Pentakill

I haven't been posting here lately, so I'll put some stuff here soon. Maybe more books stuff. I just finished reading one today and it was pretty good. Pentakill. Oh, sorry, it's just that I got my first pentakill ever.

I also accomplished a dragon-steal singlehandedly and escaped. Bandit Sivir. Waylaying their creeps and taking their gold. Slaughtering their livestock. Sacking their towers. Leading her raiding party into their base. Murdering all of them with blades. Blades everywhere. Oh yeah.

Better content here soon, by which I mean actual content. Oh, what am I even saying? What could be better than a pentakill?

Science fiction reading update again: Ray Bradbury and William Gibson

The last two books I've read have been I Sing the Body Electric (a short story compilation that goes by the title of one of the stories in it) by Ray Bradbury and Count Zero by William Gibson. Oh, and I got a copy of Greg Bear's Legacy, so now I can finally complete that "The Way" trilogy (technically it's a book, its sequel, and its prequel), but I'm not going to do that just yet, because I already have library books and I'm taking a break from Greg Bear anyway. My next two books are another "Black Company" volume and a nonfiction work, so that's it on the science fiction for the moment.

I grabbed I Sing the Body Electric because I couldn't find anything else at the library and I didn't have much time. Also, hey, I got around to reading some more Bradbury, after he totally died earlier this year right as I was looking for science fiction books (that might be an exaggeration).

It turned out that I'd forgotten that I'd already read the title story at some point. It must have been a long time ago, but I recognized it from the first paragraph. However, I hadn't read all of the stories in the compilation (I think there were only two others I recognized), so it wasn't a re-read. Overall, it was pretty good and having short stories was a nice change of pace for the sort of reading I've been doing (on trains and buses, mostly). So I might try to pick up some more of this stuff later. I don't think I finished The Toynbee Convector and I also said once upon a time that I'd give The Martian Chronicles a second chance.

A while back, I was introduced to the fact that Bradbury was somewhat demonized by other people in science fiction way back whenever, and I was a bit baffled by that. This book got me thinking about that and gave me what I take to be some insight, although of course I'm not going to bother following up on the issue. Bradbury was definitely an "idea writer" and perhaps the epitome of that concept. Many of his stories look like they could be thought of as, "Hey, what if this happened?" And he makes it work because he writes characters very well and is able to play with emotions. In the golden age of science fiction, Bradbury's style was probably sneered at as lacking substance. He doesn't spend much effort describing gadgets or expounding on how futuristic gadgets might change people's lives. Instead he writes a story that's basically, "Hey, what if globalization created a trend that had people migrating toward warmer climates? What if the whole island of Britain was eventually abandoned? What would the last holdouts be like? What would the last man in Britain do?"

Bradbury was, and still is (he might have died, but his work lives on), a non-science fiction reader's science fiction writer. He's the #1 science fiction author I'd suggest to someone that disliked science fiction, but had to read some anyway. And a corollary to this is that some hardcore science fiction fans are not going to like him. Well, I think his short stories are great. I haven't been as impressed with his novels, though. Maybe I should give those another chance too.

As for Count Zero, I don't have as much to say. I read it because of Neuromancer. And it's not quite as good as Neuromancer, but that's not saying much in detraction of it. Basically, it's very, very good. Weirdly prophetic, but everyone always says that about Gibson's stuff.

Addendum 7/7/2014: For reasons unknown to me, this post attracts a lot of spam. The vast majority of the comments that the spam filter is catching are going to this post. Since this post is rather old now and since I'm tired of getting emails every day about spam comments, I'm disabling comments for now. If you actually have something to say about the content of this post, feel free to comment on another post of mine and I'll probably figure it out.

Hull Zero Three

I read this a while back, and I'm behind on saying anything about it . So sue me. Basically, I need to take a break from Greg Bear. That's not a complaint, by the way. This book was actually way better than Vitals and I think Greg Bear is a good writer. If anything, Eon and Eternity were so good that my expectations were too high when I went on to read more of his books (those were not the first books of his that I read, but they were the best ones).

Hull Zero Three is a sort of mystery story set aboard a giant ship floating in space. The narrator experiences arriving at the ship's destination planet, where he is one of the colonists that was preserved for the long voyage—and then he wakes up from his dream and he is on some sort of nightmare ship filled with killer monsters and he has no idea what is going on. Greg Bear has a tendency, which I first noticed with "Prufax" and that is conspicuously absent in his best stories, of delivering exposition in a way that is vague and that does give the reader details, but not in a way that creates a gripping story ("Prufax" is the longest and by far the worst story in The Wind From a Burning Woman and, if I remember correctly, it also received some awards and was critically acclaimed). Hull Zero Three does suffer from that problem a bit, but ultimately recovers. I stumbled across Eon and now I've come to the conclusion that Greg Bear is a prolific writer that puts out material worthy of publication, but that does, under the right circumstances, write truly great books. I wasn't disappointed, but I wasn't particularly impressed either, and I have decided that I need a break.

Patriarch Set

I don't have a screenshot this time, because for some reason, the method I used to get screenshots in the past stopped working. When I tried to use "print screen" all I got was a black space. It's too bad, as this character was wearing the full Trang-Oul's set, so he looked very different from most characters. The rest was pretty standard. Baal in the Worldstone chamber, collapsing from my awesome might. Oh, and my character also had an Act II mercenary and a Fire Golem. That's about it.

This was my first poison necro. I later started what I intend to be a more melee-based necromancer with Poison Dagger and enough gear for a strong physical damage attack. That necromancer, Nergal, will have a similar skill distribution, but I'm justifying the repeat as being different enough as an archetype: a melee necro. Set's archetype is poison necro. Well, that's the plan anyway. Nergal isn't very far into the game yet. Set isn't necessarily the typical poison necro, but I really wanted to use the Trang-Oul's set and a poison necro seemed like the best choice.

Poison is a common immunity for monsters. Like most of my characters, Set played exclusively on the /players8 setting, so monsters, and especially ones immune to poison, would not go down easily. I employed a number of methods for dealing with this. Set's switch weapon is a Grief phaseblade. A few swings with that procs a high level Venom, which massively increases the damage of Poison Dagger. Even monsters with tons of health will melt under the power of that much poison, assuming they aren't immune or extremely resistant. The phaseblade can also be used to attack, preferably with Amplify Damage or Decrepify. It doesn't give the damage output of a fully dedicated melee character, but it works. The Trang-Oul's set gives fire skills, with Fire Wall in particular being a strong skill. Most importantly, I invested several points in Lower Resist, ultimately maxing it at Level 90 (and then when I hit level 91, I had to figure out what skill to put a point into) for a level 31 Lower Resist with +skills. Lower Resist made most poison immunities easy prey for Poison Nova or Poison Dagger and left almost all of the rest vulnerable to fire damage. Poison/fire dual immunities that I could not break were very annoying, but not insurmountable. Let's just say that this character has made me hate the Frozen Tundra.

I think this is one of the more powerful options for a necromancer and gameplay was generally more rapid than with my summoner. The Worldstone Keep was still rather tedious and would have been insanely difficult without Revives. I even died once, which almost never happens now that I know the game so well and twink my characters for domination. The Black Souls in the Worldstone Keep are just that dangerous. I also had close calls with the Ancients (mainly they kept killing my merc and I got annoyed and restarted them). Those were the hardest parts of the game for Set. Baal's minions dropped while fighting Revives and Baal himself at several Poison Daggers punctuated by being slowed into harmlessness by Decrepify. This would have been less difficult and tedious if I hadn't insisted on fighting everything on /players8, but oh well. Also, I got PlugY's Diablo Clone to spawn twice as this character trekked through Hell, and apparently the combination of massive poison damage, Lifetap, and Grief made it possible (albeit not exactly easy) to solo that boss, which was cool.

For those keeping track, which is me, I now have five /players8 Hell Baal clears. In order, there was Shamash, Master, Oberon, Stephen, and now there's Set. That's two paladins, a druid, and two necromancers. I have lots of other characters, some in each difficulty. Because I already have two each of paladins and necromancers, I want to wait on completing any more of those until I get one each of the other classes finished. Of course, that implies that I'll actually keep playing Diablo II long enough to do that. Is that realistic? I have no idea. I don't have an obligation to keep finishing these characters. It's just something that I've casually decided to do, and so far I haven't stopped. I've taken long breaks, focused on other games, and I've even started mods (Median is pretty cool and seems better than regular old Diablo II, and Eastern Sun strikes me as generally being an improvement on the original game). Well, if I do finish any more characters, I'll try to get an amazon, assassin, barbarian, and sorceress all to beat Baal in Hell before I proceed with necromancers or paladins. I already have two characters that have beaten Nightmare and are at some point in the game in Hell difficulty: Artemis, a bow-wielding Amazon, and Isis, a tri-element sorceress.

Cowboy Bebop

I spent most of my evenings over the part few days watching Cowboy Bebop. All of it. Well, not the movie, but I did see that less than a decade ago and can mostly remember it. But the show itself, well, I hadn't seen all of the episodes (probably most of them) and it had been so long that I couldn't remember them that well. So I decided to just watch them all, in order. This might have been partially motivated by my having recently watched the entirety of Exosquad (through a rather convoluted cognitive pathway: Exosquad is inspired by Mobile Suit Gundam, but come on, I'm not going to track down and watch Mobile Suit Gundam right now, but hey, there are other anime things out there that I could watch instead and I've maintained for a while that Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime, but I haven't seen it all, but I could remedy that by doing so). Anyway, there are only 26 episodes (27 counting the patchwork one they did as closure for the temporary cancellation), so it's not a lot to sit through really (Exosquad is way longer).

Going back to something after about a decade, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I might have found it to be more flawed than I remembered, or I might have found it to be better than I remembered, or I might have found it to be about the same as I remembered. It ended up being the second of those three: I definitely appreciate the show more now, for whatever reason, than I did back then. A few things stood out enough that I even decided to write this blog post...

The music was even more spectacular than I remembered, which is actually saying quite a lot considering that the show was always lauded for its music and that so much of the focus of the show (the titles of the episodes, the music box motif, etc.) is musical. It's really, really good. The show itself wouldn't be ruined if it didn't have great music, but it certainly wouldn't be as powerful.

The setting is really quite creative and detailed. For a relatively brief show that is focused primarily on bounty hunters trying to track and capture fugitives, a lot of work went into the appearance of the architecture, especially the "gates." I noticed that, when the action was taking place outdoors, it was always so easy to tell (even if there had been no clues in the dialogue) when the characters were on Earth, because Earth, science fiction technology aside, always looked like Earth, and none of the other worlds really did. I even started to recognize some of the other worlds. If the story had been a longer one, with all those details, it would have been natural to become familiar with the key features of all the space colonies depicted in the show (Ganymede looks like this, Europa looks like that, Mars looks like this, Callisto looks like that, and so on). There's even a joke that only works because of this: Jet sets the ship to go to Mars so that they can seek their next target, but Faye resets their course to take the ship to Earth. When Jet steps outside and it doesn't look like Mars, he asks Spike where they are, to which Spike sarcastically says that he isn't sure, but he thinks it's Earth.

Faye Valentine is the most compelling character in Cowboy Bebop. And I almost can't believe I'm saying that. I couldn't believe it when I was watching it. I didn't remember thinking much of her when I saw episodes of the show a decade ago, and even as she made her first appearance, I thought she was a thoroughly unlikable character. She is reckless, selfish, arrogant, and usually oblivious. At first, it almost seems like she's just there to serve as a token female and third person to round out the cast or as a device to cause additional trouble for the other characters to struggle against, only actually solving problems herself if it's through blind luck. But she's easily the most dynamic character in the series (Spike is extremely static as a character, Ed matures a bit but is still rather static, and Jet does develop somewhat as the story progresses, but not nearly as much). The way the audience perceives her character shifts dramatically when she, on a whim, tells the dog a story about how she was awakened from being cryogenically preserved and could not remember her past. From that point onward, new details start to let the audience make some sense of Faye as a character. She doesn't just lie about herself because she's a jerk (she is, but that's not the reason) or a psychopath: she lies to protect herself because she doesn't even really know who she is. She gambles away her money because her oldest accessible memories are of being unfrozen and immediately (through the actions of con artists) stuck with a massive debt that she cannot possibly pay. She is depressed at having lost her past and scared at the prospect of living in a future she cannot understand, so she retaliates by taking an aggressive, manipulative, and slightly hedonistic approach to life. The saddest moment of the entire story isn't when anyone dies: it's when Faye, having refused to have anything to do with a mysterious videotape that might be related to her past out of a fear that it's some debtor's trick to attack her, and refusing to reimburse Jet for the money he had to pay to view the contents of the videotape, leaves the others to watch it and then hides so that she can watch it too (she is a jerk, after all), only to see a message from herself as a child cheering her on and pondering what kind of person she might become, and not being able to remember any of it. In the end, when Spike is going to go to his probable demise against Vicious and the Red Dragon Syndicate, it doesn't even seem tragic. The whole series builds up to it. The thing that forces drama into an otherwise seemingly preordained situation is the reaction of Faye and, to a lesser extent, Jet. Spike isn't afraid to die, but Faye is afraid that she'll lose her best friend (not that she'd ever admit it).

RIP Karthus

June 12th, 2009–August 30th, 2012

Hopefully he'll be back someday. He is undead, after all.

Ran out of books (but here are the ones I read before that happened)

I was looking at books to put on hold, but nothing is catching my interest right now. I'll go look through books I own and haven't read.

Typing with this busted keyboard is annoying, so this will be brief. No real reviews. Sorry.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl
The revelation I'd had from reading a few Frederik Pohl is that his books are rather dark in a way that I would have liked more when I was younger. It's not that I don't like his books now: I really do. I just somehow get the impression that I would have appreciated his writing style more five years ago, and not because my taste has matured or anything. It's weird. I could say more about it, but like I said, I'm cutting this short. Maybe later.

Between Planets by Robert Heinlein
A classic "Heinlein juvenile" of the sort I'd already encountered on a couple of other occasions, so I knew what to expect. Actually quite good for what it is, in some sense. I was impressed, anyway. If you think you'd like to read a 1950's science fiction book written primarily for teenagers, this is probably the book I'd recommend. Also, hello, self.

Vitals by Greg Bear
Apparently this is a book in the "thriller" genre or something. I missed that, because it's by a science fiction author and is science fiction. I liked the subject matter (it's about a biotechnological conspiracy with anti-aging and mind-control technologies), but it's my least favorite Greg Bear book so far. I don't think I like "thrillers."

Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook

I checked this out during finals week. I got hooked on reading during any school-related downtime: between classes, on the train, on buses, and such. Just as finals week started, I needed new books. That sounds ominous, like I was going to be reading books instead of studying. I did that too, but as it happens, I'd already completed the important exam on the morning of the day I'm talking about. I just had one more exam. Like I said in one of my earlier posts, this was actually the day that Ray Bradbury died, but I didn't know about that yet. I had actually considered checking out a Ray Bradbury book for a completely unrelated reason (something had reminded me about The Martian Chronicles and how I think I judged it unfairly back when I read it). The only reason I didn't was that I didn't know which one to choose. I moved on to William Gibson, but again, I didn't know which one to choose. Then I saw The Space Merchants, which I'd seen rated very highly. I already liked Frederik Pohl anyway, so I grabbed that one and kept looking for more.

Last summer, I took a class focused on teaching writing, primarily to high school students. I have no plans to become a high school teacher, but shut up. I had like ten reasons, and nine of them were related to financial aid. But shut up. The class ended up being very interesting. Anyway, at some point, people were chatting about books either before or after the class, I forget which. There was a guy next to me who was apparently into fantasy genre books. We talked a bit, and I forget exactly what books we discussed, but I mentioned that I read science fiction, but that I hadn't read what would be considered "fantasy" in a long time, then asked what he would recommend I should read. He mentioned Glen Cook's Black Company series. I saw this, looked at how long it was (it's three novels bound together in one book) and thought that I'd be annoyed if I tried this and didn't like it (I almost always finish fiction if I start reading it—a book has to be incredibly bad for me to drop it and return it to the library unfinished, in fact, I can't remember the last time it happened). I almost left it there, but I thought about why I'd picked it up in the first place and tried to remember why the hell I'd asked that dude for a book recommendation. I couldn't remember, but I decided that something at the time must have convinced me he had decent taste. So that's how I ended up reading this.

The title on the the cover is "Chronicles of the Black Company" and I guess another publisher titles the same set of three books "Annals of the Black Company." Whatever. There are more books in the series and I'll probably read them, so I guess that says something for the quality of the writing. The individual books are, to avoid confusion, The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose.

This is definitely an unusual take on the whole fantasy genre thing and it definitely works. By now, I suppose that these books could be considered fairly old, but they're much more recent than most of the fantasy novels I've read, excepting a shit-ton of Dragonlance books. I don't know what to compare it to, but until I started this paragraph, it didn't even occur to me to compare the Black Company novels to anything, so—whatever?

My main qualm is that I think I can imagine the books being better, which is weird to even claim as a qualm in the first place. So I'd better try to be more specific. The books almost immediately take a sort of ostensible construction, a persona. The story is meant to be gritty. It's narrated by a member of a band of mercenaries and he acts as annalist for them. So the books from the reader's perspective are following the exploits of this mercenary group, and the narrator is also supposed to, as one of his jobs, be following the exploits of the same mercenary group. It should be a good fit. Instead, from the first book onward, the narrative gradually becomes more and more about the narrator himself, and less about the Black Company as an entity. This does make is a bit charming when he notes members of the company complaining that he puts himself in his annals too much, but it really is a flaw that marks the whole work. It also leads to the infamous (or at least I think it's infamous) diminishing returns sequelization problem. The Black Company is better than Shadows Linger, which is better than The White Rose. Unfortunate, because the third one, by virtue of some of the events that take place, seems like it should be the most climactic. Also, the narrator (the character that gets too much focus) is one of the least interesting major characters in the books.

Despite all that, I still want to read the rest of the series. In fact, despite all that, I'd still say that these are very good books, perhaps even great ones.

League of Legends

For almost a year, I've been playing League of Legends. I don't play it every single day, but I do end up playing at least one game on most days. Since I've never brought League of Legends up on this blog, I figured it deserved a post, and that now is as good a time as any. I recently acquired my twentieth champion, and had a ton of IP saved up, but I don't know what to do next. Also, when the screen cracked on my computer and I was stuck with a crappy monitor, I was only playing co-op games and accumulating IP. Now I'm on a slightly better monitor, so I've actually been playing competitive games again, and in some ways, I'm better at the game than I've ever been, although I've also lost some of my skill in a few areas.

This post isn't going to make any sense to you if you've never played League of Legends. So skip it or whatever. I could make a post describing the game or whatever. Maybe some day I will. For now, I'm going to cover my general builds for all of my champions. This would give you an advantage if you were to go up against me in the game, but I'm not so good that this knowledge would even be worth pursuing: lots of other people are way better at League of Legends than I am.

I'll try to go over the champions in the order that I acquired them, although I can't remember the exact order.

Dr. Mundo
The champion I bought most recently is also the one I have the least experience with. I play Mundo as a junlger, with Flash and Smite as my summoner spells. I use my generic "AD Tank" rune page, which is just armor penetration marks, flat armor seals, per-level MR glyps, and movement speed quintessences. I haven't played Mundo enough to care about giving him his own mastery page, so I've mainly just used my Amumu page, which is not ideal. My item build is based off the "Pwndo" concept. I start with Cloth Armor and health potions for jungling, then get boots and Wriggle's Lantern. After that, I rush at least one Warmog's Armor and sometimes two, while upgrading to Boots of Swiftness (I might test Mercury Treads and Ninja Tabi). I also build Force of Nature and Atma's Impaler. If the game is long, I replace Wriggle's Lantern with a third Warmog's Armor. I start jungling with Burning Agony. Mundo can be a very aggressive jungler. I start out killing a wraith camp and then either steal the enemy red buff or just take my own. Mundo is pretty strong even at low levels, so stealing enemy buffs is a real possibility. I prioritize Burning Agony and Masochism over Infected Cleaver.

This build has the potential to be one of the most absurd tanks in the game. Even with whole teams focusing me, I can survive. It does take some time to get going and I might experiment with other builds. We'll see. The only real flaw to the build seems to be that it can get ambushed and taken down midgame, especially if I'm too aggressive. The items are quite expensive and the unfinished components don't do a lot by themselves.

Udyr
I've had decent results with Udyr. I jungle with him, using Flash and Smite. Actually, all of my junglers use Flash and Smite. Anyway, Udyr uses my "AD Jungle" rune page, which is just like the "AD Tank" rune page I mentioned for Mundo except that I use HP quintessences for better survivability in the jungle. Udyr is also still using Amumu's mastery page. I should probably devise a separate mastery page for him. Using Phoenix Stance, Udyr is one of the fastest junglers. I start with Boots of Speed and health potions, then race through all the camps on my side of the jungle. I always build Heart of Gold first, then I start working on upgrading my boots to Berserker's Greaves and building Wit's End. I build Zeal and Phage, then work on completing Trinity Force and building Force of Nature. I upgrade the Heart of Gold into Randuin's Omen. I rarely ever actually complete all five of those items, so the final item is left as situational. The game has been prolonged for a reason, so I try to figure out what item will break the enemy team. While the laning phase is going, I get one point in Turtle Stance for jungle sustainability and get Bear Stance at level 4, since it's my main ganking tool. I only bring Phoenix Stance, the source of Udyr's fast jungling, up to three points. Then I put a point in Tiger Stance and max Bear Stance, followed by Tiger Stance and Turtle Stance.

This is not perfect. I definitely still need to make some refinements. Udyr is a very powerful jungler. He has no gap-closer and all of his attacks are melee-range, but most team compositions can work with that. I should work on the masteries. Runes are probably fine. The big weakness here is midgame. Heart of Gold is best built early, but it doesn't do a whole lot until it's built into Randuin's Omen. Wit's End is a huge damage boost, but it's an expensive item and delays building the other items. Trinity Force is amazing and the components aren't bad, but if I build all three components in succession before working on Randuin's Omen or Force of Nature, I'm prioritizing offense, and that only works if the team has a good tank to back me up. Once I have all five of the items I go for, Udyr incredible, running into teamfights as though invincible and ripping the enemy to shreds. And early on, even without items to make him potent, Udyr's ganks with Bear Stance can be pretty deadly and he's a hard champion to kill (Bear Stance has a speed boost, Turtle Stance has a shield, and I can Flash away in emergencies). If I get stopped, it's pretty much always in midgame. I need to change the item build somehow, but the crucial weakness seems to be with Wit's End and Trinity Force, and those two items are simply too good to give up. They're the reason that Udyr is so deadly later on.

Zilean
I bought Zilean because has bombs. That's pretty much it. I play him as a support champion that also blows things up. Of course, I still don't have a lot of experience with Zilean, so I've mainly just been using my stuff for Anivia. He has Anivia's summoner spells, Clarity and Teleport. He has Anivia's rune page, my "Magic Penetration" page, which has magic penetration marks and quintessences, per-level health seals, and per-level ability power glyphs. He has Anivia's mastery page. Setting lots of bombs takes lots of mana. I start with Time Bomb, then get Rewind, then Time Warp, and then I prioritize Chronoshift > Time Bomb > Rewind > Time Warp. Items? Let's see, I go with Doran's Ring, Boots of Speed, Catalyst the Protector, and Kage's Lucky Pick, not necessarily in that order. Once those are complete, I build Rod of Ages, then Ionian Boots of Lucidity and Morello's Evil Tome, then Rabadon's Deathcap. If the game lasts long enough, I build a Void Staff and replace my Doran's Ring with a Zhonya's Hourglass, but I don't even recall that actually happening.

I rarely play Zilean, I guess mainly because he doesn't have a healing ability and if I'm going to support, I usually go with someone that can function as a healer. But he is very fun and useful in teamfights. Cooldown reduction lets him almost constantly move around at extreme speed, and it's amusing to watch enemies run away, escape past their turret, and die safely out of reach because a Time Bomb finished them off. I've generally done well as Zilean, but simply haven't played him enough.

Tryndamere
Honestly, I got Tryndamere because I wanted to see what he was like. Tryndamere is easy to play and can, in the right circumstances, slaughter enemy teams. His ultimate gives him a brief period of invincibility, and that attracts, well, idiots. I was pretty sure that Tryndamere was an exceedingly simple champion to play, but I wanted to see for myself. Also, I'd never played a manaless champion before and I wanted another attack damage melee champion. But mainly, I just had to see what the infamous Tryndamere was like. Since doing that, I almost never play him, but I'm confident that I could if I wanted to. He really is easy to play. I play Tryndamere as a solo top laner with Cleanse and Teleport. I use my "AD Tank" rune page, even though Tryndamere isn't really a tank. Even though I never play Tryndamere, I gave him his own mastery page, which I'll probably have to delete later to make room for more mastery pages on champions that I actually play. I mainly gave him his own mastery page because of Cleanse. My other attack damage champions don't use that summoner spell, so I didn't have a mastery page that accounted for it. I start with Spinning Slash for harassment and escaping, then I prioritize Undying Rage > Bloodlust > Mocking Shout > Spinning Slash. Sometimes I start with Boots of Speed and health potions and sometimes I start with Vampiric Scepter. I rush Wriggle's Lantern, then build Berserker's Greaves, Zeal, Infinity Edge, Bloodthirster, upgrade Zeal to Phantom Dancer, and get Quicksilver Sash, all in a pretty variable order. Quicksilver Sash isn't a priority until the game is strictly down to teamfights and even then is only a priority if the enemy team composition requires it. Once I have those items, I sell Wriggle's Lantern and get a second Phantom Dancer. I've also tried a second Bloodthirster, but I prefer a second Phantom Dancer.

I can buy all those expensive items because Tryndamere tends to get kills and is also an excellent farmer. It's kind of hard to screw Tryndamere up. I see some possible areas for improvement with my setup, but I'm not particularly interested in working on Tryndamere right now. Maybe later.

Fiddlesticks
Theoretically, when I go into solo queue for normal games, I would have the jungle 20% of the time. If I had a random role every time and all teams followed the basic format of solo top, solo mid, support bot, carry bot, and jungle. Of course, that's not how it really works. I end up taking the jungle more than 20% of the time, often because no one else seems willing to do it. Perhaps I shouldn't blame them: jungling is trickier than laning. I bought Fiddlesticks because I wanted a second jungler. At the time, I only had Amumu. I'd never jungled with anyone else. Amumu is a strong jungler with good ganks and he's an awesome late-game tank, but he's not good in every team composition. I gave Fiddlesticks a try. And now I've just about abandoned him. In addition to the combination of Flash and Smite, I play Fiddlesticks with Amumu's rune page, "AP Jungle." Just like the "AD Jungle" page I noted for Udyr, but with magic penetration marks. I use my Karthus mastery page, which is optimized for my Karthus, but a lot of my champions end up using it. I start with Drain for getting the blue buff, then take Dark Wind followed by Terrify. I prioritize Crowstorm > Drain > Dark Wind > Terrify. Fiddlesticks can easily clear the jungle camps with only a Doran's Ring. I start Catalyst the Protector and buy Boots of Speed, then get another Doran's Ring in there somewhere, work on Rod of Ages, build Hextech Revolver, complete Rod of Ages, upgrade boots to Sorcerer's Shoes, and proceed with Rabadon's Deathcap, Will of the Ancients, and sell a Doran's Ring to make room for Zhonya's Hourglass.The other Doran's Ring would probably be replaced by Rylai's Crystal Scepter, but I don't recall actually having gotten that far before a game ended.

I tried to make Fiddlesticks work and I will definitely be taking another look. My problem with him wasn't so much with the items or with his skill kit. Fiddlesticks is simply too slow in the jungle. Thanks to Drain, he can wander around the jungle healthier than most. After he has Crowstorm, his ganks are some of the most potent in the game. But Fiddlesticks takes forever to clear camps. Unlike Amumu, Dr. Mundo, and especially Udyr, Fiddlesticks tends to fall behind the laning champions in experience and gold. To compensate, Fiddlesticks needs to make some early ganks and he needs those ganks to succeed. If they do succeed, Fiddlesticks can go on to buy his items, use his ult to devastate enemies with ganks, secure gold for the team by killing the dragon, and generally be a nuisance in teamfights. But if the early ganks fail, Fiddlesticks is left lagging behind everyone else.

Sivir
So I like champions that are awesome farmers. It's a bit weird. One would think that killing minions would be the boring part of the game or something. Sivir is one of the best farmers in the game. She's probably my favorite AD carry, although I realize she's not the strongest. I run Ghost and Teleport, perfect for escaping ganks and for setting up surprise pushes on exposed turrets. My "Armor Penetration" rune page consists of armor penetration marks and quintessences, per-level health seals, and per-level cooldown reduction glyphs. I figure that I'm not going to be buying coodown reduction items on an AD carry, so a little bit from the runes is nice. Sivir gets her "Sivir and friends" mastery page, but technically it was originally my Tristana mastery page, and it hasn't changed much. It emphasizes offense, with leftover points in defense for some survivability. I start with Boomerang Blade, then take Ricochet and Spell Shield, I bring Boomerang Blade up to three points, and after that I keep it about one point ahead of Ricochet, prioritizing On the Hunt and saving Spell Shield for last. I usually start with a Doran's Blade, then get Berserker's Greaves, then Vampiric Scepter. Most games, I try to go right into Bloodthirster, although I sometimes get Zeal before completing it. Once I have Bloodthirster and Zeal, I get Infinity Edge. From there, I build two Phantom Dancers. If the game is long and Sivir has lots of gold, which she should, I sell Doran's Blade for a second Bloodthirster and sell Berserker's Greaves for a third Phantom Dancer. Yes, I'm serious.

As much as I like Sivir, I'm always a bit apprehensive about playing her in a game. She is sort of capricious about performing well and can require a lot of support from allies. But if she gets farmed, she's amazing. I think she's the best base defender in the game and one of the best pushers too. Once midgame is shifting to late, leave a turret where Sivir can get to it with her ult, and it's gone. I've had several games with pathetic kill/death ratios, but where I might have saved my team through backdoor pushes. In my best Sivir game so far, I had only one other competent person on my team. We lost several teamfights and were down by something like 20 kills. The enemy team took Baron multiple times and destroyed all of our buildings except our nexus. But my Sivir kept getting stronger and killing all the minions swamping our base pushed her over the edge. Each time the enemy team invaded, even if they killed the rest of my team, I drove them off, scoring a double kill or triple kill, one time getting a quadra kill. When they finally overcommited and we aced them, I ran up and pushed through their nexus, winning the game. I still haven't played most of the AD carries, but Sivir has a special place for me.

Nasus
I only had one attack damage melee champion at the time and I wanted to try another, but I also didn't have a lot of IP. Nasus had a lot of appeal for me because he's a strong farmer, which, again, I like for some reason, and because he has something that stacks without a cap, like Sion and Veigar. I really like Nasus, but still don't play him enough. I play Nasus as a solo top, of course, with Ghost and Teleport. He uses my "AD Tank" rune page and my "Singed and friends" mastery page. Originally, it was just Singed's mastery page, but now I use it for a few other champions. It's heavy on defense, but goes deep enough into utility to max the movement speed mastery and invests on point in offense for an improved Ghost. I start with Siphoning Strike, then get Wither, and after that prioritize Fury of the Sands > Siphoning Strike > Spirit Fire > Wither. There's pretty much no reason not to take that skill progression. Maybe in some situations, additional ranks in Wither would need to be taken before more ranks in Spirit Fire, but probably not. My starting items are a Regrowth Pendant and a potion, either health or mana depending on the nature of my opponent in lane and the enemy jungler. I get Boots of Speed and build Philosopher's Stone, then work on Sheen and Frozen Heart, sometimes building Glacial Shroud early and sometimes saving it for after Sheen. Generally before I finish Frozen Heart, I upgrade my boots to Mercury Treads. Once Frozen Heart is complete, I build the other components of Trinity Force and Shurelya's Reverie. Shurelya's Reverie is key both for its active and for its cooldown reduction. With it, Frozen Heart, and my masteries, I max cooldown reduction. Once Shurelya's Reverie is done, if I haven't already, I start building Force of Nature, then complete both it and Force of Nature. That's pretty much my full build and Nasus is almost always powerful enough to win the game once it's finished. The last item slot is situational, often Quicksilver Sash or, if I'm feeling particularly vicious, Bloodthirster. If they're stacking armor to counter me, it's Last Whisper. Nasus is pretty straightforward: land as many last hits with Siphoning Strike as possible, while using Wither, then Spirit Fire and Siphoning Strike on enemy champions that get in my way, either killing them or making them leave so that I can keep farming.

I'm perfectly happy with my setup for Nasus. Max cooldown reduction is too good to pass up, and the build is fast, tanky, and hits hard enough to kill everything. The only reason I don't play this more often is that Nasus requires the right team composition. If the enemy team has a lot of crowd control, that can shut him down. And Nasus needs his own team to have crowd control, since all he gets is a targeted slow. But if the enemy team lacks CC or if my team has enough CC to make up for Nasus, watch out. Thanks to lifesteal from his passive and regeneration from his ult, Nasus is very hard to kill and can decimate multiple opponents singlehandedly. Nasus is sort of high risk, high reward. I've found Singed to be my more reliable solo top. Nasus is the sort of champion that I love the idea of, but don't really get around to actually using very much.

Ryze
Ryze looked fun. He's dirt cheap and has this unique "mana carry" thing going on. He's also the champion that forced me to start working with smartcasting. Unfortunately Ryze has been nerfed too much. When I did play him, I went with Ignite and Teleport, my "Spell Vamp" rune page (magic penetration marks, per-level health seals, per-level AP glyphs, and spell vamp quintessences), and my Karthus mastery page. That rune and mastery setup gives 9% spell vamp, which boosts that spell vamp from Ryze's ult. With Ryze, I laned pretty much anywhere. Most games, I'd start with Rune Prison, then level up Overload, then Spell Flux and prioritize Desperate Power > Overload > Rune Prison > Spell Flux. For items, I started with Sapphire Crystal, a mana potion, and a health potion. I built Tear of the Goddess as soon as possible, because stacking that thing takes forever, despite Ryze's passive. Once I had Tear, I got Boots of Speed and Catalyst the Protector. Then I rushed Rod of Ages, built Glacial Shroud, upgraded boots to Sorcerer's Shoes, built Frozen Heart, built Banshee's veil, and finished Archangel's Staff. For the sixth item slot, I bought Rabadon's Deathcap, although I might have started trying Lich Bane if I'd kept playing Ryze. I had some really good games with him, but was kind of inconsistent. Once he gets going, he generally decimates the enemy team and doesn't stop until the game is over.

Like I said, Ryze was nerfed. Actually, he was nerfed multiple times after I bought him. Maybe because I bought him. Who knows? He lost the bonus mana from his ult and the damage from mana ratio on his Overload was nerfed at least twice. He's still viable, but I sort of lost interest after the repeated nerfs.

Sion
I freaking love Sion. He won my last game for me. And by that, I mean that my team was losing and gradually falling behind, but I stepped in and ate the enemy team. All of them. I went 13/0/11 and definitely saved the team from losing that one. Sion is easily one of my favorite champions. I play him AD, because AP Sion is for girly men. My summoner spells, runes, and masteries are exactly like the ones I do for Nasus. I never really know which ability to take first, because sometimes I want to start stacking Enrage early and sometimes I need the extra defense provided by Death's Caress. Once I have a point in each, I prioritize Cannibalism > Enrage > Death's Caress > Cryptic Gaze. Enrage is the star of the show, though. I accumulate as many minion kills as I can. If my lane opponent can't stop me early, I win. AD Sion is the strongest late game champion. I start out with Vampiric Scepter to cancel out the self-inflicted damage from Enrage, then I almost always grab Boots of Speed and rush Wriggle's Lantern. The free ward from Wriggle's Lantern and Ghost both help keep me protected from ganks by the enemy jungler. That's why last game, even though the enemy team had a dangerous jungler, I never died once. I got beaten up, but was able to escape and Teleport back up to my turret. I build Zeal, then upgrade boots to Mercury Treads. I build Phage, then Warmog's Armor. At this point, I usually have to take some time off farming to help my team, but Sion's awesome ult and the tankiness provided by Death's Caress are usually enough to let me jump in and score some kills. If the enemy team doesn't dominate us there, it's over for them. I finish Warmog's Armor, upgrade Zeal to Phantom Dancer and Phage to Frozen Mallet, then build Atma's Impaler. I completed all of those items last game, ending up with something like 5,400 HP and 300 attack damage. In really long games, I sell Wriggle's Lantern for something else, which is situationally dependent on the enemy team and, to a lesser extent, on my own team.

Sion gets bonus HP from everything he kills while Enrage is toggled on. I leave it toggled on all the time, sometimes even from level 1. The bonus HP has no cap, so Sion keeps getting tankier as the game progresses. Everyone else can complete their builds and have nothing to do that makes them stronger. All they can really do is periodically sell boots, buy and quaff one of each elixer for a bit of a boost, and buy boots again. Other than that, once everyone has all the most expensive items they want, there's no room for growth. Well, that's not true if you're Veigar (increasing AP through Baleful Strike), Nasus (increasing bonus damage on Siphoning Strike), or Sion (increasing HP through Enrage). Better still, Atma's Impaler gives AD for all that HP. So Sion becomes the ultimate tank and the ultimate damage-dealer (and he has a stun and a shield). I've tried to craft my build to make Sion even more of a killing machine. But not every game is as awesome as my last one. AD Sion is a bit vulnerable early on. But I think I've been getting better with him. My second best solo top. Singed is still more reliable. I want the Lumberjack Sion skin.

Morgana
This is a champion that I took a lot of time to get used to. I got really into playing as Morgana for a while, but after I left competitive play when my screen broke, I abandoned her and have hardly played her since. Like Ryze, she's suffered some nerfs. Also like Ryze, I went with Ignite and Teleport, my "Spell Vamp" rune page, and my Karthus mastery page. I never saw anyone else do it, but that setup gave Morgana 19% spell vamp to start out, which made her very sustainable. I prioritized Soul Shackles and Tormented Soil, with Dark Binding and Black Shield getting different investment patterns almost every game. My extra spell vamp, nearly double what most people start out with on Morgana, and my emphasis on Tormented Soil and farming let me ignore Doran's Ring and rush Rod of Ages, sometimes before even getting boots. Along with Rod of Ages, I built Sorcerer's Shoes, then worked on Rabadon's Deathcap and Will of the Ancients. Then it was on to Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Zhonya's Hourglass if the game ran long enough, which is exactly what one of my old Karthus item builds looked like.

I mostly went solo mid with Morgana, which is where she belongs if she's going to farm. Morgana is difficult to harass unless the enemy jungler is particularly aggressive and helps out. She's versatile, but I did find myself unable to pick up kills in some games. I didn't intentionally abandon Morgana, but since I almost always went mid with her, I didn't give her the attention she needed to excel. Karthus is my mid. I was probably trying to play Morgana too much like Karthus anyway. I don't know. I might revisit her.


Evelynn
What a waste of IP. Anyway, I tried multiple builds, but Evelynn really does suck. I bought her because I wanted to try a stealth-based champion, but she's just not viable. I'm going to avoid touching her until she gets a buff, which is going to happen any day now. Anyway, same summoner spells, rune page, and mastery page as Morgana. I guess I started with Ravage, then got Hate Spike, and dumped some points into Shadow Walk to get a decent duration before returning to the damage spells. I rushed Sheen and Boots of Mobility, then Rod of Ages and Hextech Revolver. I upgraded Sheen to Lich Bane and Revolver to Will of the Ancients, then built Rabadon's Deathcap and never managed to get a sixth item because Evelynn sucks. If she does manage to complete those items, she's a good assassin with stealth, a speed boost, and a spammable damage spell to finish opponents, but by that point in the game, everyone else is powerful too. I also tried going hybrid and jungling with her, but I don't care for hybrid builds.

Amumu
I think I initially bought him because I'd been hoarding IP, although not nearly so much as I do now, and I played some fun co-op games with these people that wanted to do an all yordle team. When I first started playing League of Legends, I took a look at the champions and was thinking to myself, "Where are all my necromancers? I want a badass necromancer." Other than the skull-faced Karthus, the game still doesn't have anything meeting that description, but I remember considering some of the undead-looking characters that weren't actually mages. Amumu was one (Sion was another). Once I had Amumu, I decided it would be a good time to learn how to jungle. Amumu was my first jungler and is still probably my best, although I might surpass him with Udyr or Mundo. Like all my junglers, for Amumu I use Flash and Smite. Amumu gets my "AP Jungler" rune page, which is magic penetration marks, flat armor seals, per-level magic resistance glyphs, and health quintessences. Amumu has a highly defensive mastery distribution, with enough in utility to extend his buff duration. Since he's a jungler, I start with Despair (melts high-health jungle monsters). Next, I take Tantrum, then I take it again (I think that's the fastest way to clear camps as Amumu). I take Bandage Toss for ganks once I've cleared my side of the jungle, then I start looking for kills. As I level, I prioritize Curse of the Sad Mummy > Tantrum > Despair > Bandage Toss. I build Amumu as a full tank, starting with Cloth Armor and health potions for jungle sustainability. If I can get an early kill or two, on returning to base I immediately take Boots of Speed and Philosopher's Stone. My next item is Heart of Gold. Amumu is slow and, in my role as a tank, I don't accumulate as much gold as some champions. I also need gold to help ward the map, so the extra income from Philosopher's Stone and Heart of Gold really helps. Once I have those, I upgrade my boots to Mercury Treads. Depending on how often I expect to have blue buff, I time my completion of Shurelya's Reverie and Randuin's Omen. If the game is going really well, I start on Warmog's Armor early, but usually I go for Aegis of the Legion next, so that my team can benefit from the aura. If I really want to go on the offensive, I build Rylai's Crystal Scepter (slowing tears). If I want go for a more supporting role on behalf of my team, I build Frozen Heart. Guardian Angel is another option, although it usually doesn't come to that. I've also tried other items like Sunfire Cape and Abyssal Scepter, as well as some situational items like Thornmail.

Amumu is a good jungler, but he is vulnerable to counterjungling. Amumu's biggest weakness is his early game. The longer the game goes, the more the enemy team is in trouble. As long as my allies are halfway decent, Amumu's skill kit is usually enough to pick up kills and generally wreak havoc. One of my better champions. The only reason I don't play him more is that I am still a bit deficient on junglers, especially considering that I get stuck with the role more often than I should.

Kayle
I didn't buy Kayle. I found her among my champions one day. It came as a total surprise. I later learned that Kayle and her Judgement skin were a reward to players that participated in Season One. I played her for a while, but couldn't find a build I really liked. She's gotten some minor buffs, which she definitely needed. Anyway, I'm not revealing my super secret Kayle build that's a work in progress yet. It requires more testing.

Kassadin
I don't recall whether I bought Kassadin before I got Kayle, but whatever. I've had him for a long time. I only got him for Riftwalk. Riftwalk is awesome. I barely play him, not because I don't like him, but because his success is rather tied to the enemy team composition. Kassadin is sort of awkward. His best damage spell is only accessible after a certain number of spells have been cast near him. He has a spell that only barely helps him. His passive is only useful against some opponents. He's a mage, but he's melee. He's melee, but his basic attacks are garbage. He's an assassin, but his only assassin-like ability is his ult. Kassadin truly excels as a magekiller. He has a silence, a gap closer, can use his Force Pulse more often if the opponent is using lots of abilities (which mages generally do), and his passive gives him some protection against magic. I go with Ignite (assassin) and Teleport (Kassadin benefits from being able to get to where the action is quickly) as summoner spells. Kassadin uses my "Magic Penetration" rune page, which was the first rune page I ever built: magic penetration marks, per-level health seals, per-level AP glyphs, and magic penetration quintessences. I also gave Kassadin his own mastery page (primarily offensive, with some utility), probably just because I've had him for so long and his abilities didn't fit as well with other champions. I take Null Sphere at level 1 (to harass enemy champions and sometimes to last-hit), then I get Force Pulse and Nether Blade. Once I have all three, I prioritize Riftwalk > Force Pulse > Null Sphere > Nether Blade. I start with a Sapphire Crystal and potions, then build Boots of Speed and Catalyst the Protector. Kassadin really only needs three items: Rod of Ages, Sorcerer's Shoes, and Rabadon's Deathcap. Everything after those is just bonus. Kassadin is a crappy farmer, so if I'm not scoring lots of kills, I might not get much more than those anyway (Rod of Ages and Rabadon's Deathcap are both pretty expensive). Some items I might grab are Zhonya's Hourglass, Abyssal Scepter, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Lich Bane, and Deathfire Grasp.

Even though I said that bit about being a magekiller, Kassadin is actually quite versatile, especially late into the game. His burst damage is huge and he is one of the best both at catching an escaping enemy to secure a kill and escaping from ganks, all thanks to Riftwalk. In teamfights, I can throw a Null Sphere to silence the enemy initiator, then sneak around and Riftwalk to the enemy mage or carry, Force Pulse their whole team, Ignite someone, Riftwalk to safety, run over and Force Pulse again, then Riftwalk to catch whomever is running away. Kassadin is pretty cool. He's definitely my best assassin, but I don't seem to play assassins very much.

Anivia
If I remember correctly, I bought Anivia right after they reduced her IP cost. That might have been after I already had Kayle, but whatever. Anivia is Articuno. Anivia is also the manawhorephoenix. She needs lots and lots of mana. If possible, I play her solo mid so that she can farm. For summoner spells, I use Clarity (manawhorephoenix) and Teleport (for getting back to the lane quickly). I use my "Magic Penetration" rune page and Anivia's own special mastery page with lots of utility and a bit of offense for magic penetration and cooldown reduction. I start with Flash Frost because it has a long range and deters enemy champions from getting in my face while I farm. Then I take Frostbite for the Flash Frost/Frostbite combo. It requires a bit of finesse, but not a lot. Once Flash Frost is right on top of an enemy champion, I tap "Q" again to detonate it, giving even the slow Anivia time to fly over and hit the opponent with Frostbite for extra damage. I take one point in Crystallize after I have both of my offensive skills, but I usually don't end up actually using it until later. From there my skill allocation is a bit weird, other than always taking Glacial Storm when it's available (ults are available at levels 6, 11, and 16). I generally prioritize Frostbite, but sometimes let Flash Frost keep pace with it. If mana is becoming a problem, I can even throw an extra point or two into Crystallize early, keeping the mana cost on Flash Frost lower. My item build for Anivia hasn't changed much over time. First, Sapphire Crystal and potions, rush Tear of the Goddess, get Boots of Speed, rush Rod of Ages, build Rabadon's Deathcap, upgrade boots to Sorcerer's Shoes, build Zhonya's Hourglass, complete Archangel's Staff. The last item slot usually ends up being a Void Staff or a Guardian Angel, although some day I'll make it a second Archangel's Staff for the lulz.

Once Anivia has her ult, she is one of the best farmers. As I said, her abilities make her very, very mana-hungry. I try to always get blue buff if possible. Anivia can take it by herself once she has her ult, and very few champions, if any, benefit more from having a blue buff (even Ryze isn't as mana-hungry as Anivia and he should be getting max cooldown reduction from a combination of his masteries, Frozen Heart, and the passive bonus on Overload). Anivia has awesome burst damage and can slow enemies to a crawl, then block their escape with Crystallize. She does have some things going against her that make me hesitate to play her: she has some of the worst base statistics, like the lowest attack speed, lowest movement speed, lowest HP. Her wall isn't as impressive as it was before every new champion that came out started getting some ability that could get past it. Still, she is a decent mage and also happens to be a bird. I'd play her more, but Karthus is my mid.

Alistar
I don't remember exactly when they made Alistar and his Unchained skin free with the Youtube subscription thing, but I took advantage of that when it happened. I didn't use Alistar very much until later, though. At first, I found him rather clumsy and wasn't sure what to do with him. I looked at build guides and such, but wasn't satisfied with him. Now I've refined Alistar and can play him well as a tanky support. I used to use Teleport because I was pretending that he was Singed, but now, when I remember, I give Alistar Ghost and Clarity. He uses Singed's mastery page and my "AP Tank" rune page. I start with a Regrowth Pendant and a mana potion. I take Pulverize first, then Triumphant Roar, and after that I level all three of his main skills pretty evenly with, Headbutt staying behind the other two at first to keep its mana cost down. My first item on returning to base is always Boots of Speed. I get Philosopher's Stone and Heart of Gold. Alistar is a mostly decent farmer with Pulverize and his passive, but I usually want my carry to take as many last hits as possible, so I rush Philosopher's Stone and Heart of Gold in order to get some extra income for planting wards and building more items. Next, I go for Glacial Shroud, Boots of Mobility, and Aegis of the Legion. I try to get Shurelya's Reverie and Frozen Heart by the last phase of the game. As with Nasus, the combination of Shurelya's Reverie and Frozen Heart is enough that my mastery page gets me to maximum cooldown reduction. Of course, I build Heart of Gold into Randuin's Omen. If all of those items are done and the game still isn't over, it usually means I'm going to need to do some serious tanking for my team, so I generally save the last item slot for Guardian Angel.

I initially underestimated Alistar. In comparison to Singed, he's not as fast and can't bring victims to his team. He gets caught more easily by ganks and isn't as powerful as a farmer. But Singed places more emphasis on running around and causing mayhem. Alistar is better as a true tank. He can heal himself and his allies, He can Headbutt an offending opponent away from his vulnerable lane partner or Headbutt an exposed victim into his team for a kill. He can give his team an opportunity to break from an engagement or to throw damage on the other team using Pulverize. His ult gives him brief period in which he can withstand almost anything. Alistar plays well with others. Also, he is a minotaur. I've been playing Alistar more lately and I think I'm continuing to improve my support gameplay.

Sona
I definitely acquired Sona well before I started playing any competitive games, so she's been with me for quite a while. I laned with one in a co-op game while playing Singed and was impressed at how Sona could dart out at the enemy, blast them, then dart back behind me and heal me, gradually grinding our AI opponents down. Sona was the first champion I used to learn to play support. I've had some good games with her and some bad games with her. She allowed me to dominate the second competitive game I ever played. My first competitive game was as Singed. We ended up having a leaver and getting dominated, surrendering early. I decided to press on and, since I hadn't had luck with Singed, try my luck with Sona, who at the time was my weakest champion. Somehow, I ended up carrying the game decisively. I went 12/0/17 and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The people in the game were all, "OMG, best Sona I've ever seen." And I said, "Second time PVP." Yeah, I must have been playing against scrubs, but whatever. My Sona build could probably do with some updating. I haven't gotten around to it yet. I have modified my summoner spells over time, though. Right now, I tend to use Heal and Clairvoyance. The one I've probably used the most on Sona is Flash. I use the "Magic Penetration" rune page, although I will probably change this as well. Sona has her own utility-heavy mastery page. I even took the enhanced starting gold so that I could get more mana potions early, although now that mana potions are cheaper, that might be a bit of a waste. The Sona nerfs actually didn't affect my build because I have always prioritized Hymn of Valor. Once I have all three songs, I take points in Hymn of Valor first, then Aria of Perseverance, and max Song of Celerity last (of course Sona's ult is taken whenever available). I have usually started out with a Meki Pendant and mana potions, relying on the summoner spell Heal to help my lane partner if necessary before I gain a level. Once I have Aria, health potions wouldn't be much use anyway, because I can just spam Aria and use mana potions if I have to. Tear of the Goddess if my next item, followed by Boots of Speed. Up next are Mana Manipulator and Kage's Lucky Pick, in either order. I build Soul Shroud and upgrade boots to Mercury Treads. I've tried Spirit Visage and it seems good, but I guess I often forget to build it or something. I used to go for Deathfire Grasp, but lately I've been trying Morello's Evil Tome. If the game is long, I build Rabadon's Deathcap and complete Archangel's Staff. Although Sona isn't a huge damage source, it's pretty easy to fully stack Tear of the Goddess, unlike with Ryze. Aegis of the Legion is another item I sometimes take on Sona, if it makes sense for the team. Edit: Forgot about Spirit Visage, which I also usually forget to build most games, but it's good.

Sona is pretty easy to play. Just drift in, press "Q." Drift out, press "W." If the team is in danger, press "E" and run away. If the enemy team is clustered together, hit them with "R." That's about it. I'm not sure why sometimes I'm rather inconsistent with her. But lately, it hasn't been an issue and I've done fine. I'll probably move on to other supports, but Sona is still my best support for now.

Karthus
Karthus is, without a doubt, my favorite champion. He used to be my best. And when I was at the top of my game, he was my best. I'm still not quite back to optimum performance with him, but I'll get there. I could dedicate a whole post to the intricacies of Karthus. I play him solo mid and that's where he belongs. Karthus is one of the best farmers in the game, and he needs to utilize that. For summoner spells, I take Surge (and people who never actually did the math whine at me about it and think I'm a newb for taking Surge) and Teleport (mandatory on Karthus). My "Spell Vamp" rune page was originally built with Karthus in mind. Karthus's mastery page goes into offense for cooldown reduction, an improved Surge, and magic penetration, and mainly focuses on utility. The runes and masteries give me 9% spell vamp, which is helpful for sustainability. I start out with Lay Waste, then take Defile, then Lay Waste again, then Wall of Pain, Lay Waste again, Requiem, Wall of Pain, Defile, Lay Waste, Wall of Pain, Requiem, Defile, Lay Waste, Wall of Pain, Defile, Requiem, Wall of Pain, Defile. Yes, that is my exact skill progression. I rarely deviate from it, as it is the result of a lot of experience. My item build has changed significantly over time. I originally focused on Archangel's Staff, but found Rod of Ages to better for survivability. Eventually, I started using both items, even though it weakens my damage output for most of the game. It's something of a gambit. In a short game, rushing Rod of Ages on Karthus keeps me ahead of almost everyone else the vast majority of the time. But then everyone else catches up if the game is long enough. But without Rod of Ages, Archangel's Staff is more of a glass cannon tactic that ultimately fails against skilled opponents. Using both items in the same build means it takes longer to get significant AP, but that Karthus can stay ahead of the competition even in a long game. So I start with a Sapphire Crystal, a mana potion, and a health potion. When I get back to base, I build Tear of the Goddess. My next item is Boots of Speed. After that, I rush Rod of Ages, starting with Catalyst the Protector. I build Needlessly Large Rod and, if the flow of the game permits, build Rabadon's Deathcap right away. Usually I end up upgrading to Sorcerer's Shoes first. Hextech Revolver is next, usually upgraded quickly into Will of the Ancients. I can technically solo Baron Nashor with that setup alone (spell vamp on Lay Waste and I can attack from beyond the range of most of Baron Nashor's damage), but it takes a long time. Next, I get a Blasting Rod. I build Rylai's Crystal Scepter to fill my last item slot (this could be something else and maybe it should, but slowing Defile is good for helping my team get kills and Wall of Pain hit everyone). Thanks to the spammability of Lay Waste, Tear of the Goddess is fully stacked around the time I finish Will of the Ancients. Depending on how the game is going, Blasting Rod either goes immediately into Rylai's Crystal Scepter or is used to finish Archangel's Staff. This build is able to perform decently enough midgame and lets Karthus act as a true AP carry, throwing out a stream of damage through Lay Waste and Defile.

When I'm playing Karthus correctly, very few opponents can do much against me in the laning phase. I make a show of harassing my opponent, but the real goal is to force the opponent to back off or waste health potions instead of actually focusing on interfering with me. I play very passively, but try to take every single minion kill that I can. Sometimes, I've even taken all six of the first wave of minions at level 1, something I've never accomplished with any other champion. If my opponent is willing to push, I welcome it, using the turret as a shield and blowing up every minion that gets close enough to damage it. If my opponent refuses to push, I keep my distance and focus my aggression on farming even more. Once I have my ult, I can help with kills and assists in other lanes, while my opponent at mid is stuck losing a farming war against me. Karthus is a challenge to play. He's a slow, fragile mage with no escape abilities and no burst damage. A common gimmick I see is to build him as a glass cannon for his ult or as a suicide bomber with his passive. But a more rewarding build is to build him in a way that lets him hit hard, heal himself off his spells, and still have enough resilience to escape alive. He can hang around at the back of teamfights and throw up Wall of Pain in the middle of the enemy team, forcing some of them to pass through it unless they want to leave part of their team stranded. He can pick off fleeing foes that barely get away, thanks to Requiem. And if he does end up getting caught, Karthus can still rely on his passive to strike back at the enemy team, possibly picking up a kill or assist. The only problem is that lately, I've been unable to find good opportunities to land my ult and I've been having trouble getting ganked or getting finished off by a hostile Ignite early on. Karthus is one of the champions I've played the most, but I need to improve my Karthus game.

Karthus is also the champion that has me hoarding my IP. Last year, when I was starting out, I decided that I would buy Singed with my IP, then save the rest of my IP until I got 6300 for Karthus. He was in the most expensive bracket for IP and it seemed like it would take forever, but I wanted that lich and I didn't care about having any other champions. I bought him in September. Then in October, they reduced his IP price, cut it in half. Ever since, I haven't bought a single 6300 IP champion. Now I'm coming up on 50000 IP and 6300 doesn't seem like so much. But still, I don't know. Maybe I'll buy some of them. Still, I don't regret my Karthus purchase. He's my favorite champion and probably always will be.  He's hated for his ult, but there's so much more to him.

Edit: I like how I wrote this right before I gave up on my experimental build and went back to my old one. I guess we'll see. When I initially switched to AA/Shoes/RoA/Deathcap/WotA/Rylai's, it took some getting used to, but seemed to work better than my old item setup of RoA/Shoes/Deathcap/WotA/Hourglass/Rylai's. And then I was effectively on a hiatus. I didn't play Karthus for quite a while. I thought that I was just rusty and also getting bad teams, and while I'm sure that both of those contributed, I recently went back to my old build. I've lost most games with it so far, but I've generally gotten more kills and assists with fewer deaths. With the other build, I had to be very cautious in teamfights and hang back putting up walls and throwing a few Lay Wastes here and there. But with the build I've gone back to, I don't die as easily and can get closer to the action, doing more damage. And even when I do die, I usually take some of them with me. I'm still not as good with Karthus as I used to be and I definitely can't call him my main anymore, but I'm definitely going back to my old build. So now I rush Rod of Ages, stopping only to get Boots of Speed. Once I have it, I work on Rabadon's Deathcap and Sorcerer's Shoes. From there, the last three item slots are Will of the Ancients, Zhonya's Hourglass, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter. I usually build Will of the Ancients first, but it varies. Will of the Ancients is best of sustainability, Rylai's is the best for moving around the map without the rest of my team (preferably following a bruiser or tank to some key position) and for helping to secure kills, Hourglass is best for big teamfights if I can time the active on it properly. I'm still getting used to it again, but this is the build that gave me success with Karthus before, so I'm going back to it.

Tristana
Technically, Tristana was the first champion that I acquired. Tristana and her Riot Girl skin are free through a Facebook subscription deal. I saw it when I started, but ignored it at first because I was playing Singed. Then the free champion rotation happened and Singed was locked. I couldn't play the only champion I'd ever played. So I did the Tristana offer. But I only played her for one game before using my IP to permanently unlock Singed, so that hardly counts. I played Tristana against bots occasionally, but I couldn't make her work. She seemed too fragile. I didn't really pick Tristana up again until I'd been playing competitively for a while and decided that it was about time to learn how to play AD carries. I already had one to practice with, so I started playing Tristana in earnest. I don't remember what I was doing wrong, but somehow, I picked it up and Tristana seemed easy to play. Like Sivir, Tristana is an excellent pusher, so for summoner spells I take Ignite (works well with Explosive Shot) and Teleport (she's a pusher). Tristana shares a rune page and a mastery page with Sivir. I take Explosive Shot first, and early on I take Explosive Shot whenever I can and Rocket Jump if Explosive Shot is already at its max for the level. I only start putting points into Rapid Fire after I have my ult, and then I level Rocket Jump and Rapid Fire evenly. I start with a Doran's Blade, then I go for Boots of Speed, a second Doran's Blade, and Berserker's Greaves. If I'm farming successfully, pretty soon I can get a B.F. Sword, and if not, I go for a Pickaxe. I build Infinity Edge, then Zeal. I build a Bloodthirster and upgrade Zeal to Phantom Dancer. If the game is really long, I sell my Doran's Blades for more Phantom Dancers.

Tristana is easier to play than Sivir. Explosive Shot's passive component makes Tristana an excellent farmer. She can Rocket Jump away from ganks or blast her attacker away with Buster Shot. She can also get easy kills by Rocket Jumping right behind an enemy champion, knocking the victim back into a turret with Buster Shot, and then hitting with both Explosive Shot and Ignite while firing basic attacks as the hapless enemy champion tries to escape. Later on, Tristana is also an excellent pusher with Rapid Fire. Whenever I'm going to play a carry, I consider whether I think my team would be able to support Sivir. If I doubt it, I go with Tristana instead.

Singed
The first champion I ever played. The first champion I bought with IP. When I was starting out, I didn't have any IP to get my own champions (actually, I might have had some: I forget whether the tutorial games, which I had completed a while before ever playing the actual game, gave IP). So I was stuck with the limited selection of free-to-play champions. There was a guy with his brain coming out his head, but so what? I'd already played as Ryze in that tutorial thingy and wasn't really into him. There was an ugly troll. And then there was this guy. The Mad Chemist. Well, I'm a chemistry major. So I gave him a try. At first, I had no idea what I was doing. The beginner bots dominated me. I won anyway, but only because there were other people on my team that knew what they were doing. I started slowly getting the hang of things and accumulating levels. Within a few weeks, I was beating the bots. Not just the advanced players that were on my team saving me and winning for me. I was good enough to beat the bots myself. I didn't want to spend IP on runes. I couldn't get the good ones yet anyway because my summoner level was too low. I wanted to save my IP for Karthus anyway, so I left runes alone. I started messing with masteries though. I remember trying different summoner spells and settling on Ghost and Fortify. I let the bots push, then used Fling and Fortify to kill them. Some of the things I started doing back then were probably quite inept, but others have stuck with me. I started always going to the top lane with Singed because Ashe and Taric were so easy to kill with the turret and Fling (back then, the only bots that ever went top were Ashe, Taric, Miss Fortune, and Soraka, and some combination of those two would always go top, while either Annie or Ryze was always mid and some pairing of Warwick, Cho'Gath, Trundle, Nunu, Shen, and Renekton was always bot; also back then Fortify was still a summoner spell that existed in the game). I still play Singed as a solo top.

My summoner spells for Singed are Ghost and Teleport. Singed is the namesake for one of my mastery pages, but as I've already gone over, Sion, Nasus, and Alistar share the mastery page with him. Singed was my impetus for buying movement speed quintessences, and my "AP Tank" rune page was originally named "Singed." I take Fling first. In many games, I don't even use it early on or I only use it to leash for a jungler. But I'd rather have it right away than not have it right away. But once I start gaining levels, I pump every (non-ult) point I can into Poison Trail, with the remainder going toward Mega Adhesive. My starting items are a Regrowth Pendant and a mana potion. Initially, I work on Boots of Speed and Catalyst the Protector. Depending on how the game is going, I prioritize between upgrading Boots of Speed to Boots of Swiftness, buying a Heart of Gold, and building Rod of Ages. Once all of those are done, I build my Regrowth Pendant into Force of Nature and begin building Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Randuin's Omen. That's my core build for Singed. He's the champion I've played the most (Karthus is still second) and I hardly ever deviate from that core. Even if the enemy team has a lot of physical damage and not a lot of magic damage, I usually just switch to prioritizing Randuin's Omen earlier and still build Force of Nature eventually. Singed is an amazing farmer and tends to accumulate assists every game, so I often have the gold to complete the core and start working on my final item. The sixth item is dependent on the situation, but some of my past choices have been Frozen Heart, Rabadon's Deathcap, Lich Bane, Aegis of the Legion, Guardian Angel, and Thornmail.

I build Singed with a few goals in mind. He has to be tanky enough to survive attacks from anyone. He has to be sustainable and capable of protecting a turret for a long time. He has to be able to farm reasonably well. He has to have enough damage output to pose a threat to enemy champions. Most importantly, he has to be fast. And I mean really, really fast. That's what the movement speed quintessences and Boots of Swiftness are for. The same goes with the masteries and the Force of Nature. Oh, and then there's Ghost. Singed, especially with his ult up, his Mega Adhesive, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter, can outrun almost everyone. That means he can chase an escaping opponent and fling that opponent back into a trail of poison, preferable with Singed's team or a turret right behind him to finish the opponent. It means that he can run through waves of minions and poison them to death, push a turret, and then laugh and run away when the enemy team tries a three-man gank to kill him. It's this speed that makes Singed my most reliable solo top. I don't get killed very often. When I do get killed, I know I've screwed up. Singed doesn't do the most damage and he's not a killing machine, but he is a tank that can spread poison all over the place and control the action in a fight. Also, 98% of League of Legends players chase Singed.

Science fiction is good

So yeah, I don't know how I managed to go such a long time on what was basically a hiatus from reading science fiction. My two most recent books have been Eternity by Greg Bear and The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Both were superb. I don't have a lot to say about the books except that they were both science fiction, both great reads, and were very different from each other stylistically. One can't really get bored of science fiction. There's too much variety for that.

The day I checked out The Space Merchants at the library was also the day that Ray Bradbury died. I didn't yet know about it and I was considering checking out one of his books, but I couldn't decide which one and I ended up getting The Space Merchants instead. I'll pick one of his books up later, I guess, to make up for that. Or something.

Books again

Books were one of the biggest topics on this blog before I went back to school and didn't post anything for a year or whatever. Well, just over a month ago, I read a science fiction novel because I wanted to. I posted about it. Go find it yourself if you want to. No link for you. Anyway, despite some misgivings about the book itself, specifically the ending, or rather the lack of one, I found the experience refreshing. I can totally read books while I'm going to school. It's not bad. It might even be good. Apparently it's a habit I have now. Since writing that post, I've read four more books.


The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
As with Children of the Sky, I had mixed feelings with this book, and ended up mildly disappointed. The idea seemed to be, and the back cover described it this way, that the book would follow three main characters. And yet one of them, albeit the most interesting one, dominates the story. It makes the segment with the first character the authors introduce seem superfluous, and once the real main character's segment ends, the book keeps going, but doesn't have enough room to really do anything. Complaints aside, it is an interesting book and left me frustrated at my lack of knowledge of history, because I wasn't sure which references I was missing. I figured out quickly enough that Ada Byron had to be the equivalent of the real-life Ada Lovelace (I didn't remember that Ada Lovelace actually was the daughter of Lord Byron), but definitely had no idea who some of the other people were (Isambard Brunel, for example). I was generally fascinated while reading the book and a bit disappointed immediately after, but now I'm not sure what to think.

Eon by Greg Bear
My mother claimed that The Difference Engine wasn't science fiction (it is) because it didn't have spaceships, time travel, or aliens. So I grabbed this book that looked like it definitely had spaceships and might also have time travel and aliens. All I really knew about it was that it was written by Greg Bear. I am a fan of Greg Bear's short stories, but had never read one of his novels, so I decided to correct that while simultaneously dealing with my mother's complaint about my previous reading choice. And I found the first novel that I've read this year that didn't disappoint me. If you didn't already know, science fiction in the 1980's almost always involved the threat of a nuclear holocaust due to tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. See 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke or Man Plus by Frederik Pohl. Oh wait, Man Plus is from the 1970's. Well, they did it then too. I suspect that the trend started in the 1960's, but that's a topic to research later, I guess. Anyway, Eon is the first example I've encountered that plays the trope, then actually goes through with the nuclear holocaust. Yes, there is nuclear war in this book. Spoiler alert. Oh, and there are also spaceships and aliens. In fact, most of the story takes place on a time-traveling spaceship that has aliens. So shut up, mom. Almost as though Greg Bear decided to show Vernor Vinge, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling (who left me, in the two previous novel I read, what the hell happened to my ending) how books work, the conclusion is satisfying and I only found out well after starting my next book that Eon actually has a sequel (and a prequel).

Neuromancer by William Gibson
Despite being mildly disappointed with The Difference Engine, I felt compelled to give William Gibson another chance. I knew Neuromancer was the book that made him famous, so I let it be the book I'd use to give him another chance. I'm glad I did, because Neuromancer is fucking awesome. The world is vivid, the the plot is engaging, and the protagonist is one of the best antiheroes I've ever seen.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, and I picked it up because Neuromancer looked short and I thought I might need a second book. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those books that I'd be annoyed at not having read when I was younger. And of course, that's exactly what happened. Anyway, everyone should read this book. Everyone.

More Diablo II nonsense (all the builds I'm considering)

I know I have too many Diablo II posts here. Well, I wanted a full list of every build that, at this time, I'm considering running. So here we go...

Amazon

• Bowazon: Artemis is in Act I Hell (update: Act III). She already has all of her gear and has a 2 FPA Strafe. The focus is on Strafe and Guided Arrow with a Faith Bow and gear meant to increase damage and attack speed. She's not the most durable, but she hits incredibly hard and from a distance.
• Spear/Javazon: Athena is in Act II Normal. I'm still not sure where to go with her, because I am not entirely sure how effective the spear skills are or how many points need to be invested in them. I only work with builds that can at least generally handle monster immunities, so an amazon focused purely on Lightning Fury or Plague Javelin is probably out of the question.
• Spear/Javazon #2: I don't have one yet, but once I get a better feel for the spear and javelin tree, I think it's possible to get a second build out of it. If Athena is pure javelin, then I can make a second amazon that is pure spear, probably with Fend. If Athena uses one of the javelin skills and one of the spear skills, a second amazon could use another of the javelin skills and another of the spear skills or something.
• Magezon (elemental bow skills): Not sure where I'd go with this. If it's possible to get both decent fire and decent ice damage on the same character, this could totally be viable for me. Again, I'm not going pure fire or pure ice, because of immunities.
• Proc-zon: I'll look into it. Not enough information yet to know whether I could make it work.

Assassin

• Kicker (Dragon Talon): Nemesis is in Act I Nightmare (update: Act II) and is looking good. I'm going with Last Wish as her endgame weapon because I want to and because it looks awesome, but right now she's using Voice of Reason. Even though she's not high enough in level to use the equipment I have planned for her, she already has very fast kicks. This could become one of my favorite builds. Unfortunately, Nemesis is the only assassin that I actually have right now.
• Pure Trapper: I'm sure that I can make this work. I'm just not sure on the details. Update Ereshkigal is going to focus on Death Sentry and generally be a cookie-cutter trapper, but she's still too low in level and has been relying on Fire Blast and Charged Bolt Sentry.
• Blade Fury: I apparently didn't think of this before. Blade Fury uses weapon damage and does proc some things. An assassin focusing on Blade Fury should definitely be viable. 
• Elementalist (Phoenix Striker): Looks easy. Again, I haven't planned on any equipment or anything, but this could be a fun build. And I might use the Natalya's set here.
• Tiger Strike/Dragon Tail: This looks like the best way to use the whole charge-up/finisher mechanic as intended.
• Dragon Claw: I was helping my brother build one of these, but he was making some weird choices against my advice. It didn't seem to be working out all that well for him, but I could try it for myself.
• Whirlwind Assassin: Something else to try, although I'd probably rather just go with a barbarian for this skill.

Annoyingly enough, the assassin is the class I've played the least, and she seems to have more viable builds for my purposes (soloing Hell reasonably well, and preferably on /players8) than almost any other class. What I've listed here isn't even comprehensive because I've seen there there are so many hybrid builds like kick/trap assassins and such.

 Barbarian

• Thrower: Enlil is in Act V Normal (update: Act I Nightmare). I haven't played him in a while. Not as overpowered as melee barbarians, but seeing axes fly all over the screen makes me smile.
• Whirlwind Barbarian: Enki is in Act I Nightmare (update: Act II). He's going for the full Immortal King's set. I don't like how mana-intensive the skill is, but other than that, it seems great for killing just about everything. Hopefully, by the time Enki is in Hell, his mana problems will not be too severe.
• Frenzy Barbarian: This looks like the most broken barbarian build. It's another build I was helping my brother with, but again, I'd take it a different direction than he did. If I get around to making one of these guys, I'll probably go for Ethereal Breath of the Dying in one hand and Beast in the other hand, because why the hell not? Update: Marduk is in Act I Normal. He's currently using the "Berserker's Arsenal" set (with a second Berserker's Hatchet as his left weapon) and Double Swing because he doesn't have Frenzy yet.
• Berserker: Haven't really looked into this one, but it seems good. The damage output is huge and the drawback can generally be ignored or at least mitigated. Update: I started a new barbarian, Ares. He will be either a berserker or a concentrator, but I haven't made up my mind yet. He's in Act II Normal now, and Berserk isn't quite strong enough to be impressive yet, but once he gets some more levels and equipment, I think it'll go a lot more smoothly.
• Concentrator: A barbarian that doesn't dual-wield (well, neither does the Berserker, nor most Whirlwind builds), but this looks like it could be very powerful.

Druid

• Fury Werewolf: Oberon has finished Hell. He was my first LOD character ever and even by endgame, my setup for him was probably not ideal, but I can't really picture myself doing another pure Fury druid just to see if I can do better. And Oberon worked well enough, really. He took on Diablo Clone and won.
• Werebear: Hephaestus is in Act I Normal (update: Act II). I was going to try for the whole Hunger build, and then I found out that it's plagued by a desynch bug. So instead, I'm thinking that I'll fill a weapon with Shael runes or something so that I still get a bear that hits at 4 FPA. I'll be using Armageddon of course, because why the hell not?
• Wind Druid: I'm apprehensive about this one, but I should give it a shot.
• Poison Werewolf: Haven't investigated this much, but I know that it exists and is viable.

Necromancer

• Summoner: Master has finished Hell. I made myself stick to /players8 the whole time, which was the beginnings of my realizations that necromancers have so many problems in this game. It took forever. So even though there are some variants, like the commandomancer and the lich lord, I don't know that I care to build another summoning necromancer.
• Poisonmancer/Fire (Trang-Oul's set): Set is in Act III Hell. Poison and fire immunities are common enough to be annoying, but I can manage, even on /players8, by using Poison Nova to kill everything around the offending monsters and then proceeding to beat them up with my switch weapon's physical damage. This build isn't all that durable and is sometimes a bit clumsy, but the Poison Nova normally slaughters everything around me. Not really overpowered, but I do like the build. Update: Set beat the game at Level 91. One of my most powerful characters so far and easily my most powerful necromancer. He even took on Diablo Clone on /players8, which I apparently neglected to mention here.
• Bonemancer: Namtar is a character I've created, but he hasn't done any quests or anything yet. I've been saving him for later. My plan is to go with a sort of bone/melee hybrid so that nothing will be immune to me, but we'll see if that's viable. Update: Namtar is Act I Nightmare and is overleveled so I could get some more convenient bone necromancer equipment. I have a gear plan, but it's subject to change. Tentatively, I think it will work well. Maybe it won't be as easy as a poisonmancer, but it shouldn't be unbearable.
• Meleemancer: Even though I do really like the Trang-Oul's set, I've been thinking about building another necromancer using a similar skill distribution, but with different items, so that I'd have a tankier character that was better at melee. I'd lose the fire skills, but oh well.Update: Nergal is in Act I Normal and is doing quite well. I'm planning on going with Fleshripper and other gear to make Poison Dagger have considerable physical damage alongside all that poison.

The necromancer is my favorite class and also one of the most problematic classes, if not the most problematic. I do have some other ideas, like a damage-return necro and a golem/melee specialist, but I think these are mostly unrealistic if I want builds that can solo Hell effectively.

Paladin

• Hammerdin: Shamash has finished Hell. I wanted to be sure to finish him before the 1.13 patch took away Blessed Hammer's ridiculously overpowered property of ignoring most magic resistances completely, and I did. Since then, I've modified his gear so that my switch weapon and shield give me a powerful smite. With further gear changes, Shamash was able to beat PlugY's crappy ripoff of the Pandemonium Event (using Smite).
• Auradin (Conviction Zealot): Stephen has finished Hell. Yes, I named this character after myself. I did that because I knew auradins were broken. To clarify, I'm using Dragon/Hand of Justice and dual Dreams, none of that hybrid nonsense. Stephen isn't particularly versatile. He just runs around and kills everything with his auras. I was able to solo the PlugY ripoff of the Pandemonium Event on /players8 and recently beat Diablo Clone on/players 8. Definitely my most overpowered character so far.
• Avenger: I remember Nick had one of these and I played alongside him. It seemed pretty powerful.
• Fanatic Zealot: Probably the cheesiest build in the game. I already achieve a similar effect with my auradin. This is basically an easier version of the same thing, albeit with mostly physical damage instead of mostly elemental damage. Update: I did create a character named Odin that is intended to serve as a Zealot, but I'm not going to play him until I beat the game with at least one of each character, because I've already completed two paladins and I think paladins are cheesy and overpowered.
• Fist of the Heavens Paladin: Not traditionally used for PvM, but I want to try it. Not sure what the backup skill would be, but paladins generally don't have problems with immunities, I've noticed. My "templar" (Fist of the Heavens paladin), Zeus, is in Act II Act IV Normal. It's too early to be certain, but I think this skill is underrated for PvM. It is single-target and on a cooldown, but the damage is huge and cooldown isn't that long. Lightning immunity should be the only problem, and I'm already planning for that.
• Smiter: Yes, a pure smiter. I want to. At least, I think so. Update: Anu is in Act I Normal. Smite is a bit mana-hungry early on, but other than that, paladins are broken as usual.

 Sorceress

• Archmage (tri-element): Isis is in Act I Hell. I'm using Frozen Orb, Hydra, and Charged Bolt. Oh, and I'm also using the full Tal-Rasha's set, so Isis is technically a magic-find character, although I don't seem to have much use for that anymore.
• Melee Enchantress: Hestia is in Act II Normal. My plan is to have her use dual Dreams, so this could be reminiscent of Stephen's dominance. She'll get rapid attacks using the Zeal from a Passion sword. Update Hestia has reached Nightmare difficulty, but she was borrowing Enki's gloves, belt, and boots. Now that he has them back, I haven't been playing her. Once Isis is done, I'll probably never play any non-Enchantress sorceresses again, which seems like a waste of all those perfectly good spells, but Enchant is just so good and elemental immunities are just too troublesome for any non-archmage caster sorceress.
• Ranged Enchantress: I didn't think this would be worth it, but that was because I didn't realize how good Demon Machine is. On the surface, doesn't look as powerful as a melee enchantress, but I should give it a shot.

The sorceress is another problematic class, which is why I only have three build ideas I'm even considering right now. In truth, a hybrid enchant/caster should be fine and I could definitely do other variations on the archmage, but all of those use Frozen Orb anyway. Not having any source of multiple types of damage other than Enchant (fire and physical, but it doesn't even really count) and needing synergies to get a lot of damage out of her spells, the sorceress doesn't have a ton of options. Frozen Orb would seem to be the only viable non-synergized cold damage skill, and fire and lightning aren't much better off (Fire Wall, Hydra, Enchant, and then Charged Bolt and maybe Lightning or something).

Diablo III

Today I finished the Diablo III beta. I'm not making any promises, but at this moment, I don't really see myself buying the game—ever. There are a few reasons for this, which I'll get to momentarily. I should also note that even despite some significant problems that had nothing to do with the game itself, I mostly enjoyed the game and wanted to play it more than I got to. Actually, I should begin with those problems.

My laptop has a cracked screen, so I've been using an external monitor. My external monitor is ancient. Well, it's from 2000. Even though I did use this monitor for almost a decade, now that I'm forced to use it again, I'm annoyed at how bad everything looks on it. So there's that. Worse still, I had some computer-crashing issues that I suspect were not related to Diablo III at all. I suspect this because the computer seemed to be overheating. Last year, I had major problems with my computer overheating and crashing. I had my dad take it to a repair place that replaced a fan, which solved the problem. For several months, everything was fine. Eventually, yet another problem (this computer is a lemon, as you might notice from my posts in 2010) arose that resulted in my cracked screen, but that's a topic for another time. Anyway, in all the time I played Skyrim and other games, the computer never once overheated. However, that's exactly what it seemed to be doing while I was playing the Diablo III beta. It could have been the game crashing my computer, but I strongly suspect that it's merely an indication that my computer's overheating problems have returned. I was still able to play pretty reliably for well over an hour at a time, so I finished the beta. But if I hadn't been worrying about my computer crashing, which was likely not the game's fault at all, I might have actually played the whole beta all the way through with a second character. So I'm going to criticize the game, but keep in mind that it was good enough for me to finish the (pretty short) beta, and that I would have played it even more if I'd had the opportunity.

The Good

• I don't think I used the vanilla "hit monster with weapon" attack once the whole time. I played as the witch doctor, which is allegedly the substitute for the necromancer in Diablo II. I started out with a poison dart skill and always had enough mana for it. Eventually, I replaced my poison dart skill with a thrown jar that exploded and released spiders (yes, really) to attack my enemies. These skills were spammable and cost so little mana that it wasn't even noticeable. I suspect that it's similar for the other classes. That's a breath of fresh air compared to Diablo II's use of mana.
• More fluid skill usage. I don't know what finished builds will look like, but early on, I was tossing jars of spiders, snaring enemies with magic hands, summoning zombie dogs as distractions, and using a draining spell all at the same time. In Diablo II, most finished characters use the same skill over and over to kill everything, and even early on, most characters are relying on one or two skills most of the time. Oh sure, one maxes synergies and uses pre-buff skills and some mobility or shielding skills or whatever, but when it comes time to actually fight anything, it's just two skills or sometimes even just one. If I'd been playing a comparable portion of Diablo II, I would have a necromancer with a golem, a curse, and either a poison dagger, a few skeletons, or a damaging spell (Teeth) for actually killing things. My enchantress is way farther along in Diablo II than the length of this entire beta, and she's still stuck with her vanilla attack for killing enemies, and will be for a while even after she beats Normal difficulty Diablo!
• Followers apparently have skills as they level-up. I'm still a little apprehensive about this one. The original Diablo didn't have followers at all. Diablo II introduced them and LOD greatly improved them. But this might be a bit much. The game is supposed to be about me, about my character, not about followers. Still, this seems to have been done in a way that makes it work. Overall, I think it's a positive.
• Boss fights seem like they will probably be better. There's really only one boss fight in the beta, and it comes later than Blood Raven would have in Diablo II. I don't know how long the full game will be, but I'm assuming the boss in the beta is roughly analogous to Andariel. If so, that's definitely an improvement. Andariel could be a bit intimidating for a weak character, but really, all she does is call you names, tell you to die, and shoot poison at you. Far stronger poison than any other poison before that point in the game, but still, just poison. Any character that can throw damage at her while avoiding the poison or that can dish out a lot of damage can easily whip Andariel like the bitch she is. Now, the Diablo III beta was, as a rule, very easy, but the Skeleton King actually took some time to kill and actually seemed to pose a threat. He teleported to me, hit me with a big axe or something, summoned undead to get in my way, and generally didn't go down without a fight. He also talked to me before we fought and was more dramatic than Andariel.
• In multiplayer, every player gets his or her own item and gold drops. This is actually rather brilliant.

The Bad

• I guess it's impossible to namelock enemies? It was often hard to actually focus particular monsters. Also, I sometimes couldn't run up to a mob because when I clicked in their general area, my character kept spamming his jars.
•  In Diablo II, even with a brand new character, actually, even when I was just starting out, I was looking down the skill trees and planning my skill investment. I had some idea which skills I wanted to sink points into, which ones I only needed as prerequisites or as one-pointers, and which ones I could ignore because they weren't for my build. It wasn't perfect, but it was intuitive. Even after playing all the way through the beta, I still have no idea how skills work in Diablo III. I was unlocking either a new skill or some enhancement to an existing skill every level, with seemingly no room for customization. Even if it turns out that end-game characters can be incredibly diverse, this is still a problem.
• The beta was way too easy. I was never in real danger. Part of the atmosphere of the Diablo series is that you're fighting demons and such. They have claws or shoot fireballs or whatever. They are legion. They want you dead. If a level 1 character is running around in godmode, that atmosphere is gone.
• Even before I ever played the witch doctor, and moreso now that I have, I thought the biggest problem with the class was that they should have named it "shaman." Setting aside the fact that everyone immediately thinks of that stupid song by the asshole that invented "Alvin and the Chipmunks" whenever the phrase "witch doctor" is uttered, the name connotes a healer or at least someone that attempts to heal. A spellcasting individual that uses animals and nature and curses and stuff to disable his foes is already a thing in lots of games. And it's called a shaman.
• Apparently multiplayer games are limited to four people. That's half as many as in Diablo II. What gives?

The Ugly

• Well, the graphics are ugly. I mean, my horrible monitor doesn't excuse everything. For a game that's so many years in the making and is coming out in 2012, it just doesn't look very good. League of Legends looks cooler, and it's not even a game that needs to look good. Also, it's free to play. Hell, Diablo II looks better, is over a decade older, and uses 2-D graphics.
• The game was unavailable the majority of the times I tried to play it. I had to be very persistent. The servers were crashing or going down for maintenance all the time. And yeah, I know it's just the beta, but so what?
• There is no necromancer.
• The random conversations are dumb. Unlike some people, I found the voice-acting in Diablo III to be fine, at least mostly. But sometimes my character would suddenly strike up a conversation with townsfolk or followers, either discussing history or engaging in shallow philosophical banter, which was annoying.
• Everything is on Battle.net. Online play is the only play there is. By far, this is the worst thing about the game. A lot of people are dismissing this one, but I cannot. I've played Diablo II without an active internet connection or without a reliable internet connection, well, a lot. And then there's the issue with servers crashing or otherwise being unavailable. I have this crazy notion that if I buy a game, I should be able to play that game when I want to, not when Blizzard says that I can. That's one of the reasons that all of my Diablo II characters are stored on my computer, not on Blizzard's servers. Oh, this also means no mods and no item packs. Well, no thanks.