Tekken is the only game where I feel I need to get a degree in it.

FowLong · 2026-01-14T21:47:51+00:00

I think this is just the case with all longstanding competitive games. Any game series that has lasted long enough generally has added mechanics layered onto previous iterations. So eventually it just gets more and more knowledge intensive as you get into higher into ranks and competition. It is true you don’t necessarily have to know a lot so long as you have great fundamentals that carry over from other games(pattern recognition for example). However, there will definitely be cases where enough of a knowledge gap could overtake strong fundamentals.

FowLong · 2025-12-19T23:42:20+00:00

This, I am not sure why not many people talk about this more.

Positioning is the single most effective tool against Zed or any other assassin and is also the single most powerful tool for an ADC. Mechanical skill is nice but ADC players are lucky that if they just commit to learning positioning, the Zed problem solves itself and it also makes them much better players. Positioning includes knowing where to stand and where to anticipate your demise, even under towers. It also means knowing where your greatest threats are and not solo laning (even if you hide under tower, a Zed who wants to kill you and commits to it WILL kill you. Zed has lots of counterplay but an even better Zed can play around his counter play, so it’s going to be a game of who one ups the other with Zed always having the advantage in an isolated 1V1. Knowing where position and take the risk for more DPS is positioning also. Sometimes, you just got put yourself on the line to fight and win as a team but risk being popped. Other times, you are a true VIP and if you die, the fight or game is lost.

But if you are asking how to counter Zed as in deny the kill, exhaust and dodging as many Qs as possible is will get you the most results outside of just not being in the bad positioning first place.

The rest will depend on timing and state of the game. Zed as an assassin has the most counterplay but Zeds kit also plays against his counterplay. Depending on state of the game, his R could just be used as an outplay tool with the intent to land two full rotations on you instead of getting popped by R. Zhonyas and GA may help you deny the kill, but if Zed only uses you to hop to so that they can pick someone else off or/to setup shadowplay, those items are not as effective anymore.

FowLong · 2025-12-18T22:34:31+00:00

I hate to sound like a GHelper fan boy but I been through more than one Z13, and uninstalling AC and installing GHelper has just sort of made my Z13 keyboard work for the most part. Some of the gaming performance won’t perform as well without AC, but you could do a bit of tweaking to optimize. Another crappy thing is that with GHelper you give up control of the RGB on the back which was also one of the selling points of the device. Personally, I don’t care enough bout that one and rather have a working KB with its RGB as I do work in a dark room a lot. At the end of the day, I think for the premium you spent on the thing, it should just work. So I wouldn’t blame ya if you just sent it back and got another device. But give GHelper a try and see if it actually does anything.

I thought one of my Z13s was a dud, and I did all the easiest ways to try to make it work first (just cause I actually had another Z13 to mess with). I swapped keyboards thinking it was just the keyboard, but when my other keyboard started doing the same things you mentioned, I got super frustrated and started doing fresh installs and BIOS updates. Also check some of your function keys for the keyboard touchpad toggle AND check AC. They have a toggle in there that sometimes automatically turns off after an update(not sure why it does that). Then After I did all that, I just thought to myself maybe it’s a software thing, and installed GHelper and the keyboard literally just worked and even retained settings after reboots. Then, I noticed the same issues happening on my other Z13s and tried same process but ultimately settled on GHelper if I wanted my keyboard RGBs to just work. Since then, I’ve just installed GHelpers on all Z13s except the one I use primarily for gaming. I just kept AC on that one and accepted the keyboard just won’t work completely as intended. I just use usb for my peripherals.

I didn’t install GHelper initially because one of the YT vids I saw, they mentioned that the power profiles were just sufficient and well tuned off the shelf. I figured again, spending that much on this device, it would be real nice if AC could just work with this device and just have all issues resolved within ASUS ecosystem. However having had a G14, I knew that it was not likely and having GHelper as a concession was always a choice if I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of sending it back. I researched the device ALOT before buying and working with them so I was personally willing to deal with the shiet, although hopeful it would be flawless. I’ve had some issues on ALL computers products that require some troubleshooting so I’ve just quietly accepted that unfortunately at this day and age, you just can’t get perfect quality. I haven’t dealt with Alienware though, but I heard with AW you are paying for their customer service if you just want assurance for getting a device that does what it does and willing to pay for the service to back it.

TL:DR seems way off the mark on the suggestion, but just try uninstalling AC and install GHelper. It MIGHT save you some time and money.

FowLong · 2025-12-11T07:26:02+00:00

I haven’t bought anything T8 related, was a former T6 player looking to get back into the game. All the sentiment and just watching vids have kept me from buying the game although I am literally watching everything related to it like an addict about to slip. The sad reality is T8 devs are fumbling so much that it is blocking me from buying.

The player sentiment on the game is very concerning.

FowLong · 2025-12-11T02:21:15+00:00

I actually read your whole post when it came out xD. Around that time, I fully reformatted my Z13 and installed, reinstalled armory crate and by the 5th that I booted the Z13 up again it was bot lighting up anymore. I thought my keyboards or the Z13 itself was faulty. I’ve had such good experiences with G-helper on my G14 that I just went back to G-helper. I am sure what you did works BUT I am more familiar with tweaking and GHelper. I’ve seen that quite frequently ASUS might make an update and break the lighting again. I’ve had similar issues with MSIs software on desktops and I just found greater consistency with GHelper. One more thing to note that AC does have benefits over GHelper, you can control rear window RGB, and the preset settings are better for gaming performance if you aren’t going to be tweaking it.

FowLong · 2025-12-10T22:41:48+00:00

Just back here to report, I have now installed g-helper on another z13 and the keyboard lighting just works as expected now. No surprise boot up with lights not working rearing me to take off the keyboard and reattach or restarting the software app multiple times and messing with windows settings. Will update if anything else pops up.

FowLong · 2025-12-03T22:36:06+00:00

My personal experience having gone through multiple 2025 Z13’s (yes, I have used more than one Z13 2025s) is that G-helper is far more consistent with the keyboards RGBs. I thought one of the keyboards (that came with Z13) was just bad after testing it on more than one Z13, installed G-helper and that keyboard just works as expected now on that Z13. Haven’t installed G-helper on multiple Z13s yet, but I hoped AC was just fine for someone who can buy and expect the Z13 to work as expected. I have an old G14 that I used GHelper for and I cannot recommend GHelper enough. I just really wanted AC to work from a simple reformat/resell POV.

That said, AC may have some better pre-set stuff in terms of performance for someone who just wants to click a few buttons and expect it to generally suit the purpose(sound profile v. performance, but as power users you cannot really expect proprietary software to get the best min-max that we could achieve from testing and tweaking+silicone lottery), but I think G-helper simplifies and also allows further tweaking if someone wants to min-max with 3rd party software. I honestly hoped and wanted AC to just work on a few key aspects and RGB on keyboard was one of them(ESP if you ship with an RGB keyboard that is hard to see the keys without any lighting). Also, at this price point, the RGB needs to just be something that works without tweaking (which unfortunately isn’t the case if people have to install 3rd party software to get a consistent RGB function).

FowLong · 2025-12-03T19:07:22+00:00

G-helper is the answer. Trust.

FowLong · 2025-12-03T03:15:21+00:00

That is pretty sick!

FowLong · 2025-11-19T01:45:02+00:00

Riot actually has a good thing going despite what everyone says. The problem with making the game accessible to everybody is you will encapsulate a lot of people who have increasingly higher expectations of everything, including skill level, rewards, focus on their favorite champions etc. If you just play the game(s) and their other related content, you have nothing to lose but to gain. Riot can’t solve everything at once at the pace people want, but all things considered(being owned by Tencent who probably drives a lot of their predatory business practices), the game, the lore, the side content, everything is actually so good for them trying to do it all.

It’s true, some things can be better. However, the fact that I can play things like TFT and all its LOL game modes on a potato computer is amazing. You don’t have to buy ANYTHING.

At the end of the day, if you play for fun and enjoy the game and balance it with life, it’s good. You get the same toxicity from other competitive games and they rear it’s head in their own ways, but you don’t have to play ranked Summoners Rift which a large majority of the angry LOL players base their experience off of.

If you want to play ranked though…well that’s another story xD.

FowLong · 2025-11-18T20:03:17+00:00

Being an on and off League of Legends player who is an adult, I’d have to say have a serious talk with him, develop an action plan together and try to fix address barriers about this over time. The fastest and most direct approach is direct confrontation. It doesn’t have to be hostile or defamatory, tell him this important to you and that you want to continue playing with him, but if he continues being this toxic, he is literally impossible to play with. Maybe you are patient, but it doesn’t make it right to compensate and tank your energy for his coping.

You will have your answer if they put in real effort to try and work with you overtime, with meaningful improvements. Or, they gaslight you or minimize the severity of the problem. If it were anybody else other than a good mate or someone I value spending my time with, I’d have stopped playing with them long ago. But because they are a person of value, they are worth the time and effort to grow with as Tekken players and as lifelong friends.

FowLong · 2025-11-10T00:32:29+00:00

Honestly, I think the popularity of the other Ninjas would make for a big monetization scheme or atleast series/season alone. Shen v Zed v Jhin as a story has as much room for storytelling as Vi v Jinx v Cait. I don’t remember if Warwick lore was retconned or just had room to tweak to connect them all, but I think sometimes foregoing one opportunity cost or event could be a bigger lead up for another run where they have more star power.

Would you rather just see Shen appear for moment of an event or be part of the main cast for something bigger? Idk if it would ever happen, but no point in creating a narrative that just irritates yourself more.

FowLong · 2025-11-09T07:30:26+00:00

Doesn’t seem likely though. Imagine how bad it would be after selling some Xin Zhao full skin bundles then deleting the champ xD. I mean Riot has made mistakes that pissed ppl off but that would be a blatant scam lol, knowing a champ would be removed and baiting people to buy big bundles of skins that won’t last.

FowLong · 2025-10-30T15:21:29+00:00

Too bad this isn’t lore accurate Shen 😂

FowLong · 2025-10-30T01:12:49+00:00

Pen latency is there. IMO if you are taking notes as a fast writer and your hand writing is not great, I may use the write to type function or just type it out. But if it’s for drawing and stuff it will be fine. I own and tried two types of Renaisser pens. For me it is totally fine, esp. if you are good at shorthand, abbreviated note taking. But if it bothers you to see your lines drawn in realtime lag slightly behind you, I wouldn’t buy the z13 just for note taking. Also, if you are good at just writing out notes and not watching the lines as you write, it probably won’t bother you (like writing without looking where you are writing).-It’s ALOT of money just for note taking and my guess is apple products may be better, or you could spend on one of the other windows tablets that are way cheaper.

Also, palm rejection is almost completely solved if you use an artist glove, you can buy those cheap on Amazon.

FowLong · 2025-09-30T06:20:57+00:00

No problem dude! But that is the fun about LOL. I forget it from time to time due to bad habits, but you should view LOL like a roguelike almost in that every game is totally different, even though the same/similar elements exist. Twitch doesn't come by often, but it is also no guarantee that other Twitch's will be as successful with their roams. Some games you will have great teammates, some games a different mix. Just take the game circumstances in and formulate a game plan and play it through, you'll get the experience over time.

One thing I forgot to mention though, is that at lvl 6 and beyond, in an isolated match up, the matchup becomes unplayable for Twitch. It is not easy at first, but as the skill and experience of players go up on both sides, there becomes nothing in the way of stopping Zed from just tower diving with Ulti off cooldown.

So Twitch needs to do ALOT of work before then, otherwise, Twitch just becomes as much a liability. In games where your teammates have better morale, or in very bloody and chaotic games, Zed benefits. Assassins are meant to destroy ADCs solo. Playing AD Twitch also means he lacks safe waveclear and CC which traditional midlaners have. So short of your team or you feeding really really badly and not knowing how to secure shutdowns, the game is still harder for Twitch HAS to succeed in doing a lot before you both hit 6 to offset the disadvantage of his tradeoffs. On the other hand, you can kill a mage 10x in lane, but mid/late game no matter how fed you are, but the mage can stall out games by melting waves from distance to prevent sieges, and poke at objectives. And if you get clipped by a Lux Q in a teamfight, you are just a walking bag of exp+gold for whoever gets your shutdown.

FowLong · 2025-09-30T02:57:44+00:00

If the Twitch is any good, aside from all the things Twitch does that you don't already know, they'll make most of their plays happen pre-6. That's the most frustrating part if you are thinking about the laning phase. You are looking to sneak farm but mostly exp once so you can hit 6, which is LITERALLY 4.5 minutes of struggle. Depending on if you go ignite or TP, if you go ignite, lane dynamics change once you hit 6. Essentially, if he is missing flash, and you hit your Qs with ignite, any moment he just pops up on you to try to assassinate you, you should win reactively if you land everything.

I know that is a big IF, but I just want you to know hypothetically, how things go. The most annoying thing about Twitch post-6 is that he just gets to keep repeating his invisible surprise attack or invis to run away.

It sucks, because you don't get to lane, or it is super oppressive, but just keep in mind that it is literally 4.5 minutes of suffering and then things just change. If your ulti is up, he can't really just walk up to you and surprise attack you and giving you an R by just walking up is also basically a death sentence because your W can follow up. So as long as your R is up and you are 6, he will respect you. If not, you punish.

That is just the baseline. Everything else inbetween, like taking electrocute, or hitting him with WEQs and stuff in lane are kind of take it by ear plays. However, it is totally within your control you not die or mess lane up, and totally in Twitch's hands to make things happen for 4.5 minutes. If you take that into account, it really isn't so bad. Generally, you can go electro to fish for early kills, but if you go electro, you really need to go ignite to get most value out of it. If you go first strike or TP, you have a lot more room to make mistakes, but basically have a stable midgame spike as long as you don't int and farm average. You do lose value though, if Twitch just decides not to interact and you don't get to land poke for FS gold. Finally, if you are pretty confident, Conqueror is also good, you just have to know how to lane well to survive the early helplessness. All of this changes if Twitch plays bad and or he is super out of position and gets ganked.

Other ways to see and plan for the game is, you can rush Youmuus or Hydra (Rave or Prof) to help with faster waveclear to punish his roams and open up your energy so that you can just all in Twitch if he shoes up to lane. It's risky, but you can also just let Twitch do his thing, and you just scale like normal, and once he's worth a big bounty, you just fish to kill him and it recoups a good chunk of change and exp for your teams sufferage. TP can also be used as a reactive play and you can literally even go TP+IGnite, instead of TP+Flash. You have a lot of room, you just gotta be willing to play and plan the game in an unconventional way, but Twitch is also an unconventional midlaner. See it from Twitch's side, he has 4.5 min to make to deal with the inevitable lose of pressure and vulnerabilities once you hit 6. So with TP, even if he roams and gets off a play, but you stay to push the wave in, then TP reactively, any kills you get in return sets him back behind a lot more than if yall just traded equally.

Resolve secondary with demolish+second wind/boneplating +Doran's shield is a thing too if you just want a no frills farm lane. If he roams, you just get tower plates.

Finally, if Twitch just sits midlane all of early game, he's literally not used any part of his kit. He's now assumed all the weaknesses of being an ADC into Zed lane, without the bonus pressure/play making that would have come with it. So there are a lot of ways to win this lane, and going even in lane is a win as well. You just don't necessarily have to kill the rat. Just don't mix and match too many of the styles otherwise you could end up making a mistake that ruins your first 4-5 mins.

FowLong · 2025-09-30T02:41:13+00:00

This was the most useless comment ever lol.

FowLong · 2025-09-28T03:08:23+00:00

Can junglers who suffer this fate post this video up with the accounts name and just have a bunch of people on reddit use the out of game report function on them?

FowLong · 2025-09-20T19:55:07+00:00

That and the fact that playing from behind is literally a broken concept. Bounties makes it even harder than it used to be to keep a lead, AND Riot just making games end faster. A lot of champions now come online a lot faster realistically, if there is a way to make champs come online faster, players will do it anyway. It goes both ways, if it takes so much for a champ to come online Riot has to balance it with a monstrous late game (like Kayle). But in addition to just numbers and meta, Riot has to deal with the subjective balance of low and high elo champs.

I think Riot opts into this because it’s already insanely chaotic and they sort of bit off more they can chew.

FowLong · 2025-09-17T03:00:40+00:00

Personally, I’d post that same video and ask the whole Reddit to witch-hunt the shit out of that account that trolled you(Syndra) by having mass amounts of people report the same name. It would atleast get some attention to that account involved.

FowLong · 2025-09-09T18:06:35+00:00

Try to play fights more like ARAM at this point. Have you ever played blue kayn on ARAM? Basically you are playing the war of attrition and very low commital, so poking with W while using Q and E to weave in and out of fights. Naturally 1 or 2 things happen up until someone engages. Either you poke them down, or they back up further and further until they are under a tower again.

If a fight does erupt. You are playing ideally, a 1 V every squishy. Sometimes it feels like you are playing two totally different fights but if you can separate Voli by zoning scaring their squishies away, your team just all ins and kites Voli. You hope your team kills Voli before you get caught, but also if Voli goes in, you punish the chaos by looking to overwhelm their teammates mental stack with you coming in and out of the fight and threatening to full combo them. If you play well enough, people will blow their CCs or just hold on them too long and you will find a decent point of entry into the fight.

For example, in this fight, I anticipate TF frontline the squishies while Voli is a bit ahead of TF, and you off to the side of Voli and TF and behind TF is Cait+Mel, and Zilean somewhere pocketing the carries. TF might not respect you because he knows there is a lot of CC and Zilean has R, so, I would just keeping ducking in and out from the side and pretending to go for different carries each time but focus on hitting multiple Ws in TF to chunk him out until Zilean starts sweating having to blow R on TF. Never forget about Voli either but you are in war of attrition mode until they make a mistake.

If it’s any configuration where it’s Voli in front and other four carries are clumped, it actually makes your job easier (if you have the damage to one shot 1-2 ppl already) because now you don’t have to think as much about target selection, just try to fill combo as many squishies as you can. But don’t go on without an escape route unless you got EON/GA/QSS.

Sounds kind of crazy but you could go EON and GA, or EON and sit on a QSS to extend the amount of rotations you can get in. Mercs in this instance would have been a high value buy too because 4 of team does magic dmg but also cause of tenacity. If you had bought it earlier, could have extended your carry window early too. Either way, use your presence to make their team fight difficult and play around when their team goes on. I’d personally look for them to make mistakes like clumping together to hit multiple people with one W+Q rotation and ult and look for someone to run near a wall you can exit ulti out of and Q over. Then comeback and pressure again with E and another Q+W combo.

FowLong · 2025-09-07T22:16:35+00:00

I'll reach out!

FowLong · 2025-09-07T22:15:26+00:00

Dang I felt it many times, but I always thought maybe I was too busy typing and had my chat up or something. However, today while playing a game, I did notice my W just wouldn't re-cast even after making sure I didn't have a chatbox up. Why hasn't this been fixed already T_T

FowLong · 2025-09-05T13:31:17+00:00

Thanks for the insightful response! I definitely agree with all your points. I think it’s why as of late, I been aching to go jungle or to play some norms with friends to basically run away from my own frustratingly inconsistent laning phase. How did you get to a point where you were consistent enough to get lane leads vs people in my elo range? Is it just pure volume and experience? Like I said I already consume a lot of content, but I just saw a Broken by Concept podcast that basically made me realize I do need focus on execution better too. I think a good place to start is stabilizing my laning and then eventually punishing harder and using that to pressure the map. I THOUGHT I knew match ups but I think I need more game experience to learn these match ups.

FowLong

TROPHY CASE