ZOMG

Today was a great, nay GRAND day. Nickbot needed to go to the Getty Villa for a school project, so a few of us went with him today. The Getty Villa is a really nice place, I highly suggest it to anyone. We walked around for a while and saw a lot of really awesome pieces of art. It was a nice relaxed viewing of primarily Greco-Roman art and structures, with some Egyptian stuff in there too. After walking around for a while and Nickbot getting the picture he needed we head off for food. We stop off at Subway just because it's there and it's not as insanely expensive as the Pearl Dragon. What happened next is the true highlight of today.

We decide that we want to visit Riot Studios since we were down near their offices. So we find their address, or well two, and drive over there. We After finding the first address we go up to the building and find out it was locked. So we walked around to look to find the other building, turns out that one was probably their old building. We decide to go back to the first building just to check and as we were outside looking at the listing and saw Riot Games. At this point some guy walked out he talked to us for a bit and told us that he was on the third floor too. He asks us if we want him to go up and ask if someone would come down and we were like, "Sure, probably won't get us anything, but why not?" He goes up there and a few minutes later someone else walks out. We talk to the guy that works for Riot for a while and he's like, "Want to come up?" We're all, "HECK YES!" So we go up to the studios talking to him about the game and who we are, once we get there we meet Pendragon. To avoid making us sign NDAs he does a very swift walk around the office and then takes us back downstairs talking a bit more about the game. It was awesome!

Also, picture

Winding Down

So my blogs as of late have been fairly inconsequential and just me rambling off to have a post for the day. I know that this sucks, but I've done a ton better than I ever imagined that I would be able to this time around. With my long posts on how to play Anivia, recipes and tales of woe I've exceeded the expectations I set for myself. The only thing I haven't done is posted a portion of a story, either an excerpt or a standalone. I hope to do this before Blogust ends, but there are a mere three days left and I'm going to the Gettyvilla tomorrow with some of the Nickbots. Now the chat on League of Legends is bugging out again, this is just awesome. I love that game, but the servers are seriously buggy as hell. Looks like it's back up, and I may be playing soon. Take care.

BS

I highly dislike being forced to read as I have stated, so most of the upcoming English 102 semester will be me BSing my way through everything. So last night I got enough IP to get Ezreal, this makes me happy. Ezreal was a character that when I looked at him I wasn't impressed but once I decided to actually try him out I had a blast. He's a lot of fun, you can spam all of his skills because of Mystic Shot's secondary effect of reducing cooldowns by a second. I don't think I'm going to be posting an Ezreal guide, mainly because I'm not that great as him yet. All I know is harass, harass, harass. Well I'm going to end it here, and I won't post it on anything either because this post is inconsequential, but I hope to make one last post of meaning before the end of Blogust.

Blogust and Life

Looks like my posts may be getting wholly less significant for the rest of Blogust, aside from my few requirements I have yet to meet. I have decided, in an effort to make up for Spring, to take all Gen Eds this semester, of which most will require quite a bit of homework and writing. Once I hit college I decided that grades are important to me, so this hobby I chose to do is now going to be taking a backseat to my academics. I hope to be able to post more of my Anivia guide and the completed concept for my LoL champion. In fact, I have an hour I might as well work on the concept for Mao Shi.

Mao Shi: the Shaolin Weapon Master

Passive: I can't think of one that would fit... help?

Q: Jian Style / Heart Lunge - Mao switches from his current weapon to the Jian, increasing his dodge chance by a percent per level, maxing out at 24% at level 5. If already in Jian Style Mao will lunge forward at the target doing magical damage maxing out at 350 at level 5.

W: Twin Hooks Style / Severe Tendons - Mao switches from his current weapon to the Twin Hooks, increasing his attack speed by a percent per level, maxing out at 50% at level 5. If already in Twin Hooks Style Mao's next attack will hit the target in vital areas doing additional damage and slowing the target, maxing out at 200 damage and 35% at level 5.

E: Bo Staff Style / Iron Will - Mao switches from his current weapon to the Bo Staff, increasing his attack range to 150 and his defense per level, maxing out at 125 at level 5. If already in Bo Staff Style Mao will gain MR equal to the armor granted by Bo Staff Style.

R: The True Weapon is One's Self- Mao fights unarmed for 30 seconds retaining all of the passives from each of the weapons, and being capable of using each of the weapons' techniques.

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I just threw in numbers that I felt were appropriate based off of other numbers found on similar skills on other champions. Leave some feedback for him if you would like.

Back to School

I have got to say that even though I had one class that lasted only an hour it feels so great to be back in classes again. I missed the environment of learning, being surrounded by hundreds of people I don't know yet could at any minute meet. I look forward to learning something, anything. My life has structure once again, I missed it so much. Some people might think I'm weird to feel this way, but honestly learning is one of few things that I thoroughly enjoy and will never get tired of. I have a sort of obsession with obtaining new facts, it's just part of who I am.

So it looks like creating a LoL Champion is the thing that's been going on lately amid the blogging group I participate in (or maybe just the Nickbots in general) so I'm going to be working on mine. I'm contemplating some stuff, though it's a little complex I like it. The concept is a Shaolin Weapon's Master.

Requiescat in Pace

Since tomorrow is his memorial service is tomorrow I figure I'll do a little memorial on my blog here. John T Hall, Jack, and I had met in improv I want to say in Spring 2009, but I'm not too sure. Jack was the old guy of the group, but that was only in appearance, he was one of us through and through no matter how old he truly was. The longer I knew him the more he worked his way into my heart. He was nice, fun, funny, smart and had many great stories to tell. Life was going well, he was pursuing something he loved, theater. I worked with him in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, me being part of the production team/usher/house manager and him being one of the Caiaphas the Elder, seeing as it was double cast. Shortly after the end of the play I learned that he was battling with cancer, but it didn't seem to dampen his spirits, at least outwardly. He would commonly make cancer jokes and laugh about it. July 18th (possibly the night of the 17th) he had lost his battle with cancer and had passed on. Jack is loved by everyone who he has come into contact with, I say is because we will never stop loving him no matter what. I will refrain from crying and try my best to not cry tomorrow, instead I will try to smile and laugh for all of the good times we had, I'm sure that's how you wish to be remembered. So my good friend Jack Hall, requiscat in pace.

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Ok, now that I've brought the mood down I guess it's a perfect time to talk about the rest of my doings. I'm trying out the biscuit mix recipe scones, I've got to say, it ended up being a small ball of dough after I mixed everything in, so in an effort to maximize the number of scones I made them smaller. This whole thing is experimental, new scone recipe, candied oranges, orange glaze... let's hope that it turns out well. I plan to upload videos of my how to Anivia guide some point in the future but it's unclear seeing as my software is the trial version.

Nickbot

So I posted previously about how cool Nickbot is, and I couldn't think of anything to post about today, so I'm going to talk all about Nickbot. You see Nickbot is a friend who I met through Stanley. Nickbot is insanely good at any videogame you hand him, he might lose once, but it doesn't happen again after that. Not only is he cool and good at videogames, he also has the best attitude towards the games. I get extremely frustrated when I'm getting slaughtered in a practice match, he just enjoys the challenge when people team up on him. Speaking of LoL (which is where said practice matches occur) that's how Nickbot got his name. We were looking on the forums and someone was complaining about how OP the Nunu Bot is and it just made us crack up, because bots are pathetically easy and fairly retarded. Next time we played a practice match after that we were joking around and said that Nickbot is OP (which is true) and thusly his name is now Nickbot.

"But Mandog, that just means Nickbot is kinda cool, but what makes him completely badass?" Bend over and he'll show you.

NICKBOTS!

Eventually I'm going to not be posting about League of Legends on here, maybe. It's just hard to not blog about something that takes up the majority of your life. Last night I was over at Stanley's house watching them play, since I do not own a laptop (refer to my post about Juarez) I can't play much outside of my own house. Well The Nickbots, it's the group of us who play LoL that I personally know... inspired by the truly OP Nickbot himself, were playing against a team that decided to stack Sunfire Capes. For those unawares, Sunfire Capes give a lot of life, armor and give an aura that deals 40 damage a second to anyone in the area, and since the other team had roughly 5 a person the output was high. At this point The Nickbots were 11 kills to their 60 some-odd and were down quite a few towers, Nickbot who wasn't playing and I told Stanley to buy Force of Natures and Madred's Bloodrazer. Force of Nature gives a great amount of magic resist and Bloodrazer makes your attacks do 4% of your enemies health per hit. Once all of the Nickbots purchased a Bloodrazer the enemies were dying almost instantly, so they had to re-itemize, which put them behind in gold. After an intense 80 minute game the Nickbots turned the game around and won. This is tale is told so that you will never click yes on the surrender box.

As for my own games I did pretty well today. Everyone else in my last game was level 30 (it's the summoner level cap, I'm at level 30 too) and had more wins than me, from 30 more to 300+ more. I ended up having the most kills, least deaths, tied for the most assists, most tower kills and most minions killed. I love that frozen bird.

Anivia the Cryophoenix pt 3

So... part three, gameplay. I downloaded FRAPS to try to get some footage, but the version I have only lets me download in 30 second intervals and I haven't gotten any good footage. It would be a lot easier to show you what I mean if I could actually show you examples. I can, however, show you exactly how to not use the wall. It's not my video, but it perfectly examples bad walls.

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Laning Phase: Mids

So with Anivia you are likely to be in mids due to your egg which will let you take more abuse than most heroes while staying in lane and the amount of harass you can put out. If you are mids just try to last hit minions and once you get your Frostbite start harassing your opponent. Throw a Flash Frost at them, preferably through minions to get some gold, and stun them. If they didn't avoid getting stunned try to close the distance, starting when you threw the Flash Frost guarantees that you get there, and hit them with Frostbite. If you do this two or three times you almost ensure that they have to leave the lane or die. Once you hit level 6 and pick up your ultimate you can harass that much better because you have two skills that make your nuke do double damage. Throw a Flash Frost -> Frostbite if you can and then a Glacial Storm -> Frostbite. If they dodge Flash Frost, let them come back to the minions throw down Glacial Storm where you get them in the area, preferably where you can continuously hit them when they retreat, and fly in for a Frostbite.

Side Lane

The side lanes you play almost the exact same as you would in mids, except you get wall earlier so you can check the bushes if your opponents are hiding in them. The other things to keep in mind while side laning are using all of your skills to try to save your ally if he gets focus fired and focus on one champion (squishier ones are usually higher priority because they are easier to kill and can output a lot of damage or can heal their teammate.

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Ganking Phase

Between level 6 and 10 is typically where the ganking phase begins. If you're mids and you've either gotten the kill or pushed your opponent out of lane you pick either tops or bottoms to go to in the attempt to aid getting kills in that lane. If you can do this as close to level 6 from the mids as possible the better. You want to make it so you have your ultimate and they don't. The phase goes into full swing around level 10 or later when you can take down a tower and roam from lane to lane getting kills and pushing the tower. As Anivia your main purpose in a gank is to tear their hitpoints down, with a well placed skill shot and your nuke you can knock them down by half or more usually, and if your teammates knew your target they can jump on them during that .75 seconds to get the kill. If you don't think you can get both champions you then are to try and cover the retreat by slowing stunning and, if you have it, walling them off. One of the best things about having a skill shot is that they usually have a much longer range than skills that have targets so you can hide in the bush outside of lane and shoot it in without them knowing that you're coming in for a kill.

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Team Running Phase

This is where Anivia shines. If you've gotten any amount of progress in your items by now you will be one of the people your team loves because of what you contribute. When you get into huge team fights all you have to do is make sure you're not focus fired to death before doing anything, so stay back until someone else initiates, and then just unload on the other team. With your Flash Frost you can get a short but highly convenient stun on their team and Glacial Storm will tear anyone who stands in it's area apart. Make sure to hit anyone who's chilled with your nuke and you will be sure to get some very lovely kills. With your wall you can either use it offensively or defensively in these situations. If you see an opponent who is almost dead and is running, you can stop that retreat and get yourself a kill, just be careful if it's poorly timed or placed you can end up saving their life. You can easily use it to retreat exactly as you did in the ganking phase, but just as using it offensively you have to be careful because you can wall an ally in and get them killed. Starting out as Anivia go ahead and under-use your wall, because bad walls lose games, good walls help win games.

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Well, I can't really think of anything more to add about playing Anivia so that seems to be the end of my guide to Anivia the Cryophoenix. If I get good gameplay footage uploaded I'll get it on here just to show examples. If you guys know anything I didn't cover or have questions leave them in comments and I will address them.

Anivia the Cryophoenix pt 2

So I said today will be about her skills and items, and thus it shall be.

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Skills

Flash Frost - Anivia brings her wings together and summons a sphere of ice that flies towards her opponents, chilling and damaging anyone in its path. When the lance explodes it does moderate damage in a radius, stunning anyone in the area.
A massive chunk of ice flies toward target location, dealing 60/90/120/150/180 (+0.5) magic damage, slowing movement by 20%, and chilling any enemy it passes through. At the end of its range or if Anivia activates the spell again, the missile detonates, doing 60/90/120/150/180 (+0.5) magic damage in a small area and stunning units for .75 seconds.
Cost
80/100/120/140/160 Mana
Range
1100

So Flashfrost is your basic skill that you use to harass and farm. Just be careful of spamming it too often because in crucial moments where you have to stun someone to save yourself and/or a teammate or go in for the kill it's semi-long cooldown will be your bane. The most important parts of learning to use this skill is leading your opponent with it and then exploding it right as it's gone past them so that you get two hits with it and you get the stun. This is one of your skills that synergies into your nuke Frostbite.

Crystallize - Anivia condenses the moisture in the air into an impenetrable wall of ice to block the movement of her enemies. The wall only lasts a short duration before it melts.
Anivia summons an impenetrable wall of ice 400/500/600/700/800 units wide, blocking all movement. The wall lasts for 5 seconds before it melts.
Cost
70/90/110/130/150 Mana
Range
1000

Your wall, it will almost certainly be the reason why your team loves or hates you. When used right it can save lives, prevent ganks, stop a chase, save a tower, get a kill or even start a gank. The best part of Anivia's wall is that if gives sight, so if you put it into bushes or the jungle you can see your enemies, this has prevented a gank countless times for me. In my opinion this is the best utility skill in the whole game. The most important part of the wall is summed up in three words: Placement, placement and(conjunctions don't count) timing.

Frostbite - With a flap of her wings, Anivia blasts a freezing gust of wind at her target, dealing a medium amount of damage. If the target has been slowed by an ice effect, the damage they take is doubled.
Anivia blasts her target with a freezing wind, dealing 55/85/115/145/175 (+0.5) magic damage. If the target has been chilled, they take double damage.
Cost
50/60/70/80/90 Mana
Range
650

Frostbite, this is where your damage will be coming from against champions. With a cooldown of 5 seconds and the ability for it's damage to be doubled when your target suffers from a "Chilled" effect this will be a spam skill against champions. Throw your Flash Frost, stun them, fly in closer, and tear their health down with this baby. If they survived that you can throw your ult on them wall off their escape and hit them with a second nuke. Most important thing is never use this skill unless they are chilled, you want that double damage, it's completely necessary (I've gotten a few kills with a non-chilled Frostbite, but because of it's short range it's usually better to wait for Flash Frost and kill them with that.)

Glacial Storm - Anivia summons a driving rain of ice and hail to damage her enemies and slow their advance.
Toggle: Anivia calls forth a driving rain of ice and hail, dealing 80/120/160 (+0.25) magic damage per second, slowing their movement and attack speed by 20% for 2.5 seconds, and chilling them.
Cost
50/70/90 Mana Per Second
Range
625

Glacial Storm, or Blizzard if Anivia really was Articuno, isn't one of those high damage, long cooldown ults like Veigar's, it's damage with a debuff and practically no cooldown. What makes it an ultimate? It does a decent amount of Damage per Second in a decent area, with a nice buff that doubles your nuke's power and has a 5 second cooldown. The drawback is that it costs a lot of mana, 90 mana per second may not seem like a lot when you have a 3k mana pool, but with this, and two offensive skills that cost more than 100, you do still run low. The main problem with its mana cost is early, at level 6 50 mana/sec is a lot. So the important thing to master with this are the three words with your wall: placement, placement and timing (though not as much timing because the wall's cooldown is a lot longer) as well as knowing when to shut it off, which is usually immediately.

Rebirth - Upon dying, Anivia will revert into an egg. If the egg can survive for six seconds, she is gloriously reborn.

Anivia's passive ranges from completely OP to completely useless depending on where you are, your opponents and your team. During the laning phase (which in hindsight I should've described the phases of the game since a lot of people who play the game still don't know about the phases.) egg will constantly save your life, you just have to be sure to get to a tower before they "kill" you so your egg will be protected. Outside of the laning phase a lot of times your opponents will just blow through your eggs health without a second thought as long as they know to do so, and your team isn't there to keep them off of you. Other than that you can use the egg offensively by baiting them into attacking it and then your team kills them, but I highly advise against it.

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Skill Build Order

There's really only one way you should level your skills as Anivia, with a slight variation.

The order is as follows:
Flash Frost
Frostbite
Frostbite
Crystallize
Frostbite
Glacial Storm
Frostbite
Flash Frost
Frostbite
Flash Frost
Glacial Storm
Flash Frost
Flash Frost
Crystallize
Crystallize
Glacial Storm
Crystallize
Crystallize

This is so you get your Frostbite maxed early, but you don't start with it because you need to chill them first. The only variation being if you're in mids take Flash Frost at 4 and Crystallize at 8, because you don't need the wall as much early on in mids. The reason you don't max the wall until the end is because all putting points into it does is make it longer and that's not really needed until later in the game.

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Items

So I run a slightly different build if I'm soloing, just because I want a little more health when I don't have someone right next to me. Otherwise full power to the thruster and tear them apart.

Lane

Amplifying Tome and Health Potion out of the gate
On your first trip back you want to try to get Mejai's Soulstealer and Tear of the Goddess so you can start snowballing (getting kills to get more kills) and mana
From here I just go back when I need to and get what I can in the listed order
Boots of Speed
Catalyst the Protector
Sorcerer Shoes
Rod of the Ages
Zhonya's Ring
Archangel's Staff
Void Staff (if your opponents aren't getting magic resist and you've gotten this far consider Rylai's Crystal Scepter as an alternative)

The only difference for my item build in mids is the following:
Start with Doran's Ring and Health Potion
don't build to Mejai's, instead get another Archangel's Staff after you've gotten your sixth item and you've sold Doran's Ring back.

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Well that's part two, hopefully it makes some sense, I was rushing it a bit. Tomorrow I will cover how to play, tactics and hopefully I can post some gameplay footage in the near future.

Anivia the Cryophoenix pt 1

In most lore, the phoenix is a creature of fire that rises from its own ashes. What few know, however, is that phoenixes are elemental beings, formed by the eternal essences of their native world. Anivia was conceived on a world such as this – a being of the coldest winter, a creature of pure elemental ice. On her world, Anivia was the protector of the frozen wastes and all those with the spirit to endure in such unforgiving places. She was consulted as a creature of great wisdom, one who could not die and who had seen the world renewed several times. Somehow, Anivia knew that the day would come when she would be plucked from her home and pulled across worlds, and when that day came, she received the call with grace. Seeing the imbalance and injustice on Runeterra, a world lacking elemental protectors, Anivia took residence at the League of Legends.
Anivia is an immortal being of intense power. She can instantly freeze a path in front of her, covering all in its wake with thick frost – she can even force the cold to violently explode, throwing razor sharp ice shards in every direction. She can also concentrate this ability on a single enemy, riddling his flesh with deep frostbite. The cryophoenix can also summon a glacial storm, a blizzard of terrible fury that both harms and slows those within. When defense is needed, Anivia can create an impassible barrier of ice. Furthermore, Anivia can never die. Whenever she is killed, she simply transforms into an egg, waiting to be reborn.
"Some say the world will end in fire, some in ice. Anivia awaits the inevitable latter."

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Alright, now I can get started on my section of the typing. As someone suggested last night I'm bringing this blog to you in parts because a single post of an Anivia guide will be just too much to type. So I'll cover all of the pregame stuff and my opinion of Anivia.

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"Why play Anivia when you can just play Annie?"

The forums are stupid and should not be on my blog. There are many reasons why I play Anivia over Annie. Reason one is that playing Anivia is by far the most fun I've had playing LoL. Two, her stun may be harder to hit and less AoE than a Tibbers stun, but you can spam it every 12-8 seconds (depending on it's level) and although Annie's stun is a full second longer Anivia's slows everyone it hits. Three, yes Anivia is possibly one of the hardest champions to master but if you know her she is completely worth it. Although there are more I'm going to put one last word, wall.

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Runes and Masteries

I feel that any caster that uses mana (see not Vlad) should run a 9/0/21 mastery set shown here.

For runes I like building
9 x Greater Mark of Insight +0.95 magic penetration
9 x Greater Seal of Clarity +0.1 mana regen / 5 sec. per level (+1.8 at champion level 18)
9 x Greater Glyph of Force +0.17 ability power per level (+3.06 at champion level 18)
3 x Greater Quintessence of Force +0.43 ability power per level (+7.74 at champion level 18)

This gives you totals resulting in
+8.5 Magic Pen
+16 Mana Regen/5 at level 18
+50.76 Ability Power at level 18

With Archaic Knowledge and your magic pen marks most heroes who have 30 magic resist will only have 17 against you. This means that instead of reducing the magic damage dealt to them by 23%, they only reduce it by 14.5%.

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That will do it for today's post on my guide to Anivia, tomorrow I'll probably cover skills and items.

What is LoL?

One of the things that has been the primary focus of my Summer has been the game League of Legends. Yeah, I'm a loser who decides to stay at home on a computer for most of his Summer months instead of grabbing it by its proverbial testicles and doing stuff outside. I'm not saying that I hate the outdoors, but this week-end has been double IP (Influence Points, points earned in game by playing and can be spent on heroes or runes which give your heroes passive bonuses) and so I've been on a lot.

What is League of Legends, or LoL? The best way I found to describe it is that it's a tower-defense game, but in reverse. You play as a champion, of which there are fifty-six to choose from, along with four others, or two if you're playing the 3v3 map, against another team of five. You, along with the other champions and the minions, or creeps, that your base summons are trying to take out your opponents towers, creeps, champions, inhibitors and nexus. The inhibitor is a building that when destroyed will let your base summon epic minions in that lane. The Nexus is the primary target in the game, destroy the Nexus and you win. There are a total of three lanes in the 5v5 map, Summoner's Rift which I'll talk primarily about, each lane has an outside, inside and inhibitor tower along with an inhibitor. At the Nexus there are two towers. The base is made up of the inhibitors, their towers, the Nexus, it's towers, the well and well tower. The base is surrounded by a wall that the only openings are found at the inhibitor towers. The well is where champions are summoned, revive at and recall to so they can heal or buy items. In between the lanes are forest, or jungle, areas where neutral monsters are found. Neutral monsters are monsters that either team can kill for gold and experience and a few of the monsters have buffs that you get when killing them. There are two neutral monster bosses, one that just gives experience and gold to all allied champions, Dragon, and the other, Baron Nashor, gives experience, gold and the strongest buff to all allied champions.

Sorry about the poor job at explaining the game, but this is to segue into my Anivia Guide that I will post soon. There's more to the game, but this is all I can manage right now.