand, etc.
Kassadin: Against more mobile "caster" mids without stuns or with awkward stuns. Cassiopeia, Elise
Diana: Against melee assassins (Katarina, Akali) and/or highly immobile casters (Anivia, Karthus)
Ahri: Against sustain casters (Mordekaiser, Morgana) and random mids I don't see much (Xerath, Cassio, etc)
Cassiopeia: Against slower, tanky mids (Ryze, Vladimir, Swain)
Galio: Against hyper APCs (Cassio, LeBlanc) and/or when we need a tank
Jayce: Situational

There's a lot more flexibility at mid and having Talon in the mix gives me an AD option when we have an AP top / Jungle and Galio gives me an option when someone picks a squishier top and jungle... I'm not at all good with Galio yet and my Jayce and Vayne need work but, for the most part, the above champs I can all play competently.

Also, having a plan forces me to pick well thought out champion selections so that I don't find myself going, "Hrmm... who sounds 'fun' "

"Things I Want to Try" List

In addition to keeping a champion by champion skill list, I've also started working on a combination list of fun and useful things to try. Some of them require a full team but some of them I can do easily in solo queue.

List of team comps I want to try:

ADC / APC switch
The idea here is that a solo worthy ADC (Caitlyn, Graves or Ezreal) goes mid and the APC goes bot along with a support geared for them (Soraka, Morgana, etc). The goal is to take advantage of mismatched rune pages and mastery sets (mids sometimes don't take armor, for example) while also throwing teams out of their comfort zone.

Hyper Push
Against a team that's bad at pushing and, preferably, without an aggressive support
Top: Olaf / Shen
Mid: Sivir / Caitlyn, Nunu / Alistar
Bot: Jayce / Heimerdinger
Jungle: Alistar / Kayle

The idea being you switch have a semi-self-sufficient bottom lane that can survive while you push hard on mid with a hyper aggressive pushing combo and constant ganks to try to take mid. Then you switch and take top. At that point, top split pushes hard while you take down bottom. Then it's just a matter of continuing the rotation and applying constant pressure on the lanes. If the team gets a good kill of 2-3 key opponents, they take down the middle inhib. Otherwise, they just keep rotating to different towers.

Double Jungle
Aggressive jungler with a dedicated jungle support. Requires an ADC that can be sufficient but the goal is to let mid farm wraiths and basically spend the game in the enemy's jungle with frequent ganks mixed in.

Jungle: Janna (for speed and CC) / Alistar (CC and sustain) / Taric (CC and sustain) / Sona (speed and sustain) & Hecarim / Shaco / Xin Zhao
Bottom: Ezreal / Graves (self-sufficient ADC)
Top: Jayce
Mid: Akali / Ahri (champion with good damage and sustain)... also Kassadin, Katarina or LeBlanc as a possibility for mobility

Melee ADC
I think that support Anivia could work really well with a melee ADC. The wall traps people so that the melee can take down the enemy.

Bottom: Anivia & Darius / Riven / Fiora / Jayce?
Middle: Normal
Top: Jayce (so that we have a conventional ranged auto-attacker) or Kayle (Hybrid auto-attacker)
Jungle: Amumu, Hecarim, Malphite (someone with scary long initiates)

So a typical gank bottom looks like
Darius attack, Champions start to run, Anivia walls to split them and trap one. Darius attack, Darius attack. Wall melts. Darius pulls. Darius Ults. When the jungler gets involved, the Wall can be used to split and bait out a flash and then the jungler can come in with a stun/fear/knockup whatever and gank.

Support push Heimerdinger
Heimerdinger can be built 10/11/9 getting the following masteries:
CDR, AP, Magic Pen, tower damage
Health, MR, Armor, +30 health
Mana regen, 1 point in speed, Mana per level, 15% CDR on items

Take GP5 quints, armor seals, magic pen marks and AP glyphs
Rush Kage's Lucky Pick for the GP5 (and eventually Twin Shadows)
Rush Banner of Command... Use promote aggressively (with CDR on it, can be used once every 153 seconds. If you time it right, this lets you hit nearly two thirds of your minion waves with promote (you need to catch one near the base then catch the next one near mid line then skip one).
Then take advantage of your 15% CDR on items and get Deathfire Grasp, Twin Shadows, Zhonya's Hourglass and Shard of True Ice. At full build, that's a 39% CDR build with 363 AP and surprisingly tanky at 146 armor, 90 MR and the ability to go invulnerable for 2 seconds every 76.5 seconds (which, when you think about it, is nearly 3% invulnerability... that's a lot!).

Priority is probably Banner of Command, Boots (which, combined, only costs 3600) and then DFG or Twin Shadows after that. With this build, you probably never buy the Sightstone and maybe at some point you rush to a philo-stone into a Eleisa's to clear the slot. Taking heal + Clairvoyance and rejigger masteries if desired. You'll be a button pushing maniac but that's okay because Heimerdinger doesn't push a lot of buttons anyways (essentially hitting his Q when people are close and throwing his W when people scare him). Clairvoyance helps keep tabs on the jungle.

This seems like a great plan for practicing your map awareness as well as your 1-6 button pressing (something I routinely forget)

Support LeBlanc
LeBlanc / Urgot bottom lane: The goal is to get E early and harass with the landing of the E being a cue for Urgot to fire his DoT and then attack. A E/Q combo does 80 + 90 magic damage at lvl 2 with a 2 second silence and 3 seconds of 25% slow. Throw on a R / Q / Q combo from Urgot which should be doing 220 damage at lvl 2 and you have the vast majority of most champion's health. All it should take at that point is another Q or two from Urgot and/or some auto-attacks. Because the champion will be silenced, escape and/or retaliation will be difficult.

This setup needs to have Urgot farming for maximum affect but LeBlanc will almost certainly get some kills.

Shaco split pushing jungler
(key items are Statik Shiv, Boots of Mobility and then some combination of Zephyr, Warmog's, Phantom Dancer).

Darius Jungling
(building as a tanky jungler is probably best... So Spirit of the Ancient Golem, Sunfire Cape, Mercurial Scimitar / Maw of Malmortius / Wit's End??)...

Kill your carry, Irelia: Tenacious mastery + Zephyr, Warmog's, Trinity Force gives 85% reduction from CC in team fights. Unless they have knockup (Lulu, Malphite, Zyra), I'm pretty much unpeelable and unkillable. Additional items could be Spirit Visage (for massive amounts of mid fight sustain), Abyssal Sceptre (for MR tankiness and MR reduction), Guardian Angel / Aegis of the Legion for survivability or Wit's End / Phantom Dancer / Infinity Edge as situational. Mercurial Scimitar is also a possibility.

My personal skill list

I own enough champions now that it's probably easier just to keep the whole list. Clearly, my best position is support though I now have some decent top, mid and junglers to fall back on (though not a lot of variety and my best top and jungler are perma-banned... Malphite and Amumu). The scale is totally subjective with 5 being the "won't embarass myself" level of skill and 10 being "l33t pro" level of skill.

A lot of my 5's and 6's are people that I might be pretty good at but haven't had the guts / opportunity to play them in a PvP game yet (Urgot, Cassiopeia, Jayce, Darius, Galio, Irelia, Kassadin, Malzahar, Shen, Talon all falling in that list). Right now, I'm still pretty horrendous at ADC. Corki and Ezreal are downright embarassing. I'm decent with Graves but can't seem to carry. I think I've got the mechanics for Urgot down and want to try him against humans. I can dependably carry an intermediate bot game with him which isn't exactly "challenging" but is a good barometer for your mechanical skills with a champion. I can also beat an intermediate bot with Jayce without ever going back to base (that was a fun game) which, again, isn't exactly "special" but is kind of a metric I've started looking at.

So, without further ado, here's my list (NP = "Never Played"):

Ahri    8
Akali    6
Alistar    4
Amumu    8
Anivia    5
Annie    4
Ashe    NP
Blitzcrank    7
Brand    NP
Caitlyn    NP
Cassiopeia    6
Cho'Gath    4
Corki    3
Darius    6
Diana    7
Dr Mundo    NP
Draven    5
Elise    6
Evelynn    NP
Ezreal    5
Fiddlesticks    5
Fiora    NP
Fizz    NP
Galio    5
Gangplank    NP
Garen    NP
Gragas    5
Graves    6
Hecarim    7
Heimerdinger    7
Irelia    5
Janna    4
Jarvan IV    NP
Jax    NP
Jayce    5
Karma    NP
Karthus    4
Kassadin    5
Katarina    6
Kayle    3
Kennen    NP
Kha'Zix    4
Kog'Maw    NP
LeBlanc    7
Lee Sin    NP
Leona    NP
Lulu    5
Lux    6
Malphite    8
Malzahar    5
Maokai    NP
Master Yi    NP
Miss Fortune    NP
Mordekaiser    5
Morgana    4
Nami    NP
Nasus    5
Nautilus    4
Nidalee    NP
Nocturne    5
Nunu    8
Olaf    NP
Orianna    5
Pantheon    NP
Poppy    NP
Rammus    4
Renekton    NP
Rengar    NP
Riven    3
Rumble    4
Ryze    5
Sejuani    NP
Shaco    NP
Shen    5
Shyvana    NP
Singed    NP
Sion    4
Sivir    5
Skarner    7
Sona    8
Soraka    6
Swain    5
Syndra    NP
Talon    5
Taric    6
Teemo    6
Thresh    NP
Tristana    6
Trundle    NP
Tryndamere    NP
Twisted Fate    5
Twitch    6
Udyr    4
Urgot    6
Varus    NP
Vayne    4
Veigar    6
Vi    NP
Viktor    NP
Vladimir    6
Volibear    NP
Warwick    3
Wukong    NP
Xerath    6
Xin Zhao    NP
Yorick    5
Zed    NP
Ziggs    5
Zilean    7
Zyra    5

Another free week analysis

But first, a plus for my articles on themittani.com. My most recent article has been, by far, my most successful with over 17,000 unique page hits but you can read all of my stuff and help drive traffic to the site (and to me!). Share it with your friends!

Now, onto the free week champs:


Fiora: Let me start about by saying, "I HATE Fiora". She's a champion that I will FORCE myself to play this week just so I can learn how to fight against her. She doesn't always crush me but when I beat her, I don't know how I did it and when I lose, it seems to be out of nowhere. So I think there's something she does / builds / activates that changes her entire game play. I suspect it's something like Spirit Visage in combination with her Duelist ability and attack speed steroid that leads to stupid high levels of regen. May be time to explore those "grievous wounds" items (Morellonomicon and Executioner's Calling).

Gangplank: Gangplank is a lot of fun. If you play Dominion, his ult will essentially stop any team tower capping effort for 7 seconds. Use it to pick up kills and assists on a global level (particularly effective for when the jungler ganks bottom and allows you to share in a couple assists and help secure the kills. Also, he has a nice reactionary cleanse in "Remove Scurvy" that will help you hone your reaction skills.

Kassadin: The mage killer. He's naturally tanky versus magic damage and has a reasonably long silence, semi-spammable gap closer and decent scaling. He will absolutely bully any non-assassin AP caster (think Annie, Anivia, Brand) in lane. Late game he's ridiculously mobile and you'll want to head into fights with 4-5 stacks of Riftwalk (this takes some practice but you can do it) so that you can get 1-2 in the fight and absolutely shatter people. A good Kassadin will be at 300+ AP by the time the game gets to this point and will be able to Riftwalk in with an AoE burst of 640 for the first pop and 3 seconds later 720. That should be sufficient (along with a 500 damage, 2.6 second silence and a 490 damage, 50% aoe slow) to kill any squishy target. I would suggest leveling your silence first against casters and assassins but if they're melee (Malphite, for example), you may want to level your Nether Blade to give you significantly better sustain.

Master Yi: Noob stomper extraordinaire. The trick here is to A) have reliable stuns and interrupts on your team and B) have someone with said interrupts who can prevent his split pushing. Shen is great for this with an energy based taunts and superior mobility, team fight ability and tankiness to Master Yi.

Nunu: I really like Nunu support. He can also jungle in a pinch (he's a super safe jungler but has pretty horrid ganks... I'd suggest counter jungling heavily and especially focus on taking the big wraith and occasionally big golem or wolf and leaving the others. That will greatly frustrate the enemy jungler). They "nerfed" his blood boil but it's not really a big deal. Early game, you can't have it up permanently on your ADC anymore. But that's not a big deal really. You still have it up 12 out of every 15 seconds. Late game, you're going to build a Frozen heart which gives you sufficient CDR to keep blood boil up permanently anyways. The real loss is that you used to be able to go for 40% CDR and keep it on 1.5 people at all times. That's not possible anymore, unfortunately.

Singed: Don't chase singed. I think Singed is fairly weak against anyone with range and a knowledge of his abilities. Just don't push hard. He'll slow you (with a ridiculous 85% slow) and then toss you over his shoulder where the turret will hit you. This is a common trick for lvl 2 singed to try. If you see him slowing attacks or avoiding attacking altogether, last hit until you can stack a wave and then clear the enemy wave quickly. This will send a double wave at his tower and you can go back and buy while he tries to farm under tower (which he, unfortunately, does ok).

Teemo: Gahh... another Teemo free week. I'm playing ranked now which, fortunately, doesn't allow you to use free week champions in ranked draft. But I suspect the normal queues (and Dominion especially) will be rife with Teemo's for this week.

Thresh: Hurray. First Thresh free week. The thing about Thresh is that he tends to be predictable. Anyone with an aoe ability can target souls when he gets close and be reasonably sure of a hit. On the plus side, he has ridiculous levels of CC and tends to build tanky while still bringing a fair bit of damage and utility to team fights. Some people are trying to build ADC Thresh. This depends on spiking his AD so high that your alpha strike is just devastating to people. Don't buy attack speed.

Twitch: The only real ADC this week. Twitch has a weak escape that serves a dual purpose as a pseudo-initiate. The trick with him is stack his poison and use expunge which deals a whole lot of damage to everyone with stacks of poison. Remember to hit this when people run as it has a longer range then his auto-attack. His ult also pushes his AA range outside of turret range so you can take out turrets without retaliation making him probably the best split pusher for undestroyed outer and inner turrets (he really lacks the escape to try to do this inside the enemy base). If you position yourself right, I believe you can be outside or just on the edge of sight range making it possible your opponents won't even notice what you're doing.

Zyra: Probably the most aggressive "support" in the game. She has absolutely no "support" ability as far as I can tell. People run her this way because of the snare and the ability to zone out enemy champs. She's a very good mid laner as well and her ult is a HUGE aoe knockup (delayed) that works well as both a disengage and an initiate.

Snowballing a champion

I played a game last night with Ahri (one of my favorite mid lane champions). In that game, I got an early level three kill on the Twisted Fate in lane with me. I got him down to about 1/3rd health and then jumped in with Flash, Ignite and Orb of Deception which finished him off (I probably didn't actually need the Ignite but wanted to be sure).

And then I did something stupid. I finished off the minion wave and got some hits on the tower. The problem is that early hits on the tower are useless at that low a level. I was auto-attacking for 56 damage about once every 1.3 seconds against the 200 armor turret. So my five or six autoattacks did about 100 damage out of 2200. That 10 seconds or so could have been much better spent. The decision tree needs to be based on your champion and your mana situation.

1) Is your mana sufficient to gank?
   A) Yes: Call for your jungler to double gank top or bot with you. Try to either get another kill or get a kill on your ADC, top or jungler and an assist.
   B) No: Go back to base. Does your champion have good AP scaling on abilities?
        I) Yes: Buy an AP item (hopefully Blasting Wand but maybe Boots + Amplifying Tome). Now, look at the map. Is an enemy lane pushed?
             a) Yes: Go gank it
             b) No: Go back to lane and try to pressure the guy you already killed. But a ward because you're going to push.
        II) No: Buy sustain items (mana regen, spell vamp, boots, etc). Now look at the map. Is an enemy lane pushed?
             a) Yes: Go gank it
             b) No: Go back to lane and harass with abilities and take advantage of your significant edge in sustain

As you can see, many of the scenarios involve ganking which I failed to do. As it turns out, I had about 1/3rd mana and a faerie charm already in inventory. I should have immediately called for a double gank top and tried to snowball. Instead, I made the useless hits on the tower until TF came back (probably knocking it down 300 health or so) then cleared the next wave and went back and bought. I got back to find their Soraka now in lane with me 2v1 and me unable to do much (essentially nullifying my level/gold edge on TF). Our bottom lane probably should have done better with their own 2v1 but the fact remains, I screwed up in not roaming as soon as I got the TF kill.

New Week Free champions

At 10 a week, I'm starting to get some repeat champions which is interesting. This week's selection is:

Amumu: My current favorite and best jungler (although Hecarim is very close right now). Has amazing ganks. Builds tanky. Fantastic ult with a relatively affordable CD. Slap a Sunfire Cape and Merc Treads on him and he's a little ball of death that's shockingly hard to kill. His skill shot takes some practice. It fires a lot slower than other skill shots. Generally, you want to save it until they flash and then tag them when they think they're safe. I've found playing with him actually helps me plan my angle of attack better because what I want to do is walk out towards him and trap him so he has to flash away. If you're jungling, start Tantrum not despair. It makes you tankier and deals good damage.

Annie: She's an AP Mid I haven't played much of. In the hands of good players, she's brutal because she has a spammable AoE stun. It's not nearly as big as Crescendo but 1.75 second AoE stuns are nothing to sneer at. The trick is, you have to get in a rhythm and count with her. People that are good with TF are likely going to be good with her. Oh yeah. She has a giant killer teddy bear. So that's nice.

Graves: My best ADC by a wide margin. He has a tanky passive, an escape and builds towards Bloodthirster, Black Cleaver which makes him sturdier then the Infinity Edge crowd. Having said that, he has a kind of weak mid game because he's not building non-stop AD like MF or Caitlyn. I like him a lot. Went solo mid with him last night (weird team) and did really well against Ryze. The MR buff for fighting helped me trade efficiently despite his snare mini-combo.

Janna: A very aggressive support. I don't particularly like her as she feels cumbersome. Her cyclone is tricky and her ult is of very limited niche use. That's not to say she isn't useful but I've rarely been impressed by her either when playing with her or against her.

Kayle: She's really fun. She build hybrid and once you get a Nashor's Tooth, Hextech Gunblade and Malady, she's doing a ton of damage and attacking super fast. With the right build, you'll be making a little less than two attacks per second. Each of those attacks will be doing roughly 200 physical damage, 100 magic damage and about two thirds of that in mixed damage to nearby units. Throw on top of that the armor/MR shred from her passive and it's brutal. The trick to getting REALLY good with her is her ult. She makes a teammate invulnerable for 3 seconds. Throw it at the right time and you can absolutely flip a team fight. The wrong time and you make a character who wasn't getting attacked REALLY safe.

Nautilus: Along with Alistar, he's the most CC oriented character in the game. He has a pull, auto-attack based root, pbaoe slow and a chasing aoe knockup / single target stun. The keys to remember with him are don't lead with the pull (lead with your AA to root), throw the ult at the FURTHEST enemy you can hit, and your CDs are really long so be patient with them. When fighting against him, if you see him use a couple abilities quick, that's the time to strike. With max CDR and max ranks, he can get to 6 seconds only on his Q and E and 13 seconds on his W. So strike while the iron's hot.

Ryze: An interesting champion. Ryze is all about spell spamming. You want to rush a tear of the goddess and then go nuts in lane. Farm with spells. Harass with spells. Cast spells for no reason when walking to lane. Anything you can do to get your mana pool up. Ryze tends to build tankier then other AP mids. Primarily this is a result of Rod of the Ages but it's also because his AP comes from his passive so he doesn't need to focus nearly as much on AP items. Rod of the Ages, Void Staff, Rabaddon's, Guardian Angel is a perfectly good build with him.

Udyr: An interesting jungler that I should try again. He's a "stance dancing" character who really only comes into his own in the hands of someone who can do the stance dance while still managing his mana. He also has an alternate build method where he has four skills right from the start and they have 5 ranks. But he can only ever get max ranked in 3 of them. This gives him some versatility in matches but it probably also mean you need to play him a couple times to get a feel.

Viktor: One of the four consensus "broken/unplayable" characters right now (along with Karma, Syndra and Heimerdinger). I haven't seen him played professionally in any match since I've started paying attention. On the other hand, each of the other three has gotten played at least once that I've seen in the last 3 months. Viktor's biggest problem is that he's hamstrung with a passive of questionable value. It gives him a piece of equipment that will eventually scale up (for free) to give +3 AP per level while also granting one ability a bonus. While it looks good on paper, the item is not nearly as good as a normal tier 3 item and so at full build, Viktor will remain weaker. Riot has said they're looking at it but it's a tricky balance situation.

Xin Zhao: Affectionaly known as "Win Now". He's probably the most aggressive top/jungler in the game. If you see a Xin Zhao jungler, assume he's going to be coming after you at level 1 or 2 (or both!). His abilities lend him to diving and punishing players who allow themselves to sit around at half health. He has sustain and a powerful AA steroid with CC if it hits three times. Throw on top that he shreds armor (15%) and you have a scary little package that will harass you for most of the game. He tapers off a bit later in team fights but the 3 hit stun remains a powerful option even in team fights.