The people who have voice chatted while playing League of Legends with me have noticed that I have nicknames for almost all the champions, some of them being pretty silly. Upon request, I am posting my nicknames for all the League of Legends champions released to date.

If the nickname field is blank, it means that I don’t have a nickname for that champion.

Champion	Nickname	Notes
Aatrox
Ahri	Fox
Akali	Knives
Alistar	Bull / Cow	Bull if he is doing well on my team, Cow if he is doing poorly on my team or is on the enemy team
Amumu	Mummy
Anivia	Bird / Walls / Egg	Normally Bird, becomes Walls if there is also an ultimate-form Quinn on the battlefield, becomes Egg when in passive form
Annie	Tibbers
Ashe	Arrow
Blitzcrank	Robot
Brand
Caitlyn	Sniper
Cassiopeia	CassiOPeia	Cassiopeia is so OP that she even has OP in her name
Cho’Gath	Dinosaur	I use the Jurassic Cho’Gath skin
Corki	Helicopter
Darius	Chop Chop
Diana
Dr. Mundo	Mundo
Draven
Evelynn	Eve
Ezreal	Esreal	S sound easier to pronounce than Z sound
Fiddlesticks	Caw Caw
Fiora
Fizz	Fiss	S sound easier to pronounce than Z sound
Galio
Gangplank
Garen	Demacia
Gragas	Graggy / Fatman	Graggy if I’m playing him, Fatman otherwise
Graves	Ed	This is the only champion my best friend can play well, and his name is Ed
Hecarim	Pony
Heimerdinger	Pimpmerdinger	Just look at that walk
Irelia
Janna
Jarvan IV	Helping	“I’m Jarvan, I’m helping”
Jax
Jayce
Jinx		I don’t have a nickname for her, but I sometimes sing her theme song when I’m dueling her
Karma	Sae Eleisa Va	A modification of one of her quotes, “Sae Eleisa Tera Vi”
Karthus	PhantomL0rd	PhantomL0rd is a famous Revive/Teleport Karthus player
Kassadin	Kass with a K	As opposed to Cass with a C (Cassiopeia)
Katarina	Ban Kat	I hate Katarina
Kayle	Adjustimacator
Kennen	Keenen
Kha’Zix	Jump
Kog’Maw	Cock’Mouth	No nickname if he is doing well on my team, Cock’Mouth if he is doing poorly on my team or is on the enemy team
LeBlanc
Lee Sin	Ree Singah
Leona
Lissandra
Lucian	Blackman
Lulu	Lulululululululu
Lux	Laser
Malphite	Rock
Malzahar
Maokai	Tree
Master Yi
Miss Fortune
Mordekaiser	BR	EHUEHUEHUE
Morgana	Angel
Nami	Fish
Nasus	Dog
Nautilus
Nidalee	Hotshotnidaleegg	http://youtu.be/uG0v-eQ_XPs
Nocturne	Darkness
Nunu	Nununononunu
Olaf	Oraff
Orianna	Ball
Pantheon	Mantheon	Manly Mantheon and his Mandrops
Poppy	Who’s that?
Quinn	Bird	No nickname normally, becomes Bird when in ultimate form
Rammus	Ok
Renekton	Crocodile	I usually let out a vicious roar every time he uses his ultimate
Rengar	WTF
Riven		Riven needs to be removed from the game
Rumble
Ryze
Sejuani
Shaco	ShAco	Pronounced ShAco, not Shahko
Shen
Shyvana	Dragon	Normally Dragon, no nickname if we’re fighting near the Dragon objective
Singed	Poison Trail	HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Sion	Old Aatrox	Aatrox is basically a newer version of AD Sion
Sivir	Duck	“Better duck!”
Skarner	Mysterious Skarner
Sona
Soraka	Heals
Swain	Crowstorm
Syndra	Balls
Talon
Taric	Gayman
Teemo	Teeto
Thresh	Chresh
Tristana	Rocket	“Is that a rocket in your pocket?”
Trundle	Chundoe
Tryndamere	Trandamurr
Twisted Fate	Trash
Twitch	Rat
Udyr
Urgot
Varus
Vayne
Veigar	Midget
Vel’Koz	Eyeball
Vi
Viktor
Vladimir	Blood
Volibear	Bear
Warwick
Wukong	Monkey
Xerath
Xin Zhao		I don’t have a nickname for him, but I make martial arts sounds whenever I see him fighting
Yasuo	Coward	Dashes around randomly like a retarded headless chicken until you die to minions
Yorick	Gravedigger
Zac	Blobs
Zed	Sed	S sound easier to pronounce than Z sound
Ziggs		I don’t have a nickname for him, but I usually imitate his laugh when fighting with him
Zilean	Clock
Zyra	Plant Lady

If you talked with me at all yesterday, you may have noticed that I was fully immersed in keeping up with a massive electronic attack, manned by a group called DERP Trolling. To keep things simple, they used DDoS attacks to shut down a bunch of different popular game servers. The methodology used to determine which games to attack involved PhantomL0rd.

James Varga, better known by his online identity PhantomL0rd, is a very popular independent League of Legends streamer and online entertainer. During the time of these DDoS attacks, PhantomL0rd was one of the top streamers broadcasting League of Legends. The League of Legends servers went down, and PhantomL0rd’s game disconnected, just like everyone else’s.

PhantomL0rd decided to play different games, but he realized that all of these games were being targeted as well (even a game site as obscure as Club Penguin). After noticing that all of his games of choice were being targeted, he accepted DERP Trolling’s attempts to reach out to him and communicate with him. They hopped around Ventrilo and IRC and had some short broken conversations for as long as they could until someone would attack the Ventrilo or IRC server they were using to shut it down.

This is where things get a little bit confusing, and is the reason why I am making this post to help people understand exactly what happened.

While in the loading screen of a game of League of Legends, PhantomL0rd randomly disappeared. Then, someone else who had possession of his Twitch account’s log-in credentials (likely his brother Nick) signed in and stated that the police were at PhantomL0rd’s house due to a “hostage situation.” Many people believe that DERP Trolling called the police to PhantomL0rd’s house, but that is not true.

On December 30, 2013 at 5:04 PM PST, PhantomL0rd’s personal information was leaked on to the In­ternet through a Pastebin post (which still has not been removed due to the incompetence of the Pastebin staff). The supposed motive behind this posting is because someone was dissatisfied at the fact Phan­tom­L0rd was publicizing DDoSers and “raking in the cash.” PhantomL0rd was labeled as pathetic, and his information was released to the public.

After this happened, a troll called the police, falsely accusing PhantomL0rd of having four hostages in­side his house. Again, this was NOT DERP Trolling who made the call, it was someone else who found out his address through the posting. While this was happening, DERP Trolling was posting from their Twitter account showing their concerns for PhantomL0rd.

PhantomL0rd’s house was thoroughly searched by the police while he sat in the back of a police vehicle. When the police found out that it was clearly a false alarm, they let PhantomL0rd go with no criminal charges. Since then, PhantomL0rd has been constantly receiving text messages, phone calls, and pizzas delivered to his house.

The most ironic part about this stream is that, when he began streaming, PhantomL0rd titled his broad­cast as being a “chill day.” I don’t think he could’ve had a day any less chill.

PhantomL0rd streamed, telling this story from his own perspective. If you’d like to learn more about this with greater detail, you can check out his video replay.

Back in the All-Stars game of 2013, Riot let the viewers preview Magma Chamber, a new 1v1 and 2v2 map coming to League of Legends.

If you can’t tell from the image, Magma Chamber is a map designed to look like middle lane, but much smaller. There is only one turret (because once one turret is destroyed, the owner of that turret loses the game). The rest of the map (including all jungle camps) is also gone.

I was particularly interested and looking forward to the release of Magma Chamber because in 5v5 games on Summoner’s Rift, I always get set back by the enemy jungler. I can have complete, dominating con­trol over my lane, then the enemy jungler shows up and makes me instantly lose my lane. I play extremely aggressively, so I usually don’t get much help from my own jungler because I am pushed up so far.

In Magma Chamber, I wouldn’t have to worry about another random person interfering with my winning lane, so I felt like I would excel at it. Unfortunately, I found out today that the 1v1 and 2v2 map they released was not Magma Chamber, but instead a modified version of the all random all mid (ARAM) map.

The worst part about this map is that the lane resembles top lane, with two bushes placed inside the actual lane. I tried playing 1v1s on the map, and my only two losses so far have been when the enemy player bush juked me about 6 times in a row before I finally died to enemy minions. The worst part is that you can’t even buy wards on this map, so the only real counter play for bush juking is gone.

Overall, I’m extremely dissatisfied with this update. I think it’s literally so rushed and bad that Riot was better off just not releasing this update and delaying it some more. Some might claim that I’m being harsher than I should because I have a bias in favor for mid lane, seeing as I’m a mid laner and I ba­si­cal­ly got ripped off by top lane, but either way, this isn’t up to par with the quality I hope from League of Legends.

The patch notes for 3.13 recently came out, and one of the champions changed was Zyra. Being a Zyra main, a bunch of people asked me about my opinions on her changes. I am personally fine with the changes, and feel like Zyra somewhat deserved them, but this is coming from a middle laner. Someone who mains Zyra as a support will probably say that she was significantly nerfed.

In the middle lane, the first and most significant change to Zyra is her ability to dominate melee champions in early levels. Zyra’s Deadly Bloom (Q) + plant combo was so powerful that after hitting it twice, most early-level melee champions wouldn’t have enough health to go anywhere near Zyra to harass her. If they did go in to harass her anyway and fail to kill her, they would continue to get poked to death by plants and auto attacks as they’re retreating.

To reduce her power, Riot reduced the range on Deadly Bloom and reduced the early-level base damage on her plants. According to the current numbers, her plant damage is the same as pre-patch at level 6, and has increased damage after level 6.

This allows melee champions to have more counterplay to Zyra – the amount of poke damage will be slightly reduced during levels 1-5, and Zyra needs to get a tiny bit closer to harass. The damage at level 6 is the same as before, but this is acceptable as, by that time, the melee champions will have their ultimate abilities and be able to fight back.

The next noticeable change is that Zyra can now safely initiate with Stranglethorns (R) and not have to worry about losing the attack speed bonus to plants. This is because Stranglethorns was changed such that plants spawned inside the area while it is active will still get enraged. This allows Zyra to better chain her crowd control upon a catch, as she doesn’t need to wait until her plants spawn to place her ultimate on top of them.

The biggest changes to Zyra come with playing her as a support. The base damage on her Deadly Bloom was reduced, but her ability power ratio was increased. In order for Deadly Bloom (at rank 5) to deal the same amount of damage as prior to the patch, a Zyra must have 500 AP. Zyra with more than 500 AP will deal more damage with her Deadly Bloom compared to before the patch.

One of the reasons support Zyra was so powerful was because of the very high base damages on her abilities. Normally when I play Zyra as a support, I usually deal significantly more damage than my AD carry due to the initial burst, then the constant pummeling of the plants. This change ensures that if Zyra players want to continue dealing heavy damage, they must itemize to do so.

Earlier today, I got promoted to Platinum V in solo/duo queue ranked in League of Legends.

I was in Silver IV and Silver III for the longest time, so people assumed that that’s where I belonged. I decided to take League of Legends a little bit more seriously lately to demonstrate that I could very easily get myself into Platinum whenever I wanted.

It took me about a week to get from Silver IV to Gold V. This happened before my laptop broke. After I got a replacement laptop, I spent another six days playing ranked to get myself from Gold V to Platinum V. During the process, I skipped Gold IV and Gold II because the rating system thought my skill was far higher than my ranking. Overall, out of days played, it took about two weeks for me to get from Silver IV to Platinum V by playing anywhere between 1-5 games per day.

So, what’s my secret? I’ll share.

• I stopped giving up in the middle of the game. When things weren’t going my way, I was patient and kept trying my best, rather than randomly walking around the map doing nothing.
• I stopped playing purely to have fun, and started playing to win. When I wanted to do something exciting and crazy, but knew it would hurt my chances of winning the game, I refrained from doing it.
• I stopped raging at my allies. When they did things that made me unhappy, I did not express my discontent.
• I complimented my allies. When I noticed my allies did something well, I pointed it out so they knew I noticed all the hard work they’re putting into the team. This ultimately motivated them to keep performing well.
• When I didn’t get the lane I wanted (middle), I negotiated. Before, I would just pick a random champion and go to whatever lane was open, then feed and give up after ten minutes. Instead, I asked the higher-pick person who wanted to go to middle lane if there were any other lanes (s)he was able to play, and tried to negotiate to see if I could get my main role.
• I asked my allies for help. If I still wasn’t able to get middle lane, I asked my allies for advice as to what I should be doing in the other roles with which I was unfamiliar, rather than doing whatever I wanted, feeding, and giving up after ten minutes.

I ended up going almost undefeated as middle lane Zyra – I only lost one game throughout my entire journey, when I was duo queueing with Ed (Grainyrice). I still ended up losing a majority of the games where I did not go middle, but it happened a lot less frequently than normal due to my attempts at negotiating positions.

So, I think this proves two important things. First is that I was skilled enough all along to be at the very least a platinum-level player. As of right now, I’m still getting +26 LP per victory, which indicates that the rating system has low confidence in my ranking. In simpler terms, it thinks I still belong higher than I am right now, and wants to get me there as quickly as possible.

The second is that your attitude is very important in League of Legends – so important that changing my apathetic and negative attitude into something positive brought me up from silver to platinum.

If you’re having trouble getting to a league and/or division you want, try making sure your attitude is prepared to bring you there. Be patient with your allies, and don’t let their poor performance affect your positivity. Even if someone is intentionally feeding (as in, purposely running down middle lane and suiciding to the turret), stay positive. Joke around with them and try to make them your friend. I did, and I was able to carry a game that I thought was going to be a 4 vs. 6.