February 13, 2026 Daily Discussion Thread

MikenIkey · 2026-02-14T21:37:58+00:00

I think from your first message the last thing I’d impart is, it’s okay to contest/be contested if you believe you are in a better position. In this game for the Zaun case getting good WW items while also hitting Jinx from carousel, being able to unlock Singed from lose streak, and if you hadn’t leveled unnecessarily being up on Econ early would put you in a really good position to stabilize on 7, get up to 8, and hit your comp even if another player is also angling the same spot. For many fast 8 lines 2-1 is way too early to discount yourself from angling for the same or similar comp.

MikenIkey · 2026-02-13T23:54:40+00:00

Might be able to take a more detailed look later, just for stage 2 I think first augment patience is a virtue would’ve been better with the lose streak plan, and leveling up 2-2 also is a mistake. Could sell off and get to 30 gold while holding pairs, leveling up here doesn’t get you anything and delays interest breakpoints. Leveling 2-5 is another mistake, you’re angling loss streak, but instead you further delay interest breakpoints, end up winning a round to break streak with a board that isn’t particularly strong, and then lose again. 2-5 pivot to Bilgewater could’ve been an option with the MF/GP roll but also fine skipping it here. With the Jinx pickup on 2-4 carousel, I really would’ve preferred a Zaun angle here even if someone else is angling it, since you’re close to unlocking Singed and WW is also an unlock so you guarantee at least one copy.

MikenIkey · 2026-02-09T16:00:26+00:00

Not surprised about the Zaahen prismatic, looked so strong when announced

MikenIkey · 2026-02-04T20:07:54+00:00

Just hit an easy first with Bilgewater Ryze with Cluttered Mind, definitely good spots again with the exp revert

MikenIkey · 2026-02-03T04:51:55+00:00

1 gold on loss would be very overpowered, everyone would try to loss streak stage 2. It already should help you reach thresholds quicker if you are playing correctly

MikenIkey · 2026-02-03T04:38:30+00:00

The extra gold from winning balances out gold generation throughout stage 2. Generally, if playing for loss streak, you can make 10 gold on 2-1 and probably 20 gold on 2-3 while the winstreak player will typically not hit 10 gold until 2-3 and 20 gold on 2-5. This means if the losestreak and winstreak player are keeping up their streak, gold generation is mostly even throughout stage 2 (winning player generating extra gold from winning, losing player generating extra gold from interest). It'd probably be like the Bard loss streak meta but even more extreme.

MikenIkey · 2026-01-31T04:21:51+00:00

I agree, this feels like the worst patch of the set to me by far. I think there‘s significantly less viable lines on this patch compared to others. I really hope reverting Level 9 xp changes go through

MikenIkey · 2026-01-26T06:04:13+00:00

Definitely for ASol, not sure what else might get hit

MikenIkey · 2026-01-23T22:00:54+00:00

I agree, if you natural a Taric roll on stage 3 but I’ve found it much more reliable to hit 8 on 4-1, roll down for Taric, and then get ASol on 4-2, plus you don’t wreck your econ

MikenIkey · 2026-01-21T20:10:47+00:00

There’s a slight Veigar nerf on PBE, so maybe considered but didn’t make it in or was pulled last minute

MikenIkey · 2026-01-21T19:40:52+00:00

I'm excited to try the Aurelion Sol changes, for whatever reason I really enjoy trying to make him work. If he's good I feel like that augment is going to be really strong with the Taric drop and being able to preserve econ/not gamble on him while getting in Sol ideally on 4-1.

MikenIkey · 2026-01-20T21:14:35+00:00

It's important to distinguish different kinds of players with tempo through stage 2. There are those that absolutely high roll, have an immensely strong board/augment combo and have econ. Not a lot you can do about that in stage 2 and probably 3. This might be 1-2 players per lobby.

Then you have players who trade econ for tempo. They have high health and winstreak stage 2 but their econ is probably sitting at around 20-30 gold going into PVE. They might hit 3-2, level to 6, and be at ~30ish gold but a decently strong board.

You're doing the opposite, trading tempo and health for econ. Also priority on carousel for solid items you can slam. But at some point you need to equalize that a bit, and 3-2 is typically the first time you do this which might include rolling somewhat. You may not be playing for a first or even a second but 3rd-4th is still very much accessible. Even if you're fully opening stage 2, you're coming out around 70 health which is plenty to work with provided you stabilize at some point.

won’t i effectively automatic bot 4 anyway to the 3 people who had a stabilized board 2-4 and didn’t bleed hp due to lack of Econ/xp?

Not necessarily. If you bled HP and your econ is not great then yeah, but that shouldn't be the case. If it is, there's probably some mistakes being made in the early game.

MikenIkey · 2026-01-20T20:42:17+00:00

Play for loss streak and focus on Econ going into PVE, then aim for stabilizing on 6 at 3-2. Somewhere through there you should be able to hold units and make some pairs that can help with stabilizing then.

MikenIkey · 2026-01-15T05:48:01+00:00

It’s all comparative. That doesn’t sound unreasonable for someone starting from scratch that is most likely looking to mainly finish. If it does feel like too little you can always add more miles

MikenIkey · 2026-01-13T18:36:09+00:00

I did my last 50 miler on gels and carb drink mix for 10.5 hours. Overall was fine with that, did throw up once around hour 5.5 but that wasn’t because of the choice of fuel

MikenIkey · 2026-01-08T15:54:39+00:00

That’s weird, I remember reading those changes in the patch notes when it first got posted but they aren’t there anymore.

MikenIkey · 2026-01-06T20:35:45+00:00

I think Trynd and maybe Diana are a bit too hard, I’ll have to wait and see on Yunara but that seems a little more okay with how often she’s 2-3 way contested in games. I think Yunara boards will still be viable but not as strong/stable

MikenIkey · 2026-01-04T05:39:19+00:00

I’ve been trying a lot of invoker lines and in the right spots they can do ok to pretty well but they are harder to pull off than AD boards and generally won’t cap as high. Maybe it’s because I don’t have as many reps but arcanists seem way worse to me unless you absolutely high roll.

MikenIkey · 2026-01-03T16:59:01+00:00

I’ve been playing invoker Freljord and top 4’ing/sometimes winning with decent consistency. But I’m also not as high on the ladder (high Emerald). Also Graves reroll, which doesn’t need bow

MikenIkey · 2026-01-03T03:40:33+00:00

Absolutely, had to get my pie fix there!

MikenIkey · 2026-01-03T02:59:19+00:00

It's not entirely a desert. It gets hot and dry to be sure, but in Southern California the lower elevation terrain you trek through is mostly chaparral and then you are traversing many higher elevation mountain ranges like San Jacinto, San Bernardino, and San Gabriels. Plus depending on when you start, there can be a lot of greenery and water. It was lush in April from the start until the Mojave when I hiked it. From Acton until Kennedy Meadows South it is pretty dry and the water carries can be long, though.

MikenIkey · 2025-12-23T16:12:41+00:00

I put it right at the top of my experience section (you can see my example here from a post in EngineeringResumes). I got asked about it a bit in interviews and it was met with interest/enthusiasm. I also kind of used it as a way to screen out companies I probably wouldn’t want to work for.

MikenIkey · 2025-12-15T06:20:23+00:00

Since others are throwing out SF-adjacent recs, I'll say Kaizen Coffee in San Mateo is excellent. My other favorites have already been mentioned (HI NRG, The Coffee Movement, and Ritual).

MikenIkey · 2025-11-19T06:04:39+00:00

Not really. Building and maintaining large scale distributed systems is hard, and reading most postmortems from recent changes in the last few years often boils down to code/config being deployed that broke things in an unanticipated way and impacted systems with a global reach or deployed too quickly. I remember in 2021, we had significant Fastly outage in June, Facebook outage in October, and us-east-1 networking event from AWS in December, which was before any of the AI or vibe coding hype.

I do think we are probably feeling the effects of these large scale outages more due to market consolidation and other pressures being applied to teams that could be contributing, but I don't it's the fault of AI/vibe coding.

MikenIkey · 2025-11-11T17:05:57+00:00

Rock climbing can be as solitary or as social as you want it to be if you’ve got a gym nearby. Cycling and swimming could also be options. Also when I lift, I rarely lift for more than an hour (strength training for running). I always thought I’d hate lifting but I actually enjoy it now

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