MTG Salvation

Aaand here comes bird guy.

Super fun. Not sure of power level - his win rate looks abominable but his learning curve seems incredibly steep, so I have no idea where he'll land.

Hi folks,

It's new desktop time, and I am badly - badly - in need of advice.

My last two machines were Falcon Northwest Mach Vs (they lasted me more than 10 years between them and I can still play games on decent settings, but I've got increasingly bad hardware failures in this 5 year old machine and it's going to become more expensive to maintain than to replace soon), but I can't afford another Falcon these days (married with kids now).

I'm an avid gamer. I also do significant coding/compiling as well as some very limited amounts of visual art with my PC. I'm on a budget of $1500 or less (ideally closer to $1200 but I would go up to $1500 for the right set of benefits).

I have never built a PC, but am reasonably technical (I can swap out a power supply or a video card no problem, just never tried anything more advanced). I value my time very highly, as I work a more than full time job + have a small child, which is a point in favor of a prebuilt. I've looked at some PC brands - alienware, cyberpowerpc, iBUYPOWER.com, lenovo erazer, Falcon-nw.com (ha! if only), Digital Storm. The two with unequivocally good reviews (Falcon, Digital Storm) are simply out of my price range. The others have enough horror stories to make me a bit leery, but I'm strongly considering them - they seem to deliver quality 95% of the time but really really bad times the other 5%, which is a roll of the dice that I'm not thrilled with.

I want something as quiet (visually and aurally) as possible, and something as physically small as possible - if I had a $2500 budget I would buy a Falcon-NW Tiki or a Digital Storm Bolt. I'm willing to compromise slightly on performance for something quiet.

Stuff:

Question time!

1. Am I crazy to even consider this? Should I just buy that cyberpowerpc Zeus Mini that I've been looking at?!
2. What am I missing?
I haven't added any additional cooling, just two 140mm fans that come with the case (and of course the PSU and CPU come with their own cooling) - do I need to? (Water-cooling this system would be pointless, right?)

3. What can I easily do to cut cost without hurting performance much?
I have little experience with these things, so I went for customer ratings first, cost second, so I assume there are some things in here that are better than I need. Also, I haven't done any work balancing things, and I have no idea if I'm bottlenecking horribly on anything.

4. Anything much I can do about case size without hurting performance (or cost) much?
This case is huge, and while I do have the room for it, I'm becoming increasingly sensitive to my environs in my old age (...ha ha... ha... sob). I looked at some MicroATX cases that are genuinely tiny and while it seems like you can build a gaming PC at that size within reason, it probably requires knowledge that I don't have to plan the build out in advance.

5. Anything else I can do to make sure this thing is as quiet as possible?

For reference, this is about $100 more, but about half the physical size:
CyberPowerPC Zeus Mini

There's no way to not transform, but you also do have some control over when you transform. It's something that can be mastered.

You can't do the Jayce thing and just say you're going to ignore one form or the other, but you certainly can learn to anticipate when a transform is coming and put yourself in a good position to take advantage of it.

He's not for everyone but he does do some things very well.

The fountain ignores invulnerabilities but not untargettabilitis (such as fizz's troll pole and zhonya's hourglass)

I played a game recently as Brand where two opponents were on the fountain level 1 but not afk - taunting their teams. Brand ult fits the bill quite well, insta double kill.

Eh? MF's ult deals over 200% of your total AD to each target who takes the full duration, and can deal more like 400% in some situations.

It deals 50 damage, plus some of your AP, and applies a stack of impure shots. Applying a stack of impure shots deals additional damage equal to 6% of your AD per stack.

So if you throw Bullet Time on someone, they take 6% of your AD plus 12% of your AD plus 18% of your AD plus 24% of your AD plus 30% of your AD plus 36% of your AD plus 42% of your AD plus 42% of your AD (at max rank) = 210% of your total AD, in addition to the 125 + 20% AP damage that it deals.

I think you're vastly overstating Zyra's power. For example, Zyra's ult IS an amazing CC, but it's a very poor engage tool where Sona's is an amazing initiation if that's what you need. Zyra's ult is an amazing counterinitiation; Sona's is not quite the same level of counterinitiation but vastly more flexible. And you're discounting strategic mobility (which is freaking huge to actually winning games), heals and shields, which is just... Zyra's slows do not mitigate anywhere near the damage that Sona's W mitigates. It's good for other reasons but it's not the same thing.

Incidentally:

You also don't get hard-counterd by aoe comps as Zyra. Sona pretty much has to stay really close to someone for her auras to do anything.

I've seen this sentiment a lot and I'm fairly sure it's the opposite of the real situation - it turns out that bringing a free, high tuned Locket (and you can still buy another locket!) is really good against AOE comps. It's not like it was hard to catch multiple people in an AOE before - you don't need a Sona on the enemy team for that to happen, that happens pretty much always, at every elo, anyway - but Sona blunts the effects a lot.

Seems very strong - not support Brand strong, but very strong. I haven't played her yet, but I like playing with her, and playing against her isn't as dumb as it was before. Assuming Sona players like her, seems like a win.

Interested to see how people deal with a transform champion where you don't get to control when (or even if) you control.

Seems very powerful on PBE so far, though.

Doom bots crash my computer multiple times per game D:

Quote from Feathas »

Man I had a fantastic Lucian game last night. Like pro-level lategame with perfectly planned and executed everything, it was great. And it reaffirmed my belief once again that new BT is a fantastic luxury item.

New bloodthirster knows what it wants to do, and it does that beautifully.

I pulled a stat that had her as the second most picked, but I think it was a bit out of date (it was definitely NA LCS 2014 though).

The rule of thumb is if something is grotesquely overpowered (Lucian/Twitch, now Kog/Lucian/Trist) that gets picked. Otherwise Cait gets picked. She's never not been extremely relevant to the pro scene.

...popular ADC picks? At the LCS level, she's the #2 contested ADC behind Lucian. In regular play, she's the most popular champion in the game, yet still posts a > 50% win rate despite the fact that popular champs are universally lower win rate because of that popularity.

Caitlyn is the definition of a popular ADC pick. And she has been for more than 2 years.

And no, she doesn't have a Lee Sin power curve. She has more of a Trist power curve. Steroids mean almost nothing to an ADC's late game unless they're Kog'Maw level. Safety is EVERYTHING. Trist has a better late game (higher damage and even safer to play in teamfights), Cait has a better early game, they both suck mid-game unless fed.

At the very least, a champion who is THAT safe in lane should not be driving anyone *else* out of lane.

Cait is a very popular pick, but she's toxic as hell. Like, really, she's Urgot/Yorick-in-their-primes toxic, and it seems like the ONLY reason not to eviscerate her is because of the pain of like 20% of the population losing their top adc pick. I don't know that she needs to lose range, but if not, she should at least pay the real price for having that kind of range - she should be easy to jump on and destroy earlier in the game.

Cait is a safe ADC that can punish a lane and suffers mid/late for it. Her stats are on the low-end of the popular ad's. She has no self-buff to help her damage output aside from her headshot, and two of her skills aren't used in combat for damage at all, 3 if you count her ult most of the time. Her sole purpose is to push hard and fast, and to make laning phase hell for whoever she's against. If you can catch her though, she can't outduel many people that are equal in gold to her. I'd say she's almost the most balanced ADC in the game, as she has clear parts of the game where she is strong, and clear parts where she is weak.

Her power curve is more complicated than you're making it sound. She's almost always the strongest laning ADC, though lower skill players don't have access to the downright toxic parts of her kit (maybe that's why it's not worth reworking her?), but she's one of the absolute worst midgame ADCs. Her actual late game is among the best, however, as A) one big item buy is worth much more dps than almost any steroids (excepting maybe Kog'Maw, Draven and Vayne for single target, Twitch for multi target), so having/lacking steroids isn't actually that big a deal for a truly endgame ADC, and B) late game dps for ADCs is almost always a test of simple uptime - that is, the ADC who will deal the most damage late in the game is the ADC who can shoot the most while kiting the least without being actually tracked down.

Long story short, she has one of the better late games among all ADCs because the steroids don't matter that much while her extreme late game safety matters a lot.

She's FAIR in the sense that her win rate is around average when you only consider the meta-relevant ADCs; she's broken as hell in that she's one of the least fun champions to play against in the entire game and she's also broken as hell in that she gates out something like half the ADC roster from being viable picks just by her own existence - if she were removed from the game, Marksman pick diversity would go up significantly.

When you say 'further nerfed' talking about Skarner - he was freaking amazing / borderline op and he's still very, very strong. I know you're perceiving the latest rework as nerfs, but I urge you to play it. He was MASSIVELY buffed and he is now highly relevant to the game.

And yeah the new Essence Reaver changes things for a lot of guys. I'm not sure anybody wants Bloodthirster over that for a first item, though Bloodthirster is obviously a much stronger 5th item / full build item.

Part of it is: you don't intervene in something like this unless you can make it meaningfully better. Do we really believe we can fix the Congo with military intervention?