League of Legends (Old)

[zoraster]

he has the highest win rate in plat+ games anyway.

[zoraster]

this was the only thing that changed from last patch (48% win rate) to this patch (56% win rate):

Zilean
Not much to see here. We noticed this interaction was sluggish, so a quick tune-up was in order to get Zil's combo back up to speed.
W - Rewind
SYNCHRONIZED TIME BOMBS Fixed a bug that was causing Zilean's Q-W-Q combo to fire slower than intended.

[zoraster]

2-0 in promos into gold. If I lose the next three I will be sad.

[zoraster]

I went 3-0 this promo series. This is the last 30 seconds of that last game:



I literally cannot imagine a more dramatic way to get into Gold than that.

[zoraster]

Same situation but 2-2 in promos, obviously.

Okay. Fair enough.

So now the question is: do I try to raise my other account from Silver IV to Gold V or just continue to use my "smurf" to try to advance further in Gold?

[zoraster]

I think it makes sense that your later-created account would be at a higher rank, since you probably improved over time.

You should stick with your smurf and get to G1.

Won't I just hate myself for not being able to make Plat 5?

And actually I think it has some to do with being a later created account, but also some in my focus on supporting. I think I probably play at a mid-gold level support, particularly mage support (24-7 on Sona+Soraka to get to Gold). But I'm mostly trying not to be a hindrance in other roles (except maybe ADC where I'm probably at Gold 5 level exactly.)

[zoraster]

Support only has 2 destinations man.

what do you mean?

[zoraster]

well, it's 800 games, so not exactly nothing. http://champion.gg/champion/Zilean/Support

[zoraster]

Diamond here I come!

[zoraster]

uh well. i don't think that's a high risk with me. my flaming stays untyped.

[zoraster]

Explain.

The crab scales off ad. Your silence and ult still retain utility without AP (and your others do because people freak out about DOT spells and will think you're still AP).

At least that's how I understand it

[zoraster]

If what you want is the highest winrate support, it's Brand.

Janna does best overall in solo queue still and has for ages.

what's this in response to?

[zoraster]

qq i lost practice and now i suck with teemo
either that or this touchpad isn't as good as my old one

you'll spend a ton of money on a laptop but won't spend 20 bucks on a decent mouse? come on man. League of Legends is basically a game of precision clicking.

[zoraster]

seriously, psyche. use a mouse.

[zoraster]

and this must be the hedonic treadmill i keep reading about
next you'll be telling me to get a desktop to accompany my laptop
right??

You're playing league of legends. It's not exactly a game that needs a lot of resources. A laptop is perfectly fine. The difference between playing with a mouse and playing with a touchpad, however, is huge.

You can fit this into your weird thing where you make nearly unintelligible snarky remarks, but it's just an honest suggestion that a mouse is superior to a touchpad.

[zoraster]

I've thought about getting a gaming mouse so that I can map some pings or activated items to the mouse. Does anyone do this? Is it worth adjusting to?

I have a mouse that has a couple of thumb buttons as well as on-the-fly DPI adjustment buttons. I have attack+click+move set to the thumb buttons and use it some when playing ADC (primarily when I need to make very quick kiting attacks), but honestly I could easily play without that and it wouldn't matter. The extra buttons and DPI setting are far more useful in FPS than league.

Given the amount of clicking and what not, comfort >>>>>>>>>> buttons.

[zoraster]

what's the benefits of attack+move?

I hear lots of that, but i've never understood why its superior

it's usually attack+move+click actually (and i'm pretty sure that's what he means).

Two main reasons: first, kiting. Kiting requires at least two clicks: an attack on an enemy on one side of your screen and then a click to keep moving on the opposite side of the screen. If you instead use attack+move+click, all you have to do (usually) is use that, then right click without even moving your cursor (though you do have to wait for the minimum attack animation). At the very least, those super quick mouse moves don't have to be as precise.

Second, to keep you from wrong clicking -- at worst, canceling your attack animation. Simplest example: you're in lane and you're smart so you are ALWAYS moving unpredictably as possible. Then you want to kill a minion. So you click on it. Except ooops! you clicked beside it! Suddenly you miss a CS. Obviously not the end of the world, but a small thing. Now consider a team fight, particularly against champions with blink or dash. You go to attack ekko except in the instant you click he's not there. You instead start moving toward that point, putting you out of position. Whoops! IF you had used attack+move+click, you probably would have still attacked him.

Position is always a very important thing in league of legends. For an ADC, I'd argue it's THE most important thing. If you put yourself in positions where you can put damage on enemies and they can't put damage on you, you win team fights even if you're somewhat behind (what ADC hasn't gone 0-3-0 in lane only to end up something like 8-4-5 at the end). Attack+move+click may not be strictly necessary for positioning, but it's a huge tool to assure that you're positioning exactly where you want to go.

[zoraster]

what? i'm talking about the command it sends to the game, not your actual button. You can program it to attack+move+click whenever you say the words: "COMPUTER: ATTACK ENEMY" if you want.

If you just do attack+move you also need to left click (like you would if you don't have smart cast on and you pressed Q). I think anyway.

[zoraster]

i mean you can if you're using AAs, but it's probably not that pressing.

It's not bad because if you're substituting AMC for right click you're going to be trying to click the minion (or as near as possible) anyway. If you click on a minion or right by it, it'll attack the right one.

[zoraster]

qualified for promos to gold IV off of a weird game where kalista and bard on the other team for some reason wanted to lane swap with their ryze. I was top (for the first time in probably 30 games) as lissandra, so it was kind of nice... just had to not die... getting even a handful of CS and full experience would be a success.

How often do other people face a lane swap? I feel like i've only seen it done maybe one other time in all my games.

[zoraster]

yeah i think in a lane swap you need to either (1) know how to freeze the lane and deny farm or (2) get jungler help and dive+take tower. Just pushing the lane is awesome for the person getting 1v2ed because you're safe. Usually farming under turret sucks because you'll miss CS, but better get half a wave of CS than get denied every CS in a lane freeze.

[zoraster]

promoted to gold IV while doing 3.9k damage to the enemy as ADC which somehow ended in 5 kills. I have done what I set out to do: have a full Tier in between my two accounts.

[zoraster]

i'll admit. i laughed.

[zoraster]

uh i didn't get a champion on my main. am I toxic?

I got corki on the other.

[zoraster]

uh i didn't get a champion on my main. am I toxic?

I got corki on the other.

it's for having the linked fb account and presumably it won't let you link the same fb account to more than one lol account

It let me link both, but it's possible it didn't let me get the champion from linking on both? Which would be fair.

Maybe you didn't get the pool points on your main? You seem not to play it so...

You can Def link multiple accounts to one FB.

I actually try to use it when I'm playing with friends (in a party) because it has lots of champions and the other one only has 18 champs (19 with corki!), and I like to play with different champions when I'm not being judged too harshly by my teammates.

[zoraster]

I mean people choose to spend money. It's a pretty easy game not to spend money on. You just need 16 champions to play ranked and some runes. That doesn't take THAT long to do.

There are 12 450 champs, then add 4 1350 champs and that's 10,800 IP -- easily less than what you make leveling to 30. You can easily compete in ranked with level 2 runes, which are super super cheap. Setting up two pages (AP and AD) rune pages of Level 2 runes costs about 2500 IP. So to play in ranked you need to have about 13,300 IP -- which is about what it costs to buy two recent champs. It is definitely not prohibitive. If you want level 3 runes, things are more expensive but still easily achievable.

The thing that makes people spend money (other than wanting pretty skins) is wanting to play newer champions, which is fine, but it's also totally unnecessary.

450 Champ rundown:
Top: Ryze, Garen, Kayle, Poppy, Warwick
Jungle: Warwick, Nunu, Yi, Amumu
Mid: Annie, Ryze, Kayle
ADC: Ashe, Sivir
Support: Soraka, Annie

Add in 4 1350 Champs of your choice but for example: Janna, Cho'Gath, Morgana, Tristana

This is a totally playable ranked roster. ADCs have two of the very best ADCs in the game. Annie is almost a criminally underestimated mid-laner. Janna is consistently in all metas a top tier support. Morgana gives huge flexibility. Jungle gives you Nunu and Amumu which are two great junglers.

[zoraster]

he leverages his popularity into skin gifts.

[zoraster]

click add friend then click the facebook thing.

[zoraster]

They're hugely cost effective, they're just not optimal. With Tier 3 runes you're paying a lot for more marginal gains. Don't get me wrong: upgrading to Tier 3 runes is the first thing you should do after acquiring the requisit 16 and before acquiring more champions. But it's perfectly viable to use Tier 2 runes in ranked. And while a third page is nice, it's not really necessary if you use your rune pages to be flexible rather than optimized to a role (AD quints instead of AS quints, for example).

Let's take an example comparing Tier 3 and 2 runes and see how much we're really missing out:

AD Runes, Tier 2: 9x AD Marks (6.66 AD), 3x AD Quints (5.25 AD), 9x Armor Seals (7.02 Armor), 9x MR Runes (9.36 MR)
AD Runes, Tier 3: 9x AD Marks (8.55 AD), 3x AD Quints (6.75 AD), 9x Armor Seals (9 Armor), 9x MR Runes (12.06 MR)

So overall you get 11.91 AD, 7 Armor, 9.36 MR from Tier 2 and 15.3 AD, 9 Armor, and 12.06 MR for Tier 3

So by using Tier 2 runes you miss out on 3.39 AD, 2 Armor, 2.7 MR. It cost you 1245 IP to buy the Tier 2 runes and 8,610 IP to buy Tier 3.

To use gold efficiency as a comparison, you miss out on 122 gold in AD, 40 gold in armor, 54 gold in MR for a total handicap of 216 gold.

That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's also not going to keep someone from competing. That's particularly true of someone who is just starting, where the marginal differences in Runes is negligible compared to the high variability in skill and a lack of consistencies of both the player and enemies.

[zoraster]

With your suggested line up you have 2 champs catching 30% plus win rates, and 2 champs that are bottom tier in all their roles. So in a 3rd of your games your viable champ rotation is gonna look like

Top: Garen
Jungle: Nunu Warwick Amumu
Mid: annie, morg,
ADC: Ashe, Sivir
Support: Janna morgana soraka.

Also wait. I don't understand this. What champions are you tralking about with a "30% win rate"? And why discount Ryze and Cho of all champs? Tristana and Kayle are solid too. Even Poppy has a fine win rate.

[zoraster]

ah okay. Yeah definitely have to worry about the bans on those right now.

Yes, they lowered them a ton. They cost 35 IP for the marks, seals and glyphs and 100 for the quints.

[zoraster]

It greatly depends on what you think a "waste" is. I think level 2 runes make leveling from 20 to 30 significantly easier and more fun for a very slight cost (and vs. no runes, you may have a better win rate and thus win more IP). And they're still usable after that point if you need to (I only recently bought the rest of my Tier 3 runes on my smurf).

[zoraster]

Oh right. Not that you have enough IP to buy all Tier 3s by then unless you spend RP on champs.

[zoraster]

I rescind what I said about Tier 2 runes not being cost effective because I didn't know about the 5.1 rune changes. I still feel they aren't viable especially when you are already at a skill deficit.

Kayle just straight not good wazza

Yeah i mean it depends on what you want to get out of it. But the question is whether you can play this game for free and if so how long does it take before the game is really playable. If you just want to play Normals, obviously Tier 2 runes are okay and you only need a few champs to play in draft mode. If you want to play ranked, the question is harder. But I don't think the deficit between someone who has only the minimum expenditure on champs and Tier 2 runes cannot play in Ranked without getting schooled. The difference is probably at most a a division or two, and presumably once you pick up your Tier 3s, you'll move up accordingly.

That said, new players shouldn't play ranked that quickly anyway not because of runes or a lack of champion availability but because they need to get some experience with the meta game so as not to totally annoy their ranked teammates.

Like... obviously my experience with an alternate account isn't indicative of a new player's experience, but I played ranked on that account with almost those conditions (I did spend some RP to buy Sona, Lissandra and Graves). I have three rune pages, but rarely use the third. And I only this week finalized my tier 3 rune conversion.

[zoraster]

The argument isn't whether or not the game is free. It is free. The argument is whether a new player has a large advantage spending money over other new players who don't spend money. I think it's a definitive yes. The noob with more champion options and better runes has a competitive advantage over the not spending money noob. But the guy playing for free can close the gap by playing more.

Diana is really good.

Yeah I agree with this to an extent.

It's just a question of how quickly that gap is closed. If it's closed before level 30, it's not really something worth worrying a lot about in my eyes. You can't spend money on Runes directly, which is the most clear way to pay to win. But since you don't have to spend IP on champions (or you buy an IP boost), you can get there quicker. The benefits of a larger champion pool diminishes quickly, particularly in normal games where the free rotation has lots of different options.

I think rather than paying to win people who spend money pay to make the game more interesting. The 450 champions are of varied win rates, but you can carve out plenty of success just playing them (heck, there are master/challenger players who only play Annie and only ever play Soraka). But just playing these champions can get kind of dull.

[zoraster]

Sona with ardent censer is pretty powerful now. My understanding is that both the healed character as well as all those shielded by your aura get the bonus

[zoraster]

Kind of like Galio but against AD?

[zoraster]

Darius, garden, malph, and tryn all have good win rates against wukong

He has super high win rates against many others

[zoraster]

Like, to be clear - if Wu's laning weren't shit, he'd be a top tier pick in pro play because his team fight is amazing.

Honestly, ani may have some blind spots but he knows what the eff he's talking about when it comes to the monkey.

[zoraster]

The only non tank counter to Wukong is Tryndamere.

Darius and Fiona both seem to do well. But meta champs like gnar get wrecked.

[zoraster]

Ap builds will be interesting for a bit as people come to terms with the ap changes

[zoraster]

Like, to be clear - if Wu's laning weren't shit, he'd be a top tier pick in pro play because his team fight is amazing.

Pro play and everyone else is a completely different game.

Wu is quite often first blooder/dominates lane (heck he's so good in lane Mid wukomg was top tier like 2 patches ago)

The core differences are that you have larger skill variance and you don't have to respect the jungler as much. Saying that Wukong is good in lane because you're better than your opponent is different than saying that Wukong is objectively good in lane.

I don't mean to say win rates are everything, but plat+ he has almost a 55% win rate top

[zoraster]

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)

You can get away with not playing a tank champion. Don't let people in champ select guilt you either -- they're saying things like "we need a support tank" because they wanted to go some glass cannon top and think that a support tank can rectify that. But the important thing to realize is that as a support you're at best an off-tank. You have neither the gold nor the slot efficiency to be truly tanky. That's why the popular tank supports tend to have temporary tank buffs: Alistar's ult, Leona's W, and Naut's shield all give those champions temporary ability to act like a real tank. So if your team is coordinated, it works well because you can play around your CD. But if the enemy team is poking you down, or your team can't act within your cooldown, you're basically a pretty weak bruiser without damage.

If you're having trouble with tank supports and want to add one to your roster without knowing how to really play a tank well, get comfortable with Taric. Even if your positioning is bad as a tank, you're at least letting your more useful team members get tankier.

[zoraster]

Btw if you're using pinks against an alkali or what not, just get a pink ward trinket. Yes you miss out on sweeping frequently but you can use your ward to clear baron or drag.

[zoraster]

broadcasting Iec's Gold Promo games: http://www.twitch.tv/bronze2silver don't have any shoutcasters.

[zoraster]

i love jinx i love jinx i love jinx

Jinx is incredibly powerful, but you do have to rely on teammates and position well.

[zoraster]

I've got some alcohol in my glass. Would anyone care to do some ranked 5s?

[zoraster]

Because games can be decided by RNjesus?

This. Laning phase with ie rush turns into whoever crits first.

I feel like it's really rare for laning to involve an IE on either side. Heck, laning is usually over by the time one person gets an IE.

[zoraster]

to me, the big thing that keeps anyone from ever doing anything other than IE (other than those that rely on BOTRK AS) is there's no way to trade RNG damage with consistent damage. The closest you can come is to either buy two BF swords off the bat (100 AD vs. IE's 80 AD), but even right off the bat with no PD or Shiv you end up losing out on expected damage (104 expected damage per shot vs. 100, not including base AD which is also multiplied by crit damage). If you go BT, you're losing out on an expected 24 damage per shot, which falls to 32 damage per shot you're giving up with a Shiv second item or 38 if you take PD as a second item.

IE+Shiv: 128
IE+PD: 146
BT+Shiv: 96
BT+PD: 108
BT+Zephyr (same AS as PD): 105

Obviously BT has its shield and lifesteal component that makes it theoretically playable as a first item that the IE doesn't have, but generally people want damage as their first item on an ADC. Also, even though it's cheaper, BT has kind of an annoying build path because it still has the big outlay of a BF sword, but it also requires a big payoff to finish the item. Admittedly, the IE's Cloak isn't the most useful thing to buy as a stepping stone item, but there are plenty of instances where I can come back with the 645 gold rather than 1150 gold to finish the item.

Anyway, back to my point. Which is that it seems okay to me that IE does more but inconsistent damage (RNG doesn't bother me hugely), but there should also be an option for damage that is consistently more and almost comparable. That's probably a multi-item problem though because the AS items also involve Crit chance, which compounds the 250% crit damage of the IE. I guess Zephyr is the other way to go?

[zoraster]

I don't like that a multiplier-based, Deathcap-type item like IE ends up being a first buy. To me, that should be a red flag.

Maybe they should just increase the combine cost, so that it's not an efficient buy until you already have some attack speed and other stats that can make the crit passive worth the multiplier investment.

It would similarly be a red flag if mages all built Deathcap-first.

Well only sort of. It'd be the same if there were crit damage items that people built. Or if IE was just "multiply AD by X%" Yes, in some ways it practically does the same thing by increasing the expected value, but it still operates considerably differently. IE is already the most expensive item in the game.

[zoraster]

Right, I get that. But that's not a small issue or difference when actually playing the game. Consistency is important because even though we like to pretend that ADCs are able to do straight DPS, there's a lot more going on in most situations.

[zoraster]

what is interesting is that crit in its current form operates somewhat as an evening factor. If everyone played ADC just building straight AD all the time and just shot at each other a bunch, the one with more items would win every time. But in a duel between someone with an IE and someone with an IE+Zeal, even though the one is 1.1k ahead, there is a not-tiny chance that the person who is behind will come out ahead (getting 2 crits at 20% while the other guy gets 0 crits at 30% will easily make up for the difference in attack speed)

[zoraster]

League of Legends is first and foremost a competitive game. Randomness should not exist in competitive games in any capacity.

I mean this is clearly untrue. I don't care one way or the other about crits, but "randomness" plays a role in many competitive environments. Poker as an example (but also Bridge, Scrabble, etc.). But it's not "randomness" in the sense of "I have no control over this" because you can influence and value that randomness.

[zoraster]

There is something immensely satisfying to a successful teleport.

[zoraster]

why?

[zoraster]

I don't think ani is a support main?

[zoraster]

If you get a couple of kills bot, you should get dragon too.

[zoraster]

why can't tahm top?

[zoraster]

I thought Tahm to be very situational and kinda feels as a Braum in lane and teamfights to an extent. He relies heavily on other people.

On the other hand, tried Sejuani last night after not playing her for a while. This bitch snowballs hard holy shit. Am I the only one though that likes to run exp runes in the jungle on junglers that spike at lvl6?

how many fewer camps do exp runes allow you to do to hit six?

[zoraster]

no, probably not. Spend it on 6300 IP champs who are on sale, but only do champions that you've played on free week. You'll want a 3rd rune page eventually, but it's definitely not necessary at this point -- you won't have enough IP to have a meaningfully different rune page yet.

[zoraster]

to be fair, when someone buys a botted account they'll almost certainly rename it.

[zoraster]

I am playing teemo in ranked for the first time ever. that is all.

[zoraster]

mid ez IS a late game carry.

http://champion.gg/champion/Ezreal/Middle

His win rate increases over time. In games that end before 25 minutes he has a 43% win rate. In games that last 35+ minutes, he has a 52.5% win rate. He does the most damage per game of ANY champion in the game.

The runeglaive changes haven't done anything to decrease his win rate.

[zoraster]

Yeah, I don't think that much of ADC ez, but you can't really decide to ban mid Ez and not ADC ez.

But it shows it broken down by patch.

I'm not saying mid ez is necessarily OP, just that he's worthy of a ban.

[zoraster]

The AP item changes seem more appropriate for between season updates than they are in the middle of a season... That along with adding runeglaive has made for some major whiplash.

[zoraster]

oops. deleted my post right after esp posted that so now he looks like a crazy person. my bad, esp

[zoraster]

You'd kind of expect it to be worse when it's so much cheaper. It's 1400 gold for the runeglaive enchant (yes, you need the base jungler item, but this is (a) expected and (b) offers a lot of utility on its own) vs. 3000 for the lichbane.

[zoraster]

What?

[zoraster]

I don't get pissed off that the Pickaxe is basically a shittier version of a BF Sword when I play ADC. Gold matters. You achieve Runeglaive+Jungler item at 2250 gold, which gets you the runeglaive enchant plus the jungling item smite for 750 gold less than lich bane. That's a huge, huge difference in cost and ability to get the item early.

[zoraster]

which champion should i get if i want to impress the ladies

My wife loves Gnar.

[zoraster]

Who other than fiddles was super hurt by it?

[zoraster]

it's not really that low, particularly if you pick him into a good matchup.

[zoraster]

Who other than fiddles was super hurt by it?

Any non-AAing mage jungler.

who other than fiddle doesn't weave in AAs? The only reason Fiddle doesn't is because his CD and his channel time are similar.

I'm serious. Sure you may not use AAs that often in a fight, but almost all the AP Junglers I can think of use AAs when they're clearing their jungle to some degree.

[zoraster]

Yeah. I'm really up in arms that they took away Annie's ability to jungle effectively. Also, didn't people play Malzahar AD in the jungle?

[zoraster]

okay i've looked back pretty far and you haven't played any of those in the jungle recently, so I'm not sure I'm going to weep for you and your off-off meta champs.

You HAVE played a lot of naut though!

[zoraster]

bah dah dum!

[zoraster]

what does this ww build? i assume devourer + wit's end but beyond that?

[zoraster]

You have more than 140 characters on here, Esp

[zoraster]

Don't base your opinion of what is OP by ARAM.

[zoraster]

really? after playing almost exclusively Heimer and Teemo, it was singed that got you hate?

[zoraster]

why is BOTRK build as a second item on Corki?

[zoraster]

... It shouldn't be?

Corki gets a lot(!) out of raw AD and isn't a big attack speed dude. BT is a better option.

It's the most common build Plat+ as well as the build that pros usually use. I'm just trying to figure out why. I guess it gives some Attack speed and damage in one item since most of the time you don't have the luxury of a crit+AS item like shiv/PD because of the need for triforce

[zoraster]

League of Tanks is done, but against tanks BOTRK is better than BT anyway because AAs deal 8% of current health and its active is even better.

The extra AD from BT (80 vs. 25) is about 6 extra damage per AA from corki's passive, but of course BOTRK has more attack speed.

Personally I'd be more tempted to go second item IE than BOTRK/BT. Walking around without crits is sad times.

[zoraster]

I mean Corki is more of an ad caster than a conventional carry, focusing on crits is a great way to spend a lot of money not making your missiles, bombs, or gatlings any stronger

Well the crit part maybe not, but IE is still better for Phos bomb, missiles and gatling gun than BOTRK is. Plus except for when you're long distance missile sniping, presumably you're weaving in AAs to proc the triforce's sheen, which the crit is meaningful for but attack speed isn't very meaningful.

If you're using Corki as an ADC, of course. If you want to just focus on casting, you're better off with the AP items' higher numbers and better passives and better penetration options.

[zoraster]

playing ADC can be kind of frustrating. Get fed... spend the next 20+ minutes trying not to die.

[zoraster]

Lucian's range is as low as jayce's. There is something very wrong with that.

I like both playing and playing against vayne.

[zoraster]

Righteous glory isn't great on soraka because you kind of want to avoid building health. Warmogs is viable because of the regen, but you're better with talisman than righteous glory and there are better uses for you. Ardent censer is a pretty good item on straka.

Consensual clown, a challenger straka only player, recently did an AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegend ... ed_top_50/

[zoraster]

It's not hard math actually. Your W (your signature ability) has a 10% max health cost. If you have 1000 health it's 100 per cast. If you have 2000 health it's 200 per cast. So while more health DOES provide some survivability, you'd much prefer to have resistances because effective hit points go up while your W cost doesn't change. It's true that the Q does return in part based on missing health, but it does so at a very low rate compared to your W's cost (if you're at 50% health, you only get an additional 0.5% of your health per enemy hit.

Overall, it's better to have AP or resistances on Soraka than health.

[zoraster]

Randuins is a much worse buy than FH. FH got her to 40% CD reduction. The aura is mostly useless as Soraka, sadly, but the extra health on Randuin's is reduced in efficiency as noted above compared to the extra Armor on FH. And the number of times you'd use the Randuin's active on Soraka is very little as a sixth item.

Both are kind of iffy though. Against that team comp, I think the best choices are AP (hourglass possibly), Warmogs or Banshee's Veil.


---

The Real Problem With the Build Isn't the 6th Item

Truthfully, reviewing it I can't believe people didn't bring up the fact that he wasted oodles of gold by waiting until the 24th minute to get a sightstone. at the 7:43 mark he bought boots, a mana potion, 4 biscuits, a pink a green, and a medallion when he could have bought (with that amount of gold) a straight sightstone and boots plus a biscuit (or if he needed that many potions, a sightstone + potions). At the 14 minute mark he in turn buys 3 green wards (spending almost a full 7 minutes with only his pink and a green on the map other than his trinket).

The medallion upgrade ONLY gets you at max 20 gold per minute when laning over a coin, and that's with perfect CSing. So over that 7 minute period, he gained at max 140 gold over coin at the cost of a ton of map vision. Then he comes back and spends 225 gold on green wards -- so he's already negated any gold gains he would have gotten for that. From 7:43 (when he could have gotten a sightstone) until 24:19 (roughly 16:30), he buys a total of 6 green wards for 450 gold he could have had in his pocket. That's a lot of wards to buy, but it's important to note that he's averaging 0.29 real wards per minute in the opening 24:19, which just isn't good enough even though he's spending a lot of gold on it.

All that's kind of interesting to me because he actually manages to place 42 wards during the game, though doubtless many are trinkets that's still a ton and a very respectable number... it just has to be pretty weighted toward the end game when the early game needs some love.

[zoraster]

Buying a sightstone after bot lane is level nine is a waste of gold. You want to have it, but at that point in the game money is better spent elsewhere seeing as everyone should be upgrading trinkets on first back after they hit level 9.

It's rare to be level 9+ and get a sightstone for me, but I disagree with this whole heartedly. First, the number of times I've seen everyone get a trinket upgrade on their first back after 9 (at least in Gold) is approximately zero. We work with the teammates we have, not the ones we wish we had. Second, if the implication is that you should just upgrade your own trinket to Great Stealth Totem, you miss out on the very important sweeper/Oracle's Lens on support. Third, assuming that you're arguing for Great Stealth Totem instead, this leaves you with a max of 2 wards to place in an instant which is less than ideal AND it means you're warding at a less than replacement rate so even if they never sweep it's impossible to keep 3 wards on the map.

As a support late game, you want to be able to keep three wards up at all time, but you ALSO want to have flexibility in where your wards are. There are plenty of times I've warded for drag and I want to run to baron to establish vision there before the other team can react, destroying wards that had only been down for a minute or so. And there are lots of instances like that.

[zoraster]

And supports. Because dare I say in this tank meta there are still enough Rumbles and Rivens top, or Yis and Udyrs jungle who don't build this

also, I think we're pretty firmly out of the tank meta now.

i'm level 30 guys!!

If you make Gold before July 1st, I'll gift you the teemo skin of your choice, Psyche.

Close than I thought you'd get.

[zoraster]

I'm in my Gold III promos with 1 win... and a very winnable game to finish them off becomes quickly unwinnable as my ping shoots up to 500+ unexpectedly and I discount repeatedly. Pretty frustrating.

[zoraster]

For a while now on my other account: http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=i+am+bad+at+this

Spoiler: June 28th as it turns out

I went 3-0 this promo series. This is the last 30 seconds of that last game:



I literally cannot imagine a more dramatic way to get into Gold than that.

[zoraster]

nice. go forth and make gold.

[zoraster]

to be fair, it's likely that he's not "Silver III" ability. He may be significantly better or worse. 10 games isn't enough to establish a true rating in a game with 5 players. It's just their best guess at this point.

[zoraster]

the garen change is pretty cool

[zoraster]

mord will never be played botlane instead of an adc ???

Be pretty powerful in a lane swap scenario since he gets solo exp even when a support is around. But I agree... hard to replace a ranged sustained damage dealer.

[zoraster]

for, at absolute maximum, 21% of the time.

[zoraster]

the problem in my eyes is that for solo queue, the meta is as much there because we don't have time or willingness to negotiate with strangers to figure out a comprehensive way to break the meta. So any meta breaking champion has to be able to pretty much do so within the confines of everyone else playing meta champs.

[zoraster]

I've been playing more and more ADC recently, because it's just open all the time.

Do people just not enjoy playing ADC any more?

I think a lot of people find it a very high stress job. You have to be really good at harass and CS while you dodge skill shots in lane. Then late game if the game is at all even, your team loses if you misposition. And it's really easy to do something dumb like miss an AA and basically cause your team the fight.

[zoraster]

Don't pick trist if you can't ADC. Pick Sivir. Much, much, much higher win rate with better matchups and no matter what happens you can provide your ult to your team.

[zoraster]

To be fair, we started talking about FakeGod here who has to play on a high Plat level when he ADCs. So we're not really talking about very basic stuff.

[zoraster]

i didn't realize PBE teemo shrooms have their duration halved (from 10 mins on the map max to 5). That may actually substantially reduce the annoyance factor of Teemo even if he can sling shrooms around now.

[zoraster]

why no ghost baron

[zoraster]

mord will never be played botlane instead of an adc ???

Be pretty powerful in a lane swap scenario since he gets solo exp even when a support is around. But I agree... hard to replace a ranged sustained damage dealer.

Nope, ADCs do shit damage to champs!

You just need a way to siege/kill turrets!

This is wrong. Not the importance to turrets, which is a big reason to have an ADC, but the "ADCs do shit damage to champs."

I assume you believe mids do far more damage to champions. Mids do more damage to champions, but only marginally so.

Average of all mid damage to champions (according to champion.gg): 23,840 vs. ADCs: 22,993.5
Top Quartile of Damage Dealers in each category: Mid: 25,540 vs. ADCS: 23,785
All champions with a play rate over 5%: Mid: 22,977 ADCs: 22,851
Adjusting damage by play rate: Mid: 23,774 vs. ADCs: 22,722


So you can see that ADCs do roughly 95% of the damage mids do right now. In comparison, adjusted by playrate, Tops do 20,824 damage per game (87.67% of mids) , Junglers do 16654 damage per game (70.05%) , Supports 9,066 (38.13%)

Of course most mids and adcs do their damage much differently. Mids do a lot more burst damage. Which is great if you're just targetting squishy targets in isolation, but grouped up with tanks, you're kind of in trouble if you can't bring the sustained damage of an ADC to the party.

[zoraster]

don't most people build Manamune on Ez?

[zoraster]

http://champion.gg/champion/Ezreal/ADC
http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Ezreal

[zoraster]

Oh god what are these recommendations for easy adcs.

If you're new to adc, stay the hell away from Ezreal and Cait. At my elo, playing vs new Caits is pretty much freelo, and I assume that extends down to plat.

Sivir is the easiest adc to play by far thanks to her ult, she's pretty braindead. Trist feels pretty clunky, but she isn't very difficult. For more immobile carries, Jinx/Ashe aren't that hard to play. Graves is fine if you want an adc with more burst.

The problem is these are two different problems.

The first is: I'm new to the game, I'm pretty bad, give me an ADC that is easy to figure out
The second is: I'm Platinum and I usually don't main ADC. Give me an ADC that I'm not going to be a total idiot with when I have to fill that role.

Caitlyn is a good suggestion to the first. It's easy to CS with her, it's easy to figure out what she does (point at the enemy. click the enemy), other than her sort of counterintuitive escape, all her abilities are super easy to figure out. The biggest challenge is positioning, but when you first start out, positioning is hard on everyone.

Caitlyn is a bad suggestion to the second. If you made plat and you don't play much ADC, she's going to be challenging against peers who probably DO play ADC. Her power trough is real.

Sivir is a pretty good suggestion for both. Plus she's only 450 IP.

[zoraster]

Of course most mids and adcs do their damage much differently. Mids do a lot more burst damage. Which is great if you're just targetting squishy targets in isolation, but grouped up with tanks, you're kind of in trouble if you can't bring the sustained damage of an ADC to the party.

Or have a, you know, sustained damage mage.

Or melee carry.

Or bruiser-carry.

Or AD assassin.

Or you can run a double-bruiser comp with a mage, which beats ADC+Mage+tank.

ADC's don't do bad damage, but they do 95% of the damage of midlaners (which, by the way, includes support-mages like Lulu and Ori whose main purpose isn't to deal damage) while having less utility and generally being weaker in most non-objective taking contexts. They are mandatory on every team (unlike every other class of champion) because of they fact that you have to kill turrets.

If ADCs were really just about Turret killing, you'd probably expect ADCs that excel at taking down turrets to do the best in terms of winning, no? Except Tristana, who is basically Queen of the Turret takedown, has a 48.54% win rate, which is good 15th out of 17, not including Urgot.

[zoraster]

i find sivir's attack animation really clunky. it's a superficial thing, but it bothers me every time i play her.

that said the worst for me is Jinx in rocket form. I play a substantial amount of Jinx, and rockets are amazing. But I accidentally cancel more of her rocket AAs than I do any other in the game. I think it's something about the sound being too early in the process. Like I hear the sound and I click, which is apparently before the rocket actually leaves the rocket launcher.

[zoraster]

for good or ill?

[zoraster]

Servers are moving to Chicago

[zoraster]

Just a reminder if you have not done this:

LCS Playoff Pool/Bracket

Join the playoff pool today! Top prize is a mystery skin or champion on the NA server.

I have added the third place matches. If you've already sent an entry, please use the addendum I PMed you or fill out a new entry (only your latest will count).

[zoraster]

yes, she's strong. particularly in lane. Even if you know to focus soraka, it can be hard to get to her if she's competent. Because there's little reason for her to ever put herself in danger in lane except to heal herself with Qs.

I particularly like her when my ADC picks Vayne and the other team tries to counter with Caitlyn.

[zoraster]

at least he's not fiora?

[zoraster]

of course. you just won't get a prize if you win.

[zoraster]

but all her abilities do magic damage and scale off of AP (or armor/MR)

[zoraster]

seems weird. Particularly because AP items have more utility.

[zoraster]

Chicago servers are being tested today. NA is going unranked while they test, but the vast majority of games will NOT be routed through Chicago yet.

I am so ready for this. I don't expect to see optimal ping from Chicago, but I'm pinging servers up there at around 35ms compared to Portland's 70-80 (I see 80-100 in game right now).

Of course they'll do this and next week my wife will get a job in the Northwest.

[zoraster]

I might play champions that require skillshots.

[zoraster]

to be fair, who knows how long it'll be before they actually move. Only a small percent of games will go to chicago today.

[zoraster]

(I see 80-100 in game right now).

That's beause they're not testing every game.

i know? i basically started that post by saying that.

[zoraster]

30 ping. ^_^

from pinging it or from playing?

[zoraster]

that's still probably better than i'll get.

[zoraster]

[zoraster]

is there some overarching change that's making these strong or just... guessing?

[zoraster]

what exactly is happening? I pretty much have to delete and then reinstall the air_client every new patch or else I just get a black screen after pressing the login button.

[zoraster]

couldn't it be irelia?

[zoraster]

These 5.16 changes are going to shake things up! http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/g ... -516-notes

[zoraster]

My father has friended me on League of Legends.

[zoraster]

he's just level 7 right now. I was house sitting a few weekends ago and put it on his computer and he tried it out.

He's always been a big gamer (he did semi-competitive WoW raiding for many years), but still... this was unexpected. He's 60.

[zoraster]

I mean I completely agree. But he's been doing bots, so I don't think he has fully experienced the frustration he will soon feel.

[zoraster]

skar skar skarner!

[zoraster]

i have yet to play against garen. I'm not one to whine about meta much or anything, but I feel like waiting until 5.17 to play ranked while this all sorts itself out.

[zoraster]

at least the servers move tomorrow. Although given the mild gains I'll get it might actually make it harder for me since more players will be gaining than losing.

[zoraster]

I'm surprised if you're gaining 38 LP a win that it doesn't skip a division for you

[zoraster]

42 ms!!!!!!!

That's an improvement over the 90-100 I was experiencing up until now. The difference even in just walking around is fairly major. I don't think it'll suddenly make me a great player or anything, but it's definitely smoother not to have the lag when activating an ability or what not.

[zoraster]

That's pretty awesome. PRetty much LAN conditions. What do you get in game? My average pinging the server via the command prompt is 38 ms, so about 5 ms added

[zoraster]

so i'm positive it wasn't my connection, but i'd really like to think it was, going 18/1 on jinx my first game on the 40ms

[zoraster]

Why aren't you listed on the spreadsheet?

[zoraster]

that is a truly impressive loss streak. Perhaps you should give up TF?

[zoraster]

When there are more important objectives... Sometimes you might not want laning to end for whatever reason, but usually taking the tower is still better.. Finally, if you get a tower low and know you can take it whenever sometimes bouncing minions is a more important concer as you don't want the enemy to be able to safely farm freely. This last is one of the reasons in pro play you'll see champions not taking that last auto attach you know will destroy the tower: they want to avoid a freeze on their enemy's side of the map.

Just noticed you said late game...beyond having bigger fish to fry or being risky, no... You always want the turret

[zoraster]

You can rank up in the short term (though you'll obviously need a 66.7% win rate for a promo series), but long term having under a 50% win rate will eventually lead to decreasing LP rewards making it impossible to rank up with a sub50% win rate.

I'm not sure how dodging helps achieving ranking up with a sub-50% win rate... the idea is that you can increase your win rate by dodging, but losing 3 LP isn't going to help in the "advancing despite being below average" category.

[zoraster]

I mean if you dodge you don't play the game, so it's not part of the evaluation of sub-50%. It doesn't count toward your MMR.

Dodging a ton is problematic though because you lose 10 LP for the second+ dodge in a 16-hour period, which for someone with league average MMR (gaining/losing in the 18-22 LP range) is worse than taking a shot at the game absent something like an obvious feeder. If you're really patient and can wait for that period, the 3 LP loss is usually lower if you're good at predicting the win rates of certain comps. Yes, MMR doesn't change and your LP gains will go up if you can assure high win rates, but losing that LP directly still means eventually you need to win games without losing large portions of LP. And because your MMR hasn't changed, you're still facing the same level of difficulty.

Also, the Fizz into Karthus thing is kind of a bad example as it's a 50/50 matchup.

[zoraster]

In a game where you don't have control over your teammates' actions and the other team can dodge too, dodging (or to put it another way, declining to play) is part of the game too. I've never felt a particular sense of victory when the other team dodges, nor do I feel like I lost the game when someone on my team dodges. It doesn't feel like a loss and it isn't counted as a loss, so I think you have to really exert yourself to theorize that it is a loss.

Anyway, you'd have to be super good at predicting your likelihood of winning or losing to accept a 10 LP loss and end up net positive. There are certainly times where you can make that call with some precision (confirmed troll feeder) and there are times where the LP gains/losses make it so that your predictions of winning/losing can be less precise ("Elo Hell") to pay off. But the vast majority of the time it's impossible to predict a win or loss to the degree that accepting a 100% chance of a 10 LP loss is the better route.

[zoraster]

She seems a solid choice as at worst you can always use her to split and burn down turrets. One of her weaknesses is that she can't really control a lane of minions, but that's basically never going to be punished in bronze.

As has been said before though, with the possible exception of support, the best champion to get out of bronze is the one that you know and play well, which means you play the champion over and over and over. That's particularly true of any champion that has combos you can abuse, which Tris does, as Bronze players don't always expect a well put together combo.

[zoraster]

I'm not sure how dodging helps achieving ranking up with a sub-50% win rate... the idea is that you can increase your win rate by dodging, but losing 3 LP isn't going to help in the "advancing despite being below average" category.

Your MMR is more important than your LP. If you lose a game you lose both ~20 LP and a bunch of MMR. If you dodge a game that doesn't look like it'll work out (ex. champs you don't play with well, team fighting in champ select, everywhere was hard countered, trolls, etc.) Then you only lose 3 LP and no MMR.

Right. But you're still aiming to be above a 50% win rate. You dodge to increase your win rate and thus your MMR. But if the premise is advancing despite a sub-50% win rate, this isn't the solution.

[zoraster]

I can see what ani is saying, but the chances of a game being literally

lost

in champ select are basically zero, so in practice, it's not actually a good strategy, IMO

Losing 3 LP is trivial and it's not hard to out predict a 3LP loss, particularly if you're in a situation where you're losing more LP than you're gaining. It's particularly useful in Bronze Elo where ridiculous picks, trolls, etc. are more prevalent and thus your prediction has more to go on. I definitely dodged to great effect when I was gaining 11 LP per win and losing 25 LP per loss.

[zoraster]

So the following is intended to be more illustrative than an actual guide. It shows two possible ways your general LP gain/loss might look. Then it shows your evaluation of chance of winning. In the chart it shows your expected LP gain if you play out that match. Boxes in Green are those you should dodge if you're at 3LP per dodge (i.e. first per every 16 hours) and those in Yellow show where you should dodge even at 10 LP per dodge.



So it looks like there's a huge amount of space where you should dodge even at 10LP per dodge. But I'd caution against that conclusion because people tend to overestimate their conclusion of advantage. That is, you finish the draft phase and you think the other team is favored. If asked to put a % chance of winning, you might say you have a 20% chance, but in reality you might really only be an underdog expected to win about 40-45% of the time. Look at champion.gg and look at some of the absolute worst matchups that have a large enough n to be reliable. Few are so bad that they give a win rate of below 40%. And you certainly don't know what's going on with the other team, and that uncertainty should draw you to the middle of the graph as well.

Interestingly, in ELO Hell (the top couple of rows), you should probably be dodging at the 3LP level even where you think you're a slight favorite to win.

[zoraster]

First, I'm not sure many MS members can do better than random guessing in Mafia.

Second, there are certainly times you know it's a good idea to get the hell out of there in ranked play. The "mid or feed" instalocking last pick teemo. Or the guy who literally told us he had fed the last 8 games, I checked op.gg and he had gone 0/30/0 in his last game. These aren't hard choices. Dodge. The harder thing is determining primarily based on team composition who has the edge.

If you main a banlist champion, dodging on 3 LP until you can play it is probably good enough to improve your ranking on its own, especially for the learn-one-champ-master-it-get-out-of-bronze situation zoraster was talking about. Since Annie has been my main since before ranked existed and she is currently considered a banlist champ, I probably should start doing that, actually.

Kind of depends on the champ and how many games you want to play in a day. Annie is a kind of common ban (10%), but she's not Skarner or something, who is banned in 64% of matches, so dodging the ban is probably fine. But if you want to play Skarner and want to play 15 games in a day, that 10LP dodge is going to get painful fast.

[zoraster]

i think you're better off heimer.

[zoraster]

I just played a solo queue ranked match where we got all 5 players on curse voice and everyone was a good guy, no one was annoying, and everyone played together well. It was amazing. I was sad it ended.

Also played against a guy with 157 ranked Tahm Kench games: http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=ArmoredRogue

[zoraster]

5 adcs. one game. watch us lose: http://www.twitch.tv/bronze2silver

[zoraster]

apparently i forgot to switch it so it mostly showed black screen. my bad.

[zoraster]

i just played and won my first ranked game of heimerdinger. Forced to play top lane against Darius, I pulled him out. He seems like a really hard matchup for Darius, particularly because the build path already wants to build zhonyas #1. That said, i'm pretty sure our adc was getting elo boosted.

Also it qualified me for my next series on my zorasterful account. I've won 10 of my last 11 games and on a 7 game win streak.

[zoraster]

I played heimer into yas a few days ago with some scummers and it was miserable because (1) he could windwall my turrets while he took them out, particularly my ulted ones and (2) he could simply use my turrets as an extra place to dash to.

[zoraster]

flat magic pen isn't great against MR, though. The more MR they have the less efficient it is. You want % pen from void staff.



After Void staff, you have three routes to go really: (1) stack AP (2) go utility (3) roam and let your teammates deal with the MR stacker.

[zoraster]

Also teemo is one of those weird characters that combine AP with autos so you can go split push mode and go runaan's+nashor's

[zoraster]

Void Staff's passive is calculated before flat mag pen, so flat mag pen is definitely good on top of void.

Sure, but if they're really stacking huge amounts of MR, the 35% is hugely effective, but the flat pen still isn't that much. Let's say it's a Mundo who decided to (for whatever reason) go Spirit Visage (60) , Banshee's Veil (60), Guardian Angel (50), Aegis (35), LEvel 18 Mundo (53.4) he has a base MR of 258.4. Void staff reduces it to 167.96 (90.44 reduction), a huge huge gain. But Sorc Shoes+Liandry's+7.8magipen runes only reduces it to 130.16 (a 37.8 reduction).

you buy it for its %hp burn

Yeah, it's awesome except it does so as magic damage so the MR is still effective against it.

[zoraster]

I mean, that's why I picked him

[zoraster]

Who tops it now? Tahm?

tahm is not a good support.

[zoraster]

I swear to god gold is worse than bronze. I can't get anyone on my team who know how to do ANYTHING.

Clearly it's been a long time since you played in Bronze.

[zoraster]

I mean I've recently played from Bronze IIIish elo to Gold IIIish elo and while it's by no means perfect, there's considerable difference between all the leagues. I think there's a pretty major difference between low and high silver even. Of course people do dumb stuff, but I think you've got rose tinted glasses if you think it happened less in Bronze.

[zoraster]

On the other hand, playing support in Bronze is super frustrating.

[zoraster]

yes, but that's also at the price of being incredibly frustrating as an ADC because the number of people who don't feel like they "belong" in bronze and play a carry support (and of course don't deign to get a sightstone) is super high without success to show for it. Like... if you know you're actually a mid-silver player on Brand or something, by all means. But most people don't evaluate themselves particularly well.

[zoraster]

10 game (ranked) winning streak! Only gaining 18 LP per though

[zoraster]

eh 18 LP isn't that bad. Back in the bad old days where I got demoted to Bronze my MMR was so low I had to make it back up gaining 11-13 LP per win.

[zoraster]

I'm Silver I on my Zorasterful account, the one gaining 18 LP. I'm Gold IV on my I Am Bad At This account, which gains about 22-24 LP a win.

Trying to get my Zorasterful account up to Gold before I leave for my vacation. Not sure if I'll have time to try to make a run on Plat (if I'm even capable) before season ends, plus I'm sure after I get back from Italy I'll be super rusty.

[zoraster]

First, my smurf is higher ELO than my main account, at one point a full league different. It's not like I created a smurf so I could win more. If I liked winning a lot against easy competition, staying with my main account was easier.

Second, the smurf feels lower pressure to me and I don't have many friends online on it. So I can do my thing over there and for the most part escape attention.

Third, when I was super frustrated at the "Gain 11 LP per win, lose 26 LP per loss" situation I was in with my main account in the spring, I found it nice to level up a smurf and then see where I landed in ranked once I hit 30. Then, it was nice not to have to deal with the frustration of having to win twice as many games as I lost simply to stay in place LP wise. Eventually, of course, the LP gains/losses would even out, but it takes a long time for that to happen after you've played a lot of games.

EDIT: Oh also for a while I was using my Zorasterful account to play lots of different roles, whereas I always went support on my I Am Bad At This account.

[zoraster]

btw in case you didn't know (because at least one other person didn't) you can now put the cost in mana on the ability icons through the settings in game.

[zoraster]

Because the game timer doesn't count up based on just seconds?

It's based on seconds and minutes.

Do you, like, plan the next time on the game clock you will be ulting? that's way more thought than I put into this game for sure.

kind of? And it's particularly important for summoner spells. You shouldn't act the same way with your flash down as you do with it up. And syncing your abilities with dragon and baron is pretty typical.

Do you think of time in seconds? I don't know. Even when my settings were on "seconds" I made mental conversions into minutes and seconds. If I call out drag timer it's "1:25 drag" and not "85 drag"

If you convert from min:sec into seconds in your head for everything, having it in seconds makes sense. The point is to remove a mental process that takes time, however brief, because being able to glance down and get the info you need instantly is important.

It's worth pointing out that the timer shows in seconds below 60. So most of your basic ability CDs will be unchanged.

[zoraster]

you might need to just theorycraft your own.

[zoraster]

Dino Gnar is the best skin in the game.

[zoraster]

Wrong. Gentleman Gnar is a good skin. A GREAT skin even. But Dino Gnar is the BEST skin.

[zoraster]

so i love graves, but i don't think any of his skins are all that great.

[zoraster]

Holy shit I hate people that want to quit and eventually ragequit because we get behind against an early game comp as a scaling comp. Like, we almost won 4 against 5 if Ori didn't fucking rage.

The problem i have with this, is when people seem to think there is going to be a late game when your getting absolutely dumpstered.

This was to the point where a surrender at 20 vote failed, i afk'd for like 2 minutes to grab a drink because i was annoyed at the 4 man premade, and the game was actually over cause they were pushing to win.

You are part of the problem. You have tried to justify reprehensible behavior, but you just come across as even worse.

[zoraster]

The only content creator who I actually have negative feelings about is Thorin. And he represents something that's probably necessary. It's just he's insufferably smug. I'm sure there are those out there that I'd genuinely dislike, but if I've watched their stuff it was once.

[zoraster]

You make it sound like a bad thing to have a vision of what you want the game to be like.

And I'd argue that they have increased diversity in a lot of ways. There are a lot more choices of how to build as anything other than ADC. But rather than being off-builds, they're based on choices you make in game.

Take Support. As Sona even my start depends on what I want to accomplish. If I'm against Leona I almost always take coin because Leona is going to hide in the bush and I'm super squishy so having the extra poke isn't worth it (and coin is definitively better if you can leverage spellthief into a lane advantage...). But if I'm against Braum or Janna I want to poke the ever lasting snot out of them with a spellthief. In my past few Sona games I've gone on to build Zeke's, Ardent Censer, Lich Bane, Banner of Command, talisman, frozen heart, and Rylai's. For boots I've built Sorc Boots, Ninja Tabis, Mobi Boots, and Lucidity Boots. All in reaction to what's happening in the game (or their team comp or my team comp). The only thing that is always in my build for her is a sightstone. Other than that I think about what makes sense.

[zoraster]

pardon?

[zoraster]

I've never minded buying a sightstone as support. If I do well in lane (along with my partner) I get an early sightstone early and can assert vision for not just me but also (Typically) my jungle and mid laner, thus allowing me to make more of a difference. If that were taken away from me by reducing the support's role in early-game vision, I'd be sad.

Also it means that if I prioritize vision differently than the opposing support we can weigh which is more important. Some people like to get their talisman/targon's going before shelling out for a sightstone. I almost always go full sightstone if i have the cash. They may be right in their evaluation. But in order for me to be right I have to influence the game through vision in a way the other support can't.

[zoraster]

I've never minded buying a sightstone as support. If I do well in lane (along with my partner) I get an early sightstone early and can assert vision for not just me but also (Typically) my jungle and mid laner, thus allowing me to make more of a difference. If that were taken away from me by reducing the support's role in early-game vision, I'd be sad.

Also it means that if I prioritize vision differently than the opposing support we can weigh which is more important. Some people like to get their talisman/targon's going before shelling out for a sightstone. I almost always go full sightstone if i have the cash. They may be right in their evaluation. But in order for me to be right I have to influence the game through vision in a way the other support can't.

Yeah, so if you do well in lane, you snowball that not only in item/stat value, but also in vision control. That just seems like overkill.

I don't see why support should be unfun. "Don't farm. Don't build cool items. Don't get gold -- and when you do, spend it on vision." Remove the ties vision has to gold (or at least make it a flat upgrade cost across the board for all people with more variety of trinkets) and now you can open up cool support builds. You could even expound on the three starting support items and branch out those builds a bit more because now supports won't need to spend that first 800g on a sightstone and can put a little more into their upgrades.

Dunno. I just feel like having vision be tied to gold really snowballs the advantage and limits the design space of the support role. Make vision universal and suddenly snowballs aren't so snowbally and supports may actually have fun build options/masteries available.

I have a ton of fun as support. Not having to farm is a plus, not a negative. I don't know what you mean by "fun" builds really.

To be fair, soraka is kind of boring except for those occasions where you get to frustrate the other team.

[zoraster]

In other news, what does everyone think of Volibear? I've been thinking of playing for Volly in the jungle but i'm not sure if he's worth the risk given as he's rarely played. How good is he right now in this meta?

Voli isn't the best jungle in the game, but if you find him fun you can make him work. Individual skill matters FAR more then your champion pick does outside of the very top of the ladder. I know someone who got to Diamond playing only barrier/exhaust support Poppy, and by support I mean Targon's into full damage. You can make pretty much anything work if you put in the effort until the top of the ladder.

Yeah, but it's easier to click on a different champion than it is to get better at playing.

[zoraster]

kind of boring in my mind but what about them don't you like?

[zoraster]

I think it makes a lot more sense in this guy's kit than it does in Fiora's.

[zoraster]

I dunno. I think the rest of her kit right now is kind of awesome. The parry system is cool.

[zoraster]

Support Yasuo can do it!

[zoraster]

my wife got her gnar plushie today. it's pretty damn cute.

[zoraster]

i have to admit, i was surprised by the high quality of it. I assumed they'd have no real reason to do it well, but it's really well constructed and very soft.

[zoraster]

bruiser lux?

[zoraster]

winning is never boring.

[zoraster]

i spoilered it for you, venmar. Hope you don't mind.

[zoraster]

If Galio's mana costs weren't so high, I think he'd be viable. But I'd hate to see him ever become universally useful.

[zoraster]

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.

[zoraster]

why do you say that? He's pretty situational, but he can excel in all AD (particularly AA) scenarios such as Yi Jungle, Zed Mid, Jinx bot. And if you look at global win rates (Rather than just plat+) he actually is one of the highest win rates in the jungle (cite).

[zoraster]

really? I think that was the sole change that upped her win rate by like 5%

[zoraster]

Mid laners are more likely to be near full health, and they usually brought ignite before anyway, not a defensive spell.

[zoraster]

right

[zoraster]

I think if you removed the benefit to TPing to a turret it would go a long way to addressing things. As it stands, it incentivizes boring TPs like returning to lane.

[zoraster]

I really need to get my wave management together. I can shove it so that it crashes into the enemy turret, that's the easy part, but how to I "bounce" (hearing this a lot at Worlds), and how do I "Pull" the wave towards me when the enemy laner is absent. If they're there, I just push the wave a little less than they do with my CS, and eventually they push it towards me, but if they're absent how do I move it to my side?

You need their minions to outnumber yours. How many more depends on where in the lane you are because if it's on your side your minions will reinforce before theirs and vice versa.

If you have no enemy, a good way to achieve fewer minions is to get minion aggro and pull the line of minions then duck into a bush. What this achieves (most of the time) is focusing the minion aggro onto one of your creeps at once. This means that your line of minions will lose a minion BEFORE theirs does.

When you're trying to pull the lane, you need to last hit only. Try to keep their caster minions alive longer because caster minions do more damage and push lanes (incidentally, if you ever want to start a slow push, do the opposite: kill a couple of the caster minions then let the lane push toward them).

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.

[zoraster]

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.

I don't think it does depend. If you're letting it push toward you, it's not because you really want it to be UNDER your tower. That leaves you open to (a) missing CS and (b) getting dived. The reason you let it come to your turret is because you can't safely farm anywhere but under the turret, but that's not really the ideal situation. Even if your jungler is coming, having them push all the way to the turret is bad for you because in the gank you're going to lose a lot of CS.