League of Legends (Old)

[mykonian]

I want to like the upcoming rework of ardent censer. And it is a buff, trading some of the not that interesting stat attackspeed for a little more of the much more interesting on hit magic damage. The base item is worth it's price, technically, and giving others at 1050 gold buff is really neat... but what would you build it on What champ is so desperate for 40 ap and a bunch of mana regen in their first or second item?

I can only think of janna, really.

[mykonian]

mejai's is cheap, what after that?

[mykonian]

Hey, sona is neat. Could see the argument vs michaels depending on comps.

[mykonian]

mhmm, I meant the new one, it's passive is quite a bit nicer.

[mykonian]

Why do Gold players think they are better than everyone?

Because they kinda are? its like the top 15% of players or something

Gold is the most commonly boosted Elo, so I treat every gold with a massive amount of skepticism.

Also it's a pretty full quarter of the playerbase. It's really not that impressive.


Sigh, and then there's gold 5 where you can't drop out unless you get to bronze 1 mmr... which is where I'm currently at, and as far as I can tell, deservedly. This is slightly upsetting.

[mykonian]

http://www.goldper10.com/article/1680.html

I deserve challenjour

[mykonian]

Iec's analysis of lategame adc's seems the best to me.

Not sure if this is necessary, but: basic stuff, adc's work the way they do for two reasons. One they are ranged, two there are 5 ad oriented stats that synergise. You get ad, as, crit, arpen, lifesteal. The more you already have, the more cost efficient another item from that group becomes. Your first pure adc item won't do much damage compared to it's cost, the second greatly improves it, etc. Which is why you hear casters talk about three item spikes on the pure autoattacking adc's. Then there are the items that give you more bang for your buck early, but bring stats that don't multiply with later buys. Your botrk, triforce, shiv, manamune. Great items, do what they are advertised, but mean that buys after that aren't going to give you as much dps from a 2nd/3rd item as you'd get from a pure adc build. Which is fine for the adc's that build them, they want to fight and win the game shortly after buying said items. So dps wise late vs early is largely determined build wise, builds which are obviously incentivised by champions kits. Of course it's nice if you get something in your kit that says "your autoattacking capabilities become stronger" for an autoattacking build. As far as I can tell cait can go two ways with her build. Either with shiv and bt going for the early gold lead (and lets be fair, that's something you see the pros do, but probably not your opponents), or the crit route at which point you better worry about her after half an hour into the game.

Compare other roles and you can see why adc's are the role for the lategame. Casters get 3.5 synergistic stats (ap, cdr, pen, spellvamp), spellvamp really only counts half because it's not very available to most of them, tanks get 2.5 (resist, health, cinderhulk/gromp), which is why cinderhulk and gromp get so much hate, they changed the game. Bruisers have to juggle damage and tank stats at the same time so are going to have to play with the headstart in base stats they get.


Re: sivir. Sivir's lategame damage is a bit deceptive. There's a lot of (hidden) power in ricochet, not just the fact that it hits the entire fight or the 80% attackspeed you get for those 3 attacks, but also because it's an auto attack reset on a 5 sec cd. You get a lot of autoattacks in in the end just off that ability, if you manage it properly.

[mykonian]

Yeah I know, thats what I meant. When I read what mykonian wrote, it looked to me like he said that carries that go BoRK or Trinity early aren't as good lategame, which isn't really true.

yeah yeah, I shouldn't make such general statements :/

[mykonian]

Oh zoraster. You are making me blush.


But yes, that game was fun and ridiculous. So many comebacks and fights for objectives and trades of them, rotations even, teamfights that could go either way. It wasn't lcs, but it was a lot of fun!

[mykonian]

LLD, I've stared at this title for a couple of days now, but I can't find the words that belong under it. So I fear I can't deliver on my promise of writing "battle bunny riven and how it makes me feel" for you.

[mykonian]

screen shots or it didn't happen

If you look him up you can see the challenger border in his profile, so seems unlikely an imposter

Not quite sure what's going on here, what did you search?

http://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=YellOwStaR

[mykonian]

normally don't care for the champ hype/teasers but the bayou aesthetic is criminally underused and I'm quite excited about what Riot is going for

also reading the proposed AP item changes, vlad will really enjoy the liandrys + rylais buffs.

do you really want liandry's on vlad?

Issue with it that I see is that on vlad you want to build ap (duh). Even if you dislike wota personally, lets call that an item for him. Zonya's is valuable. Rylais does everything you want. I think at some point in the game those items are going to appear in your inventory. Guise is fine, pen multplies with that, gives other stuff you need. Liandry's though, dumps 1000+ gold into a passive that doesn't scale off your other ap items at all.

Wouldn't you simply get more bang for your buck with a hat at that point?

[mykonian]

I just think that hit might be smaller than the hit you take when actually completing liandry's.

[mykonian]

re: vlad build


like, say you have rylais already when you complete it, you get 9% enemy hp damage on your damaging skills. Say your average enemy at that point has 2500 hp, that gives ~1250 current hp give or take on average. So that's 112.5 damage you get out of that if you don't stack your abilites (and lets be fair, you will q stuff you've e'd within 3 secs). For that damage you need 250 hp to get it off tides (less off transfusion). So slot effiency for hat is already achieved at 300 ap. That's runes, masteries, wota, zonyas, rylays and you are already there, and that's with calculating everything in favor of liandry's so far. Still, that's a break even.

Say you get to 6th item with that build (so add a void staff, another 80 AP, I think that puts you past 400 ap already, given the percentage ap mastery you take, I think. And there you have to chose between building out your guise or selling it for a hat. The AP hat passive gives you out of the void staff is worth 650, that's more than the 440 that it would cost you to sell guise at that point. So at that point on top of simply getting a lot more damage out of your slots (since you are now over 100 past the break even), you are also winning out in gold, if you still care about it at that point.

[mykonian]

I think you're forgetting that when you sell the Guise you also lose the HP/pen

I wasn't. Otherwise you'd have to calculate with the full cost of guise, the money you get includes the value the item had to you before. The same money then goes into the value of the comparing item, so it's on both sides of the equation and cancels out. The only part that isn't on both sides of the equation is the reduced amount of money you get back, and the difference in value of both items. Which I compared.

And on top of that, I took a couple of estimations in liandry's favor and none in hat's, and even then I can't justify keeping liandry's. Calculated with tide's ap ratio in stead of transfusion, assumed that you wouldn't hit spells on the same person within 3 seconds to get the max amount of use out of liandry's. Didn't even consider that transfusion has two AP ratio's, one that liandry's doesn't affect at all.

Is it that surprising that the item that dump's ~1000 gold into a passive that doesn't scale off anything else you build is worse than the well scaling deathcap on an AP champion lategame?

[mykonian]

yes, which is why I think the average max health of 2500 that I used to calculate isn't too far off the truth. Top easily goes over that, jungler could probably hit 3k as well, but probably bought cheaper/utility items. Support won't make it, neither will the adc. Some mids might, but not the ones that are commonly played and you are already vlad yourself, who's one of the few rylai's/roa champs that are in meta.

Just look at the item, it's going to be at it's best on a champ with repeated magic damage and cc who isn't building ap, hopefully has some high base damage on said ability. Guise is a great midgame item when most of the people don't have that much mr and it multiplies your base damages greatly. When you hear hito being enthousiastic about guise it's because of his stacked tides damage.

In comparison, vlad is a lategame teamfighting monster, possible lategame splitpushing threat, who wins the game if he doesn't lose it earlier. I don't think you want to sell out some of your lategame dps to get a early mid game power spike. But that argument has been had before. Either way, liandry's is simply not a great fit for the powercurve and ideal items vlad's abilities give him.

[mykonian]

vlad's strength is long extended teamfights, though? Tides with liandrys basically ensures everyone in a giant radius is constantly being burned? It's the first thing I sell once I'm full build, but its late game is being underrated a bit here, i think?

Tides with deathcap and ap items at that point just does more damage though with tides. See previous maths. And if you already have a hat in your build it just passes on to the next item that does multiply with hat/other ap for it's damage which will be better in comparison to liandry's.

Don't get distracted by the fancy burn animation That's for other champions, not scaling lategame ap carries.

[mykonian]

Nah, these were old numbers.

I suspect with the changes, the concept is the same, numbers are different. Hat gets buffed, liandry's gets buffed, rylai's slow gets nerfed. So that's 12% nerf there in the liandry's/rylai's combo, 5% extra scaling off ap you build on hat. I can't really see through how much the lower AP generally will affect the reasoning I had further.

Lets see. That puts the value of the passive at ~250 gold. That's a pretty big change. Even at 88%, you get a lot of damage for that money. Not sure if you could find the items you'd rather have who have more ap and more value in their passives.

Pfft. Someday I could do the maths on the comparative 6 item builds with upcoming items, but idk. Can I recruit someone else for that?

[mykonian]

liandry's checks every half second, so the slow currently covered half the liandry's duration, will become 1/3rd.

[mykonian]

shouldn't the sejuani build it at that point?

[mykonian]

to add to this discussion, I've just been demoted to silver for the second time this season. I am feeling lots of things.

[mykonian]

who enjoys practsiing???

Improving is fun. Grinding isn't.

[mykonian]

Is there any way to beat fuckmo in lane as shyv

because I just went "fuck this shit" and farmed jungle until he left lane and then I pushed

melee vs ranged, bushes are your friend. Abuse them.
after that, build to overrun. Can't go too offensive here, at some point you have to run through some pain to get on him, then you'll hit harder than he does. Trick is to get to that point in time safely, then turn the lane around. Plenty of teemo's are squishy enough to burst still at that point with base damages. At 6 you even get an extra gap closer. Shyv seems one of the better characters to take him on tbf, with the movespeed, sticking and tendency to build tank anyway.

[mykonian]

Couple questions for general peoples-

1) As a support, am i supposed to dedicate a slot to pink wards? always buying 2 when i can afford it, and so on? (just came out of a ranked game where i bought 17- maybe this was extreme, but my excuse is that the enemy team had an akali)

2) In ALL roles, my major issue is positioning. i keep on getting out of position/ being vulnerable (particularly right after laning phase ends, and LATE game), and getting punished for it. I KNOW the concept of not bad positioning, but i cant seem to reconcile what i know and how i play. How do i conquer that issue?

3a) I decided to seriously cut down my champion pool and roles to focus for ranked gameplay- can you guys tell me issues with my pool, and what if anything, should i add to it?

Spoiler: list

Top: Cho'gath, Yorick, Ryze, Tryndamere, Mordekaiser
Support: Morgana, Sona, Annie
Jungle: Cho'gath, Rek'Sai, Nautilius

3b) Related to the above- I have MAJOR issues playing a tank support, can i get away with not playing one?

4) What's the best way to play Tryndamere? Also, how do i use the ult correctly, i keep on missing it or wasting it.

(thanks to whoever answers. I just wanna get better at league in general)

1. Indeed, I disagree with the rest. 2 items is plenty on a support anyway. You get actives anyway, since they don't scale with the rest. Locket is powerful, talisman is, righteous glory is, mikhaels is. Not all these items suit everybody, not all these suit the comps or the enemy comp. It's a bit overkill to get both glory and talisman, aegis and michaels tend to be for different kinds of problems. The money you are left with you can freely spend on vision. Clearing theirs, placing yours. It's another thing you can do without having money (apart from pressing actives on items). Boots-sightstone-item 1 item 2 pink ward and a slot for that odd 60 min game.

2. Everybody has this problem. Just focus on it, you tend to know right after when it happened that it happened. During the gray screen, try to understand what your opponents were doing and what the alarm signals for you should have been.

3. I really would not play top morde. Otherwise that seems solid, if a bit big. If you like to improve, spam something, learn it's matchups, get parts in your muscle memory.

You really do not need to play tank supports. They are harder anyway. Engaging is easy, but the difference between "this guy gets bursted in a teamfight" and "this guy can't be stopped before he really hurts us" is really narrow as a support. It's fun when you win, then everything works, because all mistakes you make are covered by having a bit more xp, a bit more money, a stronger team to follow up on you. It's harder to use when you are behind, you have to be much more careful than a "normal" support. Braum is the odd duck here because he's not really inside the other team.

[mykonian]

3. I really would not play top morde. Otherwise that seems solid, if a bit big. If you like to improve, spam something, learn it's matchups, get parts in your muscle memory.

Top morde can work. IMO, it's matchup/skill dependent. If you can do well in the matchup and

not get camped

, he has the same champion destroying properties.

Bingo. This is the issue. The lane is too long, the coverage too bad, your jungler is usually far away for a countergank. It's a huge target for the opposing jungler. This, in perhaps the most snowbally lane in the game. You get behind, you get zoned harshly. Then, morde depends you stomping your opponents. He scales defensively off his offensive stats. More damage means more tankiness means you live longer means more damage which selfreinforces. You get behind, you become useless really quickly.

You can pull it off in low silver, but at some point the opposing jungler will realize that he can make it a 5v4 by showing top twice and collecting morde's scalp, since he's one of the more easily ganked champions anyway. It's not the direct opponent you worry about. He's rarely the problem.

[mykonian]

Call me oldfashioned, and take into consideration that I haven't had access to lol with the new devourer, but Ilike my ww bulky. Some on-hit is nice, but you are still on jungle-money. IMO, you have 3 jobs: locking someone down, worrying a carry (possibly with a partner) so they have to target you and cleaning up the fight with bloodscent. Last two jobs get easier with bulk, and you get plenty of damage from one offensive item.

On top of that, in bronze fights take long, few are convincing victories normally. WW converts a small advantage in a fight to a chase that easily turns the fight into a decisive one. Then, his team AS buff makes objective taking easy and rapid. All you need to do is to stay alive in the fight, on the front line.

[mykonian]

Call me oldfashioned, and take into consideration that I haven't had access to lol with the new devourer, but Ilike my ww bulky. Some on-hit is nice, but you are still on jungle-money. IMO, you have 3 jobs: locking someone down, worrying a carry (possibly with a partner) so they have to target you and cleaning up the fight with bloodscent. Last two jobs get easier with bulk, and you get plenty of damage from one offensive item.

On top of that, in bronze fights take long, few are convincing victories normally. WW converts a small advantage in a fight to a chase that easily turns the fight into a decisive one. Then, his team AS buff makes objective taking easy and rapid. All you need to do is to stay alive in the fight, on the front line.

This new sated on hit ww turns "worrying a carry" into "outright killing almost any champion in league 100 to 0." That is really not to be understated. He turns any fight into a bloodboiled 5v4. Idk man, I'm very high on this guy.

I'm aware this is the point. Just have not been impressed with glass cannon wws even when devourer was overtuned. Devourer into bork builds were powerfull but slow to get going, put much more pressure on proper timing and position in the first half hour. Esspecially if the map is opened up you don't need to outright kill them.

It's only fun, if they run.

[mykonian]

Shaco is pretty bad at dueling.

His Q does nothing outside of escaping/initiating the duel. His W does nothing because it takes too long to stealth, people will move slightly away and relocate the duel outside range of box. His E is on a long CD. His passive is hard to activate when you're dueling 1v1. And his ult, while slighly deceptive, doesn't help all that much.

Good duelers usually need one or more of: Built in steroid, CC, Short CDs, built in sustain or shields.

Shaco's dueling power is very binary. You are a god when you have your ult up. For on hit effects (and you are building them), it counts as a doubling of your attackspeed. For the rest, it's just a 50% increase (poor baby, only 50%?). That's beyond any attackspeed buff anything else gets, given that usually % attackspeed is on top of your base.

Anyway, the relocation from his box is pretty important. They

have

to run. You get the drop on them, drop the box, they choose to fight you and be feared, or they show their back (yay shaco passive also yay them not hitting you for a little). So all in all, lategame shaco is a 1v1 nightmare for most champs (excluding stuff like ekko, diana, they are an issue).



anyway, why I was here, after being demoted for the second time from gold (so I actually hit silver V elo, my god), after a couple of winstreaks I'm back! I think I'll leave it at this though, fearing I may get things wrong again and get in a losing spiral again. I put in gold v in zor's list and I'll stick with normals for a while

[mykonian]

FG, you know fiora. Suppose you find yourself in a game against one as shen (or w/e bulky toplaner really).

what do. I spend 20 minutes trying to figure out which want to go about it and I couldn't think of one.

[mykonian]

this was a tp one, and first couple of min that had been the plan. Her ult was quite the game changer though, despite being ahead in items, to the point where i was pretty soon stuck to the turret, which really limits what you can do.

idk, if I find myself in that matchup with 5s, I'll swap out of it

[mykonian]

been playing garen before the patch and after (garen/shen were basically my no brain top lane champs). Didn't really change all that much, till your villain is someone important. That is really noticable. Otherwise his power got a bit shifted around from early to late game, made him slightly less of a lanebully, slightly more aoe damage threat in lategame teamfights. Nothing too huge imo.

[mykonian]

been playing garen before the patch and after (garen/shen were basically my no brain top lane champs). Didn't really change all that much, till your villain is someone important. That is really noticable. Otherwise his power got a bit shifted around from early to late game, made him slightly less of a lanebully, slightly more aoe damage threat in lategame teamfights. Nothing too huge imo.

New items help him a lot.

that is a point. I didn't switch my build around yet. What would you advise?

[mykonian]

I guess dead mans plate is a small upgrade to sunfire out of lane?

tended to build sunfire/cinderhulk->cleaver.

[mykonian]

I think something else is at work. Between gold and plat (and anything else really), riot applies some mmr check to keep up their system. So you might have had a bit of a struggle in gold one to advance because your lp gains weren't splendid etc as you dragged your mmr up to the required level. When you passed that barrier, you entered plat 5 with a mmr that was "right" and lp gains were fair. Maybe you win about the same amount but the effect is much more noticable

[mykonian]

so, 2 weeks and you are diamond?

[mykonian]

well, high lp gains tell you riot already thinks should should be higher than you already are. You are already plat 4, so they estimate you high plat/low diamond if things continue the way they are?

[mykonian]

only issue with the servers is that it's apparently atm a lottery wether my connection is stable or not. 4 games now, 2 fine, 2 with decent amounts of packet loss.

[mykonian]

seems disappointing :/

I'm about 75 miles away from the euw servers, get about 18.

[mykonian]

Something something population density something something infrastructure something something.

agricultural area something something.

without fooling around though, if you are indeed practically working on top of the servers, you'd hope for better, right?

[mykonian]

I'm disappointed in this server move. Got to experience sweet 110 ping for a couple of days, now we are back at 190 again

[mykonian]

hahahahahaha

[mykonian]

Ok, I've been off my singed for a while, mostly because some of the common matchups have been and will be for the coming time are absolutely terribly to play. You don't want to face a gnar, a fiora, a darius, garen is hard, gp eats you. Riven is a trash tier matchup. Basically anything with some form of trading that's newish (apart from garen) just makes your laning experience a pain, and half of them get to scale now as well.

I build Singed by starting mana crystal and rushing rod of ages. I usually build Sunfire cape somewhat early, depending on my matchup.

But honestly i'm an old guard singed layer and that build is probably outdated, been using it since like early-mid season 4.

Season 2 more like. This build worked for a while because there was a nearly broken mastery that gave you a lot of regen based on your max mana. The moment that mastery is gone, you don't want to start sapphire crystal, ever. That's fucking 3 seasons ago and people still haven't caught on. If you want to go this route, at least go ruby crystal, it gives some stats, they made it cheaper so you can use it as a greed starting item. It's indeed still greedy. Just go shield or flask (shield because you won't be building out a cloth armor soon, that's basically the determining factor there. If your champ wants to build a full armor item first, go cloth 5).

I'd probably get flask tho.

yay, a voice of reason.

Rylai's/Liandry's is better than RoA/Liandry's.

RoA is just not in a good spot at this point.

RoA got buffed on the same patch. Not to the same silly extent as liandry's, but a buff nontheless. The issue I have and will have with rylai's on singed is that you basically buy it for the reduced slow (even if you get 5% extra post buff) on his poison. There are times where this is key, but otherwise you get a massive aoe slow in your kit, use that. For the tank stats, I think there are better items.

singed apparently counters irelia
but how??

Not sure who told you that. It is worse than the average melee matchup. Not Riven bad, but up there. Depending on play, goes either way.

[mykonian]

Hugh Jackman

Pool Party Graves best skin

I'm with broseidon. I'm a boob man.

[mykonian]

alas, panzer is no more.

but we get reck!

[mykonian]

I guess I could expand on that post.

As long as items scale with one another, it'll make sense to funnel more gold into fewer players. People who end up getting less would buy non scaling stuff.

As long as vision can be gained and lost and this is even only marginally tied to money, this is a lot of value, which cannot scale.

The first I don't think riot could break if they wanted to. The second I suspect they don't want to because it actually creates a form of macro strategy. So throughout the years we've actually seen the opposite happen, where in pro play the jungler becomes more and more a slightly more farmed support.

[mykonian]

that's mostly the passive, right?

[mykonian]

just what this thread lacked, we didn't have psyche trolling yet.

[mykonian]

sure dear

[mykonian]

congrats!

[mykonian]

there's not really another way to do it - your browser is simply not capable of pulling content from other applications on your computer, and that is a Very Good Thing from a privacy standpoint.

fine, but my laptop has a built-in webcam. I should at least be able to link Twitch to that and at least show a stream of, say, my room or whatever, with OCE or Xsplit giving me the option to turn the stream inwards to what I'm doing on-screen. Not requiring that to stream, period. What if I wanted to stream things happening in my room or home in the first place? (Yes, I'm aware the semi-obvious answer is "Videos/streaming on Youtube" or something like that, but let's say either I want to do it via Twitch or I'm doing some sort of simul-cast with both YT and Twitch)

My laptop runs pretty hot. I have cookie dough.

Why doesn't chrome make me cookies?

[mykonian]

^ reason i suck at teemo

I can't for the life of me NOT use the q to engage and idk why

its a serious problem

I wonder how often I have to say this. There's only one teemo.

You level e. You build bortk-tank (or if shit hit the fan and you are facing an ap champ top, wits end-tank). You level q last.

You'll learn soon enough. You don't engage, people get so incredibly fed up with you continiously autoing them they engage on you. At which point you drop a shroom on your ass, q his face, back up to the previous shroom you placed and keep autoing him in the meantime.

PS: don't do this against darius.

[mykonian]

What do I do supposing I get into a match-up against Darius then?
Also, am I taking AP, AD, or tank runes / masteries? (I wanna try this)

Don't pick teemo against darius. His hook is about your range, and you have the same goal in lane (you are both lanebullies), but he does it better on all fronts in the direct matchup.

Runes are probably your jungle runes if you have them (attackspeed and tank), flat ad reds probably work as well if AS isn't available. Masteries are a bit matchup dependent, either 21-9-0 or 14-16-0 where you make sure you get both the ap and the ad tree's at the base of the offensive tree. Surviving all in's can be important in some matchups (say, the yasuo or wukong tops of this world). Where you have less threat or feel confident, 21-9-0 is worthwile (say the shens and nasi of this world).

Similarly, starting item can be dorans blade if you don't expect to get hurt in an ap matchup, dorans shield where you do, longsword pots in an ad matchup where you expect no threat. Dorans-longsword decision is based on if you want to play with bortk or with wits end. If you want vamp scepter anyway, you can start building towards it. Towards wits end, a couple of dorans really don't hurt, you spike earlier anyway, and the lifesteal does help out.

In lane it's just the general stuff. Respect the minions, use the brushes, freeze/trade when applicable and abuse your range advantage. As soon as you have your ult, make sure they are in your escape route.

[mykonian]

Why are you playing Teemo

because once in a while, it's just not good enough to have a good game. Sometimes you want your opponent to feel terrible as well. Bruiser teemo does the job

[mykonian]

understandable mistake.

It's Counter Bruiser Bruiser Lux

[mykonian]

well i mean my perfect Galio is as a super situational pick. You pick him when stacking MR is going to be really helpful. If he's powerful enough that he's good against 2+ AD dealers (or you just stack AP), then something is wrong with his kit. He's the pick you want if you see in draft that the opponent has an AP top, mid and jungle.

He's better than this.

Galio is more than his passive. He's also more than his ult (though tbf this is what you'll have to build around with a comp). Galio is a supportive mid champ that really screws with single target burst. The idea that galio would have trouble with the classic ad assassin mid is silly. Galio's strength comes from teamplay, mapmovements, but most importantly: bulwark. 30 to 90 armor and mr is nothing to laugh at. Galio's awkwardness in lane comes from him being melee. He scales decently for a tank because of the heal on bulwark, but he's a tank nontheless. He doesn't scale impressively in damage.

And there's what's really galio's problem atm. Mid professionally is a farm lane that provides lategame carries. Galio doesn't need a calm lane and isn't a lategame carry. He's not terribly good against poke.

In soloqueue though, you get your early teamfights, you face assassins, and on average, your team will have 3.5 damage threats already. He's more than fine in such scenarios. Just get over yourself an buy that randiuns as a midlaner if that is required

[mykonian]

I don't know if its still true, but before the rotation was constantly going, so you could keep a count of where it was at if you were way better than anyone on MS is.

I think this was a popular legend.

I forgot who the player was (misaya?) who it was said about that he had a song that would have the right rythm of which card would come up next if he started the count right then. So the idea was that the "random" starting card wasn't as random as it looked and that he had cracked the code, that way he could pull a card and cast the right one straight away.

It's a great story, but I think was proven to be untrue by one or the other riot employee.

[mykonian]

shrug, as long as people realise that such champions are too hard for them, I don't really care.

[mykonian]

For what it's worth, what you normally want to achieve is a freeze, but you ideally want it closer to your turret (but out of turret range). This in particular can be difficult to manage for a long period of time unless you've done it a lot.

This depends somewhat.

The issue with having a freeze is that if the opponent can afford to move up to you to trade, you don't have an answer. The moment you autoattack them, their superior number of minions in the area will quickly make the trade favorable for them.

So apart from the fact that you are occupied (which is a downside) you also require to be either stronger than your opponent or have a team supporting the freeze (by the jungler not showing elsewhere, for example).


I think there's less value in tricks how to manipulate it and more in judging what the wave is going to do and what's the proper response for you.

[mykonian]

I don't think we are talking about the same thing, zor.

[mykonian]

You guys take it way too permanently. You can manipulate the wave, but the wave also manipulates you and your opponent. A wave pushing into their tower plays different from a wave pushing towards you, and in an even lane, all participants have to respect that.

In an uneven lane, one side obviously gets to use wave manipulation to their advantage. They can organise the good back timings, can force the opponents to reconsider if they want to soak just xp or see if they can affect the map elsewhere, can try to lock your opponent(s) up in lane and be free to move yourself. Some moments farm is the most important, sometimes you need to be available on the map. Making the right choices makes you capitalise on the advantage you got. You need to respect the minions.

[mykonian]

I don't really know what you're reacting to, myko.

kscope at first, but it works with you as well.

It's a key part of laning, not just a mid game strategy.

oh by the way. If you're a support, you need to get good at reading what your ADC wants to do with the lane. That's probably a call in 5s that the support makes, but in solo queue, the ADC is the one in control of that decision. If I'm freezing a lane or letting it push into me and you as Morgana put a damn W under the minions, I'm going to be pretty pissed.

Hell no

If I'm your support, you are my baby. That means I feed you, I clean up your shit, and all you have to do in between is just to last hit the damn minions. Now if I'm already doing your harrass, setting up your trades, kindly also trust me to have the wave in the right place to do all that.

Also the average adc is dumb.

[mykonian]

240 isn't awful. Limits your champ pool maybe a little, but otherwise should you ever play ranked, it's a couple divisions at most that it would set you back. And that's nothing terrible.

As long as it's stable, nothing is stopping you from having fun and doing your thing in the game

[mykonian]

I just go singed when i am forced top and press laugh all game.

I won on default honestly.

i cant do this and win
i always get myself killed doing /j or /l or whatever

wait... you don't have to type out the full /joke or /laugh??!? this is game changing.

Not buying this. You seriously thought I was repeat typing /laugh when I supported you as lux?

[mykonian]

Control 4 is your bff

it really is.

And you can't play garen without ctrl-1 and ctrl-3.

[mykonian]

sigh, that's going to be another couple of weeks of hating the new masteries

Looks like they moved a significant amount of power out of the lower level masteries to the keystones, to be allowed to make them feel powerful. The T1's that take multiple points look uniformly appalling by season 5 standards.

Similar things seem to happen between the masteries you can put multiple points in compared to the single points ones (which look strong by comparison). Even tier 2, the multiple point ones look comparatively bad, but at least better than the T1's.

First sight, looks like a game of: "how can I get the single point masteries I want".

[mykonian]

There's also a reddit thread on the new items as well. It's really going to be another pre season of getting kicked out of your (working) habits to try to find some new ones

[mykonian]

might it be

that the onus isn't on the adc to outplay a teamfight.

[mykonian]

you thought you'd just get full masteries like that???

you have to work for that

[mykonian]

aww.

[mykonian]

the new mastery system is pretty cool. lots of hard choices, at least until a consensus arrives at what's optimal.

Been thinking about that a bit. For some champs it looks obvious, for some I don't see a good route to take.

Say you are a crit based adc: clearly you are dragged to the keystone that gives as and a heal on a crit. So 4% AS, 20 health on kill, 2.5% lifesteal, 1% per unique kill?, 7% arpen, and the crit keystone from offense, at which point the choice becomes if you want 15% cdr on your flash or better potions and dangerous game. I think you take defense there more often than not.

Say you are a tank jungle. Defense tree is where you'll look, bonus resists, reduced damage, bonus health, reduced cd on smite, resists per enemy, max hp per large monster, then take one keystone in both other trees so you can get 5 bonus damage vs monsters and I guess better potions, and 4% as and I guess the 20 health on kill? Going up further on the cunning tree seems pretty useless anyway, might as well.

For both tank supports and heal/shield based supports the keystones to go for seem obvious as well, but given that I've been playing poking ones... :/ It's a bit of a mess. Brand for sure is torn between trying to find the 45% cdr or the burn on damage ferocity keystone, there are arguments for either. I don't think the 5% cdr above the cap is that great in general, but given that brand is one of the champs who I feel get a lot of their scaling out of rushing to the cdr cap, he may be one of the exceptions. Probably will have to settle for the bonus damage on a 30 sec cd on the top of cunning.

Kennen otoh has the opposite issue. Where I use the same page on either now, kennen doesn't really want either. CDR does jack all for them, so I doubt you'd want to get above the gold mastery in cunning. But then, which of the top keystones really do anything for him? Probably will have to settle for the bonus damage on a 30 sec cd on the top of cunning. Even if the route towards it sucks.

The juggernauts have a pretty clear keystone, but my old love singed? I don't even know where to begin.


The last thing that I do see as a pretty big change compared to last time is how nice these pages are for hybrid champs. There's a lot of %bonus damage on the total, there's a lot of masteries that give something for both ap and ad champs, the only exception being the top of offense.

[mykonian]

well, yes and no. I do think most changes have been for the better. Obviously it is annoying that you have to relearn the game every season (season 4 I could say I mained jungle, basically never got back in shape in season 5), but otoh it does keep the game fresh and idk, the rules get changed for everybody, it's just part of the environment. The good players will come on top again.

[mykonian]

tbf, he was meant to be a lanebully. He always was. His synergy with cleaver is a tad unfair, but there's nothing wrong with his progression from lanebully to meatshield. There are still many toplaners who outperform him lategame.

[mykonian]

bang is undefeated on kalista iirc. Either way, the champion is strongly associated with him.

[mykonian]

Bruisers wreck tanks. You can put a lanebully in against a tank in lane, but you have to have a solution for his splitpushing and have to somehow capitalise on the improved teamfighting a tank gets. The bruisers now found in toplane have a decent teamfight on top of their splitpushing. There's no payoff for the hard lane.

[mykonian]

Mundo jungle is super strong right now and super fun.

Also he ganks pretty well with chilling smite and cleavers.

He used to be a pick because he was seriously fast and had a great lv3. That's not really a consideration anymore.

What makes him better at something than the rest?

[mykonian]

duo queues are pretty awful
One of the reasons I stopped duoing when I played ranked is because I couldn't find a partner who wouldn't take it upon himself to shit on everyone if we didn't get what we wanted. And it made me uncomfortable to be defended by my friends when I knew I was actually messing up or they'd expect me to do the same for them in the same situation. It's just too stressful either way. .-.

I'm with brandi on this one. This is a mechanic that happens in premades and it is not all that pleasant.

I don't duo on ranked anyway (I deal really poorly with voice communication during play, do not have the capacity to multitask listening/talking while actually playing the game well at the same time), but by now I've found myself often enough checking op.gg midgame to check if indeed I'm again queued up with a team when the chat gets weirdly aggressive and the amount of times it's actually true is staggering.

[mykonian]

I thought op.gg removed the feature telling you who's premade/duo in the "Ingame info"tab a long time ago?

I've missed it dearly.

it has, riot no longer gives that information.

OP.GG however, does keep track of people you've played more than once with in the last x games. It's not perfect, but by searching a name then checking that list, you can still find out premades (though you may miss a couple of they don't play together all that often)

[mykonian]

I deserve challenjour!

[mykonian]

ok so I play normals now and then. Soloqueue even. And matchmaking can be interesting. Sometimes you are suddenly playing with a player who's not even lv30, next thing you know you are playing with diamonds. Now as long as it's mid plat... I can have some game against that, if I'm on a comfort champion at least usually I don't get stomped on. Diamonds are another story, that skill gap is just too big, 90% of the times that just goes horribly wrong. But today I got to a whole new level of sadness: playing a new jungler for me against a "master" opponent. Nothing I did was right.

AAARG.

[mykonian]

Good riddance.

My mom carved pumpkins, can you imagine!?!?

[mykonian]

I've played against silvers who've out-laned me. The big difference I notice is that those players are usually completely terrible when it comes to what to do outside of the laning phase

That's me.

heh, other way around for me. Top and mid I play to survive the laning phase, get cheap ass champions and follow a single pattern of play that at least doesn't get me in trouble all too often. ADC more or less the same, play sivir/push wave/always follow up on support. As support I am more comfortable but tbf probably often take risks that are too close to 50/50.

For most of these roles if the laning phase is (finally) over at least I feel more comfortable in the choices and how to play fights etc. I don't know if it's going correct, probably not, but I know for sure the lanes aren't going well.

[mykonian]

ani, eve's clear was always crap, it's not the point. Question is, how painful can you make her first gank?

The runepage won't change (ad armor ap ap), but you do lose some accessable early game masteries. I wondered, could you make fervor work with her? Between her q and her e giving you two autoattacks, you should be able to ramp up the stacks pretty quickly.

[mykonian]

Isn't grasp for shen not more of the same thing, hito? You get bulked up, you start winning trades. Happens either way (unless facing fiora). Grasp at most pulls that moment a little bit forward.

It seems stronger on champions who didn't have that mechanic inherently, and who actually hit squishies a little more often in teamfights.

[mykonian]

I think for Shen it's really important to focus on his laning with runes and masteries. Obviously Bond of Stone synergizes with Shen ult and taunt but Shen is going to be a beast in teamfights regardless of his runes and masteries. I think what's important for Shen is to be able to handle 1v1s for split pushing and to patch up his early laning. Grasp is excellent for both. I was outdueling a Yasuo as soon as I had Cinder.

Obviously need more data points to speak definitively, but that's the reasoning.

well yes, not entirely what I'm saying. Naturally it's a great bruiser mastery, but is it at its best for shen? His kit revolves around health based damage and health based regen already.

[mykonian]

They really really really bent Ashe over with these nerfs.

You'll have to explain this to me. I've heard she got nerfed hard before, but I don't get it.

[mykonian]

Don't think that's it. In items it hardly changed and idk, seems hard to see how an adc with slows has issues with others moving.

As far as I can tell, there were a couple of changes to ashe. She got a new crit that doubled her slow, her passive is no longer called "crit" on the second shot and on, which as far as I can tell only matters for the crit mastery. Her focus is harder to stack and her q is only available with 5 focus but narrower, but otoh is no longer gated by an 18 sec cd, only by how quickly you can get 5 auto's off. Which is nuts. So sure she got a bit harder, but already with the rework her lategame dps got a huge buff, they cranked it up a lot here.

So she gets a 40% AS and 27% overall damage boost (so 78% dps boost total), for 4 seconds, then it's off for as long as it takes you to get 5 auto's in (say a couple of seconds too). That's hypercarry scaling DPS buff in her kit that she should be able to keep up for more than 50% of the time in lategame teamfight.

With that new crit that gives a slow, and the disappearance of the q cd on the cost that you can't activate it anymore with fewer than 5 focus, what's it that I'm missing?

[mykonian]

well... depends. Otherwise you could cheat your way to some free attackspeed, quite a minor mastery. They removed the cheat part, you still get a named crit (the double slow) so you can use bloodlust. I don't see how that's a major nerf anyway, if it even is one.

[mykonian]

You can't stack Q with anything beside autos, the double slow is gone off Q, You can't start up Q early and have Q fire off after a shot or 2, Her the frost shot damage no longer counts as a crit, and the slow is less slow

The trade is, her crit's are now normal crits effective, her slow is doubled upon crit, and volley crits. But still.. That's A LOT of shit off Q for not a lot in return.


That being said, I still don't know all the changes as far as the series goes(i haven't looked at any of the items and i just learned that last whisper is 1300), so it might not be as bad as it sounds?

I hadn't seen the slow reduction. Thought that was still on there?

also in return, no more cooldown!

Items is the same for most adc's, I don't think there's any standout ashe item, so that shouldn't matter all that much.

[mykonian]

I'd say you would know.

[mykonian]

I have enjoyed jungle mundo. After his first back, he stays reasonably high. He is still ridiculously fast, and as such it's reasonably easy to gain an experience lead with or without just walking into the opponents jungle. Meeting most opponents is not an issue for early game mundo. He's a very good duelist. I started w, leveled e first, then w, left q as a 1 point wonder. On a jungle page you are excused to take as much attackspeed as you can manage, which makes a threat lategame even when building full tank, between grasp and your e bonus damage.

[mykonian]

dear league thread.

shield/heal supports for the win, right? I'm not entirely convinced I still get the same out of my support kennen as previously, and I dislike brand there now as well.

[mykonian]

oi, I feel insulted by that

I enjoyed rushing 40% cdr on brand and stunning some poor bastard for 2 seconds every 3.6 seconds. The way cdr is now though, it's not going to work. Kennen's mastery setup at least makes some sense, but it's not ideal.

I might have to try taric again. Been out of practice for a while but he could be fun.

[mykonian]

Alistar is too hard for me. Not going to bother.

[mykonian]

that's not how it works.

[mykonian]

I'm aware of his combo. Getting a champ has so little to do with the concept of putting 2 skills right after another

That alistar is too hard for me depends on his choices, when to ult, when to save it, when to combo, when to flash pulverize, when to level heal. Execution comes after that which would obviously take time. And many of those choices impact what your possibilities are after that, because ult, combo and flash are on sizable cooldowns and your mana pool isn't all that great. So a lot of his plays are very all in, make the right choices, you look like a boss. Make the wrong ones, you are going to feel that for some time. I never end up looking like a boss. Hence, he's too hard for me.

[mykonian]

Hey how many of you are support mains? My friends all looked at me weird when I said it was my favorite role.

We actually have a lot of support mains, particularly our members who are in higher elos and play a lot of ranked.

I think starting off as a support main can be kind of a bad idea because it can start to use the less mechanically intensive position as a crutch without gaining a proper understanding of the other roles. That'll be less important once we get the new team selection, but I don't think you should start off as a support main. It's a better role to transition into. I found myself a much better support player after I played mostly ADC in ranked for a few months.

Zor's wrong. Typical adc main, thinks his support can't do a thing...

And yes, MS has a high amount of supports. Which is why hito insulted me a bit, he knows damn well I consider myself a support main. I don't troll my botlane partner.

An issue you might run into when playing soloqueue is that people give you bad advice. The amount of support mains there is very low, lower than any of the other roles. So a lot of people have the viewpoint where they think they know what a support should do for them, but don't actually know it from playing. Just play it a lot and you'll get good at it, the same way that goes for any other role.

And frankly, you are one of the most important players on the team. Zor again, will disagree, but he's an adc and he's your baby. Just let him talk and till 30 min keep him on a leash. He can go outside and play after that. Supports manage teamfights, you bring the cc and item actives. They also manage the vision that is required to set up a proper splitpush or a play on a neutral objective. Any road to victory is one cleared by you. Then you let the dumb muscle do the actual lifting. Anybody can right click...

[mykonian]

I've always felt you had the mentality of one

[mykonian]

like a riven main.

[mykonian]

You break my heart.

[mykonian]

*popcorn*

Sorry FG, I think this is over already. He can only top that insult by starting about my mom, and zor's too classy for that.

[mykonian]

For darius: cleaver into tank. Used to be that you'd get 5% in masteries, 5% in runes, 20 from cleaver, 10 from a kindlegem (which would go into a visage at some point), usually getting an armor item before the kindlegem. You have to be able to use deadmans plate to have it be a sensible buy. It's not a good item in a fight, just get it if you think you'll have trouble getting to a fight for some reason. Otherwise, you are just better off with a Randuins. Visage still obviously great, now even moreso because I imagine you'll get grasp of the undying. One damage item in cleaver is plenty, I don't think you need more. But those 4 items should make up your 3 item core, I think. Just actually tailor your armor choice to the game you think you are going to play. CDR is still a valuable stat, given the power that's in your q's. Might want to find that in your runes maybe? I wouldn't know.

[mykonian]

wow people in ranked are assholes

It's just people dealing with their own inadequacy. Such frustration has to come out somewhere. Sadly usually the teammates are the focus of it :/

I enjoy Swain too yeah.

He's pretty fun.

I think this must be the time, right? RoA got buffed, CDR is awkward, there's a keystone mastery that gives significant damage to DoT's. Swain is with kass and cass one of the bigger RoA abusers, and deathfire touch fits him perfectly in lane and in teamfights.

If only I could actually last hit with him, it'd be great. I don't remember it being quite

this

hard to last hit, esspecially at higher levels. I suspect I'm missing the magic damage on auto mastery sorely.

[mykonian]

How do you beat mundo right now?

Eh, its pretty hard to be fair. I've only seen it from the side of the mundo, I'll take it we are talking jungle here, lane is much more doable.

In the jungle he kind of does it all at the moment. He's really fast in clearing his jungle, and stays reasonably high. I find that it is sort of doable to keep up with the sololanes for a while in xp in many a game, which is a bit silly. Then, mundo's early level dueling is ridiculous. He's a bit of a silly champ design, he gets 3 one point wonders as his skills. The first point in qwe gives you a huge boost in damage, after that it's not as impressive. So from lv3 you do not want to stand next to a mundo. If you want to duel him, either know what you are doing, or more likely, be a ranged jungler. I think you have play against him being kindred, elise in that respect. Otherwise, stay away from him at this point in the game. His ganks are potent enough between the damage he brings and the slow, but he may as well powerfarm/invade and get as much use out of his kit as he can. Depends on the opportunities he's given.

That doesn't mean this is everything though. You will play a non-silly champ and at some point your levels in abilities scale in the way that you have more play against the mundo. And some of those abilities scale with the items you build. Mundo does not scale. Q doesn't scale with anything, w with ap, e with health and attackspeed, ult with spirit visage. That's it. So he builds tank as a crutch, so he can play with the base stats on his abilities (which are pretty awesome, but in comparison not as awesome as at lv1). So if you've weathered the storm, there's going to be a time where mundo plateaus. Now ADC itemisation has gotten a little weird for me, but I don't think riot messed with it so much that you aren't able to melt bulky champs from 3 items in. But that's your adc's job, maybe your mid's job.

All in all, mundo's curve is weird. He gets some help this season in the jungle changes/masteries, so he is really strong, but he does have his strong and weak points during a game.

[mykonian]

I enjoy Swain too yeah.

He's pretty fun.

I think this must be the time, right? RoA got buffed, CDR is awkward, there's a keystone mastery that gives significant damage to DoT's. Swain is with kass and cass one of the bigger RoA abusers, and deathfire touch fits him perfectly in lane and in teamfights.

If only I could actually last hit with him, it'd be great. I don't remember it being quite

this

hard to last hit, esspecially at higher levels. I suspect I'm missing the magic damage on auto mastery sorely.

ok, I did a custom with him. Now the cs I got was comparable to what I got with ashe without runes or masteries when I did this before, so that isn't terrible (well, depending on your goals, I guess. It's certainly not stellar either). Now say you want to play him mid, you don't really have a good waveclear skill. Your ult is mediocre at best even getting the creeps, and somewhat impractical at actually using as a waveclear tool till you have roa or blue buff, and you'd like a bit more than roa to be safe. I don't understand how you play him mid and not be forced back the entire laning phase. Even at 10 min, you don't have functional waveclear. He gets played mid though, so this is an issue with me (anyone have an idea here? It isn't leveling w from what I can tell). Obviously he's a functional top as well and since waveclear to free up yourself isn't half as important there, I get that. But it feels like playing swain on easy mode, being a ranged top and all.

I guess my question to the thread comes down to this: what's swains gameplan for the laning phase in mid?

[mykonian]

The issue with that mastery is that I do not see how you are supposed to reach 40% on most champions, even moreso supports, in any meaningful time. It makes your lategame a lot better and improves the value of the items you buy, but you don't buy that many items as a taric

[mykonian]

Oh. Sorry. That does change things.


FG, I'm bored of life, how does one tahm support without being pro?

[mykonian]

I didn't know I needed more tentacles in my life, but I do!

TBF, she does feel overtuned atm. Just, you know, base numbers. She's got a decent base ad, and on top of that her main abilities scale off total ad. I get that she's supposed to be strong given that she has no cc, but her soul grasping thing is a powerful concept in lane, esspecially given that you tend to have lanecontrol if you really want it. You basically send someone b with it, or get a very favorable trade. Come lategame... sure it's a damage amplifier, it's not spectacular. Her splitpush seems alright, mostly based on the fact that she can somewhat easily turn 2v1's around with her ult up, if she's settled. Teamfights, sure, get a good ult off and you win it if they fight it, but that should be decently difficult.

I mean, the curve seems similar to garen, and he's intentionally made this strong, didn't get tuned, so maybe it's about alright? She's similarly sluggish and kitetable as he is.

But man is that ult fun. And the lane too! Beyond just the stats, the things she does feel very powerful. I love it. Take 10 off her base AD at 18 and I'll still feel the same, 10% ad off her tentacles I can handle as well.

[mykonian]

I fear I never have. Felt like I missed the boat when they nerfed her as a support after having been op, then never made the step to play her.

[mykonian]

No, 5 is the most populated in all the tiers except bronze, it's because once you get in you can't get bumped down. Also, I'm shocked at how easy they made getting into gold. I remember a point when gold was literally just the top 25% and that was it.

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/bo ... st29199700

I just missed it in season two, estimated my percentile with the stats given (I don't know if it was from there) but from what I remember I thought I managed 14%. I think I made a post about it in this thread, the season after I did worse percentile wise.. and got gold. Season after I really pushed, managed to gain ~2% on my season 2 score, got plat. And this season, I think it's sitting close to 35% that get gold.

Yes, these rankings are inflated over the years

[mykonian]

sssh, don't say that.

Also I've played her some more now and I don't know if it's strictly true. Half of it is people not knowing how to deal with it. Powercurve wise she feels like a juggernaut, good lanebully, good teamfight when she gets to hit people, but no control. She gets kited really easily, does not deal well with cc. I've played a couple of players who were decidedly better than I was in other ways who often chose to avoid tests alltogether and took the curse, and dealt with that then. People who are confused get hurt.

Similarly, don't gank her post 6 unless you know what you are doing. It's just silly, you have your lane opponent, the jungler, they walk at you, you position near a tentacle, use your test of spirit (which is hard to miss if they try to get to you anyway or hit you) after which ult-w mean you get a tentacle over the spirit from your e, then 4 tentacles hitting the spirit and probably the 2 others. That's silly amounts of burst and at the same time healing. You do not want to be there then. Without her ult though, she's a sitting duck. Esspecially early, her test of spirit is on a horrendous cooldown. If you have any kind of bruiser, see if you can engage after that. Most champions simply do better than her standing next to a champ hitting them. She's not a proper bruiser like that. In a similar way as post 6 she depends on her ult, trading in lane depends on her e. Without it, she doesn't want fair trades. Someway she needs her tentacles to make it unfair for her, or other champions will have abilities that make their autoattacks better (which she doesn't have).

So yes, she has the numbers. She has situations where she feels really powerful. If you allow her to force you into such situations where you have no right choice, indeed the game is going to be a pain. She's not without weakness though. Just respect her test, respect her ult.

[mykonian]

I'm sorry for the sentences there. It's not a very good post.

[mykonian]

It starts around her, so you can move just past a minion and still hit it with the skill. As yas, you'd be just past her and indeed, you'd still get hit.

The problem i have with Illaoi, is that she has no real counterplay built into her kit outside "Kill the tentacles" and realistically this is a shitty form of counterplay.

You are not in motion.

[mykonian]

And more to the point, How specifically is Illaoi, OP?

She breaks some preconceptions.

Like that it's easier to kill someone with 2 than with 1. You enable her ult by bringing people. Champions with ults are stronger than those without.

So our beloved wazza took a squishy melee carry into a juggernaut. Then encountered a situation where the his team put the opposing illaoi into the situation where she's the most dangerous (running at illaoi, with multiple people), where she could reposition close enough to tentacles he already had, pull a spirit, and get one of the better possible ults off that she could get.

She's not without weaknesses, but you have to respect her.

[mykonian]

And more to the point, How specifically is Illaoi, OP? Does she beat mundo, Quinn, TK, GP, or Irelia? I think the answer is no on all accounts and the only kinda close one might be Irelia.

If she faces them straight up she has the lane vs mundo then at some point he outscales.
Quinn as a direct lane opponent would be doable, I suspect, but at some point the splitpush might be hard to stop. Your teamfight is better. As adc it's w/e.
Kench as a lane opponent? In that case that's a win, I think. In lane it's probably ok for either, but she brings aoe to a teamfight, tahm utility. As support it's fine. At least you don't deal burst damage or cc, tahm eating a carry doesn't bother you as much. Tahm will counter your teammates more in all likelyhood.
GP is indeed a straight loss, I think. He's rather resilient to losing the lane too hard and you don't have any engage to his poke lategame.
Irelia sounds really tough. She has much more game against you than say, darius, and that's already doable. I think very soon you are going to find your e becomes a very narrow ability as she takes it as an invitation to go on you and win the trade despite it.

[mykonian]

Mundo isn't all that great a laner early on. I don't think he can duel her all that easily initially. Early levels, before too many items, she should have the push on him, and if she does get a test off might gain some time. I mean, that goes for a lot of lanes. All in all, you can whittle him down and get waves at the turret, maybe find a farm lead there somewhere. After some items mundo stops caring about it though, and those duels might be interesting at that point, but I don't know how much kill threat he has unless his opposing toplaner overextends. I'd say he gets dominance over her in lane then. In teamfights mundo is much more dependable as a force, and they have similar roles.

[mykonian]

you guys are making me blush.

tbf, that game we didn't have the highest mmr (I think because of ank's break, he's clearly better than what he's playing against), fakegod has also seen games that were a bit more fairly matched. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, but many a won lane comes from people not knowing how to play around her.

She's a decent lanebully, amongst the champions in toplane she nearly always has wave control, so you tend to be able to create situations where your test is a threat. And that test is really annoying in lane, if the wave is against you, if she has tentacles close (which she tends to, since you don't have the most time clearing them out, given her wave control), that is a lost trade. Ani's choice tree works, but taking the curse actually means you have to walk away quite far, that's going to cost farm. You can deal with the curse, but that costs time as well, time you could spend farming in many a situation.

And then, you've been pushing all lane, the enemy toplaner is moaning after having been a vessel for a couple of times and he's starting to be a little low, you overextend... what jungler can really ignore that? They should, because as soon as you see them take the bait, you move to a tentacle, or between two, land the pull (point blank of you must), and pop that ult on spirit and 2 champs. At some point people are going to learn this gank doesn't work, but so far they haven't. You cannot take her, if she's full health, backing up in her own lane, with a half health teammate and a ganking person, unless you can lock her down or have significant burst. You create a situation for illaoi where she was stronger than when she was just bullying your toplaner (but not killing him).

Because that's the thing really. She can't chase. She cannot kill anyone with that pull of hers. The opponents always get the chance to back out and take a cs loss in stead of dying. Running at her, that is what makes her dangerous.

Surely at some point people are going to learn how to deal with her test, as well as how to deal with her overextending. Till that time I'll enjoy my toplane wins

[mykonian]

If I were home and peg was around we could decimate them but oh wells

What if we ban MF?

[mykonian]

I think one of the games fakegod spectated had you in it, rayfrost

Myko does she have any counter to people playing fast heroes, slow towers or just pushing in and roaming?

She outpushes most toplaners. In two ways, one's just the tentacles and mostly her q that eat waves. Second is that you don't really want to stand in her creepwave (you are a bit of a sitting duck for her test). You either need some ranged wave clear ability or be ranged, or be able to duel her despite the odds.

I haven't faced gnar yet but indeed, he could be troublesome. He's a lot harder to play than she is though. I mean, I may be missing things, but apart from abusing lane control and trying to hit tests that end up under a tentacle, I haven't found all that many tricks, difficult mechanics or choices. That may come later, but I'm not sure where it would come from in her kit.

[mykonian]

I fear I'm with zor. Inhouses are great. Inhouses where winning "matters" are potentially not so great. And those teams have mismatches, which is fine. But suppose such a mismatch happens in lane, should you hold back a little, letting them play, or should you absolutely crush them, taking them out of the game? You are kind of setting up a game where people won't have fun, which cannot be the point.

[mykonian]

btw we played against someone named Aethis yesterday.

That was the last game fg spectated that day, I think. We commented on the fact that that H made all the difference. (he was a plat 2 riven, but wasn't that familiar with his champion as far as I could tell)

[mykonian]

Nah we already played a weird bad in-house this week that reminded everyone why in-houses suck. We even drafted teams kickball style. Still awful.

Ok. Kindly don't take this the wrong way, but what happened botlane? I was kind of looking forward to that matchup before it started, but it kind of fizzled

[mykonian]

for the record, kindred janna vs lucian leona.

[mykonian]

Umm, you guys kinda counter picked our lane so I settled for outfarming you by a considerable amount. I was ahead of you most of the game. Basically until it got out of hand. I think before laning broke I was up by 30.

Oh, that's a shame I thought you had a shot there, didn't seem as clear cut.

[mykonian]

Yeah, we beat them to lv2, that's what happened. I hadn't seen it that way. Like, I picked janna, because lately I tend to play her, but I'm not that good at her. Games vs heavy engage tend to be interesting, where you can only do so much and inevitably mess up now and then. Hadn't considered how the adc pick changed affected that as well.

[mykonian]

i want something to be bitter about too

can we do an inhaus

best response.

[mykonian]

Guilty as charged, I like treeline. I've posted homages to it before in this thread so I'll keep it short this time. I like how the smaller size of the map means that you have to play as a team (not saying teamfight) from very early in the game.

And when your premade has only 3, might as well play treeline Think that we started playing ranked for some bans/draft pick. That it went well after that obviously adds to the fun, but was a bonus.

All in all, I've had fun there.

[mykonian]

Wow the Lee Sin at 3:10 is apparently the best gold 4 player alive.

Take a bunch of monkeys and let them play lee sin.

Inevitably one will make a functional play.

[mykonian]

Ok, for what role? For some I have a clue, for others I cheat at teamfights myself.

As an expansion to notty's post, ask yourself what your team is going to try to do. There's often one team which is clearly better in a 5v5 dragon fight. You need to realise what situations are winning for you and then strife to create them. Be that poke/siege, splitpush (be that for the tower or for time), 5v5, picks. Are you ahead, are you behind, are you too much behind to even win a fight in the best "fair" situation (to some extent getting the right circumstance deals with a gold deficit). After that, creating the situation is hard enough at it's own but at least you know what you are trying to do then.

[mykonian]

things I'd never thought I'd say. Wazza in gold. Grats man.

[mykonian]

Jungle is a very weird role in general. I feel my jungling is split into 4 distinct outcomes: being a large influence in a win, being invisible in a win, being fine but every lane loses making it impossible to do anything resulting in a loss, and being a roaming feeder. And I feel that all 4 outcomes are equally likely and I have no idea how to make any outcome more likely than the other.

1. is obviously good, keep doing what you do.
2. is also good, pretend you were covering for counterganks (this is just a situation where you try to read the game and hopefully get it right, otherwise adjust)
3. shit sucks, we know it does, pick a lane that might carry you and camp it.

4. has changed this season. On some junglers it is utterly silly how much gold/xp you can collect. I know it's for sure a case on mundo where if you get your smite item you stay healthy enough that you can powerfarm your jungle (and you are rather quick) in a way that it's possible to keep up in xp with the sololanes for a long time. But yesterday I had a slow start as zac in one of our scumchat games, first gank only blew a flash and didn't have opportunity to revisit. So I farmed till I found a new opening somewhere (opponent was the ww buttons quoted). I think I may have held the toplane for a wave as well. Anyway, when I checked the replay, for the majority of that game I was ahead of top and mid in gold earned (bot got an early double without my help, though maybe the blown flash helped), on top of doing well in levels. On some junglers, your opportunity will come, there's no need to force it if you figure your ganks aren't working and put you and your laners at too much of a risk. Your window where you are relevant, if you have a decent clear, feels way bigger.

[mykonian]

there's only one way to solve this. Taric 1v1, shirts off.

[mykonian]

contrary to popular belief, MS inhouses can be a lot of fun.

[mykonian]

man, team bronze-ms is such a cool idea. I hope it actually works out.

[mykonian]

Also just practice. It's partially a matter of hand-eye coordination?

And take breaks between games. Do hand practices. Hand cramps because you "must" do something are the main reason RSI exists. Usually it's work related, but if you notice such issues when you really try in lol, it's time to be a little bit more careful.

[mykonian]

I seem to be missing the point zor, would you mind explaining me why it is great?

[mykonian]

I've talked about it before, but that was anecdotal and based on my own stats. Happy someone else did some real research.

[mykonian]

If it's just Yi, verbally command the most reliable cc on your team to save it until yi reengages.

Fiddlesticks was just buffed!

[mykonian]

According to the stats myko posted, I have not improved as a player since season 3.

Feelsgoodman.

I think that would be the wrong conclusion. You improved at the same pace as the people in your elo.

[mykonian]

which means if your staying in the same percentage area it's probably a non-change in skill

I don't think that's correct? The change of percentile will always be relative to the entire population. Now your assumption is that the population as a whole does not improve. Sure there's a group of new players, but there's also a solid group of players that have been with us since the start. Every year they got more experienced, learned new concepts, etc. Everybody got better at this game after a year.

So RF shouldn't be too down about it :/

PEDIT: I take this back. I am in my last game of provisionals, and this year, it hasn't gone well. 4-5 down and I am coming from low gold so I know I'm looking at mid/low silver here with the soft reset (indeed, got placed in s4). Guess who's on the opposing team I have concrete evidence Rayfrost got worse

[mykonian]

After the struggle that was last seasons ranked, this year halfway through placements I decided to spam support zilean (not really a reason, played a normal with it and wasn't too sad about being one), and right now I've skipped a division, sitting in silver 2, and just had the best zilean game ever. I saved people and gave people movespeed, set up kills... it felt epic, there was always something to do. Saw halfway the game in anotherwise even game (till the final push gold was always within 3k for either side) that my score was 0-0-11, ended 0-3-22. Ranked? Easy.

[mykonian]

that was a nice post. ty.

[mykonian]

A month ago or so, I don't think we played with gendaberry, but as a 5 man premade I faced a yasuo top as illaoi. IIRC he was Diamond 3, but it really doesn't matter much. It clearly was one of his mains. I wish I'd have recorded that game, because how he used that champ was seriously impressive and I hadn't seen anything like it, or seen anything like it since. He'd use his dash and q to constantly conciously stay just about outside my autoattack range, but the lv2 play that impressed me the most was where he'd set up his movement in such a way that with the dash that was supposed to go through me he'd end up in the brush next to the wall, obscuring vision so again I couldn't get an auto trade in at least. The destruction was complete, but most importantly the biggest difference between him an your common yasuo was that he was seemingly more concerned with avoiding his opponents damage than maximising his own harrass. It made the whole laning phase feel like he was never going to lose, although obviously I could have played it a lot better. I've faced high level yasuos before and after, but they always seem to give you chances to get to them.

idk, food for thought maybe

[mykonian]

Okay I officially can't do anything against any fed assassin. I can win my lane but anyone can instantly kill me. My teammates don't peel so the yi can just auto me three times and kill me. -sigh-

Oh man you are a vayne.

Yea ;-;

RIP me

I'm not claiming to be a god at this game, I don't even think I'm that good. But is there anything I can do to deal with a billion people who can kill me? :C

A billion? Just 5. So when the yi alpha strikes you just auto ult-tumble-condemn him into a wall auto tumble auto and he's dead then you tumble into their apc, 3 shot him, using tumble to dodge his skillshot combo when he tries to turn on you. At that point their whole team is routing after which you run them down and kill everybody, then you solo baron and push an inhib. I don't know why I have to explain this to you, every vayne in

my

games plays like that.

I have uploaded a couple more 3v3 ranked games with me, myko and patrick. Our opponents were not top quality this time, I'm afraid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2iYNAi-2Xk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S7f8pQS7V0

Oh my, I wasn't on my best behaviour there, was I :/ Also these games were stomps, being placement games. At least the last game (3/5) we faced two silvers and a bronze (what they got last season). The pressure in those games was off quite quickly.

@shanba, treeline's shop is still oldfashioned in that you can also buy off the platform, as the region where you can shop is a fixed distance to the shop. So I suspect when you could have bought the boots you were still in shop range.

[mykonian]

So been struggling a bit in my climb, but suddenly from halfway silver 1 a 7 game winstreak happened. Obviously I was in a decent mood in those games and I mostly played them on one champ so I got more experience in the lane too so it went well, meaning all those teamchats I could be a happy camper, most adc's I had got out quite well. So after happily remarking postgame that I had achieved gold in the last game, thanking the team, my adc actually gave me a mystery gift. I mean, I know it's an option there, but I didn't think people ever used it.

So thanks to "jacksonteller", beyond gaining gold, I now gained a happy memory

[mykonian]

everybody is put in a lower division than their predicted mmr so they can feel good about ranking up given enough time.

Also I have found elo heaven. Last 10 games have been nice teams, stompy botlanes translating into stompy games, very few adc's who never grouped, objectives were taken, etc. It's been great.

[mykonian]

because you lose the lane before you actually do shit, then you don't actually do real damage.

Like, take the average ez. He gets poked a little, or his support does, support backs off, ez turns to farming with his q. Everything is fine, opponent farms up too, lane stays about even. At some point you both decide to go back, opponent has bf, and ez looks at his shop and goes hmm. What do I get for 1350 Tear and a sapphire crystal for the sheen with boots, I guess. So your opponent hurts, ez doesn't. At that point you've given away the lane, but at least ez "scales". So your tower falls to repeated pushing (ad helps pushing, ad helps taking towers) while ez gets his tear stacked. So then, in a little, he has 2 items. A stacked manamune and a frozen fist. And wow, it all paid off, right? That poke, it hurts so much.

But seriously, in your bronze games, who the fuck even cares about poke. They walk away, heal up, and you still can't get your herd of cats to take an objective. So you group for dragon or baron, or more likely, someone gets caught, everybody funnels in and a teamfight happens. Lo and behold, an autoattacker with 2 items does more damage than a ez with a defensive item and muramana over the course of a fight. Be it lucian, be it mf, be it vayne, they output more damage in that timeframe than the average ez who sits at the side of the fight throwing the odd q in. Yes ez is safe, but the rest of the team dies, so what difference does it make?

After the defeat pops up, looking at the statistics, you see that the ez had twice the damage dealt to champions of his teammates, but if you think about it, how much of that poke damage really mattered and got converted into something that brought him closer to a win?

The difference is, ez's strong points (safe laning, good disengage, strong poke) matter little to nothing if the adc can't use it to maximise his time autoattacking opponents, and are actually not that valuable in an environment where out of boredom people start baron to finish the game somehow, but even then the majority of the teamfights come from someone somewhere getting caught. Because he isn't that monster teamfighter, even with his "scaling".

[mykonian]

I think that your points are a little exaggerated.

I'm not bitter or anything.

[mykonian]

You could put me on lee sin in bronze 2 and I'd make it look like a perfectly good champ for bronze.

You are just showing you should be at least bronze 1.

[mykonian]

just kiss and make up already

[mykonian]

I fear I'm not much of an akali player, ani

[mykonian]

I think I may have mentioned it in those games, I was cheating. I only played it in games where I was rather sure I was one of the better players on the map. I played it in toplane, which is a very snowbally lane. And akali herself snowballs very hard, given the amount of zone control you can excert with her post 6.

And then, I knew

one

trick with akali, and versus the average silver, nobody paid attention to it. Your q cd is about the same length as your mark. You throw it to "poke" opponent doesn't see you claim the mark instantly, so comes back after backing off initially, you jump him consume the mark instantly refresh with a new q, consume it. The whole combo won't kill your opponent, but if he's bad he'll be reeling from the damage, and running away scared that you'll keep damaging them at the same rate. Next time it's up, you have kill threat.

And then, in those games, people kept running around like headless chickens, didn't group, so you could always pick someone off and make up for the fact that your top lane carry brought no bulk, nor any cc. So first you cheat laning, then you cheat teamfights, and somehow it works, while it really shouldn't.

Playing against the average player of my own level, I'd get wrecked playing akali top.

[mykonian]

I am disagreeing about yasuo and the assassins. They wreck often enough, but how often do they create the victories?

Like, give me that malzahar who sits in mid while we aram, then brings sustained damage and cc, in stead of that zed who needs a splitpush we cannot properly set up, or don't even have the peel for in the 4 man group. Idk, imo it looks so much better and makes your teamcomp so much harder to play.

[mykonian]

yeah but that's because your solution to everything is "sit in mid."

I refrained from responding to this straight away, because it makes me so sad.

I won't claim to be a tactical mastermind and I dislike calling in general. It's just not my thing. But I have some basic beliefs in how you can win, or how you can make the game work for you. And I believe that often it's good to have someone talk about what is going to happen next, what the immediate goals are, stuff like that, esspecially if you do have 5 people in a call from which Zor knows me. Strategically, it's pretty procedural and basic, and it clearly doesn't cover everything.

Like, I more or less ignore dragon and rift herald, nearly always push towers if I can in stead, and that's probably a blindside of mine. But to make that mean that I sit in mid, idk. I like setting up side waves so they create pressure (but this is something I disagree with with Zor, I only ever want to move to a sizable wave when we have baron buff, otherwise I think you should push something else), I like warding up parts of the map so you get in control of that and get favourable skrimishes. I dislike pushing lanes where the inhib is down, I like to push top/mid when baron is a viable objective.

Objective wise, that's pretty much it, but I do hope that's a little more than just "sit in mid". How to play ones teamcomp is a little bit more flexible in a game with scummers, but I have fewer illusions about that in soloqueue. In soloqueue it's sometimes splitpush or usually teamfight, and if you can do neither, you better hope you snowball. With scummers you can run the odd poke comp.

[mykonian]

I like setting up side waves. But I think a crucial thing about that is the ability to suddenly use communication to shift to a lane with pressure. If you have Megas then a side wave pressuring is enough but use changes in position to get the advantage on a inhib turret rather than just continue to press the one lane and hope that the side lane is enough. They have interior lines and regular minions don't always present enough of a threat to turret dive in a 5v4 situation.

You have two lanes with pressure in that example. The one with the wave, and the one with you. By moving to the wave, you give up the pressure you had in another lane.

And you don't need to dive. You just need enough of an imbalance that you can move in range of the turret and get those hits in.

If you can't do that 5v4 because of their zone control/waveclear, what good would it do with an extra wave of minions and 5v5? At that point you are better off getting a baron and using that to batter a tower down against an entrenched enemy.

[mykonian]

like, I don't mind the idea of shifting lanes, but I think it's for a different situation. I don't think you can use it to break the inhib towers. I think it's something you use to get mostly inner, sometimes outer turrets, where you've won the vision war and break the concept that they have the shorter route between towers (because you'd be able to pick if they indeed took that shorter route). With inhib towers, it's just moving to check if they notice

[mykonian]

I have traded a couple of times in ranked, where I got another role, but had just had a series of support games. Might as well use that practice, and even when people get it, they aren't always too stoked about getting support again. I think in 50% of the times it came up we got a trade of roles and everybody was still happy.

[mykonian]

Zor. What is tank akali good at that you would want from a toplane champion?

[mykonian]

Zor. What is tank akali good at that you would want from a toplane champion?

Probably the same thing Jax or Irelia are good at except with 3 gapclosers insteap of one?

it's a thought, yes. She does have spellvamp in her kit, I guess, and the shroud does help her dueling. Wouldn't think it'd be anywhere close as oppressive as those guys, but I might be wrong there. Depends a bit on how you value her q damage.

[mykonian]

I don't think that's the direction you should look, though ekko/diana might work just from knowing their basics. Otherwise you are looking at champs that roam easily or champs that are just very basic in their playstyle if you are just looking to fill mid. For the second, malz. Dude's easy, fits in the meta, has a very high winrate. Then you are playing to win more than to have fun, given you claim to be a jungler at heart. Otherwise, ahri is a decent roamer. After that you are indeed probably looking at the assassins.

[mykonian]

Windspeakers as default. Zoraster is channeling his inner adc main again. The possibly teamwide buff is simply too valuable, there are niche reasons to run bond, was talked about by krepo on stream... I think I watched thursday. I've forgotten the exact line, but you might be able to look it up if you are really interested.

[mykonian]

yeah, that armor and mr reduces way more damage in a team setting. Early levels in lane though...

which is why zor is trying to decieve you, obv.

[mykonian]

that's been an issue for a while, I think. So I'd go with ank's recommendation.

[mykonian]

Last one I got seemed more like a quiz than a survey. IT described the new hextech crafting and then proceeded to ask me lots of questions about how it worked. I guess the idea was to see if it was too complicated.

ah, brilliant, then you can explain that mess!

[mykonian]

OI. You were in this game: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends. ... b=overview

Her teamfight damage is quite significant actually. Difference is in how valuable it is. Compared to a kog, a jinx, vayne, her single target damage is not comparable. Those guys murder something if they get to hit it for a couple of seconds, have more range or other tools to keep them safe in the fight. Sivir has spellshield and a bit of movespeed (but again, jinx does that way better). But between the auto reset with ricochet, the bonus AS from it, and the fact that in many a fight you actually get to do quite a bit of aoe your total damage is worthwile. You just aren't the greatest at finishing kills, and you aren't the safest. So indeed, protect the sivir wouldn't work out, there have to be other carries that get set up by sivir's aoe/ult.

I'm glad that she's back, so I have two picks with adc again. With my ping, I can't really spellshield, but anyone can throw ricochets at waves and permapush into the enemy. Are you behind? Sit mid, they are going to be there, waveclear and have enough people around so you don't get dived. Are you ahead? Sit mid and let your mid splitpush, get the push, set up vision, and your team can do whatever afterwards, simply having infinite waveclear and having all 3 waves pushing in goldish games creates an uphill battle for your opponents. It's easy enough that I can do it

[mykonian]

My statement relies on aggregate data, not any individual game. http://champion.gg/champion/Sivir/ADC

ah, she's literally mediocre. I misunderstood the first statement then.

[mykonian]

time to record two games, one where you won lane, one where you lost

[mykonian]

At level 16 your now AOE ult with the three items above does: 450 Base + 1.5*(55 [BC] + 60 [Warrior] + 75 [Ravenous Hydra]) for a total of 735 AOE damage. Plus the utility benefits of your ult.

Mid Damage Jarvan is probably a thing now too.

You seem scarred

It really isn't a thing.

[mykonian]

also he's fast. So you'd really like it if your hard cc wasn't a skillshot.

[mykonian]

Morg is an extremely safe midlaner and she has very strong extremely reliable bully damage

the second part here I'd love you to explain. On the one hand, I've seen it, experienced it, that a morg more or less kicked me out of midlane. On the other hand, I've never been able to replicate it.

[mykonian]

On topic, I find it hilarious when people I know say that you're not actually "good" at the game until some seemingly arbitrary milestone.

Eh, we compared it to a sport around here, but say you compared it to a mind sport. One could know learn how to move the pieces and be beaten by the first newbie who throws you into a series of forks. And if you don't play the newbie, you don't even get how somehow your pieces kept disappearing, how there were no good moves.

Bronzies know how their champ works. You see the odd insec there, they can use skillshots, they can do some basic combo's. Play someone a little better than you, and you feel you have a shot, but somehow your opponent had more opportunities of punishing you. Play someone a lot better than you and you don't even know what hit you but for some reason there aren't any good moves and you are hemorrhaging gold, they are always earlier where you should have been, etc.

And it's not that you couldn't have played the same, you know the moves of all the pieces. You don't even get how you are beaten, what makes the difference. Let me play against someone worse and I'm laughing at the mistakes they make by me throwing them into uncomfortable positions, where I know what the "correct" response was. It's easy to call them bad, Because it's so

obvious

how it should be played, otoh, it's a bit hypocritical to say the same doesn't happen to me. So I must be bad too?


And just to annoy Dwlee, I have 25 sivir games, 12 won, 13 lost, average kills 3.9, deaths 4.6, assists 7.4. Farm per minutes is irrelevant, I think I get on average a little ahead out of lane, but after that Sivir has a tendency of hoarding the farm so that's cheating. That's a role I'm not really comfortable with, just filling, and it's good enough for low gold.

[mykonian]

I know you are baiting here, but for the benefit of others,I guess :/

I don't understand how mykonian's example doesn't extend to physical sports. What's the difference between beating someone in the post with a dream shake or a simple up and under and putting someone in a series of pins and forks? You must have never played a real sport before.

I was in the top 10% of one sport at one time, dabbled in some others.

Where the analogy doesn't work as well is the "moves". You can explain the movement of a knight, you can't just explain a forehand in tennis and expect the newbie to get it right. It doesn't

matter

that he doesn't know what the effect of a cross or a straight ball is, or wether he should play a down tempo, a short, a high ball. He first has to consistently hit the ball. I'm not going to insult a top 10% tennis player saying that getting nearly all forehands in the sweet spot against the opposition he's facing is in any way similar to getting an insec kick right with lee sin. Talent and training play a different role in physical sports. So the analogy wouldn't be as clean as a mind sport, where just as in league, the basics are simple, interesting parts of the game get built on that.

[mykonian]

Frankly, I think the point of that build is to "not do shit but win." You're not building zzrot+banner so that you can contribute to fights.

Yes and no.

You do give up teamfight capabilities compared to conventional items. On the other hand, you are creating time. It's a bit different for heimer, I imagine, who only has the option of using it to crash waves into a tower, but the average tank that builds this shit can use it to free his hand to move elsewhere on the map, creating a lose-lose situation for his opponent. Follow and his tower will get hit, don't follow and let the rest of the map deal with a 5v4. A pushing wave always has this property, it creates opportunity. It's not a strictly selfish build.

[mykonian]

you are now an Azir main. I'm sorry. This is just how life goes sometimes.

Well then.

Lollypoppy.

[mykonian]

Watch the cd's. You don't get to auto malph or ali, till they used ult/headbutt. Decently long cd's. Walk away like psyche says till those are down, then you get to return the favour. Panth stun is too short and he's too squish to work that way. Deal with his ult, otherwise he shouldn't get to the position where he can stun you.

[mykonian]

I don't trust the builds that site presents. Too often they did not fit with what I thought to know about building the champions I played.

[mykonian]

It's happened before, but nowadays, I know the Illaoi build is faulty. From what I have seen other people buy, from what the better illaoi "mains" play, etc. And from what I can deduce logically myself. First item according to champ.gg is cleaver. Which isn't a very good item for her. It's too offensive, cleaver gives percentage armor pen which you can't use yet (not that much armor around yet), and becomes abusive when you have a ad-dot or a combo series you can pull off. Illaoi has neither, she has big damage moves and is slow to put them out, having a very poor attackspeed and her tentacles apart from her q being unreliable.

The item you do want is gauntlet, which helps your waveclear, sets up your combos since a slow zone is very practical when your opponent is trying to dodge slow predictable tentacles, and it gives you

some

control, as well as more tankiness, and it synergises very well with your given second item which is steraks. That item both builds agree on and it plays to her strengths. "If" you get cleaver and that isn't an obvious choice imo, you get it after that, when it's competing with defensive options, most notably visage.

[mykonian]

Exactly. There was a site that was linked somewhere a while ago that had the people who were "best" at a certain champion. There was the odd cleaver builder there, more gauntlets.

Anyway, that just shows the limitations of champion.gg, you dont get the why, you don't get the details, you just get a series of items which may or may not be practical.

[mykonian]

And idk, excepting a very poor or very good laning phase your first item is probably a given. Your second item in many cases already has a choice based on what's going on in the game, depending on champion. After that, a single buildpath really doesn't do much for you, I think. With the ADC rework, I can't think of too many champions anymore that have a clear cut 3 item path that they couldn't deviate from. Kog maybe. But otherwise you'd build to what your opponents threats are, what your team needs.

[mykonian]

I wouldn't think support Morg would have an option and Q would be required at lv 1, but I hate botlane and don't claim to understand it.

In many a matchup starting w means you win the race to lv2.

[mykonian]

indeed

[mykonian]

I'd happily avoid running the risk of playing with a 4 man premade too.

[mykonian]

Basically, I'm not convinced that "These premades are fucking over my ranking" is nothing but an excuse.

They are fucking over my games. Can't really be too bothered with the rest.

[mykonian]

But that's not really the point midget, I'd be ok with that. An average rager does it because he had a bad day at work, or last game had a leaver, he's in his final promo, etc. Occasionally they are just a dick, but I have the feeling that this is sort of rare, most people vent pressure at the unsuspecting souls that wandered into their ranked game. Then you get premades, and the whole dynamic changes. There's always an "us" and a "them". The guy who's vocal feels the need to deflect from his teammates bad performance, and regardless if the game isn't going as planned they feel much more supported to go looking for someone else to talk about. The amount of times you get stupid premature and directed rage towards one player from a group of soloplayers is so much smaller than when premades are involved. IMO, it's quite toxic to any team environment.

[mykonian]

I'd say so yes. Then again I probably die a little too often.

[mykonian]

hmm, see if I can bait psyche.

Been doing my promo's in EU on a low level account and messed around with teemo. I like tank teemo, think it's the way to go for him, and in normal games facing the gnars of this world it feels dumb that ranged tops can run grasp of the undying. So why not teemo? Now that part isn't too silly, you get some regen, you get some health, some tenacity (because getting locked down sucks) and you are set to take advantage of your global taunt. Starting item is always a bit dependent on opponent, but after that I've been messing around with raptor cloak against ad champions. It's regen (yay) it's armor (yay) which make it a "fair" item, which isn't really enough. But if you do find yourself around a turret, it's at least 160% gold efficient, and more if you do buy boots. Now as soon as a tower falls, these are also the points where you put your backup shrooms so you can kite back into your lane. It makes a longer lane quite managable.

With grasp mallet is a more obvious choice than it already was, and you are less incentivised to get the mad attackspeed to get your toxic shot used, since you can get only the grasp hit in every 4 seconds. So there's no harm in delaying the bortk/rageblade/wits end (probably in the order of importance there). As long as you don't get bursted, you are quite able to kite and let toxic shot/grasp work for you.

I still have to try it on NA against proper opponents, but with proper runes (I do suspect having attackspeed runes and actual defensive seals/quints might be useful), but it doesn't feel bad? What are you guys thinking about this?

[mykonian]

Nah, it's what psyche says. The more you play the less you drop. I've got the same. It's a lot easier to get chests while in a premade (it doesn't take that much for one of you to get an S).

[mykonian]

<3

I'm gonna ask a super noob question: What do I do when I naturally push the lane? If I'm playing something like rumble or ekko in top lane where trading means the lane pushes up, what do I do at level 3 or 4 when the second wave is in their tower and I'm not safe enough to stay that far up? Mid is usually not in a position for a gank/roam at this point, and I only have a rank in my three basic abilities anyway. So I'm not really ready to roam and kill mid.

Is the solution just "don't manage your wave that bad, Oman, you idiot"? Is there anything I can take advantage of? Help me

Adding to Rayfrosts post:

I mean, there are degrees, but there are different places the wave can be, and different places the wave can push. An even wave that's on their side of the lane is going to push towards you in due time. The wave can sit in the middle, on their side, or in their tower range. Now a wave that's pushing towards them and is on their side but not in their tower is hell. This is the one you need to avoid. A wave in their tower is

great

you are getting free tower damage, people do not last hit perfectly, and they have no time to harrass if you do get your shots in, or you have all the time in the world to go b or do something as rayfrost says. Because a minute from that time, the wave that was in their tower has been decimated, but the new creeps meet on their side of the map: so the wave pushes towards you given the creeps are equal.

Which seems great but has it's downsides as well. If their creeps are in the majority, you'll have to avoid trades. While on the other hand if you are pushing, it's comparatively easy to stand in your wave and threaten your opponent when he wants to last hit. So a wave in the middle that's pushing either way gives opportunities, but also has it's limits.

So suppose you have that pushing champ and you know this is going to happen, you could try to press your advantage a bit harder when you are pushing, against a bad opponent maybe even get him low enough that a dive is an option when the wave hits the tower, or if that doesn't work, at least make sure you push hard enough that your opponent cannot keep the wave away from the tower.

[mykonian]

They made the most common runes cheaper too. So your base set mr blues, armor yellows, ad & mpen reds, AD & AP quints is about 7.7k. Its not strictly optimal for most champions, but otoh the difference between ad quints and as quints on an adc is really not going to make the difference in the average game.

[mykonian]

That were two games where it took 5 min for the team to implode with raging. You know you can't win, you are miserable for 30 min because naturally surrendering is out of the question to "make the other suffer". So the last hour of gametime has seen 50 min where I'm wondering what the point of queuing up even is, and 10 min of actually playing the game.

This is a fun game.

[mykonian]

But hey Riot loves nerfing champions that take skill to use at full potential

*coughleesincough*

Eh, anyone could play lee. And they did.

[mykonian]

people say jinx is a hypercarry, but her winrate over game length is about the same as jhin's? is she just not a hypercarry anymore? am i reading old news?

I don't have stats to back this up, but what makes jinx strong with 3/4 items is still the same: a long range AoE barrage of rockets and then the reset to clean up the teamfight. She's reasonably safe, esspecially when the first kill drops, and while she's no kog, her dps should be high. Twitch is an odd duck that's up there, and Draven should not be allowed to get his continious hits off that would make his dps as high as possible.

Jhin's curve though, is

weird

. Early game he's ye olde long range ability adc. He has the ability of creating many a favorable trade. With one damage item, he's fine too, basically his dps goes where any other adc would have gone as well. The trouble starts when he builds attackspeed. Because his passive does mean huge amounts of ad, if you do the math, you see that other adc's get quite a bit more DPS out of the same combination, because they do get the full benefit of crit chance and AS. The tradeoff is obviously that his abilities do suddenly scale with attackspeed (in a way), but the trick will be getting that to work for you to the extent that it overcomes the autoattack dps drop gets overcome. Get a bit later in the game though, and jhin's dream world comes to be. Every kill creates a slowing zone which will do a silly amount of damage if it pops, and every single crit (which will be the majority of his hits at that point) give him (also scaling) movement speed. You get your free mobility just from doing your job, not quite as much as jinx does, but then again, your kill bonuses help you control your battlefield as well. He's a very safe adc at that point. Ult is just the cherry on top.

[mykonian]

so did you figure out what changed about you between when you were moaning about the games in high bronze and now?

[mykonian]

@fate, he used to pretty much only play vayne or lb and ehm, you could do vaynespotting with him. Mechanics were there, mentality sadly too. Too busy with nonimportant issues in and out of the game and looking too hard for the outplays and "carrying".

It's why I asked before, because I didn't think the only change was to easier, more team oriented picks (there was a stint of ashe picks, iirc), and suspected the focus might also be on the right things now. IDK if dwlee sees it that way.

[mykonian]

and you swear you are gold, right?

[mykonian]

which champions are the best/easiest when it comes to carrying a team once individually ahead

it seems the word i'm looking for is "snowball"?

I disagree with this. I know it's my favorite role, but I also believe that it's the easiest to transfer being ahead in to a win on a tank. An extra item means you can carry fights that much more, take the brunt of the mistakes/hesitance of your teammates and brute force fights that you think are favourable.

Until you've reached the point where the adc's have 4 items, but you know, that's when fakegod can have his fun

[mykonian]

and you swear you are gold, right?

I'm going back to this comment, because i'm seriously perplexed as to whether your being snarky or whether your being serious about this, and it's bothering the back of my mind.

I'm low gold, nothing special. I cannot remember the last game where I was part of 50 kills. And you had less than 5 deaths. How wasn't that game over before the killscore could even reach those numbers. It's not a question that I don't know how that came to be (lots of messy teamfights where one guy got caught then everybody piled on, after which the few survivors went b to repeat it a minute later again), it's that I don't associate it with the games I play or see being played. To me it shows that teams didn't know how to win, just knew how to control their character.

[mykonian]

isn't annie bot the terror of Coop vs AI games anymore? You'd think gif ran into her

[mykonian]

close to page 2000!

you are good at this.

[mykonian]

Also currently in game 5 of my gold promo's on euw. Eek!

[mykonian]

ok, so this mage update. I'm a bit sceptical. It's a lot of noise, but if you look at it, what's really happening?

Cass is getting some unique stuff done to her. Not morde level, but they are exploring. Malz was too old and his kit showed this. He needed some work done and from my point of view that update has pronounced his strengths at no cost. Those are the big ones.

Then you get a whole slew of guys that basically do not change, but are buffs. Brand new passive shifts his power towards teamfights from lane. Big deal. Zyra gets more seeds to play with, vlad gets an in kit slow and movespeed buff, tibbers stays alive after annie dies, swain gets 5 birds in stead of 3, and a buff on torment. Xerath gets more ult shots. Numbers get boosted a little here and there. The only character I see nerfed a bit is fiddle, and you can debate velkoz (he got more power, but it's hidden further away). And none of these changes are impactful, like cass/malz. It's just a general rise of powerlevel.

Now that's not the only change, they are bringing new items! They allow you to get another ability with an AP ratio (a la old dfg), but it's aoe so it's impact is in the same area where these guys are already strong, in teamfights, giving more control over your position. Either way, more options, obviously the powerlevel increases. Now that's not the only thing that changes. Suddenly in the defensive mid items, cdr appears. After the last item changes, cdr has been hard to find (lucidity nerfed, cdr in masteries is awkward) if you aren't ad or a tank. It's back! Yes I do think that makes life for mages a lot easier. And to get through that awful laning phase, we now have early game items that give regen (catalyst and chalice) and seem practical. Yes, that will improve their laning. It was never very available to midlaners, but here we are.

At that point you already get that this mage update is indeed quite a general buff to anything that builds ap, and mostly those who can get away with a more defensive buildpath, but to make that 100% sure, the main tank options of actually dealing with this, cowl and visage, are eating a nerf. Prepare yourselves for the bulky ap tops, because they are bringing regen, and your early defensive option isn't as readily available

This is a rather heavyhanded buff, with little creativity apart from the malz rework that was someday going to happen, the cass rework, and the 2 hextech items and Riot seems to be selling it as an update alike the marksman one. I get that they would want to cash in on that success some more, but here I'll be disappointed. They are taking characters that are fine, just fun champions with decent winrates, and are forcefully pushing them in the meta by making them stronger in every respect.