http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/preseason-2016-crests-horizon

So, no green wards and mana pots in preseason.

Regarding TF matchup, no - nothing in mind.  Just wondered if there was a general philosophy of when to get and hedgie might have that covered with the mostly melee matchups - I figure the if you need to dodge ss's is good also - like ya said

thx for the thoughts thunder!  Just got to read.

high level champ specific marksman changes are out:

Caitlyn

• The zone control marksmen (traps are on a charge system now)
• New play feel with headshot combos (trap and E trigger a guaranteed headshot on the target)

Miss Fortune

• The wombo combo marksmen (ult scaling way better, can crit)
• New play feel with impure shots replaced with "love tap" new passive that gives bonus damage when swapping targets (this works well with Q)

Kog'Maw

• The true glass cannon hyper carry (tons of dmg needs protection)
• W now doubles ALL attack speed and allows him to break the attack speed cap (but ad is lowered to 60%)

Corki

• Magic damage marksmen -> passive now does big magic damage instead of true and all spells now do magic damage
• New mechanic: Special Delivery -> every ~5m in the game corki gets a special set of bombs in his base that allow him to cast a super mega W with much bigger range and impact

Quinn

• The map mobility/roaming marksmen
• R reworked as a utility focused spell -> 0 cooldown and gives quinn crazy out of combat speed to quickly move around the map, not used for assassination anymore

Graves

• We finally made his shotgun a shotgun -> up close burst damage marksmen
• Basic attacks fire multiple buckshots in a cone -> more damage up close
• Q reworked to synergize better with the new basic attacks

And kog maw

Changes:

• Bio-Arcane Barrage (W) has been changed to make Kog'Maw some kind of vomit-spewing machine gun while it is active.
  • While W is active, Kog'Maw attacks twice as fast, and his Attack Speed cap is doubled to 5 attacks per second.
  • While W is active, basic attacks deal reduced physical damage, but apply on-hit effects at full effect.
  • During this time, Kog'Maw attacks so fast that attack-moving efficiently becomes incredibly difficult, so choose a time when you don't need to move much, and go to town.
• Living Artillery (R) has been repurposed to be less powerful in the average poke case, but very threatening as an execution tool.
  • Living Artillery's base damage and ratios have been adjusted, and it no longer deals increased base damage to champions.
  • Living Artillery now deals double damage to enemies at 25%-50% current Health, and triple damage to enemies below 25% Health
• Various other changes/thoughts:
  • Base Attack Speed stats and Q's passive Attack Speed have been adjusted so he is more dependent upon maxing both his Q and W to really approach his full damage potential.
  • For those wondering, AP Kog'Maw will play a bit differently than before, but we believe it to be of about equal power to before.

I have been dipping out on a lot of Boaz games because I have been in a competitive mood. Playing fun games isn't as appealing most of the time unless it's the whatever ARAM game. I'll definitely join you guys for a few games here and there though. I have also been solo queuing and playing 3s with my IRL buddies trying to reach them things.

New items are up on reddit.  MIDS NERFED.  Good.  I especially like the Zhonya's massive nerf.  Stupid item.

downloading the latest pbe version now - i know it has all the marksman changes in it at least.   gosu streaming kog right now

Grabbed this from a post on summoner school:

https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/3qsfga/overview_of_preseason_adc_items/

Core damage items

Infinity Edge: slightly cheaper, loses 15 ad. Still good on champs who don't rely on their abilities for dps.

Essence Reaver: same price as IE, gives 20% crit and 10% cdr on its own. It also gives cdr equal to your crit chance from other sources up to 20% (so a total of 30% cdr). Essentially, this trades the 50% crit damage from IE for 30% cdr. Most champs will hit 50% total crit, so ie's crit damage boosts your total autoattack damage by ~17%. On champs who rely on their abilities for dps (tristana, sivir, ezreal, etc), the cdr from reaver could easily outweigh crit damage from IE. That said, I wouldn't make a firm statement here until after a lot of playtesting.

Overall, infinity edge was split into "ability focused IE" and "autoattack focused IE".

Zeal items

Phantom dancer: 40% attack speed, 30% crit, reduce damage taken from the last enemy you hit. Essentially, the duelist's item. Probably good on vayne/other splitpushers.

Statikk shiv: 35% attack speed, 30% crit, different lightning damage. I have no clue if the proc mechanics changed. It no longer builds out of avarice (I don't think avarice exists anymore). The waveclear item. Build this if you want waveclear (shocking, I know).

Rapid Firecannon: 30% attack speed, 30% crit chance. It stacks up like shiv, but you get 150 bonus range and some single target on hit damage when it procs. I don't know details of how the proc works. This is the sieging item. Stick it on someone like sivir and she can suddenly hit turrets from a reasonable distance. Cait might outrange turrets (800 total range). It might also be nice for short ranged carries in teamfights, but the uptime probably isn't that great.

Hurricane: This is now a zeal item. 35% attack speed, 30% crit. The extra bolts deal less damage but can crit. This is the teamfight item. Extra crits, extra on hits, and you don't trade away single target dps. This will probably be amazing on jinx/kog.

All items except pd cost 2500g (pd costs 2700g). Overall, you can choose between them based on what you want to do. Need more waveclear? Shiv looks nice. Want aoe for teamfights? Hurricane is calling your name. Some champs will have particular synergy with one over another, but all will be pretty viable depending on the game/team comp.

Lifesteal items

Bloodthirster: 200g more expensive, lifesteal isn't unique, ad reduced to 75. Still the same basic item. It will probably be best when paired with IE.

Blade of the Ruined King: 200g more expensive, unique passive nerfed from 8% current health to 6% current health. This is now a dedicated counter to health stackers. Before, it was reasonably efficient even against squishies. Now, you probably want to pass unless the enemy team is really tanky or you have insane synergy with on hits (cough cough kogmaw).

Death's Dance: 3400g (same as bork), 10% cdr, 12% "lifesteal" that applies to all physical damage, and 20% of damage taken is instead taken as a bleed effect over 5 seconds. The ability focused version of BT. If you grabbed reaver earlier, you want this to hit 40% cdr (and "lifesteal" that applies to abilities is useful on most of the champs who would want it).

Mercurial Scimitar: 75 ad, now has 10% lifesteal. I have no clue how this item will turn out. In theory, this can replace both a defensive item and a lifesteal item now. Will people get "double" lifeteal? Will they grab a second zeal item for all of the crit chance? Will they just tank up with a banshees? Have fun playtesting it when you get a chance.

Armor pen items

Last whisper is now a component. It builds into at least two different items.

Lord Dominick's Regards: 40 ad, 40% bonus armor pen (unique), up to 15% bonus damage against targets with more health than you. Dedicated tank buster, pretty straight forward. Use against health stackers.

Mortal Reminder: 40 ad, 40% bonus armor pen (unique), greivous wounds. The mundo/voli/etc counter that you have been waiting for. If the enemy team has a lot of sustain, this is the item you want.

Youmuu's ghostblade: 65 ad, no crit. The price was increased to 3200g. This is no longer a replacement for a zeal item. However, the two last whisper items give bonus armor pen, not total armor pen -- they don't do anything if the target isn't building armor. Against low-armor teams, youmuu's might be efficient as a replacement. This will need some testing.

Honestly, people might just skip this entire category when against a squishy team. Ghostblade will probably be reasonably efficient, but double zeal items or the like might be better.

Random other items

Trinity Force: less attack speed, less movespeed, 5 less ad, no ap. However, it has 20% crit and 10% cdr. It is the same basic item, and it will be used on the same champs and built at the same time (ie usually rushed). The changes make it synergize really well with essence reaver (you hit 40% cdr at 2 items), and the extra crit is nice with IE as well. Trinity/ER will be very viable on ez, and trinity/ie will probably be effective on corki (I don't think he likes cdr enough to make trinity/er better, but I could be wrong). While it is technically a zeal item, it doesn't really fit with the other zeal items (different stats, different build order, etc).

Guinsoo's rageblade: gives stacking ap/ad/attack speed (like sanguine blade). At full stacks, it also gives some on hit damage. Not really an adc item, but it might be viable on kog/corki/ezreal?

Maw of Malmortius: loses the bonus ad when low on health, but you get attack speed/lifesteal/spellvamp when the shield procs. Might be a viable defensive item? Who knows, people might run maw/mercurial against heavy ap comps and semi-sorta get double defensive items and double lifesteal (in a weird sort of way).

Overall, item builds will be much more situational. There are a lot of item builds with very similar base single target dps. The key is choosing the items that enhance what you actually want to do, mesh well with your champion's kit, and are effective against the enemy's champions and builds. Goodbye constant cookie cutter builds, hello having to think occasionally.

Well, it appears that CLG has decided to go full retard.  Thats an interesting choice.

Got Diamond 3 tonight after a big win streak! Pretty neat! 

Fun times aside - great job on hitting D3 - grats!    

Today I've watched some additional coaching sessions from a few folks, this time with a general champ focus instead of just TF focused.  One vid in particular was talking about the 3 bars, as he put it.  You have a health bar, a mana bar, and an unseen bar called a lethal bar. Developing your skill w/ the lethal bar is critical.  Basically, its having an understanding of exactly where you and your opponents lethal bars are.  That calculation requires understanding of your damage, spells, etc - and your enemies spells.  For instance, a level 6 annie w/ ingnite can 0-100 a yasuo a lv 6 yas if he does not successfully wind wall if he does not have his shield up.  0-90 with a shield.  Still 0-100 if he's a dummy.  Compared to a yas, who can like 0-50 without creep wave dancing or 0-70 with good creep wave dance, etc. 

Folks with a good understand vs bad understanding lethal calculations can be a huge factor.  For instance, if I'm a tf and I only have 20% hp, I know I need to be super careful.  But that's a no brainer.  Just basic holy crap imma die.  Everyone does small calculations like that.  I'm more talking about having a crystal clear understanding of the matchup, items, and summoners, and know that right now, if I go in on malzahar and he has 65% hp, I will kill him.  The faster I make that calculation while the other fella has more hp, the more probably I'm going to catch the guy off guard reducing his window to react.  If I don't understand the matchup, then I don't necessarily know how the lethal bar setup works - which means a more experienced player could try to flash kill me when I'm at 80% hp, etc.  

Anyway, the more I'm focussing on one champ (tf), the more I'm learning all of these matchups and how to play against each of them.  This is different than my normal style of play where I swapped between champions very often.  I actually think I kind of dislike tf.  In his favor, he has pretty solid wave clear and generally speaking, I actually find his lane phase not too difficult.  He can do a dbl red card start on the back wave which helps alot in reducing the amount of aggression the enemy can put out as they have to switch to last hit mode faster.  He's also an amazing ganker with huge map presence.  Super. But - he also requires at least semi intelligent reaction from your teammates, which does not always occur at this elo.  I really dislike champs that often require teammates in order to carry.  TF's lane phase usually isn't all that stellar and really relies on his ult to snowball himself/his lanes.  If those early/mid ganks fail, now you are probably a bit behind.  And can be missing out on money as you are leaving lane to go for those ganks.  A couple blown opportunities means a HUGE problem.  Compare that to a mid that can just steamroll mid and take a turret - personally, I prefer the steamroll my lane and not rely on other lanes concept.  

Kind of super sick of tf.  I wish I had the same level of patience as some folks with just playing a champion over and over.  For me, its really only a matter of time until I'm like fug this.  I really dislike that he's generally dependent on his teammates and lacks a bit of kill pressure outside of the global (which again, generally relies on teammates).  And I'm finding that teammates aren't always reacting well (there's a diff between me just ulting like a goon and there being an actual play where folks don't follow up - I'm whinging about the latter).

All the high elo games are pretty much the same.  tf has a so so laning phase unless he's fighting against a bum.  TF scopes out the lanes, ults and drops a yellow card - 1-2 kills is generally the outcome + a turret.  Plus its just a really boring pattern - hard push/farm and roam or use fog of war to add pressure.  Games go well if you lock down the first 2 or so ult ganks.  You become very reliant on your team if they don't go well.  I'd still rather just overpower and win my lane.

All said and done - due to all my work, I'd say my TF was about a 2 out of 10 (10=good) before I picked him up, and I'm probably like a 4-5 now.  Fair to keep in mind MID is my least played role, so its not just learning the champ and matchups, its learning proper movement, warding, lane control for mid as well.  

Sadly, though, this is about the point where playing TF is work and not fun.  I have no doubt I could drill a bunch more games and bring up my skill to a 6-7, but... kind of don't want to.  

Got to say I'm really enjoying the coaching videos I've been watching.  Some are so specific as to breakdown a players movements and ward positioning and itemization - right down to literally why is this guy standing here right now.  Downside of the coaching vids - it takes a bunch of time.  Highly recommend checking some out if you are interested in getting better - most of these are vids coaching high diamond and some even challenger.  I usually do a search on youtube for X champion coaching - and then try to find something very current based on publish date, etc.  

Anyway, all this said and done, I'm starting to rate myself on role and champion now - kind of independently.  For instance, for support - the highest level of mastery being a 10.  Independent of champion, a mastery of 10 means tracking the jungler, tracking flash/spell timers, communicating with the team relevant info (mid lane flash down until 11:25), etc. Pinging out the enemy jungler.  Drake control, proper pink placement, on top of warding, roaming as appropriate, etc.  More or less mastery of non specific champion mechanics, strats.  Then you have a champion rating - which is much easier to classify as knowing and playing a champ optimally mechanically, etc.  I'm really just applying the system to myself and its a sliding scale based on my experience.

For instance, I considered myself extremely good in the support role.  Would have gone so far as to put myself at like a 9 out of 10.  I play with the high diamond fella and now I see what I'm actually not doing in the role.  That bopped me down to a 6 out of 10 in my mind.  And with focus and effort, I move to fill in and learn those things I was missing.  Once I master that, I'd bump myself all the way back to 9 or 10/10.  I'd play again with someone significantly higher ranked than me, find more things I'm missing, downgrade my rating, and so on.  This way I don't really even have to factor elo in when evaluating myself - other than to assume that even if I lock down everything I'm currently working on perfectly, I'll still have many things I don't even know about to improve.  

1st look at new champ select

na.leagueoflege nds.com/en/site/2016-season-update/new-champ-select.html

scroll down to see vids of it in action.

also this:

"This upcoming season we're replacing the solo/duo queue with a dynamic group queue, where you'll be able to climb the ladder with any number of teammates, going from single participation all the way to a full team comp."

and

"When you're in a division lower than Gold 1, if you lose a promotional series, the next time you enter your series, you'll start with at least one win. "

Lots of interesting news today!

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/site/2016-season-update/ranked-improvements.html