League of Legends (Old)

[mykonian]

The changes to BT actually made Barrier pretty strong.

You can easily get an 800 damage shield which is fucking stupid.

BT gives shield
barrier gives shield
bigger = better
QED

[mykonian]

BT has better synergy with Barrier for damage negation because lolmassiveshield

You are such an American.

Literally everytime you argument boiled down to "my shield becomes bigger with these two together, so it's better!". The pair of them is not more than the sum of both parts. That's not synergy.

[mykonian]

The argument that you can be 100-0 without barrier but not with it is a valid difference between them, but it has nothing to do with the BT shield AFAICT.

pedit rofl

myko gets it right. I actually thought he was agreeing with Zephyr in 31747 originally, though. ^^~:

Yeah, I figured. That one was sarcastic but tone is hard to get from posts.

[mykonian]

changes to jungle items are a good sign. This might be the moment where riot addresses the problem they introduced with the lifesteal/spellvamp combo they gave all the items.

[mykonian]

Unique - Butcher: Against monsters, deal 20% bonus damage and restore 6% of damage dealt to monsters as health and 3% as mana.

^ that's the one I meant, I was a bit vague. They didn't take it off the mage one, with the success of the idea of that item, it was spread to the other ones. It's the moment the dominance of spirit of the ancient golem ended and everything started playing spirit of the eldeer lizard. It's the moment Panth and Kha became monsters in the jungle. The fact that this lifesteal/spellvamp combo exists in the jungle makes AD-casters faster in the jungle, more sustained, more dangerous in the ganks than the competition. Going straight offensive synergises with their whole role, it improves every aspect of their jungle. It floods out a lot of picks competitively. Except the little time flare was the shit, only two picks that are supportive in the jungle are elise and nunu, I think.

[mykonian]

9*205 for mres glyph
9*205 for armor seal
9*410 for mpen marks
9*205 for ad marks
3*1025 for ad quints
3*1025 for ap quints

adds to 15375. Almost there ETL!

[mykonian]

hmm, that's such an invitation to find counterexamples.

[mykonian]

Best moment to learn!

[mykonian]

Jungler is currently my best role, bit of a small champion pool, ranked wise I'm starting to encounter opponents now who outplay me on the map so I'm approaching my limit rankedwise as a jungler.

[mykonian]

[mykonian]

To be fair what they needed to do to make her more support worthy without being a solo laner is change her fucking Q, because it's not supporting at all.

You could think twice before you talk nonsense, please. It's not that hard.

[mykonian]

I actually agree with wazza.

If they'd just made her Q not target minions, support soraka gets a slight buff and solo-lane soraka gets nerfed kinda hard.

Suppose they made that change and we go to probably the most common matchups currently: vs thresh and leona. You go to lane, leona uses targons twice, adcs hit creeps, second lane comes in, next three creeps get killed: who's done it first? If thresh even gets a bit better and he flays the wave knowing that you can't do a thing about it, he's got it. They get their gap closer and if they hit that, it's first blood and the end of your botlane. The fact that they can outpush you (having your adc be an unknown) means you have to play to catch up in the game already. You lose dominance from the get go. So that sor's q hits creeps would be an asset lv1. There's probably no way to outpush a lane with a q-spamming soraka.

Beyond that, in those matchups, it's a guy with a poor lv1 skill who needs a combo against a soraka with long ranged autos and a skill that gets better if they stay in the fight with her on a very short cooldown. The thing that makes solo lane soraka strong is what makes support soraka strong: lane dominance.

And what's the downside? "I miss creeps" is a bit sad. For one, your opponents miss more because they are just being battlemoded out of lane, and beyond that half the ones you miss because you are unable to deal with the sudden massive starcall damage go to sor (who's on your team). Is it because the lane gets pushed which would somehow be bad? No, bot is the best warded lane, you have two trinkets, the opposition wouldn't be doubled with an incoming gank. OTOH, still at my level adc's don't get everything on the tower and they still aren't able to freeze it in front of their tower. Pushing also allows you to move away, go back at your own leisure (hey, the wave is pushed, it won't get to my tower when I go b now), etc.

The Q like it is is making her a somewhat viable support, even with one point in it it's a rather powerful skill. Not taking it lv1 is more or less giving your lane up.

So when wazza was saying "they should change her fucking q", I had to count to ten, remember who was saying it and not hit submit on a long sentence including a couple "fucking"s as well. Asking wazza to think twice before posting nonsense felt comparatively better.

[mykonian]

Also grats on Plat Myko, you deserve it buddy <3

Thank you Brandi!

[mykonian]

Uh. Welp. I guess.

*Silver 3 knows nothing about the game*

Well, she doesn't get played in lcs, so you don't get to see her a lot. Has less to do with level than simple playing time. Might have been a long time ago (I think before you started playing) that Brandi posted in this thread that one should start q on soraka if one played her. I didn't at that time, but tried it then, just to see what it did. Last year somewhere lemonnation had a cute build in soloqueue on soraka that I wanted to try out, so I got to see the matchups a couple of times, played maybe 10-20 games in total on soraka? I could have been silver as well and have tried that to play her given what I saw from lemonnation, krepo and what brandi talked about in thread.

I just wish wazza wouldn't so assertively state things when he's not even thought about it twice. It's the way of delivery (and how often it happens with him) that is frankly a bit annoying.

idk, I've deleted a couple of sentences by now already and it comes down to tone and frequency, in the end, I guess. Everybody can be wrong. We all will be in this thread sooner or later, or if we post often, we'll be wrong a couple of times. Wazza manages to be wrong so often with things that could have been avoided if he checked something/rethought his post. I don't believe he's trying to add his knowledge to the thread, he just wants to make cool sounding posts.

[mykonian]

omg

my account was gold 4, and when I won my promos, it jumped to gold 2.

whoa??!!!!!

Does it normally do that?

only with a big disparity between league and underlying mmr.

I just finished my placements! Silver 1, Vi's Avatars, all solo queue.

I think RayFrost had me listed highest at Silver III, so I beat everyone's expectations.

7/10 wins

see, it wasn't a fluke that you beat the silver 2 kog in lane pre ganks And that's a great place to start from just from placements!

[mykonian]

I think it's much more important to play a champion well than to play an "OP" champion.

Or do both and practice support Gragas! Been spamming him for a month now, hasn't gone boring yet (and I feel like I have play in most if not all matchups)

[mykonian]

but that's mostly just me liking RoA on almost anything that scales with AP.

This gets more spectacular knowing Patrick's championpool. RoA on:

cho gath? okay.
malz? I'll live.
brand? groan.
veigar? aaaaah

warwick???

[mykonian]

Zyra's an okay support, but I feel that she doesn't mesh well with the current meta. (I love her, but she just doesn't)

I would love you to expand on this. I've played a ton of zyra support previous to last month, but in fairness probably against (slightly) lower quality opponents where building greedily paid off inevitably. I did get her in EUW for the final 6 games in ranked there, but again in fairness those games I did pick her were won off completely unrelated reasons (and some serious greed in the build again). I don't think I know the matchups too well, even with the amount I've played her.

[mykonian]

Gragas is a good solo queue pick. Nice consistent damage in fights and really good outplay potential at all points in the game.

Top or Mid.

SUPPORT

[mykonian]

man, thresh can straight up win games for your team

I would love to add onto this and state that practically every Plat/Diamond lol player ms has right now is a support main...

Quadz is way more experienced than me on thresh (I don't play him. I basically don't play leona, just got forced into the pick twice).

Also, you mostly see me on support but that's because it's fun to play with shanba. My jungle tends to be a bit more effective (but only just).

[mykonian]

idk. Thresh is a lot of fun. I've had most experience with it laning with my brother, who for a couple of months, I think, played thresh in 95% of his games. He had the joke that all his runepages were some "thresh" variation

Still, since I don't play him, I played against thresh's a lot and they simply aren't as good as a thresh main. He's a popular support but not everybody playing him is a support player. I guess thresh is sort of accessible, but there's quite a bit of nuance in his play (most of which I learn via discussions with my brother). What one faces though... I probably should learn what I'm actually abusing (which starts with builds, but mostly revolves around what hooks they can actually go for) by playing him, but so far most of it I got via discussions with my brother.

All in all, what I'm trying to say is that he's not as easy as he seems. There's a lot of cool things you can do with Thresh if you get practiced on him (just by playing him lots and looking what choices other players (pros) make on him) and it feels too many of the opponents play him when they are "forced" to support, which is a shame.

[mykonian]

gragas build:

targons, sightstone, mobi, then branch with wardens/randuins, locket, frozen fist (esspecially for glacial) and visage as the bigger options depending on the opposing team.

[mykonian]

never will be either.

[mykonian]

Sssh, it works necause he's bronze.

still doesn't.

It "works" because he doesn't like to support and picks an apc then farms up in the midgame away from his team so he can be a non-support after that.

[mykonian]

another ranged toplaner

kscope will be so happy.

[mykonian]

thanks Brandi!

(congratulate your parents for me... )

[mykonian]

22.. :S i should be better at this

You aren't bad for a level 22.

Also, practice does make perfect. Making mistakes, esspecially after playing only a couple of weeks now, is

good

. That's the way you learn, trying every silly thing that you think about and playing lots.

[mykonian]

i want rainbows and sunshine and bunny rabbits

Then you should probably play a different game...

nuh uh. i just bought lulu

best solution. If they want to be mean, you make them into a squirrel!

(if only they made an easter lulu... you'd have your bunny rabbits!)

[mykonian]

Someone mains support = everyone is more likely to get the role they want since it's a less popular role.

the other way around made that I had/got to play a ton of support. Don't know how it was for the others.

[mykonian]

I am probably going to take the jump and get dragged into this world. I've been debating it for a while, and sort of like supporting, and my "pre-investment" into the game was grabbing Nami, Morganna, Soraka, Annie while they were on sale. So while you all at the top yell back and forth, what's the best way for me to get STARTED learning support?

a. Bad idea, cabd
b. play a lot.
c. watch other people play (there are some supports that stream)
d. don't start playing soraka, people will give you bad advice about her when you play her with other newer players. Also, she might get a rework, her kit has been problematic for ages, so you could save yourself some work and learn her in a couple of months. (also she's not the most interesting character to play)

[mykonian]

Ranked is something that you can do after grinding 30 levels, so you don't have to worry about it. Normals aren't scary. Riot's matchmaking is pretty good, they figure out pretty quickly what your skill level is and with who you should play.

Using the minimap is easier for some than other, but that's valuable. Warding is something you could learn later. It's comparatively easy to pick up and doesn't really deserve focus initially. And you'll play other roles inevitably, so yes, getting to know what the waves do and how to last hit is nice (also because if you are really good at support you are supposed to help your adc last hit at tower at early levels, should shit hit the fan, something I'm still trying to get down).

[mykonian]

Support is a terrible role to learn the game with and also all of the good supports are 6300.

That's such a challenge to name all the functional supports that aren't expensive. Beyond morg already, who's an in meta pick and plenty powerful as support, there are sona and janna who are still doing pretty well in winrates and have never really been gone.

Of the "good supports", leona and thresh, only leona is doing well. Apparently the shield nerf on thresh was big? 46% winrate weekly.

[mykonian]

Singed teaches horrible positioning because of his main skill (he can leave a poison trail behind him that slowly kills enemy champs who don't know better) and he's generally reliant, IMO, on other people fucking up rather than him being really viable as a champion.

of course you realise this means war.

[mykonian]

Well, specifically, the more popular/most meta supports right now are:

Thresh
Morgana
Leona
Braum
Lulu
Nami

Doesn't necessarily mean they are the strongest or the likeliest to help you win the game. Of that list, only morg, leona and nami do well (though obviously lulu's lolking stats are contaminated). As if you could only win games as support by buying a 6300 champ.

[mykonian]

in this case, season.

[mykonian]

Udyr vs Diana jungle

that shouldve been fun

[mykonian]

it's like (old) support ap yi, but worse!

[mykonian]

Because every team builder has that one hipster douche who says, "Fuck the meta, I am unique and different!"

Except they're all unique and different in the same douchey ways.

if, only. Half my queue time is skipping games with lee, yasuo, vayne, rengar.

[mykonian]

yesterdays games were... interesting. Last one, opposing nidalee had monitor problems, but I still managed to die twice without an opponent.

Mundo dies when he pleases.

Thankfully we had Brandi carrying us.

[mykonian]

You have to get the Advocaat from a specialty store or import it though

I grew up on that stuff (at least, that's what I'm told... also might explain some things)

[mykonian]

3s are the best.

[mykonian]

He's only hard b/c he's undertuned right now. Champs become much easier when they're balanced/OP as fuck.

Which means I rarely have a reason to choose Sej/Naut over Xin or Kha. Which makes me sad, cause I love those first two so much, but can't justify picking them unless i'm last pick and there are no tanks.

Sej is rather consistently in the top winrates soloqueue.

[mykonian]

In bronze it's very difficult to play enablers because there is absolutely no guarantee your team will follow up or know who to target.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[mykonian]

Heavily toned down numbers on most skills, except her e, a form of lategame (scaling) sustain, part of a strongly scaling passive anyway. More utility parts of the spells.

Or in other words, a lot weaker laning, much stronger lategame.

[mykonian]

about that...

I enjoyed having a champion with 3 spammable spells, good waveclear, which was good against bruisers esspecially when build quite defensively, who could brawl with the best right from level two, esspecially in 2v2 or 3v3 fights.

This is going to murder half my botlane picks on treeline

[mykonian]

I do love his feel in the game though. He's that big scary guy who lives to murder whatever opposes him. Not that he's good, but he does command respect.

[mykonian]

Uh hu, that's definitely correct.

BIG VISIBLE initiation.

"Guys, our singed is in their team"
"What's he doing there?"
"Don't know. Trolling, I think. Do you think we should stroll over?"

[mykonian]

I'm fully convinced that karthus is freelo. I say this because he's gotten me my promos to plat 2 which I've been hovering at 81-99 lp for ages trying to get.

3-0 winrate on a champ I don't play. Based lichgod

Uncommon pick: check
AoE damage: lots
inevitability of sorts: yup
easy to play: check

[mykonian]

so many???

mid: welp.
top: singed
jungle: mummy, eve, sej
support: zyra, gragas, taric
adc: trist

after those there's already a noticable drop in quality. Next to these there's a set of second rate champions that can be useful even when you expect to lose, that are if possible easy to play. Only one of those for adc, so trist got to be in this list, but being adc is a lost cause. So all in all that's a grand total of 7 champions that I am actually confident in that I can play well, that I know the matchups for, the way of playing, which trades I win.

[mykonian]

That's why nobody replaces out.

I'm with chamber. The obligation towards players in a lol game goes way less far than the obligation you have to people here. And actually, it shows. It's your teammates who talk about your mom when you died 3 times. Real team mentality, right there. If chamber can justify leaving a game to himself, I don't think he can be that wrong.

[mykonian]

There's worse ways to be a jerk. I'll take chambers option.

[mykonian]

akali for low elo, summarized:

Flad ad marks, armor yellows, flat ap glyphs, flat ap quints. 21-9-0. Flash ignite. We take no prisoners.

Don't go mid. People with range are a pain. Find a nice bruiser or so. I'd suggest their natural habitat (top). R-Q-E-W. Don't farm with q. Throw q at opponent.

Now the whole joke with akali: your q is good. What's better is that the cd of your q is the same as the time the mark stays on the target at lv1, and becomes even better after that. So if said bruiser has decided he wants to trade with you, throw your q at him, back off, count to 5, walk at him again, consume the mark, throw new q because it has just come off cd, consume it again. Trade won, bruiser scared (because: akali OP man, see that damage!!!). This does not work on higher elo's where people actually know what akali does and don't instinctly back off when they just ate a burst.

Post 6, do the same. Throw q, count to 4, ult target, consume mark, throw q, consume it, back off (or finish the bruiser off). If you got this far, the lane is yours. He does not get to farm without fear of dying in the next 2 seconds.

Build: gunblade-zonyas-whatever offensive item you can find. The only defensive item you should consider after is guardian angel.

Run around, kill people who are alone, never go in first in a teamfight.

This does not work at higher elo's, because at some point people are actually going to be smart enough to notice there's an akali walking around and will avoid getting into small skirmishes. Which is really easy since what's usually the main tank's spot in your team (toplane) is now taken by a squishy assassin. Or in other words, you like to fight, but good teams will see that your team doesn't have as much ability to create one.

[mykonian]

Janna is never D tier. She can be unpopular, but ult and tornado are too powerful and unique abilities, together with her movespeed, that she is and always will be the defining disengage support champion and one of the more superior lategame supports. Has nothing to do with scaling, not even that much with the metagame, she has her own niche in which she unrivalled. If you make a comp that can abuse her, she can't be bad.

Sure, you can't play her into and with everything and expect the same success. But there's no way a champion like Janna could ever become D-tier.

[mykonian]

I'd have to say the best player on team RESPECT was definitely myko's gragas, but their individual player's mechanics were all rather superior to team DISRESPECT's.

PEG made me look good

[mykonian]

I can only perform decent in a solo lanes.

May I suggest competative tetris?

[mykonian]

free cam and use spacebar to lock

Free cam and losing myself occasionally in teamfights with a form of displacement.

[mykonian]

Yes. Gragas.

[mykonian]

Play anything that's supposed to go there. Panth isn't one of those. He has no natural escape, has no sustain, deals mostly burst damage. He's simply not a very good bruiser, he's very vunerable to ganks in the easiest lane to gank (long but no support) and if he can't actually kill whatever is opposed to him in the burst he has, his trading is actually not that great. Then, afterwards, he brings no cc, and no bulk to a team, just another squishy that dies to the carries if they get to shoot (ie, get peeled for). The only thing panth (and most assassins top) are good at, is killing you early then snowballing their advantage, killing you over and over again. Yes, after 3-0 top, it is indeed impossible to come back. That's how that lane goes. You don't deal with it anymore.

So what you do is you avoid getting bursted pre-6, you build up your bulk so that you can actually have longer trades with him because he can't burst through you. And then you win by default because he's actually not a character top if he gets behind.

[mykonian]

its rarely about them

[mykonian]

Really doesn't matter who you pick against ryze. He's a squishy shortranged mage with initially no damage. He builds MANA. That means he doesn't actually have painful autos, and the first 1000 gold will actually go into a stat that just makes his q's a little more painful, but nothing else. His root has been nerfed ages ago, and actually doesn't stop anything that wants to run at him. Just take it, run on. He literally gets bullied by anything but the biggest losers champwise top. Most of them go 9-0-21 (iirc), start blue crystal of all things, which means there's a 450 HP no combat stats smurf coming into your lane lv1. He has no regen, nothing. He simply loses every trade to pretty much any toplaner imaginable. All it takes is getting said trades. As against any ranged character, use the bushes.

And then, suppose you don't feel like killing him, he can't push. Yes, with his ult he has some waveclear, but when he gets to a tower... tough luck. You need AP or AD to hurt towers more, and he builds neither. So if you were sensible and didn't pick a single target melee assassin (lee, panth, you name it) and actually a sensible top: waveclear, push him back, go do things with your friends, your teammates. You are always going to be more mobile on the map than a ryze can be. He can't threaten your turret, you can threaten his. He doesn't have waveclear, you tend to do, and all bruisers spike a lot earlier than a ryze, so you can duel him.

It's after you've failed to get an advantage in the early, and the midgame, that you start to have an issue. Because Ryze is eating teams suddenly.

[mykonian]

That, or the game takes too long. If your average game length is 50 minutes, odds are that the ryze gets online at some point.

[mykonian]

I don't understand why clear speed is the stat to talk about with Sejuani. She's a tank jungler. Tank junglers aren't quick farmers. They aren't good duelists. They might have decent ganks, but all that's not the point. It's 5v5's they'll like. So yes, you'll be kicked out of the jungle by the dick who picked lee sin to show he's almost insec, and that's never really going to change. He can have your wraiths a couple of times, just go elsewhere. He should be ganking non stop: it's not as if he can keep you down forever, and he is losing his window of opportunity, being an early game ganking jungler.

If clear speed was a stat we remotely cared about (and there was a time it was considered important), we'd be seeing pheonix udyr jungles, shyvana's, mundos.

And idk, last time they buffed the jungle this would be the end for mummy at that time as well. As if, he always stayed high in the winrates. Because it really doesn't matter how much your first clear hurts. It'll hurt anyway, strong or weak jungle, your first clear is going to cost pots and you'll take some blows, and if your jungle opponent gets on you with a bruiser you are in big trouble, probably flash-or-die trouble. That's the downside that goes with the upsides of the champion.

[mykonian]

If garen can't 100-0 you in the time he's got you silence, he's not half manly enough. And forgot to buy his IE.

So looking at that, garen is probably going to see some changes in the near future. Games where he gets away become really stupid for opponents, there's really little counterplay. On the other hand, he's a bit lame and boring if you aren't blowing people up.

[mykonian]

biggish post after today zoraster laned with a different gragas support and was questioning the pick, just want to explain how and why it works.

All of gragas's 4 skills do well without money.

His q gives an aoe slow and gives vision, as well as bringing some damage.
His w gives him free damage reduction, as well as damage (and not a bad amount) on his next auto.
his e is a dash/aoe knockup, though it can be a bit tricky to hit multiple people.
his ult... well gragas ult is awesome if it works.
His passive is lane sustain.

The key though is that post rework, his scaling is toned down in such a way that it's a bit silly to go full ap, the scaling simply isn't there. Base damages aren't bad.


So he's a cc monster, but brings a mix. The key in lane is his w, which is obviously a strong trading ability, and body slam, which is a great initiate and also gets you in range for your w. A small issue is that you really want q first (gives vision, helps push, is halfdecent poke lv1), so it's only at lv3 that you really start to trade very well. After that, it's drink-dash-throw q and let your adc take potshots at whatever you hit and is currently slowed. If something goes on you or your adc it gets even easier, as your drinking can actually be done when it should be (when you get hit) and people are walking into you, making your dash much easier to hit. It's really hard to lose trades where you hit your e and your adc is shooting, you really have to pick bad ones then. Between your passive and your w, you simply are a good trader compared to non-sustain supports.

Versus the engage champs, then, you for one have no real excuse to get outpushed lv1. Thresh and leona should not help their adc that much, while dropping barrels on creeps and taking two with relic shield means that the lv2 race should not be lost. With your dash and your q up, you have game against them.

Against all other non sustain champs, from lv3 you get to have fun. Janna can shield to win trades, can throw a tornado for it, but after drinking, you are the one that gets to play the mindgames.

Similar with sustain supports, but these are a bit harder to actually win. They tend to hang back after a lost trade and it's only at lv6 (drink-dash-ult back-slow the escape path tends to give you and your adc enough time to actually kill something) that you actually get to kill something, which is fun. But then, they are supposed to have good lanes. You tend to bring more cc for teamfights.

Pre-6, your q is really good for escaping ganks, and your dash is a decent tool there as well, breaking channels (vi's for example) as well it gets yourself out of trouble should they focus you (the fools, you have on demand damage reduction). But the fact that you get to area slow to avoid the oncoming 3v2 is really nice. It's not a janna tornado disengage, but you can do things.

In teamfights, you are your adc's bodyguard, throwing yourself in the way of whatever comes close. Your ult is a bit more flexible, can be a great engage as well, can isolate the tank, etc. Your q and e are very basic protective abilities. Your w becomes from a trading ability to an ability that makes you almost a tank (despite being a support). If you win, it's really hard to get away from gragas. Between his slow and his dash, he can chain cc well enough to stop someone from getting away. He gives so much control in a teamfight, even comparing him with other supports.


Downsides? Gragas spikes late compared to other main supports. His lv2 is mediocre compared to his lv3. Your ult takes practice. I'm over 100 games in on him now and even then I still mess it up, first 40-50 games all games saw a complete failed ult. It's simply a very tricky ability. Compared to leona, he brings a little less single target burst. You open yourself up to ganks a lot because you really would like to dash in (and you need that to defend against a gank). He is not great from behind, since you really need to get in peoples faces to work, which is obviously suboptimal if they kill you quicker then you kill them, so if you lost the lane you are basically sentended to playing disengage with your skills, which leaves some of the potential of his kit out.

Build:

armor reds, armor and mana regen yellows (mix depends on preference), magic resist blues, health quints. 0-21-9 masteries.
Core build is targons-sightstone-mobi boots. Optional items after that are glacial, wardens, aegis, cowl (as second MR item). Luxury item that makes some sense is iceborn gauntlet, but building towards randuins-locket is really better. You are simply more useful in teamfights when you are huge, and you have to do it on less money so you have to make said money count. But it's doable, and you avoid sololanegragas's if he should go for full tank have no way of killing anything or should spend money towards bad scaling. As a support, going full tank is perfectly fine.

[mykonian]

Welp

Placed into Gold V

AFK rest of the season.

Eh, you can't get out of that. They removed the decay from gold, and the only way to drop out by playing is if your mmr drops below silver 5. Which is a huge skill gap.

You are fine (also congrats!)

[mykonian]

guys, are we considering that on wazza's elo, people juke into skillshots?

[mykonian]

I didn't want to make it then. Veigar stun is instant.

[mykonian]

it's comparable to nasus in a way, both splitpushes work for a similar reason. Because they win duels at some point. They aren't particulary quick about their pushing, but shen's abilities get rather stupid in a 1v1.

And yes, having an ability that allows you to join a fight a lot faster than your direct opponent is pretty good. Because that's the point of a shen splitpush, as some other tank splitpushers do. It's to gain a tempo advantage by making the push, in that way setting the enemy team up to choose between two poor options. It's nothing like a zed splitpush, who does it to get his 1v1, not to join his team at the crucial time when his direct opponent can't.

[mykonian]

sssh, don't pass this on, super secret. Poppy counters Fiora!

In all seriousness, I picked Poppy into Fiora for the free armor (team was rather heavy on AD anyway) and because I didn't feel like playing anything else. But the interaction I did not know about was that

riposte does not stop devastating blow

, compared to other ad top's you can trade somewhat well with fiora, and since you aren't a tank brick wall top, you can snowball the lane against fiora pretty decently.

[mykonian]

What does it mean when they say "The Mystery Gift swirls with every skin of Harrowing’s past and present! Better yet, Harrowing content bursts out of the chest at a 2x rate!" ? Does that mean all Harrowing Mystery Gifts actually give double-Mystery-Gifts? I'm confused, because mine didn't.

The way I read it is that you get a twice a big chance of getting harrowing skins randomly. Also sort of makes sense.

[mykonian]

real men use shift.

[mykonian]

praying for next year then. This years halloween skins were shit

[mykonian]

woo, make him blue give him some metal armor spooooky.

[mykonian]

woo, that's cool. I'm about done with this season, gimme something new

[mykonian]

GOOD LUCK QUADZ.

[mykonian]

Take this with a grain of salt, I'm working on it but my warding is also not yet where it could be.

I think there are a couple of things you have to keep in mind when warding. One is where you expect/want to fight. It doesn't make sense that when you are losing an pushed back to ward their red. When dragon is down, it makes less sense to have wards in bot tribush. Thankfully, people in soloqueue aren't very creative, so warding around midlane at about the hight of where you push/get pushed tends to cover most fights. In jungle fights, you want to have bushes they could dash into warded.

Next up is warding where you can ward. Calling for "a ward on baron" is very cool, but if both your middle turrets are down and the whole blue buff jungle is black, you better see most of their team in a lane or that expedition will be risking the game for a little bit of vision.

As for lines where you can ward, there have been some images here already that showed it better. You can semi control the entrance to a jungle half with two wards (bush behind red/next red and wraith bush on red side, next to blue buff and the bush next midlane), which I've really liked, as it was one way to convert a winning toplane into a game that was in our favor. Use the toplane dominance to ward out top jungle, then leave the lane again and organise it with our jungler to get the opposing jungler in some trouble.

Before that, there's the wards in river. Idk, you probably know about them. They are solidly in the laning phase.

[mykonian]

How would i go about learning how to jungle all over again? it seems that the jungle is getting 100% changed

There is only one thing really getting changed and that's the jungling route. Currently, 9/10 games, you know your opposing jungler will start his bot buff, take wolves, take blue, exit the jungle slightly over 3 min depending on his clear speed and if he has a semi decent early gank. If he doesn't, you don't really care It seems like they are trying to diversify the jungling paths depending on what champion you have, which is pretty neat. It also means that initially in reading the opposing jungler you'll have a hard time, if you are even trying to do that. Anyway, it's still the lanes that govern mostly where the jungler wants to be.

And that's a bit the point, as a jungler you really don't care that much about the monsters in your jungle. You care about 4 buffs on the map, 1 dragon and 3 lanes. The monsters you kill in between are bland, boring. They give money and xp and allow you to play the map like you want to. Old or new jungle, if your mid is an orianna who's dominating whatever champion they have, but in their eagerness to push that dominance is too far up the lane, you can put money on it that he's going to get ganked. Now, I tend to be a tank jungler but it really doesn't matter. That's a lane that's going to be ganked, that'll see their mid and jungler push past the creep wave when the gank happens and your mid is the stronger already. That's a 2v2 you are going to win. I don't care what monsters are in the jungle, if I get some it'll be the ones close to midlane, or I'll actually skip on them till the situation has passed.

Most of what you learn about jungling has so little to do with the monsters.

[mykonian]

How would i go about learning how to jungle all over again? it seems that the jungle is getting 100% changed

There is only one thing really getting changed and that's the jungling route. Currently, 9/10 games, you know your opposing jungler will start his bot buff, take wolves, take blue, exit the jungle slightly over 3 min depending on his clear speed and if he has a semi decent early gank. If he doesn't, you don't really care It seems like they are trying to diversify the jungling paths depending on what champion you have, which is pretty neat. It also means that initially in reading the opposing jungler you'll have a hard time, if you are even trying to do that. Anyway, it's still the lanes that govern mostly where the jungler wants to be.

And that's a bit the point, as a jungler you really don't care that much about the monsters in your jungle. You care about 4 buffs on the map, 1 dragon and 3 lanes. The monsters you kill in between are bland, boring. They give money and xp and allow you to play the map like you want to. Old or new jungle, if your mid is an orianna who's dominating whatever champion they have, but in their eagerness to push that dominance is too far up the lane, you can put money on it that he's going to get ganked. Now, I tend to be a tank jungler but it really doesn't matter. That's a lane that's going to be ganked, that'll see their mid and jungler push past the creep wave when the gank happens and your mid is the stronger already. That's a 2v2 you are going to win. I don't care what monsters are in the jungle, if I get some it'll be the ones close to midlane, or I'll actually skip on them till the situation has passed.

Most of what you learn about jungling has so little to do with the monsters.

NOOOOOOOOOOOooooo

I still follow s3 jungling route and I dig it

Start blue, get opponents red, be level three, gank top have toss and a slow against a level two?

I miss those days.

[mykonian]

Back in my day we used to jungle trundle and warwick! And we didnt gank til level 4! AND WE LIKED IT.

you whippersnappers have it easy with your big wolf and your healy dealies and your hunters machetes.

Only because you weren't lv30 yet and jungling was hard. It was the age of level 2 ganks.

[mykonian]

Support mains are going to LOVE having their clutch plays taken away as they are rendered absolutely powerless and literally hurled into bad engages on the terms of their shitter adc. This is gonna be a good week to gank botlane.

oh no, gimme. Happy hour incoming!

[mykonian]

I think the idea/promise was that she'd have a low base attackspeed? That'd make her passive usable to the less mechanically inclined among us, but also puts a damper on her DPS with x items compared to other adcs. She doesn't really have a damage multiplier either so it seems what you are looking at is a very safe low damage adc. I don't think her skills really shout lanebully either.

So in other words, something new to the niche blue ez is currently filling on his own?

[mykonian]

don't tilt, zor

[mykonian]

second, are there any rules of thumb when to use my ult as kha? I find I end up saving it for "important" moments and hardly ever using it.

Heh, this is not just for kha. It's one of the things I figured I had to improve seasons 1 and still am working on. Players better than me are much more liberal with their ults. Saving is done if you know there's a big teamfight coming up where it might be key to have it, but if you don't see that coming up there's not much reason to restrain yourself, esspecially as a jungler. You are picking your fights as kha anyway.

As for a similar champion, which has a leap, has good early dueling, stays high in the jungle, maximises the use of spirit of the elder lizard and has good gank pressure? Lee sin fits the bill.

New season might make it a little more difficult for those two, though. They do it all, right now, and Riot seems to be intending to break that.

[mykonian]

this is almost inspiring me to queue up in euw now.

[mykonian]

I agree, this is the end really. What comes is pre-season.

[mykonian]

I need a new Support here. I have Taric, Sona, Soraka, and Janna. And I really only play Taric and Sona. When I don't get Taric I tend to get lost though.

Suggestions for my next champ?I've been interested in seeing LGS videos of Thresh and Lulu, but I'm open to ideas.

Pick up Zyra, I LOVE support Zyra.

This was forever ago,

but does someone want to tell me how to support Zyra. Her skillshots are hard but I love the amount of CC she brings. Her harass is mana hungry though. In the end I don't see why I'd take her over Nami.

They are nothing like each other, I fear. Nami is a poking support (she brings sustain and good trading), zyra is a champion that only facilitates good trades, and has good bush control.

In my opinion, you do not "harass" with your spells. For one, as support zyra you level your e, you don't poke with your q. You poke with your autoattacks, they are quite long range. You engage with your e. The trick is to see when your opponent is going to last hit. He's going to stand still long enough to hit a snare if he's not plat (plat vaynes become an issue). If your opponent is draven, you are in for some fun. Let him get his last hit, throw your e towards his axe. Again, won't work if your opponent knows what you are doing, but lets be honest: they won't.

Now, you probably know this but if you don't, you can cast you seeds after you cast your q/e, though you have to be quick. So your average "combo" in lane is to cast your e, when you know it hits cast w twice, if you are quick enough it pops both, but if not you cast q after anyway to pop the second plant. Now, this is the moment your partner should think "hey my support is engaging on this dude, lets shoot him". Dude gets a choice. Either he shoots back and takes damage from the plants and both autoattackers, or he runs and takes his loss. Early game this loss should be half his HP, give or take, with all three spells and an auto or two from your partner.

Landing your e is easier if you cast it from a bush, really, since they can't see your cast animation which helps a little. Esspecially against melee supports getting vision with a plant + spell and your autos tends to make it easy to conquer a bush. When you are there, you can use your superior range and engage thread to zone.

From 6 on your combo is basically the same, but the choice for staying becomes a worse option (increased damage from plants and knockup).

[mykonian]

was bored, gold items worth. 1500 each.

juggernaut: 1659+tenacity
warrior: 2056
magus: 2377
devourer: 1500+on hit passive

[mykonian]

trying to play with a new champion out is so frustrating. Kalista gets taken, someone dodges. Kalista gets banned, dodge. etc.

teambuilder.

Mid and top are short queues for once. It's amazing.

also, I'm so out of shape with my singed. That's just sad

[mykonian]

The junglers that use it probably do want a strong early game. The lee's of our world probably will get it anyway, going juggernaut just gives up on any midgame ganks.

Also, guys, guess the perfect enchantment for evelynn.

[mykonian]

Sorry, that's probably a badly placed comma. Lee wouldn't want to go tank early because he depends on damage for his ganks. Other champions might want juggernaut.

[mykonian]

about ashe: The one thing I can think of is the reduction of lv2 spikes. Other champs have them, she never really did.

[mykonian]

good luck oman!

[mykonian]

From what I've heard S5 is usually worse because it's people that got through their selection games okay and then fail but can never get demoted to bronze.

it's also people who feel like they've managed something, that they are superior to bronze etc. Similar things happen with gold 5's a bit more, I think.

[mykonian]

an all ad team isn't bad per se, you are just on a clock of sorts to abuse your advantage.

[mykonian]

91. Amazing how many champs there are with "I'm going to hit you with this ability somehow" as their ability name. No clue with most of them.

[mykonian]

I dislike pick a card so much, but jungle tf... I kind of have to figure that out in the coming month, I think!

[mykonian]

gragas

That indeed took time.

There is some value in playing something off meta that you know well though, even if it's not strictly better. I had a stint with fiddle where I knew better what he did than my opponents because he hadn't been played for a long time then. Long time ago. I am and was even then pretty sure that it had weaknesses and probably wasn't strictly as good as other champs, but if people didn't know how to abuse that, it became fine.

I don't think it's the tf people should take away from that tournament really, depends a bit on if we see it again. Kayle actually has some jungle pedigree, intervention is always relevant, she could be a stronger off meta pick?

[mykonian]

seems worth trying. Devourer apparently is strong, and there is less early pressure expected from the jungle as of now.

[mykonian]

We played a tf jungle yesterday, it is kind of surprising how quick it farms/how strong it gets. And that's when I was playing mummy jungle (and frankly was outplaying him initially). No stopping him though.

[mykonian]

I get that, but ww doesn't really scale all that well into lategame and if he can't win (or outright lose vs ranged), there really isn't much of a point playing him top

Unless you want to be a Darien wannabe, that is. Which is a big indication that you shouldn't be doing that.

And he won with it after consistently losing his lane. Which should tell you that there might be a point to him lategame, because WW has few matchups top he actually wins, there are a lot he can sort of stay in.

(It's the movespeed. Fights with a warwick lategame, when towers are down, are not close. People do not get away. If you win a fight, you win it hard. After that his attackspeed helps convert it to actual objectives, but that's a bonus at that point.)

[mykonian]

High base damage is your friend. Also health scaling damage.

Or in other words, fuck hyper. Being small against pretty much anything, that skill alone wins you trades. All you have to do is land a slow when your opponent is not in a position to go all in and you are golden.

AS isn't close the the stat you are most interested in. You get that for free to start with, and deep down in this thread I've got a mathish post about early game AS vs AD. You are not going to find it, but the conclusion is that you need to have a very good reason not to go heavy into AD first. Health is really nice, CDR is pretty awesome, since there's a flat decrease on catching your boomerang, comparatively you get more out of it, and that skill is your solution to every laning problem. I get outpushed? boomerang. I get outtraded? Land boomerangs and chase someone down the lane. I get zoned? Throw boomerangs from your tower, farm anyway. And as megagnar, AS gets pretty silly. You have trouble getting near people to start with, and your main damage tool past your ult is throwing rocks at them and chasing them down with more rocks.

[mykonian]

well, there's a reason to build her AP. It's because AD is the default, but AP isn't much worse, just a tad slower to ramp up, tad less effective later on (iirc). The idea would be to trick your opponent in taking the wrong runes, assuming the default of AD... which nowadays doesn't seem like the default anymore while it's better. I suspect it's not cool enough. Also, I don't think that many opponents at Jasons level switch runes depending on their opponent.

[mykonian]

If you want to know about wukong top, I can help with that too.

Pls o pls, tired of getting bullied out of lane by some turbonerd Irelia.

Decoy her stun, win all the fights as you outdamage her early, and with an early game advantage you can snowball the lane.

dash at her, auto q decoy walk out, deal ~300 damage to her. She regens on autos, you do the same thing once more.

you are out of mana.

[mykonian]

PORO KING INHAUS TONIGHT?

Sorry, not at all a fan of the game mode.
It's basically shittier ARAM with a dumb gimmick.

it's aram without the "well I'll sit here and get hit by spears for 15 min" part.

[mykonian]

it is when people don't adapt to the teamcomps.

[mykonian]

http://christmas.riotpromotions.com/9Mg8vz

awesome promotion for RP

That looks like a scam

Could we please not use MS as a platform for piramid schemes?

TY.

[mykonian]

yeah, that's probably correct.

[mykonian]

There's some nuance there.

There's value in learning how to play when you are better. There's value in playing when your opponents is better, but you develop different qualities. It makes sense to try to be your teams leader when you are better at that, it makes sense to shut up and focus on your own game when you are in a game where people are better than you.

And team's leader is in the most general sense then. Not that you get the most kills or ping incessantly. But the guy that makes his teammates play better, notices their mistakes and does a little extra to make those issues disappear, who knows which champions are the ones that can carry the game with him, and allows them to help him.

[mykonian]

what I'd do, would be devourer-nashors-zonyas. You get value from there even when you don't have too much money to spend compared to the solo lanes. After that I'd start thinking.

[mykonian]

I fear I'm not that into the jungle yet that I know. I don't play it enough.

[mykonian]

klazam, would you like it if I went through that vid and posted some criticisms?

[mykonian]

Skip to 4:30 - i need to figure out how to edit video i make in that format later.

Had a lot of fun in that game. Not a perfect game, but still, i felt i did pretty well.

Reason why im posting this is that i noticed a weakness in the jungle now. If you start on blue side, you can chill just outside blue and attempt the steal since the jungler dont have smite to secure it, and the laners are away, busy. I did not succeed in the steal (shouldve turned off the aa) but i managed to disrupt yi just emough to the point where he became a nonfactor, and i also enabled my adc to hit level 2.

Any comments/thoughts'd be appreicated.

Also, how do i embed a youtube video?

thanks iec

that'd be perfectly fine with me. i know i didn't ward enough late game, for one, but still would be helpful to hear details.

Spoiler: wall

Eh, I don't know how I'll sound because of this. I watched the vid and paused to either post what I would have done at that point or what could have gone better after some moments. I don't think I spend much time to talk about things that went well, of which there were plenty. Things I didn't talk about either seemed pretty good or weren't really worth worrying over.

0:38. Get used to using ctrl-key to level up abilities. It's an easy habit, it helps you out big time sometimes.
Your starting items are cocky. Idk, I wouldn't dare to go that way. Mana pot seems iffy on morg for sure.

2:35. Cheese plan did it's job... and then you messed up. Yi peeled off, you could have let blue reset. By walking in it tagged you, you got in a bit deep. Otherwise nice plan, but you wanted too much from it. You already set him back big time. This way you had to run for your life, blue still was low HP when yi got back to it.

3.56. You burned lucians flash and forced him back, there's a wave on their turret, the kill got you to 800 gold: Go back! Ping your adc, he doesn't need a bf-sword first back. If he goes b right there he maybe buys a dorans, while lucian gets a couple of pots. You get a sightstone, and the wave will be nicely pushing your way. You win the lane by going back now. Your adc isn't helping you to do the better thing, but you could coach him there.

6.30. Same deal. Get out of there. Jinx is even lowish now, wave again pushed into their turret, lucian forced back. Spend your money, win the lane with the wave on your side and superior items.

ok, thankfully you go b. You could coach your adc, she shouldn't be there alone that far up the lane while ahead and while low.

6.59. I cheated and fast forwarded to check if you went for frost queens later. If you don't, upgrading your gp10 doesn't really pay. I don't know if this is common wisdom yet, but you can get an edge there.

7.41. God bless zed can't hit a spell. That should have been a dead jinx. Not impressed with your partner. He had 2 good times to go b, 1 mediocre one, and he spends that time walking with 60% health at a bush that has a scary dude in it that gets pinged.

7.53. You've warded properly. Otherwise, this is where you worry about a dive.

8.31. Curious move from your opponents. This is where you were in trouble for jinx's early greed, couldn't really go b because of the wave, had to because you were both poked low since you weren't in a fighting position anyway. I think you two got lucky here that braum picked a bad moment to go b and spend. Items do not decide when you go b.

9.18. Ah, you forgot to change to sweeper. That happens. Everybody knows they should, that's just a matter of being sharp.

10.18. Maybe you were perplexed by it as well, but this should be instant: ULT! Lucian dashed into you, braum is near, you are in a duel: this ult is going to finish unless their adc flashes, which would be a great trade for your ult anyway. Capitalise on lucians error! Exhaust here would save jinx. The situations where you don't want to punish and adc dashing in are so remote that you might as well reflexively try to do it.

10.38. Ok, it takes balls to engage that way into lucian braum, but you two were ahead. Fight didn't go well, given that lucian played the way he did it could easily have gone the other way. Park it, maybe be a little more careful next time, and get it right then. For now, on with the game!

11.00. Buy that pink. No sense in going to lane with 300 gold. Even if you don't drop it off immediately (brush after red/pixel brush as candidates, maybe tribrush control but udyr jungle doesn't really warrant it perhaps), an upcoming dragon could be facilitated by it. Could also get a pot or two. You never know what it does for you.

12.32. Bam, yi shows in the top jungle fight. At this point, I'd be watching for that, the fight up top obviously is a magnet for action and you would like to do something: improve your vision. You have one ward left in your sightstone and although the previous ward hasn't timed out yet, the tribrush ward really isn't going to do much given how far up you are. You two are ahead, so all that's stopping you from warding behind blue (the only avenue left to gank you in this far advance position) is a possible 2v3. Mid showed, now yi shows top. You are free to put that valuable ward down!

13.19. You won the fight, good idea, get that ward on blue down. Might be personal preference, but I like having the ward behind blue, not in the bush. Goal isn't to steal his blue, goal is to spot people who are going to flank you.

13.45. and it shows it's value straight away. Well done.

14.30. You are such a great teammate. That was a godawful jinx ult. People should not do that. But it's good that you don't whine and complain. You aren't going to change that person in one game, it's more important that they like to play. Good soloqueue mentality there.

15.40. great engage, great ult, great movement up till the stun. Probably/maybe should back off after your stun has hit, you did your job, you aren't going to kill him. Result will be similar, this is a bit nitpicking. That was a nice play.

16.03. You are low. What are you really going to do. Just go b, get ready for next time.

16.22. Nice movements to get out of that situation. That was good. If you had gone to your second tower I think you'd have been out.

18.02. Probably the wrong tower again. Move towards one further away (inhib in this case), don't give them the opportunity to dive should they want to.

All in all, good series though. If you had gone back at the earliest opportunity, you'd have gotten back in lane at the same time as jinx, got the dragon fight the same, then have enough health to maybe pull off a good ult for your team at red. But since you didn't, you got the most out of the limited health you had there.

18.25. You go to lane with 600+ gold here. I don't know what you are planning boots wise, but I think mobi's are the standard for the pros? Makes life a lot easier given that you aren't stuck in botlane anymore with the tower gone. Also, lots of places to put that pink down this time, assuming you'll bully lucian away again, he can't stay up too far and you can basically move all the way to mid if you want to in the near future.

19.24. When you fought bot, yi was not on the map. Odds are he's coming. You two are together, it's scary, but it's a risk you can take. You are trying to steal blue, they know you are there given lucians star thingie. Your adc wards in the little brush, then attacks blue: look at what vision you have now you are doing it. Yi could be standing an inch away from you and you wouldn't notice. Use that last ward in the sightstone, get it on the other side of that wall, see him coming.

20.09. You are again such a great teammate. Jinx had no business being there, also given previous statement. You pinged her, you went b when you should, you couldn't save her there, just die with her. But very nice of you to be nice for your partner. You only need him for one game, great soloqueue mentality there.

Your item choice is greedy. I mean, you want a zonyas this game at some point, but don't give up boots and pinks for that. They are way more valuable than getting your zonyas a couple minutes earlier. You don't have a direct lane opponent you have to match it with, you just want it for the utility of not getting blown up by zed/yi. They haven't come particular close yet, you've only had one teamfight.

21.28. Great fight! Since I'm critising, I feel you could have been a little closer to the jinx, knowing that the only way they'll get away at some point is for the braum to q-slow her. A timely black shield can lock down a second kill. But that's nitpicking, really. It's also hard to judge since you don't want to be too close they can turn on you/jinx passive makes her go away from you pretty quickly.

23.02. Ok, this takes time to get used to, I'm missing it often, but at this very moment you want to ward that brush. You and I and the udyr don't know how to attack-move, and then there's nothing more annoying than people you can't target. You are looking at a teamfight right here, get the brushes warded, avoid getting juked. You'd also allow udyr to turn when he wants to (when his turtle gets back up maybe?).

23.52. Yeah, you kind of warned me about lategame warding: this was a good opportunity. You could have followed the jinx, get one at blue, maybe walk back out and drop one next to wolves, allow you two to push up botlane far after you've gone back, or maybe threaten that then swap towards mid.

25.11. Probably telling what you already know. You see zed and riven up. They murder static squishies. They could have bought homeguards. It's questionable to farm the minions after you got the inhib. Jinx isn't helping by moving on, but just let it be, don't stay to try to save her there. Good that you pinged.

26.20. Ok, you got the inhib by now, next play is going to be baron. Time to set up, let your team know. You've seen lucian bot, zed mid, riven did push bot hard and odds are she went b. Time to get a friendly to guide you to baron so a random yi that appeared won't bother you too much and get 3 wards down. I could drone on about pinks: I don't think you've been too short on mana yet, that was never the issue. It was your team or you staying too long.

26.53. Riven killed udyr but fizz is close and garen/jinx pushed up mid, this is where you'd ping your team you'd like to have a look around baron and ward some stuff, if they could keep an eye on you. Between a q, a zonyas and riven without ult, they should be in time to at least get the return kill should you run into riven.

27.18. Pushing mid was a fair call, team does it so obviously you follow through. At this point, you know 3 are in their bot jungle, yi is mia, fizz is murdering riven far away top. You'll take the tower and unless their 3 are going b now, they are still going to b out of position on the bottom side. Avoid getting flanked badly and you are looking at an inhib tower here. Get a ward over the wall towards wolves and maybe one just outside their wall and you'll see them coming. When you moved up to the mid 2nd tower, you could have dropped one in the wraith brush to maybe spot out yi if the others were flaking. Is less important.

30.45. Baron!!! You just took out their jungler! Ping madly!

31.12. Garen is a bro. Follow him, you can get your cool wards down. One before red, one at the wraith bush, and you've got the two towered lanes down!

Either way, it doesn't matter. By this point you have won. Opposing team has given up. GGWP.

Mechanically, you played pretty great. I don't hit the black shields against braum perfectly either and your snares were very good. Seems to me that you could improve the easiest by getting some map movements down, experiment a little with when to leave a lane, when it is safe or an acceptable risk to venture into the dark unwarded unknown, possibly also supported by your build (earlier mobi's and more pinks). I don't think you could go very wrong by building gold item-sightstone-mobis-pinks on the majority of supports as a core, then build from there to what the team needs.

[mykonian]

oh, good point.

That first ward has to pay, since it "forces" you to start with only two pots. Only one of those is a health pot. You have very little margin for error or trading capability in lane there. I mean, you pull it off, but maybe against a stronger opponent they get you into trouble because you start with way less effective health than they do.

[mykonian]

So yesterday we got some scummers together, of one which was Klazam... uh oh. "Now I actually have to show I can do what I explained...". First game had him on morg, I got to be his adc (eek, worst role!), and it was clear he had taken some of the advice and put it into play straigth away. We won botlane and the objective control was pretty great. Game was lost, but that could hardly be helped, a kayle and quinn who got ahead overcame whatever we got to build up early game.

So the aim was pretty high and my adc play naturally hadn't really done anything to relieve the pressure. I knew I mispositioned often, got less farm than I should have given how the lane went, etc etc. So I locked in gragas, one of my more played supports...

And got not a single mechanical thing right that game I cracked under the pressure.

[mykonian]

Myko, I'm curious what you think: Athene's or Morello on Support/AP Morgana?
This was something I was talking to Klaz about last night, even found an awesome reddit article about it.

Support I would go for morello for sure. You are buying it for the cdr, morello was and is a very cheap source of cdr. As Kscope said, morg really isn't mana hungry enough to warrant going deep into mana regen. Athenes simply isn't a support item, chalice is a laning item for mid.

As midlane, I have no clue. Chalice-athenes got a nerf this season, I think? Because for a little while you saw a lot of pro's jump ship to morellos. Last buff saw a return of the athenes champions to that item. I wouldn't say morg is a good example of an athenes champ. As support you don't spam your pool, but even in lane it's not that much mana spend I felt. And what are you going to do with more mana, really? Ori or azir etc can spam their spells much more, you still have to have the opportunity apart from your pool. It would be my guess that you'd want to stay away from athenes and look for other ways of mana regen, be that morellos, RoA or simple rings.

[mykonian]

hey myko

I'm thinking of picking up gragas; do you have any tips

I think you mained him at some point?

Mained him is a big word. I spammed a ton of support gragas.

Ehm, key points are: hit stuff with your W, that's what wins trades.
you can double knock up with e, but it's narrow.
don't build AP, he scales badly (the reason why I played him support, could just build tank items and do the job of a support, without having gotten way more money that I should have done more with)

[mykonian]

I have liked him as support, but it's a champion that requires practice. Esspecially his ult, bit less his body slam.

He has very few unfavorable matchups in botlane, can trade somewhat well, gets out of ganks well, peels very well, is naturally tanky. Issue with him and other tank supports is a little that you have to do well in botlane to get that one item that makes you actually a practical tank in stead of a one shot cc bot for your carry. His ult can do so much work, and really, you never play that for the damage.

[mykonian]

Can I play him as AP mid?

yes.

but don't do it. His ap scaling simply doesn't warrant putting money into it. Even when you get lich bane.

[mykonian]

Hazmat Heimer!

Rito hath spoken "thou shalt play the donger!"

Couldn't be happier.

[mykonian]

says the person picking him up

Also, I would miss dfg.

Veigar is fun! Last week got my first real penta on him.

[mykonian]

He's sitting at 46% winrate, for quite a while now and accross the board.

He's a bad champion now

And he's the most picked champion still.

[mykonian]

He's just picked a lot by people who think he's OP and don't know how he works

He been one of the most popular champions since forever.

You think people would have figured it out by now

Or he's actually bad in this jungle because it's hard to pull off an early gank when the jungle itself is so hard.

[mykonian]

coincidentally, that winrate dropped after

V4.13:

Dark Passage
Now only shields the first ally to be near the Lantern in addition to Thresh.
Flay
Fixed a tooltip bug that listed Flay's slow duration as 1.5 seconds instead of 1 second.
The Box
No longer deals additional damage to opponents that break extra walls beyond the first.

[mykonian]

Pretty sure I just did.

They made him worse, his winrate dropped from top 3 supports to well below 50%.

[mykonian]

sounds like a nice time to have a pause, yes. Don't play a game you don't think is fun.

[mykonian]

I'm telling you people en masse happened to forget how to play thresh when two of his skills got toned down.

[mykonian]

not the little knight one?

[mykonian]

I'm getting a connection error every time I try to log in. Can't connect to PVP.net. Anyone else having log-in issues?

Been a while now, it's getting rare to log in the first attempt. Two days ago saw a 10 min series of starting up lol, logging in... waiting... connection error, close lol, start up lol etc. But that was about the worst I've experienced.

[mykonian]

venting.

Previous year in the NA-ranked games I played a bunch of Gragas support. I like it, but I get it, people think you are trolling and get hostile very easily. Fine, professional risk picking that champ and all.

But when did Zyra become a Gragas-tier support? That was the champ that got me over the final hurdle last season, made my final ranking then possible. Played three ranked games with her now and the amount of hostility that spawns from just that pick is insane. It's not even that she has a bad winrate or anything.

[mykonian]

Last game was a second pick zyra, didn't see their lane yet.

And idk, I enjoy that I can engage with her, I enjoy that I can peel with her, she's got good bush control in lane and if you manage the cooldowns a little (this is the main issue) she's got pretty amazing trading in lane, given that beyond you and your adc's auto's, they are fighting in the zone where your plants are helping.

Obviously that goes a little different in the scumchat games where I do more and take more, but you know, that's scumchat games.

For the record, build tends to be, lv1 gold item, sightstone, boots (then go mobi's or sorcs), cheap ass value ap item (guise or armguard) or aegis, then upgrade the armguard or guise at some point. Pretty standard.

[mykonian]

and probably gragas

The point of playing him support is you can build him full tank without feeling bad about the money you are wasting. He's a cc bot, but a decent trader in lane. Don't think he belongs in that list.

[mykonian]

It always felt really slow. Seems bad on first sight.

And idk, he has less burst than leona. Does have a knockup and the ult is hard to compare. Quite a bit better at warding than her, vision on q and the dash, obviously.

[mykonian]

about urgot

don't build tear.

don't build out your brutalizer

level the nade last.

Ult aggressively, 1v1 squishies. Don't think he's actively bad if the opposing team isn't a sensible comp and you don't try to make him into an adc. He isn't.

[mykonian]

woo 3-0 the dream

climbing too ez

edit: same league as myko, dram, and badscience!

Welcome to darius's marksmen!

Also, 0-9, the dream. Tilting too ez.

[mykonian]

I got absolutely destroyed in a Lissandra game (5-12-10)
Queue up for another, one of my teammates from that game recognizes me and starts begging everyone to dodge because im a fucking noob/shit/feeder.
I grab talon and proceed to go 19-1-8.
Most satisfying feeling ever.

You are a better man than I am. Those games aren't worth it to me.

[mykonian]

zor may do it because he sees it in lcs, but anyway, it allows you to get vision in a bush without being in range (unlike a trinket ward) and that goes even moreso for a sweeper which locks you up possibly in a very small area when you are taking down a ward. So if someone has to carry a blue trinket, the adc makes a bit of sense.

[mykonian]

so, got out of promo's, gold 4. Had a loss streak of ~10 games for various reasons which I'm still working on.

MMR is now low silver / high bronze. This is all kinds of amazing.

[mykonian]

sorry, yes, placements.

[mykonian]

pink ward slot

[mykonian]

Wait you went to high school with... Jordan? I think that's his name

Is he still with Susan, or has she finally left him? Last time I met her she wasn't entirely satisfied with just that relationship.

[mykonian]

the cd's are on the high side.

[mykonian]

Probably none of you care, but there's some reddit hate on Riot's recent move to increase RP costs in none USA regions (in a response to recent developments in exchange rates). People see a 10% increase and then complain how between the regions the cost for RP is simply not the same and hasn't been before. Which is impossible anyway, but maybe there's some fair criticism there. Regardless it stinks for anyone involved. In a span of just months, Riot has seen an effective decrease of their EU revenue by 25-30%, since I assume they write their results in dollars. That is rough. So they decide to share the pain a little bit, take the hit in possible sales perhaps. For EU, RP is in practice something you are importing from a US based company... the euro gets cheaper, importing costs more.

All in all, it's not ideal, but it's understandable...

[mykonian]

His Q does apply his passive and the slow from his W, but it doesn't apply any on-hit effects that aren't built into his kit.

Typical build is:

Manamune
Last Whisper
Brutalizer -> Cleaver
Frozen Heart
XX Defensive Item (hexdrinker/banshee/whatever)
Merc Boots

Take 5% CDR in runes to finish the blue-less CDR. The guides I've read suggest 6 flat CDR glyphs on the grounds that 10% CDR lets him get an extra rocket off during E pretty reliably during early laning. Take armor penetration reds and quints.

I guess you could maybe sheen if they were crazy full of dive and you were going to skirmish at close range a lot. I laned against a Talon and probably could've used one.

An earlier Elixir of Wrath is really nice because it gives him a reliable source of lifesteal.

Just to provide another view, season two urgot was a competative pick (pre range nerf) with the build:

double dorans blade,
glacial/brutaliser (usually glacial first, but order could vary).
merc threads
frozen heart
guardian angel

After that you could think about building out your brutalizer (to cleaver, but this isn't ideal. Cleaver is a bit of a meh item in this case.), maybe getting a bloodthirster (also not ideal) but practically start saving up towards a triforce which is really the best use of a slot in stead of dorans at that point.

Either way, you skip the tear to become a bruiser. You can duel nearly every single target, your ult is actually useful ("weee bonus armor and mr and being in the middle of their team, I'm a bruiser!"). You give up that you can spam your q, you rush cdr to get more damage and dueling power in effect. Often you just dive into fights to get the opposing adc down. This works a lot better then they have a lot of tanks/utility characters, fewer high damage threats.

Also, tip for laning (and this goes for either build), don't use q level one. Don't use it level two. You can even level your e lvl one if you think you are going to have a fight then, it does more damage for the mana it costs, and it helps you in the extended trade because of the armorpen. Either way, refrain from using your q. Level 3 you go from the guy they were hitting on and pushing around to the guy that kicks them out of lane. Land your e, get two q's down. They lost half their health, you lost less than half your mana pool. Now it's your lane. Your lvl 1 q really isn't worth the mana you spend on it, the second rank starts to be "useful".

[mykonian]

I've waited two years, but finally we have a functional mummy jungle item. No longer do I have to choose between being squish or "ew" buying tenacity on mummy. Hell, at the start of the previous season my mummy build was spirit stone into sunfire, skipping the jungle items altogether. Played a game, and it's miraculous how much nicer everything is.

I am so happy.

[mykonian]

So right after I did my placements, I went on tilt and lost a bunch. Lolnexus began to look very curious, a gold playing with bronzes. Now, I'm no carry player, I'm not going to 1v5 teams. So even winning a little more than I was losing simply wasn't enough to keep up with how big the gap between MMR and division was, and those are trying to get together. So it was a little frustrating to see how much lp each loss cost, and the eventual demotions hurt a little. I mean, I knew what was going on, I didn't get suddenly that much worse, but still. Now that it has bottomed out though (mmr and division shook hands in high silver 3), life is looking up again. LP gains are healthy again, just like playing with low silver/high bronze, I think I'm still eeking out advantages for my winrate often enough (not that I win everything, but you know, I feel like I'm helping). And I get to play support Gragas and look cool and nobody is even questioning it.

High silver rocks.

[mykonian]

this is one of those whine posts, but idk, take from it what you will.

So I like gragas-support, and it's probably not top tier, but it's not bad either. One issue is that occasionally, people will think you are trolling them. But last Graves I met was so sceptical, he missed the cheese opportunity we had and it makes me sad.

Now, this is something you can easily do with thresh, ish as leona, and with others you have to worry about it in the matchup against them. 9 minions in, you get lv2 (if you take the 3 melee minions first). Relic shield gets you an easy head start (always get the first two minions, it'll just come back up to help you take the first siege creep). As Thresh, you'll look for that early flay that catches one of them and a large bit of the minion wave, minions get lower, opponents back off because they feel they are being traded on. Otherwise, you go in to lane and hit every creep a bit. Gragas has an easy time here, the skill you want to get level one happens to be cask anyway, which you can happily drop on the wave, esspecially with the recent buff on his mana pool.

When the last melee creeps of the second wave are about to fall, you get in position, hope your opponents are morons, ctrl-skill for a level up and move in straight away. Now gragas is no thresh or leona at lv2, and they do it a lot better, but still, knocking someone up and slowing them is going to win you the trade against a lv1.

Last Graves though, after I dropped the second cask for the melee minions of the second wave, moved into our bush, took 5 seconds to type in all caps that I should stop hitting minions. Opportunity lost Mind you, I threw it on the full health creeps, cask doesn't have close to enough damage to take them, he couldn't even miss last hits because of it. He just didn't understand I was trying to win him the lane as graves vs cait.

I was sad.

[mykonian]

oh, most are totally fine, a couple even actively help. Now and then you get that adc you are in sync with and the lane goes so smooth suddenly, not even because you are both better, but because you think about going in at the same time. Lately, those lanes have been more common than the ones where they back out when you go in and visa versa. I can't complain

[mykonian]

explain that to me.

His q is a weird skillshot, his w is simple and easy, his e depends on coordination, his ult... well that's a bitch, really. I've tried him and the first conclusion is basically the same as my initial thoughts: this champ is way too hard for me. I have no clue how to get that to work without putting weeks of games into it, then hoping your partner in crimes isn't a moron so you can actually attempt to carry him. And then still get a whining adc in pick/ban because he's seeing "another bard fucking up his game".

[mykonian]

eh, he's got a point and click slow, it's not the worst.

[mykonian]

he gets a slow on his auto via his passive. In effect, it scales with time.

[mykonian]

Like, it only ever mattered in seasons 1 and 2 when adcs had beyond broken scaling and people didn't know how to punish the death timer

and even then, the same adc's in silver missed at least 2 creeps on average per wave.

I don't think the 150 gold going to another player matters on our level. It's more the psychology.

[mykonian]

well he's kassadin, so post-6 he kind of has a built in flash.

I still think that placing an average of half a ward a minute throughout the game is probably not sufficient.

Look at the kass again. He placed 15 wards himself, bought the upgrade on his trinket (so they last). He wasn't just fed kills by his team, he was carrying all over.

I checked a 33 min game where I was support, we ended up on a similar total of wards, only difference was the distribution. Kass mostly, darius some, picked up cabd's slack. They did have a lot of wards, probably, and that let them find picks.

[mykonian]

on a similar note, I love sightstone on junglers. It's a slight tempo hit that makes life so incredibly easy when you are winning. And ap-tank junglers, which I play anyway, really don't care much about the tempo hit in stats.

[mykonian]

Nasus has a couple of issues. For one it's that people who play him don't always understand their character. Lets get it out of the world straight away: Nasus is not a lategame champion.

He's a toplaner with a weakish early game that brings little cc, is good at taking down structures, pushes mediocrely, and doesn't have to build an offensive item to hurt. He doesn't have a gapcloser (nope, wither doesn't count). Everything about this character screams bruiser apart from siphoning strike which seems to imply that he'll be awesome lategame, infinite scaling and all. But at 60 minutes, nobody cares. There are two characters in the whole game that matter at that point, and they are the attack damage carries. They'll shoot you from miles away, and Nasus has to walk over to get use out of his stacks, and there will be all kinds of people in his way throwing whatever they can find in his way to stop him moving to their adc. You don't actually get to hit the adc anymore, because it doesn't matter if you have 4 items of armor, they will kill you quicker.

Where nasus, and any bruiser, rules, is the time where adc's don't have all the multiplicative stats together yet, where his armor and mr still helps him survive. That's before lategame, and his timing because of his build path/siphoning strike is different from your average shyvana, but that's his window. And then, in low silver or low gold alike, we don't organise a proper splitpush. Now that he can do, outscale his direct bruiser opponent. But cc for a teamfight at

another

dragon? Meh.

What he does better than most other bruisers is converting (small) victories into objectives. Towers sure don't live long.

But for sure he's not an autopilot champion, you have to manage when to splitpush, when to team up and get that objective, because it's an illusion that you aren't on a clock. You are, like any toplaner, and most others have more than wither to offer for their god (the adc) in lategame teamfights.

I mean, if you get all that, he's very nice in low elo. You can take that tower after a teamfight on your own while your team is doing wolves or something

[mykonian]

music of our youth, zor.

Be happy most of them are just too young for the spice girls.

If you wannabe my lover...

[mykonian]

ah, but they aren't strictly resets anymore, are they

[mykonian]

toplane tank/bruiser who takes smite, farms up a storm, builds skirmishers cinderhulk then goes on to dominate 1v1's and teamfights alike lategame.

[mykonian]

No. Issue is that you need to create time. Not any tank can run it, you need that and waveclear to bugger off and do some jungle. Tanks that tend to build sunfire top that weren't top tier in the last top tank meta are champions that require help pushing the lane anyway. You can't do it with shen. You are just going to be sitting there with a fancy summoner, clearing waves that are pushed into your tower.

So... bruisers with good/great early waveclear. Shyv, Renekton, Pony, sion maybe, gangplank maybe, garen maybe and after that zac becomes even more awkward. I don't even know if that still counts. Of that list I only play zac. So perhaps it is strong, but it is narrow, and 3 of the 7 champs I named aren't in meta toplaners anyway for all kinds of good reasons.

[mykonian]

GI's tool is timeconsuming but effective. It doesn't scan for EVIL as much as it just shows everything going on. Then you can scan for EVIL together with your big friend google. Google is surprisingly good at knowing what's EVIL. But depending on how much you know (and just like me, you won't know much), you'll spend some time with your good friend. There are so many ways to run something up, you simply aren't avoiding it. And then google does tend to know the way to properly exorcise said EVIL, but again, takes time.

Just saying, if you have your system running like that for a long time already, start early on a saturday. It's gratifying though.

[mykonian]

Last worlds they got stats out about the supports in the group stage, including their warding behaviour. Now the numbers called were amazing, but otoh, I can buy a sightstone and drop wards, no problem. So that seemed something I could easily improve on.

http://wardscore.loltools.net/?name=mykonian&region=na

Progress has been made. Got to invest something to get back into gold (won the first two of this promo, looking good).

Now, comparing. I have had one game where I hit 1.38 wards per min and that was really an outlier (long game as well, on soraka so really nothing better to do). More usual when I'm trying, 1/min. Less even when I'm not focussed on playing. Mata hit an

average

over those worlds group phase games of 1.78 wards per min. That's excluding the pinks, of which he got 3 down every 8 minutes. The pinks I figured out by now. You use them as portable instant sweepers and you get closer to those kind of numbers. But even, then, so many wards... I don't know how to do that.

EDIT: and even more depressing: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends. ... icipant=10

84 wards in 43 minutes. HOW.

[mykonian]

idk for others, but it's also what it implies. I play games, I'm not too old, (I'm a guy), I'm squarely in riots target audience.

Apparently what they (and their whole marketing division) think sells to me is a near all white game where girls are mostly hot and fragile, men are clever or strong and wielding huge weapons.

Do I really want to accept that I'm characterised as being so shallow?

[mykonian]

Good points were made.

so next level is destroying more of my opponents wards!

[mykonian]

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends. ... ?tab=stats

Felt like one of my better mummy games... and yet, halfway the game, seemed like it became impossible to win. I am so, very, sad.

people. got. caught. IDGI.

[mykonian]

Meaning if they can get on Ez, they win with MR, not only this, but 2 ADC comps have great sustained damage, so if you guys couldn't close a fight within a few seconds (or at least remove them both) you's had actually lost that fight, not to mention soraka just makes this problem 10 fold.

Very right. This is why annie became fed as god, she already countered their comp with her burst and lockdown on their carries+sor, same for diana.

Double ad doesn't make for a great teamfight comp, they don't bring as much aoe or cc as an AP mid (which annie showed). ADC's scale, double ad comps don't, they are solid midgame comps, winning off their quicker tower taking which they can snowball. In teamfights they notice they lack cc and aoe ,which they paid for their increased single target damage a second adc gives. Corki ameliorates, but he's still no ap mid.

And even then, after taking baron and taking down the first inhib soon after, there's no excuse. But diana made a call, ez went "you don't tell me what to do" and it went downhill from there. Most fights after that we lost while having a ward advantage in the area, rarely got a "fair" fight, even numbers.

[mykonian]

I personally like distortion (just the flash ult, really). Captain is something I rarely get on offensive champs, feels much more effective going out of fights. So on backline supports that has my preference.

Sorcs is indeed a guilty pleasure. If I'm a better player I just buy mobi's there. It's just that pen kind of nice with mummy when dueling but yes, that's bad.

You can see where I bought the GA, we had one good fight ahead of us at that point, which imo would decided the winner, so I bought into my pink ward slot there. I don't think you can beat GA for that situation.


Obviously there were a ton of things that could have gone better. Stupid simple things, failed my jungle route because I didn't deal with the lack of pull properly, twice telegraphed a move on their wraiths too much and once of those didn't register that annie was too low to come in as a safeguard, once stole dragon and initiated a fight that way when annie was on her way, the smite steal wasn't worth the effect, could just have waited for them to get then take the fight after. Didn't call off the second baron when it was started too early. And regardless, it wasn't "just ez". His obstinancy was shortlive, but started a whole series of events, it was the characters in the team as a whole that only could work together with each other for 30 minutes, apparently. It wasn't one player, it was everybody. You don't end up in a 3-2 split between lanes when baron is clear, mid inhib is down and top jungle is warded if you are of one mind.

[mykonian]

I didn't try to act condescending, I'm sorry if it came over that way

[mykonian]

Yes, mummy flash ult can be strong, but the disto SPEED doesn't help with that. So it's just lower flash cd, which okay, but if you're flash ulting regularly you should just land bandage more instead? Flash ult is for those emergency bad positioning situations, and it's exactly in those that the captain speed boost will help your teammates get to the fight you started.

It's also much harder to respond to, which is really nice. Bandage sees champs like corki or graves scatter from that point, with flash you have a chance of getting them both.

I disagree with mobis, and I don't think sorcs are a guilty pleasure per se. magipen on amumu is really strong! But Liandry's for pen instead of an armor item and tabi for armor instead of sorcs is a better way to get the pen here. LW doesn't stop Tabi passive, Liandry's has HP, etc. What's the point of getting sorc if you're using your slots on all defensive stats?

It's not an answer to this post, but in general pen is cool because of the high damage that's hidden in mostly despair and somewhat in tantrum during a teamfight, together with stacking that with mummy's passive. Not really looking to build AP. Either way, that's at it's most effective when your opponents can't/don't have to prioritize MR so you get close to true damage on w and e. With Annie and Diana in game, that situation clearly wasn't there, should just have gone full utility mummy because investing in pen becomes less cost effective when there's more mr around. Mobi's esspecially early on are nice for ward placement and moving for counterganks. Lategame you are right, tabi would easily be superior.

I understand the "one good fight" reasoning for lategame GA's, but those are for people who do damage, y'know? Try to describe a situation where GA on mummy will be impactful. It's actually pretty hard.

Just the living longer/again aspect. It did in the end do nothing, that's true. Maybe righteous glory would have been better in retrospect, then i'd get some extra cc for said fight.

[mykonian]

bard.

Mastery of him might actually be valuable, he seems overtuned.

[mykonian]

1 sec ranged aoe knockup on a ~8 sec cd.

Which isn't his ult.

[mykonian]

i'm really sad you aren't doing bard. papa zito hates fun.

[mykonian]

you mean that 1.8 sec double stun on a low cooldown?

It's kind of dumb.

[mykonian]

that's where mastery comes in.

nobody said he was easy.

[mykonian]

no shit, you have by far the most experience on it. Either you spam another champ you like and get decent on it, or you find champions that have overlap with your skillset you use for karthus that appear in other lanes. It's not a coincidence that my succesful champs over the years have similar basic skills that they need/use (of which one was karthus, but I played him for different reasons than you do, and as such, was way worse at it).

The big advantage you have is that after a couple of normals on said champ you pick (and I don't know enough of how you play karth to advice you on that), you get to dive into ranked and get practice on a high level. You get better, quick, even if you lose the first couple of games, simply because you get to learn your champ while playing against good players who punish your mistakes quickly.

[mykonian]

Honestly it has become much harder to win 4v5 in S5/4. I used to see it all the time in S3/late S2.

I still vividly remember one game where I think I carried with Kassadin 3v5 back when he was super broken.

Also, AP Varus is a lot similar to Karthus, and he's super fun too! It's too bad I don't know how viable he is in ranked. Plus teammates think it's a troll pick :/

Also I tried to reddit thread you linked Ani. I got Janna, Teemo, and Master Yi lol

Edit: Also pre-reworked mid Soraka was by far the most similar to Karthus, which might be the reason I did so well on her (even better than would be expected due to the fact she was somewhat broken and easy to play)

But you probably shouldn't look for additional mid picks. If you get mid anyway, might as well pick karthus.

But stuff like knowing when to transition from sitting at the edge of the teamfight to going all in with him, how to zone, how to chase, how to lead your lay wastes and whatever else you think makes your karth so succesful, there's got to be stuff you can transition from one role to the other.

Spoiler: my personal example

For me, I started as a mostly singed player, I enjoyed engaging teamfights, I enjoyed the choice between diving their backline and peeling for yours, and I liked body zoning, as well as getting the most out of engagements, knowing your limits. During the time thresh/leona were the top support picks, I also enjoyed finding engagements the opponents couldn't take.

In the end, nearly all my succesful champions are champs with circles, most of which tanks. One of the closest picks in way of playing to a teamfight tank in the midlane when that was strong was karthus. So mummy/eve/sej/fiddle, taric/sona/zyra support, singed top, karth mid have been the champs over the years I had the better winrates or the highest elo's with that I can think of now, which I simply was the most comfortable on. Bruisers and adc's have been a weak spot, I simply don't have the movement skills and the intuition where to be with them.

[mykonian]

Btw, general question regarding mid: I'm fairly positive that the first item you should get is morello's/Athenes most of the time (because first-world mana problems), excluding mana-less champs like Kat, but should I almost always go for, like, Rabadon's next item unless I absolutely NEED to buy a defensive item (either because my opponent got fed or because someone else on their team is getting too huge to simply ignore them and go stragith damage)?

http://www.leagueoflegendsmath.com/Must ... ml#Rabadon

Someone did the work for you.

TL;DR: if going offensive, build void staff,

unless

you have a shield or something similar that scales off ap.

[mykonian]

and he's played as a split pusher

I'm not surprised.

[mykonian]

http://giantfunny.com/ultimate_bravery.php

just saying.

[mykonian]

idk how to go about this item.

For the majority of the assassins, brutalizer does it all. Gives pen, gives crd, gives damage. Who cares about the rest. The fact that cleaver/ghostblade existed was nice come endgame, but you'd stick to brutalizer for quite some time.

I don't see how that changes? Only now you are back to the awkwardness where you are forced into ghostblade. You aren't going to build a kindlegem early on an assassin, and in midlane phage seems really suboptimal. You reach the promised land of cdr and pen so late.

Then, for your second item, you are basically getting to the same point. Last whisper is much more compact, brings more damage, has a buildpath with things you can use.

I've thought about urgot, there it might somewhat work, but you are already giving up some laning phase to build a mfing tear because that's forced into your build now (thanks riot), idk. Super awkward as well. Only good side is that you get to reach all 6 ticks of cleaver with one e hit, since it's an ad dot.

I could see it on lucian, he can abuse phage rather well, can use the cdr. But otherwise, bruisers who can abuse cdr? That's got to be a really short list. Thinking: Darius, Garen, Gnar, Hecarim, Panth seems awkward, Shyvana, mayby Udyr, Yorick. And apart from garen, darius, and maybe shyvana, I could think of more natural items to build.

[mykonian]

botrk, triforce, hydra. Hydra is mostly renekton of the serious champions.

so that's what it's going to have to compete with for the bruisers, you don't want too much money in pretty offensive items, you also need to build to survive when your base stats aren't sufficient anymore. Of that list: (Darius, Garen, Gnar, Hecarim, Panth seems awkward, Shyvana, mayby Udyr, Yorick).

I see some darius's going hydra (which is awkward, he already has plenty of waveclear), some brutalizer which seems fine, other items seem bad. So he's a candidate.
Same for garen, brutalizer fits, rest doesn't really. His itemization gets awkward soon. This item might help, good thing is his e in teamfights shreds armor quickly (ticks every half second in aoe, yes plz).
Gnar builds full tank as far as I know, if not, just a brutalizer or a bortk would do fine, and would probably do more work.
Hec builds triforce, this won't change that. Item is too good for him.
Panth isn't really a toplaner. If he does appear there, phage doesn't do jack for him. Only positive is that his e procs the cleave 3 times.
Shyve builds bortk. It's just that phage seems really good with her in lane, and triforce isn 't perfect on her.
For Udyr, I don't see how this outperforms triforce, or even bortk.
Yorick is an oddity. He's basically having the same issue as Urgot, you have to build up so long to get to the promised land with cdr and pen and all the mana you could need.

[mykonian]

oh right. hydra. botrk seems an odd one to be a solo item

it's in the same catagory. It add's a serious amount of damage that won't multiply well with other items. Botrk's percentage health damage only increases with attackspeed, and you already have a head start with attackspeed for optimal dps anyway. Which is why it makes sense as a sole damage item, not as much for an adc (bloodthirster scales with crit and attackspeed, as well as any other damage you have. You get more damage items, this item will become a lot more effective).

This is obviously ignoring that you may get more damage from a botrk as adc anyway because you are playing against high health targets, as well as the kiting opportunity it gives is nice.

[mykonian]

Tried to make some sort of video of a game we played, but going over it again, I hated so many of my choices and actions...

Reviewing games might be valuable.

[mykonian]

The review did help me to organise some thoughts. I was initially trying to use it to have some examples to talk about what I want to do with warding (because it was hard to explain), but I think I can make a half valuable post now. Still, a lot feels like stating the obvious, in isolation and in text, but in game this depends on how the map looks and what you prioritize. Bear in mind, I'm just a gold 5 support who just focussed on it for a couple of weeks to try to improve at it. With that I think we have all the disclaimers


If your sightstone is full, you want to place wards. You want to place from a point where you know you are safe (because you see your opponents or see that they aren't around you). That's going to destroy your older wards, but this is fine since you are placing them further towards your opponents. The further they get, the more information they give, the bigger the part of the map you can influence. Where you have vision you can act as a team. Where you have vision and they do not, you even have the advantage (you get to determine how and if you engage). Vision then helps to gain advantages further up the map without grouping as 5 and going mid. If your sightstone is empty, you want to go b. You want to have wards on your hands, during fights as well. As soon as a bush appears in a fight, drop a ward in it, there's nothing more annoying for opponents to weave in and out vision. After a fight that you win, you want to take that opportunity of the lack of opponents to extend your ward line again. In the end it comes down to "if you don't have anything better to do, place your wards, go b and repeat".

In similar light to wanting your wards deeper, you don't want enemy wards in your own jungle, or later in the game beyond the line where you have control. Control is a broad term, I have issues explaining this. This depends on your wards, your team (who's around how strong are they) and your towers (if I get found here how quick can I get to safety). Sweeping implies a risk, you need to stand still for 3 auto's in a place where your enemies you know where you are. You never want to sweep if you don't know your surroundings, so you want to ward beyond where you sweep, or visa versa want to sweep behind your wards.

Contrary to wards, which are dirt cheap (you go b and you get 4 free new ones! Trinkets for everybody!), sweeping is expensive. Pre level 9, it's a pain. You get a low cd small area sweep and your jungler gets the wraith buff. Which is awesome, btw. Forget blue, forget red, you want this buff (or if invading, you want their wolf buff, it's awesome too). Back on topic, you want to sweep a lot more than you can. This is why you buy pink wards. It's easy to get distracted by the awesomeness of a "permanent" ward and get amazed by it's value, but as a support, you don't need money, you do need sweepers, so as soon as you have your sightstone and your mobi's (or maybe with normal boots already), you want to dump money into pinks. As soon as you can, just make sure you have two in your inventory. If you see a ward placed, if you want an area swept, place the pink, so this will usually be behind your vision line (as explained in the previous part about sweeping) and this means you can defend them as well as yourself. But as a ranged support, you can happily dump 1500 gold per game into pink wards. You really don't need the items. It may be a bit different for tank supports, but even then, pinks are powerfull.

For dragon and baron, it depends on your position, you either want to have your route towards, and the pit warded (which happens naturally as you are building towards the pit). On the other hand, if you got position before, you want the same part swept, you don't want them close, you want to see them coming, and you want the pit to be free of wards. After a couple of years of annoyance with vision in pits and people finding all kinds of nooks and crannies to put them in, Riot extended the vision of pink wards to the entire pit

if you put the pink anywhere inside the pit

. So that's worthwhile.

All this means that if you are losing, your influence is less, your line of wards is going to be closer and your goal is to build out towards dragon/baron and hopefully find picks/see their rotations. If you are winning you want them to press towards the line their turrets make, past the the neutrals so you can sweep behind your wards to claim the neutrals without contest and make their jungle as yours.

[mykonian]

General theory question: When is penetration better than straight AD or AP?

I mean, when should I put LW as a second or third item is one question that I can kind of fake. The question I'm asking is: When should I use Pen runes instead of Damage runes.

Lets do reds as an example. Full set of ad reds gives 8.55 damage. Full set of arpen reds gives 12 flat arpen.

To state the obvious first, ad reds give you 8.55 damage more per auto. But your opponent has armor. Say your opponent runes armor runes, he probably starts out on 35-40 armor. So you see 1/1.35 of that damage back, just over 6.

For arpen (100/100+armor-arpen)*AD, where AD is your ad, armor your opponents armor. I think the average adc starts out with say 60 ad? Maybe less. The opponents armor runes cancel with the pen, so you basically see 1/1.25 on your target. The difference with not running pen is a little over 4. So at the start, AD is better.

As the game goes on, the difference between options scales two ways. The more AD you have, the better pen becomes, since it multiplies with it, while AD just adds to it. On the other hand, as your opponent gets more armor, the difference between 100/100+armor and 100/100+armor-arpen becomes less. Say, lategame, when hitting that annoying tank with 200 armor (say you forgot to buy whisper, or assume he has 300 on his character sheet), you get about 1.4% advantage out of your pen. Before that beats your 8.55 from damage runes, you'd have to have 600+ ad. You won't have 600+ ad.

On the other hand, this paints too grim a picture. Against non tanks, pen does better very quickly. Most characters build damage pretty soon as well, and arpen falls off more harshly as people build armor. I mean that as that the arpen runes get less valuable quicker by building 50 armor when you already have 200, than 50 armor when you had 100. So past early game, when you aren't facing a massive armor building tank yet, but do have some damage, arpen is better. It's probably also better on champions that aren't intending to deal with tanks either (as in, not the adc)

[mykonian]

so I don't really have a mid pool anymore. There's full tank galio but that gives up the lane and just hopes you get carried till midgame. I can sort of do that, being somewhat useful late while losing my lane. But that's not terribly helpful. So I decided to practice ori, she's a strong laner, can be useful even when losing, has shields and stuff. I should be able to press R as well.

but ffs, spamming her to practice her is not good for my confidence. Just got utterly trashed by a silver 4 TF. Hardly a lanebully. And that's the 9th normal game, also played her quite a bit in bot games just to somewhat understand the skills and order when to use them.

That is really going to require a lot of games before I even can think about influencing stuff

beyond

my lane, or say, deal damage in teamfights.

hard game is hard

[mykonian]

There's full tank galio but that gives up the lane and just hopes you get carried till midgame.

what??? Galio is a super lane bully even if you build him tanky. because you want chalice anyway for mana regen and CDR. are you losing lane vs. AP with chalice/treads? Do you not have dedicated galio runes/masteries?

I do have stuff set up for it. Losing lane is mostly in that you are melee and initially get pushed in, also your cc up to 6 is just a slow. Compared to your average opponent, you can't influence the area around mid well at all. It's not that you give up a ton of kills or anything

@SAD, I guess. Still, pretty upset That shouldn't have gone so badly.

[mykonian]

She's also really noob unfriendly and incredibly hit or miss. They made her a lot harder in the rework.

so I pretty much gave up on that, was trying her before the rework.

[mykonian]

How did the rework make her harder?

Shifted power to her e, made the cooldowns on her other two skills higher.

To trade, you need your e. Now more than before. Before you levelled q and that was your main skill. E is binary. Opponent is poisoned? Amazing. Opponent isn't poisoned? Sucks. And now, since the cd on the other two skills is higher... you are a sitting duck for much longer should you miss them. This, while already being a short ranged stationary mage. Your only backup plan is your even shorter ranged ult. It is very unforgiving to any champion that can all in. If you miss 2 skillshots, they can (and should) murder you.

[mykonian]

So your argument that she's not that bad is that it's really all find when you do hit your q and e too often and that she scales well so you just have to make sure you don't die.

Which is the whole issue. I am a noob, I will miss skillshots, I will be outmatched in terms of aggression and she doesn't have a backup plan for when your opponent is shitting on you, because you won't get the time to scale.

I get that she has an upside. That's why the risk is justified. I just know that I can't pull that off, old cass was safer and I was hardly a star on that.

[mykonian]

but that sucks

[mykonian]

which we'll find out in a month or two.

[mykonian]

still, the 4 forlast champions were on top of the foodchain for their role in high level games. A kalista player is to be feared, pulls bans just for being able to play that champ well. Azir is still something to work around at least (even post nerfs), seen edg's vs skt's finals and how pawn showcasing a counterpick influenced that. Reksai is the only survivor of the jungle item change, and became the jungle pick over the course of MSI. Gnar is the only one really toned down to the point that toplaners only fall back on him because they had practice on him for so long, maybe no longer super viable at high level, but was pick/ban for quite a while.

And it took a little before people got used to kalista or gnar etc, so idk, I'm a believer that bard will be no different. Just like reksai's sonar thingy is silly, or most of kalista's abilities, also bard gets to do some really silly stuff. All it needs is for someone to master him.

So I suspect riot's sales department is happy with champion design as it is, given the placement of the forlast 4 champs in the meta, that seems like a "healthy" powercreep for them.

[mykonian]

ok, I hadn't had a good look at reworked ashe before, so might as well.

Passive is funny. She basically gets 10% crit chance on auto's past the first. IE is probably even slightly worse than it was before given that the free "crit chance" is unmodified by the bonus crit damage.

Her q is the amazing bit, they moved away from the original concept. She gets real scaling. Before she was goaded into the pure carry build by the lure of a free crit, now you've got a real reason here with the active that gives her 90% bonus damage in a prolonged engagement. Like, what? I get it's conditional and not quite rapid fire (longer cd in real application, 1 sec shorter, 20% less damage), but trist isn't supposed to be a utility adc, ashe was, right?

So... what was given up? Some slowing power early, hawkshot cd early (but it got a lot better).

Idgi. You picked ashe for the slows and the initiate, and were happy with the damage she'd bring anyway with ie/pd. Now somehow she's got semi lategame carry scaling on top of the utility?

[mykonian]

I think this gif can apply to many situations in this game.

hmm

we didn't show off our best side, did we

[mykonian]

but... she was never

bad

.

[mykonian]

I never said she was bad? I said she was already probably the best? And I agree she never was explicitly bad but she was weak when the Meta revolved around the early game smashers, especially when blue side could do golems.

was mostly to the "go ashe go" from iec. Giving a sizable damage buff to a champ that's out of the meta, but not bad explicitly, seems ill advised.

[mykonian]

ok, I hadn't had a good look at reworked ashe before, so might as well.

Passive is funny. She basically gets 10% crit chance on auto's past the first. IE is probably even slightly worse than it was before given that the free "crit chance" is unmodified by the bonus crit damage.

Her q is the amazing bit, they moved away from the original concept. She gets real scaling. Before she was goaded into the pure carry build by the lure of a free crit, now you've got a real reason here with the active that gives her 90% bonus damage in a prolonged engagement. Like, what? I get it's conditional and not quite rapid fire (longer cd in real application, 1 sec shorter, 20% less damage), but trist isn't supposed to be a utility adc, ashe was, right?

So... what was given up? Some slowing power early, hawkshot cd early (but it got a lot better).

Idgi. You picked ashe for the slows and the initiate, and were happy with the damage she'd bring anyway with ie/pd. Now somehow she's got semi lategame carry scaling on top of the utility?

Rethought this post, 90% bonus damage is generous, only works as long as you don't have attackspeed elsewhere. So that falls off after the IE has been bought.

Then, so does the attackspeed trist gets, the 35% damage increase ashe gets is more valuable late.


Either way, it's silly.

[mykonian]

teemo is a mage / fighter, IMO

but he's kind of a weird champ who doesn't fit SUPER well into any category

He's a decent duelist, even a better splitpusher, a lanebully. As most 1v1 focussed champs he's not the greatest in teamfights, but he can bring some peel, can dive the backline some.

[mykonian]

there is some valueing in having a small champ pool around your real elo though. That's basically the same thing Panzer says.

[mykonian]

We had even been looking for a fifth. I suspect you were set as away, dram?

[mykonian]

Just had a good game on bard. Don't care that the opponents had a lux support. Don't care that it was partially also because the team won, I was part of that! It was just great feeling how things

worked

. There were a couple of ults that did stuff, there were a couple of worthwile journeys, I had so much fun!

Currently still riding that high.