Faith In Mind

This is a guide for a Leage of Legends champion named Janna, The Storm’s Fury!

Story:

There are those sorcerers who give themselves over to the primal powers of nature.  Originally an orphan growing up in the chaos that is the city of Zaun, Janna eked out what living she could on the streets.  Life was tough for the beautiful young girl on her own.  The rampant magic that characterizes Zaun was the first and most alluring tool which Janna realized could both protect and elevate her.  As many magicians do, she discovered that she had an affinity for a particular type of magic – the elemental magic of air.  She mastered her studies of air magic in a matter of months, almost as if she was born of it.  Janna went from a street vagrant to an avatar of the air virtually overnight.  Seeking to right the injustice in the world, particularly the insanity that has become the city of Zaun, Janna has brought her ethereal skills to the League of Legends.

”Do not be captivated by Janna’s beauty.  Like the wind, she is one gust away from terrible destruction.”

Standard templates for Janna consist of two main types, Support and AP Nuker. This guide was written in an effort to show people that there is a third option, a ranged DPS option. With her amazing movement speed and smooth attack animation she just begs to be used aggressively not sitting in the back trying to luck into tornado shots.

Skills: This section of the guide will include the listed skills and their abilities along with a brief overview of why or how we use them. A deeper insight into the tips and tricks of using Janna will be further discussed in the Tips section.

Tailwind- Increases the Movement Speed of all allied champions by 3%

Overview: Tailwind is Janna’s passive, it gives a global movement speed of 3% to not only Janna, but all of her teammates. This movement speed coupled with phantom dancer and her Zephyr skill allows Janna to dart in and out of combat like lighting laying waste and disappearing in the blink of an eye.

[Q] Howling Gale: By creating a localized change in pressure and temperature, Janna is able to create a small storm that grows in size with time. She can active the spell again to release the storm. On release this storm will fly towards the direction it was cast in, dealing damage and knocking away any enemies in its path.

Cooldown: 12 seconds

Cost: 110 / 130 / 150 / 170 / 190 Mana

Damage: 60/ 85/110/ 135 / 160 + AP + 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 damage for each second it charges.

Overview: This spell is the bread and butter of the AP/Support builds. It scales decently with AP and has a nice knock back ability. Only problem is it takes 5 seconds to make it a valid nuke later on and any player worth his salt is gonna see the whirlwind coming and get out of the way. We pick this skill last in our skill tree and use it for a makeshift snare. There is no cast animation you can cast it while running then instantly smash Q again to shoot it out and pop your opponent up in the air. With practice you will be able to time it to trigger when your Zephyr snare runs out for great burst damage on somebody trying to escape.

[W] Zephyr: Janna summons an air elemental that passively increases her movement speed and enables her to pass through units. She may also activate this ability to deal damage and slow an enemy’s movement speed. Passive: Increases Janna’s movement speed by 8 / 10 / 12 / 14 / 16%, and allows her to move through units. Active: Janna launches her elemental at the target dealing 60 / 115 / 170 / 225 / 280 (+1 per ability power) magic damage, and slowing their movement speed by 24 / 30 / 36 / 42 / 48% for 4 seconds.

Cooldown: 10 seconds

Cost: 40 / 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 Mana

Range: 600

Overview: This is our power ability and the ability that makes this build possible. At level 5 this skill gives us 16% movement speed, coupled with 3% tailwind and then +12% from phantom dancer gives us + 31% movement rate over most over other champions. This is stacking of movement speed puts you into the realm of the great chasers like Warwick and Blitzcrank. Zephyr allows you to dart in and out of combat, often running down a side lane to pop out of the grass behind them as they run from a group fight to pick off easy low life champions. Another useful tidbit is this skill doesn’t interrupt the attack chain. If you use this ability when you are auto attacking you can time it so that you Attack, Zephyr and then instantly auto attack again. This is clutch early game when coupled with Eye of the Storm early game for easily dominating your lane.

[E] Eye of the Storm: Janna conjures a defensive gale that shields her target from incoming damage while increasing their physical damage. Janna shields her target, absorbing 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+1 per ability power) damage and increasing the targets attack damage by 24 / 30 / 36 / 42 / 48 for 12 seconds (can target Turrets).

Cooldown:12 seconds

Cost:70 / 90 / 110 / 130 / 150 Mana

Range:800

Overview: Eye of the storm coupled with Zephyr is how we dominate our lane early game. Being able to ignore the first couple auto attacks or their first ability/nuke when jousting in lanes is crucial for lane survivability early on.  This spell is a life saver when you lane against other dominant harrassers such as Ashe, Teemo or Gangplank.

[R] Monsoon: Janna surrounds herself in a magical storm throwing enemies back. After the storm has settled, soothing winds heal nearby allies while the ability is active. Janna knocks surrounding enemies back and channels healing winds, restoring 60 / 100 / 140 (+0 per ability power) health to nearby allies each second.

Cooldown: 120 seconds

Cost: 200 / 275 / 350 Mana

Range: 725

Overview: This is the other spell we largely ignore for most of the game. Without going AP there is very little power to an already underpowered ult. I tend to pick up one point of Monsoon after i have rank 5 in both Eye and Zephyr. Its very handy in escaping from enemy ganks which is pretty much the only reason we use it.

Runes: Since I started working on this character template after beta was over and I no longer have access to the free runes I will have to update this section when the store is open. For the most part Im going to try to make a rune book of Crit Chance and Movement speed along with Armor Pen.

Masteries: I go a simple 21/0/9 build with her for right now.  I have a couple ideas I want to try and will update this guide as I get the talent tree points to try them out.

Spells: As of right now I almost always go Exhaust and Heal for my two summoner spells. Having double snare almost guarantees you an early game gank or two. Late game it helps you keep your allies alive by exhausting whatever carry or DPS user the enemy has as soon as the fight starts.  Heal is integral to our early game survivability and cant be exchanged.  I have tested out some other spells, but I have met with sub-par results. The low cost of your spells means you rarely need to use the mana heal. All of your Movement speed items means that ghost is virtualy useless.  Ignite isnt to bad, if I just COULDN’T use Exhaust, I would probably switch it to Ignite but it’s still not as good as Exhaust.

Skill Progression Tree:

There are basicly two types of skill progression for the attack Janna, A) The Harrasser and B) The Harrassed and they are both very similar.

A) The Harrasser

1. Zephyr
2. Eye
3. Zephyr
4. Eye
5. Zephyr
6. Eye
7. Zephyr
8. Howling Gale
9. Zephyr
10. Eye
11. Eye
12. Monsoon
13. Howling Gale
14. Howling Gale
15. Howling Gale
16. Howling Gale
17. Monsoon
18. Monsoon

This template gives us early game lane advantage through aggressive harrassment and health management via Zephyr and the damage shield portion of Eye of the Storm.  Late game when people start to have enough hitpoints to easily escape you, you start to pick up Howling Gale to give you an extra couple seconds of attacking via the knock up.

B) The Harrassed

1. Zephyr
2. Eye
3. Eye
4. Zephyr
5. Eye
6. Monsoon
7. Eye
8. Zephyr
9. Eye
10. Zephyr
11. Zephyr
12. Howling Gale
13. Howling Gale
14. Howling Gale
15. Howling Gale
16. Monsoon
17. Howling Gale
18. Monsoon

This template is for the rare occasion that you are getting overly harrassed either from a player who is just plain better than you (yes I know that never happens!) or you are stuck versus 2 other players in a PUG game where you cant get your teammates to switch. The focus on gettign Eye higher faster to give you the free 300 hitpoints and the ability to stay in the lane longer versus focused harrassment along with an earlier Monsoon for some regen.

Items: The section that seperates this build from all the other Janna builds, the items !  There is alot of temptation to try and juggle both AP and Atk damage through the use of items like Guinsoo’s and Nashors Tooth. I just cant justify the gold investment into these items with the limited damage return they offer. Maybe if there was 2-3 more hybrid items that worked both attack and ap  I might see it, but alone they are to costly for the return they provide for this template.

Early Game Items:

Meki Pendent + 2 Health Pots

Beserker Boots

Mid Game Items:

Zeal

Last Whisper

Late Game Items:

Infinity Edge

Phantom Dancer

That is a very basic untailored item build that generaly does well in games. With proper useage of Zephyr for harrassment/kills and Eye of the Storm for hitpoint defense you can very easily stay in your lane from the time the match starts till you have 2300 gold. At that point you go buy your Zerker boots and your Zeal. From there you build your items based on the champions you face.

If you are facing alot of HP heavy units or tanks you would modify your build. Switch out Infinity edge for Black Axe and ignore Phantom dancer and get Mandreds Bloodrazor. The attack speed from Razor makes up for the attack speed in Phantom while the HP attack covers the missing Crit Chance. Most tanks besides Singe dont move very fast so the missing movement speed from not building Phantom is acceptable.

If you are playing a match against alot of HP light champions you can move the Infinity Edge down in front of Last Whisper.

There are a few items which arn’t to bad but I have met with mixed results so dont often use them.  If you are just have a terrible time with their DPS focusing you, you can pick up Frozen Mallet. This gives you some extra DPS along with another snare to help you get away when you get low.

Somebody else mentioned that instead of last whisper to use Starks Fevor to supplement my attack speed. I tried it and it was “ok”. You never do big bursts of dps, as your more of a sustained DPS champ so the hitpoints you regen via life steal are pretty negeliable but its not a “bad” choice should you want to try something different.

The one item I havnt been able to throughly test is Trinity Force. It seems like it would be awfully good, but it is very expensive so I havn’t tried it yet. I will update the guide as I test this item extensively and find out if it has a home somewhere in the ATK Janna Build.

Tips and Tricks (work in progress)

In this section I plan on going over some of my choices in the skills and items that might seem alittle strange along with the reasoning or tactics behind the choices.

Early Lane Domination

This is a very important time for your champion as it sets the tone for the rest of your match. Early game you want to make sure you spam your Zephyr as much as possible. It has a retardedly low mana cost and almost always allows for an extra auto attack or two as they run away.  Make sure when you do shoot your snare at them that you have killed a majority of their creeps so they dont auto target you and wreck your hitpoints.  Once you have Eye of the Storm start casting this then running in and snaring for even more damage. You would be amazed at how fast a non-tank player can be pushed out of a lane by creep diving with Eye up.  After awhile they will learn that when you cast Eye they will back up and run away, this serves two purposes for us. Firstly everytime you put on your shield and run to their mage creep line and they fall back they are not only not getting gold from last hitting creeps, but depending on how far back they move, missing XP from the warrior creep deaths. Secondly it will setup possible traps later where you forgo the shield and just creep up slowly till you can leap forward and snare them. Time this tactic with a friendly to gank, and cast eye before you chase to add additional damage onto the pile.

Mid Game Ganking

Once mid-game time hits and people start to move around in lanes is where you really shine. Hopefully you have your boots, zeal and working on your next damage item by now and you can freely zoom around the map. Find somebody wish half life, go to the weeds and wait for them to get close. Jump out and snare and you and your teammate should be able to kill him before he makes it back to his tower. By now you should have a couple levels of Eye and with it up you can take a hit or two from the tower without getting hurt to badly. Be careful of this tactic as the towers damage grows exponetinaly and while it may do 0 damage the first strike, 50 damage the second, the third is going to take a huge chunk out of your HP total.

By the time you are level 10 you should have 4-5 levels of Eye of the storm. At this time you can easily solo the lizard buff with no problems taking virtualy 0 damage due to the recast time on Eye. By the time the lizard breaks the buff it refreshes in a second or two allowing you to keep it up and speed through it. This is very important to your ganking as it stacks with your zephyr for an even more brutal snare and allows you to dish out more damage till you get your DPS items.

Late Game Winning

Late game is pretty simple. You continue the lane ganking you started in mid game and up the ante with more and more dps as you gain your items. Whenever one of the enemy champions strays to far you should be there, waiting in the bushes to swoop out and demolish him.  Keep up constant pressure, with your movement speed you can jump from lane to lane with ease and whenever there is a temporary stalemate at one of the towers you should dart off to another lane to push a creep wave or two and then come back. This may not seem like a big deal but I’ve lost count the number of towers I’ve killed with just creeps by stalemating them in middle then pushing the top or bottom tower before they can realize im gone.  Make sure to incorporate Howling Gale into your arsenal late game for group fight disruption and 1v1 chasing.

End

This guide is a work in progress and as I try out new item combos or talent tree masteries I will update it as I see fit. Hope everybody not only enjoys guide but also the fun and power that is the Atk Janna!

I recently picked up the new Batman video game for the PS3. Normaly I tend to stay far away from video games that are based off of movies as I have an almost 100% hate ratio on said video games.  Recently I rented the new Wolverine game from Blockbuster and I was genuinely suprised at the quality of the game and this prompted me to test out Batman.

So far the game gets two FIM thumbs up.

The graphics are good, the sound is better. There is a definite creepy vibe you get while sneaking around a morgue in an insane asylum looking for the Scare Crow. The combat is fast paced and fluid. You basicly hit one button to attack then depending on how the thumb button is directed you do different moves. Your bat sense(thought that was supposed to be spider) flashes when a villian gets ready to swing.  Pushing the counter button continues the fluid movement into a arm bar or leg takedown to counter the attack and if you time it right you flow right back into offense. The more fluid and precise your attacks the longer the hit chain goes and the longer the hit chain the more experience you get. The experience is used to buy addons to your character in the form of better attacks, more armor, special gadgets like silly string explosives and bouncing batarangs.  There is a metric ton of hidden items in the game in the form of Riddlers Clues, paitent inteview tapes and weird glyph rocks. All of these unlock flavor and fluff on the batman universe. I actualy think I have just as much fun trying to find out about all the different villans that batman has fought over the years as I do playing the actual game.

All and all its a fun game and worth the rental. If it had multi player I’d recommend straight buying it.

So, I’ve played the new wolfenstein. Simply put single player is amazing. The story is fun and engaging, one of the best single player fps stories I’ve played in a long time. Like everything else in the wolfenstein world its over the top and fun. I will always have gaming memories of the first time I had to chase the hyper speed invisible nazi assasins through the dark tunnels, or fight the giant tesla tank in an abandon warehouse. The weapons are both standard and off the wall. Like every fps set in modern or semi modern times you have the standard machine guns, the bolt action sniper rifles ect, ect. Wolfenstein mixes standard and sci fi amazingly well. Use the bolt action sniper rifle when they are far away and when those zombie voodoo nazis get up in your face pull out the particle cannon and disentigrate them!  Use the tesla gun to shock your enemies to death but watch out they fire in random patterns as the voltage jerks their arm and trigger finger all over the place !

All and all I’m very impressed and happy with my purchase, something I can’t say all to often when it comes to FPS games.

So I bought a Belkin Speed Pad the other day for a number of reasons. I play Darkfall Online and because of the way the GUI is setup it would be very handy to have an easy way to bind macros to keys. Secondly I get pains in my wrists sometimes from over a decade of competitive gaming and it has a very nice ergonomic design to allieviate carpal tunnel pains.  So I’ve had it about a week and so far my reaction has been mixed. The design is very well laid out and streamlined for a gamer but it has one glaring flaw that should of easily been addressed.

It doesnt work sometimes.

Not all the time, just every couple of minutes I will press right to turn, and I just stop, I repress it and it kicks in again. You would think this wouldnt be that big of a deal but for a gamer its HUGE. This triggers on any of the keys, not just the movement keys so it gets compounded when your trying to use macros and they are not working in the order you press them. I have not had time to do much research on it, but I’m going to try and find out if there have been some firmware releases to update it, or maybe some better drivers or something. SURELY this wouldnt of gotten out of testing with such a glaring flaw. Im sure it’s some remedial glitch that comes from conflicts with Vista because for some reason people just dont give a shit about programing their drivers to work on the current OS anymore.

/rant

So I’ve had my Kindle for about a week now, and so far I have zero complaints. I take it out side, there is no glare. It’s light in my hands and the Ink Technology they use to turn pages is amazing. After reading for a couple minutes I completely forget im not holding a book. Also I normaly eat while reading, and being able to put it flat on the table and read it just fine is GREAT. I can keep one pinky clean to turn the pages and not have to use one whole hand to hold the book and possibly get the pages dirty.

I use my kindle almost daily since I got it and strongly recommend anybody whos an avid reader to pick one up. I havn’t develed to much into the blog/newspapre aspect of the Kindle yet, but for strictly book reading its a must. The only draw back is my ego, I used to enjoy inviting somebody over to my house and seeing the look on their face when they see my books stacked all across my wall. To hear the wonder in their voice when they say “Did you read all of those?”  Oh well, thats the way the binding bends I guess.

This Webpage , has the very stripped down version of the Faith in Mind poem. It has no documentation or translations, no commentary or views on what the lines mean. It just is. Which I kind of think is the point personaly.

Brutal Legends is coming out October 13th, it stars the voice acting of Jack Black as a kick ass metal guitarist whos teleported to another world…. a world that looks like the cover of every heavy metal album ever produced. I personaly think Jack Black is amazing, one of the great comedy geniuses of our time. I’ve been following his carreer way back before he was known when Tenacious D was doing little skits for comedy shows and HBO.

ANYWAYS I wanted to share this video with you guys. Its Tim Schafer the producer of Brutal Legends and the music director was a chick named Emily (didnt get the last name). This is a video of Tim trying to finish a Rubix Cube before she finishes reading off the list of the songs and artists.

Brutal Legends Video

A friend sent me a link to a Shirt company called Shirts Taste Good. Its basicly a Mobile Rick Rolling T-Shirt…. Its Awesome everybody order one.

I recently bought a Belkin n5st3 Tournament Edition Speed Pad for my gaming pleasure. Always a rabid gamer, I  can’t help but look for newer and better ways to play my games. This Speedpad is basicly like chopping off the left side of your keyboard and then removing the shift/caps/tab keys and replacing them with smaller keys. These smaller keys allow you to bind macroed keystrokes to them. For example say you are playing an FPS that requires you rebuy your items everytime you respawn. You could easily make a macro that did “B, 1, 3, 7, X’ to open the buy menu, buy items 1, 3, 7, then close the menu and bind it to one key allowing you to instantly shop with the click of the button. This macroed keyslots has alot more to do with MMORPGS these days than FPS’s. I currently play Darkfall and the way the UI is setup in darkfall only allows you to have 1 hotbar of 10 up at one time. Naturaly through out the course of your darkfall life you will rapidly outgrow your first 10 hotkeys, moving you into second and third tabs. So say you want to cast a spell, “Heal Other” which is on your third bar, but all of your weapon equips are on the first bar, and your currently on your second bar which has all of your melee moves.  Your macro would switch to hotbar one, equip staff, switch to hotbar 3 equip spell, cast spell, then switch to hotbar 1 re equip your melee weapon then jump back to bar 2 where you started from.

I just got my confirmation email from amazon saying it has been shipped so we will see on Tuesday how it works out. Only thing I’m worried about is the shape of the speedpad for my hand placement and wrists. One of the reasons I went lookign for it was that i have wrist pains sometimes so I wanted something that was more ergonomic. Only time will tell I guess.

image courtesy of Belkin.com

My Speed Pad came in, below are some of the pictures:

While playing with my new Kindle, I had a brainstorm. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it, but wow the possibilities of this are infinite. Imagine loading specialized textbooks into the kindle so that the kids carry all their books in one handy electronic device. Then imagine the books were interactive, set to scale in difficulty to the answers given. If the kid has a problem with a section of geometry then instead of just giving him a test and moving on, it continues to quiz and instruct him, or then notify the teacher via Kindle email if they are still having problems and need outside assistance. No more lost homework, its all electronic.

Think of all the trees we would save and i’m sure some megabillionaire companies would help with the cost of the kindles for each kid. Kinda like one computer for every kid linux push out there from a non-profit company.

Wow I really wish I was smart enough/rich enough to get this started.