@Kore - US-based players play over a wide range of times, but are particularly active in the evenings EST.
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Also, I wanted to share a few quick thoughts on the 5v5 victory I played in yesterday. Our team was:
*sunrise - Amumu
*Metallian (Noobstar) - Ashe
*YoungDiva - Gangplank
*WarlordDR - Ryze
*Astax - Garen
This team were all RaY civ veterans, and are all level 30s except for level 16 sunrise. We played versus:
*Amumu
*Miss Fortune
*Ezreal
*Kog Maw
*Warwick
All of the enemies were level 30s.
IMHO our advantages were playing together on TS with mics and probably higher ELOs on our level 30s to compensate for our level 16. Their advantages were level 30 runes and masteries on 5 rather than 4 champs, and (again IMHO) a stronger champ lineup.
Anyways, we won pretty handily. At one point we were up 20 vs 12 kills, and later that rose to ~30 vs 18. They surrendered when we had taken out all of their inhibitors at around the....35 minute mark?
So my few thoughts:
1) The team I played with had great map awareness. In particular Ashe arrows and Gangplank Ults were all over the map. I'm sure Gangplank Ulted halfway across the map more often than he Ulted near his champ. That meant...
2) Fights were much more fluid, and big 5v5 teamfights happened less often. Deep into the game lots of fights were 2v1 or 3v2, and not necessarily surprise ganks. Rather both teams remained somewhat spread out, probably because if the enemy team had concentrated one area for too long some of our players could have supported from a distance and still pushed the undefended lane. Instead fights happened off a few-second advantage supported by long-range Ults. This was helped by...
3) Our team had great tactical burst play. As a mediocre Amumu it wasn't necessary for me to give a TS heads up each time I Ulted. Rather almost any bandage toss or Amumu Ult was followed up by a strong attack from my team, and few enemies escaped. This may have been what separated our 3v2 battles versus the enemy 3v2 battles (particularly the aforementioned long-range Ults). It was also interesting being told to stand by ground a take a death rather than escaping - the rest of the team was confident they could exploit an Amumu death with 1 or more enemy champ deaths, and they usually delivered.
4) In general, and like MP Civ4 with good players, the game just played faster. Everyone was good at killing creeps, and people rarely died defending their towers, so the towers stayed up, and people didn't spend as much time asking for help or coverage. As a jungler this was nice because I didn't miss out on experience running back the way I came, but rather could farm the jungle and then act opportunistically against the enemy.
5) Special mention to a great rescue. I was chased by Warwick over 1/4 of the map (and yes, I remembered to Cry on him) and without having the request assistance 2 teamates met me on the river and killed the enemy.
6) I was very pleased to outplay (or at least out-score) the enemy Amumu. i ended with 3/5/12 and he had 2/8/6...in both cases not 100% on the assist numbers. While I'm happy to credit almost all of my success on my skilled teammates, I'm still pleased to not have been a large drag. I also got quite lucky in at least one occasion when I spotted the enemy Amumu coming through our jungle to gank while I was trying to grab the northern jungle enemy. One thing that I either got in the zone with or simply got lucky with was bandage toss - I usually miss 50% of my tosses, and in this game I hit almost all of my tosses, leading to several assists.
Things to work on:
A) Remember when I have my Ult. I missed my second opportunistic assist chance when I bandaged the Kog Maw that had just been Ashe Ulted but forgot I had just hit level 6.
B) Remember when my Ult is up. At a team fight at the top enemy base tower I flashed forward and landed right in the middle of the enemies, only to have 40 seconds of Ult cooldown remaining
C) Have a contingency plan if the whole enemy team tries to gank the Blue Buff at the start of the game. None of us died, which was great, but I know I was slowed down quite a bit, and I'm not sure if there was something I could have done better.
(otherwise I keep missing killls because of lack of mana).