I'm a newish player trying to spread my wings. I used to only play support but I am looking to get into playing ADC. I've tried a few ARAMs and the two ADCs that stand out to me as particularly fun and suiting my style are Varus and Miss Fortune. Both seem quite forgiving to new players and have easy-to-understand abilities.
HOWEVER, they seem to have different build paths depending on what "style" you play, and I don't really know what that means. What's the difference between lethality Varus, on-hit Varus, AP Varus and crit Varus? MF also has three different build paths: crit, AP and lethality.
Like, I understand the basics that those are all different stats, so you're building items to enhance one stat over the others - whether that's crit or lethality or whatever. But how does that actually get reflected in gameplay? How does crit Varus play differently to AP Varus, and when are they better than on-hit Varus or lethality Varus, etc.
Thank you!

https://u.gg/lol/profile/eun1/lmperatooverview
Hello, I am a Gwen main that recently hit Masters for first time playing on a 10 years old forgotten by the MMR gods account with abysmal LP win-lose ratio bringing it up from Bronze to Masters in 457 games with 57% WR overall and 62% WR on Gwen from 301 games. This post has few purposes:

• Share disagreements I have with common points on this subreddit - about Gwen's role in the team, her itemization, her strengths and weaknesses.
• Give certain formulaic tips that will help you cheese games even if you don't really understand why on the grand scale of things. This is not a guide on becoming a very good player, it's a guide on climbing the ranks with Gwen.
• Link it everytime someone asks what is Gwen's role in the team and how to play her.

BAD takes that you should not follow

• Shadowflame instead of Nashor's Tooth - Gwen's strengths are splitpushing and she does this extremely well. Trying to turn her into an assassin with items that harm her splitpushing potential is counterproductive. Enemies in Plat, Diamond and Master aren't beasts that can evade all your abilities. They are inters, just like almost everyone in soloqueue. Chances are you will never meet a truly great player in the enemy lobby or have one in your team. Once they are slowed down by your ultimates first cast, it is trivial chasing them down and finishing them off. There's no reason to build her like a C tier assassin when full duelist splitpusher build will do the same damage in teamfights. You will just get your damage items faster, because the splitpusher playstyle generates more gold.
• Ignore Rabadon in favor of X - Third item Rabadon is what allows Gwen to turn around games and turn from an okay teamfighter to a great one when the player uses their ult well. After buying Rabadon she can 100 to 0 anyone who didnt build more than 1 MR item. Rabadon is what allows you to dive their fed 500g bounty player 1v2 and kill him.
• Gwen has bad early game - It might take a bunch of games to see it, but when Gwen early is played correctly, she has better pre 6 than most enemy toplaners who are supposed to be stronger early. Her Q damage is very high, low cooldown, has mobility, increased ranged, untargetability, increased resists, ability to poke without drawing minion aggro. Noone will punish your champions vulnerabilities even in Masters. Two big reasons for it: Gwen is a rare pick and the enemy doesn't know what to expect from you, and because majority of players Masters and below haven't learned all aspects of the game equally well. They have learned to play into very specific things that allow them to win games (exactly what I do with Gwen). Whether its one tricking champions, very good vision and macro, great mechanics - it doesn't matter. They will start inting as hard as a Bronze would when you throw a wrench in their plans. More often than not they start to play a bit more careful when trading with you if you scare them with a great trade early on in the game which allows you to punish them even harder.
• Play safe and farm up for late game - If you just hug your turret, avoid fighting and prioritize on last hitting minions, then you will miss out on the snowball opportunity from plating and turret gold. It is a very suboptimal way to play Gwen.
• Riftmaker is a bad mythic on Gwen - Very common argument that I have read here is that Riftmaker is a bad mythic. That it has awkward stats or there are tankier options, items with more mobility, with more damage etc. Riftmakers main strength over any other mythic is the omnivamp it provides. The omnivamp is crucial for those 1v2 and 1v3 fights that you will be often fighting when playing very aggressively. The healing increase is miniscule, but it is enough to have an impact. Yes, you can fight enemies when outnumbered with other mythics too, but going anything other than Riftmaker takes away from your potential to be hyperaggressive. Going Riftmaker also creates an illusion for the enemy in which you are far squishier than you actually are which has helped me secure many victories after enemies get baited into fighting me. The health, AP, ability haste, omnivamp, increased damage, true damage - all of this works great on Gwen.

Key concepts that you have to understand to make this playstyle work for you

• Plates - 15 plates, each worth 175 gold. Consistently you can get around 5 plates per game which is 875g + 300g from turret kill + 150g from first turret = 1250g - more than 4 kills worth. Gold generated through plating does not grow your shutdown gold. Plates are better than kills for this reason. It is worth it to die for plates if minute 14 is about to hit (Plates despawn on minute 14).
• Inner turrets on side lanes ( second turret on bot and top ) - Destroying a secondary turret alone gives you 600g total. With demolish rune and completed Nashor's Tooth you need just a few seconds to push the turret. If you have vision on more than half the enemy team then it is risk free gold.
• Herald - Taking herald gives you 300g and the herald eye which can help you get either plates or inner turrets.
• Splitpush - Allows you to push the inner turrets and reach their inhibitor if the enemy team does 1 macro mistake. Sometimes when you take the inner turret the enemy team won't respond to your threat hoping that you will just give up and recall. If that happens you continue to push onto the inhibitor turret. In other situations your team will be 4v5 at drake and spam pinging you to TP. That can be the correct play but more often than not I decide to ignore the pings and keep on pushing. This often results in the enemy splitting up in the middle of the fight to try to do both drake and also protect their inhibitor and base. Your team might win the drake fight this way and you got yourself a free turret or two. Your team might also get completely wiped on drake, but that gives you more time to push. Maybe you even get to take 1 nexus turret. Gwen with Riftmaker, Nashor's Tooth, Rabadon Deathcap and demolish melts turrets in seconds.
• Nexus turret pressure - When inhibitor goes down you often have the opportunity to damage or destroy one of the nexus turrets. It is good to destroy one as it allows for you to no minion push the last nexus turret at a later time and cheese the game.
• Lobby pick order - Always try to be last pick in the lobby. Chances are your Silver, Gold, Plat etc. teammates aren't the most proactive players and they won't benefit as much as you would from being last pick. You don't want to blind pick and end up playing vs Akshan or Fiora. You don't necessarily have to counterpick the enemy, but you don't want to be counterpicked. If you aggressively spam the "Swap Pick Order" button it is possible your teammate won't give it to you out of spite later if he declined the first time. Which is why if that person declined once, wait for the enemy team to pick a few times. Then you notify them in chat that their lane opponent picked and if they can swap with you. There are 3 other people in the team so you don't always have to instantly go for last pick either. Try to weasel your way down slowly by asking those directly after you if last pick doesn't work out from first attempt. If blindpicking is unavoidable then pray the enemy is clueless.
• Playing hyper aggressive and money hunger - Sometimes it happens that your botlane goes 0/7 in the first 10 minutes of the game and enemy ADC is very ahead. This shouldn't make you play safer. If the enemy bot has 500g shutdown on their head then if there is an opportunity it is better to dive them 1v3 with the chance of getting that shutdown bounty rather than playing safe. Whenever you are forced to teamfight your primary goal is to get all the shutdown bounties on the enemy team. Gwen loves AP and AP costs gold. The more gold the better. It is okay to die if it means that you also got gold. Because gold on you is way stronger than gold on their champions. There are exceptions to this. For example if you are very fed with kills and have 700g shutdown on your head then it is not wise to jump in a suicidal fight when moments later a better opportunity will arise.
• Number of games played - Keep spamming Gwen and Gwen only. Play her against every matchup on top atleast a few times to know what your champion can do and what you can do. Don't wildly change your runes every few games. Stick to the same runepage. With time you will see and understand the key moments in the game where you can dish out the exact ammount of damage to kill an enemy and survive. Whether you can push down a lane, greed for a turret and get out of it alive. Whether you can jump in 1v4 and survive.

Tricks that you might or might not be aware of:

• Gwen Q does not trigger minion aggro if you do not autoattack so you can harrass through a wave.
• You can queue up an autoattack if you right click the target during the Q animation and if you are in range it will instantly autoattack when Q cast ends. Works great with E -> Q right at the end of your attack range to do a little bit of extra damage. This will trigger minion aggro.
• Going 2x Blasting Wand on a back with 1700g is better than going Leeching Leer ingredients in majority of cases. It helps you do as much damage as you would with a completed Riftmaker but way earlier into the game helping you snowball harder. Also you can push turret plates way faster with the extra AP. The second blasting wand can later be used for building into Nashor's Tooth. I prefer going Riftmaker first because it makes you tankier and allows you to do easier 1v2 plays when you get ganked.
• Your W can be used to tank Baron and Dragon attacks if you cast it at the proper location where the edge is right infront of the monster without touching it.
• You can use your W to push turrets and plates even if its protected by the enemy. If you are ahead of your laner and the wave is crashing on his turrent you can walk up and cast your W in a place where its edge allows you to autoattack the turret without moving the W. This way if the enemy wants to push you off, they have to walk directly into you which accomplishes 2 things: gives you an opportunity for an easier dive and/or the enemy misses a bunch of farm trying to protect their plates.
• If you are ahead you can skip completing your boots item and stick with normal boots or no boots at all. The speed difference hardly makes a difference in the early game but you can get your item spikes way earlier. Your slow from your R and your dash are more than enough to stick to targets.
• When you are trying to push a structure as fast as possible E on top of yourself immediately after your autoattack completes. Your dash is not a fixed distance and you can dash very small distances which is a quicker way to reset your E AS buff.
• Gwen Q executes minions below 20% HP which works on super minions too. This makes her one of the fastest clearers of super minions in the game and guarantees that you will get the 90g from them if there are teammates present.
• Even if your minion wave is very small when you are approaching a turret, it is worth it to push it. After Rabadon all you need is 2-3 minions to push a turret safely. You might tank a few shots but the damage reduction that turrets get without minions doesn't apply instantly the minion dies. You have time to push the turret.
• You can cast E while you are casting Q. This will move the damaging area of the Q together with you. Can be used in many situations that require it. For example if both you and the enemy are on low HP and you have pushed the wave into his turret. If you dive him with the standard E -> Q he might react, flash away and CC you. But if you pretend to be cleaning out his minions with Q and then E towards him right before the final snip which deals the most damage it is unlikely he will expect that and be able to react to it.
• Jump in a fight right when you are about to level up. If you are leading your enemy on XP then the level up from 5 to 6 often enables a kill opportunity. Learn to level up your spells with your keyboard, not a mouse click. Watching other people play in real life, I notice that even some mechanically good players keep using mouse clicks to level up their spells. When playing Gwen this should become a habit. You level up -> you rank up spell - even if you are in the middle of the fight. It happens frequently because of her AOE spells killing a few minions in the middle of the fight or you were just randomly near a level up. It has happened too many times where a level up in a spell that I did in the middle of the fight saves my life and changes how the rest of the game goes.

Build

CORE ITEMS:

Riftmaker

Nashor's Tooth

Rabadon's Deathcap

I build in this order in >90% of my games. Go Nashor first if splitpushing is going to be completely uncontested. Start Doran's Ring unless its against a lot of poke in which case go Doran's Shield. Do not buy HP Pots, only buy refillable.

FOLLOW UP OPTIONS:

Cosmic Drive Good AP, CDR, speed. Frequent build after Rabadon.
Void Staff When more than a few enemies have MR items. Overall increses damage. %pen is strong. Frequent build after Rabadon.
Lich Bane Good for faster splitpushing or nuking their squishies with E->AUTO. I recommend as last buy or sell boots to buy this when you have enough gold at full build.
Shadowflame vs frequent shielding and squishier teams. Good AP ammount and pen. I would buy this against a fed ADC with enchanter support.
Zhonya's Hourglass vs fed AD assassins or generally AD heavy teams.
Morellonomicon vs teams with a lot of healing. I never build this.
Thornmail vs AD heavy teams that also have a lot of healing. Occassional purchase.
Randuin's Omen vs teams that have a lot of damage from critical strikes. Example: Yone top, Yasuo mid and Draven ADC.
Spirit Visage vs teams with a lot of AP damage and prolonged fights. I do not build.
Force of Nature vs teams with a lot of AP damage. Generally better than Spirit Visage.
Abyssal Mask Great cheap item vs a lot of AP damage and when you have 2-3 AP on yours.
There are other items that could work like Wit's End or Death's Dance but it is extremely rare that it would be a better choice than any of the items above.

BOOTS:

I have bought all boots on Gwen except mobility boots. It is very dependant on enemy champions and how ahead I am. Usually I buy Mercs into a lot of CC, Steelcaps into AD heavy teams and Lucidity boots if I am very ahead.

RUNES AND SUMMONER SPELLS:

These runes will be most useful to you in majority of games. Swap armor and MR runes depending on your matchup. Go Second Wind instead of Conditioning vs poke matchups like Teemo or Gangplank. I like to pick Bone Plating against burst champions like Pantheon or Renekton. I climbed from Bronze to Diamond without Demolish, but my climb would have been way easier if I went Demolish instead of Unflinching due to the extra plates it can secure. I take it every game now. Presence of Mind is unnecessary and Triumph enables you to fight multiple enemies easier. It also gives you 20g per takedown extra which at the end of the game if you had 15 takedowns ends up being 300g. In my many games playing Gwen I can recall only a few times I wished I got Presence of Mind over Triumph. If you are nearing 0 mana then shove wave and walk up in river to get green slime plant.
Teleport is too useful not to take every game. For second spell I go Ignite for most games. Take Ghost if the kill pressure on lane is small AND the rest of their team is very mobile/ranged, for example a Malphite top lane with Kalista Rakan botlane, Azir mid and Hecarim jungle. That is a comp that you pick Ghost against. If the enemy team doesn't have a lot of mobility or you have easy lane on top then you should take Ignite. Makes tower dives much easier.

NOTES:

I cheese my games. I play around my enemy's mental and abuse Gwen's strengths. The account I played on was hardstuck Gold for many seasons, sometimes ending in Silver. My mental is not strong, I ran it down many times out of spite towards a teammate. My average vision score is 2x lower than that of an average Iron player. Despite all this my climb was steady with the exception of spending a decent ammount of time and games in D1, because I relaxed too much in my games. My point is that if I manage to climb like this, so can you. Just follow the template each game:

• Pre min 14: Get plates, plates, plates, shove waves, try to get herald if theres good opportunity, if not shove wave get plates.
• After min 14: Inner turrets! Bot and top, when you see 3 people on enemy team on one side of map, you go to the opposite and push the lane.
• Don't walk around aimlessly on map, walk up that sidelane and push the wave. Repeat.
• Enemies are guarding their towers too well? Farm their jungle. Join up for teamfights only if it is absolutely necessary. You will know which are if you keep playing the same runes, items and champion every game.

If I think of something else I will add it in an edit.

Always been an ADC main and never played much ARAM. But in the last few months, I've been spamming ARAM and found that if I picked a tank I've literally never played before, games were incredibly easy and my winrate skyrocketed. So I got curious and checked out ARAMzone champ winrates by build.
Almost every single 55+ WR champ build is either a tank/fighter building tank items, or a champ that does very well against tanks building something like liandries.
From my own experience, if the game goes past 2-3 items, whichever team has more tanks tends to win. I feel invincible playing tanks but I also do SO MUCH DAMAGE without building a single source of damage.
So, in your opinion, do tanks seem fair at the moment?

I was an aram assasin and a normal support player untill now, i know how Talon works as i have played him plenty in aram. How do i play him in normals? I liked electrocute for the dmg pre 6 as it did secure me kills there, but i see people running first strike and conq. What items to build and runes to run? For example vs 4 squishies or multiple bruisetanks? Also how do i farm, i seem to get poked out by almost everyone. Had a matchup with Yone and Lisandra, pre six i got bullied vs both. They seemed to always survive on very low with almost perfect combos. I go all in if enemy gets hit with w2 for example. As support my roam timers and conditions were different as well, i know i have to shove and roam but cant seem to do that. And i was thinking of getting tp instead of ignite.

Date: 06/05/2023
Reading time: 6 minutes, 1249 words

Azerbaijan violates Nagorno Karabakh ceasefire, small arms fire reported in two directions

Azerbaijani military has violated the Nagorno Karabakh ceasefire with small arms fire, the defense ministry says. Small arms fire broke the ceasefire in the central and north-eastern directions of the line of contact.

Armenpress, Azerbaijani forces violate ceasefire – Artsakh MoD, Artsakh reports another ceasefire violation by Azerbaijan in the eastern and southeastern directions

Woman accused of attempting to kidnap Armenian PM’s son to be detained for 1.5 months

Gayane Hakobyan remanded into custody for 1,5 months. Ashot Pashinyan says woman tried to forcefully take him to military cemetery on May 18.

ArmRadio

Armenia actively works around visa liberalization with EU – foreign minister

The visa liberalization issue is being actively discussed with the European Union, Foreign Minister Ararat Miroyan said on Monday. The issue is an item on the agenda of Armenia and EU members and Armenia is receiving support in almost all cases.

Armenpress

No final agreement on specific map for delimitation, says FM

There is no final agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan on which specific map will be used for border delimitation. Ararat Mirzoyan said that the 1975 map would be an acceptable solution for Armenia. He added that as far as he knows the Azerbaijani President didn't object to the map during the latest summit.

Armenpress, Azerbaijan needs to publicly confirm recognition of Armenia's 29,800 km2 territorial integrity - FM, Possible peace treaty won’t mention size of territories of Armenia and Azerbaijan - FM

Armenia works intensively with various countries to buy armaments – official

Armenia is in “intensive discussions” with many countries regarding the acquisition of new armaments. Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan said Armenia is taking into account the fact that Russia’s capacity is unable to export weapons now given its war with Ukraine.

Armenpress

2 new diplomatic representations opened in Armenia in 2022

Two new representations were established in Armenia in 2022, the foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan told lawmakers during committee debates of the 2022 budget. Overall, Armenia has diplomatic representations in 90 countries, and has diplomatic relations with 178 states. In 2022 Armenia accredited four new non-resident ambassadors to Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and North Macedonia.

Armenpress

Armenia to exercise full border control on its side in case of unblocking, says Secretary of Security Council

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Armenpress

Customs duties from EEU budget drop, says Armenian finance minister

In 2022 Armenia received 28 billion dram less from the Eurasian Economic Union’s single customs budget compared to 2021, finance minister Vahe Hovhannisyan said. In 2021 that amount stood at 84 billion 839 million drams.

Armenpress

Armenia considers offers from several countries on building new nuclear power plant

The Armenian Government has set up a commission on nuclear energy which studies the global market to find the most appropriate offers. Director of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant Movses Vardanyan said that Armenia should begin considering the construction of a new power plant today.

Armenpress, New nuclear reactor for Metsamor to take 10-12 years and cost $3-5 billion, says expert

Toivo Klaar to visit Armenia

Toivo Klaar, the Special Representative of the European Union for the South Caucasus, is coming to Armenia. "I am leaving for Yerevan to monitor the fulfillment of EU obligations at a high level"

Armenpress

The session of the Committee of Secretaries of the CSTO Security Councils will be held in Minsk

Committee of Secretaries of the Security Councils of the Collective Security Treaty Organization will discuss challenges and threats in its zone of responsibility at the meeting to be held on June 8 in Minsk. Press secretary of CSTO Vladimir Zaynetdinov said the meeting will be held under the chairmanship of Alexander Volfovich.

Armenpress

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan says maintains close contact with ex-FM Zohrab Mnatsakanyan

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan says he maintains close contact with ex-foreign minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan. Member of Parliament Garnik Danielyan asked him whether or not he sought advice from his predecessors over the negotiations process with Azerbaijan.

Armenpress

Iranian national sentenced to 9 years imprisonment for drug trafficking in Armenia

Iranian national sentenced to 9 years imprisonment for being accessory to smuggling of 350kg of heroin. Iranian national was found guilty on all charges and handed over a 9-year sentence. Customs officials discovered heroin in February 2021 during customs control.

Armenpress

Washington to host another round of Armenia-Azerbaijan foreign ministerial talks

Armenia and Azerbaijan will continue negotiations on establishing relations and peace treaty. The next round of foreign ministerial talks is planned to take place in Washington, D.C. The talks will start on June 12.

Armenpress, Peace deal with Azerbaijan possible by year end, says Armenian top security official, Armenia, EU continue dialogue on visa liberalization, Foreign Minister says

Government of Armenia must try to ensure mechanism and platform for talks between Stepanakert and Baku, says FM

Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan says there are numerous unresolved issues regarding the security and rights of the people of Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh. He said the authorities of Armenia must try to ensure the start of the dialogue, the mechanism and platform.

Armenpress

Nominations close for the 2024 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity

The 2024 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity will be awarded on behalf of survivors of Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors. The nomination period opened on June 1, 2022, with the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative encouraging people all around the world to put forward modern-day heroes. In total, 730 submissions for 676 unique candidates have been received for the Prize.

ArmRadio

Armenian, Azerbaijani FMs to hold new round of talks in Washington

Foreign Ministers Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov will hold another round of talks in Washington. New round of negotiations on peace treaty and establishment of diplomatic relation will start on June 12. The Foreign Ministers of the two countries last met in Moscow on May 19.

ArmRadio

FLYONE ARMENIA achieves 400,000 passenger count in five months of 2023

FLYONE ARMENIA transported 400,000 passengers in the five months of 2023, the airline’s Chairman of the Board Aram Ananyan said. The airline is approaching the threshold of having a passenger count of 1,000,000 per year.

Armenpress, FLYONE ARMENIA to name aircraft in honor of composer Aram Khachatryan

Donations to Armenia:
Himnadram
Armenian Wounded Heroes
ArmeniaFund
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Hello everybody, and welcome to the 2023 edition of the Mindcrack Time Capsule, the tenth annual version of this long-lived tradition!
As a quick description, this is an annual post where we gather up all the information on the current state of Mindcrack, seal it up, and then open it back up one year later to look back on all the changes that might’ve happened over the course of a year, and to preserve info before it gets lost to time. There’s a lot of info collected here, and so this post also serves as the best source of info on the current state of the group with information not written down anywhere else; whether you’ve been away years or actively follow the group there’s likely info here that you won’t know and it’s a good way to get caught up on the important parts of Mindcrack.
With the intro out of the way, let’s get to the actual time capsule! The current state of it follows:
—
Today is the 5th of June, 2023.

General Information

A current concise definition of Mindcrack is "A group of friends and content creators founded in 2010 who come together for gaming content and regular charity events, primarily based on Twitch."
Mindcrack currently has 24 official members with 18 active as content creators, and around 19 Friends/VIPs active in the group, though there is no official list on who all is considered a Friend. Mindcrackers and Friends are essentially the same and differ only in name.
The latest member to join officially was OMGChad on the 31st of October, 2014, and the latest member to leave was BTC (BlameTheController) on the 12th of November, 2015, however these stats are somewhat misleading. For the last 12.5 years there has been a steady stream of new friends that each gradually became part of the group as well as some that parted ways, for the first 5 years these had specific dates tied to when they officially joined and left, but since then the newcomers have gradually become active within the group in the same way without being tied to any single date for various reasons. Thus, the latest person to become a part of the group is difficult to pinpoint.

Charity

There have been ten full Mindcrack Marathons to date and a multitude of other charity efforts, both from individuals and the full group. In total Mindcrack has raised over $2,088,731.75 for others through their group fundraising streams since 2013, of which $1,955,259.30 has been for the charity Extra Life (totals missing $0-5K). The latest full marathon was on November 14-20 and ran for 88 hours, raising $128,386.51 for Extra Life.
A complete list of all totals raised during Mindcrack group fundraising streams can be found here, the source message is pinned in the Mindcrack Discord and regularly updated.
The most recent charity event was held two months ago for Extra Life and was Mindcrack's first time running Extra Life United, the annual gathering in Orlando where Extra Life gamers come together to connect with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and participate in a variety of tournaments. For ELU 2023 Mindcrack hosted the entire event, running the gaming tournaments, stage entertainment, and the official stream which was essentially a spring Mindcrack Marathon. ELU 2023 also featured the return of the Minecraft Building Competition, and Pakratt led team Mindcrack to another 1st place finish against 5 other teams despite an ill-timed computer failure, earning $10,000 for the team’s hospitals.
The Mindcrack Patreon has now been supporting Mindcrack's charity efforts for over 3 years, allowing the marathon to grow in size and production quality. Currently the Patreon has 267 Patrons pledging $2,370 per month, with 59 Patrons on the $25 tier, 1 on the $500 tier, and the rest split between $5 and $10.
Kurt's Far Lands or Bust journey has continued on as always, with Season 10 currently coming to a close after a 54 day FLoB-a-Thon filled with adventures and over 1.5 million blocks traveled in just over a year. He is currently at 7,396,358 blocks traveled towards the Far Lands as of May 15th, 2023, sitting at 58.9% of the way there. The latest numbered episode was #847 on May 30th, 2023. The series has raised $472,939.92 for 7 different charities since 2011, however Season 10 did not end up supporting a charity.
MCGamer and the Zeldathon Team have raised $3,203,023 for 12 different charities during their 34 charity events. The latest Zeldathon was Zeldathon Daybreak which raised $125,800.00 for Direct Relief from August 2nd-8th, 2022, and they also held Side Quest: Dampe’s Twilight Tour! for Halloween from October 28th-31st which raised $12,600 for Gamers Outreach, their first time supporting the charity. The next Zeldathon will be Zeldathon Echoes, scheduled to start on July 6th raising money for charity: water.
There's also a multitude of individual charity efforts in Mindcrack; several people in the group hold streams supporting their individual Extra Life campaigns, and there's frequently one-off streams for various charities, such as Taffy’s recent subathon for St. Jude and Extra Life’s Dungeons & Dragons stream last month which Aurey joined. A complete list wouldn't be feasible to collect, but their efforts are greatly appreciated. In total everyone in the group has raised over $6 million for charity over the years.

Regular Series

The Mindcrack Podcast is hosted by Sevadus and Guude releasing two episodes every week, consisting of a public episode every Monday and a Patron-exclusive episode every Thursday. Additionally, Patrons at the $25 tier can watch the recordings live with live chat. The latest public episode was S2E135 which released today on June 5, 2023, and the latest premium episode was episode 134 released on May 25, 2023.
Cone, Kurt, and Zeekay host the podcast Ran When Parked which normally releases new episodes every other week, the latest episode was episode 94, however there hasn’t been a new episode in 2 months.
As of tonight Coestar's StreamADay is sitting at Day 3,471, and Phedran's daily streaming streak is on Day 2,072. Coe still holds the second longest daily streaming streak on Twitch as he approaches the ten year mark.
In the last year Subathons have really picked up, with Arkas, DumbDog, Guude, Justin, Kurt, McLaffyTaffy, Millbee, and OMGchad each having at least one, as well as many one or two day marathon streams from others, and they have resulted in many collabs within the group. Another recent fad is IRL streaming, with several in the group getting dedicated mobile streaming setups to go out in the world and stream, and Guude has almost entirely replaced his gaming content with IRL streams recently.
A large number of limited collabs appeared in the last year which aren’t currently running, most notably Mario Kart Mondays returned as a one-off appearance, the Bike Dads returned for a short period starting in the very same week, and DumbDog brought back The Checkpoint League for S2 which included Chiblee, Jaaski, and Justin. TFC Tuesday is also currently on hiatus. There are also a variety of collabs which frequently make appearances without a set schedule, including games such as Mahjong Soul and Mario Party.
The following is a list of the more stable weekly collab series within Mindcrack currently:

• Armo, Breon, Coestar, Kingster, and occasionally Ryuski play PUBG for Sunday Gunday every week, and PUBG also makes frequent appearances throughout the week with other squad combinations.
• Breon, Mhykol, and Ryuski are joined by Fortain and Omnirach every Tuesday playing games together, currently playing Space Engineers after previously playing Minecraft: Legends.
• Monday Group Games have just recently returned on Tuesdays, with several Friends and Staff playing Among Us with the Mindcrack community.
• Coestar and Guude's Two Bananas for Sale continues as always after recently hitting their 5 year anniversary, playing games together or with Patrons every Friday night. Their joint Patreon currently raises $584 per month thanks to 34 Patrons.
• Arkas, Guude, Nebris, and Pakratt continue to play Divine Journey 2 every other Saturday and just passed their 8-year anniversary playing together, however their sessions have been inconsistent since the start of the series.
• Pause and Beef have once again joined with Etho for a new Team Canada series recently, playing the Minecraft CTM map Starblight Desert.
• Guude and JSano, known as Guano, still regularly upload GeoGuessr videos on YouTube.

Servers

Season 9 of the Minecraft vanilla server is currently ongoing, but Season 10 is expected to start in the very near future after the release of 1.20, and the final server tours are already taking place. The current season started on December 11th, 2021, and the server is running on 1.19.4 with some extra plug-ins to allow $25 tier Patrons on the server. This season has had approximately 789.5 hours streamed by Mindcrack so far; the latest stream was by Soccer on January 15th. Mhykol hosts a server map at https://mindcrackmap.com using BlueMap.
The most recent full modded server was Crackpack Season 4, Mindcrack's 7th modded season which was active from November 2019 until January 2020.
Dadcraft’s most recent server was Minecraft Vault Hunters; Chiblee, DumbDog, Jaaski, and Justin joined others on the server earlier this year.
Adlington, Arkas, Cone, Dire, Doc, Kurt, Phedran, and VintageBeef all have fan servers for Twitch subs and/or Patrons, but some might not be active at the moment.

Ultra Hardcore (UHC)

There have been 33+32 (Thirty-one donation UHCs and S4b) seasons of Mindcrack UHC.
Breon, Coestar, ConeDodger, and Kingster are the winners of the latest UHC season, Season 33, which was streamed on the 26th of February, 2022.
Amethyst, BigGiantCircles, and HonneyPlay are the winners of the latest donation UHC, the 31st of its kind, which was streamed on the 20th of November.
PauseUnpause is the most deadly player in regular UHCs with 36 kills, and Arkas and Coestar are tied for the most deadly player in donation UHCs with 38 kills each. Nebris and VintageBeef are tied for the most wins in regular UHCs with 9, and Kurt has the most wins in charity UHCs with 7. (Latest UHC stats by Guardax)
Seasons can be categorized as follows: 24 teams of four, 15 teams of two, 14 teams of three, 8 free-for-all, 2 PvE, 1 teams of five, 1 teams of ten.
This was the first year since 2015 without a spring charity UHC, as running Extra Life United took precedence.

Individual Members

The table below contains current subscription, follower, and member data for the Mindcrackers' various social media accounts. Each number is hyperlinked to include an image of that member's account as it appears on this day for easy comparison of account contents, videos, and Discord channels:

Mindcracker	Twitch	YouTube	Twitter	Patreon	Discord Size	Discord Messages**
Adlingtont	3,048	34,700	5,998	9 ($55)	42	30,090
AnderZEL	284,676	524,000*	68,569		Twitch sub to join	?
Arkas	39,117	84,900/381	24,169		441	53,430
Aureylian	146,868	261,000*	157,293
AvidyaZen	21,460	301	356		106	22,730
Coestar	62,293	108,000/1,510	28,950	21 ($69)	1,607	2,089,410
Docm77	130,700*	1,010,000	249,640	118($946)	Patron only	?
Guude	46,294	362,000/178*	89,790		Twitch sub only	892,210
JSano19	5,020	48,100	13,134	0	Patron only	?(no Patrons)
Kurt	53,468	410,000	54,606	167	Patron or Twitch sub only	186,160
MCGamer	86,885	97,900	35,313
Mhykol	15,637	52,300/10*	23,855		138	17,710
Millbee	55,546	113,000	43,072		556	813,250
Nebris	20,638	132,000
OMGchad	53,412	117,000*/1,490,000	31,096		1,955	37,110
Pakratt	102,151	49,600	19,624		544	372,720
PauseUnpause	150,560	553,000*			902	141,410
Pyropuncher	29,503	351,000*	46,246
SethBling	244,378	2,000,000	360,297		305	37,440
Sevadus	410,340	44,800*	52,997		1,732	58,700
Vechs	9,647	169,000	47,499	83($666)	1,214	173,200
VintageBeef	28,807*	1,560,000/17,200/18,600*	194,795	131	Patron only	?
W92Baj	9,427*	112,000	40,808	5	Patron only	?
Zisteau	56,398	339,000/1,540	68,059	82	1,358	420,200
Mindcrack Network	69,179	150,000	46,948	267($2,370)	2,637	327,390

* indicates pages that haven't been used in the last year ** Discord messages are all messages sent in default channels since server creation.
The following table is the same info for Friends that are content creators who have been active within Mindcrack in the last couple years, though this isn't an official list so it may have extras and not be complete. McLaffyTaffy and Paint have been added to this list since the previous year.

Friend	Twitch	YouTube	Twitter	Patreon	Discord size	Discord messages**
Amethyst	700		828
Breon	2,584	293	1,679		163	51,410
Chiblee	29,994	6,110/1,920	34,833/5,998		3,257	689,490
ConeDodger	5,766	9,780/730	1,344	144	Patron or Twitch sub to join/use	1,583,970
Dahl	451*	21,200/21*	805	0	Patron to join	52,630
Darkosto	77,941	3,680	5,893	28($169)	8,299	474,250
DireDwarf	18,336	4,650*	2,969	6($38)	360	183,770
Drooo	363	10*	436		56	28,450
HCJustin	69,961	13,500/296(new)	19,311	22($119)	Twitch sub to join	1,275,930
HonneyPlay	11,623	3,070*	1,205	8	544(shared w/ Pak)	372,720
Jaaski	11,003	455/7(new*)	2,551		619	273,350
Kingster	514	4*	28		33(new)	860
McLaffyTaffy	31,410	14,500	6,862		989	161,680
Mookake	691	2,330*	234
Paintbrushpuke	539		227
Phedran	9,686	8,740	4,710	54($403)	476	110,070
Ryuski	1,357	194	429		75	28,000
Sapphyrei	18,362	189*/127,000	11,611
Soccer	510	135*	271		Twitch sub to join	440*

There are currently about 28 people part of Mindcrack that stream on Twitch regularly(past 3 months), and about 7 that upload YouTube videos with non-streamed content.
In the last year there were approximately 32,950 hours streamed on Twitch by about 41 Members and Friends, with 2,880 combined hours streamed during last month. During that year there were 875 unique categories streamed and 3,589,000 hours watched on Twitch which is equal to 410 years.
The most streamed games in order were Minecraft, PUBG, Words on Stream, PlateUp!, and Noita. Minecraft had the most streamers with 32, most hours streamed with 4,994, and second most hours watched with 427,540; the category Just Chatting was also among the most streamed and had the most hours watched with 561,200, and Travel & Outdoors and Special Events were also among the top.
Here's a chart showing monthly hours streamed by Mindcrack members from August 2015 to May 2023; here's a similar chart with Friends added starting May 2020.
According to the Mindcrack website, the total YouTube subscribers across all official Mindcrackers is 9,042,471, the total number of videos is 71,787, and the total views is 2,418,417,594. The website hasn't been updated in years and these numbers have not changed since the last time capsule, so they are at least one year out of date.
The total member count across public Discord servers in Mindcrack is 27,789 which includes significant overlap(13,537 for just Mindcrack Members). In total there's been approximately 10,587,460 messages sent across all 36 servers including from bots, but I don't have numbers from every server. Cone’s Discord has overtaken Coe’s as by far the most active server, with over 340,000 messages in the last year alone.
SethBling is the most subscribed on YouTube with 2 million subscribers as well as the most followed on Twitter with 360,297 followers. Sevadus has the most Twitch followers with 410,340 followers. Darkosto has the largest Discord server with 8,299 members, and among the Mindcrack Members OMGchad has the largest with 1,955 members.

Subreddit

mindcrack has approximately 45,000 subscribers. Discord servers and Twitch chats are the primary places the active Mindcrack community's interactions are based, so the subreddit sees minimal activity.
The Moderator Team of mindcrack consists of 10 humans and 2 bots: GuudeBoulderfist, pakratt0013, stinusmeret, Zisteau, pajam, Lost-Chord, Compieuter, ArmoAram, stevetheclimber, emilythecool, MindcrackTwitchBot, and CrackBot / AutoModerator.
This is the subreddit today using old Reddit (Picture Version), and this is the same page using the redesign (Picture Version).
Here’s the current flair selection which has not been updated recently, and here are the subreddit’s traffic stats which are normally only viewable by mods.

Miscellaneous

Docm77 and VintageBeef are also members of HermitCraft, and Arkas, Chiblee, Coestar, Jaaski, Justin, and Pause are all members of Dadcraft. After making a game on the HermitCraft server, Beef recently released a physical trading card game available for purchase.
SethBling currently holds 2nd place for the Super Mario World 0 Exit speedrun with a time of 41.350 seconds. He also holds records for several speedrun categories he created. In December Chiblee got the world record for time to first WooHoo in The Sims 4 without expansions with a time of 24.410 seconds; this has since been pushed back to 2nd place.
In the lives of the Mindcrackers and Friends there’s been many changes over the last year; Sevadus and Trent’s wedding will be later this month with other Mindcrackers attending, others in the group have started dating, there’s been many new pets across Mindcrack, and there’s been lots of travel and a bit of moving, including Pakratt and Honney who are currently in the middle of moving. Because of changes in the economy, some people in the group have gotten new jobs and slowed down their content.
Throughout the year many people in the group have met up in a variety of places which has seemingly become more prominent thanks to an increase in IRL streaming. Some of these were just meeting as friends such as Mhykol driving to Breon’s place or Soccer and Shelbs visiting Arkas, while others were for Mindcrack events such as ELU where many of them stayed extra days and streamed local activities together.
There have been no public updates in the last year on Mindcrack's progress towards becoming a non-profit that's publicly been in the works for years. This long transition period is seemingly one of the main reasons that new Mindcrackers haven’t been added recently, as the definition of membership was always anticipated to be changing soon and in essence already changed years ago.

Community Contributions

u/Omegatron9 has kept his spreadsheet and graphs on YouTube subscribers up to date.
The events of Mindcrack's first 10 years are covered in my History of Mindcrack written in 2020.
Some spreadsheets I have with stats:

• Mindcrack monthly hours streamed - August 2015 to May 2023 copy
• Mindcrack Stream stats - June 4, 2022 to June 3, 2023, has extensive numbers for every category streamed by everyone in Mindcrack in the last year
• Quarterly content produced by Mindcrack Members, 2010 Q4 to 2020 Q2, useful for seeing Twitch overtake YT for Mindcrack content
• Arkas’, Guude’s, Nebris’, and Pakratt’s Divine Journey 2 stats, updated live during every streamed episode

Thanks to Guardax and memnarch for providing Discord numbers.
—
Thanks for reading through the tenth time capsule!
There’s still time to add more though, if there’s any info that you want to add you can add it! Whether it’s extra info on the group, predictions about the future, comments on the members, or anything else, feel free to leave it in a comment and I’ll add it to the time capsule.
There’s a lot that goes on across the full Mindcrack group and I’ve barely been able to watch any streams this year, so if you see anything I've missed, put down incorrectly, or forgotten, be sure to let me know and I'll fix it!

I don't think there are any other ARAM-specific tweaks that showcase how misguided and stubborn they are in their attempts to balance this.
How could they possibly imagine that nerfing an immobile ADC's damage to oblivion would make people do anything but focus on safer builds - like the inane poke build.
But then to stubbornly insist on this shit for months (years?)...
But, hey, she gets a 2.5% attack speed buff!

If you are reading this, I expect you are either a Swain enjoyer or a Swain hater. If it’s the former, I’ve got a deck for you! This is my first time writing a guide, but I was inspired by the really nice Trundle timelines guide by AJTehPro, so I’ll try! So strap in- I’ve played literally hundreds of games on this deck over many seasons so I have a lot to say about it.
If you just want the list without all this nonsense that’s FINE I guess you can have it ;]
((CEBQCAYBAIBQCAIDBEZAGAQDA4EASBQBAIAQCAICAMAQCAYBCQAQGAYNAECAGAQCAQAQSDQEAEAQCFABAEBS4AIFAEHQEBQDBUHA))
I will get this out of the way: do not expect this deck to be a free win generator. Even in favored matchups, it is often close, requiring you to play on a knife’s edge (see \* Ember Maiden)
https://imgur.com/a/cubx52r
As you can see, my last 30 games in Dia/Masters have a cool 66.666666% win rate 😎 I’ve had a really fun time playing it however, as most of these cards have been rotated out of standard. In this weekend’s MR open, the deck had like 55% winrate? (honestly I forgot to write it down..) but it was certainly not my weakest link (coughthrallscough)
-----
The overall premise: your deck is building to the Swin-con of leveled Swain getting through using either board stuns or Braum to navigate blockers. On occasion you can look for burn, but in general you need at least one large swing.
Based on your AOEs, Swain should come down leveled 90% of the time.
Turn 5 leveled Swain is a reality we are living in. (See *\* Avarosan Sentry)
​

1. Matchups

• The good:

This list is anti-aggro.
You will be thrilled to queue into aggro because this deck is centered on AoE removal and has lots of opportunities for healing. (See **\* mulligan.) Not a ton else to say other than you are surviving the initial onslaught, healing up, then stabilizing with removal on deck for any pesky Noxian Fervors. I’ve they have decimate, they have it.
Exceptions are a high-rolling thresh-nasus with their 9 damage (?) turn 2 (??) which I’m not sure any deck has a terrific answer for. (Weird how often that seems to happen… Q_Q )

• Which leads me to unfavored matchups (the BAD):

-SI control is “tricky”, because you basically have to hope your opponent doesn’t draw vengeance for your win cons (Swain, Leviathan). If you can keep their board clear and grow other threats such as Braum, Ember Maiden , or a Mighty Poro, this is ideal.
Notes against Nasus/Thresh: be a jerk. Don’t let them have easy slays. If they want to draw cards with glimpse beyond, don’t let them if you can afford to. Keep scorched earth for the target that’s going to get atrocity’d. And even if you have this ready, sometimes you lose games. And that’s ok.
If I queue into HeimeJayce, it’s technically winnable, but an extremely uphill battle with their spell generation of precisely the things they need to counter you i.e. vengeances and kill spells from Financier.
Ionia is also difficult because of their access recalls in particular. (I played a version of this deck during the Ahri-Kennen meta and let me tell you. Those recalls. They reset all of your scaregrounds stacks, so just keep that in mind..)

• The “everything-else”:

Most games excluding the categories above feel even and skill based. (I won’t go through every single matchup, although I have my opinions on each of them 0_o )
One thing I really love about this deck is how versatile it is.
Big-Midrange stuff can be challenging if your units get outscaled, so it can become a race to set up Swain stuns.
- Notably, timelines decks have been on the rise and in bo3’s I have been most inclined to ban the Trundle variation.
​
2) The core cards, “the list”:

• Scargrounds (0-2x): I’m glad to see one Scargrounds. I pretty much never want to see the second one, and I definitely do not want to see a third. Hence- I am not running three. The deck operates fine without it, but if you are able to commit to it, it can do wonders.. Remember though: tough and +1 does nothing to stop Vengeance, which your really bad matchups are known for, so if you are playing against SI (not spiders lol) the card can be too big of a tempo loss.

​

• **Avarosan Sentry (3x): It’s draw. It’s a 2-drop. It’s just a solid card, I can understand why it was rotated, but I’ll never give it up.

IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS DECK: Use this card as a body to receive AoE damage to contribute to leveling Swain. This means: sometimes, I play sentry even though it’s going to die to ember maiden at round start. Sometimes, I don’t block with it because I’d really like that extra 2 points of damage from Blighted Ravine/Avalanche to count towards Swain. Play around with this card.
​

• *Ember maiden (2-3x): This is your ride or die, the core, the engine of the deck. Embrace the ember maiden. This may involve you letting through some blocks that seem really bad to take, but knowing ember maiden will tag on damage and contribute greatly to Swain’s level up. In A match where both players are just passing, I’ll throw down this card to see if I get a response. Preferably, I want Troll Chant in hand (especially against PnZ) because keeping Ember Maiden on board controls what your opponent can play when it comes to low health units, or even their champions that they need to keep “undamaged”.When combined with Scargrounds and Braum, it’s a clear engine, but this takes a lot of mana to set up.

- Important to note that this card is actively damaging your own nexus. Especially against things like Draven/Sion and other burn, you'll have to weight in when it's time to swing with this unit to lose it.
​

• Troll Chant (3x): Sometimes you’re going to use this on your Ember Maiden just to keep her around for the next round. Sometimes you use this for a rough block on Braum or to survive against a wide board. Sometimes you will use this to remove a fearsome blocker Swain. All in all, an extremely versatile card. I hate to get bricked by a full hand of them, but I wouldn’t want less than 3.

​

• The removal: The cards are similar, but the ratios are going to depend on the meta. Ravenous Flock and Death’s Hand are both 3x for me. Ice Shards, Avalanche, and Blighted Ravine (2-3, 1-2x respectively): These have different strengths and speeds obviously. Depends on the meta how valuable avalanche is. Right now, that is very valuable. As discussed previously, sometimes it's ok to sacrifice your units to a wide AoE if it’s going to turbo-level Swain.

​

• Scorched Earth (1-2x): hoo boy this card. It really feels necessary. Whether its a “thank goodness I have it!” into landmarks, or an answer to big threats (i.e. Nasus, leveled Trundle, Ornn). I’m not comfortable with less than 2. Side note: I’m always surprised when I see people running Nox Guilly so if that’s you, let me know your thoughts~

​

• Optional reads: Disintegrate, Culling Strike (0-2x): purely meta dependent. I like at least 1 Disintegrate but in this deck, it can brick when a lot of your damage is at round start. The card is just plain bad against aggro, and a lot of times is a last desperate removal combined with something like Ice Shards.

The deck is not fast, the sequel:

• Spirits Unleashed (1x):I’ve run this card as a one-of and I can’t see wanting another copy. 5 Mana is extremely costly and while it can be incredibly useful to contribute to Swain’s level up and possibly clear board, the deck functions without it and it is too slow to cast against hard-aggro and doesn’t really help the bad matchups again. (Vengeance will still kill a +1+1 target!!). Having a 4/4 Mighty Poro and a 3/2 Avarosan Sentry is pretty nice though 😀

​

• Draw: Avarosan sentry(3x) and Whispered Words (1-3x) is your draw. That’s all. You’ll rarely get Whispered Words below 4 cost, but it’s neat when it happens 🥲

​

• ****Stuns:

The number of stuns is extremely dependent on the meta.
For example, when nightfall was poppin’, Arachnoid Sentry felt pretty good as a stun and a fearsome blocker. Other times, the lower cost warrants Spell Slinger instead.
If you’re running into things like Lurk, Heccarim, DE/Garen, or notably Poppy, you’ll want to mull for stuns.

• I am personally investigating the matter of Pirouette. It seems like it would be great and a “double stun” for leveled Swain, but my considerations are that I more often than not use the stuns defensively or as a means to apply Flock, in which case having the body is good, especially if it’s a 2/2 from spirits unleashed (happens more than you’d think).

3. ***The Mulligan:
Always keep: 1 Avarosan Sentry, 1 Braum. It’s good to have a unit early, and Braum is Braum. Everything else is dependent on the matchup.

• Against aggro: you’ll keep avalanche :’) Tavern Keeper is great, and Blighted Ravine isn't bad to have, but I would rather have removal that doesn't require setup, such as a Death's Hand (which kills a lot of early units).

Is your opponent’s deck known for a lot of 1 health units? (Heccarim, Gwen, scouts no-ranger’s-resolve?) you need ice shards.
Is it mono Shurima, or recent Lucian decks with the un-nerfed Plaza? Uhhh yeah I’m hard mulling for Scorched Earth.
Are you against Lurk? Stay calm, it’s winnable. Mull for stuns ***\*

• Against control: you’ll want to actually keep things like Leviathan and Swain for the idea that you are building towards leveling Swain and want these pieces as soon as you can reasonably drop them. Pray for no Vengeance.
• On Swain: weirdly, against “neutral matchups”, I find myself not keeping swain a lot unless it’s against something that isn’t going to have a fearsome blocker on 5 or I’m confident I can level him quickly.

You need to be able to survive the early game, and unless you know you won’t get burst down quickly, he can feel chunky in the opening hand.

• Tavern keeper is generally a good card to keep in the mull because your deck is SLOW (have I said that yet? 🙃 ) You will expect to take some damage early and drop this later to stabilize.
• Scargrounds: I am always keeping this in the mulligan EXCEPT! use your best judgment in the aggro matchups. Scargrounds is a phenomenal 3-mana-do-nothing card, and so sometimes it’s just too slow. If the rest of your hand is big units, mull it away and look for removal or Avarosan Sentry.

--------
Final words:
You can try to play around everything, but sometimes you play like a doofus. Still, never give up!
Especially if Bram is flipped, this deck has amazing defense and sustainability! It doesn’t do anything crazy or over the top and so sometimes you just get outscaled but that doesn’t mean you can’t still pull out wins against a leveled Viego or a post-Maokai Deep. Manipulate your removal! Stun! and BURN!
Good luck out there and have fun! 🙂

Looking for a co-op partner or small group of adults to play MC with! I've been playing around with ATM8 and Cobblemon a bit, but down to try anything that promotes exploration/adventure. I'm pretty sucky at building, but would like to get better at it.
Down to join a server or host! Shoot me a message if interested
I also play TFT, LoL (just casual ARAMs and norms), and am interested in survival/RPG type games!

looking for ARAM enthusiasts (18+) , don't care if ur a new player or a veteran just don't be toxic , I play to win but don't take it too seriously and mostly like to try out fun builds .
Add me in-game - BatChest2 / if you also want to voice chat - maxdd#9656 (not always in the mood for it)

let's acknowledge that Infinity Edge swap into a mythic is a complete failure, all that it gives are stats, no passive, no active, nothing .
just 70 ad , 20% crit , 35% crit damage, and 5 ad only per mythic, it's not fun at all and unsatisfying given that it's supposed to be the ADC iconic item, I'm sure that some will say that it's designed to be like this, and it fits adc playstyle of being damage machines, well theoretically that can work, but realistically the item is not even worth a mythic slot, not even crit adcs are buying it, not even Yasuo and Yone who have double crit chance.
apart from Tristana you can look into every single adc and see their highest winrate builds with a considerable pick rate, none of them has IE as the best mythic
you can pick any random adc except Tristana and see their best performing mythic, it's never gonna be IE
jhin ? (he has crit scaling in passive and R) ...nope his best mythic is Galeforce followed by Ghostblde
Miss Fortune ? (she has crit in her Q, and R) also not ...Ghostblade
Twitch? (he always used to build it before the change) Rageblade has way higher pick rate IE not even close
what about Draven ? this might be the closest that IE can get to be the best mythic, but still Ghostblade is better by a small margin
Patch 13.11 (op.gg)
IE needs either to be reverted to Legendary, or a complete rework with a meaningful passive or active, for example they can give it an active that amplifies all damage by 3-7% and gives 3-6% move speed until out of combat (90 sec cooldown) , or any other type of change that encourages adcs to build it.

I've come into a lot of extra free time recently to game so I'm looking to make some friends who like a variety of games. I also love chatting when not gaming, watching funny videos, sharing music, all the good stuff so VC is pretty important. Not looking to game with hateful people.
What I play:
-League of Legends: only play norms for fun but take pretty regular breaks from playing(do not like ARAM)
-Survival, Crafting, Base building: Minecraft, Core Keeper, Satisfactory, Factorio, Valheim, Project Zomboid, No Man's Sky
-Strategy: Civilization, Stellaris, Age of Wonders, Age of Empires
-MMO: Warframe, Guild Wars 2, FFXIV(complete noob)
-RPG: Elden Ring, Divinity: Original Sin
-Other: Barotrauma, Risk of Rain 2, Geoguessr, Jackbox
​
What I don't play: shooters and BRs(I've played this stuff in the past for social reasons, and will play occasionally but I'm not looking to play fortnite, CoD and valorant every day)

When I play ARAM as Swain I tend to build rylai always so I took it upon myself to take Font of Life + Revitalize to heal my ally as it lends his HP scaling to his teammates as well, usually healing by 3k+ at the end of the game. Presence of Mind makes up for Swains' mana usage for the most part in ARAM and has Conqueror.
One thing I've been struggling with though is mythic item choices. I know Liandry's overall is a strong pick for him but I can't help but look to Riftmaker for Swain as I'd build Imperial Mandate and I believe the passive from Riftmaker would also benefit Imperial and Demonic.
My 4 core item build usually ends up being Rylai -> Imperial Mandate -> Riftmaker -> Demonic. Liandry for vs 3+ tanks. Is this a bad build? I've also been meaning to test it for support Swain as well.

Shaco's overall performance is weighted down by his AD builds making it seem like he's underperforming and is need of buffs, yet his Liandry's AP builds are in the positives and way above normal. It's crazy to think how certain champions are overlooked with why they are underperforming/overperforming and are given general buffs that do nothing for the desired outcome. AP Shaco will continue to be a menace and AD Shaco irrelevant.
Comparing the two differences of his two most popular mythics: AP Shaco with Liandry's is 54% winrate vs AD Shaco with Duskblade 34% winrate. On ARAM Shaco receives a 5% bonus damage buff likely due to his overall winrate being below average. How much of that is due to AD Shaco with his horrendous 34% winrate and that being the reason to buff him which results in buffing his 54% winrate AP builds.
I would like to see Shaco actually be nerfed with his AP builds if we can't build oracles and since cannon wave vision is a joke. Melees facechecking boxes is a death sentence considering Fear being both hard cc and soft cc. If they want to see AD Shaco be buffed then they should give him higher attack speed or something else that doesn't directly contribute to his AP builds which are not suffering.

To all my fellow jeeneetards.
Has been a long journey chaiye %tile 50 ayi ho ya 99.5 I am sure kuch toh seekha hoga last 2 years mein. On that note I want to thank everyone for building such a strong community. Sarre majje kare hai yaar pichle 2 saal idhar. From padhle bsdk to fight till the end sabkuch hi dekha hai idhar. People doing crazy comebacks everyone has a story to tell.
Patani tum sabh log kabhi iske baad miloge bhi ke nhi but jo bhi hai I wish all of you the best. Aram karo majje karo bas mehnat karna age kabhi mat bhoolna life mein!
Thanking you!
u/Ritwizzzz

I just wanna learn the champ a little bit. I think she fits my style of playing aggressively towards enemy jungler and good tracking (for my elo). If u have any tips you think i could use, feel free to share.
As backstory: i dont really like crit builds so i didnt wanna touch kindred, but i saw gryffinn's trinity build and it really caught my attention. Tried her out in aram with trinity - BC - Wits and really had a fun time.

E max first 100% of the time. The MS is too valuable and its current state is basically what we got from W before anyways. You don't really gain much from leveling Q or W. I'd argue that even vs poke, E max is still better because you can at least roam better rather than stay in lane and get poked out.
Lv1 start Q vs melee (could be some exceptions like pyke) and W vs ranged. Q because it'll be more effective in a 1v1 or poke fest if it does happen, and W because you can dismount to normal -> remount -> normal to kill any ward placed in bush. You're never going to land Q on a ranged champ in lane unless they're being overly aggressive and stupid with positioning.
For items, as support... RUSH VOW. It gives literally every stat Rell needs sans-MR. The only exception for this is if the enemy team is like 80% magic dmg (ap jungler, ezreal/zeri + millio or smth bot) whereas you'd rush abyssal mask. Vow gives a ton of combat power, gives you a bit of the healing you lost on your Q and lets your adc take some more hits. This is especially good if your ADC is very aggressive and also doesn't take free poke.
Second item... IS NOT THORNMAIL. You DO NOT need to buy a mythic second. Tank mythics mostly suck for Rell. Objectively you get more value from most legendary tank items than you do mythics, and buying mythics later on give you more value anyways since mythic boost does that by design. It's not like you're going to get much more than 300 dmg out of that evenshroud before your next buy anyways.
Your actual second item is either Abyssal Mask if you have a strong mage on your team vs at least 2 magic dmg sources (you're not going to be fighting the enemy bot lane much at this point if you roam properly anyways), deadmans plate (if they are more AD oriented ofc), or mythic as a last option.
For your mythics... Jak sho is BAD. It gives resistances that stack up over time. Unless you are always playing as a warden before engaging to get its passive up, as well as aftershock, you don't gain value from this. As most instances you will be engaging upfront and the enemies will be dead long before you get the boosts (ideally). Evenshroud is ~fine~. Locket isn't as good as it was before, and even then it was questionable, especially since it's assassin and general lethality meta atm and serpents is a thing that exists. Radiant Virtue is an overall better option than Locket if you need to provide that supportive ability.
Shurelya's is also not actually terrible on Rell. The MS coupled with E make it for an insanely strong tool especially in low elo, where people take 3 seconds to start running because they don't often choose to fight when things move fast towards them. Everfrost is also not entirely a meme atm because you can use it in tandem with Q to guarantee a W even if the enemy has tenacity (as you can cast it mid crash down and get similar effects to what attract repel provided, RIP).
For other general items. Sitting on Tear is FINE. Completing Fimbulwinter is also FINE. Seraphs could even be a possible option if you're insistent on abusing the AP ratios riot added on for some reason.
Force of Nature is probably your second best MR option (unless you have like nilah or sam or smth that can amp your vow healing with visage). Chemtank sucks but if the enemy is very stacked on magic damage and have lots of mobility, why the f* not?
For armor options... Don't buy Zekes, it's trash. Imperial Mandate is a legendary now. If you want more bursty dmg, get that instead. Doesn't give armor, but Zekes is 2000 gold too expensive for what it gives. Thornmail sucks unless you have enemies you can force to hit you, like a Nilah or Draven. Do not get this vs stuff like kayn or divine sunderer users. You won't stop their healing effectively. Get oblivion orb for them. You'll reduce like 400x more healing this way, even w/o the magic dmg we lost from passive (RIP).
Frozen Heart gives no hp, you should almost never buy this. The only time you should is if the totally balanced CertainlyT bros and bel'veth are on the enemy side. You need at least two targets that you can get a TON of value from its use in order to make it worth losing out on an HP-providing item.
If you have any further questions, ask me. It's just silly that Rell's winrate hasn't moved despite the buffs given to her. That mostly tells me that many of you aren't roaming, and lolalytics tells me you're building crap. Stop that and give riot good data so we can finally revert this and have riot work on a better E.

I hate seeing DH varus, nidalee, pyke on my team. Typically they play for early KD and are useless later.
I love to see tank bruisers because only alphamale gigachads go aftershock darius
Or free damage liandries champs like Brand, heimer since its hard to mess those up.