I think thunder was referring to zyra being a bad pick it your team needs a tank. So if you're sitting last pick and your team consists of fiddle sticks jungle, jayce top, and you grab zyra it would be a mistake. Braum, leona, alister, tahm would of been much more appropriate.

The chatter among high elo players is that she's underrated in Mid and her win rate would seem to back that up.  Of course all that might change because she's very vulnerable to changes in the meta.   If her lane counters become popular or the dark days of League Of Assassins come back, I wouldn't recommend her mid.  Fizz and Rengar are not what you ever want to see on the other team.

Yeah, pretty much what Cow said regarding her teamcomp issues.  She'll still provide good CC even after her fire and forget Spooky Ghosts get nerfed, but... sometimes you just need a tank as your team's Support and more for an initiator than anything else.  Her ult and E are more for counter initiation and peel I feel.

Good tips on my Ult, thanks.  I was pissing Cow off the other night doing the same thing that I did with you last night.  Think my Kalista is just really rusty from me trying to find my 'secondary' ADC for Ranked this season.

Ez isn't just my "PeterDumpTruck is my Support?!" pick.  He's a champ I've always liked and always wanted to be good at, and is a good pick in a variety of situations.  And he's a great poke champ so I thought he'd be really good with Zyra.  Figured our level 2 would be pretty brutal.

Unfortunately I didn't take into account that you don't play Support Zyra like I or a majority of Zyra players do:  Starting Q and maxing Q first for superior harass in lane.  You start E and prioritize it, which a few high level players and pros prefer to do... but I think that's a more successful style for securing kills during ganks/teleganks.  

I was planning on winning a poke war so in hindsight, I would have picked Corki or Lucian for stronger all in.

Ah righto.  I kind of suck with her as a mid (most of my solo lanes are smeh).  Think you might be onto something with trying to 1 trick pony her a bit. I'll put in some reps on her mid sometime soon though.  I'm about a million times more comfortable as a support.  

You've put in a ton of work on kali and its most often fun to play with you in lane.  

re: maxing E v Q as a support, hmm... most of the higher elo folks I was watching (I watched a bunch of stuff before I went on my zyra kick a few weeks back) I believe it was a E max.  Maxing Q made perfect sense to me in mid lane.  

BUT - I just looked it up and the main reason I was maxing E - I thought it had reduced cooldowns per level... which it does not.  I'm going to adapt a bit and maybe level q/e at the same time to keep the dps consistent.  

It's good when you're invading and getting invaded.  And any team dumb enough to get invaded in The Trinket Era is probably somewhat careless.  And any team that decides to invade against a champion who has a Sona ult level 1 is probably somewhat stupid.

So my guess is that people see the stats that say leveling E first is best cause you win more games when you do, but those are skewed since they're 'invade' games.

Edit: By leveling E, I mean level 1.  Lots of top players prioritize E, but even they get Q level 1.

The problem with putting everything into E is that you can't use it too much offensively.  That is, if you are just throwing out E's all over the place, you screw yourself against a decent opponent if you miss one - Zyra with E down means the opponent gets to own lane for 12 seconds.  So you have to hold it quite a lot.

But Q is a harass tool that you can afford to miss sometimes.  Your ADC doesn't get zoned out a bunch if you miss one.

So a Q max lets you put all your points into a spammable skill.  An E max puts all your points into something that you generally have to hold a lot.  It's only good if you don't plan to spend much time in lane.

I run Q up first when it's high mobility champs, and E when it's not.

You prioritize E because the damage from the plants isn't based on the level of Q, and you have to have that longer root to really wreck the lane with your ultimate.  Q only adds 35 damage with each level, and in an all in, that's less damage than you'll gain from your plants having that extra time under root, and way more when it's the difference between them escaping R before the knockup.  A level 6 all in with E at level 1 is very weak by comparison, a double root at 1.75 seconds, followed by a knockup less than a second later is typically a guaranteed double kill for the ADC unless Zyra picks one or both of them up herself.  Her harass doesn't suffer that much from being a level 1 Q, at level 6, the plants are doing 62 base damage, 70 instead of 140 off Q is just a single shot difference with a little AP.

It is very reliant on actually hitting your skillshot though.  E first works quite well at low ELO, assuming you're good with it, but I wouldn't expect it to work at plat plus, the odd diamond smurf trolling through silver just doesn't get snared often unless they've already engaged, at which point I'm rescuing my idiot ADC, not setting up a double...

Not sure who's going to still be playing Blind Pick or Normal Draft when this goes live.

Even when we have five in a group it solves the issue of:

"Where's everyone going?  I'll fill."

"Don't care."

"Wherever."

"Don't matter."

"Look at my name."

also... fill exists... so hurm

Hmm - let's think the lobby setup through.  We go through a few phases -

• we have the initial lobby before queuing up where everyone pops in and has to select 2 roles, 1 role and fill, or fill.  
• Position assignment where rito assigns you a role 
• Pick intent - everyone can (don't think you have to, but maybe) indicate the champ they want to play
• Bans
• Picks

So, in the initial lobby, if we have 5 of us, then you could still pick fill if you don't care.  If you pick 2 roles, you'll always get the 1st role requested unless someone else in the group has selected that as their 1st role - then rito will decide.  That's kind of fair anyway.  If a few people pick fill, then they are randomly assigned.  Everyone could still just blow off this step and we'd keep the status quo where folks all select fill.  Realistically, though, some folks will select specific roles and some that really don't care will select fill.  To get it to a no hard feelings, tongue in cheek, bitchy passive aggressive post level, I think we'd need to get on the same page and try to get folks to be honest with what they want to.  Eg if we actually have people that truly don't care, they fill.  If we have someone that only plays support, well folks should still be able and willing to contest that instead of being a nice fella and we should have people indicating that their 1st pick preference is support as well (instead of just picking fill, grumbling if things don't go well in the role you wanted, etc).  We'll just have to have folks get over that and hopefully be a little aggressive and let rito decide if we have 2 folks with support as their preference, etc.  

Things will be a lot nicer I think when we have <5 people.  We'll still need people to be willing to contest a persons desired role if they want it within however big our premade is, but we generally won't have someone getting boned into a role they'd rather not play.  That's a pretty big win for all of us when we have < 5.

Outside of that initial lobby, I think the position assignment done by riot and the pick intent phases will be really helpful - the position assignment being particularly useful if we all abide by it.  

That's exactly correct - nothing happens until that is done.  You pick fill and lock, 2 roles and lock, 1 role and fill or you can't queue up.

I think this is going to be my fav change of the season hands down.  

Being able to play the role I want to play is 95% of the reason I play team builder now.  5% is being able to play whatever champion I want.  

So, lets think downsides.  The new champ select that is replacing team builder will have bans.  Team builder does not.  So, that removes that 5% bonus I mentioned for me anyway of being able to play anyone.  They did say they will make the blind pick queue just not have bans and use the new system, so that's still an option I'd "kind" of have - kind of meaning that I still can't guarantee I get to play whatever champ I want.  Not as big a deal, but it means that any "practice" of new champs, if they have a high ban rate, will likely be restricted to custom games.  That's kind of a step back in my mind, but its probably worth the trade offs.

If you are queuing up solo, it also means you are not guaranteed to the role you want.  

Anyway, the I think those are the only 2 downsides as a replacement for TB specifically - you are not guaranteed to get the champ you want to play and you are not guaranteed to get the role you want - while you can today.  I doubt that's a big deal to most folks, but its something I liked anyway.

That's all pretty minor, but worth noting as I'm trying to think through the pros and cons and why I play the modes that I do.  

Downsides outside of team builder - well, bans might end up being straight stupid.  3 people per team each get 1 ban.  What happens when one of those people decides GP must be banned every game.  What happens when another guy dislikes X instead of more needed ban, etc.  I think the concept of 1 ban for 3 people per team is more fair, but I think it will result in some folks that are commonly banned now getting through.  We'll see on that one.  

Patch notes out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/40gnuf/patch_61_notes_leak/

Maybe no more League Of Thunderlord's.

I feel like this was recently updated... maybe not... maybe:

lots of infos...http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/site/2016-season-update/champion-mastery.html

Mastery Chests

Earn locked Mastery Chests by performing well across a variety of champions or as part of a team. When you or someone in your premade party earns any S rank, you’ll acquire a chest. You can earn up to four chests each month, and each champion you play can earn you one chest per season.

You’ll see which champs you’re eligible for in champ select and on your champ details page.

Keys and loot in the store

To unlock your chests, you have a chance to randomly pick up a key each time you win any matchmade game and winning with friends results in finding more keys than going solo.

For those who just want to pick up content at a significant discount, we’re offering chests and keys individually in the store. All chests contain random loot worth more than the cost of the chest (well, depending on how you feel about Teemo) so you can purchase with the confidence of knowing you’re getting a good deal (but a direct purchase from the store will still be the best way to pick up specific items).

 http://s.lolstatic.com/site/2016-season-update/5194f869e9e197420fc626e1ac5bf74084cadb01/video/crafting/reroll.mp4

Well looks like new champ select has been pushed back to the 14th.