Well, my great riven experiment is going super well.  hue.

Aside from me not being good with Riven as of yet, let me tell me what I learned.  Usually when I try out a champ I haven't used in a bit or want to work on, I do several things - 1 - watch vids and replays 2 - practice combos and things I see in those vids.

I learned how animation canceling works properly with riven.  Before, I actually thought you were canceling animation just by doing the q auto-attack combo (aa-q,aa-q,aa-q).  And you are... kind of.  There's actually something referred to as the fast combo.  It requires a little work to get down, but makes a very big difference in your damage output and how quckly you can get things done. The fast combo takes about a full second less to do if not less (1.5-2sec).

Here's how you do it.  Keep in mind the key is in precise timing and the goal is to chain 3 of this pattern together, but you can tell pretty easily when you pull it off once and then just try replicate that.  Here you go:  stand next to a jungle creep to practice.  Autoattack, now press q to cancel the autoattacks animation - you do this very quickly after the aa.  Next, autoattack again to cancel the q animation... more on this in a sec

oh... also there's the wall hop mechanics.... all of this crap requires quite a bit of practice to be consistent.  I know there's no real comparison to someone like me and good ol [][], but you should check out pretty much any of his challenger top lane games as riven vs pretty much any other champ.  Super strong mechanically.  With riven, its like ok super, you can do this one combo - you need to do that combo while weaving in another combo precisely which requires clicking on this exact spot while you simultaneously pretty e and r to cancel the animation, weave in that fast combo, time your stun right, use your hydra to cancel the animation on your stun.... blahblahblah.  All in motion. 

Anyway, I think I'm going to spend some time working on my ult combo tonight against some bots to see if I can get the mechanics down.  Feels like a champion that you absolutely need to put a ton of time in to master.  Or, according to champion masteries, I'm 12 more wins away from completely mastering this easy to use champ... hurrdurr

I suppose she probably feels very rewarding after you pull of a proper set of abilities/autos

Well... the great riven experiment continues with minor success.  I spent some more time reviewing the combos yesterday so my mechanical skill improved a little.  The sheer amount of repetition required to get good and consistent is going to be very high, though, I think.  

Somethings I've noticed - she feels very even in most matchups early game. You have good damage potential, you can farm, you can play the lane however you want (but the goal is to always try to ensure you take minimal damage from enemy creeps or ensure the enemy takes damage from your creeps when you trade).  If you fall behind, things can snowball against you really easily in most matchups if you make a mistake and die from it.  Like, the swing feels MUCH more painful than it does on other champs if you fall behind.  

You do feel like you have a decent adv (so far, against everyone but ekko I have felt good early game with my lower skillcap) - even the newly rediscovered ryze you feel pretty strong against... early.  On the bright side, I'm generally recognizing that any failing in my riven games generally originates from me, so I'm less likely to get all salty at teammates (though I did not enjoy the mord/taric bans of our captain that one game resulting in the worlds worst ryze kicking my arse - his awfulness was only matched by my lack of skill with riven... so the matchup favors the guy that can point and press w to freeze me in place and wail on me ).  

I learned some of the good roaming patterns (if on red side, you wander down, hop the wall at the enemy blue and then come up behind mid... unfortunately, I kind of blow with the initiation unless I have my ult (so.. I learned to only do this with my ult up...).  I practiced some wall hops and am better than I was yesterday at them.  I'm also a little bit better at team fights, though still quite awful.  I learned the value of weaving in flash into my combos.  Makes a huge difference in team fights to use that.

I still find myself wanting to build more tanky, but I don't think that's going to be the way to go.  Her tankiness comes from lifesteal and her ad scaling shield.  The downside of that balance, though, is that again, if you fall off, you lack both damage and tankiness... so you kind of have to play her well or else.  

The epic thresh game I had in that ARAM was pretty fun too. So many kills haha

Any else currently have goals in League they are willing to talk about?  My goals have flipflopped a lot this season.  1st I wanted to make a big push this season to try to see if I can get to diamond; currently I don't much care about that and think with my current skill set I'd probably make it up to around plat 3.  Possibly better, but that's where I think I'd land atm.

So, I went from caring about getting to diamond, to not.  Now, I care about getting the ranked team rewards (think I'm pretty close to wrapping that up - we need to get more team games in).  I never really cared this season about how high we can get in our ranked team.  Be nice if we rose up, etc, but at least for me, I don't get the same feeling of accomplishment as I would in solo queue, so I do my best, but don't give a rip really.  

I've gone back and forth focusing on various roles - that's nothing really new for me.  I spent time trying to develop a higher skill cap with a few champs this season and dropped my previous try to be decent with all folks and instead try to be good with some. 

I guess my main goal is to get better with champs and have fun.  Then the more personal goals of trying to be less negative in general.  Bit of a struggle, but I'm making progress here and there.  Anyway, the weekend is here.  Catch some of you tonight hopefully.  Bad news though... still trying to play riven for now...

I am sort of losing interest in midlane and the game in general. I have had a lot of fun playing old games from my retro collection lately. I have also been busy trying to get myself into graduate school by studying for the stupid GRE exams.

At any rate league of legends goals are pretty much just have fun for now. I have been loving playing support since I feel like you have a HUGE impact on getting your ADC fed. I have been really successful playing Bard in solo queue. Messing around with lee sin support has been fun as well since its focused so much on the defensive side of his kit rather than the OMG MAKE A WARD JUMP PLAY side. Kicking bad guys away from my carries has been a good time (and occasionally making the WTF BBQ ward hope kick some one back into team play).

My goal for this season was to get Diamond 1 if not Master. I've been playing substantially better compared to last season and still can't get my Diamond 5 back. The closest I've gotten was Diamond 5 promos, but progressively dropped back down to Plat 3 again. My Win/Loss is also negative, lel. You can check out my ranked endeavors on http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=DanKnee. I believe that one of the issues is that I've been consistently Duoing with people and those are the games I tend to lose, whenever I solo queue I win more than half of my games but they're so boring.

Had fun with Karl/Pacov last night. Had a tough Summoners Rift loss that Pacov REALLY didn't enjoy but after that we got carried by Boaz in ARAM. haha

def going to check out mad max at some point.

That riven was rough and I was quite awful, but there was only one game that was super annoying last night.  Got a lux support that absolutely refused to purchase wards (maybe got 1-2 at most).  Guy was a bit of a twat having even requested to play support.  Bit of a bummer. 

So, I've done a few things recently that might be of interest to folks.  1st - I mapped a new button to use attack move click (AMC). So, what's AMC do?  Well, it moves your champ to wherever you clicked and attacks the closest target.  If you use AMC and you click around or near a specific target, then the attack will go there instead of just targeting the closest thing.  Anyway, if you haven't used AMC before and you just want to try it out to get a feel for it, just hold down shift and then click on a target or near a target.  That's the normal shortcut.  I used to use that and just started using a mouse button for it yesterday.  Takes some getting used to, but I find it helpful for targeting and its also useful for canceling the back portion of your auto attack animation.

Speaking of cancel auto attack animations, I'm really focused on this since I put all that time in on riven - and, imo, that being a big part of the difference between a good riven and a shite one.  Anyway, forgetting about riven for a moment, let me talk about auto attack animation canceling on ranged champs by issuing a move command. 

So, every auto attack in the game has a wind up animation, the actual attack taking place (eg the moment the ranged attack is sent (think the bullet leaves the gun) or the melee attack connects), and the wind down animation.  To use a clear, but exaggerated example, lets say the full animation length of caitlyn's auto attack takes 4 seconds.  The wind up takes 2 seconds, the autoattack or bullet is sent at exactly the 2 second mark, and then the rest of the animation takes place for those remaining 2 seconds.  Now, ranged champs are automatically stationary during that entire duration.  So in this example, you are literally standing still, by game design, for 4 seconds.  Now, you can actually cancel this 4 second animation at any time by issuing a move command (eg right click on something that is out of range or is the ground).  The catch is that if you issue that move command before the shot is fired (again, less than 2 seconds in this example), no auto attack dmg takes place.  BUT - if you issue that move command any time after the shot is released, then you can actually move - and if your attack speed is fast enough, you can issue another attack command. 

To completely beat this into the ground.  Let's use my bs caitlyn example.  Full AA animation takes 4 seconds, 2 sec wind up, shot immediately at 2 sec, 2 sec wind down.  Let's say she has an attack speed of 1.  So, cait clicks to auto attack.  2 seconds pass, the bullet leaves, you IMMEDIATELY issue a move command to cancel the wind down animation.  Now, you can queue up another auto attack.  You are limited by attack speed as to how quickly you can queue up another attack. 

Anyway, compare a cait that cancels their animation to a cait that does not.  1 is stationary and lands 1 shot every 4 seconds.  The other has potential to land 1 shot every 2 seconds or so.  Obviously, the person canceling the AA animation has high damage potential, not to mention a huge positioning advantage. 

Glad there will finally be someone who knows why I'm yelling "Oh what a day!  What a lovely day!" during teamfights.

The last thing I want to talk about is animation canceling and/or extending combos with flash.  I'd wager we've all seen the more common usage of this on gragas.  Graggy uses his dash to move in your direction, then flashes immediately.  His dash animation continues and now he can still hit you covering the same distance as a the dash while reducing your potential reaction time (mostly because its unexpected).   That's one easy to pull off example.

There are other cool things you can do.  Here's a neat vayne trick I learned and tried out yesterday.  Let's say you are on the bottom side of the map and you are 1 v 1 vs another adc (no one else is around).  Let's say you are both lined up north and south in a line, in auto attack range.  If you used your condemn, you will just knock them back to safety due to the whole north/south setup bit.  However, if you cast condemn and then flash to the left or right of them before the animation is finished, they will actually be condemned based on wherever you landed.  To reiterate, if you are in a north/south line and just condemn, the enemy will simply be knocked back north or south.  If you condemn, then immediately flash, the enemy will be knocked back based upon wherever you are standing when the animation finishes (post flash).  To the enemy, it will be pretty much instantaneous condemn as the exact moment your flash animation finishes, the condemn instantly begins the knockback. 

In short, not only does the flash cancel condemns animation, but is also enables you to reposition where the enemy will be knocked back instantly.  It's actually pretty easy to do as well.  To practice it, when you are out of range, cast condemn (eg so you run up to the enemy and then it is cast because you already issued the command).  Now, flash as soon as you are confident the command has been sent. 

Flash animation canceling is gigantic on riven as its another tool to not only reposition but to instantly land a stun with no animation delay.  Anyway, there are some abilities in the game that will allow you to carry the damage over to wherever you flash and others that will not.  Skipping obvious things like graggys dash, think about champs that have longer animations for various spells.  You can often chain those together by either casting the ability, then issuing a flash command to carry that abilities effect forward.  Worth toying around with anyway.

Last, if you want a really good example to try out animation canceling on, try out zyra.  Her wind up AA animation is very quick, while the wind down is much longer.  Just wait until you see the projectile moving and then issue a move command and see how much faster you can follow and damage.