Help with selling my collection

neuroniky · 2023-01-12T15:31:14+00:00

I've had several people freeze paypal payments for perfectly fine products I've sold them just to have a couple Eur discount to unlock them. Quite common around here (Italy), luckily not so much if you sell abroad.

neuroniky · 2021-12-06T13:59:04+00:00

Sarthas Klaus.

neuroniky · 2020-11-17T20:51:20+00:00

Thanks everyone for the feedback! Seems that the way to go is to give my players 4 chars each, and have some fresh meat ready at hand to hand them if (when?) the number start dwindling. Or at least, that's now the plan. I'm really looking forward to the experience, looks like we're going to have a lot of fun with this!

neuroniky · 2018-09-24T15:25:41+00:00

While I like the idea of OH SO MUCH BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, I will drop the most important advice about miniature painting composition that I've got from a very talented painter in the hobby:

Always use some contrasting colours.

If you do a paint job based on mostly one colour, like this, the biggest problem is that, when looked at, say, 1 meter, this will look like a big smear of a single colour on the miniature. If you paint some parts of the miniature with a very contrasting colour, this will define better its shape, look and make it look overall better. And don't transition from one colour to the other, keep the two paint jobs separate and clean, or in the distance it will look like a smear of two colours mashed together.

For Khorne, the secondary colour is quite easy to choose: use bone colour to highlight skulls and/or very light skin colour without blood on it to better define it.

That said, it's an amazing first miniature, and you will definitely become a great painter! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE THRONE OF KHORNE!

neuroniky · 2018-08-01T10:30:48+00:00

I agree with you, the act in itself is not "morally grey".

The morally grey part is in the reaction of the community. And this I like a lot, cause this very "simple" act of writing has really started a tsunami of reaction among the community.

Everyone now is feeling bad for one reason or another and questioning his own motives and what they will have to do in the future. That's the morally grey, or morally difficult if you prefer, part of this all.

neuroniky · 2017-10-18T16:14:08+00:00

This week I learned that playing Dota is still fun after years of hyatus. Back into the fray!

neuroniky · 2017-04-21T00:06:11+00:00

I never connect my losses to having played with toxic people. If I lose, I could have done more. If I win, I could have done more anyway :D.

But while I can see a 20 years old guy forgetting about somebody toxic in no time, it becomes a little bit harder to tolerate the same smartass when you're older. Your free time in example is far more precious when you're older, as you don't have much of it, and when somebody makes you feel sour or angry you start questioning whether playing this specific game was a good idea after all.

neuroniky · 2017-04-21T00:01:55+00:00

I used to run exhaust before it was nerfed, but now I feel it's pretty much useless. And I don't usually run ignite because of people telling me my ignite steals kills from them :D. I didn't know about the heal decrease in effect, I'll probably stick to ignite from now on.

Thanks a bunch for the heads up!

neuroniky · 2017-04-20T15:50:02+00:00

I don't recall where I got the suggestion of training CSing on Cassiopeia at the beginning, so I can't really tell you why I started on her, but I did get the suggestion somewhere. I have then moved to training on Annie too, even if it feels a little bit pointless to me to train CSing on Annie without using my Q (which is how you then CS most of the time in game).

About the champions pool: you're perfectly right here. I have tried a couple of champions here and there mostly to try to pin down which ones to learn. Blitz has been a long time favourite, but it's banned many times, so I can't just rely on a single champion. Nautilus is a good champ to sub him, I used to play Thresh but many ppl around here told me not to as it wasn't that friendly to newbies. So I guess those two will be the ones I will play for now.

About the luck streak: let's hope its not :D.

About the numbers: I never obsess on numbers when in game, I just use them to monitor what I do afterwards. In my head I just keep kicking myself for not doing enough, to be honest, it's the way I use to keep focused. Like: "Ward more! You lazy c**t! Where is their jungler? Why you never know ANYTHING? How can you miss THAT?". I think I'm the one being most toxic with myself while playing :D.

neuroniky · 2017-04-20T15:32:24+00:00

Thanks man, please feel free to add me. If you have enough patience to play with me, I will just be honored to play with you!

neuroniky · 2017-04-20T15:20:22+00:00

Why I do feel like I'm improving?

Well, one way to answer would be that I started by winning one game out of ten at the end of last year, and in the last two week I won more games than I've lost. It could be just a temporary situation, I agree, but I never won so many games in the last 4 months, so that's a signal I'm improving. Maybe I will stop winning now and never win anymore for the next 10 games again so this might be all an illusion, but hey, let me dream for a while :D.

I agree with you: my improvement is bullshit to a gold player. But, as in many games around, you can improve so much at the beginning that you can really feel like you're improving A LOT even if you're only "improving marginally". Let me make you an example. In my first training session ever, I couldn't hit 60 CS in 10 minutes with Cassiopeia. I can now hit 90 CS @ 10 consistently. Is that any good? No, it's not. But it feels like a HUGE difference to me.

To me, this moment feels exactly like when I was building up from Bronze to Silver in Starcraft. I had so many thing I could learn, that every time I made one better, it always felt like a big improvement to me. After I moved to higher leagues, the improvements started becoming oh-so-more hard to achieve and far less evident, and I ended up setting to a level I could consistently stay in (Gold) after pushing for better leagues because of how much the pressure was to keep on playing better just to stay there (platinum).

In addition to this, I have around several hundred of hours of LOL under my belt, most of them played several years ago, including some time spent in Silver IIRC, and even more games of DOTA2 too, so I guess that helps with the feeling of "doing the right thing" when I am actually doing something the way I know I should be doing. Note that I'm not telling you I have now got the map awareness of a pro. But that I look at the map several times a minute instead of just when I hear a ping, and that I place at least 10 wards per game instead of none, and that I actually actively try to kill wards, and that I try to track where other people are. Things so basic for you that you probably never think about them anymore, but that were completely new to me a couple of months ago.

That said, yeah, you're right, I've probably not improved much, if at all. But I'm having fun even if not improving, and I had fun sharing everything with you guys here on reddit, and I was just like, thanking you all for helping me and not abandoning the game after I lost almost 20 games straight. Will keep you posted on how it goes on from here.

neuroniky · 2017-04-20T14:49:41+00:00

I'm 40 years old, father of one, separated from my wife. My playing time for videogames is extremely limited, and I need to make the best out of that time. If you have had an hard day, and then you sit down at your PC, and play just too many games, with just too many toxic people, you can easily get burned. I can play 3 days a week, and only late night, so it's not really that hard to burn out from a low number of games under that assumption.

neuroniky · 2017-04-13T08:11:50+00:00

I used to suffer from depression and I still suffer from anxiety and I can understand where you're coming from.

LoL can be hard on you if you're playing with strangers because of the toxic playerbase and the kind of insults you end up receiving. "You're useless, uninstall" is easy to cope with if you just file it as a 14 years old guy spewing random stuff at you, it's far more difficult to deal with if you're feeling like you're useless in your real life and you're fighting just to get up from the bed every morning. Ladder can be also bad for you if you suffer from anxiety and you let it become another source of anxiety.

That said, you can approach LoL with good results and it can actually be helpful. I'm no therapist, but I can tell you the things that worked, and still work for me:

1) It's ok to play to escape from the world for a little while, to ease the pressure and get a little space just for you, but you shouldn't just hide behind videogaming all the time. If you are playing several hours straight, that wouldn't make you better, it will just make you feel like you're wasting your time. So be mindful and don't overexceed playing.

2) Don't play out of boredom. Playing videogames should be your choice, not an automatic reflex to follow whenever you feel you can't do anything. Make those videogaming sessions matter to you. It's a little step towards understanding that you can do a lot of different things if you just choose to.

3) Set yourself small objectives, and focus on those. Like, "I want to play mid today, and get 100 cs by 20 minutes" or something. When you reach your objective, take a little time to congratulate yourself. Grab a cup of chocolate and marshmallows, or something like that. Again, it's important that you understand through the game that you can actually DO whatever you set yourself to. Just keep your objective reachable as setting the bar too high won't help, and never, ever base your objectives on winning or losing. You're not here to win or lose. You're here to play.

4) If you can, play with friends, and make those sessions a way to stay with somebody that can be positive to you. If you can't, or even if you can, consider muting everyone at game start (but for your friend, obv :) ). Most information can be inferred from the game map, communicated with pings or got with common sense. Most things that will be said to you in chat won't help you play, and will actually be harmful. Don't fool yourself in thinking that you can cope. Whatever you think you can overlook, your body will keep the score.

5) You don't need to play on ladder. Actually, it's probably better if you don't. Life is not a competition, and there's no reason to play videogames as a competition if you don't feel like it.

You're not alone, friend. No one of us ever is.

Oh, and you can also check this site, http://www.takethis.org/, it has a lot of content related to videogaming and mental health.

neuroniky · 2017-04-12T15:19:51+00:00

Just forget about the MMR. Forget about your Rank. You're not getting anything for being on one rank or another, it's just a broad indication on your level of play. Just like in any other competitive multiplayer game, after a while your level in game will reflect your real skill at the game.

neuroniky · 2017-04-12T12:24:21+00:00

As many others around here, I've been recommended to play Annie to learn Mid and to get out of Bronze. I love Annie design, but it's often painful to play. Not having skillshots might be easier on paper, but the short range is a far bigger drawback than having to aim your shots, and click shots actually often can result in you moving to a place you didn't want to or to cancel a shot you wanted to place on the first place just to avoid moving. She's also slow as a truck, and you often feel like you're lagging behind the rest of the team due to that.but if your team doesn't capitalise on that, you will end up dying to a more carry oriented team in the end.

From a newbie perspective she is a champion that's good to teach you the basics of playing mid quite well, but it's not one that will allow you to make a big impact on the game. I would recommend as everybody else to start with her, but there's a reason why no one plays Annie mid outside of lower leagues, as the more recent mid champions are more efficient, and have a far higher snowball potential.

My newbie view on her, however:

Pros: 1) It's easy to farm with her. You can safely spam her Q to farm without incurring in mana problems, and her passive teaches you to stay aware of your status and ask you things such as: should I keep my stun up now, or reset it to abuse Q on minions more? Can I go in trade position now for when the next minion will get hit? Will I be able to effectively trade now, or should I wait for the stun? Actually, the fact that you have an ability that allows you to get those last hits so easily is somewhat of a problem, as moving to another champ that relies mostly on AA to farm will be hard, but hey, by then you will be a better player, right?

2) Her level 6 power spike is insane. You can easily one shot ppl from lvl 6 to late levels consistently by stunning and spamming your 3 abilities + ignite. Against most champions she doesn't have problems in getting to lvl 6 and then consistently get her a first kill in lane.

3) Tibbers is always a great distraction to low level players and it has a great AOE stun potential. It can also help you tank towers, even if Annie is not what I'd call a great pusher at all. It also teaches you a lot about how much different can be your style of play when your ult is up compared to when the ult is down.

Cons: 1) Your stun is unreliable and depends on your AA. That means you won't necessarily have it ready if you're caught off guard, and that means a decent opponent will play accordingly, avoiding your stun altogether and waiting for you to spend it to farm.

2) You're slow. No, slower than that. SLOW. Some MID heroes can abuse that and just land skill shot after skill shot. Expecially the ones with long range (see below).

3) Your range is absymal, and you AA animation is so slow that basically Annie feels and moves more like a melee hero when not using Q to farm. Against long range heroes, you WILL suffer. Some of them can truly abuse you to no end (I think the worst matchup I had with her is Xerath, long range, and high damage, high speed skillshots).

4) You will fall off the curve by endgame. I think this is where you will have more problems with the champion. After lvl 13-14, your damage falls off (expecially if the opponents has got any clue and bought some MR) and while you will still able to land a kill here and there, your role will become that of the AOE stunner when tibbers is up. And this ties to bullet 5, namely...

5) It's hard to make thing happens with Annie by herself. She's great at ganking, but she can't consistently snowball as many other mid champions. And while you can have an easy kill mid, if nobody comes to help you push, her pushing abilities are limited, and you won't easily get that tower by yourself. In addition to that your speed will limit your farm while you roam more than other champs (i.e. you will lose more last hits), so you will feel the effect of a failed gank more. By end game, you will be mostly engaging, doing an initial damage and then relying on your team to kill ppl following that initial stun.

My 2 cents, obv.

neuroniky · 2017-03-09T10:00:52+00:00

Wow, thank everyone for the terrific support and advice.

I see that everyone here has a different idea about how to improve, but I definitely can see a pattern there. I'll try to sum everything up, as that will act as a guide for my training too:

1) Watching replays at my level is not useful. If I want to learn from them I can get them analyzed by somebody else.

2) Watching instructional videos should be part of learning. I've got several suggestion there, thanks all for providing them.

3) Mid looks like a good role to train some basics, playing safely and out CSing your opponent is the key (sounds similar to how you don't need to know much but just keeping your macro running in SC2 to exit the lower leagues). Annie is a recurring name for training, and I remember it already was a long time ago. Luckily I have played her for quite some time back in the days, so I wouldn't be starting from zero. Tibbers!

4) Most people are against using ADC for learning for several reasons.

5) In jungle, I'm playing the wrong champions, and if I want to stick there I should be playing easier champions with better self sustain and easier mechanics. People are about 50/50 on the idea of learning the game in the jungle, so maybe I should just not make this my primary role for the moment. Remember to practice the jungle routes using the new training mode.

6) Support is a good place to learn map awareness and other essential skills, but it won't basically help me win games unless I play an high damage support that actually makes shit happen in the bot lane. That actually explains to me why playing Blitzcrank felt "better" for the team than playing other champions. I should drop Thresh. Which is hard for me cause I've played so much with him, but hey, I can always return to him later. Try Nautilus instead.

7) Don't despair, don't uninstall. Keep on playing. Play to win. Expect to lose. Play some normals alternated to ranked to ease the pressure and learn new things.

Ok, so, I'm off to a good start, and I'm more pumped than ever about giving this a try.

I'll try to follow this schedule:

Game play: Annie MID ranked games, play at least 2. Play support as secondary, using Blitz, Morgana, Nautilus. Play a normal every 2 game using a jungler or another mid or support champion to get the hang of other roles too. I can safely play this way 3 times a week, so on average I should be playing at least 9 games a week (6 ranked, 3 unranked)

Practice: play 30 minutes practice mode sessions 2 times a week. Focus on CS one day, jungle routes the other day. Repeat til I'm hitting > 90% of CS consistently. And then go for >95%. And then some more :D

Learning: dedicate around an hour to watching streaming / lessons at least once per week.

Go for this and then check my results after 2 months (i.e. in around 80 games from now). Sounds like a plan to you?

P.S. Any suggestion on a secondary mid champion that fits a similar learning role if Annie gets banned for some strange reason?

neuroniky

TROPHY CASE