Grand Old Thread: League of Legends!

[Vex Kasrani]

Currently watching the finals match.

What do you guys think of Nasus? (I know I ask this about characters alot, but I wanna know the general opinion of characters I want to use!)

 

[S l o X]

just went shen because some guy had tf and we needed someone tanky


toogood.

 

[DanGR]

Currently watching the finals match.

What do you guys think of Nasus? (I know I ask this about characters alot, but I wanna know the general opinion of characters I want to use!)

Wither is too good.

 

[Octave]

Is it better to build Kog'Maw as AD or AP?

 

[Wobbles]

I don't think Europe realized that would be their *only* winning gimmick. Their teamfighting was pretty weak and they got caught a lot, especially in game two when jiji got Anivia. Ashe + Anivia gave them a lot of initiations that turned the matches into 1v5 for a few seconds.

 

[Pakman]

Is it better to build Kog'Maw as AD or AP?

AD bloodrazors ftw.

 

[M3D]

I think this weekend proved the Kog'Maw hype was way overstated. He was not very successful at all. Teams just counter-picked an assassin like Kass or Akali and dove Kog for the kill. It's got to be pretty obvious after this weekend, that at the highest level Kog just isn't as scary as people made him out to be the last two months or so.

I think there's going to be a lot shifts to Elementz tier list and the general consensus about character values now that WCG showed what champs could really do with cash on the line. Twisted Fate is going to get a second look. Anivia is going to get boosted up to the top of t2 at least. Galio was a huge surprise at this event too. He was a first pick in several matches and then was banned throughout the finals. I'm kinda worried about all the n00bs trying to pick one of my favorite characters now.

Also... melee carries got proved to be just not good in this meta. Maybe Irelia will change that? Maybe Riot will bring some new items in to make them more viable? Something is gonna have to change if Riot wants melee carries to be viable at all. It was all ranged carries, tanks and mages.

 

[DMG]

Currently watching the finals match.

What do you guys think of Nasus? (I know I ask this about characters alot, but I wanna know the general opinion of characters I want to use!)

Nasus is balanced, but falling behind in the metagame when Riot keeps releasing new characters that inevitably become or stay better than Nasus (this started back in the Garen/Ez days, and has continued since. Xin, MF, Sona, Galio, etc. Even people who were under Nasus for a bit like Olaf are doing better.) With people like Galio/similars competing for spots Nasus would fill, he has a hard time proving himself.

He scales pretty well past his subpar early game.

Wither is too good.

Whither is really good, Merc treads are pretty nasty though since the CC grows stronger over time. If you can only get it to last 3 seconds instead of 5 seconds, you lose out on a ton of the scaling. Early ranks in Whither it isn't that noticeable, but rank 5 Whither on Merc treads vs no Merc Treads it's a huge difference. That and Whither is on a fairly long CD unlike the shorter duration CC's like Sion/Taric, even if people have merc treads for those CC's they can keep using them in fights where as Nasus probably will only get 1 Whither off unless hes got some nice CDR.



Edit: Well it's hard for Melee carries to be viable when you have CC up the butt, escape mechanisms/movement speed buffs prevalent, Exhaust to stop auto attacks and occasionally dodge, etc. There's not really a good thing for Melee Carries at this point, there is PLENTY working against them specifically, and not much working for them specifically. Ranged Carries tend to have an escape mechanism or kiting they can work with, Melee Carries frankly get shafted lol.

 

[DanGR]

Whither is really good, Merc treads are pretty nasty though since the CC grows stronger over time. If you can only get it to last 3 seconds instead of 5 seconds, you lose out on a ton of the scaling. Early ranks in Whither it isn't that noticeable, but rank 5 Whither on Merc treads vs no Merc Treads it's a huge difference. That and Whither is on a fairly long CD unlike the shorter duration CC's like Sion/Taric, even if people have merc treads for those CC's they can keep using them in fights where as Nasus probably will only get 1 Whither off unless hes got some nice CDR.

Pretty good summary.

One rank of it usually works at low lvls where no one has merc treads yet. And I've noticed top elo players often times skip out on merc treads for zerker greavers on their carries anyways. ; )

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Just lost 7 games in a row. I don't understand how or why people are THIS bad. Actually, I just lost about 100 ELO. I was 1752 this morning and I'm 1670 now.

In other news, I'm done with Gangplank. I carried him as far as he can go. He just has a few too many faults to actually be viable. I think I'ma just go back to my good ol' Gragas.

 

[Virgilijus]

If you could fix Gangplank, what would you do?

 

[DMG]

Make Ult reliable at the start, then turn RNG (Panda's suggestion, would be pretty solid)

Parrrley apply Blade Debuff (Panda suggestion also)

Slightly lower CD on Raise Morale and have it slightly increase AS

Slightly lower CD on Heal (shave off 3 seconds or so, something minor)

That would be my changes to make him more balanced.

 

[john!]

Call me a scrub, but I cannot imagine how Tryndamere is a bad character. The amount of damage that he is capable of dealing is unreal. Maybe once I start playing good people I'll see his weaknesses, but as of now I think I've found a secondary champ.

 

[DMG]

He has a hard time laning because he's Melee, so he almost always has to eat harassment for trying to get last hits. For a carry, Melee or otherwise, there's not much worse than being denied Gold and EXP for most of the laning phase and never getting the chance to snowball the game. If Tryn never gets enough gold, he will never be able to dominate the game. Getting denied is very likely to happen to him no matter what lane you put him in besides maybe a 2 v 1 where he's part of the 2.

 

[Tom]

whoa i did not see the newest page

 

[Virgilijus]

He has a hard time laning because he's Melee, so he almost always has to eat harassment for trying to get last hits. For a carry, Melee or otherwise, there's not much worse than being denied Gold and EXP for most of the laning phase and never getting the chance to snowball the game. If Tryn never gets enough gold, he will never be able to dominate the game. Getting denied is very likely to happen to him no matter what lane you put him in besides maybe a 2 v 1 where he's part of the 2.

I've been working on a jungle tryn build that, even though I don't have all the runes yet, works decent. His spinning slash lets him get away from anti jungle ganks pretty well. The only downfall is that, until he reaches level six, he can't really gank because of how squishy he is. That's not to say he can't in the right circumstance, but pre 6 it's tough.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

If you could fix Gangplank, what would you do?

1. Ulti should initially hit with 1 cannonball when it starts, guaranteed, then go all RNG.

2. Parrrley should have armor penetration built into the skill (Elementz's sexy idea). But just for Parrrley, not for everything.

3. I would add a bit more flavor to his deny to his character. I personally think it would be nice to apply Grog Soaked Blade to his next Parrrley after he uses Raise Moral. An alternative that I actually like more is to make his next Parrrley slow after he uses Raise Moral. He has no CC that he can use on command and a slow on his Parrrley would give him more utility early game when he needs it the most.

4. Increase the duration of his Raise Moral buff to 15 seconds from 10.

5. This is just an idea I had that I think would give him actual damage output before he gets items: Make his passive also increase damage dealt from his ultimate to the target by 20%. Combine that with the application of Grog after Raise Moral, and I think his moveset would have far more synchrony with itself, and give him enough utility early game to actually make him a somewhat more useful character.

Right now GP's biggest problems are as follows:

- He is useless (other than his ult) without items.
- His damage output is horrible without big damage items.
- His survivability is ****ty because he has to spend all his money on damage items or else he is a mostly ignorable presence in fights.
- It is difficult to itemize for him given his need for a) armor penetration, b) crit chance, c) AD, d) HP/armor/MR.
- His mana regen is too low around levels 3-9.


Quite simply he needs too many things to be viable. If they were to lower his reliance on just 2 different stats I listed (like armor pen and mana regen) as well as a few (probably not all) of the proposed changes above, with #1 being the most important IMO, I believe he will be a perfectly viable character at all levels of play.

To be honest, I think with #1/2 and some increases to his base stats, he could be quite viable.

 

[john!]

He has a hard time laning because he's Melee, so he almost always has to eat harassment for trying to get last hits. For a carry, Melee or otherwise, there's not much worse than being denied Gold and EXP for most of the laning phase and never getting the chance to snowball the game. If Tryn never gets enough gold, he will never be able to dominate the game. Getting denied is very likely to happen to him no matter what lane you put him in besides maybe a 2 v 1 where he's part of the 2.

early game of course is his weakness, but there are ways to get around it... i've tried jungle trynd with moderate success, but i didn't have all the right runes... avarice blade always helps... jungling during mid game can help a lot because his e and ult make him near ungankable in the jungle, and you get tons of gold. i just think he's too easily overlooked, he can play conservatively until 6, and then he gets free tower dives, great healing with level 3 q, etc.

whatever, i'll keep going with him until i find significant weaknesses in his gameplay.

 

[DMG]

That's a pretty big weakness though. Along with having to deal with CC/Kiting like everyone else without having range or CC to compete with it. Then he has to deal with Exhaust and has no way to add Damage besides Spinning into people when he is blinded. You can jungle with him, but then you could have easily had a great jungler like WW or Udyr do that job and had a ranged carry go Mid and now Tryn doesn't have a viable spot for a team.

 

[Vyke]

I've seen a few good Trynds take the 1v2 lane and do pretty fantastic. All of them have been built for Trynd though... Crit runes... etc. So they all had reliable heals.

Somebody was talking about just building him like every other tanky dps to make up for him being squishy. Dunno how it'd go though, but I can see it if you rely on runes for crits instead of items.

 

[Scamp]

I think this weekend proved the Kog'Maw hype was way overstated. He was not very successful at all. Teams just counter-picked an assassin like Kass or Akali and dove Kog for the kill. It's got to be pretty obvious after this weekend, that at the highest level Kog just isn't as scary as people made him out to be the last two months or so.

I think most of the Kog hype was before they fixed the passive on his attack speed. Before you could just get bloodrazors and then get defense items. Those defense items would make it a lot harder for you to be killed by Kass/Akali/whatever unless you're off by yourself. Now if you get those items right after bloodrazors you won't pack enough of a punch.

 

[DMG]

Yeah Kog before the AS nerf was ********. Always got pretty close to hitting the cap with just CS, Razor, and Zerks. You could easily go Razor/Boots and then straight to Veil/GA for defense, and then fill whatever you wanted attack wise. Near effortless 2.5 AS with a nice % health based damage before even factoring in regular damage from attacks? Cmon, that's a bit much Riot lol.


With that said, I see him going from auto ban either side to one or both sides allowing him in favor of banning more cookie cutter staple champs like Vlad, Garen, etc that you can throw on just about any team and make it work.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Oh. My. God.

I just played a game where I was carrying like hell with AP Gragas (as usual) while our Ez fed. His build was boots 3, manamune, sheen. That is the worst Ez build I have EVER seen and unsurprisingly he did **** for damage.

1600 is the new ELO hell. I can't even tryhard out of this garbage.

 

[M3D]

Did some fuzzy math based on the picks/bans at WCG and came up with a list of the "most effective" characters:

1. Garen
2. Galio
3. Janna

Morg was #4 based on my math, but I think that shows how fuzzy the math is in this case. Morg went 0-5 in the tournament, but was banned 11 out of 18 games. Based on this math, it was actually very inefficient to ban her. Actually, this math might hold up considering there was a huge skill gap between NA/EU and SEA/China. Maybe she was a very efficient ban in close matches, but inconsequential in matches with the obvious skillgap.

5. Ashe
6. Twisted Fate
7. Miss Fortune
8. Amumu
9. Sona
10. Kog'Maw... although Kog's rating in my system was a little inflated by all of his bans. Looking at the list, I think he was actually a very inefficient ban throughout the tournament. He lost five of the six matches he appeared, including on CLG in their loss to SK in the round robin. Basically, he's not a good choice for a ban due to the efficient ways to counter him.

11. Shen
12. Kayle
13. Anivia... is an interesting case because she was only used by CLG and won every game she appeared in. She was also banned once, when SK was trying to disrupt the CLG strategy. No other team used her though, which is why she is so low on the list. She probably was "carried" to her perfect record by the superior skills of her team.

14. Kassadin - the anti-Kog'Maw
15. Warwick
16. Taric ... poor Taric got a lot of play, but had a really abysmal record. His two wins, including in the finals, helped pull him out of the basement.

17. Akali - 2-0 for the tournament, mostly used to kill Kog'Maw
18. Annie
19. Nunu

... then there's a huge tie for the next eight spots or so. Overall pretty interesting information. Of course, this is too small a sample size to determine anything for certain in regards to tiers or true effectiveness, but its fun to look at and speculate.

 

[Wobbles]

M3D: I would argue that jiji's Anivia is a large part of what completely wrecked SK in the 2nd game of the finals. His walls were keeping SK split up during every fight and the damage was hardly negligible. Not carried at all, if you ask me.

 

[Virgilijus]

Yeah, Jiji's Anivia was one of the key factors to CLG's dominating games. The walls he laid down were luscious. I think in both games he played, he had no deaths and either most kills or second most kills (Chauster's MF just went crazy one game). Would agree with Wobbles that he wasn't carried at all.

 

[M3D]

I'm not saying Jiji got carried or even jiji's Anivia got carried. I'm saying that its hard to judge Anivias real value in such a small sample. She was" carried" to her position due to the amazing player using her on an amazing team. Over a larger sample, I wonder if she would be so effective. That's all. I totally recognize Jiji was a huge factor in his teams victory. Shoot, there were a lot of kills that were earned only because of Anivias walls.

 

[Vyke]

Oh. My. God.

I just played a game where I was carrying like hell with AP Gragas (as usual) while our Ez fed. His build was boots 3, manamune, sheen. That is the worst Ez build I have EVER seen and unsurprisingly he did **** for damage.

1600 is the new ELO hell. I can't even tryhard out of this garbage.

Get somebody to duo with so you have two backs to carry instead of just one.

 

[john!]

Oh. My. God.

I just played a game where I was carrying like hell with AP Gragas (as usual) while our Ez fed. His build was boots 3, manamune, sheen. That is the worst Ez build I have EVER seen and unsurprisingly he did **** for damage.

1600 is the new ELO hell. I can't even tryhard out of this garbage.

Are you being sarcastic? lol

If not, then you should take your smurf to 30 and remind yourself how bad it can get below 1200.

 

[AshuRawRun]

M3D has some of the most entertaining posts to read with Wobbles lol.

But still on this one I think Europe is underated, well it's true that perf was pretty bad but I still think EU can do alot better wait & see...

 

[Cia]

Currently watching the finals match.

Can someone plz link to finals? No one sees my posts here T_T

 

[Leacero]

Can someone plz link to finals? No one sees my posts here T_T

It's cuz you're stealthed and no one here put down wards or has an oracle. :|

BTW chat rooms are working again, so flood into SWF again.

 

[Scamp]

Link to finals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRmyWJ3A2g&feature=related


I went and did some statistics of my own. Over the course of WCG blue team won 5 times and the purple team won 10 times, including an amazing 3-0 sweep in the finals.

Purple imba?

 

[Tom]

purple needs a nerf!! take all of the blue out of purple and just make it red!! red+blue vs blue is no fair!! simple math RIOT!

 

[Wobbles]

Unless red is negative or = zero. Simple math TOM!

M3D: Alright :3

Scamp: Which is funny considering Blue is considered to have an advantage and Riot wants to factor in Blue team as getting something like +25 or +50 effective Elo for purposes of matchmaking. I read that somewhere. It must be true.

 

[DanGR]

All you guys that play with me should read this: http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=3261500#post3261500

:o

It's basically all my views on how to play Shaco and how to help me as a team.

Edit: SamuraiPanda, what do the Shacos at the top do nowadays? I used to watch Wickd's (High Elo EU Shaco) livestream before he stopped using him as nearly as much (before the nerfs) and he was more centered around teamfights, building the good aura items (Stark's & Aegis) + brutalizer/phage/sheen- a build I really disagree with.

 

[Vyke]

They do nothing because you'd really just pick Poppy, Kassadin, or Akali to fill his role. His utility was downgraded a lot since the nerfs specifically for him (even if they just say 'clone', lol)

As horrid as it sounds, I have a lot of fun with him as AP these days with my caster runepage. But it's just fun, I wouldn't take him too seriously anymore. He's fine as AD, duh, but thar be better picks for his role.

 

[Scamp]

Shaco still fills some roles that few others can. He's probably the best counter-jungler out there and he can also beat down towers/dragon exceptionally fast.

But yeah, not a top pick anymore for sure.

In other news...


Sivir

* Attack range increased to 425 from 400


GUESS WHO'S BACK!!!

BACK AGAIN!!!

Playing her before the obvious nerf next patch.

I'm kinda posting this all over the place.

 

[Vyke]

Shaco can't even tear down towers that fast anymore, they nerfed his clone's tower damage. Why even bother bringing a counter jungler when you can just work AS A TEAM to do just that? You don't need a counter jungler... wards do that already.

 

[Scamp]

Shaco can't even tear down towers that fast anymore, they nerfed his clone's tower damage. Why even bother bringing a counter jungler when you can just work AS A TEAM to do just that? You don't need a counter jungler... wards do that already.

First off, who bought the wards? Outside of a tank who can start with cloth armor or someone who can roll boots first you're going to be at a health disadvantage for doing just that. Not to mention you have to go and place them, which is risky.

Did you mean having wards in order to prevent ganks? That's not countering the jungler.

What do you mean AS A TEAM to counter the jungler, anyway? In order to do that you need to leave your lane in order to fight at a general disadvantage, unless the other team isn't coordinated at all. Before you can even leave your lane you need to have it pushed past the river, which also is generally not good unless, again, the other team has no coordination.