Took a couple of days off to do things with friends, so instead of jumping straight back into ranked and just having to ban Kled, I decided to stick with normals and play some picks I don't normally use in ranked.



Shyvana - I wasn't heavily involved in the gank game because Shyvana. Also LeBlanc and Thresh can be hard lanes to gank for champions like Shyvana that can pretty much only gank by running at a target. I did focus some attention on Illaoi when I had Exhaust up. I would simply exhaust her if she ulted and then Cho'Gath and I would take her out. Mainly I focused on farming and counter ganking and counter jungling when I wasn't close enough to counter gank.

I was also trying out the highest win % build for Shyvana listed on Champion.gg. Shyvana arguably being my main champion this season with the most amount of games played. I took a step back from her after they removed Enchantment: Devourer and her win rate plummeted. So this was a test drive to try and get a feeling for how strong she is. I am a bit amused that I ended up with the most farm in the game as a jungler. But that is a legitimate strategy on Shyvana

Farm like a boss.
Get items.
Murderize anyone you can reach.





Nocturne - my guilty pleasure. However my client glitched out and I had to play this game without sound. So while I could create darkness I couldn't hear myself creating darkness :-(.

I went for an early Tiamat to try and increase my jungle clear speed so I could kill off Kindred marks as fast as possible, however they marked Graves and teamed up with Kled to target Graves who didn't have any wards out at at time. That kill was costly because it gave them a shut down, Kindred gained a mark, and then she was able to get another mark from the scuttle crab on that side of the map since I didn't feel like I could safely secure it.

Elsewhere on the map Diana was struggling and Bot lane with support Singed with no Sightstone were also struggling.

So we ended up behind and also got outscaled to the point that near the end of the game while we were defending our Nexus turrets Annie got extremely low so both Diana and I went in on her and we both got deleted without actually killing Annie. GG.





Gragas - Wanted to play a Gragas game before Rito effectively gut him with the changes they have up on the PBE.

Tahm Kench turned out to be really good at saving our carries' bacon, so they were able to dish out a lot of damage and end up in questionable positions where it looked like they were going to die only to be rescued at the last instant. With Diana doing well and the rest of the time holding their own, we simply had to wait for Kayle to scale up and then were able to steam roll them.





Dr. Mundo - it looked like we were going to have a poke comp initially, so I figured I would join in the poking with the one of the view pokey junglers outside of Nidalee who I don't play. That and we needed a tank.

That Pantheon build!

Their Lee Sin, despite dying a bunch in the early game, put his team on his back and carried them to victory. Basically any time one of our carries was remotely out of position they would ended up getting kicked into the enemy team or soloed out by Lee Sin by himself so we were frequently playing down a person.

Lucian and Bard took a dump on Jinx and Morgana, however in one spell when we got too focused on their team, Jinx who had been ineffective in the game so far managed to take down our Bot lane Inner tower, base tower, and inhibitor. So who left the Jinx alone folks?

One of my deaths was super frustrating in that I went to take their Top tower, however I unexpectedly acquired tower aggro and didn't notice initially, because why would I be taking tower aggro? We had a minion wave at the tower and I walked back a couple of steps to make sure it reached tower range before I did. Turns out there was an invisible Teemo sitting in front of his tower and I damaged him in the process of targeting the tower. When I got low enough he came out of stealth and did enough damage to finish me off despite the fact that I tried to pop my ult to heal up.

Running round as Dr. Mundo out of the jungle was actually pretty fun. I might try him a bit more though I will admit that he isn't subtle and lacks outplay potential, so that might temper my interest.





Rengar - another guilty pleasure, though honestly I probably like him even better than Nocturne even though they both tend to have the problem of getting blown up if they don't manage to get their team ahead along with themselves. But ve shall see if he remains a guilty pleasure given the changes Riot is suggesting for the upcoming assassin update.

So to start off I warded the river bush near Mid on red side. Then I ran over to the Top side Tri bush to stand watch since Sion wasn't doing it, except their entire team turned out to be sitting in that particular bush, which Sion should have been sitting in if he was actually covering the jungle properly. Grrrr!!! I walked out of the bush and Flashed over the wall but they were still able to pick me up all with no reaction from Sion. Not the most auspicious beginning.

However, this turned out to be one of the those super fun Rengar games where you are hitting all your skill shots and every time you use your ult you pick up a kill despite not having full fury.

One thing I struggle with on Rengar is accidentally using a non-optimal ability the second time you end up at full fury during an engage. E.g. They are low enough health that a 2nd empowered Q would kill them but you accidentally press Battle Roar because you aren't paying attention to the fact that your fury is about to spike. That didn't really happen this game, so there were several skirmishes where I was able to get off more than one empowered Bola Strike when that was what I needed to ensure we picked up the kill.

It was also fun in the sense that all my lanes were winning so that gave me free rein to hunt down and kill whoever looked juicy. It was amusing watching Sion 2v1 Irelia and Vi on more than one occasion and come out ahead. I need to have whatever Sion had for breakfast. XD

At one point in the game I walked right into their Vayne as she was running up the river toward Mid lane and I thought, "****!" and then my next thought was "eh, let's see if I can kill her." And I did, which was rather satisfying as that isn't a character I would typically try to duel without being prepared (read as have a fully stacked fury bar) for it.

All in all this was a fun series of games where I learned a few things. I felt in the zone as far as making reasonably good decisions about what to do with my time, which resulted in few deaths and more wins than losses. Yay!