The problem with new champs is that they cost you something, specifically one of Riot's point types. While the early adopters will always be around, the savvy shopper will get as much feedback as he or she is capable before deciding on a purchase. We're here to help you with that.

Below we've compiled the reviews and impressions on Varus from the top names in the community, be they professional, journalist or somewhere in between. Read and watch to your heart's content, and let these pros and fans help you make a decision.

• Team Curse's Cop: "Varus' role is to initiate team fights and do lots of AoE damage. His ultimate is like an Ashe arrow, but it spreads to other enemy champions. He can then follow it up with lots of AoE physical damage and AoE slow/heal debuff. If played right, he can also out-harass most AD carries bottom lane."
• ggChronicle's Optimus Tom: "He feels reminiscent of Ezreal, Kog'Maw, Miss Fortune and even Twitch; once you get the hang of Varus' skillset and the overall power this champion has to offer, you'll feel right at home in the bottom lane with him, ladies and gentlemen."
• Team Dignitas' Spell: "Best build is as typical AD carry. You have good trading possibilities on lane. The only thing that this champion lack is escape ability, but with Ultimate Snare, AoE Slow on his E and Flash as Summoner spell you should be quite safe in team fights. With amazing passive and really good range you can make good trades on botlane (especially with Sona or Taric)."
• ColbyCheeze: "He's actually a really good mid-laner due to his really nice poke and range. He has a very effective slow and a high-damaging root, so this adds a lot of utility to him as well. So, not only can you play him in a solo lane, but he also works like any other AD carry -- great with a support in the bottom lane. Probably best with someone like Soraka just because of his high mana costs."
• ggChronicle's Obscurica: "'Delayed gratification' seems to be Varus’s calling card. He can have great burst – if you’re patient. He can snipe you from across the screen – if you’re patient. He can immobilize the entire enemy team – if they don’t move away from the first afflicted party member in time. As is with a true sniper, Varus’s play style is mostly a matter of patiently waiting for the right circumstances, then exploiting it as efficiently as possible."
• ShureLily's Shurelya: "It's always great to be able to play a DPS that can engage, like Ashe. This is an advantage, especially in solo queue since you're going to be the heavy damage dealer on your team. This way you can fight on your own terms when you're ready."

We've gotten away from covering DevTalk here at State of the League. In fact, I barely even remember how to use the red quote formatter thing. Sometimes, however, pretty serious news breaks, and in those times a man has to re-learn what he has learned.

It shouldn't come as a suprise, but the always excellent Moobeat caught the following (super important) red quotes:

So, at the very least there's now one less argument players can use about being stuck in this "ELO hell" I hear so much about.

But I doubt that'll stop. People like to do their complainin'. Makes the heart feel good.

[Sources: Surrender at 20; League of Legends forums]

Muffinqt, HotshotGG, Doublelift, Nhat Nguyen - 

Watch live video from sotltravis on [url]www.twitch.tv[/url]

Episode 32 will have Dan Dinh, Mashme, Xpecial, Muffinqt, and Pobelter on it. 5 PM PST on Twitch. 

There are a lot of League of Legends sites out there, and most of them have a lot of bloggers. It's a tall order to keep up with all of it, but don't you worry; we'll do it for you. We like you that much.

Each week, we'll keep track of the best blogs, vlogs, podcasts, sites and articles from the rest and compile them into one handy (and also dandy) post for you to use as a guide to the week's League of Legends happenings. But we're not perfect. Did we miss something? Let us know.

• DiffTheEnder interviewed Ego Ignaxio, who's famous for his Kennen play. Diff later took a stab at placing items into a tier list. ...I can't believe I just wrote that.
• Elementz went crazy with tier lists, converting his former solo queue and draft mode tier lists to tier lists for the individual roles. He's made tier lists for every role: AP mid, bruiser, jungle, AD carry and support. Due to some community, erm, feedback, he went into further detail about his reasons for the rankings and changes. He eventually got around to making a full tier list for the Hecarim era.
• Digital Noob's Nightelyn speculated on the super-secret "Supremacy" mode (if we can even call it that yet).
• French gaming organization Eclypsia announced a second League of Legends team, this time made entirely of women. CLG's Methis translated an interview with Amélie "Mel" Nay, the AP carry for this new team.
• Russell Holly of geek.com compared League of Legends and Dota2 from a beginner's perspective.
• Stonewall tweaked his Hecarim-era jungle tier list. He also talked about Twitch's place in the jungle spectrum.
• FYA Umashi managed to grab a moment of Dyrus' time.
• TheBirdofPrey discussed the cost of vision in League of Legends. He also took a look at the value of Catalyst. And just before our recap came out, he compared the efficiency of elixirs to item combinations of similar ilk.
• Only Jaximus began a new era of Twisted Treeline tier lists.
• Moobeat was back in action this week, catching discussion points on the PBE changes and the Irelia changes, among others.
• The Dignitas blogging team provided several entries on learning this week: reading the tells, tips for succeeding in bot lane, mechanics of support players and dealing with counter jungling.
• Zerockk was able to sit down with AL.EU's jungler, Malunoo.
• Redrover talked about the development of iLoL.
• Redditor games2007 used numbers to show how Ryze will be stronger if the current PBE changes make it to live. As numbers are my mortal enemy, I'm unable to understand what happened here... but the gist of it seemed to be "RYZE OP."
• SK Gaming's Leethal interviewed Nick Allen of IGN eSports.
• SK's Faerum, meanwhile, took an in-depth look at IPL4, discussing the overall tournament, its top picks and bands, and the overall strategy of sustain.
• Ocelote began a series on leadership. In his first episode, he talked about what it takes to jump from solo queue pubstar to the big leagues, including how to establish one's name and how to get the attention of professional organizations.
• ggChronicle's MonteCristo brought back his series, "The Upper Bracket." In the latest installment, he discussed the significance of coaches in the American League of Legends scene.
  
• ggC's Sotere took a look at the minor (but significant!) changes of the Hecarim patch.
• And here are the week's shows, recurring vlogs and podcasts: Chaox's vlog 4-26, Dyrus' vlog 4-23,  LoLPod ep. 39, Saintvicious Daily ep. 12, State of the League ep. 31, Trinity Force podcast ep. 26, TheOddOne's vlog 4-26, Sotere's Wake-Up Rundown 04-24

PROMO CODE: SOTLJINX for 15% off

Hey Everyone, Jinx has just launched a new line of League of Legends themed shirts (and a Garen poster) and they were nice enough to treat Nhat and I to a good time at their launch photoshoot. Should have some good pictures from that soon, but in the mean time, if you click the picture of Nikasaur in that awesome Ryze shirt and use the code SotLJinx at checkout, you'll get 15% off League clothing from now until May 3rd. 

According to his Facebook page, Wingsofdeathx will be joining Epik Gamer as the team's top laner.

"So for those of you wondering if I'm joining EG or just ringing for a scrim the answer is I will be playing top lane for Epik for now. We are going to sign up for IPL5 qualifiers and play more scrims from here on out."

At this moment, it's unknown exactly what type of roster move will happen. Comments on the Facebook page suggest Westrice will no longer be an active member, but we have not spoken with Westrice, Weingsofdeathx or any other member of Epik Gamer to verify this. And they're, y'know, Facebook comments. Anyone can say anything.

Epik Gamer has been in the League of Legends competitive news quite a bit over the last month. Roughly one month ago, Dyrus left EG to join Team SoloMid (who went on to take first place at IPL4). Shortly thereafter, Dan Dinh stepped down as jungler/manager. While ClakeyD and DontMashMe filled in these positions at IPL5, it's been Aphromoo and Unstoppablex who have joined EG as the permanent AD bottom and jungler, respectively. Regardless of who is playing what role, this is a radically different looking Epik Gamer than the team we knew a year ago.

(Thanks to @_KrayZZ for the tip)

[Sources: WingsofdeathX's Facebook; Leaguepedia]

The problem with new champs is that they cost you something, specifically one of Riot's point types. While the early adopters will always be around, the savvy shopper will get as much feedback as he or she is capable before deciding on a purchase. We're here to help you with that.

We gave you our thoughts on Hecarim earlier this week; now it's time to see what everyone else thinks. Below we've compiled the reviews and impressions on Hecarim from the top names in the community, be they professional, journalist or somewhere in between. Read and watch to your heart's content, and let these pros and fans help you make your decision.

• Curse Gaming's Crumbzz: "He's a fast-paced jungler that focuses more on damage instead of CC. His abilities allow him to jungle effectively due to having a lot of AoE, but he isn't as strong at ganking due to lack of disables."
• Team Dignitas' Spell: "I feel like he is designed to be a jungler. I tested him on PBE realm and first feeling I had it was him being quite similar playstyle to Nocturne. He got everything on just decent level - AoE clear speed, quite good sustain (that is as well his defensive ability), decent pre-6 ganks with only 1 CC and movement speed boost for short amount of time and awesome after level 6 ganks."
• Ocelote World: "Hecarim is presented as a DPS jungler with a great ability to chase the weakest enemy and take him down. His passive gives him damage the faster he moves, so quintessences of movement speed and movement speed masteries from utility tree are a must to make the most out of this champion."
• ColbyCheeze: "Hecarim's a great initiator and has amazing disruption in team fights. He's not the best damage champion, but he can be very threatening later in the game and definitely in a prolonged engagement. For the most part, I feel you have to build him more tanky and allow his spammability to do the work for you."
• Team SoloMid's TheOddOne: "The feeling of being a centaur is pretty cool. Clippety cloppety! The problem with him is that he has no CC. You just run fast and knockback. You need either red buff, exhaust or your ultimate; if you don't have those then they're getting away. ... He reminds me of Volibear; he has a strong early and late game, but he's really weak mid-game."
• ggChronicle's Obscurica: "Yeah, he has what it takes to break the Mundo/Shyvana duopoly on competitive jungling. There’s no real question there.  He’s even primed to be what Sejuani and Nautilus could not accomplish: a solo queue nightmare, whose combination of innate survivability and huge mobility lets him duel successfully independent of his allies’ performance."