Starcraft 2, and why I love Janna Support

Earlier today a friend on facebook was wondering if any of his friends had Starcraft 2, so I messaged him and we ended up playing a quick 1v1 in which he surrendered. Now, I am pretty bad at SC2 (and I hardly play it) but I know the basics of the old Terran meta so I used the normal Marine-Marauder-Medivac strategy and in the later stages of the game I had some Battlecruisers in the works. Two tips for anybody wanting to improve their game are as follows;

1. Never queue units or upgrades unless you have a HUGE back log of resources, this allows you to have a greater total pool of resources at any one time but requires a bit more macro.
2. Set your shortcut settings to Grid layout. This sets the top left shortcut on the panel to Q and the bottom right shortcut to B. Anything in the middle will be on its respective key, this allows faster actions with practice.

And I just played a game as my favourite supporty type of support. Janna! She is my main support and has carried me all the way from Bronze V to Bronze IV, not far I know. But she turned what was usually a ridiculously arduous process into a relatively straightforward one. I still get the odd loss but I remember getting a 9 straight win streak just because I countered most of the usual picks. The main thing is building correctly and what skill to max first. I learnt alot from playing DOTA2 with some pro friends of mine and its surprising what carries over to LoL. Wards. You can afford to buy TWO wards every 2:05 aside from any assist/kill gold you get WITHOUT any bonus Gold per Second Items, Masteries or Runes. Thats enough to ward river bush and a lane bush early and Dragon and Baron mid-game all for FREE! If you add Kage's Lucky Pick, Philosopher's Stone and the Greed Mastery that's a total of 2.3 gold per second. That allows you to get FIVE wards every 3:00 with some gold left over, aside from assist/kill gold. This goes for all supports. Enough on wards, lets look at builds. If you have a high CC/Defense kit like Janna you don't need to buy support items at all (except for wards). I always run Janna with Warmogs, Unholy Grail, Rabadons and Mobility boots with Distortion enchantment. That gives you great Health regen, awsome Mana regen, good cooldown reduction, great movement speed, decent Max Health, decent AP, a reduced cooldown on my summoner spells and it leaves room for both types of ward. As for summoner spells, the usual that is taken by supports is Flash and Exhaust. I go with Ghost and Teleport because it gives high mobility and you can get back to the fight quickly if you die (which you shouldn't) or if you go back to base. Teleport also allows you to quickly teleport to another lane for some on call support, using Teleport like this is only recommended for advanced players because it requires high map awareness for full effect. She doesnt need Exhaust because she has a Slow and a Knock-Up which can change teamfights and stop pesky channelers like Karthus, WW and Kat.

-Xalaram

A little on Neverwinter, and the next LoL Champion

Yesterday I played a bit of Neverwinter, it's not bad. Now I mean the MMO Neverwinter not Neverwinter Nights. I'm a little unhappy with the lack of classes that they could have and all the variations, such as multi-classing. But apart from that it has nice graphics, nice soundtracks and decent sound effects.

Now, something on the upcoming League of Legends champion; Lucian. He was leaked before Lissandra if my memory serves correctly (which it might not since I am writing this at 2:50AM) anyway, the thoughts on him were mixed. Just recently, the official teaser was released. He has two guns and wants to take vengeance on some inhabitant of the Shadow Isles for killing his wife. A few pictures were also released showing the two guns and a gravestone. A friend of mine did some digging around and came up with a different version of the gravestone picture in which it has a name on it, although partly obscured it reads; "In loving memory" and "S E N". It is possible to see a small part of the last letter on the gravestone, I personally think its an A. Not much has been released about his kit except that he will be an AD Carry without any CC. All I can think of at the moment is a male version of Vayne cross Miss Fortune, except black. Which is another interesting thing! He will be the first black champion on the fields of justice. I am definitely looking forwards to seeing how he will turn out.

-Xalaram

Cube World, at last!

Thanks to a friend of mine, I now have Cube World despite being out of money! :D

The game does not disappoint in any way, and I am completely enjoying it. So far I have tamed a Bunny, a Mole and a Cat. I have decided to go with a Female Elf Warrior Berserker with a Greatsword! I found a Wind Spirit cube (which increases movement and attack speed) and have added it to my Greatsword, this stacks with my Berserker passive of increasing attack speed with every successive hit and when I get a good combo up the cube starts glowing brightly and sparks start flying off the victims. I have heard of some sort of teleport stones like a waypoint from Diablo or some such but haven't found any yet. Will post more about this game tomorrow!

-Xalaram

Minecraft 1.6, and why Nami makes a good bruiser

With the latest Minecraft update I reset the world of my Multiplayer Server, which me and a few friends often frequent. Lucky for us, we spawned straight onto a Jungle Temple. I found some iron bars, a set of gold horse armour a diamond and some other things. We decided to just renovate the temple and live in it. Downstairs is the chest room and bedroom, mid floor is the crafting and smelting area, top floor was the bedroom but we dug a new one down stairs and turned it into a Cocoa Bean farm and last of all we built a small watchtower on the roof with a glass floor to let the sun into the crafting area. Since we are in a jungle we have been clearing the nearby trees and undergrowth to prevent ambushes from unwelcome things, such as creepers. More on this in a later post!

Now, about Nami! With the latest LoL patch, they removed the item Malady and added its main passive onto Nashors Tooth. I didn't really like this idea but it simplifies things a little more when building AP onto basic attacks. I decided to try Nami with an AP build with alot of on-hit stuff and happened across a winning combo; Nashor's Tooth, Lich Bane, Rabaddons, Berserker Greaves and some other things makes for a deadly combo while still being able to provide plenty of support to your team. I do not recommend supporting from the start with this build because you won't have enough money for wards (which are essential!) and your ADC might want you to get some support items. I can confirm that this build works, just make sure to max your E first followed by W or Q depending on whether you need more survivability or crowd control. A Kassadin mid swore at me and switched lanes earlier today because I started wrecking him. This build would work top and mid.

-Xalaram

EMERGENCY POST: CUBE WORLD WAS RELEASED!!

As the title suggests, the voxel based RPG game was released sometime in the near past. I highly recommend buying it! I am extremely excited and will most certainly purchase this awsome game in the very near future!! :D

-Xalaram

Dark Seer, and why AP Yi is still broken

So, just then I was playing some DOTA2 and decided to play Dark Seer. Now I understand he isn't everybodies cup of tea but for me he is extremely fun. Early game go for a Vanguard and Mana Boots and just spam Ion Shell on your melee creeps. It gives you some easy farm, it harasses the enemy heroes away from their farm and its a great aggressive defensive move in a pinch. After I picked up Vanguard I went for a Hood of Defiance I think it's called, for some spell resistance. After that I went for a Heart of Tarasque! Seventy-two health regen per second when out of combat. Seventy-two! By that time the game had ended however. His skills are interesting. His Q pulls all non-friendlies into a point, his W is Ion Shell and it does constant damage to anybody unwise enough to be too close to whoever it is cast on, his E makes you run extremely fast for a short amount of time and his R is the most interesting of all! It creates a purple wall and when an enemy hero passes it a clone of themselves is created which you can control. You would be surprised by how many people are scared off if you just put this down over a lane and behind a turret when you are pushing. Sometimes I use it just for this effect but I like putting it down in the middle of a team fight mostly.

Earlier today however, I was playing LoL on the North American server with some friends and I came across a solo-bot AP Yi. The enemy team had no AD Carry and they didn't need one. We were utterly destroyed by this one AP Yi. All the AP ratios on his abilities are still too high. I called for our AD champs to build Executioners Calling for its niche passive that is supposed to counter Yi's Meditate. He was still able to out heal our DPS even though his healing was halved. WTF!? And after that he would just Q again and get another huge chunk of health taken off anybody close enough and in the case of our ADC, he died in two Q's. I am really looking forwards to the Master Yi rework that is supposed to happen sometime soon. No more unkillable, overly bursty Yi's.

-Xalaram

Minecraft gets Horses, and a bit on LeBlanc and Tiredness

A reasonably short time ago, the latest Minecraft update was released. Woo! It adds a bunch of awsome new things, some of which are; horses, donkeys and mules. No longer will we have to worry for our lives when hacking through hordes of zombies, neither will we need to make multiple trips when collecting resources on the surface in remote locations. Also, carpet and stained hard clay blocks. Ever wanted to build a giant pink and green checkered castle out of non-flammable material? No? Well neither have I, but at least its possible now.

Also, I was playing a match of LoL earlier and decided to go LeBlanc mid. For quite a few months after I bought her I was pretty bad at her. One day, a friend from Europe asked to 1v1 me. I said OK because I hardly ever turn down a challenge and then he proceeded to faceroll me with LeBlanc. Ever since then I have been doing alot better with her, guess I picked up some tricks. I also found out quite recently that I absolutely cant play LeBlanc when I am tired. In fact, my level of play decreases dramatically when I haven't had enough sleep.