Quote (Spirit-Warrior @ Mon, Jul 27 2009, 10:37pm)
You can't free farm particularly in pubs? A pub is the easiest place to free farm, last time I checked. You can farm by a level 2 tower for 5 minutes before anyone even notices you. And when they finally do, assuming you're unable to run away cleanly, you can just infest and/or juke and Rage/TP.
Stats are hardly necessary early game in pubs, people don't coordinate their spells/attacks, they don't coordinate ganks (at least not well), and a Helm + intelligent playing with minimal regen items will easily allow you to farm up the cheap pieces of Armlet. The activated HP buff will more than give you the HP you need to escape whatever comes your way until you manage to farm up more.
I've played in a fair amount of pubs where the emphasis was on ganking a lot, sometimes in decently coordinated groups. It happens often enough, especially if you're the one to initiate it. Pubs might not be the most reliable or skilled, but there are enough decent players out there to make it happen often. No wards or team support in these gank or push line ups can make farming as Niax difficult. Sure, some pub games are just terrible, but for pubs and lower level scrims, this is not out of the realm of possibility.
If you're going to stay in a troubled lane or be ganking, then armlet might not be the end all solution. Niax isn't always the only carry, and he makes for a decent jungle ganker, where treads might be preferable as a first major item.
I've actually been quite impressed with some Pubs lately, actually buying wards/chicken and playing as a team etc. Rated bot games and pub leagues are bringing out better play in them then I've ever seen, although they still suffer from being pubs. I've been particularly impressed with the pub CM games, as crazy as that sounds. Some of them are actually quite enjoyable.