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[The Scout]

Note: when people refer to "utility" supports, they often refer to janna and soraka. So utility in this context has come to mean: neither tanky nor known for having damage. Do sona and bard count as utility supports, or do they have enough damage to elevate them from that group? If you play a Q-max thunderlords soraka, do you become a damage support?

Sona is definitely a damage support, especially if she gets Lich Bane early. Even without it she can normally half health enemy ADCs early game in one Q/passive hit. Bard can be if you stay on top of his meep collection. A good amount of meeps also let's you build tanky instead of AP while still being relevant damage wise.
Whereas Sona and Bard have easy combos to set off Dunderlords, Sona's Q/passive hit being an instant proc and Bard's Q/meep attack, you have to hit your Q/W/basic attack as Soraka. Deathfire's is probably the most reliable damage because you can just plop your E on them for an instant effect that can burn an entire team. (Her scaling is pretty lame when it comes to damage anyways, being able to toss mega heals around like candy on Halloween is her support thing.)

[BlackHeartKabal]

Yes

Especially as Talon

ftfy

[baruk]

Note: when people refer to "utility" supports, they often refer to janna and soraka. So utility in this context has come to mean: neither tanky nor known for having damage. Do sona and bard count as utility supports, or do they have enough damage to elevate them from that group? If you play a Q-max thunderlords soraka, do you become a damage support?

Sona is definitely a damage support, especially if she gets Lich Bane early. Even without it she can normally half health enemy ADCs early game in one Q/passive hit. Bard can be if you stay on top of his meep collection. A good amount of meeps also let's you build tanky instead of AP while still being relevant damage wise.
Whereas Sona and Bard have easy combos to set off Dunderlords, Sona's Q/passive hit being an instant proc and Bard's Q/meep attack, you have to hit your Q/W/basic attack as Soraka. Deathfire's is probably the most reliable damage because you can just plop your E on them for an instant effect that can burn an entire team. (Her scaling is pretty lame when it comes to damage anyways, being able to toss mega heals around like candy on Halloween is her support thing.)

I recently ran into a q-max soraka in a nemesis draft game - she took deathfire touch rather than thunderlords with a rylai's/liandry's build. She went 28/4/15, doing 49.3k damage to champs in a 40 minute game.

Gotta get my gankplank and hecarim going. I think I got enough support sion practice in after completing another winning spree, only a 7 win one this time because the 8th game had a team that collectively lost its shit while me and the jungler were just fucking around, so I guess it was my fault too :U

Also, I dropped enough key fragments in a single day to complete 2 keys, but no box drops? Wat? Pretty sure there were a few S's here and there.

I've got the opposite problem - earning S grades/gilding new champs* has been going well but I can't get enough fragments - I'm on 12 chests and zero fragments at the moment. I can't complain as I get enough for a key every so often (my haul so far includes iBlitzcrank and El Tigre Braum).
 Apparently, you can earn a maximum of 12 key fragments per month (there is a monthly reset on the counter), enough to open 4 chests, but to do that you would need on average 85 wins against human opposition.
The fragment drop rate goes down the more you earn, however.

here is the formula for key fragment at this moment for this patch:

(80% + Number of premade x 2) / key fragments already gained

So if you play alone your chance goes like this : 80%; 80%; 40%; 26.6%; 20%; 16%; 13.3%; 11.4%; 10%; 8.88%; 8%; 7.27% - For the first 12 keys ( 4 chests for the month) Have in mind that these are droprates per win not per game!!!
~ roughly number of wins for the first 12 keys: 85 wins

*note: you can also earn a chest from a game if someone in your pre-made gets an S grade, but you still need to be playing an "ungilded" champ that you own (and they become gilded afterwards)

 edit: one more thing, you can now buy random champion shards for 1700ip. So I suppose if you own all the 4800ip and cheaper champions and just wanted to complete the set, you could buy three champion shards for 5100ip and reroll them into a random 6300.


 

[frostshotgg]

Remember kids, if you're playing alone Riot doesn't care about you in the slightest. That's why I quit earlier this season. the changes this season have been enormous middle fingers to the solo queuer.

[baruk]

 So if you've earned one key fragment already, you have a 90% chance of earning another in a 5 man premade, but you still have an 80% chance playing solo. If you're on 10 key fragments, your chances drop to 9% and 8% respectively. That seems reasonable.

[baruk]

 

edit: one more thing, you can now buy random champion shards for 1700ip. So I suppose if you own all the 4800ip and cheaper champions and just wanted to complete the set, you could buy three champion shards for 5100ip and reroll them into a random 6300.

Nuh uh. You can get champions and skins you already own.

I decided to buy 2 shards since i felt like gambling - I got Riven and Poppy, both I already own and have been playing a ton of. Luckily, I was able to make use of that Poppy shard for mastery lvl 6

There's a reroll option - it lets you turn 3 shards into a random permanent.

For now, you can re-roll shards to guarantee a piece of content you don't own

[Putnam]

Remember kids, if you're playing alone Riot doesn't care about you in the slightest. That's why I quit earlier this season. the changes this season have been enormous middle fingers to the solo queuer.

it doesn't matter below diamond though

edit: one more thing, you can now buy random champion shards for 1700ip. So I suppose if you own all the 4800ip and cheaper champions and just wanted to complete the set, you could buy three champion shards for 5100ip and reroll them into a random 6300.

Nuh uh. You can get champions and skins you already own.

I decided to buy 2 shards since i felt like gambling - I got Riven and Poppy, both I already own and have been playing a ton of. Luckily, I was able to make use of that Poppy shard for mastery lvl 6

before anyone complains, even i'm going to say that it's reasonable to get dupes--game's still free-to-play.

[frostshotgg]

Remember kids, if you're playing alone Riot doesn't care about you in the slightest. That's why I quit earlier this season. the changes this season have been enormous middle fingers to the solo queuer.

it doesn't matter below diamond though

You've got that backwards. It matters less above diamond because they restrict queueing. Below diamond, premades are totally fair game upto and including the godawful for everyone involved 4-man. Shoutout to the graph Riot themselves published that showed a 10% gap between solo queuers and stacks.

[Putnam]

i probably should've put that in "scare quotes"... riot's said that to people who complain about it

[baruk]

Remember kids, if you're playing alone Riot doesn't care about you in the slightest. That's why I quit earlier this season. the changes this season have been enormous middle fingers to the solo queuer.

it doesn't matter below diamond though

You've got that backwards. It matters less above diamond because they restrict queueing. Below diamond, premades are totally fair game upto and including the godawful for everyone involved 4-man. Shoutout to the graph Riot themselves published that showed a 10% gap between solo queuers and stacks.

Here's the latest on dynamic queue.
 

At launch, almost-full and full premades were winning far too many of their games over smaller premades, and we prioritized accounting for the benefits of teamwork.

So the new graph shows that the 5 man premade matchup against smaller groups has gone from ~58% winrate to ~51%. Frequency of 5-man vs 1 to 3-man matchups is 0.1% of the total.

it doesn't matter below diamond though...
i probably should've put that in "scare quotes"... riot's said that to people who complain about it

 Actually, I would say that "dynamic queue doesn't matter below diamond" is the consensus among pro players and popular youtubers - arguably the same people who inadvertently lit the torches and sharpened the pitchforks for dynamic queue in the first place - not that their initial reactions were not honest and correct assessments of the failures of dynamic queue at high elo.
 You might want to check out the roundtable discussion with gbay99 and scarra

 My theory is that any change to matchmaking in any game will tend to be controversial - because half the player base at any one time will be below 50% winrate, you have a ready-made contingent of people who are eager to take on an external explanation for their losses (I'm familiar with the mindset, sitting on ~47% winrate right now).

[TempAcc]

It seems to me that buying champ shards is only ever worth if you already have most cheap champs in the game, and that its also generally better to turn shards into essence than rerolling them into one guaranteed shard you dont own, unless you happen to already have most champions, because at that point its probably better to just reroll things.

Additionaly, in regards to skin shards, it seems to me that its better to turn things into essence, since there's way more skins than champions, and you're more liked to get a shard for a good skin for a champ you own rather than randomly getting a really nice skin with rerolling. That way you have more control over what you get.

[frostshotgg]

Cool, so they narrowed the gap to the point where it's almost fair and balanced. Good job nearly fixing your broken system, Riot! They also almost fixed high level matchmaking being absolute garbage always (if you sweep the godawful experience that is autofill under the rug). Really, absolutely astounding work. They're nearly back to the state things were in before! *applause intensifies* /s

Dynamic queue definitely matters below diamond. Coordination was a step up from the anarchy of solo queue no matter what level you play at, full stop. All of the high level players I've kept up with since I stopped playing have pretty much kept the same tone that dynamic queue is horrible no matter what skill bracket you play in. To claim that somehow Diamond is the cutoff  for where coordination matters is pretty absurd. Coordination matters at all skill levels, full stop.

That roundtable was actually the impetus to finally make me quit. I don't know how you can possibly see it as anything but a further damnation on dynamic queue. The video is half an hour of Scarra and gbay starting to say something about how much they hate dynamic queue, getting interrupted by one of the rioters who then mention something about "yeah we messed up there but we're working on it". I don't think Scarra got in a full thought once without being cut off and the rioters trying to redirect the conversation so they don't have to actually discuss any of the major issues with dynamic queue they still haven't addressed. The most insulting part to me was that even gbay who represented the decidedly more casual section of the playerbase wasn't allowed to speak unless it was praising the fact he got to play with friends in a competitive environment. That table was decidedly rectangular, with the playerbase being shoved to the very far end while Riot gave a "It's bad but deal with it, bitches" speech.

On top of that, that was when Riot revealed that they had never been planning on adding a solo queue mode. Ever. Every single time they had said they were going to make one, or were trying to make one but were having technical problems but it was coming, every time it was a bold faced lie because fuck you for wanting to play alone, bring more wallets with you when you play or get the fuck out of their game.

I'm in the skill bracket where I'm never against stacks, but that doesn't make it any less shitty on Riot's part and there's plenty of other games that don't like to take a dump on my market segment. So that's why I quit.

[baruk]

Dynamic queue definitely matters below diamond. Coordination was a step up from the anarchy of solo queue no matter what level you play at, full stop. All of the high level players I've kept up with since I stopped playing have pretty much kept the same tone that dynamic queue is horrible no matter what skill bracket you play in. To claim that somehow Diamond is the cutoff  for where coordination matters is pretty absurd. Coordination matters at all skill levels, full stop.

  That would be absurd, but the argument as I understand it is all about the tradeoff between desirable features, fair matchmaking and queue times eg. role selection is a desirable feature that has helped reduce toxicity in champ select, however the tradeoff is longer queue times for carry roles. Dynamic queue in theory is desirable by allowing larger groups, perhaps even beefing up the ranked population - so between bronze and diamond you get fast queue times whilst still finding fair matchups from the large pool of players. In diamond and above the ranked population is too low for dynamic queue to operate without hurting matchmaking.

[xaritscin]

the new champ looks dope. being able to get the buffs without combat, summoning bushes, a snare with dash, a shield with slow and damage, and a summon golem ulti.

imagine the possibilities of a full summon team:

-Mordekaiser
-Yorick
-Yvern
-Annie
-Azir/Malzahar/Zyra

top that with one or two Zzrots and a banner of command

[BlackHeartKabal]

summoning bushes

*shakes fist*
RENGAAAAR