League of Legends XVII: Gondor Has No Tank, Gondor Needs No Tank

[Math_Mage]

League of Legends XVII:
Gondor Has No Tank, Gondor Needs No Tank



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Silverraptor (http://www.livestream.com/silverrapter?t=527242)
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GUIDES

Into the Wild - Guide to Being a Better Jungler (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10867111#post10867111) by Mtg_player_zach
Laser Bear Udyr (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9657101&postcount=39), by Djinn_In_Tonic
Rammus: Can't touch this (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=258919), by Math_Mage
Seizing the fourth digit: Playing your way out of Elo Hell. (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=341821) by Math_Mage
Twitch (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10267058&postcount=1448), by Djinn_In_Tonic
Faulty and Raistlin's Quick Build Database: Notes and Stuff (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10942497&postcount=1004) by Faulty and Raistlin
Jungle Akali (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10498621&postcount=1358) by Djinn
How to play everyone's favourite Lightning Squirrel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10518034&postcount=154) by Dogmantra
Lee Sin (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=636475) by Dralnu
Super Serious Rumble Guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11052926&postcount=904) by Dogmantra
Jax (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11252389&postcount=652) by Mtg_player_zach
OH SNAP Morgana Can Jungle (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11295698&postcount=1238) by Dogmantra

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Jungle Janna! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC6wm9iaNmM)
How to Win Every Game in League of Legends (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrsTE1vpoXM)
Panic at the Nexus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7WlCbaLI3I)
Sunfire Cape Sunday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgjfX6crjrg)
Season One Trailer with Commentary (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/news/season-one-trailer-commentary)
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I'm just a noob (Ryze Ryze Ryze again) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpr1T-pgaZY&feature=related)
e.o.n Shen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs_cGUPQ3M&feature=related)
Vendrim-Ionia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry3E2UQMe3k&hd=1)
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Your -Epic- Dreamhack comes true! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKCs1CyBFLg)
Ezreal Custom Skin Spotlight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn-HoAPlg-c)
I Just Got Ganked (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpNVN33fj4Y&feature=channel_video_title)
Keep Feeding (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaR0frKc4a0)

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LoL Comic (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=48169) by Elagune
Learn Your Alphabet (http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6264/g28376.png) by Dogmantra and Pierreabelard (with a mention in Summoner Showcase #36 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy7JWV-HA28&feature=feedu)!)
Chibi Champions (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=763895) by pika7
Gender Swaps (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=606416) by ShowMeYourMoves
Champion Flowchart Guides (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=608154) by Renekton Bot
Patch Day Comic (http://i.imgur.com/kHtwk.jpg) by DaemianFF

TRAVEL BACK IN TIME: PREVIOUS THREADS
League of Legends XVI: Alas, Poor Game Balance, I Knew Him, Morello (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203298)
League of Legends XV: Robots Are Better Than Trees (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201024)
League of Legends XIV: We're So Broken That We're OP! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=198948)
League of Legends XIII: Our Skill is Hard to Deny (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196765)
League of Legends XII: It's Worth It Because I Said So In The Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194886)
League of Legends XI: It's Hard to Post Like This in Heels (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192695)
League of Legends X: Armored Armadillo Delivers Ambiguous Affirmative (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10646164#post10646164)
League of Legends IX: New Thread Available! Only 6300 IP! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188076)
League of Legends VIII: Gali-Os: They're idolicious! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=185516)
League of Legends 7: Truly, Truly Outrageous! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182486)
League of Legends 6: Jannaaaaaaaaaa! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=178334)
League of Legends 5: Tall Grass Used Garen! DEMACIAAA! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=173805)
League of Legends 4:CAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAW (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169616)
League of Legends 3: You only need to click once (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=164008s)
League of Legends Goes Where It Pleases 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158135)
League Of Legends: We post where we please. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139094)

[Croverus]

Heh, I loled at the title. Tiem to go play some free champs!

[Joran]

I don't quite get the title. I understand Gondor and I understand Tanks but do not know where the twain meet.

P.S. Normally I'd wait for someone else to ask for me so I don't look like a rube, but I won't be able to sleep until I know the answer.

[St. Viers]

Leona Art Spotlight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMwqUXs5UlM&feature=player_embedded#at=23)I might be getting leona for her splash art alone O_o. I may have said this before, but I really love Katie DeSousa's work. Even if it comes off a bit strange (morgana for example), she is technically brilliant, and I learn a ton from watching their art spotlights.

[Math_Mage]

I don't quite get the title. I understand Gondor and I understand Tanks but do not know where the twain meet.

P.S. Normally I'd wait for someone else to ask for me so I don't look like a rube, but I won't be able to sleep until I know the answer.

Referring to the rise of the tankless comp in competitive play, is my best guess.

Anyway, the preseason college tournament (http://challonge.com/ivylol) has been happening for the last couple days, and they've reached the quarters. You can check out each team's roster here (http://ivylol.com/).

[toasty]

Referring to the rise of the tankless comp in competitive play, is my best guess.

Anyway, the preseason college tournament (http://challonge.com/ivylol) has been happening for the last couple days, and they've reached the quarters. You can check out each team's roster here (http://ivylol.com/).

Despite being in college I'm totally uninterested in this event because I'm pretty sure that about 3 people play LoL at my school, I'm one of them, and I'm the best. Oh, and I might just be the "worst" player on my Ranked Team. :smallsigh:

[Joran]

Referring to the rise of the tankless comp in competitive play, is my best guess.


One of the reasons for tankless play is because Alistar is banned all the gosh darn time. I knew this day would come and I promised myself I wouldn't cry ;_;

Aha, just looked it up in Google =P Boromir said "Gondor Has No King. Gondor Needs No King". I was wondering if it was a quote on one of the streams.

[ZombyWoof]

So we're going to make up a 5s team to challenge the NorCal Power Rankings on All is Brawl.

Unfortunately based on who we have on our team I will always be playing Ashe, Corki, Annie, or Kassadin :smallfrown:

[Silverraptor]

*Walks in*

*Stamps time card*

*Walks out*

[Math_Mage]

One of the reasons for tankless play is because Alistar is banned all the gosh darn time. I knew this day would come and I promised myself I wouldn't cry ;_;

Aha, just looked it up in Google =P Boromir said "Gondor Has No King. Gondor Needs No King". I was wondering if it was a quote on one of the streams.

Oh! I thought you knew that quotation, and just weren't sure where tanks got involved. :smallredface:

[toasty]

So we're going to make up a 5s team to challenge the NorCal Power Rankings on All is Brawl.

Unfortunately based on who we have on our team I will always be playing Ashe, Corki, Annie, or Kassadin :smallfrown:

How is this bad? I think on my ranked team I'm basically delagated to playing Soraka, Sona and Taric every game. Maybe if I learn Alistair and Janna (... and Blitz?) I'll start playing them too.

[Draken]

*plants Sapling, Laser Bird and Voidling banner on new thread*

*Salutes banner*

*Goes sleep because it is freaking late*

[Moonshadow]

Leona Art Spotlight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMwqUXs5UlM&feature=player_embedded#at=23)I might be getting leona for her splash art alone O_o. I may have said this before, but I really love Katie DeSousa's work. Even if it comes off a bit strange (morgana for example), she is technically brilliant, and I learn a ton from watching their art spotlights.

...What is it with Riot and big chested female characters? I'm starting to think that they start out as 3150 champs, and the boob job bumps the cost to 6300 >_>

[Eldariel]

...What is it with Riot and big chested female characters? I'm starting to think that they start out as 3150 champs, and the boob job bumps the cost to 6300 >_>

It's the same artists doing all of the character art; I'm thinking they just have some breast worshippers in the team. She's got an armor (and some clothes) tho at least, unlike about 99% of the female characters in the game (Irelia, Lux, Kayle, Karma, Vayne vs. Janna, Morgana, Sivir, MF, Sona, Akali, Ashe, Caitlyn, Cass, Nid, Kat, LeB - tho note how 4 of the 5 more clad characters are recent :smallwink:).

[ZombyWoof]

How is this bad? I think on my ranked team I'm basically delagated to playing Soraka, Sona and Taric every game. Maybe if I learn Alistair and Janna (... and Blitz?) I'll start playing them too.
because those are basically the only champs I play in ranked, period... and I can't bust out any of my good-but-not-carry champs. I can't play Janna, I can't play Taric, I can't play Zilean, I can't play Shen...

and the reason I can't play these characters isn't because they're not good enough or I'm not good enough with them, but because the people I play with know maybe 2 champs each. We have one guy who has to play Malphite every game.

[Math_Mage]

It's the same artists doing all of the character art; I'm thinking they just have some breast worshippers in the team. She's got an armor (and some clothes) tho at least, unlike about 99% of the female characters in the game (Irelia, Lux, Kayle, Karma, Vayne vs. Janna, Morgana, Sivir, MF, Sona, Akali, Ashe, Caitlyn, Cass, Nid, Kat, LeB - tho note how 4 of the 5 more clad characters are recent :smallwink:).

My problem with Leona's art (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=207548&d=1309491410) isn't so much the boobs as the totally ridiculous costume she thinks is armor. Not to mention she's going to have such fun fighting sword-and-board in high heels.

[St. Viers]

...What is it with Riot and big chested female characters? I'm starting to think that they start out as 3150 champs, and the boob job bumps the cost to 6300 >_>

Simple: it appeals to their audience base, which makes people want to buy and play them. I actually like them not for the body, but her faces are very expressive, and how she shades/gives it skin tones is amazing XD

[Winthur]

It's the same artists doing all of the character art; I'm thinking they just have some breast worshippers in the team.

Couldn't help it but make the connection. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKlzoGP2m0w) :smallbiggrin:

[TheEndIsNear]

I ahve a question, where does the garen comngi out of the busha nd no facechecking come from?

[Winthur]

I ahve a question, where does the garen comngi out of the busha nd no facechecking come from?

1) Pick Garen (preferrably with Arpen marks, quints, and 21/0/9 masteries, and Flash/Ignite).
2) Buy a Doran's Blade.
3) Wait in the bush at the bottom lane with your partner
4) Get level 2.
5) Wait for somebody to facecheck the bush (or if they are snooping around it, Flash right into their face).
6) Q the victim.
7) Follow up with your E.
8) Ignite if needed.
9) Have fun with the gold you just got from first blood.

Basically Garen is a character whose combo is devastating early game but who can be seen from a mile away since he doesn't have any sort of close up. Flash and the bushes help for the surprise element needed to deliver the combo. The combo alone is capable of merciless murder on a fragile champion once you hit level 2, and it becomes even better once you factor in your ultimate. But it requires people to get close to you in the first place. They'll be reluctant to unless they have no idea that you're in the bush they're about to visit.

That's basically it.

[Eldariel]

My problem with Leona's art (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=207548&d=1309491410) isn't so much the boobs as the totally ridiculous costume she thinks is armor. Not to mention she's going to have such fun fighting sword-and-board in high heels.

It takes a lot of effort to fight like this in heels...


Couldn't help it but make the connection. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKlzoGP2m0w) :smallbiggrin:

Well done :smalltongue:


I have a question, where does the Garen coming out of the bush and no facechecking come from?

Garen's playstyle is basically this:
- Sit in a brush
- Someone comes near
- Decisive Strike to silence
- Judgment their asses into oblivion
- Demacian Justice kill
- Rince and repeat (he heals up superfast in brush and doesn't need mana or items so he doesn't even need to base)

Basically, Garen is (was) the reason you never facecheck a brush. Because he will be there and you will die.

[Math_Mage]

It takes a lot of effort to fight like this in heels...

Well, I've mentioned my problems with Eve's appearance in previous posts, so yeah. :smallsmile:

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Leona Art Spotlight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMwqUXs5UlM&feature=player_embedded#at=23)I might be getting leona for her splash art alone O_o. I may have said this before, but I really love Katie DeSousa's work. Even if it comes off a bit strange (morgana for example), she is technically brilliant, and I learn a ton from watching their art spotlights.

That is some pretty darn cool splash art.

[Dallas-Dakota]

Joran, no, it's not a ''high elo stream quote'', it's a pure and original Cookiemonster quote.:smallbiggrin:

Also, yay, my quote got made into the title.:smalltongue:

[endoperez]

...What is it with Riot and big chested female characters? I'm starting to think that they start out as 3150 champs, and the boob job bumps the cost to 6300 >_>

I've actually seen an explanation that doesn't hinge on a breast fetish. It's not a perfect one, but...

The characters are only seen from the top view, in-game. From that specific angle, small breasts are hard to see, so they have to make them bigger or the players will be confused about a champion's gender. Just look at Ezrael! :smallwink:
Any way, if the breasts are big enough to see in-game, they end up looking ridiculous in the splash art.

[Dallas-Dakota]

Actually.... (http://www.cracked.com/article_19262_6-glitches-that-accidentally-invented-modern-gaming.html)

[The Rabbler]

I've gotta ask: Why is the breast-size issue such a huge deal? I honestly don't care what a character looks like as long as he/she has interesting abilities and doesn't look absolutely terrible. I honestly don't think that having ridiculous muscles or huge boobs make a character look good; I think that successfully playing off a theme makes a character look good ie: shaco.

[Zen Master]

I saw a discussion once about the original Fallout game, and how the physiques of the player character is grossly exaggerated. It just works in graphics - frankly, I'll even claim boob size is exaggerated for the exact same reason all weapons the Warhammer (and similar) miniatures are so huge.

Heels is another matter. I guess that's just a question of girls in flat shoes looking homey. And homey doesn't work well in deadly arena matches.

[Brother Oni]

Just had a thought - with the new EU-W and EU-N+E split, should we start splitting the list of players on the EU server in the first post, or are there so few of us, it's not worthwhile?

[Eldariel]

I've gotta ask: Why is the breast-size issue such a huge deal?

It's not. It is, however, an amusing pattern and a tad over-the-top obvious marketing.

[Dragor]

I've gotta ask: Why is the breast-size issue such a huge deal? I honestly don't care what a character looks like as long as he/she has interesting abilities and doesn't look absolutely terrible. I honestly don't think that having ridiculous muscles or huge boobs make a character look good; I think that successfully playing off a theme makes a character look good ie: shaco.

I don't know, but it rubs me up the wrong way. Large breasts are commonly assosciated with making characters sex objects or fanservice; and while fanservice is amusing in small doses, in large quantities it can really make a character who could potentially be taken seriously a bit of a joke. So it's not large breasts in general, it's just the connotations that big boobs = fanservice, and thus means the character can't be taken seriously.

I've been looking forward to Leona quite a bit, and that splash art is awesome. Not a fan of the obligatory BREAST plate, but eh- it's a female tank with a cool concept, I'm not going to complain. Might be a first day buy- and might even get me back into LoL, who knows. :smalltongue:

[goes back to lurking]

[Winterwind]

Just had a thought - with the new EU-W and EU-N+E split, should we start splitting the list of players on the EU server in the first post, or are there so few of us, it's not worthwhile?Good call.

EU-West for me.

[Nargan]

EU West, fo' sho'.

[Zen Master]

Oh.

Scandinavia is getting saddled with all the slavic language nations. That .... that just ain't going to happen. They'll put me in east, but I'll be moving to west soon as I can.

[Ziren]

I've gotta ask: Why is the breast-size issue such a huge deal? I honestly don't care what a character looks like as long as he/she has interesting abilities and doesn't look absolutely terrible. I honestly don't think that having ridiculous muscles or huge boobs make a character look good; I think that successfully playing off a theme makes a character look good ie: shaco.

While I find breasts that are the size of the characters head... visually unappealing, I can't say they bother me all that much.
I just find that marketing her as a strong independent woman and that putting her into the heavy plate equivalent of a chainmail bikini doesn't fit together so well.
Though the high heels are what looks the worst on that picture to me - there's no way she could keep her balance if she lifts a foot from the ground carrying a sword and a shield of that size with her.

I'm EU-West as well.

[The Rabbler]

I guess that makes sense. I assumed it was a bigger deal because there are dozens of posts about it all over the league forum whenever a female champion is released.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

West Side fo' life mah homes

/amidoingitright



I guess that makes sense. I assumed it was a bigger deal because there are dozens of posts about it all over the league forum whenever a female champion is released.

It's about one part genuine concerns, three parts trolling, four parts troll response and two parts meme, by my estimation. In other words, pay it no mind.

[Eldariel]

I guess that makes sense. I assumed it was a bigger deal because there are dozens of posts about it all over the league forum whenever a female champion is released.

Official LoL forums are a troll den. There's about 70 useless posts to each with little thought behind it, most of them being just flamebaits, generic stupid whining or just general stupidity. And of course, the replies follow the suit. Same is, of course, true for just about every forum that isn't heavily moderated and/or with a small user pool.


Also, I've stated it multiple times before but I'll be on EU West.

[Winterwind]

Official LoL forums are a troll den. There's about 70 useless posts to each with little thought behind it, most of them being just flamebaits, generic stupid whining or just general stupidity. And of course, the replies follow the suit. Same is, of course, true for just about every forum that isn't heavily moderated and/or with a small user pool.For some reason I haven't yet figured out the official German LoL forums are rather okay - rather than the perpetual "omg riot u sux" whining one sees on the English ones, people seem more inclined to appreciate Riot's attempts at solving issues there (it may have something to do with Riot people actually posting in the German forums quite frequently and giving updates on what they are dealing with and what they are trying to do, rather than this infuriating policy of not addressing people angry about server issues and alike at all that Riot seems to be following on the English forums). And I have seen much less trolls and people who think "...", "QQ" and "/close" are all valid responses to a thread there. I haven't got a clue why that might be, though.

The English forums are a troll den much, much worse than the Blizzard forums though, and that's saying something.

[Dogmantra]

2) Buy a Doran's Blade.
I thought the Bush Garen start was boots + 3 potions?


Maybe if I learn Alistair and Janna (... and Blitz?) I'll start playing them too.
You should have someone else learn Blitz or Cow then you learn the other one then you auto win bot lane and if you're all upset about not having two mages soloing just put like Morgana or Karthus in the jungle. I am the best at tactics.:smallcool:

(seriously though Blitzcrank seems to be the most under-rated champion, comparing him to like Ashe he's obviously not as good, but looking at some of the other "tier 1 champions" [not necessarily just Elementz's list, but common consensus] he seems crazy, he has so much CC, two absurd damage increasers, can be built AD, AP or Tanky DPS, he has some of the best initiation in the game, and just to top it all off he melts towers.)

[Master_Rahl22]

because those are basically the only champs I play in ranked, period... and I can't bust out any of my good-but-not-carry champs. I can't play Janna, I can't play Taric, I can't play Zilean, I can't play Shen...

and the reason I can't play these characters isn't because they're not good enough or I'm not good enough with them, but because the people I play with know maybe 2 champs each. We have one guy who has to play Malphite every game.

People like the Malphite guy really make me mad. There's one guy I regularly play with who only ever plays Miss Fortune. Granted, he's really good with her, but it doesn't matter if we're duo queueing and somebody already picked a ranged carry, or that we have a premade and somebody else wants to play a carry for once. If he's low in the pick order and MF is taken or banned, he plays Tristana or Ashe or Caitlyn. It just pisses me off so much because yes he's good as ranged carry, but dammit sometimes I want to play something other than Tanky DPS or Tank or Support. Also, I am familiar with quite a few champs, decent with several, and good with a few of them so that I can fulfill multiple roles if that's what my team needs.

[TechnOkami]

I believe I'm Euro West if I'm not mistaken...

[Arcanoi]

You should have someone else learn Blitz or Cow then you learn the other one then you auto win bot lane and if you're all upset about not having two mages soloing just put like Morgana or Karthus in the jungle. I am the best at tactics.:smallcool:

(seriously though Blitzcrank seems to be the most under-rated champion, comparing him to like Ashe he's obviously not as good, but looking at some of the other "tier 1 champions" [not necessarily just Elementz's list, but common consensus] he seems crazy, he has so much CC, two absurd damage increasers, can be built AD, AP or Tanky DPS, he has some of the best initiation in the game, and just to top it all off he melts towers.)

Blitz and Cow are, in my opinion, the best champions in the game. Positioning is extremely important, and Blitz and Cow take your opponents' positioning and trample all over it. The ridiculous degree to which they contribute to teamfight and great survivablility with low itemization just pile on top of that.

The only reason they aren't picked more is that they can't carry as well as Anti-Carry Tanky-DPS.

[Silverraptor]

While I find breasts that are the size of the characters head... visually unappealing, I can't say they bother me all that much.
I just find that marketing her as a strong independent woman and that putting her into the heavy plate equivalent of a chainmail bikini doesn't fit together so well.
Though the high heels are what looks the worst on that picture to me - there's no way she could keep her balance if she lifts a foot from the ground carrying a sword and a shield of that size with her.

I'm EU-West as well.

She uses the heels to dig into the gorund to help her withstand blows.:smalltongue:

[9mm]

So the Female Armor ragers have completely overrun the League forums; le sigh.

[Eldariel]

So the Female Armor ragers have completely overrun the League forums; le sigh.

Well, at least it's better than the EU forums right now. The EU forums are run over by nationalists regarding the server change (among others, some Serbians cry about Kosovo and Montenegro being listed as separate countries, just about everyone cries about Fennoscandia being a part of East rather than West, some people suggest north/south split instead and then there are these posts (http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/5320/serversp.jpg)...)

[Sila Prirode]

Blitz and Cow are, in my opinion, the best champions in the game. Positioning is extremely important, and Blitz and Cow take your opponents' positioning and trample all over it. The ridiculous degree to which they contribute to teamfight and great survivablility with low itemization just pile on top of that.

The only reason they aren't picked more is that they can't carry as well as Anti-Carry Tanky-DPS.

I play Blitz, a lot. And biggest problems is late-late game (45+ min) where you get outfarmed by most champs. Now, if I have a team who can fight well in 4v5 situations (not win, but trade well, like 3 kills for 3 deaths, or something similiar), it's auto win, because one good hook turns it into 5v4, and then it's smooth sailing to Nexus.

But if you have a balanced team, Blitz turns into a liability quickly, because even if you do hook one, your team burst him down, and while their abilites are on CD enemy team usually initiates. It's still 5v4, but you have some CDs down, and almost everyone has more farm then me, so I don't contribute as much as I could with someone tanky DPS, or just tank.

[Winterwind]

Well, at least it's better than the EU forums right now. The EU forums are run over by nationalists regarding the server change (among others, some Serbians cry about Kosovo and Montenegro being listed as separate countries, just about everyone cries about Fennoscandia being a part of East rather than West, some people suggest north/south split instead and then there are these posts (http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/5320/serversp.jpg)...)Yeah, the nationalism is simply shocking. Shocking and repulsive. I wouldn't have ever expected so many people to be spouting so much hatred for other Europeans in our times, nevermind getting away with it. :smalleek:

The discussions regarding which people can speak English and which can't are very... charming, too. :smallsigh:

[ZombyWoof]

I don't know, but it rubs me up the wrong way. Large breasts are commonly assosciated with making characters sex objects or fanservice; and while fanservice is amusing in small doses, in large quantities it can really make a character who could potentially be taken seriously a bit of a joke. So it's not large breasts in general, it's just the connotations that big boobs = fanservice, and thus means the character can't be taken seriously.
It's a huge deal to me. I really don't like the list of female champions in LoL because each and every one of the is exactly the same skin over and over: show all of the body, rinse, repeat. The only real ladies the League has who don't show massive cleavage or are heavily sexualised in their skins are Annie and Poppy. Then some idiot makes a splash art for this champ in heels? Yeah, he's a good artist, but maybe he should learn to draw something besides busy woman in heels. I bet you that the first round of this particular art was her in a bikini and heels before his boss was like, "Umm... she needs to be in armor" so he painted a shirt over the rest of her body.

[Dogmantra]

But if you have a balanced team, Blitz turns into a liability quickly, because even if you do hook one, your team burst him down, and while their abilites are on CD enemy team usually initiates. It's still 5v4, but you have some CDs down, and almost everyone has more farm then me, so I don't contribute as much as I could with someone tanky DPS, or just tank.

I would disagree. Blitzcrank alone can burst down a squishy, and he doesn't need his cooldowns to be useful with autoattacks.

[Ziren]

It's a huge deal to me. I really don't like the list of female champions in LoL because each and every one of the is exactly the same skin over and over: show all of the body, rinse, repeat. The only real ladies the League has who don't show massive cleavage or are heavily sexualised in their skins are Annie and Poppy.

Kayle, Irelia and Lux aren't that bad either...



Then some idiot makes a splash art for this champ in heels? Yeah, he's a good artist, but maybe he should learn to draw something besides busy woman in heels. I bet you that the first round of this particular art was her in a bikini and heels before his boss was like, "Umm... she needs to be in armor" so he painted a shirt over the rest of her body.

I agree with your general point though. For a champion that was marketed as their strong and independent female tank... the image just doesn't fit.

Also, the anatomy on her legs is seriously messed up, how could the artist and everyone else at Riot miss that?


In other news, don't you just love it, that the LoL Client simply crashes if you lose connection to the internet for more than five seconds? Oh well, back to the 30 minutes login queue... as soon as the server is no longer busy :smallfrown:

[Joran]

I play Blitz, a lot. And biggest problems is late-late game (45+ min) where you get outfarmed by most champs. Now, if I have a team who can fight well in 4v5 situations (not win, but trade well, like 3 kills for 3 deaths, or something similiar), it's auto win, because one good hook turns it into 5v4, and then it's smooth sailing to Nexus.

But if you have a balanced team, Blitz turns into a liability quickly, because even if you do hook one, your team burst him down, and while their abilites are on CD enemy team usually initiates. It's still 5v4, but you have some CDs down, and almost everyone has more farm then me, so I don't contribute as much as I could with someone tanky DPS, or just tank.

The problem with Blitzcrank is that he falls off towards the end when everyone starts getting Banshee's Veils. Those grabs no longer work, unless you have someone who can pop those veils and if you do that, then the element of surprise is lost.


Then some idiot makes a splash art for this champ in heels? Yeah, he's a good artist, but maybe he should learn to draw something besides busy woman in heels.

<WhiteKnight> Uhhh... The artist is Katie De Sousa. </WhiteKnight>

Anyway, Leona's features are exaggerated, but at least she's wearing clothes this time.

[Sila Prirode]

Oh, I have no problems with squishys, but AoE-fest at the endgame (45+ min, as I said). Mostly because of the lack of farm, when you just can't stand against stuff like 250+ CS Ashe or Annie, etc.

[Dogmantra]

The problem with Blitzcrank is that he falls off towards the end when everyone starts getting Banshee's Veils. Those grabs no longer work, unless you have someone who can pop those veils and if you do that, then the element of surprise is lost.

Ehh, initiation pulls are overrated.

And the other thing is that you don't need as much farm as those Ashes or whatever because you scale so ridiculously with items. You have a 62% aspd boost which is nearly always up, a 3 second cooldown double damager (which gives you a couple of free hits while they're knocked up) and that's only on two of your abilities! You also have the movespeed boost and the pull, and the silence, but those don't scale your damage really. What I'm saying though is you scale about twice as well as Ashe or whatever so that sure you only have half her farm but you have the same damage and three times the CC.

[Math_Mage]

I'll start splitting the EU list when someone tells me they're in EU East. Only one so far is Acromos, with an avowed intention to switch, so...yeah.

Leona's art, as with a number of the female champions, is Riot's typical middle-of-the-road mediocre where verisimilitude is concerned. It's not this (http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs17/f/2007/199/c/2/Medieval_Angry_Hope_by_Kai_S.jpg) good (http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/n539/marnath1/CattieBrie.jpg), but not this (http://coolvibe.com/2011/12-fantasy-art-characters-by-reaper78/female_vampiric_knight/) bad (http://images.coolvibe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/catching-the-breath.jpg). (I posted some other good pics here (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=10753660#post10753660).) The metal dress has to rate among the stupidest things I've seen drawn, though.

Re: Blitz, late game pulling is for peeling and cleanup unless by some miracle their carry doesn't have a Veil. Treat him like a tanky DPS with a little special surprise. He scales pretty nicely.

[Joran]

Re: Blitz, late game pulling is for peeling and cleanup unless by some miracle their carry doesn't have a Veil. Treat him like a tanky DPS with a little special surprise. He scales pretty nicely.

True, I was busy playing bots yesterday and I was so sad to see so many Banshee's Veils. I could punch things pretty darn hard though.

Let's try another tack. I don't think Blitzcrank fits in the current high-ELO meta well. At the moment, it's Solo top, solo mid, Jungle, support/carry bottom.

Blitzcrank can't solo and he can't jungle (caveat: he can't jungle well. If Dogmantra can jungle with Morgana, you can jungle with anyone). He doesn't have good sustain. So, he needs to fit in bottom, where your support is and there are better ranged DPS to fit into that spot.

He can fit in the support slot, I'd guess, but I'd rather have someone who can help sustain the ranged DPS.

[Dogmantra]

Blitzcrank can't solo and he can't jungle (caveat: he can't jungle well. If Dogmantra can jungle with Morgana, you can jungle with anyone).

Uhh, let's see, Power Fist > Overdrive > Overdrive > Rocket Grab. Wraiths > Wolves > Mini Golems > Port x2 > Blue > Red > Gank

The only thing is items to start with. Longsword would be the best for his two AD scalars, but Cloth Armour would give more health retention, and Vamp Sceptre could cash in on his high early damage.

I have done it before, it did work, but it's no Morgana or Karthus "weird" jungle.

[Joran]

Uhh, let's see, Power Fist > Overdrive > Overdrive > Rocket Grab. Wraiths > Wolves > Mini Golems > Port x2 > Blue > Red > Gank

The only thing is items to start with. Longsword would be the best for his two AD scalars, but Cloth Armour would give more health retention, and Vamp Sceptre could cash in on his high early damage.

I have done it before, it did work, but it's no Morgana or Karthus "weird" jungle.

Well, that's why I used a disclaimer like "well", not "can't". If you can jungle with TF, you can jungle with anyone...

Have you tried Sona? She has that slow power chord + ranged red buff auto-attack you seem to love so much...

[The Rabbler]

Blitzcrank can't solo and he can't jungle (caveat: he can't jungle well. If Dogmantra can jungle with Morgana, you can jungle with anyone). He doesn't have good sustain. So, he needs to fit in bottom, where your support is and there are better ranged DPS to fit into that spot.

He can fit in the support slot, I'd guess, but I'd rather have someone who can help sustain the ranged DPS.

IMHO, Blitz is a better fit as a tanky dps. If you play him as such, he can do some strong damage whilst being very hard to kill. The problem is getting the farm required to do so. A babysitter support down bot usually solves that (Janna/Alistar make Blitz so happy). I usually see them building tear -> boots -> sheen -> manamune -> trinity -> randuins/banshees/frozen heart/FoN/other tanky stuff

As for his supportive abilities, I find him pretty lacking. He can punch every once in a while, grab every long while, and silence everything every 20-30 seconds (with some CDR). That's fine, but it's nothing compared to, say, Janna or Zilean; Both champs that fill the support slot quite well. It'd work in low ELO and maybe med ELO if you're dual-queuing with someone who knows what to play.

EDIT: and on the topic of strange junglers, Caitlyn is always funny to try and I love me some jungling Alistar

[Dogmantra]

Well, that's why I used a disclaimer like "well", not "can't". If you can jungle with TF, you can jungle with anyone...
You can't jungle with LeBlanc without a really specific runepage and a pull.
(Also I just thought it would be amuzing to reply with a specific jungle path and method, they're fun to come up with :smallwink:)


Have you tried Sona? She has that slow power chord + ranged red buff auto-attack you seem to love so much...
I have not, I was considering getting her next (one more aspd seal, then I can get whatever) because she'll complete a line. I suppose something like Damage > Heal > Damage > Speed/Heal with the standard Wraiths > Wolves > Minis clear would work. Her ganks wouldn't be too bad either.

My favourites though are Morgana, TF and Singed.


IMHO, Blitz is a better fit as a tanky dps. If you play him as such, he can do some strong damage whilst being very hard to kill. The problem is getting the farm required to do so. A babysitter support down bot usually solves that (Janna/Alistar make Blitz so happy). I usually see them building tear -> boots -> sheen -> manamune -> trinity -> randuins/banshees/frozen heart/FoN/other tanky stuff
Blitz makes a "meh" tanky DPS and an amazing melee dps because of his closer and also his CC and his crazy scaling. You don't need the Manamune (it's inefficient to build mana on him for defense, get health if you want health, and you shouldn't be having mana problems if you're managing your abilities well). I use Triforce > IE > Phantom Dancer > Gunblades/Defensive (obviously getting BVeil and Frozen Heart, if you've got it flaunt it, though sometimes I like Randuin's instead). Blitzcrank is just about the only melee DPS character that works squishily because of the nature of his closer as opposed to other closers. His closer brings one guy to you, thus making it 1v1, whereas part of the reason melee dps doesn't normally work is that it relies on you going in to all the enemies.

[Math_Mage]

I bet Blitz solo top actually works out nicely against a number of lanes. Blitz duo bot is still one of the strongest lanes in the game. FWIW, I think Triforce-Omen-Veil-IE is the way to go.

[Dogmantra]

I bet Blitz solo top actually works out nicely against a number of lanes.
From what I've seen and what I assume, he loves facing the same sort of people Rumble likes facing, short ranged squishier champions.

[Winthur]

I thought the Bush Garen start was boots + 3 potions?

Garen scales epically well with Attack Damage and getting early Doran's Blades (stacking a few of them early before getting real deal items) really helps the combo. If they facecheck, you can easily silence them (they can't flash afterwards) and do the spin, since you're not a slow character. Or you can initiate with flash and get a kill this way too. Plus, I like the +100 HP. I do buy HP potions on Garen, particularly on some tougher lanes where I get a bit too kited for my own good, but early on Doran's Blade and my passive's regeneration is cool enough. :smallcool:

(I'm on a Garen kick recently, he's really fun to play as a tank.)

Also: Should I get Taric or Sona as my next champion?
I suffer from a lack of a good support champion (sure, I have Janna. I'm also TERRIBLE at Janna and playing with my Janna is playing 4v5. Zilean and Nidalee don't really count since they prefer solo lanes and being an AP carry/support mix.)

[Math_Mage]

Garen scales epically well with Attack Damage and getting early Doran's Blades (stacking a few of them early before getting real deal items) really helps the combo. If they facecheck, you can easily silence them (they can't flash afterwards) and do the spin, since you're not a slow character. Or you can initiate with flash and get a kill this way too. Plus, I like the +100 HP. I do buy HP potions on Garen, particularly on some tougher lanes where I get a bit too kited for my own good, but early on Doran's Blade and my passive's regeneration is cool enough. :smallcool:

(I'm on a Garen kick recently, he's really fun to play as a tank.)

Also: Should I get Taric or Sona as my next champion?
I suffer from a lack of a good support champion (sure, I have Janna. I'm also TERRIBLE at Janna and playing with my Janna is playing 4v5. Zilean and Nidalee don't really count since they prefer solo lanes and being an AP carry/support mix.)

Play them during freeweeks if you can. There isn't one that's definitely a better choice, though I'd lean towards Sona.

[St. Viers]

Disclaimer: angry rant ahead.

so played a game were the first two kids lock in kog-maw and twitch. We get a nunu as jungle, cho to solo top, and I pick morg to support the twitch bot lane.

The first thing he tells me is to not take any farm, so I don't assuming I'm going support then (so I grab philo stone first, after a ring as start). Meanwhile, they have a morg that is getting fed off top (cho wasn't too good), and by roaming mid (kog didn't take any escape spells).

Meanwhile, I'm stuck protecting an aggressive twitch from soraka + irelia, and he doesn't seem to realize that my shield only prevents magic damage (not his fault, not one used to use morg recently). He also builds only avarice blade and zeal as first items. Needless to say, we don't have anywhere near the damage needed to stop soraka/irelia, and our jungler is too busy ignoring everything to farm their jungle.

Later, my team flames me for not having damage (like "their morg" does), and are shocked that I thought I was playing support (laned with carry, took cv on their request, not fed), even though I managed to eke out an hourglass in addition to boots, wards, philo, and most of aegis.

[Joran]

I bet Blitz solo top actually works out nicely against a number of lanes. Blitz duo bot is still one of the strongest lanes in the game. FWIW, I think Triforce-Omen-Veil-IE is the way to go.

I think the problem with Blitz solo top is he doesn't have the sustain that your normal tanky DPS has. He can take harass and not have a way to either deal back harass or just heal it off that an Irelia, Cho'gath, or Jarvan have.

As long as the top lane can dodge the rocket grab, which hiding behind the minions does well, Blitzcrank can't really do much.

Blitzcrank bottom lane is an absolute nightmare with someone with a stun.

[Daverin]

Okay, thought I'd chime in with my thoughts on Leona's art:

1. Okay, its official, I must come from a place that has an above average aggregate breast size on females, because these do not look big to me. Seriously, I see plenty of women with something around this size. If there is an anatomy issue, it is EVERYTHING ELSE. She's almost literally a stick figure, with a tiny face, with either average or slightly above breasts. So, yeah...

2. On to what bugs me: oh dear lord, the armor! :smallfurious:

Now, I am nowhere near an expert, and have plenty I do not know, but I do have a more than passing interest in the history of armor, and whenever I see something that is supposed to be armor but not, it gets me rather agitated. Of course, the standard breast plate thing is bad enough, but also some massive metal skirt... thing that is connected either by 2 dimensional strips of plate or simply by the white coloring of her leotard (whichever those three lines are) is both unnecessarily bulky and likely not going to do much good. And how are her armor pieces even connected together or kept on her?

And armored high heels. No, just no.

This bugs me because I had high hopes of a female character with a very realistic, armored portrayal, considering she is a tank and fulfills a paladin archetype. We know they can do it, just look at Kayle who almost has a reasonable suit of armor, bulk aside. Actually, looking at that preview drawing from E3, why in the world did they move away from it? It looks much more promising, and even seems to have more symbols involved with the sun motive.

I can only hope that the armor is giving an overhaul, but that is unlikely. Which is sad, because I was REALLY looking forward to this one, as I thought the lack of a female tank was really lame. I was genuinely thinking I'd be eager to try her, but now I'm looking at the current art scheme, and I feel like not only is it ridiculous, but to regard someone's point earlier, it does not even emphasis her motif as much as the original preview art! Gah!

Alright, done with the rant. Hopefully at least the abilities will be awesome.

[ScionoftheVoid]

On the dissapointment with the new Champ's look: We can always hope for a skin with better armour, particularly with complaints/suggestions on the forums. The most relevant word there is "hope", however.

[Temotei]

1. Okay, its official, I must come from a place that has an above average aggregate breast size on females, because these do not look big to me. Seriously, I see plenty of women with something around this size. If there is an anatomy issue, it is EVERYTHING ELSE. She's almost literally a stick figure, with a tiny face, with either average or slightly above breasts. So, yeah...

Leona's breast size is, honestly, par for around here. My fellow graduates often had bigger breasts after freshman year, actually...some of them were about as thin as Leona, too. Plenty still are. It's a little hard to tell, though, since Leona's clothing is very tight-fitting, as opposed to the usually less so shirts here.

Leona's outfit bugs me. I especially dislike her headpieces and heels, though her breastplate is kind of weird-looking to me, too. She's pretty, though.

[Winthur]

By the look of things, I will always buy a Chalice of Harmony on Leona.

Or should I say...
:smallcool:
C-Cup?

I love how this thread is now about breasts.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Friend of mine needs advice on Roaming Taric.

[Math_Mage]

unRated playing TSM now. (http://solomid.net/livestream.php?s=33356#17484:esl.lol)

BANS
TSM: Rumble Nunu TF
unR: Alistar Warwick Jarvan

PICKS
TSM: Vayne Nocturne Sona Singed Brand
unR: Zilean Amumu Vlad Ashe Janna

Grackis casting. :smallyuk:

[9mm]

New JoJ

General Blackwill assassinated!
Leona lore teaser
Piltover wins zeplin race
Vayne loyal to the Black Rose?!?!?

[St. Viers]

unR is soo tight, gameplay and teamwork-wise

[Inhuman Bot]

Kayle; Armor; Reasonable

Not particularly. I will note you didn't observe the "Daggers stored by her throat" or the poorly designed sword, but whatever.

[Dienekes]

Not particularly. I will note you didn't observe the "Daggers stored by her throat" or the poorly designed sword, but whatever.

If we're going by which LoL champions armor is unreasonable or weapons are unrealistic we will be here all day discussing just about every champion.

[Math_Mage]

Not particularly. I will note you didn't observe the "Daggers stored by her throat" or the poorly designed sword, but whatever.

That's...why he said "almost". Neh?

[ZombyWoof]

Teams:

Trundle/Singed/Jarvan/Janna/Ashe

vs.

Vayne/Malzahar/Annie/Warwick/Cho

My whole team was complaining that we were outpicked. Personally, I believe that we outpicked them considerably... though we would have done better had Janna gone Ashe or Corki and I'd been allowed to play Kassadin. Why?

Explanation:

Vayne and Malzahar get labeled as "Tank Killers" in a way that seems... unfair. For the mathematical exericse here, let's assume that a "tank" is a generic champion with 3500 HP and 200 AR/MR.

Vayne's "tank killer" reputation comes from the fact that her silver bolts deal true damage... a very stupid decision by Riot, I might add. She deserves that reputation, but she also lacks stuns or slows (and her knockback doesn't really count). Still she's good at kiting thanks to tumble and her knockback.

Malzahar on the other hand... let's just take a look at him for a second. Assuming 500 AP malzahar's pool will deal 13% magic damage. With 3500 HP, that's 455 damage a second. Malz's ult will keep it there for 3 seconds (2.5 and we'll give it the rest of that second) for 1365 raw damage. After MR, that's... 450 damage. Out of 3500 hp. Throw in Malzahar's ult and his full combo deals 850 damage in 3 seconds to our theoretical "tank."

In three seconds, Annie will land full combo and Tibbers will punch and burn for 3 seconds... and deal 873 damage to our theoretical "tank." P.S. Annie is a bit op right now and I'm just waiting for people to realize it. Vlad, Malz, and Swain are still FotM status and everyone's kind of starting to figure out that Annie is really the untankable mage (thanks to her friggin' ridiculous ratios) but whatever. Roll with it, eh?

Now let's look at the CC available to each team:
Ours: Slow(wall), Knockback/slow, Knockup/slow/wall, Knockup/knockback/slow, slow/stun.

Theirs: knockback(kind of stun), silence/suppress, stun, suppress, knockup/silence.

I don't think I'm the only person who sees that each member of our team save Trundle has an absurd CC set, and even Trundle's pillar is pretty damn good.

So going into this team I thought to myself, "What is their gameplan going to be?" The answer was: "focus Ashe." That was really all they could do. They didn't have a pack of pushers (like, say, Singed or Jarvan), and I was really the only non-tank worth focusing.

I thought to myself, "What is our gameplan going to be?" My answer, and I'm curious what you guys think, was this: "Take out Vayne as she's the only real threat to Trundle/Jarvan/Singed. It's ok if I die because even if I do, I'll have done my job if Vayne dies. Also open up opportunities to take towers by letting Jarvan and Singed split push a bit, and then abusing Jarvan's standard to take a tower quickly."

Once again, looking at the teams I came to the following conclusion: their team has one threat, and that's Vayne. Vayne unchecked will run rampant through our team. Our team has one threat, and that's me. If I'm unchecked I will run rampant through their team. I have three tanks and Janna who are there to take the blows for me. They have three carries and Warwick to take the blows for Vayne.

In the end I turned out to be right: outside of laning the HP and MR from our three tanks ended up being so much that Annie and Malzahar couldn't deal a sufficient amount of damage to them to bring them down. Since our front line was so clogged, none of their dudes could get back behind to get at me, and even if they did Janna had the knockup and knockback to get them back off of me.

How the game panned out: at first they tried saving their guns in teamfights to get through to me. That didn't work because I simply arrowed Vayne and our tanky/dps quickly brought her down while everyone tried frantically to save her. Then they realized that going after our tanks was the only option they had, but the combination of Janna's heals and the sheer tankiness proved insurmountable and the casters simply couldn't' deal enough damage.

Result: our opponents surrendered at minute 20 in the face of being down 3 turrets, 2 dragons, and 5 kills.

As an aside: their team was something I'd have dreamed of with kassadin. let our tanks take the brunt of the assault, pop in back and kill vayne, and then leave. Suddenly it's spent casters vs 1/2-3/4 health tanks... and I can pop in and out at my leisure killing whomever whenever.

[Inhuman Bot]

That's...why he said "almost". Neh?

But it's not almost reasonable, even excluding the bulk; The design of the plates is flawed. I might be misremembering, though.

[Daverin]

Not particularly. I will note you didn't observe the "Daggers stored by her throat" or the poorly designed sword, but whatever.

Note the "almost". Heck, just the strange lack of armor around torso alone is enough to kill it from actually being realistic. But it is closer than a very large amount of female fantasy armor I tend to see, right down to not having the ridiculous "breast plates" that would only make it work worse...

Also, forgive me because I am aware this is semantical to a certain degree, but I specifically meant armor, and only armor. Weapons are cool, but I've always been more focused on what was made to stop them. You are right though, that thing would probably make a better club than a sword, minus how likely brittle it would be... however, to that, they could probably just claim... a wizard did it. :smallwink:

EDIT: Actually, looking at it, daggers by throat? I'm not sure what you mean, there.

[Saint Anti]

Excuse me you fine gentlemen, but how many of you are ready for surprise party fiddlesticks?

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/2494/surprisepartyfiddlestic.jpg

[Dogmantra]

I just renamed all my rune pages

:O

(don't worry they're still all song titles [or bits of song titles]! they're just songs that I like by bands/Tom Milsom that I like instead of being ones that most people know!)

so time for the funnest of guessing times, here are my roon pages scrambled up and if you really have nothing better to do have a guess who they're mainly for (a couple of them are really specific, a few of them are broad but have specific names, and a couple are roles like "support" or "tank" [but neither of those roles are specifically in there])

Animals
The Painfully Indie
Four Foot Squirrel
Little Mouse
She's An Angel
Watching Paint Dry

I might be just a litttttttle tired so that explains the weird post.

[TechnOkami]

Excuse me you fine gentlemen, but how many of you are ready for surprise party fiddlesticks?

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/2494/surprisepartyfiddlestic.jpg

'dat balloon.

[Temotei]

Animals
The Painfully Indie
Four Foot Squirrel
Little Mouse
She's An Angel
Watching Paint Dry

I might be just a litttttttle tired so that explains the weird post.

Animals -- Cow (but you like old Cow, so that's unlikely...)?
The Painfully Indie -- I'm not even sure of what this means, so...tank?
Four Foot Squirrel -- Kennen?
Little Mouse -- Rumble?
She's an Angel -- Morgana/Kayle/Support (in that order of guessing)?
Watching Paint Dry -- Karma or Singed?

I'm probably wrong on most.

[Spartacus]

So we just had a fun lesson as to why you don't let Kayle gentleman form mid for ages, and why you don't let Nasus sidelane push for the entire game. By the time Nasus started getting ganked, he could walk away from just about anything with Wither and discouraging smacks on the nose for ~800 damage, and kill any one member of their team if they come at him alone.

EDIT: Painful indie may be Ezreal.

[Math_Mage]

Re: Zomby's team comps, here are my thoughts:
-The threat isn't necessarily Vayne, so much--it's the dual burst of Annie and Malzahar. Forget Vayne; Warwick and Cho will be able to finish off a fight that starts with that coordinated explosion. You absolutely cannot approach them straight up.
-Your team should act to minimize the burst. Ashe is a good start: instead of approaching them straight up, you initiate from a good distance and catch a mage with his/her pants down. Kassadin would be a great help to this strategy, with the silence stopping last-minute reprisals from the target.
-Vayne is the second target. After you cut the initial burst in half, the other mage isn't a problem. Your team has more than enough sustained CC to focus down people in turn.
-For all this hot air I just put out, 95% of solo queue games won't come down to which comp's strategy is superior; one side or the other will have snowballed long before then, in one way or another.


But it's not almost reasonable, even excluding the bulk; The design of the plates is flawed. I might be misremembering, though.

And, what, that one detail takes it from "completely and totally fine" to "completely and totally unreasonable," with no stop at "almost reasonable" on the way? Hm. FWIW, I don't see the daggers at her throat to begin with, though I can see that her pauldrons are rather pointy.

[Dienekes]

Shall we get the armor and weapon discussion out of the way?

The breastplate would cave in on her chest putting all it's pressure on her sternum if a weapon ever came into contact with it. As for the rest of her torso it's unarmored, along with her head. Not particularly practical, though admittedly she does have a reasonable looking gauntlet to protect her forearms. Though that's about it.

Her shield is incredibly poorly designed seeming to add only a lot of weight with no gain in protection. The ring of spikes are utterly useless as both a weapon and as protection and have no reason to be there.

Her armored kilt is far too long and rigid to be able to run in it, and the strips are so wide she is effectively wearing a solid metal dress. Since we're speaking of running, let's point at her high heels and move on.

Then to that sword. Well it's too big and too heavy, but no more so than Garen's and Tryndamere's but even beyond this it looks useless. The force of using the blade would be all on the thin sections meaning the blade would more likely break there, same goes with the crossguards. The angle of the sword also makes the parrying hooks nearly useless. The leaf shape up top means it's going to be immensely top heavy since it's such a large blade, so it's going to be absolutely terrible as a thrusting weapon.

Really it's hard to find a piece of this kit that is right. But, again, that's par for the course with LoL and I don't think we'd be having this armor discussion if it wasn't that she was a girl. Completely ridiculous and non-functional weapons and armor are fine on Garen and Jarvan.

[ZombyWoof]

Re: Zomby's team comps, here are my thoughts:
-The threat isn't necessarily Vayne, so much--it's the dual burst of Annie and Malzahar. Forget Vayne; Warwick and Cho will be able to finish off a fight that starts with that coordinated explosion. You absolutely cannot approach them straight up.
Cho and Warwick won't be able to finish off a fight against Trundle, J4, and Singed. Those three just have too much damage and too much tanky. As for the dual burst of Annie and Malzahar, it would combine to about half of the tank's HP. And we have 3 tanks. After their initial burst is done, it's 3 tanks at half health vs 2 spent mages and vayne.



-Your team should act to minimize the burst. Ashe is a good start: instead of approaching them straight up, you initiate from a good distance and catch a mage with his/her pants down. Kassadin would be a great help to this strategy, with the silence stopping last-minute reprisals from the target.
Really the goal was to let the tanks take the burst.



-Vayne is the second target. After you cut the initial burst in half, the other mage isn't a problem. Your team has more than enough sustained CC to focus down people in turn.
Vayne is the primary target. We have the tank to absorb every bit of the mage's burst, and Warwick/Cho don't put out enough damage to really threaten our tanks. Not with Ashe backup and Janna waiting to heal them.

[Dragor]

On the dissapointment with the new Champ's look: We can always hope for a skin with better armour, particularly with complaints/suggestions on the forums. The most relevant word there is "hope", however.

Here's betting the skins will be Bikini Leona ("Fully embrace the sun!") and +1 Charisma Chainmail Bikin Leona... :smallamused: Riot's gonna get its trollface on...

[Moonshadow]

Here's betting the skins will be Bikini Leona ("Fully embrace the sun!") and +1 Charisma Chainmail Bikin Leona... :smallamused: Riot's gonna get its trollface on...

Nah, I'm placing my bets on Solar Eclipse Leona (Involves a "full moon" :P) and Surferette Leona, so that she and Singed can be surfer buddies.

[Spartacus]

Some things I have come to realize firsthand today: Nasus is fantastic at pushing down buildings if you let him farm Q all game, Nasus is great at pushing down champions if you let him farm Q all game, and never, ever let a Jarvan trap your whole team in with an enemy Nasus that is ulting.

Twice today, I played on a team that could hold the enemy off fairly well in a 4v5 and just went around killing any pushed lanes, farming up my Q. It is certainly dependent on the enemy ignoring you, though.

[TechnOkami]

Oh goodie, Swain has declared war! I smell the rise of the Black Rose back into power... also, will the slew of League of Legends champions become a new sort of peace-keeping army now? The world may neve- CAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAW.

[Moonshadow]

Hmmm. Do I throw 20 bucks at Riot and buy Galio and have enough RP left over for the Leona double pack (if it turns out to be any good), or do I continue to have fun with Twisted Fate?


AP is still the way to go with Fate, right?

[Dogmantra]

Animals -- Cow (but you like old Cow, so that's unlikely...)?
The Painfully Indie -- I'm not even sure of what this means, so...tank?
Four Foot Squirrel -- Kennen?
Little Mouse -- Rumble?
She's an Angel -- Morgana/Kayle/Support (in that order of guessing)?
Watching Paint Dry -- Karma or Singed?

I'm probably wrong on most.
Animals is my jungler page since there are so many animals that jungle. Wolft, Trollman, Lee Sin is also an animal ooh baby.

Four Foot Squirrel is indeed Kennen (but also non mana using AP casters, like Rumble)

Little Mouse is Teemo. Duh. Except I have bunny Teemo so it doesn't make much sense :B

She's An Angel is my generic mana using caster page which I pretty much exclusively use for Morgana because I think mana is dumb so I really don't play many champions who do it.

Watching Paint Dry is for generic AD mana using characters, 'cause that's REALLY BORING. Like watching paint dry.


EDIT: Painful indie may be Ezreal.

Dingdingding we have a winner.
It's because he's so indie. He's an AD carry but he's a caster and he doesn't build attack speed. What a hipster.

[Moonshadow]

...I'm starting to think I'm slightly better at this game than I thought. Though, really, it could just be the people I'm playing with >.>

I decided to play Fate again, after spending my last 20 games as a Tank. Forgot how much fun he was, actually.

Thought it was gonna be a bad game right from the start though. Team comp was Kayle/Mundo/Olaf/Teemo/Fate. I point out that I'm AP, and we could probably use a little more AD (I count Mundo more as Tank than AD, and kinda a bad Tank at that, and Teemo was going AP).

Kayle calls me dumb, and says we have "bestest team comp eva". I resign myself to having to do the slack, and proceed to rumble.

Enemy team comp is Nasus/Twitch/Ashe/Nocturne/Shaco. I helpfully point out that Thornmail would be the perfect counter-item to this team, and get called dumb again.

I go mid, and proceed to lane vs Ashe. I figure I had this lane covered with my superior poking skills and CC, and well, I do. Kayle somehow gets first blood in bottom lane with Teemo on Twitch, and then they both die to Shaco.

This is when I point out that with 2 stealth characters, maybe they should get wards? You guessed it, I get called dumb again, and told that wards won't help.

I get my ult, and tell people to call for ganks. They don't, so I use it to kill Nocturne and Shaco a few times. I get one absolutely hilarious gank where I catch Shaco in their jungle recalling while browsing the shop, and run away laughing.

Eventually, we end up bumrushing middle after the other 4 members of my team failed to distract the enemy long enough for me to split push (I did get a few towers by myself when I thought they could stop dying). They ended up surrendering after we made a massive push and took middle tower and inhib.

We won, and I was best player out of both teams, but I can't help but think it would have been a lot easier. I mean, the enemy had 33 kills (17 on Nocturne, who raped everyone except me), of which were mostly Kayle and Teemo feeding like bosses in the first 20 minutes.

It was really nice to see that Mundo had bought a Thornmail like I said though. I'm glad that at least 1 person listened to my advice.

I was 12/3/6 AP Fate. I like to think I did pretty well :smallbiggrin:

[Rockbird]

The giant QQ fest on the LoL forums over the server split is hurting my soul...

All the scandinavians going "waah, waah, eastern europe can't play properly" is just :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:. If anything couldn't you just put all these idiots in a server of their own?

Oh, and EU N&E

[Daverin]

Shall we get the armor and weapon discussion out of the way?

The breastplate would cave in on her chest putting all it's pressure on her sternum if a weapon ever came into contact with it. As for the rest of her torso it's unarmored, along with her head. Not particularly practical, though admittedly she does have a reasonable looking gauntlet to protect her forearms. Though that's about it.

Her shield is incredibly poorly designed seeming to add only a lot of weight with no gain in protection. The ring of spikes are utterly useless as both a weapon and as protection and have no reason to be there.

Her armored kilt is far too long and rigid to be able to run in it, and the strips are so wide she is effectively wearing a solid metal dress. Since we're speaking of running, let's point at her high heels and move on.

Then to that sword. Well it's too big and too heavy, but no more so than Garen's and Tryndamere's but even beyond this it looks useless. The force of using the blade would be all on the thin sections meaning the blade would more likely break there, same goes with the crossguards. The angle of the sword also makes the parrying hooks nearly useless. The leaf shape up top means it's going to be immensely top heavy since it's such a large blade, so it's going to be absolutely terrible as a thrusting weapon.

Really it's hard to find a piece of this kit that is right. But, again, that's par for the course with LoL and I don't think we'd be having this armor discussion if it wasn't that she was a girl. Completely ridiculous and non-functional weapons and armor are fine on Garen and Jarvan.

Meh, I am not entirely pleased by Garen or Jarvan either (esp Jarvan. What in the world is that, a couple of glued on plates onto superhero tights? And no need to mention the pauldrons.) I just wish people would try a little harder on realistic armor sometimes, although if the design is cool enough I'm willing to drop it. The reason I am soloing out Leona is probably unreasonable expectations. It sounded like we'd have a serious, non-fanservice female champ who is also a paladin, which not only always implies heavy armor, but also often does actually encourage a more traditional (read, realistic) looking armor.

[Brother Oni]

Meh, I am not entirely pleased by Garen or Jarvan either (esp Jarvan. What in the world is that, a couple of glued on plates onto superhero tights? And no need to mention the pauldrons.) I just wish people would try a little harder on realistic armor sometimes, although if the design is cool enough I'm willing to drop it. The reason I am soloing out Leona is probably unreasonable expectations. It sounded like we'd have a serious, non-fanservice female champ who is also a paladin, which not only always implies heavy armor, but also often does actually encourage a more traditional (read, realistic) looking armor.

Aside from the silly pauldrons, I don't see too much wrong with Garen's armour (unless you count looking like an Adeptus Astartes as wrong).

Xin and Pantheon have sensible (adjusting for historical influences) armour.

[Moonshadow]

Okay, that was a terrible game as TF. Was still fun though, cuz messing around with his ult is awesome.

People complained when I used it to see they'd all just Baron'd and then didn't teleport into the 3v5 team fight that happened. I didn't see the point in adding another corpse when they could have just ran away and not initiated.

[9mm]

sometimes, skill with a character can make all the difference. My client crashed so I show up 7 minutes late and yet:


http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/9mm_fistcuffs/fiddlesticksownage.jpg


fun times.

[Dralnu]

Meh, I am not entirely pleased by Garen or Jarvan either (esp Jarvan. What in the world is that, a couple of glued on plates onto superhero tights? And no need to mention the pauldrons.) I just wish people would try a little harder on realistic armor sometimes, although if the design is cool enough I'm willing to drop it. The reason I am soloing out Leona is probably unreasonable expectations. It sounded like we'd have a serious, non-fanservice female champ who is also a paladin, which not only always implies heavy armor, but also often does actually encourage a more traditional (read, realistic) looking armor.

Coming from a WoW background, I always thought of Kayle as the sensible paladin. She's fully armored, heals, can put up divine shields, and kicks butt with a sword. Her original skin doesn't even show a face! That's not very fanservice-y.

[ZombyWoof]

Shall we get the armor and weapon discussion out of the way?

The breastplate would cave in on her chest putting all it's pressure on her sternum if a weapon ever came into contact with it. As for the rest of her torso it's unarmored, along with her head. Not particularly practical, though admittedly she does have a reasonable looking gauntlet to protect her forearms. Though that's about it.

Her shield is incredibly poorly designed seeming to add only a lot of weight with no gain in protection. The ring of spikes are utterly useless as both a weapon and as protection and have no reason to be there.

Her armored kilt is far too long and rigid to be able to run in it, and the strips are so wide she is effectively wearing a solid metal dress. Since we're speaking of running, let's point at her high heels and move on.

Then to that sword. Well it's too big and too heavy, but no more so than Garen's and Tryndamere's but even beyond this it looks useless. The force of using the blade would be all on the thin sections meaning the blade would more likely break there, same goes with the crossguards. The angle of the sword also makes the parrying hooks nearly useless. The leaf shape up top means it's going to be immensely top heavy since it's such a large blade, so it's going to be absolutely terrible as a thrusting weapon.

Really it's hard to find a piece of this kit that is right. But, again, that's par for the course with LoL and I don't think we'd be having this armor discussion if it wasn't that she was a girl. Completely ridiculous and non-functional weapons and armor are fine on Garen and Jarvan.
My issue is with how heavily sexualised she is. It would be neato to have an adult and attractive-looking LoL character who isn't designed to be a sex object!

Big swords are a stable in Fantasy. one of the funniest parts about Tryndamere is the way he drags his sword behind him with the blade in the ground. I'm trying to think of a better way to dull a sword than to constantly wear the edge with the planet Earth, but I'm having a hard time thinking of one. You should see the edges on my skis after three days in the snow.

High heels and some stupid "HEY LOOK I HAVE BOOBS" breastplate? Not so much.

EDIT: Kayle, now there's (http://lol.zone.gamebase.com.tw/zone/lol/skin_view/judicator_helmet#judicator_helmet) a pretty champ who doesn't need heels or anything else to be pretty. And she could even HAVE heels and I wouldn't mind: she flies off the ground, who cares how impractical her footwear is?

[balistafreak]

I didn't think it was possible, but, playing Swain, I ended with a team that universally had a CS of <50 after about the 30 minute mark, whereas the entire enemy team had a CS of >100, >175 for their top farmers. I myself did pretty dang well with a CS of ~170, seeing as in the lategame I was spending most of my time running for my life.

Gameplay consisted of them roaming the river/jungle aimlessly upon the slightest hint of one lane being the slightest bit pushed, often changing directions several times before settling on a lane. This resulted in them being several levels behind. For contrast, their entire team was 15-17 with their mid-laner at 18 whereas I was at 18 and my entire team... around 12-14.

wat

I mean, I'd expect a CS of >50 after the 30 minute mark even if all you did was autoattack the lane.

I could go on to complain about item builds, such as the Alistair who rushed Warmog's (started with a Ruby Crystal [which is pretty damn funny by itself], finished it after his level 1 boots) or the Rammus who had a Rod of Ages...

The hilarious part is that they all spoke Spanish... causing me to have to actively fight the "anti-Brazilian" sentiment. :smallsigh:

[Dallas-Dakota]

Grongratulations, you were trolled.
It happens, occasionaly.

[Nargan]

I am so happy, because today is the day I finally pulled myself and got more wins than losses in ranked, and I was like 20 behind, due to playing ranked as soon as I was level 30 and being very very bad.

I have AP cow and malz to thank, because I usually get a win if I play one of those 2.

[Brother Oni]

Big swords are a stable in Fantasy. one of the funniest parts about Tryndamere is the way he drags his sword behind him with the blade in the ground. I'm trying to think of a better way to dull a sword than to constantly wear the edge with the planet Earth, but I'm having a hard time thinking of one. You should see the edges on my skis after three days in the snow.

In the real world, a weapon of that size is used more like a giant metal club than a cutting implement so the sharpness of its edge doesn't really affect its effectiveness.

[Dienekes]

Aside from the silly pauldrons, I don't see too much wrong with Garen's armour (unless you count looking like an Adeptus Astartes as wrong).

Xin and Pantheon have sensible (adjusting for historical influences) armour.

For Garen the pauldrons are definitely the worst offender. Those things would crush his spine. But what really irks me about his design is actually the lack of armor except those enormous pauldrons.

All I see on him are the pauldrons and an oversized belt that would probably greatly hinder his torso movement and by extension his swordsmanship. His actual chest and head are uncovered and vulnerable.

Xin Zhao is decent (pauldrons are still too big), and Pantheon's alright mostly because they seem to just be completely copied off of real historical warriors.

Now as to sexualizing Leona, yeah she has that. But she is paired with buffed up, Adonis looking men. While yes she's over sexualized, admittedly, Akali, Soraka, Karma, and Kayle are pretty decent so it's not like it's a universal thing Riot is doing. Sure there are a lot of scantily dressed woman, but all the men are hunks, plus Urgot.

[balistafreak]

Sure their are a lot of scantily dressed woman, but all the men are hunks, plus Urgot.

... Ezreal. :smalltongue:

[Maeglin_Dubh]

... Ezreal. :smalltongue:

Bishonen don't count. They have no gender.

[Dienekes]

... Ezreal. :smalltongue:

Fine there are a few non-hunks, but I could have added Irelia, Tristy, and Poppy as the not overly sexualized category.

[Math_Mage]

The giant QQ fest on the LoL forums over the server split is hurting my soul...

All the scandinavians going "waah, waah, eastern europe can't play properly" is just :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:. If anything couldn't you just put all these idiots in a server of their own?

Oh, and EU N&E

Duly noted, splitting list into West, N&E, and Unspecified for people who haven't said which server they're on. Btw, does anyone know what's going to happen to international smurfs on the EU server?

[ZombyWoof]

Jeez. Udyr is so, so, sooo bad. Enemy WW kept being all "lol shaco juked you." No... Shaco used his blink to jump over a wall. That's not "juking" that's "flashing..." and if you can't get away from Udyr using a flash you're just... really, really bad.

There is NOTHING Udyr can do against ranged slows, ranged snares, Rylai's Scepter, Morgana, Vladimir, Ez, Shaco, etc. etc. Hell, WW blinked away with Flash and really that was just sort of, "... yeah ok. I have no way of chasing you."

[Temotei]

Jeez. Udyr is so, so, sooo bad. Enemy WW kept being all "lol shaco juked you." No... Shaco used his blink to jump over a wall. That's not "juking" that's "flashing..." and if you can't get away from Udyr using a flash you're just... really, really bad.

There is NOTHING Udyr can do against ranged slows, ranged snares, Rylai's Scepter, Morgana, Vladimir, Ez, Shaco, etc. etc. Hell, WW blinked away with Flash and really that was just sort of, "... yeah ok. I have no way of chasing you."

Nobody seems to want to play him this week, which is kind of funny, considering the buffs. I think I've had two Udyrs on my team before, both obvious regulars of the champion (one admitted it and the other said he used to main Udyr and was starting to use him again after the buffs). Both were pretty good with him, too. I particularly liked the solo top lane versus two Udyr. He won the lane by a landslide. It was interesting. [/ramble]

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Yeah... I decided to try out Udyr after the buffs. We had a split-pusher TF on the other team, so I figured I'd pay him a visit while he pushed bot:

Udyr: RAWR!!! I'm jumping out of the bush in Bear stance! You can't run away now, Fate! I know your Ult is down!

TF: ...Phantom Dancers. /Trollface.jpg

Udyr: :smallfrown:

[Temotei]

Yeah... I decided to try out Udyr after the buffs. We had a split-pusher TF on the other team, so I figured I'd pay him a visit while he pushed bot:

Udyr: RAWR!!! I'm jumping out of the bush in Bear stance! You can't run away now, Fate! I know your Ult is down!

TF: ...Phantom Dancers. /Trollface.jpg

Udyr: :smallfrown:

I did the same thing as Karma versus an Udyr. I used Shurelya's Revelrie, boots 1, spirit bond, and ghost, getting away in about half of a second. It was overkill, but it was worth the laugh I got. :smalltongue:

[ZombyWoof]

Yeah... I decided to try out Udyr after the buffs. We had a split-pusher TF on the other team, so I figured I'd pay him a visit while he pushed bot:

Udyr: RAWR!!! I'm jumping out of the bush in Bear stance! You can't run away now, Fate! I know your Ult is down!

TF: ...Phantom Dancers. /Trollface.jpg

Udyr: :smallfrown:

The moment I realized Udyr was awful was when this happened:

Udyr: ZOMG ASHE AT 50 HEALTH! BEAR FORM ACTIVATE!

Ashe: Q.

We spent 30s in this funny dance of "ok chasing Ashe can't catch... disengage" then "OMG is this ashe really chasing me? Time to go get her." over and over. I started at 50 health, Udyr started at full. I killed him and walked away with more health than I started with.

[Math_Mage]

Farm: it matters. (http://www.lolbase.net/matches/view/US161678809) After seeing the difference in minion kills, also consider that I had more neutral creeps than their entire team, and we got 4-5 dragons to their one Baron. (Oh, and they lost teamfights when they had Baron.) I derped up and got caught a number of times; my team initiated a number of idiotic fights (sometimes facechecking bushes even after I pinged to tell them exactly where the enemy was); and Yi built triple Wriggle's Lantern...but it didn't matter, because we had 11k more gold than they did.


Yeah... I decided to try out Udyr after the buffs. We had a split-pusher TF on the other team, so I figured I'd pay him a visit while he pushed bot:

Udyr: RAWR!!! I'm jumping out of the bush in Bear stance! You can't run away now, Fate! I know your Ult is down!

TF: ...Phantom Dancers. /Trollface.jpg

Udyr: :smallfrown:

Even without PD, chasing TF with Udyr is no fun because he has a low-CD ranged stun. Anyway, this is why people are picking up lane Udyr--because you can take Flash and Ghost for chasing. (Well, that and the sheep noticed The Rain Man doing it and went "ZOMG we must do this thing because he does it.")

[Croverus]

I started playing Udyr just because its a free champ I hadn't tried yet. I really liked playing him and was somewhat decent with him. Normally I'm god aweful with melee champs that have no ranged skills. I usually prefer mages, but I was getting good at using his stance combos to push towers and chase down people.

[dgnslyr]

Forgive a poor beginner for his ignorance, but what's the difference between top and bottom lane? I know Baron spawns at top and Dragon at bottom, but what are the distinguishing factors between the two.

[Duos]

I've been trying out Udyr for the past few days and I gotta say, I really do like him. The trick seems to be knowing when you can catch somebody and when you can't.

I liked The Rain Man's build-I've been getting FoN almost every game and it helps my play tons, because that extra move speed is really crucial. Also, I build Triforce, which helps with late game chasing. More move speed is always good always.



Yeah... I decided to try out Udyr after the buffs. We had a split-pusher TF on the other team, so I figured I'd pay him a visit while he pushed bot:

Udyr: RAWR!!! I'm jumping out of the bush in Bear stance! You can't run away now, Fate! I know your Ult is down!

TF: ...Phantom Dancers. /Trollface.jpg

Udyr: :smallfrown:

If he had Phantom Dancers, plural, you should have at least boots 2 and FoN or some other form of MS bonus by then. And you should try to come out of the lane behind the enemy champ whenever possible, forcing him to card you or go through the jungle, which is not where you want to be when fighting Udyr.

[ZombyWoof]

Forgive a poor beginner for his ignorance, but what's the difference between top and bottom lane? I know Baron spawns at top and Dragon at bottom, but what are the distinguishing factors between the two.
The lanes favor different teams because of where that small triangle bush is.

The big thing that really matters though? Dragon is at bottom lane, and Dragon is a major, MAJOR advantage to the team that gets it early. +190 to each member of the team. It's also a team objective that comes early in the game: Baron is usually best done with 5 people, while Dragon can be done solo at level 9 by certain champs. That makes Dragon an objective that is done during the laning phase... which means that you want 2 bot for better dragon coverage.

Don't expect people to understand this; however, when jungling first started taking over no one could figure out why bot was duo and top was solo. Used to have a ton of people saying things like, "Nuh-uh! Top is duo!" To them I would ask, "Why? Give me a reason why top would always be duo." Every single choice in this game, every metagame style didn't just develop randomly: it's there for a reason.

[Dralnu]

Forgive a poor beginner for his ignorance, but what's the difference between top and bottom lane? I know Baron spawns at top and Dragon at bottom, but what are the distinguishing factors between the two.

I don't know if there's more difference than that, but generally teams want to make sure that their bottom lane is strong enough that they can push the lane past the river and control access to the dragon. That's why if your team has a jungler and they don't, the person in the solo lane goes top because you don't "give up" anything by playing defensively in a 1v2.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[ZombyWoof]

I've been trying out Udyr for the past few days and I gotta say, I really do like him. The trick seems to be knowing when you can catch somebody and when you can't.

I liked The Rain Man's build-I've been getting FoN almost every game and it helps my play tons, because that extra move speed is really crucial. Also, I build Triforce, which helps with late game chasing. More move speed is always good always.
Right. Here's the thing: good kiting will always own Udyr.



If he had Phantom Dancers, plural, you should have at least boots 2 and FoN or some other form of MS bonus by then. And you should try to come out of the lane behind the enemy champ whenever possible, forcing him to card you or go through the jungle, which is not where you want to be when fighting Udyr.
What if he has flash? Or what if he just stuns you and runs by you? Or what if he takes your stun to the face and keeps trololol running?

[Dienekes]

Forgive a poor beginner for his ignorance, but what's the difference between top and bottom lane? I know Baron spawns at top and Dragon at bottom, but what are the distinguishing factors between the two.

That is the distinguishing factor. So the theory goes when you're playing you want 1 jungler, 1 top, 1 mid, and 2 bot because one of the two bottom players can partner with the jungler to take dragon quickly and still have a presence in the lane.

If you're a real beginner this probably won't be happening and you'll be going 2 top, 1 mid, 2 bottom most often.

Curses forgot there was another page.

[balistafreak]

"Safe" dragon generally needs protection on three sides, barring shenanigans. The bottom lane needs to be pushed past the enemy's first river entrance (the one with the Y-shaped brush), there needs to be a ward in the upper right jungle (near blue buff), and there needs to be a ward in the tiny bush near mid.

Obviously this changes with game state. If all five of the enemy are visible, you can start dragon safely regardless until they go MIA for more than a few seconds. You can forgo the ward in the tiny bush if the middle lane is pushed to/past the second turret. Having a lead in current numbers (how many people are dead?) can mean safe dragons as well, and sometimes you can insta-gib dragon late game with all five teammembers even if the entire enemy team is MIA.

Knowing when you can begin dragon and when you can't is fundamental game sense. Knowing when you can try to push someone off or steal it is a level up. How to intentionally bait the enemy into a trap at dragon is next but requires coordination (and relies on the enemy being smart enough to ward but still dumb enough to fall for it :smalltongue:).

*********************************

Dragons win games. Well, that, and farm, wards and AoE.

We were around 15 kills down, but we had secured about 5 dragons to their zero. 15*500 (counting assists) = 7500 gold. A dragon is 950 gold, so 5*950 = 4750. Throw in 2 Barons by endgame, for 1500 global gold each, and suddenly we're ahead, 7750. Count in the extra gold we get for breaking their killstreaks for extra gravy.

And we had more minion farm.

Gold wins games. There's a reason it's one of the most useful numbers to see who's winning in those competition games.

Wards win games, because they let you take Baron/Dragon and enemy jungle creeps with impunity at times. They let you push out a lane that you might otherwise be too worried about a gank to do so. They let you spot incoming ganks, set up ganks of your own, and spot brewing team fights.

Best of all, wards let you do silly things like flash-baron steal. There is NOTHING that feels as good as that.

... I lie. Something that feels better is flash-baron stealing and then proceeding to ace, push, and explode the enemy nexus. :smallcool:

Finally... AoE. CC is king in teamfights, but the thing that comes after is AoE damage.

Picture this. Amumu initiates with his ult. Boom, rooted. Vladimir opens up with his ult for extra damage, Maokai drops his own ult too right as the distance is closed for protection and extra damage. Already the enemy team is heavily softened up. Anivia participates by flinging her ultimate onto the area and by the way, this entire time, Gangplank's ult's cannonballs have been dropping down. Double AoE slows mean "you can't leave".

Maokai's ult pops, then Vladimir's. Gangplank and Anivia keep adding in till the last man drops (because really this teamfight isn't lasting longer than seven seconds).

Hellish teamcomp. Heavy on magic damage, but still.

Aced.

[ZombyWoof]

Your team is Tree/Anivia/Amumu/Vladimir/GP and you're worried about magic damage? That teamcomp is awful because it doesn't even do its job (teamfighting) particularly well (GP's ult isn't very good!)

Try this:

Amumu/Annie.

Nothing beats that in terms of AoE damage and CC. You get snared for 2 seconds then stunned for 1.75 seconds meanwhile taking 2k raw damage? Done. Now contend with the three other folks on that team.

[Moonshadow]

Can someone please tell me why AP Fate seems to be universally hated?

I've played my last 5 games as AP Fate, and people always call me dumb for doing so, despite still being able to split push like a boss with Lichbane and having a super poke on my Q.


So, why so hated?

[toasty]

Forgive a poor beginner for his ignorance, but what's the difference between top and bottom lane? I know Baron spawns at top and Dragon at bottom, but what are the distinguishing factors between the two.

Top lane is a solo lane because Dragon is bottom and its an early game goal, while baron is a late game goal. Because Dragon is bottom and there are more heroes bot lane its generally more important and more contested so more kills go down bot lane, meaning that Top Lane tends to be the more passive "farm all day" lane. Top lane is thus favored by solo pushers and melee heroes who require large amounts of farm. This includes: Irelia, Jarvan, Chogath, Singed, Teemo and Morde. At least, those are heroes that North American Meta favors. Europe does alot of Double Mage so heroes like Alistair (AP) and Gragas are also good. Sometimes people run Teleport Top because this allows them to have global presence. Heroes like Pantheon, Twisted Fate and Shen are natural Solo Tops because they can Teleport anywhere, including Bot lane, for Dragon fights and double ganks. You can do the same thing mid, but its not as effective, IMO.

Mid Lane is the hardest lane to gank because its the smallest lane so heroes like no natural escapes like Annie and Ashe are decent in this lane because its nearly impossible to kill them if they have flash up unless you have 2 stuns/roots/suppressions/fears.

[Joran]

Can someone please tell me why AP Fate seems to be universally hated?

I've played my last 5 games as AP Fate, and people always call me dumb for doing so, despite still being able to split push like a boss with Lichbane and having a super poke on my Q.


So, why so hated?

No idea, Reginald of TSM played an AP TF in Dreamhack and you'd think people would respect the opinion of a pro player. Then again, this Vlad below had never heard of solomid.net before.

Fun times: Vlad (thankfully in a bot game).

Vlad: I always suck with Vlad.
Others: Stack AP, not HP. Max Transfusion first.
Vlad: I know all that, I still suck.

First item: Leviathan /facepalm

Vlad: I'm always at low health.
Me: Don't use E to farm or harass, until you have a revolver.
Vlad: What's that? /double facepalm

So, let's review:
1) He stacked HP, not AP (his dream build had Warmog's too)
2) He doesn't know what spellvamp is nor what Hextech Revolver is
3) He used E to farm and W to initiate.

Just... wow.

[Silverraptor]

Can someone please tell me why AP Fate seems to be universally hated?

I've played my last 5 games as AP Fate, and people always call me dumb for doing so, despite still being able to split push like a boss with Lichbane and having a super poke on my Q.


So, why so hated?

Lower ELO players don't seem to realize that % of AP does damage to turrets and not just attack damage. So when they see an AP TF, they seem to think that he's not going to split push, which is practically all that TF is designed for. His other minor thing is to drop in on a team fight and stun the carry. AP TF has better nuke though.

[Math_Mage]

Okay, I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting carried a lot. Time to l2p.


Right. Here's the thing: good kiting will always own Udyr.

Tell it to Rain Man. I'm gonna go try to catch him on stream, because I totally agree with you in theory, but he's doing something right or he wouldn't be winning nearly every Udyr game.

[toasty]

AP TF is "hated" because no one realizes that, despite TF's bad ratios, TF is a damn good mage. Specifically in comparison to his AD counterpart who just doesn't have the range to really do his job.

[nyarlathotep]

Can someone please tell me why AP Fate seems to be universally hated?

I've played my last 5 games as AP Fate, and people always call me dumb for doing so, despite still being able to split push like a boss with Lichbane and having a super poke on my Q.


So, why so hated?

The reason AP TF is hated is that he fulfills a role that is non-conventional and doesn't work with every team fight, and if you're solo queuing they view you as a pub and won't trust you to do it well. AP TF is primarily a split pusher which means your team needs to be able to survive a team fight without you and thus needs to be beefier on average and have a seperate carry for actual team fights.

Additionally AP twisted fate is really good at killing single targets. Thus pub TFs are often thought of as kill stealing jerks, especially AP TFs because they focus on single target damage.

tl;dr AP TF needs good team comp to work at higher ELO and they don't trust you if you're solo queuing.

[Moonshadow]

Lower ELO players don't seem to realize that % of AP does damage to turrets and not just attack damage. So when they see an AP TF, they seem to think that he's not going to split push, which is practically all that TF is designed for. His other minor thing is to drop in on a team fight and stun the carry. AP TF has better nuke though.


AP TF is "hated" because no one realizes that, despite TF's bad ratios, TF is a damn good mage. Specifically in comparison to his AD counterpart who just doesn't have the range to really do his job.


The reason AP TF is hated is that he fulfills a role that is non-conventional and doesn't work with every team fight, and if you're solo queuing they view you as a pub and won't trust you to do it well. AP TF is primarily a split pusher which means your team needs to be able to survive a team fight without you and thus needs to be beefier on average and have a seperate carry for actual team fights.

Additionally AP twisted fate is really good at killing single targets. Thus pub TFs are often thought of as kill stealing jerks, especially AP TFs because they focus on single target damage.

tl;dr AP TF needs good team comp to work at higher ELO and they don't trust you if you're solo queuing.

So basically, as per usual, people are retards who think anything that isn't pure glass cannon is a bad build.

If nothing else, there is 1 reason why AP Fate is better than AD Fate in Normals.

Because no one builds any defensive items, and base MR on champs is pretty much always lower than their Armor.

[Spartacus]

So it seems that the information in Kayle's tooltips does not match the actual game. I myself noticed that her heal remained blanked out and was uncastable, even though I had the necessary mana. I needed 10 or so more than advertised.

[Ziren]

So it seems that the information in Kayle's tooltips does not match the actual game. I myself noticed that her heal remained blanked out and was uncastable, even though I had the necessary mana. I needed 10 or so more than advertised.

Yeah, the displayed values are still the ones from the prematurely implemented hotfix, but she actually has her old skills.

[Dogmantra]

TF's bad ratios
If you look at what Twisted Fate's ratios are and compare them to other mages, then look at the range, cooldowns and AoE he's got perfectly fine ratios.


Hellish teamcomp. Heavy on magic damage, but still.

Aced.
Needs more Rumble.

ONE POINT FIVE AP RATIO
(IT USED TO BE HIGHER WHAT)

[Faulty]

If you look at what Twisted Fate's ratios are and compare them to other mages, then look at the range, cooldowns and AoE he's got perfectly fine ratios.

Machine gun stuns, man. Gold cards are crazy. Also, wild cards does impressive damage once it gains a few levels. It's really deceptively powerful.

[TechnOkami]

From now on.... I shall never solo queue again, and will bring 4 friends minimum with me on to the Fields of Justice. Always, and forever.

[ex cathedra]

Needs more Rumble.

ONE POINT FIVE AP RATIO
(IT USED TO BE HIGHER WHAT)

Q: 1.95.
E: 1.3.
R: 1.5
RUMBLE TOTALLY NOT OP.

Totally.

[Dogmantra]

From now on.... I shall never solo queue again, and will bring 4 friends minimum with me on to the Fields of Justice. Always, and forever.

what about when you're playing Twisted Treeline?


Oh, also I bought Riot Points AGAIN because I wanted Baking Morgana and now it turns out I had enough for Vayne too because I am a consumer whore.

What's the deal with Vayne? I went like Wriggle's (that was to win the lane, another Vayne, she had Ignite, I had Ghost, and she started with Doran's to my boots so she kind of autowon to begin with) Triforce, Wit's End, Black Cleaver and a GA with Merc Treads. I know that's probably a terrible idea, but anyone got any better builds or whatever? I really really like the idea of Wit's End or Triforce then tank.


Q: 1.95.
E: 1.3.
R: 1.5
The funniest thing is when he came out people were all "nah build lots of MPen and tanky items on him his ratios are super bad"

and then they wonder why they get stomped by the Rumble with four hats.

[balistafreak]

Your team is Tree/Anivia/Amumu/Vladimir/GP and you're worried about magic damage? That teamcomp is awful because it doesn't even do its job (teamfighting) particularly well (GP's ult isn't very good!)

Well, it worked out well enough (inadvertently) in solo queue at melting the enemy team in one huge flurry of ultimates. Admittedly this was normal mode solo queue, but please take my word for it that the enemy did not consist of 5 glass cannons.

Explain as to why the team is "bad at teamfighting".

4 of 5 members are Not Glass Cannons. (Unless you're stupid and build GP glasscannon, but that's another story.) This means not instantly melting, like a team of AD carries does. The only truly "squishy" character is Anivia and she even has her egg to make her tougher than she appears.

3 of 5 members have Hard CC: roots, stuns, knockups. Gangplank's passive is awesome during laning, chasing, kiting, and ganks but not really in teamfights, and Vladimir's Blood Pool is certainly not going to count as CC during a teamfight.

3 of 5 members have Good Damage. Anivia and Vladimir are the main damage dealers, while Gangplank has amazing burst in the form of Trinity Force Parrrleys and good melee DPS besides anyways. Maokai is a bit weird (more utility than damage, normally; great utility and gamewinning utility, but he's harder your go-to nuker character) and Amumu we can mostly agree is best built dedicated Tank.

And my original point, 5 of 5 members have Good AoE. Maokai's ultimate is a decent sum of damage but is most important for that 20% damage reduction: while we're at it, Arcane Smash and Sapling Toss are AoE too, albeit small. Anivia's ultimate is crazy DoTs, if you can get them to stay in it: see Amumu, with AoE root. Both of them also have small AoEs in their skillsets. Vladimir's ultimate is a huge damage boost, and everyone knows how annoying Tides of Blood is. Gangplank has the most esoteric amount of AoE: his ultimate deals a deceptively high amount of damage if you can make them stay in it for more than two or three seconds, and it has a stupidly big size. However, this is only his ultimate: otherwise, he's just an auto-attacker.

A team of crazy single-target killers is hilarious, but I'm a firm believer that AoE wins teamfights, and by extension, games.

I'd also like an explanation as to how "GP's ult isn't very good".

I'll be the first to say that despite it's huge AoE it's extremely hard to use correctly. A misplacement of perhaps a centimeter can mean the difference between leaving the enemy caught by hard CC and dead, and merrily waltzing their way out of it, mostly unscathed.

But at the end of the day, it is a gigantic, 7 second zone of 25% slow that is global, letting its user freefarm lanes and the jungle while still having a major impact on skirmishes, ganks, and chases throughout the map. It also lets you have a major impact on teamfights, but in all reality you should be physically present for those. In these cases the damage is basically incidental, and merely a hilarious perk.

If the enemy can be coerced to stay within it for >2 seconds, it deals a noticeable chunk of damage. If the enemy can be manhandled to stay within it for >4 seconds, the damage is akin to that of a nuke. Enemies that are forced to stay within it for its entire duration are generally dead, since the added damage and team presence that being forced to stay the entire time implies is enough to kill them.


Try this:

Amumu/Annie.

Nothing beats that in terms of AoE damage and CC. You get snared for 2 seconds then stunned for 1.75 seconds meanwhile taking 2k raw damage? Done. Now contend with the three other folks on that team.

I will concede that this is a much scarier hypothetical. Annie's AoE stun is just stupid good. :smallbiggrin:

... Amumu, Annie, Gangplank, Ashe, Sona? A bit squishy for my tastes, but keeps the theme of AoE nonsense going.

[toasty]

What's the deal with Vayne? I went like Wriggle's (that was to win the lane, another Vayne, she had Ignite, I had Ghost, and she started with Doran's to my boots so she kind of autowon to begin with) Triforce, Wit's End, Black Cleaver and a GA with Merc Treads. I know that's probably a terrible idea, but anyone got any better builds or whatever? I really really like the idea of Wit's End or Triforce then tank.

It sounds like you are maxing Silver Bullets. Don't do that. At least, don't do that if you listen to the high elo players. *Cough* But seriously, Chaox has a good point when he says that maxing silver bullets assumes you are going to constantly be hitting the same person again and again and again. This doesn't happen in a team fight. At least, very often. Max your Tumble and realize that it scales with Critical Strike, so get some Critical Strike. Infinity Edge is good, but because your Silver Bullets are actually useful, consider getting Phantom Dancer or Black Cleaver. I know that Chaox's standard build on Vayne is Bloodthirster and Phantom Dancer, but I'm not going to tell you to blindly follow Chaox becuase I know you'll probably end up trying to make her work as an AP caster. I agree that Tri-force seems to work really well on her, but I don't think going full-tank afterwards ala Irelia seems very good.

Oh, and flat attack damage runes are pretty cool on her if you're into winning your lane. Q now does amazing damage. Chaox uses Flat Damage Yellows and Quints along with standard Armor Pen. Personally if you're soloing a lane with Vayne I'd go with Armor Yellows and MR Blues of some sort, but if you're in a duo lane you can get away with more burst.

[Dogmantra]

It sounds like you are maxing Silver Bullets.

Focusing Tumble, secondary in Silver Bolts because it's dumb and I like using anti fun things against enemies (heck it's why I play Vlad)

[toasty]

Focusing Tumble, secondary in Silver Bolts because it's dumb and I like using anti fun things against enemies (heck it's why I play Vlad)

I think most people focus Tumble and your wall-stun thingie for lots of burst in lane. Do what you want though

[Dallas-Dakota]

So is ''server unavailable'' for anybody else? The site says online though... :smallsigh:

[Faulty]

So is ''server unavailable'' for anybody else? The site says online though... :smallsigh:

Just leave it there for a bit and it'll start working after like a minute.

[ex cathedra]

What's the deal with Vayne? I went like Wriggle's (that was to win the lane, another Vayne, she had Ignite, I had Ghost, and she started with Doran's to my boots so she kind of autowon to begin with) Triforce, Wit's End, Black Cleaver and a GA with Merc Treads. I know that's probably a terrible idea, but anyone got any better builds or whatever? I really really like the idea of Wit's End or Triforce then tank.

I tried to build tanky deeps Vayne the week after she was released, but I never found a build that satisfied me, so I just build her as an AD hard carry. If you have any luck finding a decent build, you should share.

I would suggest skilling her as Q>E>W. I don't really have to justify leveling Q first, but I choose to max Condemn prior to Silver Bolts because of how they fit into Vayne's kit as she levels. Condemn is excellent in low/mid levels when you pull off a successful wallshot, but its damage becomes negligible lategame when you're better off autoattacking; at that point, it doesn't really matter how much damage your condemn does, since it's just a stun.

Similarly, her W naturally has relatively weak scaling until the opposing champions are level 18/have begun building HP, and the proc is less valuable than Condemn when harassing in lane. It just makes more sense to me this way. Just my two cents, regardless.

[nyarlathotep]

The funniest thing is when he came out people were all "nah build lots of MPen and tanky items on him his ratios are super bad"

and then they wonder why they get stomped by the Rumble with four hats.

Four hats is kind of silly when you realize that his all of his slows stack with a crystal scepter and how much he benefits from a will of the ancients.

[balistafreak]

The funniest thing is when he came out people were all "nah build lots of MPen and tanky items on him his ratios are super bad"

and then they wonder why they get stomped by the Rumble with four hats.

Why do people think stacking Deathcaps is ever a good idea? :smallannoyed:

Yes, it has the most raw AP of any item in the game, but a spread of Rabadon's Deathcap, Zhonya's Hourglass, Void Staff scares me a lot more than triple Deathcap. Rylai's Crystal Scepter/Will of the Ancients/Abyssal Scepter to taste.

[ZombyWoof]

Why do people think stacking Deathcaps is ever a good idea? :smallannoyed:

Yes, it has the most raw AP of any item in the game, but a spread of Rabadon's Deathcap, Zhonya's Hourglass, Void Staff scares me a lot more than triple Deathcap. Rylai's Crystal Scepter/Will of the Ancients/Abyssal Scepter to taste.
I have no idea, personally. Void Staff is a much higher damaging item mid to late game than the second Deathcap is. Would I rather have 85 AP or 40% MPen? Hmmmmm :smallconfused:

it kind of works on Vlad, but you're better off with Rylai's.

I don't even usually buy Hourglass! 100 AP isn't all that great compared to certain other items, 50 armor is pretty "meh" and frankly its active is only good on certain champions. If you have mana, I'd rather get RoA. If you don't, Rylai's. You'll get more mileage out of the 500+ HP than you will out of the 50 armor, and in addition their passives are better.

Plus RoA + Arhcangel's is more AP than two Hourglasses. Just sayin' :smallwink:

[SlyGuyMcFly]

... Amumu, Annie, Gangplank, Ashe, Sona? A bit squishy for my tastes, but keeps the theme of AoE nonsense going.

Another contender for 'AoE nonsense':

Malphite, Jarvan, Kennen, Ashe, Morgana.

I played in this team once. Malph ult, Jarvan banner-dashes, Kennen & Morgana pop ults. Knock-knock-stun-stun-stun-stun-stun. And you still have have a Javan ult, Arrow and Morg's snare to nail anyone who manages to flash out of the killzone in the .5 seconds they spend not under hard CC.

It was fun.

[Dogmantra]

Four hats is kind of silly when you realize that his all of his slows stack with a crystal scepter and how much he benefits from a will of the ancients.
Which is why your other item is a Rylai's and screw Will of the Ancients because you use your shield to block a trillion damage
(also spellvamp isn't nearly as useful now it doesn't proc on his passive because nearly everything he has is AoE and/or DoT)
(doubly also please understand I am exagerrating like I literally always do)

Why do people think stacking Deathcaps is ever a good idea? :smallannoyed:
because if you're entirely focused on damage it is literally the best you can do?

with the exception of people who use an Hourglass core, if you can get away with it you should be building maybe one item that's core to your character (Rylai's on Rumble for example, RoA on some people) then as many hats as you can get away with is the best no two ways about it

Of course you rarely can get away with it, you might need some survivability or your opponents might have MR etc etc, but you're seeing a problem where there isn't one.

(note: "is the best" refers to damage, not utility)

Malphite, Jarvan, Kennen, Ashe, Morgana.

Other than Jarvan that sounds like a really OP comp from back when AoE to win was the kingdom and Galio was the king.

[balistafreak]

Unrelated to the discussion at hand, my friend is excited about Leona "having a global ult", and "comboing it with Gangplank".

I can't find written evidence of this anywhere. Citations, anyone? :smallconfused:

[ZombyWoof]

Blech... forget those AoE comps.

My AoE Dream Team:

Ashe/Janna/Amumu/Annie/Renekton

[Dragor]

Unrelated to the discussion at hand, my friend is excited about Leona "having a global ult", and "comboing it with Gangplank".

I can't find written evidence of this anywhere. Citations, anyone? :smallconfused:

I think a preview (IGN maybe?) at E3 had a Riot employee saying that Leona would have an AoE ult (can't remember if it was a global), but also reminding us that everything was suspect to change. He might not be barking up the wrong tree entirely.

[9mm]

when demo'd at e3 Leona's ult was an orbital sun laser strike, that happened to slow.

[Eldariel]

Blech... forget those AoE comps.

My AoE Dream Team:

Ashe/Janna/Amumu/Annie/Renekton

MF/Alistar/Amumu/Anivia/Jarmander. For AoE MF does better; tho Ashe's initiation is obviously always more than welcome.

EDIT: Sivir might actually be the highest damage for the job; she doesn't have an AoE ult but Ricochet into 5 is kinda ridiculous.

[9mm]

MF/Alistar/Amumu/Anivia/Jarmander. For AoE MF does better; tho Ashe's initiation is obviously always more than welcome.

EDIT: Sivir might actually be the highest damage for the job; she doesn't have an AoE ult but Ricochet into 5 is kinda ridiculous.

Ricochet is why Sivir technically has the highest dps in the game.

[ZombyWoof]

MF/Alistar/Amumu/Anivia/Jarmander. For AoE MF does better; tho Ashe's initiation is obviously always more than welcome.

EDIT: Sivir might actually be the highest damage for the job; she doesn't have an AoE ult but Ricochet into 5 is kinda ridiculous.
Technically my AoE dream team is just Annie/Amumu :smallwink: The rest of them are thrown on their for different duties: Renekton for tankydpsabsurdity, Janna for healz and breaking away bad engagements, Ashe for... well it's Ashe. She has her hand in a little of everything. She can kite! She can DPS! She can initiate! She can clairvoyance!

[TechnOkami]

when demo'd at e3 Leona's ult was an orbital sun laser strike, that happened to slow.

Sounds like a chance to 1 up Lux's Hyperbeam.

[Dralnu]

Unsure about upcoming Kayle changes. I'm really hoping that the new passive is enough to make me commit to the three hybrid items, Rageblade + Trinity + Gunblade. They're all superb items and I'll take Riot's word that they're aggressively priced, but I'm skeptical that a passive "shred" (better be reduction!) will be better than the previous 30/15% AD/AP boost that really got the most value out of the hybrid items in the first place. If anything, a stacking shred combined with higher AP scaling on abilities just further encourages players to go full AP/AS with Nashor's + Malady + Rabadon's etc. I guess it's not a bad thing if it turns out that way, but I really would've liked a champ that goes full hybrid.

On another note: holy crap Nidalee is amazing! New favorite champion. I was absolutely terrible with her the first few games but her mechanics intrigued me. But oh man, now I feel like a 3.5 Druid amongst core-only unoptimized Fighters and Rogues. Amazing damage, superb burst heals, safe lane pushing due to traps, easy and fast farming, and friggin awesome chase/flee capabilities. Not only that, but her itemization is incredibly straightforward and she scales wonderfully but doesn't really need much to get going, Rageblade itself is stupid good on her and pretty cheap and from there I just go to town. Even when my team loses I go something like 8/2/6.

I daresay, isn't Nidalee OP? I mean, I've been playing Kayle so much: endlessly calculating the ideal build, mastering the drudgery of farming with her, slowly biding my time in the game when I've hit the 40% CDR cap and only then do I start picking up the gear that makes me an unstoppable killing machine... With Nidalee it's like "lolz Ring --> Boots --> Rageblade you win the game." Anyone else feel the same way?

[TechnOkami]

...Nidalee wasn't buffed, was she?

[Math_Mage]

So, I'm jungle Xin. We invade Akali's jungle and get first blood. I gank bot half a dozen times to put Karth/Sion ahead of Alistar/Sona despite the atrocious matchup. I go 4/0/8 in the first 15 minutes putting lanes ahead, helping our team get towers and dragons. I ward up their entire jungle to impose map control; we get pick after pick and farm their buffs like nobody's business. I call the shots to put our team in the right place at the right time, initiate crucial fights, and strategize circles around the enemy team.

Naturally, after the game (http://www.lolbase.net/matches/view/US162151150) Singed tells me I didn't do **** for the team except almost lose us the game by getting picked once. How annoying.

Oh well. Was a really satisfying match; I won't let stupid comments get me down. :smallsmile:

But for bugfixes, Nidalee hasn't been changed for as long as I've been playing.

[Dralnu]

So, I'm jungle Xin. We invade Akali's jungle

... Akali can jungle efficiently? :smallconfused:

[Qwertystop]

Kassadin. Is. Awesome.

[Qwertystop]

after the game (http://www.lolbase.net/matches/view/US162151150)
According to that, Sion and Karthus got Zhonya's Rings, and you and Sion got random items. Also, the opposing team didn't have summoner spells.

[Dogmantra]

... Akali can jungle efficiently? :smallconfused:

There are two jungles for Akali. One of them requires Smite/Ignite and you need to take Ignite mastery, another one requires a very specific runepage.

[Godskook]

On the max AP discussion, on Rumble, yes, Deathcap stacking is the best source of AP, but on almost everyone with mana, 5 Archangels+Deathcap is not only cheaper(and thus, comes online faster), but also provides more AP. In fact, unless there's an in-game rounding that I'm unaware of, Sion is the only Champ on which it isn't true, but even then, by a mere 6.25 AP(pre-deathcap passive), but for 3725 less gold.

'Course, that's assuming the insane notion that someone actually wants to use a build with that much glass in the cannon.

[Faulty]

glass in the cannon.

Isn't the cannon made of glass? Not a cannon full of glass.

[Math_Mage]

... Akali can jungle efficiently? :smallconfused:

She can. It's dangerous, though, and if she gets interrupted--as we did by getting first blood on her--she's really unable to come back from that. I even messed up in jungle after that invasion, and was still ahead of her before ganks.


According to that, Sion and Karthus got Zhonya's Rings, and you and Sion got random items. Also, the opposing team didn't have summoner spells.

Blame Lolbase for being out of date and somewhat buggy. ZRings are Deathcaps, I got a Wriggle's, Sion probably got an Hourglass, and Lolbase only shows one team's summoners these days for some reason.


Isn't the cannon made of glass? Not a cannon full of glass.

I think one is meant to mentally complete Godskook's sentence, "glass in the cannon's construction/build." So, yes.

Anyway, in most games you will get more damage against most targets by building Void Staff instead of another hat, never mind that Archangel's gives more flat AP in most cases.

[Arcanoi]

I go 4/0/8 in the first 15 minutes

Only thing I can say is that you built wrong for doing this well. This is the sort of game where you buy an 18-minute Cleaver into Warmogs-Atmas and roll the enemy team single-handedly.

[Math_Mage]

Only thing I can say is that you built wrong for doing this well. This is the sort of game where you buy an 18-minute Cleaver into Warmogs-Atmas and roll the enemy team single-handedly.

I was thinking about it. Ported back with Wriggle's and 2800 gold at one point (I wasn't doing that well when I bought the Wriggle's). But...I've done well and rushed Black Cleaver before, and it's very hit-or-miss whether I'll utterly dominate or become useless. Against Ashe, Alistar, Akali, Sona, TF? No, I'm not building squishy trying to melee into that comp. With Ashe, Sion, and Karthus on the team, we needed a big front line more than we needed more damage. I bought BVeil on the spot.

Also, it's worth pointing out that for all I did well early, it was mostly playing catch-up after ruining Akali. After the first blood, I messed up trying to take blue without Smite (which I had used for counterjungling)--I didn't die, but I was stuck doing minor camps. So I was still level 3 at 4:00, and generally behind. Even after I started doing well, I was behind our duo laners in level for a while.

I suppose I could have bought BFS and Giant's Belt, or Wit's End and Chain Vest. But I'm happy with what I ended up doing.

[TechnOkami]

I've got a random question: is Vayne still as trolly as she was, even though she was nerfed? What I mean by trolly: still able to more or less kill whatever she stares at, and to kill steal like there's no tomorrow.

[Temotei]

Just played a game where a Shaco "failed red" and gave up the entire game at level 2 and a Sion kept dying in his solo top lane against two (Nid solo'd bottom lane.). Of course he was overly aggressive and wanted kills, but ended up getting none. Sion tried to surrender at 20 minutes, and so did Orianna and Shaco, but Caitlyn didn't want to and I'm just an ass today, so I said no out of spite. We lasted until 36 minutes with only Caitlyn, Orianna, and me (Alistar) fighting against the fed Katarina, Shaco, and Xin, plus Nidalee and jungle Shen.

Highlights: Headbutting Shen into our shop for the super turret death, pulverizing Katarina and Shaco while they tried to burst down Orianna by our nexus turrets, earning us two kills and no deaths, and laughing at Sion and Shaco as they did nothing but we held on anyway, wasting their time, as they put it. :smalltongue:

EDIT: Oh, and to the above poster...killstealing doesn't exist, I'm told. I say it doesn't matter unless it's a support or tank taking the kills from a carry, in which case, one or two is fine, but after that, the support or tank should be reminded that a carry is supposed to kill. The tanks and supports are supposed to win the game by allowing the carry to kill. :smallamused:

[toasty]

I've got a random question: is Vayne still as trolly as she was, even though she was nerfed? What I mean by trolly: still able to more or less kill whatever she stares at, and to kill steal like there's no tomorrow.

I'd say Vayne is decent right now. Of course, that's because people have kinda gotten over her and its been proven that the old school carries like Ashe and Tristana are still viable. Vayne has a huge amount of burst, but she's not really stupid, if you ask me.

[Math_Mage]

Sending Tristana to lane against Annie: not the brightest idea. (http://www.lolbase.net/matches/view/US162349557) 3 kills, 3 levels, and 30 cs ahead of her even after my first death; I think Trist was the lowest-level champ in the game for a while, and she had barely half my gold. Cassiopeia did her best, but let's just say Yorick and Karma didn't. My teammates didn't take kindly to my direction--this is the first time I've pinged dragon after a won fight and gotten a "STFU noob" for my troubles. Good thing it didn't matter.

Oh, and I'm practically tied for largest critical strike of the game. Lolwut.


I've got a random question: is Vayne still as trolly as she was, even though she was nerfed? What I mean by trolly: still able to more or less kill whatever she stares at, and to kill steal like there's no tomorrow.

She's definitely still that way in solo queue, and debatably that way in competitive play too; last time I watched top-level competition Vayne carried the day both games (once with assistance from Annie). Some would have you believe Ashe and Corki are back to the top spots; myself, I think Vayne still outclasses them. Her burst and sustained mobility are simply amazing for a ranged carry, and she's such a bloody strong laner...

Of course, if you want solo queue heroes, Gangplank has surpassed Vayne for that spot. Or he would have, if he wasn't permabanned.

[Croverus]

Been playing a lot of 3v3s just to build up IP and get closer to Lv 30. My favorites for 3v3 are gragas, urgot, nasus, alistair, and kassadin. Most of them do well in those enclosed spaces and have plenty of ways to avoid being caught (gragas and kass can both bypass most walls, urgot and nasus can both slow enemies and urgot can reversal to throw off a chase, and ali has his cc). All of them can fill more than one role if my other teammates insist on playing a certain way - gragas and alistait are naturaly good at tanks, nasus can be very tanks and urgot has a surprisingly good growth, only kass can't tank well; on the other hand gragas, alistair, and kass all do well as ap and can cause a lot of damage that way; urgot and nasus are both insane ad carries, one filling a ranged ad role the other melee ad; and not a lot of people play gragas or urgot so playing against them is not easy for opponents who don't know ho they work.

The 3 or 4 times in the past 3 days I've actually played 5v5 I usually just went soraka and healed my team to victory. Teamed up with Tryn in top I apparently was so annoying healing him that their entire team attacked top lane and focused me, ignoring Tryn and the akali that had joined us top to push. We also had a singed and alistair. The enemy was gangplank, scion, kogmaw, shen and an ali. We ended up killing all but their ali (who finally kileld me then ulted and ran back to his towers). Only death the whoole game, since we proved we could beat them already in a 3v5 losing just 1 person. They surrendered 3 minutes later. I was in 2 other games that were won by the other team surrendering early after they realized I could keep my team alive better than they could hurt us.

I love being a support.

[ex cathedra]

So, after that conversation with Dogmantra, I decided that I should buy Rumble before he got nerfed again. This was the result:
http://i.imgur.com/QpXFy.png
So, yeah, solo queue is really dumb. No jungler? Nashor's TF? Frozen Mallet/BT Jax? Zero MR on the opposing team? I laned solo top against Singed/Sion. I went like 4/1/2 in early laning, so I just started playing Roamble and it snowballed from there.

[efdf]

solo queue at its finest:
http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/1292/soloqueue.jpg

We won.

[Adumbration]

I've rediscovered a long lost love: Zilean. Such a fun champ - early lane dominance, perma-ghost, a genuine Nope! button and abilities permanently available. What's not to like?

At the moment I'm building:
Doran's ring
Philostone + boots
Tear --> Archangel's
Deathcap

I'm getting 15% CDR from runes and masteries so I don't really need to build more of that, but what else should I get? Just more AP? Survivability?

[Dogmantra]

EDIT: Oh, and to the above poster...killstealing doesn't exist, I'm told. I say it doesn't matter unless it's a support or tank taking the kills from a carry, in which case, one or two is fine, but after that, the support or tank should be reminded that a carry is supposed to kill. The tanks and supports are supposed to win the game by allowing the carry to kill. :smallamused:
Nnnnnope, Killstealing just doesn't exist at all.


Some would have you believe Ashe and Corki are back to the top spots;
Ashe is in a league of her own. You can't compare Ashe to other AD carries because she's a terrible AD carry. She's the best because she's two characters, a la prenerf Shen.


solo queue at its finest:
http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/1292/soloqueue.jpg

We won.
That looks like a perfectly fine team comp, you have a spread of damage, initiation, survivability with burst and sustained.
:smallwink:

[Math_Mage]

Ashe is in a league of her own. You can't compare Ashe to other AD carries because she's a terrible AD carry. She's the best because she's two characters, a la prenerf Shen.

Well, to look at it that way, Vayne is also an AD burst mage, the way Q and E dominate mid-game. :smallwink:

[Dogmantra]

Well, to look at it that way, Vayne is also an AD burst mage, the way Q and E dominate mid-game. :smallwink:

She's two characters late game :smallwink:

[Winthur]

Shaco is two characters the moment he hits level 6, so he's obviously better than Vayne :O

[Eldariel]

Shaco is two characters the moment he hits level 6, so he's obviously better than Vayne :O

LeBlanc is two characters from level 1 as soon as she drops low on HP.

[Eurus]

LeBlanc is two characters from level 1 as soon as she drops low on HP.

Yorick is five characters by level 6.

[Dogmantra]

Yorick is five characters by level 6.

:O

Yorick op

nerf Yorick

[Temotei]

Nnnnnope, Killstealing just doesn't exist at all.

You'll probably just say the same thing, but what I neglected to say (even though it was basically my main point) was that I meant that if a teammate is circling a fight without doing anything and then last hits the enemy champion, it's really bothersome--especially if done repeatedly.

I can't believe I left that out. But yeah, I played a game with my friend once where I did only that. He was playing Tryn and he said that Tryn doesn't get assists and every kill either of us got (TT game) was a killsteal if he was in the fight. I decided to help in the beginning of fights, and then wait for their health to drop so I could nuke-last-hit them. It was fun and I knew we were going to win. Still, it was endlessly annoying to my friend, apparently, which is kind of my point.

[Dogmantra]

I decided to help in the beginning of fights, and then wait for their health to drop so I could nuke-last-hit them.

This is how you deal with people who complain about killstealing. Well done.

[TechnOkami]

EDIT: Oh, and to the above poster...killstealing doesn't exist, I'm told. I say it doesn't matter unless it's a support or tank taking the kills from a carry, in which case, one or two is fine, but after that, the support or tank should be reminded that a carry is supposed to kill. The tanks and supports are supposed to win the game by allowing the carry to kill. :smallamused:

Ok, I didn't get a chance to say this earlier, but now that I do: I don't believe in kill stealing either. Honestly, as long as we win, I'm willing to let one person get almost all the kills. Either way, I get a $#!^-ton of assists :smallbiggrin:

[ZombyWoof]

Ashe is in a league of her own. You can't compare Ashe to other AD carries because she's a terrible AD carry. She's the best because she's two characters, a la prenerf Shen.
:smallconfused:

Ashe is a fine AD carry. Only Annie, Caitlyn, level 6 or higher Tristana, and Bio Arcane Barrage active Kog'Maw beat her. In addition she has her Volley which is one of the best pokes in the game: it has 1200 range (2x her autoattack range) and a 1.0 AD scaling... as well as good AoE and applies a slow. Plus she comes with a built-in Frozen Mallet, so while everyone else is rushing said mallet so they can have a slow, you're getting a Bloodthirster so you can kill thing!


What makes her awesome is that in addition to being a fine AD carry, she has her Arrow which is a global 3.5s stun 5s aoe slow and a clairvoyance... making her really hard to gank in bottom lane with a good support.

EDIT: Killstealing doesn't exist.... but it was funny to see the LeBlanc who rushed Banshee's Veil blame me, the 11-2-9 Shen, for why we were suddenly losing. No, dear, it's because your first 3,000 gp item was BANSHEE'S rather than something useful like RABADON'S that we were losing. "Shen doesn't deal damage!" she said. No... YOU don't deal damage. "Shen is a tank!" Have you played post-nerf Shen? He's an awful tank... have to play him TankyDPS to get any mileage out of him.

On another note: the same can be said of farm. I mean obviously some champs back off farm in a duo lane, but I have found that it is impossible to win if you're in a lane with two farmers and you back off your farm because your teammate complains. Generally speaking your teammate will then miss half the CS you're trying to feed him... and then you'll both be underfarmed.

[Temotei]

This is how you deal with people who complain about killstealing. Well done.

I like you. :smallamused:

Last game, it was Twitch mid versus Katarina, Teemo and me as Alistar bot versus Malzahar and Janna, and Yorick and Morgana top versus Pantheon and Lee Sin. Firstly, Janna should have been paired with an AD champ, but whatever. What I'm getting at: At level 4, Twitch comes from mid to hide in the brush directly behind their turret. He pings and waits. I wait for our minions to push slightly farther and then headbutt Malzahar into Twitch while Teemo runs by to attack him as well. Teemo dies when he stays in turret fire for too long while I live with ~150 health. I get to level 5 from minions dying nearby, so I level my heal to rank 3 and start healing up. Twitch finishes Malz and runs back to recall while Kat comes down from mid. I ended up sending her back a little way and hanging out for a while against her, Janna, and Malz while healing. The turret took two autoattacks from Malz (who was not buffed by Janna's shield). :smalltongue: It was all very exciting.

[Silverraptor]

The people at massivepwnage.com did it again.

http://www.massivepwnage.com/comics/2011-07-04.jpg

As usual, your results may vary. But this is why on a team you need a "Carry".

[Winthur]

Warwick too heavy to carry :smalltongue:

[Moonshadow]

So, after that conversation with Dogmantra, I decided that I should buy Rumble before he got nerfed again. This was the result:
http://i.imgur.com/QpXFy.png
So, yeah, solo queue is really dumb. No jungler? Nashor's TF? Frozen Mallet/BT Jax? Zero MR on the opposing team? I laned solo top against Singed/Sion. I went like 4/1/2 in early laning, so I just started playing Roamble and it snowballed from there.

Wait, what? I build Nashor's on TF, but not until after I get a Lichbane.

[ex cathedra]

I mean, I guess it could be viable, but I honestly think that the attack speed is just redundant and it's less important than Deathcap, Lichbane, and Voidstaff. Regardless, it should never be rushed.

[Moonshadow]

I have a weird AP Fate build anyways, that works me for me, but probably not anyone else >>

I get Nashors because it helps me split push a lot better, which I pretty much always have to do, given the incompetency of most pubbies.

(my build, if anyone is interested, is Ring start, Kages, boots 1, Philo, Mercs, HoG, Sheen, Lichbane, Rylais, Nashors, Deathcap, with armor/mr thrown in as needed)

[Adumbration]

Oh wow, just hit 20 summoner level in my US account. I think I just burned about 12k in IP in runes and 1.3k to buying TF. Didn't get full runepages though, since not all are unlocked, but now I have two working pages that I can build on later. Jungle/carry/tank and Mage.

Surprisingly satisfactory. My rune pages in EU are decent enough, but if I could do them again I would pick some other stuff. (Armor over dodge, MR/level over flat MR and flat cdr, flat MR and AP quints over health quints, etc.)

[ZombyWoof]

I mean, I guess it could be viable, but I honestly think that the attack speed is just redundant and it's less important than Deathcap, Lichbane, and Voidstaff. Regardless, it should never be rushed.
Tooth is always the fifth item on my build. I usually go Rabadon's, Lich, Void, Sword of the Divine (lol double proc!) and Nashor's Tooth. This gives me the necessary power to burst down ye old towers... because 40% of your AP is the damage you deal! And with Rab/Lich/Void/Nashor's you're talking 500 AP... 40% of which is 200? Throw in TF's good attack speed (he gets +15% for his E, +55% for Nashor's, +60 for SotD and has good base) and you've got a pushing machine... especially since you can throw blue cards at towers for bonus damage... and it procs lich bane.

[Astrella]

:smallconfused:

I think what Dog means is that purely in the AD carry role, Ashe doesn't really compare with the other carries, in that she has the lowest damage output of all of them. (No steroid, crappy basestats, ...)

What makes Ashe so strong is that she couples her AD carry nature with an incredibly strong support set, which makes her a far more interesting pick then the "purer" AD carries, such as Tristana and Miss Fortune.

[Spartacus]

:smallconfused:

Ashe is a fine AD carry. Only Annie, Caitlyn, level 6 or higher Tristana, and Bio Arcane Barrage active Kog'Maw beat her.

It seems to me that you have somehow equated AA range with AD carry power. Kog'Maw does Magic Damage, and last I checked it was a rare Annie that decided to build AD (*cough*9mm*cough*).


You'll get more mileage out of the 500+ HP than you will out of the 50 armor

Depending on the enemy teamcomp and your champ/items built, of course. 50 armour effectively increases your HP by 50% against physical damage. If the enemy is almost entirely physical, 50 armour will almost always be better than a RoA if we're talking purely survival.

[Dogmantra]

in that she has the lowest damage output of all of them. (No steroid, crappy basestats, ...)

AD Kennen is actually the worst one.

[The Rabbler]

AD Kennen is actually the worst one.

But AD Kennen has a much more reliable stun. Plus, his skills actually do some damage.

[Dogmantra]

But AD Kennen has a much more reliable stun. Plus, his skills actually do some damage.

In terms of damage, he's the worst. That's what I meant by that

(also in an amusing twist of fate, I had 1112 IP and then I played a game and now I have 1347 IP clearly this mimicks the time I got 1111 IP then 1337
[there was another time where I got 1234 then 1337 too I'm quite lucky])

[Math_Mage]

I think what Dog means is that purely in the AD carry role, Ashe doesn't really compare with the other carries, in that she has the lowest damage output of all of them. (No steroid, crappy basestats, ...)

What makes Ashe so strong is that she couples her AD carry nature with an incredibly strong support set, which makes her a far more interesting pick then the "purer" AD carries, such as Tristana and Miss Fortune.

Her base damage isn't high, but her base AS is best in class. Just sayin'.

Also, AD Kennen's skills don't scale well with physical damage, compared to, say, Volley.

[balistafreak]

solo queue at its finest:
http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/1292/soloqueue.jpg

We won.

Pffft, that team was clearly nerfing themselves. Rally is far superior to teleport, clearly.


Of course, if you want solo queue heroes, Gangplank has surpassed Vayne for that spot. Or he would have, if he wasn't permabanned.

... :smallfrown:

Jungle Trinity-Tank Gangplank is my goto character for soloqueue. I haven't hit 30 yet, so I haven't dipped a toe into ranked, but dang, this is still true?

Dang. I need to learn how to play another jungler tank. How's Rammus in the jungle?

[Astrella]

Her base damage isn't high, but her base AS is best in class. Just sayin'.

Also, AD Kennen's skills don't scale well with physical damage, compared to, say, Volley.

Well, what I meant is that she doesn't really have a skill that naturally increases her auto-attack damage (except for the one crit you get from your passive.). She's kinda like Caitlyn in that respect. (Except Ashe's support kit is better then Caitlyn's.)

[Math_Mage]

... :smallfrown:

Jungle Trinity-Tank Gangplank is my goto character for soloqueue. I haven't hit 30 yet, so I haven't dipped a toe into ranked, but dang, this is still true?

Dang. I need to learn how to play another jungler tank. How's Rammus in the jungle?

-Gangplank has been this way for a couple of weeks only. Expect changes on that front when Riot gets around to using the nerf bat.
-Rammus is...decent in jungle. Right now I'd say he's simply outclassed by Amumu. Rammus is better for not dying, but Amumu contributes more all game.


Well, what I meant is that she doesn't really have a skill that naturally increases her auto-attack damage (except for the one crit you get from your passive.). She's kinda like Caitlyn in that respect. (Except Ashe's support kit is better then Caitlyn's.)

Yeah, I didn't dispute the part about steroids, just the part about base stats. :smallwink:

[Eldariel]

-Rammus is...decent in jungle. Right now I'd say he's simply outclassed by Amumu. Rammus is better for not dying, but Amumu contributes more all game.

Basically:
- Rammus has better ganks (aside from the fact that he can be wardblocked)
- Rammus falls off in usefulness if he doesn't get early kills
- Amumu has faster clear
- Amumu offers more CC

So yeah, Rammus is fine but Amumu is better. Rammus is also a bit risky since if you get messed with or if your enemies manage to survive your ganks, you become useless while Amumu still does his job as long as he gets to QR each fight. But on his own, Rammus has all the traits for a good jungle: fast clear, resilient & strong ganker. It's just, his scaling is kinda weak so he needs little steroids from a kill.

[Winthur]

Dang. I need to learn how to play another jungler tank. How's Rammus in the jungle?

As someone who mained Rammus for a long time and kinda fallen out of love with him after some stuff shifted around...

Rammus is good for two things:
1: Speedy initial clear of the jungle.
He does it in below 4 minutes and can usually gank right after finishing his jungle.
2: Ganks
His ganks are potent because he doesn't even need boots that much thanks to Powerball. Powerball allows him to roam the entire map, often passing wards before the opponent manages to react. With Puncturing Taunt he can pin the opponent in place right after Powerball slows him.

The problem with Rammus is that he doesn't clear the jungle fast after his initial clear, as the jungle creeps become stronger. Rammus would have to get a super early Sunfire Cape to continue farming at a decent rate, and that's usually not advisable (although the Cape is overall a great item on Rammus).

Rammus has his weaknesses as well. It's easy to hurt him early on. Steal his blue and he's toast, and given his weak mid-game, it tends to haunt him for a long time.

I'd say Rammus can help his teammates win lanes earlier and easier than Amumu, but if he doesn't manage to get fed, his mid game is rather sad. He's prone to running around underleveled since he doesn't jungle fast unless you hamper your build (Wriggles don't really help Rammus much).

The thing is that Rammus does fulfill the role of a jungling tank rather well, just not as well as Amumu does. That, and if Rammus wants to be really effective, he *needs* to make successful ganks. Amumu can just provide cover for lanes and set up wards until he's 6, and he's set even if he didn't get the gold for a lot of items.

Rammus has however a few perks that Amumu doesn't. Rammus is better at locking down a single target, and his CC (Taunt) is usable more often (so he can lock down targets more often) and isn't dependant on a skillshot like Bandage Toss is. Amumu's ult, however, is a game-changing button, which is capable of controlling the teamfight as soon as he presses it. Rammus doesn't have that.

Rammus, if his early game phase went well, does very respectable damage as a tank. Locking down a squishy with a Defensive Ball Curl (so the squishy hurts himself on his spikes) and ramming him with the attack damage provided by armor, possibly assisted by a Sunfire Cape aura, is really strong.

Oh, and Rammus is more resistant to getting caught while roaming, because Powerball gives him a bit more map control (he can go into places faster than Amumu and ward wherever he pleases with little risk).

Rammus is also a good tower pusher, and after a successful gank he and his teammate can take down a turret much faster than the mummy would.

It's just that Rammus is overall less reliable than Amumu and just kinda feels not worth it anymore if Amumu is available. If for whatever reasons there is no tank in your team and Amumu is not an option, and you have no jungler, you probably can play Rammus rather happily at least for the early game pressure he is capable of putting on the enemy and the tanking potential that comes with kill/assist gold.

To be honest, Amumu is probably overall better for solo queue. Since Rammus depends on good ganks, you're going to be annoyed as hell if your teammates push the enemies to their turret. Doubly so if they later demand ganks which you can't commence because, you know, the enemy turret. :smallsigh:


(aside from the fact that he can be wardblocked)

Since the last patch, not anymore. You can take my ward for that.

[Inhuman Bot]

Yorick is five minions by level 6.

Corrected that for you.



The people at massivepwnage.com did it again.

http://www.massivepwnage.com/comics/2011-07-04.jpg

As usual, your results may vary. But this is why on a team you need a "Carry".

See, but LoL breaks the definition of carry of every other game in the genre, because "Carries" in LoL tend to be really good laners, too. (See: Tristana, MF, and others), and aren't nearly as good at the endgame, (Barring a few examples. See: Trundle, Tryndamere, Master Yi, Akali). "Carries" is about as meaningless as "Tank". "Support", "Jungler", "Nuker", "Initiation" and "Pusher" are probably the best classifications.

[Winthur]

See, but LoL breaks the definition of carry of every other game in the genre, because "Carries" in LoL tend to be really good laners, too. (See: Tristana, MF, and others), and aren't nearly as good at the endgame, (Barring a few examples. See: Trundle, Tryndamere, Master Yi, Akali).

:smallconfused:

Carries are supposed to be a strong force in the late game. Trundle (whose damage output is a secondary thing he brings to his team and who scales only okay into late game) and Akali (who doesn't fare that well if she's not ahead of the enemies, ergo: in a well-fed early-mid game) don't count IMHO.

[Daverin]

I think he means compared to other MOBAs. Think about it, although strong, almost none of the supposed carries can actually single-handedly "carry" the team. Riot just refuses to make it that so that teamwork is a nonfactor like that. Sure, they are some of the best lategame, but the fact that non-carry comps can work so well sort of validates his point in and of itself. I can just imagine other games have it that they very literally carry the team to victory, with the team just trying to harass the other carry and keeping them alive before the breaking point.

[Inhuman Bot]

I think he means compared to other MOBAs. Think about it, although strong, almost none of the supposed carries can actually single-handedly "carry" the team. Riot just refuses to make it that so that teamwork is a nonfactor like that. Sure, they are some of the best lategame, but the fact that non-carry comps can work so well sort of validates his point in and of itself. I can just imagine other games have it that they very literally carry the team to victory, with the team just trying to harass the other carry and keeping them alive before the breaking point.

Correct.

It'd be hilarious to have proper carries in a game without gold loss on death or creep denying, though!

[Moonshadow]

I think he means compared to other MOBAs. Think about it, although strong, almost none of the supposed carries can actually single-handedly "carry" the team. Riot just refuses to make it that so that teamwork is a nonfactor like that. Sure, they are some of the best lategame, but the fact that non-carry comps can work so well sort of validates his point in and of itself. I can just imagine other games have it that they very literally carry the team to victory, with the team just trying to harass the other carry and keeping them alive before the breaking point.

Come back here and die for my fleeting tactical bonus? :smallbiggrin:

[Eldariel]

This comic is too true. (http://soraka.blogspot.com/2011/07/soraka-comic-rush-03.html)

[Temotei]

This comic is too true. (http://soraka.blogspot.com/2011/07/soraka-comic-rush-03.html)

Sona: :smalleek:....:smalleek:

Lee Sin driving. I like it.

[endoperez]

Soo...

I haven't been able to play for a while. How is Shen these days? Have his builds changed after the nerf?

[Dogmantra]

Soo...

I haven't been able to play for a while. How is Shen these days? Have his builds changed after the nerf?

His damage is... way worse. His early game burst was cut drastically, and later on it's about the same with a regular Shen build. He can still tank as well as he always could, but can't split push as hard. He's pretty balanced, just very lacklustre compared to when he was the most broken thing since copyright law.

He builds about the same, Sunfire, FoN, Randuin's, grabbing an early HoG, maybe an Aegis.

[Moonshadow]

His damage is... way worse. His early game burst was cut drastically, and later on it's about the same with a regular Shen build. He can still tank as well as he always could, but can't split push as hard. He's pretty balanced, just very lacklustre compared to when he was the most broken thing since copyright law.

He builds about the same, Sunfire, FoN, Randuin's, grabbing an early HoG, maybe an Aegis.

Of course, he still synergises well with TF, especially if they both have Teleport. Nothing would escape the split push they put out.

[Winthur]

Soo...

I haven't been able to play for a while. How is Shen these days? Have his builds changed after the nerf?

He's a herp derp durr. The ult doesn't really become that good until level 11, he doesn't have as much teamfight control as other tanks (the taunt that consumes a ton of energy and a bunch of subpar skills) and he needs way way more HP stacking to get back his Ki Strike damage output from before. (which can often mean Warmogs) He can still split push. Singed can also split push while being insanely survivable, much more damage dealing, and also much more joyous as you Shift + 4 the enemy team to oblivion.

Shen is probably not worth it even as a bottom lane tank who babysits the carry. His solo lane also stopped being that good. :smallfrown: That said, he builds similar to before, except you might want a Warmogs if you're big on the Ki Strike damage.

[Adumbration]

I actually quite disagree with you, Winthur. While no longer OP, I think Shen is still a fairly good tanky tanky dps. The global ult is still global, which is automatically a win button, the taunt is useful and the shield is godly as an early game "nope, no damage taken" skill. The vorpal blade is good for harassing and last hitting at a distance.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, Shen's kinda mediocre right now. Not bad but there are usually better options; he doesn't tank that hard though his ult is still asskickery. He used to be tanky damagey splitpusher but now he doesn't really have damage unless he builds that way which cuts into his tanky capabilities and overall, his kit just isn't as good as it used to be (though yeah, you can still destroy with him but I'd rather have a Jarvan, a Mummy, a Cho or some such for my tanky type right now).

You need to build a lot of damage for him later on and given the HP scaling on Ki Strike, this generally means Atma's nowadays. A rather simple build you could use on him would be something like this (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Shen/?items=36,15,61,16,70,55&runes=36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,32,32,32,32,32,32 ,32,32,32,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,1,1,1&masteries=0000000000000003030411140301031040001000 000&level=18), though obviously the items depend. The resistances are pretty low for a tanky type but the massive HP pool kinda compensates for it, and it's kinda what you want to get your damage output anywhere near where you want it.

It's rare I'd ever suggest building both FM and Warmog's on the same champ but it can kinda work on Shen, actually. Of course, with defense that heavily HP-based he's really vulnerable to Madred's; it only takes 65 Madred's hits to kill him (well, plus the regeneration for another ~10 or so). And obviously, a tank's build should never be set in stone. And yeah, that build's damage, while not amazing, is pretty alright. You clock Ki Strikes in the mid 200s, Madred's in the upper 100s and basic attacks in the mid 200s allowing for starting burst in the 700s (sans crit) + 210 Vorpal Blade for raw ~950 in the first burst, and the slow to keep it up even without red (and obvious decent follow-ups in a straight fight or chasing and beating). But it has none of the traditional auras, is a rather late bloomer (since it contains Warmog's - always kinda meh) and so on.

[Math_Mage]

His damage is... way worse. His early game burst was cut drastically, and later on it's about the same with a regular Shen build. He can still tank as well as he always could, but can't split push as hard. He's pretty balanced, just very lacklustre compared to when he was the most broken thing since copyright law.

He builds about the same, Sunfire, FoN, Randuin's, grabbing an early HoG, maybe an Aegis.

I feel like it's time to experiment more. This build simply isn't going to work on him anymore, in a competitive setting. Maybe no other build will either, but it's worth finding out.

[The Rabbler]

I feel like it's time to experiment more. This build simply isn't going to work on him anymore, in a competitive setting. Maybe no other build will either, but it's worth finding out.

I always build my Shen as follows: shield -> Merc Treads -> HoG -> Aegis -> Negatron -> Warden's Mail -> Banshees -> Randuin's -> FoN. Then, if the game is still going, I'll sell the shield for either Thornmail or Rylai's, depending on what we need more ATM. If it's one of those hour-long games, I'll usually sell the aegis for GA.

I grab Aegis early to give me some extra damage, whilst also providing a good, even source of MR and AR. I grab Banshees because I'd rather eat spells/disables/skill shots than have anyone else eat them and banshees allows me to do that without taking damage while also giving me a good source of MR and health at the same time. I don't grab sunfire, because it's such a poor use of money; for the 800 gold you spend on the recipe, you get 20 or 40 hp and the passive (which, frankly, isn't all that good).

[Dogmantra]

I feel like it's time to experiment more. This build simply isn't going to work on him anymore, in a competitive setting. Maybe no other build will either, but it's worth finding out.

Now supposedly they're buffing Shen's AP ratios soon. If that happens and they get buffed enough, I'd imagine tanky AP with a rushed Rylai's a la Rumble and Kennen would be the deal.

[Inhuman Bot]

I hope Riot hires the guys pulling this stunt. They're probably better then the current IT staff.

[balistafreak]

I hope Riot hires the guys pulling this stunt. They're probably better then the current IT staff.

It's always harder to defend than attack. True in many things, such as life.

Hilariously childish of them, but I must admit seeing ELO = 9999 gave me a chuckle.

I wonder what the exact legal ramifications of hacking attacks are. I don't know the finer points of law, so...

[Eurus]

I have to say, it's kind of depressing to know that not only is League being hacked right now, it's also being hacked by idiots. I realize that net defense is difficult, but really Riot? :smallsigh:

[Dallas-Dakota]

Indeed.:smallsigh:

[Daverin]

Wait, what's happening? Riot's getting hacked?!?

... Can anyone tell me if it is just me when it seems stories of hacking, at least on some noteworthy level, are on the rise?

[Inhuman Bot]

I wonder what the exact legal ramifications of hacking attacks are. I don't know the finer points of law, so...

Generally? Nothing too bad, but it's obviously on a country by country basis. Some countries don't have laws regarding hacking, in fact.

Happy 4th of July Riot!

[Eldariel]

... Can anyone tell me if it is just me when it seems stories of hacking, at least on some noteworthy level, are on the rise?

Targets are just more mainstream so you hear of 'em more. Also, these "hackers" are really bad at what they're doing. Seems to be a common nominator in any "hacker group" striving for mainstream spotlight; they have no clue of what they're doing, tend to use a bunch of programs freely available in "the undernet" and do it for the public show and apparently want some degree of recognition or some such.

[Silverraptor]

So where's this story of Riot being hacked?

[efdf]

http://clgaming.net/live/958

Saintvicious is streaming at 1 Elo, should be interesting to watch.

[Eldariel]

So where's this story of Riot being hacked?

Forums are full of it. The short version:
- Remote Admistration Tool (called "Cybergate") link spammed (basically, it's a site that installs the RAT through a Java Script if you're dumb enough to run it; you literally have to accept to install the virus which is then downloaded as a file on your computer), prolly sent to Summoner Showcase or something, a Riot Employee gets logged.
- This account is used to send serverwide messages of "free RP" with the link; many other accounts are stolen (Pobelter, Hotshot, Doublelift, and few other high profile players, and a bunch of randoms)
- The Admin access on the Riot account is abused to all hell. People are banned, ELO are altered, etc. Also, on some of the usernames are changed (Pobelter got changed into "LeagueofNos" and given 9999 ELO, for example).

That's about it. An extremely crude and superobvious trojan downloaded from a random hacking forum somehow caught a Riot employee (probably someone computer illiterate) and all hell broke loose (and a bunch of people went Dumb Mode and went to download their "free RP"-program *sigh*).

[Temotei]

http://clgaming.net/live/958

Saintvicious is streaming at 1 Elo, should be interesting to watch.

What movie is that?

[ZombyWoof]

It seems to me that you have somehow equated AA range with AD carry power. Kog'Maw does Magic Damage, and last I checked it was a rare Annie that decided to build AD (*cough*9mm*cough*).
That wasn't my point at all. AA range is very important and makes a huge difference in the positioning of an AD carry as well as how strong their lane is. Just for example, take Caitlyn up against, just as an example, Annie, and see how difficult that is. Trade out Caitlyn for Ashe and notice how much easier it becomes just because you don't have to walk through as much threat zone to harass her. 100 units of range (the difference between MF and Cait) is about 1/3rd of a second walking at move speed 300... and 1/3rd of a second is often the difference between a kill and an escape.




Depending on the enemy teamcomp and your champ/items built, of course. 50 armour effectively increases your HP by 50% against physical damage. If the enemy is almost entirely physical, 50 armour will almost always be better than a RoA if we're talking purely survival.
That's not how armor works :smallconfused: 50 armor on, say, Annie at level 18 is the difference between 56% of the damage getting through and 44% of the damage getting through, which means that it mitigates 12% more damage.

Rod of Ages is +530 HP, and Annie's HP is 1640. That means that Rod of Ages increases Annie's tankiness by about 33%... or be 3x as effective at mitigating physical damage... and infinitely more effective at mitigating magic damage.

If you want to know when 50 armor is better than a RoA, 50 armor is better than RoA on Annie when 530/hp < .12, or when HP > 4800. The higher your base armor, the less effective bonus armor becomes.


I think what Dog means is that purely in the AD carry role, Ashe doesn't really compare with the other carries, in that she has the lowest damage output of all of them. (No steroid, crappy basestats, ...)
According to the LoL Wiki, Ashe's base attack damage is unusually low... but Trist's is lower at level 1, and only 1 damage higher at level 18. Ashe's at level 18 is 98. Trist is 99, MF is 100, Vayne is 108.5, Cait is 101...

Her AS is also pretty low, with Trist, MF and Vayne clocking in at 1.15+ and Ashe being at 1.031. Caitlyn on the other hand, is 1.009

But comparatively, MF and Vayne have a range of 550, while ashe is at 600 and cait at 650. Trist's range greatly increases to a huge maximum of 680.

So when we compare their base stats, Ashe does come in pretty much in the rear... but not by nearly as much as you'd think. Vayne's is the highest, actually, by quite a bit.

Alright let's talk about the steroids. Tristana's steroid is interesting, it increases attack speed by 90%. This is crazy useful against towers and 1v1s, not so crazy useful in chasing. Miss Fortune's gives her a 50% AS increase and adds stacking magic damage to her shots which is quite powerful. Vayne's... is probably the weakest of the three with her true damage buff. I suppose we can include Tumble but that's a skill not a steroid. Ashe's steroid does things a little differently: it applies a 40% slow. This is better than any of the other steroids because it lets Ashe kite a lot harder than any of the other champs until those champs buy Frozen Mallet.

Oh also... Ashe's volley is on a 4s cd and is 50 + 1/ad. That's a pretty powerful move since it's AoE and very strong.



What makes Ashe so strong is that she couples her AD carry nature with an incredibly strong support set, which makes her a far more interesting pick then the "purer" AD carries, such as Tristana and Miss Fortune.
What makes her so strong is that she is a pure AD carry who's kit isn't just focused on damage. I don't see how her Volley or her Frost Shot or her Frozen Arrow are "support sets..." except that they support Ashe in her goal of killing champions.

On the other hand, Hawkshot is definitely a support skill.

On Shen:



Yeah, Shen's kinda mediocre right now. Not bad but there are usually better options; he doesn't tank that hard though his ult is still asskickery. He used to be tanky damagey splitpusher but now he doesn't really have damage unless he builds that way which cuts into his tanky capabilities and overall, his kit just isn't as good as it used to be (though yeah, you can still destroy with him but I'd rather have a Jarvan, a Mummy, a Cho or some such for my tanky type right now).
I have to be honest, Shen is bad right now. His early game is really bad and he needs farm to do anything late game. His ult is useless for saving champs at level 1 (wooo... 100 hp) and can only be used in certain ways (generally I use it to join a gank)... and towards the late game its lack of scaling provides real problems.



You need to build a lot of damage for him later on and given the HP scaling on Ki Strike, this generally means Atma's nowadays. A rather simple build you could use on him would be something like this (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Shen/?items=36,15,61,16,70,55&runes=36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,32,32,32,32,32,32 ,32,32,32,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,98,1,1,1&masteries=0000000000000003030411140301031040001000 000&level=18), though obviously the items depend. The resistances are pretty low for a tanky type but the massive HP pool kinda compensates for it, and it's kinda what you want to get your damage output anywhere near where you want it.
The thing with Shen is, you have to twist his build really hard to get any real damage out of him... and that's a huge problem because he doesn't have the CC that certain notable champs have. Compare his taunt to, I dunno, J4's knockup and arena. Maybe Amumu's stun and almost-stun? How about Rammus' taunt and slow?



It's rare I'd ever suggest building both FM and Warmog's on the same champ but it can kinda work on Shen, actually. Of course, with defense that heavily HP-based he's really vulnerable to Madred's; it only takes 65 Madred's hits to kill him (well, plus the regeneration for another ~10 or so). And obviously, a tank's build should never be set in stone. And yeah, that build's damage, while not amazing, is pretty alright. You clock Ki Strikes in the mid 200s, Madred's in the upper 100s and basic attacks in the mid 200s allowing for starting burst in the 700s (sans crit) + 210 Vorpal Blade for raw ~950 in the first burst, and the slow to keep it up even without red (and obvious decent follow-ups in a straight fight or chasing and beating). But it has none of the traditional auras, is a rather late bloomer (since it contains Warmog's - always kinda meh) and so on.
And see that's the problem with Shen in a nutshell: you have to warp his build so that he's useful at anything other than taking damage... which means you can either a) itemize for his main plan (tanking) or b) itemize so that he's not totally useless. Compare this to the tanks like Amumu, Rammus, Cow... champions who have very considerable damage (Amumu's first burst is around 600, and then he has sustain % based damage after that's AREA OF EFFECT, discounting any AP he might build since Abyssal Scepter is a fine item on him, while Cow has 500 before any AP and his passive) and MUCH better CC (Shen's dash is at maximum 2 seconds of taunt, which is A) cleansable and b) diminished by tenacity while Amumu's total CC is 3 seconds with much better area and Cow's is 1.5s, for which just 1 of which is CCable).

Quite frankly, Shen has no real place in the meta right now because even subop champs like Rammus just outclass him in virtually every way.

FIX SHEN NAO.

[efdf]

That's not how armor works :smallconfused: 50 armor on, say, Annie at level 18 is the difference between 56% of the damage getting through and 44% of the damage getting through, which means that it mitigates 12% more damage.

Rod of Ages is +530 HP, and Annie's HP is 1640. That means that Rod of Ages increases Annie's tankiness by about 33%... or be 3x as effective at mitigating physical damage... and infinitely more effective at mitigating magic damage.

If you want to know when 50 armor is better than a RoA, 50 armor is better than RoA on Annie when 530/hp < .12, or when HP > 4800. The higher your base armor, the less effective bonus armor becomes.


Actually, you're completely wrong on every point here.

[dgnslyr]

I guess it's support in the sense that it helps your teamates too, as opposed to just yourself. Personally, I find Ashe fun to play, and at the moment I play primarily Ashe and Tristana.

[Silverraptor]

I hope Riot is trying to fix all of this.

[ZombyWoof]

Actually, you're completely wrong on every point here.
Really? Because I mathed out how much damage the armor mitigates. If the armor mitigates 11% more damage it's like having 11% more HP... is it not?

[Daverin]

... Support morde.

Now I've seen everything.

Also, efdf, for the sake of clearing it up for anyone seeing the argument who want to ensure they have an optimal build at all times, could you please not be that guy who just goes "you're wrong" and actually provide evidence for your side? That response really isn't going to do anything except get Zomby mad, I'd imagine.

[Temotei]

That response really isn't going to do anything except get Zomby mad, I'd imagine.

You won't like him when he's angry. :smallwink:

[Daverin]

Aww, looks like he's just calling it support kaiser...

[Eldariel]

Really? Because I mathed out how much damage the armor mitigates. If the armor mitigates 11% more damage it's like having 11% more HP... is it not?

1 point of armor increases your effective HP against that type of an attack by 1%. So 50 Armor increase increases your effective HP against physical attacks by 50%. By contrast, HP increase is of course multiplied by your existing Armor; so 530 HP with 90 Armor would grant you extra 1007 effective HP against physical attacks, for example (and of course, benefits against magical attacks too).

This is less than what 50 more Armor would provide you with if you have more than 2k HP (also note that Armor & MR effectively give you extra value out of any healing and/or regeneration you receive, since the HPs regained also benefit of your Armor & MR), but of course, 50 Armor does not help against magical attacks.

[efdf]

Sorry, I didn't write an explanation because my brain's not really thinking well but here goes:

Having 50 more armor does, in fact, increase your EHP by 50% against physical. Each point of armor and each point of magic resist has this property (1% EHP per point) with no diminishing returns. However, due to the nature of how the information is presented (% damage reduction) this can be hard to see so I'll demonstrate.

0 Armor: 0% reduction.
100 Armor: 50% reduction. Requires 2x as much damage. 100% EHP Boost
200 Armor: 66% reduction. Requires 3x as much damage. 200% EHP Boost
300 Armor: 75% reduction. Requires 4x as much damage. 300% EHP Boost

It seems like there are diminishing returns (50 to 16 to 9) but it's not actually the case.

Oh, and to use your original example (Level 18 Annie with +50 Armor)

Base: 44% damage reduction (56% damage taken)
+50: 56% damage reduction (44% damage taken)

Imagine a target with 2000 HP being attacked by a 100 AD character.
0 Armor: 20 hits
Base (76.5 armor): 2000/56 damage per hit = 35.7 hits (20 * 1.765 = 35.3) ~76.5% EHP boost
+50 (126.5 armor): 2000/44 damage per hit = 45.5 hits (20 * 2.265 = 45.3) ~126.5% EHP boost

Now, the numbers aren't exact but that's simply because the 56% and 44% numbers you gave me are rounded.

[Temotei]

I like SaintVicious. He seems like a fun streamer.

Interesting stats on the non-diminishing returns there. I'm not in thinking mode right now, so that's all I've got.

[Dogmantra]

this just in: Sheen on Kennen

BEST early item