Riot nailed it again with this latest batch of skins. I’m really excited about a couple of these, though I’m probably going to be waiting for sales (I would buy so many more skins if they were just a bit cheaper). This patch brings Greybeard Veigar, Commando Garen, and Shurima Desert Zilean along with the Cowgirl and Waterloo skins for Miss Fortune.

I’m really excited about the quality of these skins. Whatever happened to the Riot five or six patches ago was a great thing because the skin quality lately has been impressive. Now if we could just bring down the cost.

I had a pretty stellar game this afternoon as Kog’Maw. Granted, that’s not so tough these days, but I was rocking a significantly positive K/D/A ratio (22/7/7) in spite of a team of four negative K/D/As. I was playing with a friend who actually said over Skype, “You are the sole reason we are winning this game.” That’s a pretty great feeling, and it doesn’t happen very often.

More often my “carry” games are more subtle, and tell a small part of what can only be considered a team victory. I have been trying to pick champions that allow me to contribute in a big way, lately, and I think it has helped my rating. The key, to me anyway, is to pick someone that can really dish out the love. I am great at ganking, so playing gank toons allows me to maximize that part of my playstyle. I really like Vlad because he farms minions well for the entire game and his ultimate is a boon to any team. Kog’Maw is great if you have the space to farm (i.e. not laning against good harassment/stuns) and a team to distract people. Ezreal is an amazing comeback toon if your team starts down. I also like to play characters like Xin Zhao and Shaco, who can close the gap without risking too much in the process. As you all know, I’ve also been playing a lot of Master Yi recently, though I rarely feel like I carry with him. He’s often more like an annoying swarm of hornets – it hurts like hell and you can never pin them down enough to stop the pain.

So who do you use when you want to carry? I know a couple of mean Udyr players who really seem to turn games, and it’s always fun to have a pro Zilean or Morgana on your team. Drop your best carries in the comments (with a fun story if you have one)!

PS – Thanks for the pic, Miku! Front page of Google Images for Kog’maw so I linked back to your post.

Anyway, I’ve updated the post, which you can find here, with screenshots for your amusement (no, I don’t want to talk about that Katarina game – thank god it was ranked 5v5 premade (not thank god for my poor teammates)).

So far, there isn’t much to report. Players do seem to be marginally concerned about dragon, which is a nice change. I even convinced some teammates to take dragon before we went for the tower that had minions pushed right up on top of it. There are still plenty of inexperienced players, though. Yesterday I played a game in which our Fiddlesticks insisted he take middle, despite our having a Vladimir and maybe a Tristana if I remember correctly. It’s not that Fiddle is a terrible champion, but he’s a shadow of his former self and compared to many of the new characters, he’s a lackluster mid. That was also a game in which my teammate first-picked Master Yi (which the other team countered by taking 3 stuns and two exhausts). That game ended very poorly.

The really surprising part in all of it is that 1500 ELO and above represents the top 5 percent of players in solo queue. These are players who presumably outperform 95 percent of the other players in their queue. Am I delusional in thinking they should know better than to take Fiddle mid? Do I misunderstand my own skill? I think the reality is that all of these things point to the complicated nature of a team game with an individual rating system. At any ELO there will be a large number of players who have been misappropriated, for good or ill. Bad players get highly ranked and good players fester in ELO hell because their teams are either above average or below. It is nice to see that I’ve made my way up the rating list, though. There is some hope of improving your own rating.

Riot’s dropping a really nice discount on the Hextech Sion skin this week, which I’ve always thought was one of the coolest skins in the game. Instead of the usual 975 RP, you can snag him for just 243 RP from Tuesday to Saturday this week.

The sale also includes Bird of Prey Anivia and Chrome Rammus, which go from 520 RP and 975 RP to 260 RP and 487 RP, respectively.

For a long time I thought Ghost was a Yi necessity, but I’m really coming around to Flash as a better alternative. It can help you avoid stuns, and once you have Yuomu’s, your Highlander/Yuomu combo will be as fast as most ghosted players. I’ve also stopped focusing on the Wuju buff so much because after the first rank the benefit is negligible compared to successive ranks of Meditate. For the most part that has worked well.

If you have other tips, I’d love to hear them. My build runs based on my farm. It’s almost always Madred’s Razor -> Yuomu’s unless my farm is unusually good, in which case I’ll jump straight to an Infinity. From that point I’ll go Stark’s or Last Whisper depending on my opponents’ armor stack, after which it’s just a matter of managing your incoming damage and trying to avoid stuns while working your way toward the enemy casters/carries.

Despite early claims that Garen was balanced, just that people were finally learning to use him, Riot has admitted that Garen may be a little too strong at everything he does. It is just a tad ridiculous for him to be able to buy survivability items and completely melt an entire team. Also, the fact that his W has both a passive damage reduction buff and an active seems like overkill.

Lucky for us, he’s catching a nerf, and I can’t wait. It’s not the Garens that dominate games that are causing the problems. It’s the other Garens, the people who think they know how to play Garen, that are the issue. You’ve probably seen them trying to tank three people at level five, turret diving from level one, and stacking armor against completely magic based enemies.

It’s not a problem unique to Garen. Any time the community realizes a given champ is overpowered, players do anything they can to play him, even if they don’t know the champion. It’s already starting to happen with Kog’Maw. The little alien got a buff and now a lot of people who had previously ignored him are both picking and banning him. It’s a trend we’ll probably see nearly as often as there’s a significant patch. For now, though, I’m happy to wait on the Garen nerf, and when it becomes a problem with other champions, I’ll anxiously await their nerf patches as well.

I’ve long held that Yi is one of the more poorly designed toons in the game. He can be very easy to shut down, especially since draft mode gives your opponents the opportunity to take as many exhausts as they believe are necessary. But Yi is also undeniably fun to play, at least in my mind. It feels great to cruise around the map at mach 10 and just cut people in half. For that very reason, I’ve started The Great Yi Experiment.

I’m going to be selectively using Master Yi in ranked play over the course of the next few weeks to see just how handicapable this swordsman can be. The idea for the experiment actually came from a Twisted Treeline match in which I played Yi, and though I played well early, I got rocked late because the other team stacked exhaust. It was a painful loss. I realized after playing though, that I could have used better summoner skills to keep myself alive and dealing damage, even against three exhausts.

I’m hoping to provide scattered updates along the way. So far, it’s been fun. I’ve seen a modicum of success, both as a jungler and a lane toon, and I’m hoping to continue the trend.

I started a game as Xin, enjoying a little time in the jungle. The enemy team had tried to gank me at golem, but since they didn’t have a jungler I just left and took their golem instead. Nasus found me just as I hit smite, but he was low for some reason and with the help of mid and top lanes we got first blood. It was a solid start. It wouldn’t be a solid game.

I got back into the jungle, but our Zilean was having trouble 2v1 against an Annie/Garen combo. I went to gank and promptly got myself murdered. No big deal, but I was a little behind. Back to the jungle for farming. Zilean’s having trouble again, I go gank, get smashed. I’m 0-2-1 at this point and just barely on top of the leveling curve thanks to Zilean’s passive. I died two more times though, and I was sorely behind. A lot of the problem was that every lane was tanky with high damage. If it wasn’t Garen/Annie bot, it was Nasus and some other thick mofo top. A lot of pain without much potential for ganks.

Looking at their team, there was only one solution – build tanky and farm up. I spent the next 20 minutes killing creeps, controlling dragon, and sneaking the other team’s buffs whenever I could. It took a while, but eventually I had enough damage reduction to not only survive teamfights, but make use of my Bloodrazor as well. I went from an 0-4 start to legendary by focusing on a build to counter the enemy team.

This isn’t revolutionary. In fact, most “pro tips” aren’t. They’re simple things, but that’s what makes the difference between quality players and players who hit the skill wall. In a tough situation, the pro player finds a way to make his comp and his character work. People still, to this day, completely neglect the opponent in favor of a build they found on Leaguecraft or the forums or saw in a live stream, and they lose.

There are a lot of games, most games by my count, that get decided by how well a team builds. If you’re playing the same build over and over, consider switching things up according to who you’re facing. Build on your strengths, but patch the holes in your defenses as well.

To compete this time, you’ll need to submit original works of art, preferably themed around Bilgewater, the land Miss Fortune and Gangplank call home. Apparently the “Bilgewater Gallery” is looking to expand its collection, hence the silly contest.

Winners get some pretty epic…booty. The top six entries get a nine day IP boost and 2800 RP. It’s a pretty sweet deal if you’re artistically inclined.