Minor language warning since BYOND seems to suddenly care about the content of blog posts...

So today it took me about 14 minutes of searching to find the thing that lets me post blogs on my member page. Why? Because, for convenience sake (yes I did note the irony of that), it's been moved into that little bar thing up the top, and as I never read the news posts that tell us about this stuff, I was utterly baffled by the button's sudden disappearance from my page!

All's well though, I eventually found it after searching the forums for help. lol.

Speaking of LoL, (clever segue, I know :P), I just played an epic match of that today. If you have no idea what League of Legends is, skip the next paragraph (or seventeen) for more relevant info. Anyway, I've been playing as Amumu, with all my masteries set on defense. I'm level 22, so I only have one mastery tree basically. Anyway, I'd been doing decently with that setup, but I couldn't help but wonder if maybe switching to offense would help, as Amumu's main feature is his AoE damage and ability to annoy everyone around him.

So I switched to 21/1/0 for a laugh, and got put in a terribly balanced team with a Cho'gath, a Nunu, a Jax and an Ashe (terrible combination for the obvious reason of 3 tanks). I was like "Meh, whatever, I'm testing this anyway..." so I rolled with it. Who did we get put against? An all-star team of freaking Yi, Jax, Tristana, Blitzcrank and Ezreal. Seemed pretty darn well-balanced to me, so I figured we'd lost right off the bat. At the same time, I, feeling crazy, was like "WOO LET'S DO THIS YOU'RE ALL GOING DOWN!"

I guess fanta makes me go insane for a while or something.

Aaaanyway, Nunu was like "Hay all who can handle a lane vs 2 guyz?" because he wanted to jungle, and I replied "Eh, depends on the opponents." Apparently, he took that as a "I can! Pick me to abandon to the mercy of two enemy champions!" and so he went off to jungle and left me laning solo. "Well," thought I, "I hope I at least don't get put against ranged people!"

If you guessed that I got put against ranged people, then no you don't get a treat, because it was freaking obvious. You can have a pat on the back though. ANYWAY, it was worse than just ranged charcters: I was up against Tristana and Blitzcrank. In other words, the "I grab you, you bend over and take my painful explosive shot" combo. Seeing this, I quickly requested backup, suggesting that maybe Cho'gath could handle soloing, immediately after which he died to a level 1 gank, even with Jax supporting him. So much for that idea.

Nunu stonily ignored me as the first creep wave approached and I braced myself for the inevitable face rape that would occur. Knowing that I needed to get that exp, I had to cautiously head out and stand behind our team's minions, making sure Blitz couldn't grab me while still being in range of the exp from the kills but NOT in range of Tristana. It was a tricky dance, but today I was Michael freaking Flatley, and I even managed to harass the two a little with tantrum every now and then while hopping around like a tiny toilet-paper leprichaun.

Of course, such things can't last, and eventually I was grabbed by the hand of doom and prepared for the worst. Only my worst was apparently a tantrum to Blitz' face, and then a quick hop back to the tower with a tiny wound from explosive shot (which healed due to my items). What do you know, he got as much damage as I did! Suddenly, I was very appreciative of my new offensive build. Still, the danger was far from over. At about level 5, I was grabbed once more, and this time subjected to all manner of nasty pain-inducing special moves. Sure, I dealt out as much as I could, but with 2 vs 1 my health was falling fast and I had to make a mad dash back to the cover of the tower... and only just barely succeeded. Fortunately, they were both low enough hp not to want to follow me, so I warped home and ran back out to my tower.

Meanwhile my team was doing amazingly. And by amazingly, I mean totally shit. I think we were sitting on about 5-0 in terms of team deaths, and everyone except Nunu seemed determined to die as many times as they possibly could within the first 15 minutes of the match. Nunu, meanwhile, was ignoring EVERYONE in favor of jungling, not even trying to assist people he was a stone's throw away from. Yeah, you can tell our team was built on strong bonds of friendship and intelligence, can't you?

What's a tiny green mummy to do? Well apparently, if you're me, you decide to take a calculated risk. Or actually, you decide that since you just got grabbed by Blitz again and you're the only one at level 6, you might as well crank out the hurt! Now as you can imagine, being grabbed by Blitzcrank is a bad start to any combat situation. Nevertheless, neither him, nor the nearby Tristana, were quite prepared for the Curse of the Sad Mummy (my ult), which I dropped in their faces as soon as Amumu's feet touched the ground. Naturally, I'd had Amumu bawling his eyes out before he was even grabbed, so the damage was stacking up. Their hp took a sharp downwards turn, and they frantically tried to pump me full of Blitz's metal fists and whatever the hell it is Tristana shoots out of that cannon. It hurt, but not as much as my tantrum to their immobolized, close-range faces. With tears in full swing, plus tantrum, plus Blitz getting the headbutt of destiny, it was only a short moment before he was down for the count, and Tristana was running like heck to avoid the same fate. I ALMOST got her too, but she had a head start after seeing Blitz topple into scrap metal, and Amumu just couldn't keep up.

More importantly, the score was now Team Tristcrank 0, Amumu 1! I was like "DAMN STRAIGHT BITCHES! AMUMU OWNS Y'ALL!"... which I said over team chat because I really didn't feel like talking shit to a team that was owning everyone BUT me, and possibly looking to add me to their pile. Still, it was an amazing rush, and it felt like all the pieces of the Amumu puzzle had finally come together - with this much power, Amumu could finally kill people!

But of course, this was only the beginning. Still feeling the rush of my first kill, I returned to base for some item buying and returned just in time meet mid-lane with Tristana. Blitz apparently decided I was too much for him and went off to try and gank my teammates, leaving me in a delicious 1 v 1 scenario. Now before I might have been unsure of Amumu's ability to win a battle on his own, but not anymore. Tristana knew it too, and stayed the heck back, except for to try and harass me which would heal almost immediately anyway.

In any case, she got a little too close and I unleashed the Amumu combo on her (tears, bandage, tantrum), forcing her to run away yet again with low health. I was just above half health, and about to retreat when lo and behold, Jax rocks up to take her place. And look at that, he thinks he can take the 'mumu! Yes, the silly, silly Jax leapt out at me, so I simply turned on the tears, fired off a tantrum, and watched him rethink his strategy. Oh but was I going to let him run off with that insult? "No, no!", insisted Amumu with his Curse of the Sad Mummy, "Please, stay a while and let me cry in your face! What's that? You're trying to escape? I'm afraid- BANDAGE TOSS!"

Following that was another satisfying message related to me slaying an enemy, and as a bonus,I got Jax's lizard buff! But the best part was yet to come. Tristana, still low health and seeing mine lowered by Jax, ran in and attempted to finish me off. I turned and stumbled away, but it quickly became obvious that I would never escape her. So naturally, I bandage tossed back into her face and dumped a tantrum, reducing her health to the same level as mine. At that point, she realizes she's screwed since I still have the tears going, and she starts to run. I give chase and a split second before I can finish her, our Ashe's massively oversized ult rips through the air and smashes Tristana into a megling paste on the ground. Friggin' K.S.er...

Still, I was now sitting on 2/0/1, and was most definitely getting stronger by the moment. Sadly, the rest of my team seemed to be quite retarded and was still getting ganked all the damn time, meaning we were STILL behind in kills, though occasionally we'd get a few of our own to try and close the gap. Anyway, fast forwarding a bit, I had 4 kills (and the abject fear and respect of the entire other team) before my spree was ended by a 4 person gank. That's right, it took 4 of them to take me down, and it was a lucky meeting for them too. UNfortunately for them, Amumu only got stronger as the game went on, piling on sunfire capes and thornmail until even fighting me was a recipe for instant death.

I literally could take their Yi 1 vs 1 (I did so at one point until he ran away), beat Jax into submission, make Ezreal waste all his mana flashing away and trying to kite around my bandages, and of course show Blitz that grabbing me was the worst idea he'd ever have. Regardless of my own victories, I'd also like to admit that despite our team being full of morons who literally fed the enemies for fun, our Jax was pretty darn good, and he got more kills than anyone else. Basically, while I was ruining every group fight ever for the other team, Jax was a nightmare for their lanes, popping out and slaughtering everyone when they let their guard down. Between the two of us, we literally carried our team to victory, since the others were content with feeding (Cho'gath) or jungling (yes, Nunu was STILL at it). Ashe was ok, but compared to Jax and I she didn't really stand out. Plus she fed a fair bit too.

One of my favourite group battles was when 4 of them dropped out of nowhere to gank me, only to find that my thornmail, ult and Amumu combo resulted in at least 1 death, along with everyone else at low enough health that when the rest of my team arrived, the enemy team were screwed. I DID die that time, but I did enough damage to ensure that our team would win easily, and go on to push a few towers. Over the course of the game we literally came back from being 6 or so kills under them to wiping the floor with these guys. Of course, there were other group battles that involved me not dying at all and slaughtering people everywhere, but I liked the futility of them killing me the best. Yes, I'm a cruel, heartless person.

But seriously, I ROCKED as Amumu that game. By the end of it, I was just ridiculous. People could fight me, but they would lose and lose hard. I was mostly just running from person to person in group fights, beating them down then bandage tossing to the next until one survivor would manage to crawl away from me into the safety of a tower, or they were all dead. Occasionally I would die, but whoever was dumb enough to deal that much damage to me guaranteed their own death due to thornmail and my wailing maelstrom of damage - if it didn't kill them right away, my teammates would tear them apart moments later. My final game score was 9 kills, 4 deaths, and 12 assists, with 1 turret destroyed and a swath of terror and destruction in my wake. And you'd best believe that every single one of those assists was an enemy champion at least half beaten down by my insane DoT combos, most of the time nearly completely so.

Oh, the icing on the cake was discovering that Tristana was level 30, Yi was level 26, and the others were level 24 (Jax), 22 (Ezreal) and 20 (Blitz). All of them were fully decked out in their best runes (compared to my haphazard combo) and masteries, yet I (and when they felt like it, the rest of my team) managed to turn that game around in a big way.

Anyway, the moral of the story is HECK YES I'll be playing with those offensive masteries again! With all the bonus damage I do now, it's more than enough to let me participate in low level ganks, and also to make me one of the deadliest things in a team fight mid to late game. I really feel like it makes Amumu cross the line from decent to good, and puts him in a position to compete with other highly played "top tier" characters. Naturally though, the other team could have played much better, so I can't let it go to my head. Nevertheless, this is an excellent first game for these masteries, and I expect great things in the future!

In other news, if you don't know what LoL is but really want to play it now, then click this link and you can play for free! Plus, then I count as a referrer and get a spiffy, useless forum badge. Come on, you don't want to deprive me of a useless badge now do you? *puppy dog eyes*

And um... a million paragraphs later I am adding a tiny footnote about PRPR. It's taking forever, but yes it still is in progress. Right now I'm working on the radio tower (not that anyone really cares), and will continue to add things when I get the time. I guess this game will be finished when it's finished, and not when I want it to be XD

...and that's it! My whole blog is huge again and probably filled with typos, but since it's 2:30AM I'm going to sleep instead and come back later to fix this if need be. Thanks for reading!