I saw the changelog comment about ensuring that the rest of the team levels faster if they are lagging behind, but somehow it feels like these days I end up seeing farm-to-win junglers happily out-level the entire damn game (both their own teammates and the enemy team). There could be five of us (two on one side and three on the other) slugging it out in the lane, and we'd be at Lvl 6/7 while the jungler is at Lvl 12. Once again, as you said, soloQ = solo. Seems like a good strategy is to...

Vainglorygame is the SEMC forums, where the developers actually exist. Vaingloryfire is merely a sister site borrowing build creation functionality from Mobafire. Think of this place as a really large fan site and it will make sense. As for the hero/item statistics... editor availability/problems maybe?

Skaarf and Vox are confirmed for nerfs in v1.5.

That is a lot of wins - I feel your pain :(

I was the one who filed the bug report on the main VG forums, and also the one who mentioned the bug here (in a bit of shameless self promotion). The problem indeed hasn't been solved, and I think there's been related control problems with ults and skills from Taka as well. We can probably only wait for v1.5 to land sometime this week and hope that SEMC will have fixed it by then. I've also lost countless Kraken/Gold Miner steals to this bug, and it's frickin' irritating to say the least....

There's talk on the main VG forums that they'll be introducing new modes of play - specifically casual play and bot play, which might alleviate the issue of people familiarizing themselves with new characters with their rankings at stake. Unfortunately SEMC seems to be keeping mum about the exact details of the features...

Actually some part of it has to do with one's connection --- whoever loads into the hero selection window first technically has first pick. Although it's arguable that said person probably has a good connection, which in turn might have a relation to their ability to hold the lane, I personally feel that instalocking is symptomatic of an individual who is so fixated on a character that they are unwilling to consider the selections of the rest of their team. I'd venture as far as to say that...

Tip: If you come across an instalocker as of v1.4, soft-lock and allow the timer to expire. You will not incur the abandonment penalty this way :), and you can take a 1 minute toilet break!

I've tried the farming thing and indeed it's done me well. Would you guys recommend making one of my first items a Sprint Boots in order to benefit from the mobility?

Yeah I meant it as that one can really get to a higher rank by doing exactly these things, even though they are frowned upon as bad etiquette.