Hmm, well, I shouldn't say that, but it is a solid 90%, which would be I believe August 29th, 2022?

Anyway, an update on my Ashe build: I am beginning to lowkey suspect that the build is absolutely absurdly broken. In a game where I was being ultra-hard-camped with the enemy jungler not going to the top side of the map so much as once until well past the 20-minute mark to engage in full teamfights, and by a midlaner who never went top until well past the 20-minute mark to engage in full teamfights, with both permanently visiting botlane basically on repeat, nonstop.

I ended up with 11 deaths that game, tied for highest on my team. And I did lose first turret. No duh, I had what amounted to a permanent 1v2, 2v3, even 2v4 down there! Naturally, I was going to die a lot and lose my turret because of being dead so often and needing to base.

...And yet? We still won that game, in large part thanks to me. We got every drake in the game. (Although I admit, the one and only death of mine not to the enemy jungler or the enemy midlaner was during the third drake, where the enemy adc showed up while I was at very low health, but we still got it, so it was still worth.) Including the elder.

We got two barons.

I solo-took the cloud dragon that got us soul; I duo'd with my midlaner the elder. I even elder-zapped two members of the enemy team (and if the jungler hadn't oneshot me, I'd have probably solo-ended the game right then and there). I also even earned a solo-kill on the incredibly-fed-enemy midlaner! (Never killed their jungler tho.)

And you know what? In spite of the enemy team literally hardest of hard-camping my lane. I still out-cs'd my lane opponent, I still outdamaged my lane opponent, I had better stats across the board except in deaths, to my lane opponent. I, the adc with 11 deaths who lost first turret. Had some of the best stats in the game. And still won the game, in part due to repeatedly taking objectives.

I could not have had a harder game than that. The enemy team threw literally everything at me to shut me down, and targeted me specifically. They went out of their way to target me. As in, while four members of my team were sieging their base, they'd still send 2-3 members to try and kill me. And in spite of them having rather good success at doing precisely that. I was still relevant.

I was still more useful than my lane opponent who had a fraction of my deaths and who had the turret gold.

The enemy team tried hard to set their adc up for success and tried hard to shut me down. I still was one of the most dangerous members of my team, with literally the only enemy team member able to kill me being the enemy jungler oneshotting me. (I mean, one of the strongest junglers on the patch with a transformed muramana and full lethality in the form of a duskblade ghostblade edge of night and more who ran dark harvest and had to have had over 20 stacks on that rune, against an Ashe who has one of the squishiest builds possible. I aint living through that.)

An assassin jungler oneshotting me, being the one and only way to stop me, with me being able to kill literally everyone else on the enemy team, with me applying heavy pressure. And this, after being hard-hard camped.

Now imagine that if I hadn't been camped.

If I had free reign on botlane without being camped, I never lose my bottom turret and take one, maybe two towers. I probably also get kills in the 2v2, because there were at least 3-5 times where the only reason we didn't get those kills was due to the jungler or midlaner coming down to bail their botlane out. Over and over, we almost killed them, stopped by that presence alone.

Without that presence, we get those kills and hard-snowball through the botlane. 

This is the build I mentioned before, by the way. Lethal Tempo, Presence of Mind, Legend:Bloodline, Cut Down I think? (the middle one, using enemy's higher-than-you health), Transcendence, and Manaflow Band. With the extra runes of CDR and, normally, adaptive force + armor (this time I took double-armor due to a 4-AD comp, not that it did anything to help me since the jungler still oneshot me in spite of being ad and the midlaner was ap so in hindsight if I had known about them camping bot should've just gone for the normal adaptive force).

And building manamune, ionian boots, runaan's, phantom dancer, statikk shiv, and rapidfire cannon (to transition into essence reaver replacing rfc and infinity edge replacing statikk shiv and blade of ruined king replacing ionian boots).

Without being camped, I legitimately think there was a good chance I'd get to the upgraded full build. (As-was, I got to the zeal of the rfc so was on my final item!)

So I think that my build is actually broken on her. Cheap items, cheap powerspike, lane bully, scales well...I literally had a scoreline that looked like inting but was still crucial in winning, suggesting that I can easily play from behind with the build. If I can play from behind with the build, and can play ahead with the build even better...it's perfect.

Today was largely a self-care day and do-errands day, so I didn't really put the time in for writing. Right now, watching the OCS finals best of five, and that'll take the majority of my night even if it's a 3-0 sweep (which I doubt it will be).

There is some rather unpleasant news; my old dog, an 16-year-old fart of a toy fox terrier, got bitten badly by another dog; hopefully, he'll be alright (we did get him to the emergency vet fairly quickly).

But I'd prefer to focus on other things. I'm one game away from getting Yone to S on the spirit realm quest, and within reach of my third S+ as well. I knocked out all of my tft quests for the week, and I've been playing a fair amount of Nexus Blitz during the day, and even dabbled in Summoner's Rift while there's Draft during nights. (I stay far away from blind and ranked, because both are a whole different level of toxic.)

I've been trying out a build, but it's not quite the build that I said I wanted to. It's the same runes I said, and same core items; manamune into muramana, with ionian boots and runaan's and phantom dancer. From there, it should be the trio of infinity edge, essence reaver, and blade of the ruined king, with one of them replacing the boots.

I've been trying out the idea that, if the game went super-duper late, replacing items with those three, but running the cheapest build humanly possible, the cheapest six items for an adc to buy. Which happens to be manamune (2400), ionian boots of lucidity (900), and then...quadruple zeal items, with each and every single one of them being 2600.

No other build is cheaper. There's cheap builds, some using some of those items! Iceborn Gauntlet is 2700, only 100 gold more expensive. Lethality is also fairly cheap, with Umbral Glaive being 2400 and the rest of the items not being much higher, but while Umbral Glaive is 200 gold cheaper, Duskblade is 300 gold more expensive (bumping the gold to +100 a 4-zeal build), Edge of Night is also 300 gold more expensive (bumping it up to +400), ghostblade is also 300 more expensive (so, +700), and sanguine blade is 400 gold more expensive (bumping the full build to be 1100 gold more expensive).

But the cheapest full build for the most bang for the buck is Runaan's-Phantom Dancer-Statikk Shiv-Rapidfire Cannon.

I actually quite like it. Building four zeal items gets you the 100% crit on Ashe, whose passive makes heavy use out of crits. It gets good attack speed, which you can pair with lethal tempo. It gets good movement speed, basically doubling her movespeed (may be a slight exaggeration there). Plus, Runaan's Hurricane plus Statikk Shiv is disgusting waveclear from autoattacks and Ranger's Focus.

I can just right click, and bam, wave is basically cleared with one auto. Get a full four in, and the only way it's not gone is with a super or if it's baron'd up.

Then, there's the fact that zeal items actually have a fairly good resell value. They resell for 1820 gold, which is only a 580 gold loss. Not exactly the most efficient item to resell, but, still fairly price-effective. If I ever get to the full build and get 1480 gold (1580 for infinity edge), I can sell one of the zeal items and get a bf-sword-crit-item, essence reaver or infinity edge.

Get that a second time, I get both.

And then I can go for the BorK to replace the boots.

Of course, the build is flexible. Against a fully-full AP team, I ran MR, merc treads, and after building the manamune was building Wit's End (attack speed mr-item), Maw of Malmorteous (attack damage/cdr mr-item), and Mercurial Scimitar (lifesteal mr-item), with the intention of after getting that trio to finish the build off with something like death's dance or spirit visage.

I didn't win that game, didn't even finish the build, mind you, but in my defense: I was the only player, me the sole adc of our team, building MR, so we had no frontline because everyone on our team was squishy, even the "tanky" champions because they built armor/ap instead of mr. But I digress.

Another game, I saw that the enemy team had some incredibly tanky champions, or at least champions who could build tanky. (Amumu, Nunu, and Sett.) That game I still went manamune and ionian boots first, and then runaan's because I expected to be teamfighting early and often to spread bolts to the entire enemy team, but I was building BoRK after that. (We won before I finished it, butstill.) From there I'd probably have gone either ER or IE, then the other, not bothering with the quad-zeal strat.

So, I'm really liking the build. 

If I wasn't such a trash iron player who can't cs to save my life, I'd probably be able to get the initial full build in like 20 minutes and transition to the better full build by 30. But since I am, sadly, the initial full build is more like 30-35, and a transition would take to 40-50 minutes to obtain. One way or another, the game's probably over before I get there.

Ah well. I still think it's a really good build for me, so I'll be moving forward with it as my default bottom-lane rune choice.

I'm probably not going to work on anything tonight, OPL playoffs will eat up my evening presumably, so no work done, ah well.

On that note, I wanted to talk more about League for quite a long time.

I am still an Ashe onetrick.
But I can't always play her. When I'm autofilled to jungle, I've taken to playing Kindred. When Ashe is banned, I play a lifesteal on-hit Vladimir (think Kayle items: Gunblade Nashors Rageblade Beserkers Spirit Visage Death's Dance). Coincidentally, both use nearly-identical runes. I wanted to ramble on them for a long, long time, but I'll save it for another blog.

I wanted to talk about my progression on Ashe tonight specifically.

I've tried various setups. I tried an armor-shred Ashe, an on-hit build. PTA, BoRK, Runaan's, the idea being to build rageblade and black cleaver after that, and something more after that, don't remember--never got it off the ground because it never worked for me. Something similar to it might work for another player, but that style of play isn't me.

I've abandoned the idea that I'd run lifesteal Ashe for similar reasons in spite of how fun that is (tho every build I run tends to have a healing rune in it, beit bloodline or the domination one; only one getup doesn't have it, and even that one might if font of life allows you to heal as well, honestly not sure on how that works).

So I've been favoring poke-oriented builds.

I've got two or three (third was not always so) "tanky" Ashe builds; I've got two lethality Ashe builds; I've got two support-Ashe builds, and all of them work. (There is overlap there, btw. One support build is a tank build, one lethality build is also a support build.)

One tank Ashe build I play exclusively in toplane, because as a botlaner you're expected to deal damage and I wasn't convinced the build dealt enough damage. The idea of the build was to turn a squishy immobile adc into a tanky fairly mobile ranged tanky toplaner.

That build is Grasp-primary, with shield bash, minion deaths giving health, and I believe bone plating (tho most of those runes are flexible), with overheal and bloodline secondary. You take tabis or mercs, and build in whatever order the enemy champions dictate: Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, Death's Dance, Deadman's Plate, and Abyssal Voyage, with some flexibility built in.

It actually works remarkably well and functions exactly as advertised by and large, unless I face an unfamiliar champion to me and/or get ganked and set behind. I become tanky, ridiculously hard to kill, and provide a reasonable frontline, while offering the utility Ashe offers, with her ult, with her slows, etc. I really like it as a toplane build but I know it's only viable in that lane.

The other tank Ashe build is also a support build, but one which came back to my original theory behind building manamune on Ashe. It still runs Grasp-primary, but runs sorcery-secondary, transcendence and manaflow band. This one runs with font of life, due to no items/abilities giving a shield for shield bash. The build here is similar: rush manamune, build mercs/tabis whichever of the two is better, and then build exclusively items that give mana that're also tanky items.

The universal item I'm building first in that build is Zeke's Convergence--I know it is a support item, but it gives 300? mana, high armor, and also magic resistance. From there, depending on need, there's: Righteous Glory (300? mana, health regen), Iceborn Gauntlet (highest mana item at 500, gives waveclear, good armor), Frozen Heart (slows attacks, highest armor, 400? mana), and Abyssal Mask (400? mana, extra mr).

The idea of this build is obvious enough. It is basically to be the ultimate utility, with a good balance of everything. Still an immobile champion, sadly, but otherwise monstrously good. Absurdly tanky, good cc, arrows quick to be off cooldown from the cdr, and once the manamune transforms into the muramana, dealing the maximum possible damage, while also boosting an ally's damage potential.

I've run it both top and bot, concluded it's better top and works just as well as the other tank build. If not better. Every game I played it in, I was either even or ahead of my opponents! And then my botlane got crushed, losing that lane, and/or my jungler inted/fed, and/or my midlaner fed or even in one instance ragequitting the game. I never lost using it in laning phase and it worked to do exactly what I wanted it to do, every single time. But alas, it is not a 1v9 build so even if I won an isolated 1v1 or even surviving 1v2s, if my teams lose 4v4s or even 4v3s where they had number advantages, not much I can do!

Basically, the build I feel works and works really really well, so I quite like it. A tankier Ashe does remarkably good in toplane, the one and only flaw to be had is that botlane players sometimes want Ashe, which is problematic, and it's less effective of a build in the botlane 2v2 (still works, just not as well).

The next notable build of mine is a manamune into full-lethality Ashe mid: Dark Harvest paired with Cheap Shot (which is GODLY good on Ashe). From there, well, eyeball's the only real rune to use in that column, and when it comes to Hunters, the choice is between Ultimate Hunter and Ravenous Hunter. Ultimate Hunter would eventually allow for spamming arrows on a ridiculously low cooldown, but I'd have no lifesteal in the build unless I built sanguine blade (which I don't).

The secondary rune is sorcery. I used to run transcendence, before I realized that I never exceeded the cdr cap so all it'd do is get me to max-cd faster. Now I use manaflow band for some extra mana and mana regen, while running gathering storm. The build is manamune and ionian boots, into duskblade, into ideally ghostblade (for movespeed and highest lethality), and from there there's options: umbral glaive for ward sweeping/killing and cdr and extra lethality, or rapidfire cannon for extra range and built-in crit and extra movespeed. Technically those aren't mutually exclusive, that's six items, but games tend to not last long enough for me to get even remotely close to that full on the build.

I could, if forgoing the rfc, build either sanguine blade for high high high isolated damage and lifesteal, or edge of night for a spellshield to give me protection. 

This build is ridiculously squishy and rather immobile. But the poke hits like a truck and I don't think there's any higher-damage poke-oriented build for Ashe. Sure, sustained damage over time builds, probably are better builds, but poke damage from volleys and an ult that, post-muramana, can in of itself half-health any non-tank champion? It's a feel-good build.

I could run it botlane, but in botlane it tends to be less effective because it takes longer to get online and it's easier to get dove and harder to get influence and such, so I mostly run it midlane.

So that leaves the botlane, which uses the same exact runes between support/adc-Ashe, just building differently. Arcane comet, manaflow band, transcendence, and gathering storm, with presence of mind and bloodline as secondary. As the support, the build is spectral sickle as the support item into manamune into lethality, starting with ubral glaive, then duskblade, then maybe ghostblade. (Which, with ionian boots, would be full build.)

The idea of that is to poke poke poke and bully the enemy team, force them away with low healthbars. You want your adc to get the kills, minions, etc., so you just focus on utility but still deal significant damage.

As the adc, the build is manamune into...well. Into anything. If iceborn gauntlet is built, or abyssal mask is built, is fairly tanky. Other items would be rfc for crit, attack speed, range, and movepeed, and runaan's for crikt, waveclear, movespeed, and attack speed. You could maybe throw in an ER in there somewhere, too, for replenishing mana, extra crit, extra damage from excess cdr, and raw attack damage. It's really really good at poking, throwing volleys nonstop, and giving decent survivability. 

But I want to try out a new build now.

It was mathed out that, statistically speaking, in damage over time over a period of ten seconds in a sustained engage, the highest-possible damage build for Ashe, that is also the cheapest build possible, that is also applicable regardless of opponent's hp and at all stages of the game?

That's actually still a manamune into muramana build. But, manamune into runaan's into a suggested IE into something like Death's Dance into a final situational utility-based item, was what the person who mathed it out suggested. (That person being one of Cloud 9's ace adcs.) Running lethal tempo and inspiration, in their case approach velocity and magical footwear.

That build would, presumably, rely on autoattacking and kiting to an extent that, while it'd work for other Ashe players, has been shown to not be ideal to my style. The one and only autoattack build I've managed to not be trounced on is the lifesteal build, and even then it wasn't very remarkable. 

So I wanted to make a build that would still be good at poking, while also having the high damage of that sustained damage over time when actually autoattacking. 

The build I came up with is in fact circling back to lethal tempo as a rune, taking presence of mind, bloodline, and on the third I believe the one that does the most damage overall on Ashe is Cut Down. And as secondary, running sorcery, in this case, transcendence and manaflow band. Transcendence here is actually necessary due to a lack of cdr in the build otherwise and still wanting to get to that 40% mark. Well, I still only get 30%, between ionian boots, the cdr rune, and transcendence, buuuut, there is an option for that to get it up further.

I'd still run manamune, but then build Runaan's. The items I'd be looking to fill out the build: Phantom Dancer, Infinity Edge, Blade of the Ruined King, and Essence Reaver.

Not in that order necessarily, mind you. I'm honestly not sure what order to build in, I'm actually thinking cheapest item to most expensive, which would be phantom dancer into bork or er, then the other, with ie replacing boots as a sixth item if I ever got that far.

Phantom Dancer would help make me be less immobile, especially in tandem with Runaan's also giving movespeed. It'd give that shield to give temporary tankiness as well. Building it gives the 50% crit in tandem with Runaan's, and pairs well with the attack speed.

I've yet to test it out, but my theory here is that the manamune with presence of mind and manaflow band and a still-respectable 30% cdr from just ionian boots and runes. So I could still spam volleys, with volleys dealing pretty dang high damage post-transform (doubly so, with any of the items that have attack damage in them).

And then with high attack speed, being able to use autoattacks in tandem with that. Escape potential (especially with bork-pd, a classical combo), cheap build, good slows/damage, I wanna try it out and see if it works in practice.

We'll have to test it out sometime, but ah well. Probably not tonight.

So I've been watching a fair number of people play Civilization 6 recently--I'd never play that game because I like unit stacking and more importantly I hate hex movement squares (I much prefer the square grid where you can move all eight directions), but this does instill a deep-seated desire to play Civilization III.

I've been watching a fair number of people play Final Fantasy VII Remake--similarly, that's a game I'd never play because they turned it into a hack-and-slash, one of my least-favorite genres of all (I'm like pretty sure that it's up there with button mashers and first person shooters for being a definitive three least-favorite), and while the game does offer a "classic" mode, from my understanding, even the "classic" mode doesn't really change it from being nothing like the combat in the original version of the game.

...But it does make me want to play the original Final Fantasy VII, which I happen to own on steam!

I've been playing a little more League of Legends, and it's been going pretty well! I've been winning most of my games, though I've had this unfortunate situation where in games that I was performing exceptionally well, someone on my team either hard-ints or outright leaves the game (often both) leading to an inevitable loss, and the games I am winning I am getting hard-carried because I have a terrible K/DA, terrible farming, terrible stats, and am often underperforming.

Right now, on that front, I'm experimenting with running teleport instead of heal--this was initially an accident born of forgetting to change it back to heal after playing a One For All, not noticing it. But in the match, I ended up noticing that with how I played, I wasn't in a situation where I'd be using Heal. I didn't need it to save my life, nor need it to save my allies. And in the next game, got similarly promising results, though more recent results have been mixed where I've looked at that and went, "...this would probably have been livable with heal", but it's something that's still not definitive, still not sure of.

Other than that, mostly going the same. I start with cull because it gives better lifesteal than Doran's Blade, nearly identical attack damage, and allows me to get gold for my items sooner, which I often need due to being terrible at farming. (Yes, I know, cull is an item you'd normally expect to be taken because you're good at farming. But as a starting laning phase item, it can still help if you're dismal, because one extra gold per kill can mean the difference between an item or no item when you back.)

And then it's Manamune start, boots of Ionian Lucidity at convenience, and then I'm usually by default aiming for Runaan's Hurricane into RFC into Iceborn Gauntlet, except for when I need the tankiness of the Gauntlet to not die. Not that most of my games last long enough for that, of course. Win or lose, most games end within 25 minutes pretty much without fail right now it seems.

I also like to play Teamfight Tactics daily and am currently working on an annoying tft quest involving rerolling more than five times, fifteen times. Rerolling six times is 12 gold--not including any champions you'd want to pick up. Since by the time you're rerolling, there can be 2-3 champions on any given shop you want, costing 3-5 gold...if you buy any of them...well. You get the idea. It's hard to do.

I could of course brute force it. Level up to six, doable by about Krugs, then economize until 50 gold, wait a turn to get 62, and then ignore champions to reroll six times down to 50, but knowing me, I'll cave to the impulses. Get distracted, then end up not rerolling six times.

Another thing I've been doing more is minecraft. I haven't been playing much on my friend's server (though, there's no reason for me to not, that world has an incredibly good start to it, I love what I have there, I have just about everything I'd need), but I have been playing a ton on the server for Girbeagly, one of the streamers I love to watch a lot. (He's one of many inspirations to me that makes me want to do things with my life, knowing that even if he's not super-duper-mega-famous, he's still successful and also well-connected with celebrities as friends pretty much and that's basically the sort of person I could only dream I could possibly ever become if I got godly good luck on my side.)

And, yes.

I actually do want to make that book, now, about Sam Sidney Tailor, Projection. The superhero/supervillain who made the one key choice to differentiate the direction in their life. In spite of me knowing just how hard, how difficult, it would be to actually write that and make it work. I am not some genius who can write out in meticulous, realistic, detail a masterwork like Worm. I don't have the head for the logistics to, sayyyyy, write out how a supervillain would pull a heist on a bank or such. I don't do research like that, but I'd need to, and I wouldn't know how to make it work, and there's just all sorts of similar details, and yet that passion is still there. I want to do it.

And you know what's not on that list?
Phyrra and Cyrus.
Well.
It kinda sorta is, but in a different way than the above ones.
The above I have passion and active desire to do and know what I want to do in them, too. 
For Phyrra and Cyrus, I want to make it, but it's different--there's currently not the passion/active desire to, and there's the hardest of hard writers' block on how to make it, too. I don't know what to do even though I want to. There's the objective knowledge of knowing that, yes, I need to work on it, it won't get done if I don't, but I don't know what I want to do on it, and how to do it.

And there pretty definitively is not time to do all of these.
I'd be lucky to get one of them to the point I'd be happy about, yet alone, all of them.

​I suuuuuuuuuuuckkkkk.

Basically, talking a bit about pro teams. It's a little heartbreaking that Dignitas couldn't quite make it into the post-season because they fought hard and I think they are immensely good--so are the Golden Guardians, and so are the Immortals, and honestly it's disappointing that only one of them could make it in when all three were good enough to be worthy of it.

But, I was elated to see 100 Thieves make it through, even though they are currently as I am writing this, going into their make-or-break fifth game of the series. I'm watching pick/bans as I'm writing this pretty terrified because I really really want 100 Thieves to win. I don't want TSM to lose and it'll be sad if they do and if they win they'll certainly have earned it and I can't fault them for winning of they do, but I am just...I really really like 100 Thieves this year.

And as I have said before--this year, I can more or less say, "Go Clutch Gaming!" whenever Cloud9, Dignitas, or 100 Thieves play, because those are the three teams to have Clutch Gaming players. Casters keep on praising Vulcan as being one of the best supports in the LCS, if not the best; it's not like he magically got better in the off-season, so he was that good last year, too, on Clutch, he's just got an even better team this year to show off his skills.

And casters also keep praising Cody Sun, more or less saying that in spite of him being 'quiet', he amasses massive lategame power fairly silently and then slams the enemy team dealing massive damage, has good farm, good endgame k/da, doesn't die often, etc., and overall is probably one of the best adcs in the lcs--not as good as Zven, but better than most of the adcs around, almost always a bit of a stable rock for them to fall back on.

And the casters praised Ryoma, an Oceania import, from the OPL, expected to be losing against veteran midlaners as an lcs rookie from a minor region, but like. I am a big OPL fan, I legit think the region is majorly underrated and they have some really good talent, so seeing proof of concept in one of their star midlaners from that region popping off in playoffs...it warms my heart to see and I love to know that they're doing well.

...That being said, as much as I am cheering for them, as much as I love them, and want the casters' predictions of a TSM win to be wrong...as much as I hate it. Gotta say that TSM pretty much won the draft in my opinion, so I just don't think that they're going to win. I really really want to be wrong, I really really want 100 Thieves to win, but I don't see how they win this, not even with the first blood.

On the edge of my seat watching, tho! And hoping, and praying, they can pull it off. 

I kept on touting how Muramana can do some serious damage.
I kept on saying, 'this does deal damage'.
When pairing muramana with presence of mind (and in my case, also manaflow band), mana = damage.

Turns out that I was right.

It was brought up in the LEC broadcast what the stats for it are--a completed muramana could deal 90 damage...compared to the 80 damage of an infinity edge, as the broadcasters said. (As in, did do damage--as in, the person using the muramana was dealing the most damage in the game at that time.)

So I was right.
I am right.
I knew I was right.

Muramana is viable.
​So I'll be continuing to make use of it.

...But I did do work on Phyrra and Cyrus today.

Mostly came to talk about, courtesy of the LCK, my current challenge:
Mordekaiser, Irelia, Kai'sa, Rumble, Jarvan, and Miss Fortune--how to build a TFT comp using them.

First, expand it to have Kayle, for valkyrie and blademaster.

Then, probably expand to Fiora, to finish blademaster3 and get cybernetic (2/3) undergoing.

If I were to actually keep this comp, then there are options for the ninth.
Gangplank for demolitionist and strong power.

Drop a synergy to field Fizz (infiltrator 2 with Kai'sa) and Annie (for the mech)--you could do this by removing one of the core units (jarvan or mordekaiser), or by dropping Fiora to get rid of the blademaster synergy. Very viable and doable.

Keep all and field one of Ekko (for infiltrator 2 cybernetic 3) or Shaco (for infiltrator 2 dark star 3).

Or drop the rumble and field both Ekko and Shaco (for cybernetic 3, dark star 3, and a chance at infiltrator 4 if you get the spatula item for it).

Basically, I don't think, barring a force of nature, there's a way to make the comp with all six be viable, but if you drop one of the six and keep the other five, should be incredibly workable.

And I do want to try, because I actually managed to run my last comp--granted, I got a very very very early force of nature that game (two spatulas dropped at the same time), butstill, the fact I finished second (and it was a close second) shows that I did theorycraft correctly that the comp was at least somewhat viable. (Admittedly, again, I lucked out. Buthey, I'll take lucking out.)

Not too hard to guess by the lack of blog, so back to January 7th we go!
That said, today I did some marginal work, so, not back to the 6th yet (it'll happen soon enough), and, hey. If you got the chance to do what I did do yesterday, you'd take it, too. (Not gonna blog about that, but suffice to say, every second was worth it. Even staying up until 7:15 am.)

I should mention; I really really really love the third set of tft, and it might be my favorite set so far because there's so so so SO many comps that are viable and fun to run. I found a few ridiculously good comps. Comps using celestials, a comp using chronos, a space pirate comp (albeit finicky), there's just so many good ones though I admit that if I am aiming to win, I just spam star guardian/sorcerer since you can get both synergies to six and just obliterate everyone.
(Get a locket on one of your third-row units to give them the shield. Focus on getting large rods and tears. Get a chalice on one of the lower-mana star guardians, ideally Ahri. Maybe with a Seraph's, too. Put items like morello, jeweled gauntlet, etc. on Vel'koz and if you can, make him a star guardian so he spams his death-ray. You obliterate everyone, even comps with mana reavers, even infiltrators, just...everything. You can't always pull it off, you need the right items and to get all of the key units, but if you get it, you just WIN.)

But, I still like to play around.

I have a bit of a bad habit; when I watch games of professional League, I want to run games using units from the pro game, as a comp.

And right now, due to the OPL, my challenge is to build a comp with Graves, Miss Fortune, Thresh, Jarvan, and Kassadin.

That comp has built-in blaster 2 mana reaver 2, so there were a few champions I thought would help build it up.

Darius, for an early space pirate 2 and mana reaver 2 (because Thresh is a tier 5 unit).
Kayle or Kai'sa, for the Valkyrie 2.
Rakan or Xin Zhao for the Celestial 2 (Kassadin) Protector 2 (Jarvan) synergies. (Side-note, I know that Rakan with morello and shojin is really really strong, but I've never managed to get the items/champions to pull that combo off, sadface.)

And then, options for the ninth.

Any Chrono unit, for Chrono 2. (Generically, this would be Wukong.)

Build Pirate 4 by fielding Jayce and Gangplank--this notably requires ten slots, so impossible without force of nature, so if opting into Pirate 4, it'd come at the cost of sacrificing either the Valkyrie synergy or the Celestial/Protector synergies. (Probably the Valkyrie one.)

Build Blaster 4 by fielding Ezreal (for Chrono 2) and then...uhhh, Lucian I guess? (I don't remember all the blasters, he's the only one other than Ezreal Graves and MF I can remember.) Same story--this requires sacrificing either Darius (removing the pirate synergy) or the celestial/protector synergy (probably just getting rid of the eventually-redundant Darius).

Build Dark Star 3 by fielding Mordekaiser (for Vanguard 2 in tandem with a Jayce replacing the Darius to keep Pirate 2 once you have Thresh for the mana reaver) and then some third Dark Star. (Shaco, Karma, Jhin, Lux, any work but might be Shaco.) Again, this comes at the cost of sacrificing something, by necessity, the valkyrie synergy (because Jarvan uses the Protector synergy so can't give it up, and you want the Vanguard so don't want to give up the pirate synergy).

Maybe even go into Chrono 4, with I guess. Wukong Ezreal Thresh and some fourth Chrono? But, this feels like it gives up too much, you'd need to give up two units rather than just one.

Basically, I like to theorycraft, off of League pro games' champions showing up in a game, "how can I make a viable comp using these champions?", and this is what I came up with today.

We'll have to see if something like it could work, probably tomorrow tho given how late it is now.

...But I haven't missed a day yet and I do have ideas. I am typically saving my work for later in the day and spending earlier time doing more of for fun stuff. Like Minecraft. Right now, I am in a position where I am incredibly happy with what I am doing. I have fixed the issues with every single minecart I had--fun as the semi-automated transportation was (they would stop due to collisions and have a maximum range from a player, past which they wouldn't continue until a player came in range), due to it being semi-automatic rather than fully automatic, it wasn't reliable enough.

I have now established a system.
Every single minecart railing system has a chest, with the minecarts stored within. (It used to be that every single minecart railing system had the minecarts already on them.) Whenever I need to use a minecart, I can take it out and then take it to the desired location, then catapult it back to the starting location if I'm not going to take it back, or leave it there until I do take it back.

It's a system that does require forethought and foresight, to know where I am headed, not to forget, etc., but it's easy enough (if annoying) to fix any broken railings that go semi-auto. (I do need to fix the infinite one in my mineshaft tho, and I didn't have the heart to remove the cow/sheep from the surface one.)

The makeshift wall around the village is complete enough I think, and the torches are mostly there. I still need to make more of them, but I at least have them there. I also need to double-check that the torches cover everywhere and go below the surface to map out the caverns there.

I believe the iron golems provide some level of protection and mostly, I am working on getting traders up to master level and getting the trades I want. I got my fletcher up to master, though need to buy a couple of those items. Got my stonemason to master, but I need to buy additional quartz and quartz pillars.

Beyond that...

I haven't confirmed, but I suspect there's a second fisherman who I need to train to master.
I need to get an armorer.
If I have a butcher, I need to get them to master. If I don't, that needs to be done.
I need to get my Cartographer to master. (Not to mention, map out some key areas. My house, the village, etc. And store these maps.)
I need to get a Cleric. (This I can't do right now.)
If I have a leatherworker, I need to get them to master. If I don't, that needs to be done.
I need to get a Librarian. (Possible, but requires a bit of effort. I've been lazy.)
I have a toolsmith, but I need to get them to master (which is a pain because all I'm doing is buying stone axes).
If I have a shepherd, I need to get them to master. If I don't, that needs to be done.
​I have a weaponsmith, but I need to get them to master.

So I am grinding emeralds, selling to my farmers, selling to the fletcher (wood farm and slaughtering chickens en masse, mostly), to get the funds necessary to level them up.
Work is being done, slowly, surely, but eventually I will have a village where anything I want is readily available. As I said already, I already have bows/crossbows available with enchantments (not that I use them), a sword with kickback (it does have one less attack than my diamond sword, but one less attack with kickback > the extra attack), and an infinite supply of fishing rods (even though my current fishing rod will never break).

Getting things done!

I used the moba builder, and came up with this abomination.
I wanted to see what Ashe, Caitlyn, and Miss Fortune were, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that, immediately, they had one synergy together--Sniper. Granted, Sniper looks like a useless synergy, but I also saw the Chrono/Celestial synergies and tried to build them up. In the process, I also accidentally activated the Valkyrie synergy and took the Blaster (read: set one gunslinger) synergy up to four. 

Space Pirates sound like a better version of the original pirate synergy and I expect that to just be a game-winning comp automatically, but I haven't played around with it yet. Rebel sounds pretty useless, since it feels like a weaker version of the Shadow synergy.

Infiltrators are basically a hybrid of assassins and the shadow synergy; the shadow synergy aspect is somewhat weaker but the change from focus on crits to attack speed is one I think is reasonable enough I suppose. Still don't anticipate using it much.

Not gonna lie, the new blaster reads as being weaker than gunslingers so building blaster 4 sounds kinda troll, but I can easily see building an effective comp around it depending on circumstances. Mercenaries depending on how they work seem like the ultimate scalers.

Valkyries as a synergy sounds pretty weak, not going to lie, but we'll see how it works. Chrono sounds ridiculously broken as a synergy; it sounds like a hybrid Ranger/Lunar on steroids. And Celestial is a very very slightly nerfed Noble 6 synergy and feels ridiculously strong.

So, in actuality, will probably be building a celestial and/or chrono synergy, but hey, this is just pbe, I expect things to be different come live.

Looking at the synergies, Chrono has no secondary synergy built in, whereas Celestial does, and honestly, Celestial/Protector sounds like an even stronger version of Noble/Guardian. From those six, probably max Protector for eight, and then throw in a mystic for nine? The alternative is three mystics and keep protector at two, though you could also do mana reaver (doesn't sound op but might be), which via Shen, gives you an in to Blademaster/Chrono, for a final comp of Celestial 6 Blademaster 3 Protector 2 Mana Reaver 4 Chrono 2.

So, Celestial 6 Protector 4 Mystic 2, or Celestial 6 Protector 2 Mystic 4, or the above; Celestial 6 Blademaster 3 Protector 2 Mana Reaver 4 Chrono 2. That'd be this comp.
What makes Celestial even more busted: there's a Celestial item. This Celestial item can turn any unit into a Celestial to get healing from the celestial. And there's an item for Protector. Hoh boy Celestial/Protector is definitely the way to go here, to at least 4/2 on both of those but ideally 6 and maybe 4.

You could theoretically get Celestial 6 Protector 4 Blademaster 3 Mana Reaver 4 Chrono 2.
Or Celestial 6 Protector 4 Mystic 4.
But like I said. This is the pbe content right now, and I'm sure I'm overlooking plenty.

When the changes go live, I'll expect many of the broken combos that seem stupidly obvious to be nerfed into oblivion, and I will need to play around with what works, what doesn't, what can work in specific situations, etc.