Things have been quiet here lately...

There hasn't been anything to respond to for a bit, so I shall take it upon myself to (maybe) start a conversation.

Over the last week or so, I've begun to step away from some of the champions I traditionally play, such as Rumble, Maokai, and Mordekaiser. Instead, I have been trying out a few champions of different play styles, and I've been having quite a bit of fun in the process.

The first of these is Gragas. He's a champion I've long been interested in, but I never got around to trying him. What with him being free, I decided enough was enough and finally gave him a go. A day after first playing him, I had spent all of my IP to buy him. I have a feeling that he would probably be decent as a tanky dps character, but AP Gragas is just too much fun. His ultimate in particular is worth mentioning; you can get the cooldown on it to somewhere between 30 and 40 seconds. That is absolutely amazing for a move that can change the game as much as that. Also, the unintentional comedy of saving an enemy champion's life with it is always good for a laugh.

Wukong is another one that I've been playing a lot lately. I really enjoy his style of play; he's a very nimble champion and it's great to be able to duck in and out of combat by using his stealth skill (the name eludes me). He has decent burst damage and his ultimate is very powerful, mainly for the knock-up effect (though the damage isn't to be sneezed at either). He fills a role I have been long seeking to fill: being someone sort of like Xin Zhao who isn't actually Xin Zhao (I'm not sure why I dislike Xin Zhao so much, I've heard he's not even that good at higher levels of play).

Finally, there's Kog'Maw. I had previously been playing as Ashe as my ranged AD character of choice, but I decided that you see quite a few Ashe players but Kog'Maw tends to be neglected. I do believe that he's trickier to play than most ranged AD characters; he's fairly slow and squishy. As a consequence of this, good positioning is even more important for him than other champions in a similar vein. I've had mixed results when playing as him in the middle lane, but a side lane with a support champion (Soraka is ideal) or a strong laning champion (I had a good time pairing up with Rhizophora as Galio) tends to work out quite nicely. You're basically an artillery unit when you play as Kog'Maw, and when you get things right it feels fantastic.

An honorable mention goes to Swain, who is also great deals of fun now that I'm actually starting to play him properly and not lose as catastrophically as before.

So, there you have it. Thoughts? Musings? Erotic limericks? If you combine all three I may be tempted to buy you a drink sometime.

Good Team Makeup does not equal Win

This is a cautionary tale.

Teamwork...

So I just lost my first real normal solo queue game with Gragas - and it wasn't pretty. It would seem that playing a champion with abilities that no one knows or understands is... dubious in solo queue. Now, to be fair, I have won several games in solo queue with Gragas up to this point, at times completely dominating lanes and laying on good damage.

The issue came with my team's complete lack of understanding of my ult. They seemed like the kind of people who were expecting a giant teamfight fustercluck with burst AoEs and tons of damage. So, when I would drop my barrel to blast the enemy team apart and to separate them into 5 small pieces which we, in theory, would then gang up on and burst down, my team instead scattered and each attacked a different person, some members even running away from our turrets and team to take on 2 enemies at once. So, my barrel had, in fact, the opposite result from what I had expected. By dropping my ult and intending to scatter the other team and make them easy to kill, my team instead scattered even more and became even easier kills.

I'm sure that they had just figured that they should keep attacking the person that they had been focusing, however, that person is now protected by their side and by the guy(s) with them. TURN AROUND. Focus them one at a time in easy-to-kill situations. You are not Rambo.

What also sucked was that their idea of a teamfight fustercluck with burst AoEs and tons of damage wasn't going to work because the enemy team had an Amumu. Guess what? If you all jump into a tiny little radius centered on Amumu, we're all going to die. They also didn't seem to realize that my ult leveled the playing field and reduced Amumu's effectiveness.

SERENITY NOW!

Gragas!

Just got Gragas today!

I'm pretty excited to continue to play with him, he seems to be a lot of fun.