Gank Tax

Just a guy wishing he could play more LoL

[ganktax]

Fell in love with Quinn top

Got to play her two times tonight, both times vs. melee-range champions - Vi and Nasus, respectively. The first game got pretty messy as I was able to rebuff pretty much anything that Vi threw at me and pulled ahead in CS easily, ending the game with a 100 CS advantage over her. I still have to work on being aggressive and gauging my own damage potential, as I probably could have gone all in on her a few times and picked up kills, but to her credit she played very cautiously and disappeared from lane a number of times, I assume to farm golems to try and get some sort of income. The enemy jungler (Nasus) only tried ganking me once, but Quinn is very slippery and even with Vis ult, I got close enough to my turret that they couldn't finish the job. I ended up rushing a Static Shiv and just split-pushed the lane as hard as I could, leading to a 3/0/2 game.

Second game I was vs. a Nasus who was able to give me a much harder time, as he caught me playing cocky and was able to use a combination of Wither, Ghost and his Q to get me early on. I feel my build was a mess in this game, however, as I started working toward a Static Shiv again, but then got a Last Whisper into a Blade of the Ruined King. I think if I were to play this game again, I would look to get a bigger damage item first, before I picked up the Last Whisper. I think I saw Nasus building an Aegis on top of his Doran's Shield and jumped the gun, but I failed to notice him working toward a Triforce and I feel if I had built an Infinity Edge, I could have done far more to split-push and deal with our frequent tussles. I was pretty proud of myself early on by shutting down an Aatrox gank attempt and popping his passive and ended up 3/4/6 overall, mostly due to under-estimating how slow I was getting from Wither, even when I had my ultimate available.

I played two more games tonight, both as Zyra, going 1 and 1. I have a real problem when it comes to playing Zyra and being completely over-aggressive for no valid reason. I realized early on that my Jinx was relatively passive, but instead of trying to play passive as well and just peeling and warding to try and setup a safe environment for her to farm, I foolishly tried desperately to setup kills for her, which failed repeatedly. She and I had poor communication and our Jungler (Vi) had a rough time with our lane as well and we gave up several kills early on. I ended with a horrible score of 2/8/5, but most of the rest of the team did equally bad, so it eased the sting a bit.

My second Zyra game went remarkably better, as the enemy team botched a level 1 invade which went 3 to 1 in favour of us. I managed to get one of those kills, so I ended up heading to lane with a Philo Stone, wards and health pots, while the enemy Sona came to lane with strictly consumables, which didn't work out for them very well at all. Our Corki did a great job of keeping the harassment early on, even after the enemy Tristana got a kill on our jungler and snagged herself a red buff, we just played around it and punished her for being over-aggressive and jumping on us early on. I ended the game 1/3/8 with Corki going 6/0/11 in a relatively quick game.

Overall, I feel like my top is a lot better than my support, as I have an easier time evaluating myself and my opponent, but I can struggle to sync up with an AD Carry. When we get off to a good start, I don't find it difficult to keep the momentum going, but when we are behind and getting bullied, I don't feel like I adjust my playstyle and mindset appropriately to deal with it.

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Games 5 & 6

Still working toward finishing up the 10 limited hero pool games that are part of the Dota2 tutorial; managed to go 1-1 today. Both games I got to play Vengeful Spirit, a hero that I really enjoy - she's got a decent attack animation, a really great stun/nuke, an AOE armor shred (which is HUGE in Dota) and an instant-cast swap that can be used on either enemies or teammates, which can be very disruptive so long as you don't get blown up instantly upon swapping. The first game was alright, I ended up with a Skeleton King in the short lane vs Sniper and Warlock, a combo that we really didn't have a good way to deal with. They would just poke us at range repeatedly, and even though we each had a stun, we were always at risk of Warlock ulting us if we tried to engage. I played more of a support role this game, and have realized that I very much need to learn proper ward positions and how to stack/pull neutral camps correctly, as I think doing so would have helped us get a bit more xp and have at least a slightly better chance of staying relevant. The game ended up with us pretty much getting steamrolled, but there was thankfully no rage out if anyone. Contrary to the first game, the second was a serious stomp in our favor. I picked up Venge again as our other picks were Witch Doctor, Viper and Dragon Knight but I ended up going safe lane bot again, only this time with WD and I got to build carry. Our lane opponents were Skeleton King and Sniper, so while we had a bit of a break from double ranges harass, we were able to set the lane up favorably and picked up several kills early on by chaining our stuns, and also a few very fun swaps to place an enemy right behind WD's ultimate. After a few deaths, the enemy Sniper disconnected (I assume rage quit as it was right after we had killed him) and we just began pushing all lanes in. To their credit, the other team hung with it and played the game out, one of them even going so far as to micro their dc'd Sniper to auto and ult at us, which I give them props for. So I now sit at 4-2 in my training matches, after which I believe I will be sticking to either Single or Random draft modes to continue working on learning more of the heroes. Overall, I need to work on my stacking and pulling, as well as learn to better plan out my builds, as I tend to know the items I want to get, but I don't think my purchasing is as efficient as it could be. I also want to better communicate with my teams, as they really do overall seem to be a lot more open to suggestion and guidance than the typical League game might see. People my still make the same habits with regard to bad positioning, odd build and skill routes as well as wandering around without wards, but in all 6 games so far there has only been friendly chat between teams and no rage or trolling of any kind. 6 games isn't a huge sample to base this off of, but this is a good start, at least. Now that the S3 rewards have been announced, though - kinda wondering if I shouldn't at least do my placement matches in League and see how close I can get to the Victorious Elise skin...

[ganktax]

Dota

So despite wanting and planning on playing more League, I've actually been starting to get more seriously into Dota2 these past few weeks, and so far have been really having a great time. I won't get into which game is "better", as I think they are actually both excellent games, each with their own strong points. As is my habit, once I started getting into it, I really threw myself into digging down and learning as much as I could, all the while playing practice games with a large number of heroes to try and get a feel for what type seemed to suit me. So far, seems like pretty much everything does, I don't think I've yet to find a hero that I flat-out disliked playing. Invoker was by far the most confusing, but I appreciate the amount of skill it must take to play him eve semi-competently. After many dozen practice games, I started playing a few co-op vs. bots to see how I did with other people (seems like the two guys I know who used to play Dota don't play as much anymore), and even if there were a few losses, I still feel that I learned quite a lot. Then the International 3 happened, and although I am still a bit fuzzy on what some heroes do (Pudge/Chen fountain-hooking blew my mind), it was great to see competitive matches and get to meet some of the personalities. I started cheering for Team Liquid, as I liked their overall playstyle (and ixmike8's mustache...) and I knew I had to start getting into PVP. When it comes to games like this, I tend to have a reservation about getting into competitive games, although I have no real idea why. I used to play in Magic tournaments on a weekly basis back when I still played, so I don't think it's a fear of losing or underperforming, but for some reason I find it hard to hit that Play button. Now that I have, however, I am having a great time and I encourage League players to give it a shot, not because I'm looking to make anyone switch, but I really do think it helps put abilities and playstyles into a different perspective. I don't think I'll ever give up on League (spent wayyy too much money on it to do that...), at least not completely, but for the next little while I am going to try and get as much enjoyment out of Dota as I can. That all being said, I'll still be cheering on Cloud 9 this week at PAX, I'm so happy a team has come along and has seemingly turned the NA scene on it's head, it's great to finally see and I do believe that they will really help bring the overall skill level of NA teams up to at least competitive levels, if nothing else.

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Important losses

...or at least that's what I'm telling myself :P

Played 2 games tonight, both ended up in losses but I picked up a few lessons for myself - namely I need to seriously work on my ability to communicate with my teammates and I have to re-evaluate my champion picks.

First game I ended up first pick and since nobody else wanted it, I got to jungle. Nautilus is visually, mechanically and thematically my favorite champion in the whole game, and I haven't played him in ages, so I jumped on the chance. Enemy team ended up with a goofy comp that included a jungle Heimerdinger, Diana, Akali, Ashe and Leona whereas our team seemed to be a bit more standard: Nautilus, Vi, Caitlyn, Sona and Veigar. Unfortunately, even though our Caitlyn was pretty awesome and did some serious work in botlane, our Veigar and Vi kinda seemed overwhelmed with fighting highly mobile AP assassins.

I was able to get off a couple of decent ganks, but there were a few issues that I would like to think could have been avoided if I laid out my plans going in, such as me and Vi using our ults on the same target at the same time, or missing out on a kill by seconds, as Vi would back off a sure thing tower dive when I already had tower aggro. In retrospect, a quick "I'll ult first" or "I'll tank tower" could have kept things rolling smoothly in our favour.

When it came to later on in the game, Akali ended up roaming a great deal and racked up kill after kill as I just wasn't able to peel enough or keep up with their gap closers. As much as I love Nautilus, I feel like Nasus or Elise would have been better picks overall, as the CC didn't seem to do much against their gap closers and they usually were killing and getting away with very small amounts of health so Spirit Fire's armor shred along with Wither or Elise's executes and skillshot stun may have allowed for more control over the game, as well as the ability for Akali and Diana to assassinate a single target and then run off.

The second game started off decently well with a completely uncontested invade on the enemy red, but then quickly turned around on us (I was Thresh) as the poke out of Varus and Zilean were far too much early game pressure for our Kog'maw to handle easily, so he was zoned quite a bit in the early part of the game.

As for the game itself, it was very back-and-forth and even though the enemy team got off to a decent start, we ended up holding our own and stretching it out a lot more than we probably had any right to. I ended up getting a few early kills, which slightly irked Kog'maw, but they were hardly intentional on my part, and I feel like I kept us well warded and stocked up on aura items (Shurelya's, Locket and eventually Zeke's Herald). I think the real problem with this game was a lack of focus in fights and we got caught several times by Malphite or Orianna ults and although our damage output was overall pretty good, the combination of jungle Jax and toplane Rengar ended up diving into the enemy backline, but leaving a Malphite and Kennen in the way, preventing us from an effective follow-up.

At one point, a fight in mid turned well in our favour and landed 2 towers and an inhibitor for us, but we played it poorly after that and tried to Baron instead of just taking other objectives from their jungle and pushing the other lanes. This ended with us having a horrible fight in the Baron pit where we got the buff but were almost wiped as a result, which let the other team take our mid inhib in retaliation and they had a better siege than we did, particularly with Orianna (who ended with a ridiculous 17 kills). Another fight went our way and (tooting my own horn here) a Flash/Box got an Ace for us, so we pushed into their base again, got their inhib and both Nexus towers but adrenaline got the best of us and Rengar/Jax took turns facetanking the towers leaving us pretty low, where a respawned Orianna completely wiped us out and cost us the game.

If I take anything from this game, I feel like I should have been more communicative with Jax and let him know that the enemy Zilean wasn't warding very well and their constant pushing could be abused. I also need to work on my peeling in teamfights, there were a few times where we were running and I'd turn around and hook an enemy and pull them closer toward us, when instead I should have moved on a diagonal and tried to pull them away from my teammates. Thankfully the team was pretty good about it, pointed it out to me in a (mostly) non-confrontational way.

Overall, some awkward games and the 2nd one was a bit of a heartbreaking loss, but once again I feel like I'm learning in a good way and hopefully I can avoid making these same mistakes again.

[ganktax]

Shen top loss & Varus AD win

Got two more games in tonight, managed to split them evenly. The first game had me go top for the first time in ages, but I managed to get Shen who I am fairly comfortable with, after having jungled him a bunch. I was up against a Kennen who was pretty good, he was able to go the Doran's Blade early and punish me for CSing, but only got a kill on me from my own greed in trying to Taunt/Flash/Q, but I just ended up Flashing straight into a Q from him and dying. Our jungler never came top, but I feel that if he had, we'd have been able to kill Kennen a few times, but it's my fault for not directly asking him, as pings only go so far. Sadly, our botlane had a very rough game and Tristana got shut down pretty hard by the enemy Varus. I tried to ult several times to set up fights in our favor, but the person I was ulting tended to either jump into the entire team and die before I ported in, or they would just run from the fight - definitely need to be more vocal when mistakes like this are made, as I think there were a few fights we could have turned around...next time, assuming I ever get Shen again. My second game was awesome, I got to play Varus again, and while I still have to work on getting used to his range and damage, we mostly rocked the other team. I had a Lee Sin for support, but thankfully he knew what he was doing and we just stomped the enemy Thresh/Vayne early - I think we had three kills between us and the tower down by 5:00. Once the tower was down, we just roamed for a while, bailed out mid and top a bit, and although we had a few clumsy fights and ended up giving them a mostly free Baron, we were able to keep our lead and shove the game home. I need to work on my item build order a bit better, I realized how dumb it was to get boots, pots, wards and a Vamp Sceptre instead of just saving up a little bit more for a BF Sword, which would have given me even stronger harass against bot and likely would have netted me a few more kills. I will also need to work at improving my positioning in teamfights, I seem to be ok in laning, but come teamfights I'm not keeping myself mobile enough and well behind our tankline, leading to me getting CC'd and killed all three of my deaths that game.

[ganktax]

Some great content from reddit (for a nice change) breaking down the *assumed* mindset Cloud 9 had in their game vs. Team Coast.

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mikiballard replied to your post: Is AD the new support?

I’m getting really tired of the “carry" junglers like jax, Yi, riven, fiddle who just seem to play like regular laners, disregard team composition, and have no sense of buff or map control :(

That seems to be a big problem with some peoples' understanding of the game - they go into it with the "I need to win this game" mentality, instead of "We need to win this game". I'm not against carry junglers necessarily, but they don't just fit into any team comp. I've had a number of jungle Rengars recently who bring basically nothing to the game as they can't pull off ganks early enough to get the snowball going, then end up just farming to try and catch up... Meanwhile the other team has a Jarvan or someone like that who can bring utility without a bunch of items and they just go to town uncontested :/

[ganktax]

Is AD the new support?

For the third (I think?) time, I'm working on getting back into playing more frequently and so far it hasn't been too bad. I've mostly been just soloing normal drafts and I think what's been most surprising is the amount of people who aren't interested in playing AD. So far, I think I've played something like 5 games as AD, a role I used to just hate, and have actually been having a pretty good time of it. Mostly Caitlyn games, which is probably the best for someone who is kinda terrible at positioning, but tonight I got to play Varus which was actually extremely fun and I really hope I get to play him more often. Other than AD not being fought over anymore, I've run into considerably less crappy behavior than I was used to. Most champ selects are reasonably conflict-free and the only trolls I've run into so far have just been talkers, none have gone on to ruin a game yet. The worst games I've had so far were the ones I duo'd with an old teammate, and most of them were his refusal to just ignore the troll attempts, leading to things kinda blowing completely out of proportion for no real reason... Such is the game, I suppose. Despite not having jungled a game in months, it's still my favorite role in the game and the one I have the most interest in. While this is probably going to sound elitist, I'm pretty saddened by just how little junglers in my games actually know about jungling. There is so much more to it than just killing buffs and ganking, but you wouldn't know it from some of these games I've been in. The thing that has stood out to me the most is the lack of realization of just how much or how little they actually are capable of when ganking. Our jungle Rengar tonight ended up dying time and time again because he didn't seem to catch on that even though he could do a hefty amount of damage, even if we get a kill on someone, he's still only able to take so many tower shots. Maybe I'm crazy, but diving for a kill on the support and then dying to tower isn't exactly the best trade, especially the third or so time. As League of Legends moves forward and continues to grow, it's becoming more and more evident to me that the game really needs some sort of blog or forum that really strives to teach some of the finer points of how to *think* as a player in the game, as that seems to be very lacking. There are a number of good blogs out there, like ggchronicle, reign of gaming, surrender@20 and even the main LOL subreddit on occasion, but a pro said one time that the game is made up of a million little decisions, and I would love to see the thought process delved into on a deeper level. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get a jungle game in at some point and can try writing down some thoughts about it, but watching Meteos stream vods sadly doesn't make up for practical application, no matter how much I wish for it to be so...

[ganktax]

OGN Week 4 Match Reviews

This is so good, I've got some studying to do.

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Teamwork

I managed to play some games with my old team this past week, they may not have gone as well as we had hoped, but they were really fun. It had been 2 weeks since my last games, so I was pretty rusty both in terms of map awareness and my focus in teamfights.

Game 1 - Zac (jungle) - Defeat 1/6/10

I was initially on the fence about Zac, but I am so very glad I picked him up. We had a bit of miscommunication over my initial clear, but Zac's regen is so foolish that I was able to save smite on blue while only getting a bit of a leash. Dangerous choice on my part as I did get really low, but it sped up my jungle like crazy. I feel like I was able to put out some early pressure and even though it only resulted in one kill, I felt as though I could feasibly stay in the jungle for multiple clears before going back. This is something I noted in both games and something that I've got to fix up going forward - having high regen is no excuse to not back, as it doesn't really speed me up any and in this case it made me miss some gank opportunities because enemies had the chance to go back and shop while I was still just running around with a Hunter's Machete, making it tough to reliably gank.

As the game went on, the fact that I hadn't played with the guys in so long really started to show and we began missing more and more queues and bungling more and more engages. I always found that when I played with them frequently, we'd have the best luck when I would spam the same jungler game after game and we'd all learn as a team how we'd approach situations, but in this case, I was new to Zac and that really started to show. We held our own for a while, but it ended up swinging more and more in the other teams' favour and they took the game home after a few bad teamfights on our part.

Game 2 - Shen (jungle) - Defeat 1/8/6

I jumped on Shen when he made it through picks & bans, but in retrospect this was actually a bad choice, I believe. The rest of our team was Renekton, Nami, Miss Fortune and Ahri so I often found myself following Renekton in and going for their backline, but then the rest of our team would get walked all over. This falls back to a communication issue and while there were some obvious engage issues on our end, I can't help but feel that picking Jarvan, Nautilus or Amumu would have been far better for us - pretty much any jungler who can cause mass disruption for the other team to allow MF, Ahri and Renekton to do their thing.

This game was another example where I stayed in the jungle far too long off my initial clear, I had almost 1,400 gold on my first back. If I'm able to play with the guys more often going forward, I'm going to make sure this is something that I correct. Our overall communication was better in this game, we ended up with a lead fairly early on in the game, but as time ran on we ended up throwing it away with unsafe initiations and falling for baits.

Overall, despite two losses and pretty terrible KDAs, it was a real pleasure to play with my old team again and although it sounds and feels horrible to say, I hope their new jungler is sick more often...If I am able to play with them a bit more going forward, I'll need to take more time thinking about my jungler choice as it works with the rest of the team and try to avoid knee-jerk "Shen's open, get me Shen, get me Shen!"

Things to work on for my next games:

Avoid staying in the jungle so long early, pick appropriate times to shop

Learn to use Zac's rebirth passive in more offensive ways

Pay closer attention to the windup time on Zac's E, I fell short a few times

[pastrytime-blog]

Dear everyone,

I don’t know if you really know this, but being a shoutcaster is incredibly difficult. Over the course of the last ~24 hours or so OGN English caster MonteCristo announced on twitter that he was indefinitely taking a break from the League of Legends community on Reddit citing “it’s...

[ganktax]

Pretty rough return

I just played two of the worst games in a very long time - 0/7/5 as jungle Zac and 1/8/9 as support Thresh. In both cases, a good number of my deaths were due to me initiating too hard without pinging or letting my teams know, so I'd get no follow up and would just blow up immediately. I'm disappointed, but I do think I learned something from them: **Zac** - This was my first real game as Zac and I feel like I let that cause me to make some stupid decisions. I was focusing too much on getting a feel for his abilities and damage output and not enough time paying attention to what was going on around the map. Despite not getting a leash, I stayed in the jungle far too long just farming up, when I should have gone back earlier and got a few starter items and then tried to force ganks. The range on Zac's E is really scary, as is the knockup if you hit an enemy, but I don't think he's going to have much success killing an enemy laner by himself, as his health costs work against him (either you suck up the costs or you stop chasing to pick up your blobs), at least not unless he gets fed and has a few items. I think the biggest thing I could have done differently in this game would have been to make sure my teammates knew what was going on when I was ganking - there were a number of times when I'd get into range, launch myself and then not get any follow-up, because the jump covers so much distance so quickly, it doesn't allow for teammates to react quickly enough. Don't get me wrong, I think his ganks are going to be amazing in an organized team environment with voice chat, but at my level, the coordination just isn't there. I very much would like to play Zac more, but I'm going to have to be much more diligent when it comes to letting lanes know when ganks are coming. **Thresh** - There's not a whole lot to say about this game, we were poised to take the botlane early on, but despite the poke from Corki/Thresh, the all-in from Draven/Ahri (yep, Ahri support) was just too much for us. I screwed up my build as well, accidentally building my ruby crystal into a kindlegem, thereby skipping over a sightstone. I finished the locket for the double shield, but at a point the enemy team had 3 very dangerous champions with multiple kills each and we had only one, so there wasn't anything we could do. Thresh is an amazing support, however like in the Zac game, I made severe mistakes by not pinging who I was going to try to hook, which resulted in dragging someone like Ahri into range to land a Charm while the rest of the team focused other targets. I'm not trying to blame the rest of my team, I realize my numerous mistakes and own up to them, but to repeatedly make the same mistake is very frustrating in hindsight. It's really starting to sink in just how much I crippled myself by only playing with a team for almost a full year - I know that if I just go back to playing on my old schedule, I'll more than likely improve if I could keep it up for a month or so, I've just got to stop getting distracted by other things, or making up excuses for myself. I really do enjoy this game, and taking the time to try and analyze where I messed up helps take the sting of such horrible scores away. So, in a nutshell: **Zac**: * Ping targets when ganking * Try to use more unexpected ganking paths * Don't let his sustain prevent you from shopping when needed * Disengage quicker when a gank isn't followed up on **Thresh**: * Ping hook targets * Don't forget to buy sightstone * Keep harass going, don't necessarily let up if they return some

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Step 1: Import

Everything ported from the soon-dead Posterous over to Tumblr. I still hope to be able to post regularly again, I just have to shake off the rust and get back into playing the game. Had my first game in a month the other day, ended up going 3/0/8 jungling Volibear, so at least that's something!

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Not quite dead yet

Trying to bring this thing back, work in progress for anyone who may see this, please stand by.

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Rammus Revisited

So a while back I posted about Rammus and foolishly made assumptions without actually playing him first, which is a very bad habit.  Since then, I was made aware of a different way of looking at everyone's favorite ball of pain and death, and I've been lucky enough to put that into practice, so I wanted to share the experience for anyone interested.

In a nutshell, it's freaking awesome but not without risks.

After all the nerfs several months ago, Rammus has lost a lot of the tankyness that he used to have in the jungle, and sadly, his largest issue is that even with items, his clear speeds don't ever increase, they just become less damaging to him.  In order to make the most out of the current incarnation of Rammus, I wholeheartedly agree with Lautemortis and believe he should be played like jungle Alistar, exploiting his CC early and often.

My games with him so far have been pretty consistent, starting off with W -> Q -> W -> E and then gank.  Early ranks of Puncturing Taunt are fairly short duration, so I tend to try and save this ability until the last possible moment.  Similar to Maokai, you want to initiate with your gap closer (in this case, Powerball) and then try to move behind them while they are suffering from the slow effect so that they have to walk around you to get to safety.  Early in the game (assuming your teammates are paying attention), this will often result in a Flash and it's up to you if you want to follow up with your own Flash/Taunt and try to net the kill.  Rammus has very little damage early on, as well as somewhat high cooldowns, so saving your Flash for a follow-up gank may be better worth it.

After the first few levels, maxing out Puncturing Taunt is your best bet, along with picking up Boots of Mobility, Philosopher's Stone and Heart of Gold.  I've had a few different build paths, however my next step is to upgrade the Philo into a Reverie and then usually picking up an Aegis of the Legion if the game is going well for my team, otherwise building toward a Glacial Shroud if I expect things to stretch out.

The most important part of the game for Rammus will be around the level 9 mark, when he should have Puncturing Taunt maxed out, and Boots of Mobility.  At this point, keep your buffs timed (and don't be afraid to use your ultimate to pick them up faster) and otherwise aim to pressure enemy laners as much as possible, very similar to what you'd do with Alistar.

I should mention, at this point, that your teammates will need to understand what a gank from Rammus entails, as he is less durable than he used to be several months ago.  Despite being widely recognized as a Tank, Rammus isn't terribly durable early on and doesn't have the huge displacement like Alistar does, so initiating in tower range is not as easy as it might be with other champions.  As with most junglers, if the laner is able to keep the lane pulled closer toward their tower, the chances of a gank being successful goes up dramatically, and this is especially so with Rammus.  If you suspect the lane to be warded, it's best for your laner to initiate while you are still hidden from most commonly-warded spots, just to take the enemy focus away from watching the minimap, as the combination of Powerball and Boots of Mobility will allow you to close in on them seemingly out of nowhere.

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The (re)rise of Maokai and the fall of Nautilus

Well, another case of me having to put my foot in my mouth, apparently - I had previously predicted that the suite of nerfs to Nautilus (damage and cooldowns) wouldn't end up affecting his strength level or his popularity, but it would appear as though I was wrong.  Out of 3 recent, large tournaments (ECC Poland, MLG Summer Arena and IGN Face Off), Nautilus was picked a grand total of 5 times across all three events, whereas Maokai was picked a whopping 33 times.  So, what happened?

In a nutshell, the jungle meta has shifted slightly and these nerfs just put Maokai in a better position than Nautilus.  Where Nautilus' cooldowns were nerfed, Maokai's were left untouched, and as Maokai's cooldowns are all static (with the exception of his ultimate), he just became a more desireable pick for early game when his incredibly powerful initiates can win games.

That all being said, I don't think Nautilus is finished and won't be played anymore at a high level, I just think that for the time being, Maokai is a better pick.  Come late game, when Nautilus' cooldowns are lower on his abilities, he's probably still a more powerful champion as he has more displacement and more AOE CC, however Maokai can win games early, which is simply viewed as more powerful at this time.

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Jungler changes in the August patches

There were two patches in August (so far), but going to merge them all into one list since they've both been out a while now.  A few comments to follow after the jump:

Amumu

Cursed Touch (Passive)

Duration reduced to 3 seconds from 4

Tantrum

Mana cost reduced to 35 from 50

Bandage Toss

Ability Power ratio reduced to 0.7 from 1.0

Curse of the Sad Mummy

Ability Power ratio reduced to 0.8 from 1.0

Cho'gath

General

Magic Resist per level increased to 1.25

Attack Range normalized to 125 from 130

Rupture

Cast time reduced to 0.5 seconds from 0.672

Delay normalized to 0.625 seconds from 0.5 - 0.75

Feral Scream

Cast time reduced to 0.5 seconds from 0.6417

Vorpal Spikes

Width now increases based on Cho'gath's size

Feast

Now grants Cho'gath up to 50 additional Attack Range, based on Feast rank and amount of stacks

Cast time normalized to 0.5 seconds from 0.43

Range increased to 150 from 100

Evelynn

General

Recommended items on Summoner's Rift now include Boots of Mobility

Shadow Walk (Passive)

Restealth duration reduced to 6 seconds from 8

Dealing periodic damage (ie: Ignite) no longer prevents her from restealthing

Agony's Embrace

Cooldown reduced to 120/100/80 seconds from 150/120/90

Hecarim

Devastating Charge

Now more responsive when colliding with opponents

Initial Movement Speed bonus increased to 25% from 0% (still reaches max speed at the same time)

Onslaught of Shadows

Enemy flee speed is now higher based on how close the enemy is to Hecarim

Rammus

General

Now gains 1.25 Magic Resist per level

Xin Zhao

General

Base Attack Damage reduced to 55.3 from 59

Attack Damage per level increased to 3.3 from 3

Audacious Charge

Damage reduced to 70/110/150/190/230 from 70/115/160/205/250

Shyvana

Dragon's Descent

Fixed a bug where Dragon's Descent would hitch on initial use when using skins

A few changes of note, mainly with regard to the somewhat popular AP Amumu, a tweaked Cho'gath and an already-buffed Evelynn.

A high Elo jungler by the name of Azingy had popularized an AP Amumu build in the late spring/early summer and it ended up being quite strong.  Typically, Amumu would build mostly tanky and rely on the enormous initiation from his ultimate to allow his teammates to get kills, while his AOE abilities were mainly just for flavor.  Fact of the matter was that he actually had extremely high AP ratios, which lead to a build with a few Doran's Rings, Magic Pen. boots and Abyssal Sceptre that reduced Amumu's tankyness but made up for it with a dramatic increase in overall damage out of the Sad Mummy.  These nerfs don't make AP Amumu completely unviable anymore, but it's a gentle shift back to where he "should" be.  The mana cost reduction in Tantrum is fantastic for those of us who still run Amumu tanky, as it does help considerably in dealing with being counter-jungled.

Cho'gath is another champion who was occasionally used in the jungle, but not terribly often, and most likely because of how difficult it could be to land his Rupture and actually get in to initiate.  With these changes to normalize the time between when the spell is cast and when the effect happens, he's going to find a more frequent home in the jungle.  I think he's situational and still has a high skill cap if you want to land those clutch Q's to secure kills, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see him show up in one of the big upcoming tournaments.

Lastly, Evelynn was almost immediately considered the weakest of the recently remade champions (the others being Xin Zhao and Twitch), so these buffs were warranted.  I've yet to try her and honestly think her bursty/assassin role is pretty much completely eclipsed by Diana (no pun intended), but she may yet surprise us.  Eve seems capable of dishing out a huge amount of damage, so she's another one where we may yet see her show up as a secret strat in the near future.