Grand Old Thread: League of Legends!

[_kSo_]

i'll duo with ya kso

also, i think i found a tank i can shine with (that's not banned): rammus. funnily enough he was the first character i ever played in lol. i just sort of picked a random champ during week 2 and didn't know what i was doing. i think we won.

i've also been doing great with twitch recently, i tried him out this weekend and have been wrecking face.

i won't talk about the numerous champs i tried and failed with this weekend lol.

edit: OMG articuno, rattata, sandshrew! it all makes sense now. or maybe i suck with human characters and am cursed to playing only animals.

sounds good, i'll look for you next time I'm on...matchmaking just seems to suck though, kuz the last 2 ranked games i played my team was great and the enemy team sucked so much....and then when i lose, its the other way around. I dunno what is happening LOL

and yes, i though anivia = articuno too when i saw her lol

 

[Cia]

Kennen is such a bad ***.

just went 12/0/5

woulda been better but they surrendered.

sup.

 

[ruin`]

I'd like to know what ya'lls opinion is on Karthus. Ever been matched vs a good one, what did the player do? Why etc?

Relative strengths compared to say, morgana, annie, articuno?

 

[Sinz]

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?

I just watched this(tbh to try to see what happens in competitive LoL. Wasn't watching for the point of bashing LoL). This is the biggest turtle fest I have ever seen. :/ Someone on here said that LoL has a more aggressive early and mid game than HoN. But, this did not illustrate that at all. First kill 10-15 minutes in? 1st tower 20 minutes in?

The USA team gathered up for a good 20 minutes and got little out of it. While the european team just maintained map control and had one person push a lane and then port out. This went on forever...... It took 45 minutes to kill "twisted fate"s turtle push. They held them off in a 4 v 5 with aoe spam. Constant arrow spam and other aoe effects to just keep them in a disadvantage should the other team choose to initiate.

Even though the USA team had a better team fight advantage they just couldn't force any team fights. The ones that happened they won(until the EU team got farmed because of all the solo pushing of Twisted Fate). However, they lost so many turrets and whatnot while twisted fate just pushed and tp'd out.

In the laning phase of the game where they were viewing it was never very aggressive. It was just ranged carries getting last hits and running into the brush. The three (two? Don't remember how many times) times that the teams went for a first blood attempt it failed.

The moral of this game was definitely turtling. :/ It looked like a pub(aside from constant good warding) where people wouldn't push. Thing is that if you did push you were at a disadvantage in the fights.

I don't know what the Baron buff is but according the shout caster its a good buff that guarantees a win in a team fight unless you have bad positioning.

I saw a ton of wards in this game. Whats the cooldown on buying wards?

Yeah... are most LoL games turtle based? The ganks in this game were pointless because of the good ward usage. Even though there weren't any ganks. Thing is they wouldn't have done anything because of the map control that both teams had. It was just sooooo turtle. The dragon kill they waited for the USA to start then the EU stole it. Same with the Baron. The EU team never pushed as a team. They just sent their one man out with wards to place so he couldn't get ganked and he pushed the lane then proceeded to teleport out. He took out 5 towers(iirc) by himself during the mid game while the USA team was grouped up trying to force a team fight.

How could Twisted Fate be a low tier pick(like the shout casters said) when he has that much mobility over everyone on the USA team. All the EU team did was wait at towers spam aoe to prevent a team fight, send out twisted fate, twisted fate pushes, USA team reacts, twisted fate ports out, then EU team gets some more farm while the USA team just wasted time running around the map.

 

[M3D]

Hey Sinz, your analysis isn't crazy off. Riot is well aware that the result of their design has been a very turtle-oriented game and they are trying to fix it. In the first patch after these videos, they nerfed the summoner spell Ghost so it was less of a "Get Out of Jail Free" card and Flash has been nerfed a couple of times since launch.

I think the primary problem is that the same has a very flat design in terms of drawing out player skill. Last-hitting creeps isn't that hard, there are a lot of healing abilities and Riot intentionally dodges complex character designs that might be obtuse to casual players. So the result is that at a high level, the gmae is less about who dominates hard than it is about who sucks less. There is a razer-thin edge of difference between top teams, so itemization can and will win games. That means first blood, dragons and baron kills are often going to determine how the mid-game goes. HotshotGG even made a thread before the WCG finals freakin' out about how purple has this huge advantage because its so easy for them to do baron from behind the wall, which prevents ganks.

That's why good warding is such a huge deal in LoL. You have to avoid ganks coming out of the jungle and you have to control dragon/baron or at least make sure the other team doesn't as well. Often if you win a team fight, its in your best interest to take dragon rather than push a tower because a tower will always be there, but dragon might not. So you ward like hell to keep the other team from ever getting a lead on you via dragon or ganks and you focus on summoner spells like Flash/Ghost to stay alive in an attempted gank AND to finish off kills of fleeing opponents if you have a clear advantage.

As for Twisted Fate, I think he was rated a little lower than he should have been going into the tournament. He used to be a BOSS. Like, his attack speed could get so high that he could TP onto towers solo and backdoor them easy. He also cleaned up kills all day with his TP/stun combo. So Riot nerfed his attack speed buffs by like 2/3rds and reduced his damage a little bit to make him less of a top tier pick. BUT he can still assist in ganks and push lanes. He had recently got a small buff to his damage, I believe, when the European teams started using him a bit more again. As you can probably guess, in a metagame where you turtle up as a team and defend/run away a lot, a guy that can push opposite lanes without fear of getting ganked and teleport to and stun fleeing enemies is a nice tool. So he was one of those surprise characters that worked in a particular setting as a result of a metagame shift. If you watched the next two games in the series, you see the US team bans TF and then they don't have to worry about it anymore.

The good news is that Riot is working to adjust these things and make the game more oriented towards active play. They say their new, larger map will help with this a bit, although I doubt it. It will at least make warding less effective, since you'll have to ward more of the map to have the kind of vision you get with just a few wards in Summoner's Rift. They say character design is going to get tweaked a bit to adjust this as well, but since MOST characters have some kind of CC or escape mechanic, I'm not sure how they'll make those less of an issue. I guess we'll see how it shakes out in the next couple of months.

 

[Leacero]

How bout them Eve changes?

 

[Ignatius]

i saw a ton of wards in this game. Whats the cooldown on buying wards?

0 .

 

[Sinz]

0 .

No cooldown on wards? O:

There is a 6 minute cooldown on them in HoN o: Wards are sooooo important. Especially in a turtle metagame.

I'm assuming Purple = scourge(top) and Blue = Sentinel(bot)? Yeah the Hellbourne have a much higher chance of getting Kongor(similar to Baron but drops a token that revives a hero when they die) than legion does. They also have better rune access, pull spots, and so much more. o: The only thing legion really has going for them is the ease of use of their jungle.

If LoL had tp scrolls I think it would be a lot better >.> Would both promote and demote turtling. :/ Maybe a more active midgame. Dunno.

 

[Cia]

How bout them Eve changes?

What did they do to eve? Plz tell me it wasn't a nerf.. Lol

 

[Vyke]

League has Summoner Teleport to balance it out, Sin. The thing I want to see is getting rid of flash and slapping in a Blink Dagger-type item so the first 15 minutes of the game isn't relatively safe farming. You can't gank **** when they all carry ghost + flash.

The Eve Remake is nice. The last time I checked it goes as follows:

Passive: Restores Health on Champ Kill/Assist. Scales with Level.

Q - Hate Spike: Now hits two targets at the same time rather than bouncing from one to the next. Currently bugged to hit the same person twice if there's only one person around.
W - Stealth: Now gives movement speed (scaling with each level) and lasts 40 seconds at all levels.
E - Ravage: Now has a mini-dash that closes the gap to your target. Applies the debuff regardless of positioning now.
R - Reworked: Exuding Embrace. An AoE Blind/Exhaust and.... Slow? I can't remember. Seems nice to counter the dps heavy teams though, gives her another role.

 

[Ignatius]

No cooldown on wards? O:

There is a 6 minute cooldown on them in HoN o: Wards are sooooo important. Especially in a turtle metagame.

I'm assuming Purple = scourge(top) and Blue = Sentinel(bot)? Yeah the Hellbourne have a much higher chance of getting Kongor(similar to Baron but drops a token that revives a hero when they die) than legion does. They also have better rune access, pull spots, and so much more. o: The only thing legion really has going for them is the ease of use of their jungle.

If LoL had tp scrolls I think it would be a lot better >.> Would both promote and demote turtling. :/ Maybe a more active midgame. Dunno.

Wards have the same cooldown in DotA. And you also forgot that Hellbourne as slightly better ward positions as well.

That said, HoN still needs to fix their TP scrolls, still using the silly old version.

 

[Cia]

League has Summoner Teleport to balance it out, Sin. The thing I want to see is getting rid of flash and slapping in a Blink Dagger-type item so the first 15 minutes of the game isn't relatively safe farming. You can't gank **** when they all carry ghost + flash.

The Eve Remake is nice. The last time I checked it goes as follows:

Passive: Restores Health on Champ Kill/Assist. Scales with Level.

Q - Hate Spike: Now hits two targets at the same time rather than bouncing from one to the next. Currently bugged to hit the same person twice if there's only one person around.
W - Stealth: Now gives movement speed (scaling with each level) and lasts 40 seconds at all levels.
E - Ravage: Now has a mini-dash that closes the gap to your target. Applies the debuff regardless of positioning now.
R - Reworked: Exuding Embrace. An AoE Blind/Exhaust and.... Slow? I can't remember. Seems nice to counter the dps heavy teams though, gives her another role.

Hmm.. Malice and spite seems better. The movement and attack speed is amazing. Without it, she's probably gonna be all AP..

Hate Spike and Ravage changes seem nice, and anything is better than her current passive. (WTF were they thinking?) But isn't the new passive the same as katarina's?

 

[Frolossus]

really hoping for the kat buffs to go through, makes ganking so much easier

also i found out how easy mf is to play and carry people with today

 

[Zolga Owns]

How bout them Eve changes?

Oh god, she's my favorite again.

 

[L__]

But isn't the new passive the same as katarina's?

Katarina's passive: Voracity: After a kill or an assist, Katarina gains 25 gold and her cooldowns are reduced by 15 seconds.

 

[Frolossus]

new malady might work on akali imo

 

[M3D]

People have been asking for TP scrolls in LoL for a long time. And yes, there are no cooldowns on ward purchases. The basic version cost 90 gold and you can stack up to three of them in a slot. I tested and you can actually fill more than one slot with them as well. So you really can ward the whole map if your team gets together and buys a bunch of wards. When I'm playing support I attempt to buy at least one on each trip back to the fountain.

Frolossus, I need Akali tips. I want to learn her but I am super bad. Playing tank/support doesn't really prepare you for playing a squishy assassin.

 

[Sinz]

People have been asking for TP scrolls in LoL for a long time. And yes, there are no cooldowns on ward purchases. The basic version cost 90 gold and you can stack up to three of them in a slot. I tested and you can actually fill more than one slot with them as well. So you really can ward the whole map if your team gets together and buys a bunch of wards. When I'm playing support I attempt to buy at least one on each trip back to the fountain.

Frolossus, I need Akali tips. I want to learn her but I am super bad. Playing tank/support doesn't really prepare you for playing a squishy assassin.

Well the thing about squshy heroes is that you always have to be mindful of your positioning and your enemies positioning. I'm assuming that you have a large amount of burst damage so if you see an opportunity you ahve to be able to punish that. However, you have to play passively until then :/

But, seriously wards are the most overpowered item in any of the dotaesque games. They set up ganks, prevent ganks, allow for strong farm, and give you overall control.

 

[M3D]

Yes, wards win games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kamr4rZe_W0

 

[SamuraiPanda]

I can't wait for the Gragas buff. I've been pushing for that specific change for months now, and they finally listened to me. Considering I'm the only person actually fighting for him, I'm not THAT surprised they implemented my suggestion.

Between that and the hexdrinker for Gangplank vs magic teams, my 2 favorite chars are going to be pretty beasty in the new patch.

Although, Hexdrinker is going to make it GG for casters. Casters have a hard enough time in the current metagame, and they make items like Hexdrinker for the AD carries.... Ima make a thread about it soon, but Riot seems to think its funny to bend casters over. I honestly think they're trolling caster mains right now :/

 

[john!]

cool, so now every god **** physical carry in the world will be immune to frostbite finishers

guess i'll just get it on twitch and destroy everything without having to worry about dying

sigh lol

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Rawr

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=3398680

 

[Sinz]

Wards have the same cooldown in DotA. And you also forgot that Hellbourne as slightly better ward positions as well.

That said, HoN still needs to fix their TP scrolls, still using the silly old version.

Depends on the point in the game. If its early game Legion has better ward spots(regarding the pulls and warding the top rune. You can be more offensive with warding the legion jungle than with warding the HB jungle. However, the legion can be vastly more defensive in warding their jungle than HB can. Legion's ward spots favor turtling while HB favor an aggressive play style.

What's wrong with the tp scrolls? o.O

 

[DanGR]

How exactly do you drink anything with a sword? (Hexdrinker)

 

[Tom]

MY ELO IS PLUMMETING

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh

 

[M3D]

I stopped playing solo queue. It's just too ridiculous and I'm not a strong enough player to carry a mediocre team. I'm a role-player, not a carry. So I don't worry about ELO. Although it has been fun to get full 5-mans together and do ranked. I broke 1300 this week, but then a loss knocked me back down into the 12s. I think if our little crew played ranked more regularly we could break into the 14-1500s, but most of the time I'd rather play normal matches and enjoy other characters. I just don't have it in me to tryhard all the time.

 

[Mogwai]

I feel like watching WCG games has made bad players even worse...

Like, every teamfight win is just followed by going for Dragon and farming and it's really starting to infuriate me because what should be 25 minute games are becoming 50 minute drawn out affairs where we let the other team win by giving their twitch time to feed off of the exceptionally bad players on our team. uhg, just sucks so bad.

 

[Leacero]

This is why SWF players should play together more.

 

[_kSo_]

at least you guys aren't in an ELO where it's game over at champion select....


I wanted to try out warwick, and NOBODY on my team went tank....and then i was like ashe, switch to tank we have too much physical, our sivir was like "if you wanted a tank you should have picked one


>_______________< I was the first one to pick and lock in....and NO ONE else picked tank, so we ended up being ALL physical, and ALL pretty much squishy except for me.....jeez people are getting dumber and dumber every day

 

[Octave]

I never want to play solo queue again. Every single game is filled with idiots who seem like they have no idea what game they're even playing, let alone what to do in the game.

Someone level a smurf with me, I'm level 14 :<

 

[Turazrok]

I solo queue as beefy jungler dps and force ganks. GAH

 

[AshuRawRun]

Did you know, we could teleport Anivia's egg if we launch the summoner spell before Anivia dies and if we ain't interrupted by a CC?

 

[Mogwai]

Did you know that Pantheon can Aegis of Zeonia across the whole map by buffering the Aegis when his ult circle appears as the opponent is blue pilling or teleporting?

EDIT:

What? I didn't say you had to start with wards. But Warwick can easily fit a ward into his starting items if need-be. Moot point though.



No, I meant placing wards at the Jungler's Blue and Red when you get a chance later on in the game. Earlier on, you'd most likely place wards to prevent ganks -and- to prevent them gaining a Dragon kill. I'm not sure you view not getting ganked by the jungler (or MIA) not countering them.

You could easily just not push a lane as hard to not get ganked by a jungler, either way.



Yes, generally both teams would be coordinated if it were a 5v5 premade, which I'm going to assume we're thinking of. That means both teams usually meet up at dragon to teamfight whenever a jungler attempts it. It's just how the current meta goes, it seems... or at least, how the top teams deal with it.

Or one team's blue or red is warded at some point in time and gets stolen, etc. This is usually later in the game when everyone has had the leeway to buy those few extra wards with that extra 90 gold leftover.

You can probably tell that I'm thinking about this as I type out my response, so I'll go ahead and speak what's on my mind currently regarding Jungling as a whole. While Riot has stated they want to steer it to be more of an option rather than a necessity, It's currently all the rage. As I see it now, the only real effective way to counter a jungler is to get out some constant harass on the jungler starting from level 1, and warding.

Other than that, trying not to get ganked. Yeah, you could pick that one character like Eve, or Shaco that would do a pretty good job of shutting down the other jungler. Though I don't see devoting time to making the game into a 4v4 a worthwhile effort when you could just communicate as a whole ... mostly what the higher ups are doing.

I'm rambling now, and I've typed too much. I don't really remember why I wanted to start a debate on this when looking back, it's sort of pointless until we actually reach the top. Panda would be more apt to comment, or Mogwai...

I just like speaking my feelings, I guess.

tl;dr: Disregard this I suck *****.

namesearching a week later ftw!

counter jungling and it's risk vs. reward etc varies a lot depending on team comps and stuff. it's kinda hard to explain... maybe I'll write something longer about it later, but the gist of it is that if your team can
a) convincingly win a level 1 5v5 teamfight
and
b) significantly screw up the opposing jungle pattern by denying a particular camp
it's typically best to force an issue pre-creep spawn and possibly 5 manning the opposing golem/lizard/wraiths to hamstring the opposing jungler.

for instance... it's basically never worth trying to mess with Olaf/WW/Udyr/Xin/Shen's jungle just because they can really start anywhere and you're wasting time that doesn't REALLY screw them up. if you can beat Pantheon/Fiddle/Amumu's team at golem, do it because they're all very blue buff reliant junglers. it's part of why I think Amumu and Fiddle are overrated junglers, because in order to jungle quickly, then need to take skills that are poor for level 1 teamfighting and they need to start at a very specific location. Pantheon is more robust simply because he's so strong vs. champions at level 1.

 

[M3D]

It's true that Fiddle/Amumu get shut down HARD if the enemy team denies them the blue buff. It seriously doubles the time it takes you to get leveled up and start ganking if you don't have blue buff available from the get-go. The other day the enemy team denied my mummy blue and even the process of leaving my normal jungle path, switching to their jungle, taking their blue (MAD risky) and getting back into the rhythm of things slowed me down significantly. Then when I went to check out blue again, the enemy team had left up a little creep in the camp so I had to kill that and wait for it to respawn. So I couldn't gank or threaten to take dragon for like a full 5-6 minutes longer than usual and after just one gank in my jungle, I fell so far behind I was pretty much useless except for my ult for most of the mid-game because I was so far behind on levels and farm.

No me likey.

Speaking of jungling though... I got my runes for Akali! Gonna start jungling with her this week.

 

[Scamp]

Disagree with you both on Fiddles jungling being crippled by not gettting blue buff. But he's not really the fastest jungler anyway so it's not really worth arguing.

 

[EC_Joey]

So yesterday my 5-man pre-made ran into something we've never seen before.

They went Sivir, Alistar, Sona, Taric, Nunu. 3 of them had summoner heals, 2 of them had smite. They started killing dragon as soon as it spawned. Once they got it, they pushed down 2 mid towers. Around the time they pushed down our mid inhib, we started coming back in teamkills, but we had trouble dealing with super creeps. We lost 2-3 key teamfights outside of our base, and ended up losing.

I feel like we got 6 pooled in LoL.

 

[Mogwai]

what was your team comp? the supposed counter to the fast 5-man push is to have your carry free farm top/bottom and start going into teamfights at the inhib turret, but I haven't seen people go for the fast 5 man push in forever.

 

[prog]

i'm in a really ****ty ELO right now, probably kuz of my own badness, but I'd like to duo queue with someone and get out of it plzzz

You've found your duo buddy

 

[Cia]

Did you know, we could teleport Anivia's egg if we launch the summoner spell before Anivia dies and if we ain't interrupted by a CC?

lol.. yeah. but this was much better when CC didn't interrupt TP. these days, who doesn't have CC to stop this? wouldn't summoner spell exhaust interrupt TP <_<

 

[_kSo_]

I never want to play solo queue again. Every single game is filled with idiots who seem like they have no idea what game they're even playing, let alone what to do in the game.

Someone level a smurf with me, I'm level 14 :<

I'll do it, I want to test out some jungle stuffs

You've found your duo buddy

kk