aaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back

Okay disclaimer time:

If you want deep comparisons, you'll not find them here.

If you want anything but my own personal opinions, you'll not find it here.

If you want to be a dick..that's up to you, but it would be pointless.

I have a terrible sense of humour, you have been warned.

Steam ID is Jazz and my LoL ID is JazzGB or Ahriman Efreet

Gunslingerpanda's Twitch Stream - link

Lolking link to my profile - link

Dota2 profile on DOTABuff - link

Week 1 can be found here

Week 2 can be found here

Apologies for the delay - thunderstorms and Destiny (or is that density?) got in the way a little.

Quick notes:

• Destiny is a game. If you like Halo, mmos, kill stealing and some relatively fun boss encounters..look into it. Otherwise it's very meh
• Finally (!) was able to install Strife. It runs poorly on my laptop (League barely runs - often have dips to 20fps) and by god does it look fugly. Things of interest to note are: Last hits count for everyone in the area..so they all get the gold. Out of combat regen is insane and can trigger during a fight if you aren't hit for 3 seconds or something. Free personal couriers. Pets come with you and have upgradable abilities. Boss neutral mobs can be claimed for your side. Oh and it has integrated voice chat.
• Panda and I played a game of Strife.....we uninstalled afterwards and promised to never speak of it again.

AKA - 'Dota hates us all' - Gunslingerpanda

So after picking myself up and getting back in the saddle (and once the electricity was back on) I played a hell of a lot of DOTA over the weekend - including my first couple of solo pubs. I've played 3 and actually managed to be on the winning team for one of them - playing Crystal Maiden support as NO ONE PLAYS SUPPORT in these games. Everyone always wants to play mid or ADC..so generally it looks like Im going to work on my support game in DOTA..difficult to do with AI as they're so dumb (pushing mid..runs off to top..BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNEEEE)

• So I spent some time working on my mid pushing, warding and generally learning how to play better in early game when you're so squishy.
• Have I mentioned I love Huskar? The lead image was almost going to be him say HURT ME MORE...I wonder if this says something about me?
• One of the pubs I played in had Riki as mid..he spent the whole time bitching about how shit we were (even though we won) until I pointed out that he should try playing a character that wasn't invisible and against people who know to buy dust...that shut him up.
• I then botted with Tusk and Ogre Magi.
• Tusk is tough..I don't have a handle on how to use him, especially his punch as that seems to take forever to wind up.
• Ogre Magi is just...wow. Super weak early with only his stun and meager mana pool but..that ult..whew. Lots of fun playing support on him.
• Panda joined in on some bot games in the afternoon - we had an almost hour long botgame where I got stuck playing QoP. Never again..it was so damn painful. We actually got steamrolled by bots in that one..embarrassing.
• Which leads me to Bane. Bane was trolling Panda as much as Luna usually trolls me...and he was on our side. Bane couldn't decide if he was top or bot...he hid in the side shop..he farmed mid even though Panda was there..Bane was BAAAAANNNNEE (doesn't help that I can't stop the batman bane vo when he's there)
• Kunkka is now called Kenickie..or Konker depending on the Lauren Laverne levels of love.
• We took a break and came back for another couple of botgames.
• If you feed Huskar, Huskar will kill all of you.
• I'm worried Huskar is OP. I was tanking 3 bots at once and killed them all before Bane had decided to stop running away...again. Goddamnit Bane.

• We then switched to League, essentially in order to feel better about how shit we are at DOTA2..turns out that it works.
• First game was ye olde TF/Karma combo of mayhem and destruction. Didn't take long and I'm getting better at last hits and general farming. Need to work on his ult/ganking techniques and general early play. I've got card picking down though.
• Our second game was..wow. Things didn't start well with Heimerdinger not telling us where he was going, Panda deciding he was going to play support..then not, and mistaking my reply for Donger's (I was going to play support Morgana for whoever was bot)..so we ended up with a support Zac and me ADC which was less than ideal.
• Communication people..communication.
• Donger then proceeded to 'mid or i feed' which lead to much hilarity.
• We managed to tag team the bottom lane - Panda was determined to go Kaiju on every bot he could with hp stacking items.
• We played on intermediate for the first time - the League bots are nothing compared to the DOTA ones...DOTA bots of doooooooom...baaaaane.

Final thoughts:

• I really need to work on my efficiency in the early game. Last hitting to get more gold to get the right items while staying in lane and harassing the other team..so not much to work on really.
• Warding and map awareness.
• Still haven't even bought a blink dagger.

So the start of another week of painful truths and wasted hours. It's scary to think I've probably put more time into these two games so far than I have the whole Mass Effect trilogy..which I have completed with all the DLC. Haven't spent any money either. Anyway thanks for staying with my descent (3) into madness...I expect to hit a shoggoth any day now.

TBC

aka: 'After everything else even my WiiU crashed today' - me..this morning..in a very bad mood.

So..lets start off with the good news..good-ish news.

• I played some Smite yesterday. Another game which doesn't install properly on my machine. I had to go into the .ini files of the game and redo the resolution for it to actually launch. Totally a 3rd person League of Legends game..ignoring the background/lore it's a totally fine product but with the lore it's right up my ally. I grew up on classical mythology (and rock n roll oddly enough) so running around as Mercury or Bast is great fun for me on a personal level. A gaming session was veto'd by Panda as he doesn't like it so YMMV. Ra's beam of death is sweet sweet Lux.
• I also played some Dawngate - which thankfully has a small download size compared to some 9gig behemoths I could mention. The roles in that game are interesting - it looks like the 'Shapers' (heroes to you and me) can play multiple...roles I guess, and can select between Gladiator (farming carry?) Tactician (CC?) Hunter (Jungler) and Predator (Assassin) each of which have buffs and passives which aid that role (ie Gladiator gets extra farm for last hits). It didn't have a training mode so I had to set up a custom mode with just me in it. Only two lanes and a MASSIVE jungle..also there are bots that mine extra gold and you can cut down the other teams supply if you want..also its an EA game. It was meh I guess.
• Riot are using the ban hammer on people who are racist or just super jerks in League according to a reddit thread and then if they complain about it they're have to deal with it all being made public..so..there goes at least 40% of League players I guess.

In other news my laptop hates me. First skype had a bad memory error (so i reinstalled) and then Steam refused to open after logging in - it would just silently close without giving a reason. It wouldn't even appear in the task manager. I did the whole 'delete everything but the exe and apps folder' but that didn't help either. Oddly enough after rebooting for the 5th time or so it randomly started working so..yay? Oh and my graphics card decided to Blue Screen on me during it's update. It was 10pm by this point so my patience with Mr Newell's platform of digital delights was not great. So fuck Steam and by extension fuck DOTA for today. I didn't even watch the blink and you miss it final so..yeah.

• Managed one game of League before apathy set in on all side last night - it was too hot and I was in a poor mood. Went for TF mid and played appallingly - though I got uprated by some very kinda person..so yeah. I just could not get my cards to work properly, my screen was scrolling too slowly for me and i was just getting annoyed (and dead). My main issue was that I had no idea what some of the bots would do to me. Veigar? Dropped this massive wall of stun on me and I had no idea that was going to happen as I've played with him on my team once and never even saw that happen. It was frustrating at the time not knowing what to expect and how to counter that. I think it's worse in League as DOTA has designs that you can kind of 'read' to know what to expect to a degree and people can play any of them so you see a much wider range in the game itself rather than Lee Sin....Lee Sin..and Annie followed by whatevers on rotation. I have never seen anyone else play Morgana or Twisted Fate in a pub.
• It pays to remember that these games aren't going to relax you after a bad day..sometimes it's better just to walk away till tomorrow.
• Which brings me to today. Beyond my WiiU crashing earlier (Zhou Tai OP confirmed) everything seems (touch chrome) stable enough. I played a game of League today as Nassus with Xerath on bottom lane. It's frustrating when everyone goes for last hits even though you're blatantly the ADC but it was fun to play a melee character as opposed to not-lux. Speaking of which the Lux-bot was on a total rampage..it was great. Anyway Nassus' Q ability is really cool - raising in power the more you last hit with it..if you can last hit with it <narrows eyes at Xerath>. And he has the whole Anubis thing going on which ties well into Smite. Oh and end game R..got my first Quad kill..yay.

Man these have been downbeat recently..I'm going to try and make them a bit more optimistic despite the heat and other issues. Thanks for reading as always.

TBC

I can't stop this feeding, killing two or three - game you just don't realise..what you do to me.

Shtay a while a listen:

• If you haven't bought Transistor yet, I strongly recommend it. I listened to Greg Kasavin giving a quasi-interview on DOTA Today (from last year..not today) talking about how DOTA played a major part in the design of the combat in that game..and it shows. Here's an old article from Dtoid about the background and design of Transistor. I've only played a small part of it and not only is it fun but the OST is phenomenal and it's just gorgeous. The main character is apparently animated with Blink video .gifs? I don't know..its..just buy it. Oh and if in Europe/UK set up an dummy address on Amazon.com and buy it there..it's like £4 cheaper. Every little helps.
• Played some more Smite - after the gimmick wears off it's still a fun game, just not that great with bots.
• We're still in 'fuck steam' mode.

Which brings me to last nights hijinx:

• I would love to say that I was accousted in the street by forumite TBK and dragged into some back alley to play some shady game of League as the decoy..but he just kindly asked if I'd like to make the 5th in their PvP game.
• I was up against a gold level Lux as TF and after commenting upon how much I love Lux (have I mentioned that?) and swooning a wee bit the game was afoot.
• TBK attempted to get me help him pick up some early jungle buffs but I wasn't quick enough to jump on that.
• I died alot.
• I went to go pick on a level 3 Ryse at the top..which was probably the other team's plan as I got ganked a hell of a lot up there. Knowing where the safest places to stand in that game (or more importantly run around like a headless chicken to avoid stuff) is super important.
• I was totally carried on the coat tails of the rest of the team and they managed to pull a victory out of it...the ending battle was massive swathes of techinicolour madness exploding (very slowly) across my screen like someone throwing up skittles.
• Afterwards tbk lay down the rules on jungling - when to help your jungler (at the very beginning to get first buffs) When red and blue spawn (1:55) and just generally how to help the team as a whole. Very helpful.
• Which brings me to the next section of the evening. tbk was kind enough to suggest a customn 1v1 game where he could help me with my mid game as TF.
• First up - Summoners Rift is fucked. We spent the whole time in mid and tbk's minions pushed the bottom lane all the way to the top without any interference. That cannot be right. Top lane was balanced but..oy vay bottom lane was madness.
• Second - as you may have surmised given my recent issues, my laptop is fucked. Its roughly 4 years old, has a Radeon HD 1gb card and 2gb of ram (fair play though..it's a dell inspiron, but you get what you can afford) and I can't get 60fps when there's more than just me on the screen. More interestingly it makes little different lowering the settings or resolution. 4fps difference between high and low settings with lowering the resolution doing not even that. I think DOTA was more stable(when it fucking works) but..well I'm not one to bitch about 60fps in console games but...ergh. I generally get between 30-40fps with dips to 20 during the technicolour extravanganza.
• oh and regarding TF's pick a card - welcome to the twilight zone of League players. Gods that keyboard idea is golden.
• Anyway back to the custom match - tbk helped me realise where the serious weaknesses were in my game - essentially a) I don't move around enough, thus become predictable for skill shots, b) don't control my creep waves enough - leading to poor clearance and the occasional hit, c) don't know the proper damage rotation for most heroes and d) itemisation and countering is obviously lacking.
• That's after nearly 30 hours in the game..I still have essentially no idea what I'm doing and don't even get me started on wards.
• Between DOTA and League I've spent nearly 60 hours of my recent life on learning MOBAs and I've only scratched the surface.
• Oh and I played some bot games with Ziggs and Skarner this afternoon. I like Ziggs and I got the idea down on jungling with Skarner I think..though if you aren't effecient you really do get left behind.
• Still saving my IP for Lux but Lissandra looks tempting too...oh these temptresses of League.

Final thoughts:

• There's a lot for me to work on there but at least I have a better idea of what to focus on now.
• It's damn difficult to focus on it when you're trying to survive..muscle memory is a wonderful thing.
• I have now been on the winning team in both DOTA and League PvP...once. Yay.
• I have not seen Bane or Luna for two days now and it has been glorious.
• It would be nice to have enough money to get a new laptop..or more reasonable a desktop but that..isn't going to happen for a while unfortunately. Sigh.

Anyway..more upbeat today I think..things to think about, things to do, ignoring DOTA is good for now at least..yes, positivity. Proably need to construct additional pylons too.

tbc

When you gank me in the jungle at night, before getting into a team fight..Iiiii'm hooked on my feeding..but high on believing that I'm of some useeeee.

So:

• Steam works again..yay! I found my DOTABuff profile..double yay! Don't look at it because I suck! y..oh.
• Sniper Elite is $30 cheaper on US PSN than in the UK on the PS4..I'd hate to think what the Aus $ discrepency would be but that's fucking ridiculous.
• I looked through my ps+ stuff and found I had two 'console' mobas on there. Guardians of Middleblerth and Awesomenauts..so for my continuing record on here I thought I'd give them a go.
• Guardians of Mi..look the Lord of the Rings moba is dead on the PS3 due to the Gamespy shutdown and they won't give me a steam key but I played a bot match with GANDALF THE whatever..sorry I'm not a fan of LOTR. Anyway first off I was surprised to find that the controls were fine, kinda like console diablo apart from R2 being a cone shaped AA to hit multiple creeps. Other things of note are that you can upgrade towers and creep upon hitting level 6. There shoot faster, run harder..kinda like a tower defence mechanic. Apart from that and the lackluster bots I was surprised to find that it worked well and I would have thought that League (especially given it's skill shots etc) would be a reasonable fit for console - there would need to be concessions but I'm surprised it hasn't happened. Think of how many xbones that would sell..
• Awesome, Awesome, Awesomenauts is Bucky O'Hare the Moba..essentially a saturday morning cartoon made into a moba on a 2d plane. I'm still not convinced it works..it felt far more confined and..well linear obviously, than other mobas and it came across as more of a deathmatch game than anything else..also the abilities kinda sucked. Great presentation though. I think both games are available on steam.

What I tell myself every time I play these games...also an excuse to have one of my favourite cartoon themes from my childhood. Oh and..totally not Mass Effect..

• Played a small amout of League last night. Tried out Xerath and found him to be okay..I guess. Didn't really feel him with the bots on my side getting hammered because..erm..League?
• Went on to a co-op match where I ended up playing support Annie in top lane. First time I'd played her and I enjoyed it..well when the ani..ninja girl stopped running away all the time whenever she borked her initation and I had just got a stun in..and then complained about kill stealing..sigh. Anyway it was good once she started to get her cs down and levelled a bit. Annie has a lot of potential I think and tibbers is great. Warding was also done by me so yay?

• Which leads me to today. I spent a fair bit of time trying out characters with bots but got fed up with them either a) not supporting, b) tri-laning because they thought i was mid when I was trying to jungle, c) being ridiculously dumb..bounty hunter would not go for the stuns..at all..he just ran away. Oh AI...
• Fed up with that I solo queued. Now..oooh boy. Let me tell you a story of pain and suffering.
• Here's the ID http://dotabuff.com/matches/795029041
• I suggest that if you want to either a) laugh your head off or b)cry with desperation you should watch that match.
• I was Crystal Maiden in top lane..pretty much by myself as Pudge in mid DEMANDED that Clinkz stay with him.
• Drow was the only capable player there and was harrassed by the Russians on the other side.
• It became highly amusing when Riki kept trying to gank me and couldn't understand why I could see him with all the wards I had (WARDING FTW..I was the only support, only warder, only person who bought a courier..it was an experience)
• I got steamrolled a couple of times as I can only freeze one at a time and run.
• at about 30min everyone but Brewmaster on the opposing team d/cs..easy win huh?
• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
• Complete lack of co-operation by everyone but myself and Drow taking top lane and Brewmasters RIDICULOUS ult lead to him stopping all 5 of us by himself as nobody but the two squishiest of us would co-ordinate. Juggernaut was jungling or something and Pudge..well he tried, I'll give him that.
• wait..was juggernaut building two BKBs?
• Madness.
• Really if you have 40mins to spare and need a laugh look it up if you can (i assume you can at least).

Final Thoughts:

• oh pubs..oh pubs..oh dear.
• Never rely on anyone but youself..never go support when it's a mess.Or always go support when it's a mess. Or Balrog, rather.
• Ward everything
• Riki lol.
• More seriously though, nobody pinged but me..nobody called MIA but me. It was a mess and sad to see. It might be worth laying some sort of basic rules out before a match but I doubt anyone would listen.
• Luckily frustration falls to hilarity eventually..and we still won.
• That Brewmaster player must have been pissing himself laughing, and I dont blame him.

After that hilarity I think I'm happy to play pubs..I don't think I'm going to be the worst player there any more.

aka: 'Blitzcrank is the best..around and nothing's ever gonna keep him down' - me

This blog post is bought to you, in part, by Sigue Sigue Sputnik

Quick notes:

• Everything is better with 80s movie soundtracks...everything
• I finally succumbed to the temptation to spend money on free to play games..I bought some riot points so I could afford Ahri (only actually needed 84 more points but..you know how it goes) thus that pact has been broken and the seals of Flava Flav will be next - Wu Tang shall return and it's all my fault.
• You should check out my gravel pit some time...that is totally not a euphemism.

So only League the past day with tbk and Gunslingerpanda:

Here's the archived Stream if you're interested in 3 hours of madness and it's 3am and you need something to help you sleep - http://www.twitch.tv/bm_panda/b/550812838

• First game was a Morgana (so want to write Morrigan there..where's my new Darkstalkers Capcom?) that started being a support in top..yes I know..and ended up being a mess. Forumite tbk gave me a good dressing down for my shoddy item choice, quite rightly by the way and gave me some tips as to what to start with and build towards.
• Blitzcrank was the troll of the evening, in two different games. With Morgana he dragged out someone from my Ult...it was something let me tell's ya.
• Second game with tbk and Panda I went with Nasus (tempted to call him Susan now as well) in top trying to get my last hits down. I was trading with a Darius up there until he d/c - tbk was playing and telling me what to do at the same time, which is a hell of a feat in and of itself. Again tab wins games people...tab wins games.
• The following..hour? tbk gave a symposium on League and the meta. It's all archieved on the stream and it's a hell of a thing that he knows all those juicy, meaty meta. I'm going to have to watch the stream again because it mostly went over my head but we all agreed that Jinx is manky as hell...ewww.
• tbk went off to Dominion with some friends so Panda and I got into a dual queue. He played Zac I went with Annie. We also had another Blitzcrank and a Fizz as well as..erm..Ashe that's right.
• Alright there guv', have you seen my mate Mr Tibbers? He's a laugh 'e is.
• Annie is soo much fun..cackling like a pyromaniac and a demonic bear nuke (from orbit).
• Watching the Fizz player was hilarious..dodge, shark, dodge, poke, shark bubai.
• Blitzcrank had no idea what was going on and typically they just did their own thing.
• learnt through playing that you can stack the stun by just randomly using W not sure if E still triggers it though.
• Mr Tibbers needs a BA Baracus skin.
• We won the last two games, lost the first.
• Casual league is the best league - anything goes..and boy does it ever.
• This afternoon I spent in botmatches trying out Ahri and Tristiana so I had a handle on their abilities. I..can't play with bots anymore. It's more than time as many have stated but it's just so frustrating with them feeding. In the Tristiana game I had 27/4/10 and we still got steamrolled..
• Ahri is great..just awesome. Charm, Q, W, R...great..love it.
• Tristiana is also great, once I worked out that W was her mobility and to hammer Q whenever it came up I had a jolly old time. She kills things fast in the jungle too..Ahri not so much it seems.
• I love the fact that a new champion nearly turns LoL into a completely new game. The difference between Nassus and Ahri is..great.
• Everything is broken so everything works...apparently?

And so we reach the end of Week 3. We're coming up on the month and I reckon i'll do a retrospective at the end of that week - it's been a hell of a ride and we've only just scratched the surface. Thanks again to tbk and especially Panda for putting up with me whining about framerates and internet connectivity.

I leave you with the following: