f13.net

Are ridiculous:

Surge and Promote are gone, Barrier is in. Boots get tier 3 upgrades. Base Move Speed values upped by 25, all boots lose 25 MS

HoG is gone. More stuff builds from Kage's Lucky Pick

Attack speed items more expensive. Attack damage items cheaper.

Phantom Dancer has less MS and AS, now ignores unit collision

Warden Mail/Randuin Omen always proc

Tear of the Goddess became redonk: Charges whenever you use mana so singed charges it by running around with his posion on, and Ashe charges it by shooting frost arrows. If fully charged and upgraded to Manamune/AA staff item transforms again into even better item with super awesome active. Manamune becomes Muramana and has a toggle that adds a % damage bonus to your single target spells and auto attacks. Archangel Staff gains a % mana shield as an active.

Sword of the Divine is back
Summary: Press Button-> Win game (100% attack speed, 100% crit for 4 seconds or 3 crits on 25 second cooldown)



http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=31443382#31443382

Wow.

So many changes.

New jungle seems pretty rough.

Looks like they're drawing a lot of item design inspiration from DOTA.  No shocker, the item design there is a lot more interesting.

Still no BKB/zhonya's type item for AD melee characters.

I like that they're willing to make a bunch of changes. I haven't played in months but I'll be coming back whenever this patch hits.

Goddamn, that's a HUGE raft of changes. It's a whole different game. The jungle changes seem really fucking harsh and are probably going to restrict what champs can jungle again - which kind of goes against their last jungle revamp. Also seems like they really want to reduce the need for armor/magic resist and up the effectiveness of ArPen/MagPen. It does seem like they want a more DOTA style of items with more actives. Some of these look cool, like rechargeable items that have WARDS instead of having to buy wards. It'll definitely change the whole goddamn meta.

It's like, they want more killing/action and then make a jungle change that makes it more passive.   :oh_i_see:  I guess they're banking on mid game becoming a lot more active.

Yeah, I think those jungle changes are meant to delay the gank cycle by about 2-3 levels. Also, I think jungling is going to SUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK IT except for a few of the better junglers. I'm trying to think what this would mean for Mundo. Killing the stacking bonuses on Warmog's is really going to hurt my build.

When the S2 jungle hit a lot of people complained about having no downtime from the quick jungle respawns and being forced to give up a lot of farm if you ever wanted to gank or invade. While opening the jungle up to champs without A-tier sustain was good, there was too much emphasis on farming that never rewarded you with as much gold as a solo lane.

I for one never enjoyed the S2 jungle and if this brings back Rammus and/or Trundle I will be a happy man.

Shop changes look great.  Sooo tired of the crappy shop.

Though I played mostly jungle in season one and two I never really had a problem with it in either.  I'm not sure what Riot's obsession is with fixing what's not broken.

The two broken roles throughout season two seems to me to have been support and top lane.  Looks like they're giving support some love with new items and passive gold gain, but that probably won't be enough.  But I don't know how they plan to fix top lane.

Aww, Promote is being removed? But I like Promote.... :sad_panda: Useless, but fun for trolling team-mates with ^^

There's an item now you can build that does promote.

I think the jungle "fixes" are meant to fix top lane by making early ganks happen a LOT less or at least be more risky.

I for one am all for this  :grin:

Its live as of tonights patch:

I for on welcome our new AP teemo overlords

http://competitive.euw.leagueoflegends.com/preseason/intro

Just did a blind game using Skarner for jungling to see the new changes. It helped greatly that the other team's Teemo left after level 5 and their Cait was utter crap.

The jungle camps are definitely tougher to start out, but I used one of the new jungle items, Hunter's Machete. That offset the increased HP nicely. The nerf to Warmog's is pretty damn big for tanky types. The new store is a bit confusing at first but I'll get used to it. The shrunken UI is REALLY shrunken. The minimap might be a bit too small especially when you have UI scaled down. The masteries are going to take some serious study as there are a few things moved about and a lot of nice additions. The utility one that gives you 50 gold to start instead of what it was before is pretty big for supports, as are the multiple defensive masteries that let you reduce CC duration AND stacks with tenacity items.

Took Cotton Tail Teemo out for a spin. He still IS good, what changed that made him better ?

I tried this at lunch today, can't comment on the balance changes aside from the fact that I noticed almost no difference in my jungle run as hecarim (yeah got the new machete), but my god is the new UI ugly. It feels like they are trying too hard. I know it sounds weird, but that was the vibe I got from it.

Well a few months ago he got a buff to his e. Previously it was .15 AP/second and the first tick was .15AP. For a total of .7 AP

Then they made it .4AP initial and .1 AP/second for a total of .8 AP.

This made AP teemo pretty good.

In season three there is a new mastery that adds .05 AP scaling to auto attacks.

They changed malady, instead of adding 20 damage it adds 15+.1 AP to auto attacks.

So previously AP Teemo would get Nashor's and hit for .4 AP on his auto attacks.

Now get gets Malady(less shrooms though) and hits for .55 AP on his auto attacks.

And he can get hurricane to spread his posion around and make it an effective AoE.

This should make AP teemo a terror of terrors.

Just took this for a spin last weekend for the first time in something like a year, and was totally lost with all the changes that had occurred.  Tried again today, and the new store helps immensely.  Liking the new UI, too, everything seems a lot clearer, especially the way you can tell how many ranks a skill has without mousing over it now.  Though I didn't realize you could enchant boots until my last game, heh.

I looked at the enchant boots and didn't really see anything I HAD to have. They were a bit pricey for what you got.

There are a couple of really good things in there.

Supports can give their ADC +8% movement speed via the captain enchantment. This is a larger buff than the new Phantom Dancer or Static Shiv.

Bruisers and ADC's can buy +12% movement speed via the furor enchantment.

Homeguard will make returning to base to refit faster and make defending your nexus a lot easier.

After a bunch of PBE play, and last night, the jungle changes need to be taken as a whole:

I think the pool of available champs will actually widen a bit, once the first wave of hotfixes is done: before, there was a strong demand that you be able to clear fast, and able to apply lane pressure immediately. But the ability for the jungler to gank before 2 minutes with little penalty is gone. So, champs that can make it past their first clear or two, even if they're not in good shape to gank, will be better.

In addition, the impact of sightstone/oracle's nerf cannot be overstated. It is easy and profitable to ward your lane thoroughly, and you're never going to see a 7-minute oracles anymore. You'd think this would make things more passive. It doesn't. It is a lot easier now to be aggressive in lane, and know that the odds of a gank are minimal.  (Note, this boosts the ability of ward-ignoring gankers, like Noct, Rammus, Eve, Hecarim)

On the downside, jungling is a bit more boring. But I think top is a lot less toxic.



PS: also, support, a lot more fun! <3

Also, yeah, machete is essentially mandatory. But it builds into such nice things. And that one of them has tenacity frees up your boot slot.

My jungle skarner is:

Machete + 5pots, Tabi/Spirit Stone, Sheen/Glacial Shroud/Tank Stone in a flexible order based on how the game is going. Frozen Fist is a flat out lovely item: it's good AOE damage + moar slows, it makes your wave clear crazy.

Just got done with a blind game as Graves. Really good game that I started out really badly against a Leona/Teemo combo and ended up just melting people. Ranged AD carries got some SERIOUSLY OP new items. Statik Shiv - adds attack speed, movement speed and crit strike chance - and moving and attacking builds up to 100 charges. When you have 100 charges, it fires off a burst of lightning that hits up to 4 targets with magic damage (think it was up to about 143 on my Graves). Just destroys waves of minions late game. Add that to an Inifity Edge, then add a Runaan's Hurricane - 70% attack speed and every basic attack fires a bolt that hits 2 additional targets for physical damage equal to 10+50% of your attack damage. And for your lifesteal item, build from Vampire scepter (cost 2x as much but adds 10 AD as well as lifesteal) to Blade of the Ruined King. This thing has a passive lifesteal - takes 4% of the target's current health and returns half of it as lifesteal health. Then it has an active that does some obscene percentage of the target's current health and returns it to you - OH and it slows them as well.

These items will be nerf-fucked soon. An AS/Crit AD carry like Graves can just absolutely DESTROY with that combo. I didn't even think to upgrade my boots.

I think what it is is just that there's a lot more options for ranged AD carries now: IE/BT/PD/(LW|BC) is still the king of single-target damage, but now there are a lot more paths for doing aoe damage.

But if you end up 1v1ing their IE/BT/PD/LW carry with a ie/runnan/botrk/shiv, it's not even going to be close.

It's definitely nice diversity.

There is still an optimal build, it just depends on the carry.

Carries that don't have hurricane synergy* maximize by purchasing BT(or IE) then Sword of the Divine, then Last Whisper.

Final ideal build depends on the enemy team, but will look like... BT,SotD,LW + choose ONE (Zephyr+GA or Mecurial Scimitar+ Free Slot)

*Examples:

The extra hits from the hurricane proc graves's reset on his e, allowing him to reset his e in three attacks. Never run out of dashes.

Caitlyn gains headshot stacks on the hurricane side damage, giving her a headshot up to once every 2 attacks. Yea for bonus damage!

Kog'Maw/Varus/twitch apply their on-hit bonus damage to all three targets. (and then they can proc all their abilities that use them on everyone!)

---------

Other examples of differences: Corki can now build Black Cleaver extremely efficiently. Ezreal can now start manamune**

Statik Shiv isn't that good, its OK as a second AS item but... Hurricane is better for pushing and probably team fights

**Also hilarious on Ryze

Yeah, it may still settle out into optimal builds, but I'm at least hopeful there's more diversity.

SotD? I'm not an ADC specialist, but I'm dubious about it, especially as an early item.. 2200g for 45% AS is really bad, and it gives absolutely 0 stats when on cooldown. I mean, you can imagine the situations where it works and melts somebody, and yay, but if the fight isn't over? You're an ADC who is a full item behind your counterpart.

Maybe it's a good snowbally item if you get ahead, to keep on killing folks?

Sword of the Divine looks like an item I would NEVER USE. Use it, kill one person, then lose 45% attack speed for 60 seconds? No thank you. Add in the fact that I tend to FORGET to use item activations way too often and it would be a waste of money for me.

been playing some hurricane ap teemo. it's a little rough build in early/mid game because your single target damage suffers until you can really get more items but you will push lanes like a motherfucker and in team fights, providing you are getting focused your damage is through the rough.  Getting that poison on two extra champs is goddamn ridiculous.

My beautiful, underrated AS Kayle build got nerfed into the fucking ground. Really disheartening to suddenly do so poorly with the playstyle I put so much time into honing. I am an unhappy panda. At least now I have motivation to finish the new version of my theorycrafting application so I can come up with something equally weird.

teemo is just preposterous these days. he's going to get some serious nerfs.

Yeah, Teemo pushed the ever living fuck out of me top lane the other night when I played Garen. And that was BEFORE the changes. Teemo with a Hurricane would be insane.

My god, the typos in my last post.... :ye_gods:

Anyways yeah, leaving teemo alone in any lane means you will lose towers fast. I doubt he will get a nerf but I see hurricane getting one, possibly a higher gold cost.

I think at the very least the 70% attack speed will get a drop down to something like 50-60%. It's just a crazy boost.

On another note, Diana is still a goddamn beast. Played her mid against a Xin who thought he could bully me. I only had 8 kills but I didn't die until at least 10 or 15 minutes in. My favorite moment was a team fight that left both teams bloodied. Shen and Xin had either died or fucked off, I was low on health and running back to base. The jungling Lee Sin was behind me, also on low health. He decides to chase me, thinking he can take me out. Hit R, zap him with a big hit, he still has life because of his defense ability, hit W BLAM does him damage and shields me, then hit R again to finish him off. The Xin on his team said in all chat "Why would you chase a Diana on low health?"

Yeah, in the exact same boat as you. malady is awful for the AS kayle build, and the new percentages and moving speeds turns everything to shit.

100% Crit and 100% attack speed has a lot of uses

1) If you don't crit(say attacking a tower or nexus) you get the whole bonus 3 seconds, making 140% AS for 3 seconds (a very nice boost).

2) The crit only counts for auto attacks, so abilities that can crit get the bonus for "free"

3) You're going to get a kill with it. And each kill you do reduces the cooldown, so realistically its 30 seconds (then 15 seconds).

4) The damage increase is monumental. Consider that, if you have 0% crit the boost increases your raw damage for the next three attacks by 2.1 times. Now consider that they come much faster and you see that in the space of 2 attacks with say, Phantom Dancer[which is more expensive] You get, effectively, 6-7 phantom dancer attacks.

5) Front loading damage is a big deal in both skirmishes and team fights. OK, loosing 45% AS for the rest of the fight is bad, but that will come at the advantage of killing taking an enemy out of the fight that could have done damage.

------------------------

Think of it this way. Suppose you use it first thing in a team fight and use it to murder their tank. Suppose the enemy is using PD instead of SotD. It is true that he is now +50% AS and 30% crit on you, but he still has 3-5 attacks left to kill your tank... and his tank is dead... which means that your tank is now able to apply debuffs to him without having to worry about the other tank doing the same to you.

From the PBE:

Teemo

[E] - Toxic Shot
Now scales 0.3 (down from 0.4)
[R] - Noxious Trap
Now deals 200/325/450 (down from 200/400/600)

Diana

[Q] - Crescent Strike
Now deals 60/95/130/165/200 (Down from 70/110/150/190/230)

Liandry Torment, build it now before Riot nerfs it.

Jungle is dead.

The changes has made jungling too slow, and the advantages of going duo top too obvious.

Welcome to the age of hyper carries. Sword of the Divine was removed from the game for a reason....

That Diana nerf won't really hurt her all that bad. She'll still do INSANE burst damage, even minus the 30 damage from Crescent Strike. If that's all the nerfing they do of her, she'll still carry a team if properly fed and competently played. The Teemo change will help a good bit, but I've always found it's his insane attack speed that really lets him snowball a fight on top of the toxic shot damage.

I don't know that jungle is dead, but it sure has cut down the number of ganks.

FTFY

Black Cleavers ArPen stacks at the moment and gives a ridiculous amount of stats for its value.

Gave this a try again this weekend for the first time since it released.  Can any of you recommend a toon to play as support in a dedcated 3 man team?  I played some chick with a harp last night (Sona) and she seemed pretty effective. 

Sona is a good bet.  I like soraka for her heals and silence and AE starcall.  Taric has a great stun which can ruin the opponents day if your adc is ready for it.  I hear Nami is op at the moment.  People have been trending to aggressive supports lately.  I've seen a bunch of fiddlesticks, malphite, lux, etc supports.  Kinda depends on how you like to play.  Also whether or not you can land skillshots (I suck at em).

Most supports are pretty noob friendly.

Here are the easiest.
Soraka - Very passive.  Sustain all day.  Shred MR and silence in team fights.
Taric - Stun. Heal.  Armor aura.  Surprising burst damage.
Nunu - Haste, snowball, and a fun ult.


Slightly harder:
Janna - I've always sucked with Janna.  I miss my tornados, mistime my shield and botch her ults.
Blitzcrank - Hooks. Skillshot and if you miss a ton, people will bitch.  You can really put the fear into people with this one.
Lulu - Lots of tools.  Great ult.  Poly.  Lots of poke damage.
Lux - Skillshots galore. You won't get the AP to straight up chunk people, but you can set up a lot of kills.

I haven't played enough Leona or Zyra to have any opinion on them. Soraka and Nunu are my most played.  I had like a 75% win rate with Soraka.  She's fairly boring to play, however.

For fun you can play someone a bit more unconventional like Morgana, Fiddlesticks or Yorick.  Or you can do a double bruiser / kill-lane bot.  Jarvan/Leona, Blitzcrank/Alistar (aka Blitzstar), or any combo of Xin'Zhao/Jax/Jarvan/Rengar/Pantheon/Garen/Wukong together.  

Have fun with it, especially if you're doing a premade.

Nunu isn't that easy IMO. Lulu is probably easier, at least to me. I've had some fun with Nidalee as a support but you'll get some weird looks and douchieness from people who don't like her. Probably because she snowballs into a decent damage dealer mid-to-late game. She's also not easy to play at all and if you miss skillshots with her, she can get faced hard. Sona is awesome. Other than that, I'd agree with Rasix on the supports.

Thanks guys.  It is a premade and I think I'll stick with Sona and Taric for now.  I like the sounds of Taric for my playstyle.

I think people have weird expectations for Nunu.  A lot people just expect him to be a poke machine, which isn't going to be the case in most matchups.  Against an aggressive or poke heavy opponent, you need to play passively.  Almost every idiot thinks it's my job to stand in front of them and eat Blitz hooks.  No, asshole, stand behind a minion and play passively when you need to.  Throwing out snowballs is a waste of time in a lane with good sustain (raka/sona). You have absurdly high base stats, so you'll be a tank later whether you build for it or not.

Just snowball the right person, haste the right person, and use your ult when appropriate and you'll do fine.  I do find it's really hard to win your lane when you're paired with an especially bad ADC.  You'll be forced to max E first, because hasting that moron would be a waste of time.  Soraka is better for playing with morons, although most of them don't realize how high the CD on your heal is and thus just get themselves killed a lot.


Fabulous choice.  Taric provides a great alternative playstyle.  :awesome_for_real:  His late game can be a bit crappy, but you're good at getting picks and your ult/aura are always pretty awesome.

If your ad carry is in any way decent keeping him buffed as Nunu is more important than trying to make plays, I've found.

Late to the discussion here, but I usually play Sona.  Crescendo is just an amazing ult. 

You should see my ELO.  :awesome_for_real:

Not in the right mindset to get into detail but the short of it is, that some supports can carry bad ad and some can't.

I never played just press E support nunu. Mostly becaue unles ur with a 1600 elo ad carry being allowed to sit back and let them work rarely pays off. Which is why if I'm in a pure support mood I just rathe be sona. Less dick in hand more play maker. The second reason is that np one knows how to deal with a tanky nunu or ap nunu, both of which can easily shove victory down the enemies throat with or without a retarded team trying to throw the game. Which is the case in 99% of solo que.

Easist support are sona, taric, and blitz.
Easiest for dummies are sona, nunu, and janna.

Mechanically, Nunu is probably the easiest support - you basically have two buttons, one of which you just use on cooldown. However, he has no escape, short range, and is based on zoning, which can make it tricky to be effective with him without setting yourself up to get killed over and over. But those are all skills that will translate well to/from any champ. I like him a lot.

For some serious poke grab magic pen runes on sona.

First game post patch.  Survived cleaver-land with GP.  Their Garen made some really dumb/aggressive plays while my jungler was nearby. Didn't work out so well for him.

Unranked?


Not really. ADC is probably the most noob friendly position. Support has to carry their retarded ADC to the finish line. Supporting is hard because there is a lot more zone control when there are two people in lane and zone control is your entire job as a support. Generally there are three kinds of supports, poke, sustain, and engage.

Anyway, onto specific supports(for the moment i will only have nunu up, will update as necessary or if people have questions): I play all supports except Zyra and Lulu


-------

Nunu: Aggressive against melee supports, passive against poke/sustain supports.  Your primary goal is not really to attack the other guy, but to peel. He generally beats other aggressive supports if he can peel or counter engage since

A: He has the best base stats in the game
B: His bloodboil gives his ADC a massive boost in DPS, generally above the enemy ADC.
C: His snowball gives the enemy ADC a massive reduction in DPS

Nunu's weakness is poke. He(and his ADC especially if they're not safe) are prone to being zoned out of creeps against high harass compositions. This is because the enemy doesn't want to commit to a fight if they're going to out sustain you and because nunu would take too much damage starting one.

Nunu's strength is counter engagement and delay. He has lots of disengage tools and can, so long as his carry has an escape, effectively force the enemy ADC composition to change targets. (by running in after the enemy has initiated). This does not work against leona because your carry will be dead if they get an engage.

Pick Nunu against blitzcrank, taric, soraka, Janna, and nami(?)

Do not pick Nunu against Sona, Lulu, Zyra, or Leona.

------

Zyra: Play aggressive against everyone you win every lane against everyone. Zyra OP.

I don't actually play Zyra but she has a massive AoE CC ultimate, scaling damage for free in her w, free CDR and great CC in her root that goes through minions.

------

I didn't play ranked for long. I think I got as low as 1K and called it a night in S2 (aka, fucked off back to normals).  Most ADCs at that level could barely last hit. Less than zero map awareness as well. You could ward, ping, scream in chat, and they'd still let the jungler just walk up and punch them in the crotch. If there was even a jungler.  Surprisingly most mids and tops weren't that bad.  They were just dicks. Mid or top was usually the guy that threw the biggest fit or just instalocked in spite of pick order.

Haven't played ranked yet in S3.  Probably not going to, but that might change if I get bored with SWTOR.  I'm guessing my normal elo is roughly 1200-1300 based on my win/loss.  It's hard to translate that into ranked because the asshole factor goes through the roof.

As for supports being noob friendly? At the level most people play here they are, and especially for Nebu, as he's leveling up.  Most have simple mechanics (well, LoL mostly does anyhow) and you don't have worry about YOUR cs for the most part. Clap for yourself if you last hit well with banana queen (it's easier now).

But yes, eventually, you're going to have to carry that idiot along.  Especially if you get on a huge losing streak you're going to be miserable babysitting some jerkwad that's blaming everything on you.  I love the ADCs that think every time you poke, it's "GO TIME!!!!".   Sometimes it's best to just let them die rather than risk the double kill.   Waste your mana keeping the waves off your tower as they run back.

Gotta carry harder yo.

So what's wrong with Morgana?  I played her tonight because someone took Sona before me and I rocked the match with her.  I imagine that her root is near useless against better players though. 

She falls off hard lategame and isn't able to pressure a large number of popular mids. In order to make best use of her you have to rush Zhonya's. Zhonya's is expensive in first item and doesn't provide the offense that many other popular options bring.

In the lategame its almost impossible to get a good ult off and so almost impossible to make effective use of the character compared to other team fight ult mids.

Speaking of Nunu, any tips for building him AP/bruiser? The AP items are something of an enigma to me since the S3 revamp.

I was just starting to recognize items in S2, now I'm trying to parse the S3 changes.

It looks like English... but I can't understand a single word. 

Assume you're talking to someone that has played 3 days and knows none of the 'lingo'.

She's stronger early and mid game, falls of a bit late as she has largish cooldowns.  Her shield is great for countering crowd control and countering magic damage, so that's why you'll see her played as support as well as a mid (mid is the middle lane on summoner's rift).  Plus, she's got some good poke and push ability.

Her ultimate requires her to be close to folks, and thus puts a somewhat squishy champ in harm's way. Late game, people will just blow you up really quick and you'll die before you can hit the stun part of the ultimate.  Zhonya's Hourglass can help with that, but if it's down, you're going to get wrecked.


I haven't done AP Nunu yet S3 (just started), but I'd go RoA, Iceborn Gauntlet (or FH if you need in lane), Deathcap, Liandry's Torment (I suppose you could go this over RoA), Sorc Boots, and maybe pick one of Abyssal, Lich Bane, DFG, or any tank item.  You can pretty much just play him to the matchup/situation.  A lot of stuff works rather well on him.  You could also just build 2 AP items on him and then go straight tank.

Morgana, though listed as a support, really works better as a mid to me. Her soil ability makes for fantastic minion farming. She has a great CC ability (the snare) but it requires skill to use (hence the term skillshot). Her E is a immnunity/damage absorb ability that is very helpful unless you are like me and forget to fucking use it. :) Her ULT (the R ability) is fantastic mid game as if you land the skillshot, then soil THEN ULT, you can lock someone down and either get the kill or shred them so much, your teammates can finish them off. She can actually carry. What he's saying is that late game (when just about everyone is level 18 and has full builds), she isn't nearly as much of a facefucker. He thinks to make good use of her, you have to build Zhonya's Hourglass as your first big item. It's a very expensive item and takes a lot of farming to get, slowing your progression down. I don't agree that she needs that item.

For her, I tend to build sorceror's shoes first (adds magic penetration and gives movement speed), then a Rod of Ages (snowballs Ability Power and Health), then decide from there. A Hextech Revolver isn't bad for her (adds AP and spell vamp - like lifesteal only with AP) and you'll eventually want a Rabadon's Deathcap (best AP item in the game).

I was glad that Morgana has fallen off the "must ban always" chart, although honestly, I think it happened for a reason: she's a really good mid when you're not good at the game, because it is impossible to not get at least moderate CS with her. And when people are less good at avoiding skillshots/flashing out of your ult, she can be great.

But her lanes are almost always passive lanes, and you can find people who do better than farm. And even if you snowball early, you're going to fall off late.

That said, really safe to play.

Morgana has some of the lowest DPS of any mage in the game, even if you can land everything, which can be hard. Late game against tanky opponents there's basically nothing she can do for her team other than ult. Her win rate in pro matches seems quite low to me, to the point where when I see a team pick Morg I just assume they'll lose.

You really need to be rolling downhill from level 6-11 or so for her to be effective.

Also this may change but the most popular AD carries, the guys you want to land a full ult on the most, are some of the best at escaping her ult. In general over time champions in LoL have gained more movement abilities, which hurts her a lot.

Also AP Yi destroys Morg. He does more late game, can farm just as well, and can force her out of lane. His Q does more damage than her shield and healing can mitigate and she can't stop him from healing to full.

I noticed this last night.  Melee classes with the self heal thing would blow me up with little or nothing I could do about it after level 12 or so.  I did get many chuckles out of rooting people and then soiling them though.  Good times. 

Sona doesn't seem very effective for 3 man though.  Too little dps and the buffs are wasted if you don't follow someone down a lane.  I'm still trying to figure out what caters to my playstyle and am limiting myself to the free weekly toons.  This is really just something to mess with when I get too frustrated with WoT.

Sona is mostly not going to be doing much good if she's by herself. I have ONE TIME seen Sona do a solo top lane by herself and absolutely destroyed her lane opponent. But that was in blind before I hit level 30 and was a very good player.

Just to confirm. You are playing Summoners Rift in your "three man" not Twisted Treeline Nebu?

Anyway. Personal bias, but I would recommend learning the game with Ashe and Annie, mostly Ashe. Ashe just teaches you everything you need to know about the game with a nice set of training wheels.

Her slow + being an attack damage focused champion lets you right-click people and win. You learn to last hit properly, which is an essential skill, while volley helps you farm if you are not great at it and gets you out of danger as and AoE slow, but if you are really overextended you will be punished and learn where not to be (i.e. alone and exposed). Her eagle serves as a training ward and helps you learn map awareness/scouting. Finally her ult is just so fun and multipurpose; either stunning the guy who is right in front of you making a break for his tower, the melee bruiser who just jumped you, or getting a clutch stun from halfway across the map and picking your team up a kill or two, plus it serves as training for the other skill-shots you will be using later in the game.  

Playing a support is good training, but you can't win the game for your team. And at your low skill bracket being able to carry the team if you have any clue about video games at all is key to having fun. I guess it depends if one of your friends plays a good ADC (attack damage carry = uses physical damage and their normal auto attack to kill people with infinity edge and similar items).

But, if you have only played like 5 games ever, most of this does not matter too much. Just play, try and have fun, and learn when it is time to fight and when it is time to run.

If you had fun with Morgana, you might want to give Lux a shot, too.  She's very similar to Morgana, in my experience, but way safer and more useful in the endgame.  Though I've never tried her on TT.

OK, so Morgana has two primary damage abilities. An AoE DoT and a skillshot nuke (which is also a root). In addition her ultimate is an PBAoE Nuke and delayed nuke/Stun

Against single enemies this provides a large amount effective damage since, if she lands her skillshot nuke, she can lay a pool down under them and do a lot of DPS. From levels 6-13 or so she has very good damage in this regard.

Her typical leveling path starts with the skillshot nuke, but maxes the AoE DoT first. This is because the AoE DoT is great for farming and pushing waves while if she lands the nuke, she can generally get a good portion of the AoE DoT off by sticking it under the rooted enemy.

In the mid game, her ability to farm easily and push lanes lets her shove the lane to the turret and roam to support other lanes, and this makes her extremely potent in a game with extended laning as well as in poke comps since her w is a great zoning tool and her q can set up engages.

Her "hard" engage options on single targets amount to either landing the skillshot nuke or getting close enough to start the ult.

The problem comes in lategame team fights. The further the game goes on, in order to be effective in a team fight Morgana needs to do two things. 1) Get in the middle of everyone in order to ult and 2) survive until the second tick of her ult goes off.

Unlike many AoE ulters the CC on her ult is not immediate, so she cannot as easily flash/ult like Amumu (who can also bandage toss) or Galio or Sona or Zyra or Orinanna can, and if she does flash/ult a team she needs to be able to survive them simply saying turning and killing her (a problem that fiddlesticks also has).

The later the game goes on, the more damage the enemy team will have as well as more escapes which means that it becomes harder and harder to land the ult.

Zhonya's Hourglass is generally her first item, it provides an activated ability which makes you untargetable and invulnerable for 2 seconds. Morgana absolutely needs this in order to survive ulting. But this also makes it so you can't move and this makes it easier to get out of Morgana's ult before the second portion goes off. In addition the necessity to get this early puts you at a DPS disadvantage compared to champions who got Liandry's or were able to itemize into more offensive abilities. The other problem with zhonya's is that it requires a needlessly large rod as a component, which requires 1600 gold. Other mids can go back and pick up their items more piecemeal which give them incremental advantages.

The primary weakness of Morgana at the moment is that many other popular mids are just as good at shoving the lane, and so Morgana's ability to passively farm with her w and then help out other lanes is negated when the enemy doesn't have to be there. In addition its become clear that grouping earlier is advantageous, and so long laning phases aren't happening as often.


AP Nunu needs CDR and AP. CDR since he only has one primary dps ability and AP since it scales really hard with AP. Tankyness is nice, but not entirely nesecessary beyond what you will naturally pick up from AP items.

The New Liandry's is really strong on him since his e double proc's it. Depending on whether you're able to hit things a lot he does or doesn't need mana regen, but you will probably want a cup anyway since 15% CDR is 15% more damage when you only have one ability. You don't need to worry about sustain because your q heal scales off AP, which will keep you up so long as there are things to eat.

Bruiser Nunu just builds like support nunu but adds a DPS item or two. I don't really play nunu bruiser all that much so am unsure of exactly what to go. Though i am guessing that CDR and a Sheen item would be ideal, especially with the new Frozen Fist (or whatever its called) adding armor, CDR, AP, and an AoE proc (which nunu needs to effectively clear creeps).

I would probably build Frozen Fist, Reverie, Bulwark, and then a Ravenous Hydra and go 0/30/0.
  

There are a lot of streamers for League of Legends too.  Many do commentary (Scarra and Wingsofdeathx commentate a LOT) and some just play and are entertaining in their antics (Aphromoo can be a hilarious bastard).  Sometimes I wanna play LoL when I get home but I don't have anywhere near the mental fortitude to do fuck all, so I'll watch a stream while I prepare to pass out.

It also helps you pick up on lingo.  Kinda embarrassing when someone asked me to leash blue and I had fuck all idea what he was blathering about,.

Edit: Oh yeah, link to twitch streams http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/League%20of%20Legends

Twitch generally has the better streamers. They have TSM, Dignitas, Fear (high elo solo queue, shit team), and Nhat Nguyen (support player) among others. Own3d.tv has some benefits with the entire CLG and Curse rosters streaming there, as well as Ocelote and some other pros/personalities.   Twitch sometimes glitches out on me.  For instance right now I can't load their directories but can access their streams from other sites.

I tend to watch Wingsofdeathx late at night when I'm done with gaming. He's pretty entertaining and rather informative. I wish scarra streamed more, but apparently his internet is shitty.  Oddone from TSM is pretty good if you want to learn jungling, but the rest of TSM isn't quite as useful (you'd thing Xspecial's stream would be better, but it isn't). 

Streaming helped me learn the game as well.  I was far less of a noob than I should have been at the start.  Still, the first few times in, I'll admit to not knowing where the blue buff was.

I use www.teevox.com.  It aggregates streams from twitch and own3d.  Find the occasional random interesting thing to watch too (like speed runs of random games).

Lux? I don't know, I still have trouble with her combos, which are really the key to being efficient her. Q-E-AA-E-AA-R-AA is non-trivial execution.

Just pretend you are a super scary crazy lady who ejaculates deadly light beams.  Cackle a lot. 

It is really impossible not to cackle when shes a chargin' her lazer.

Also, her combo isn't particularly hard to execute, at least no harder than any other character that relies on comboing.

Kills with Lux's ult are just FUN. There are certain champs that are like that because they don't have to be anywhere near you when they kill you, just hit an ability at the right time. Karthus, Gangplank and Lux are the ones off the top of my head.

If you want a fun and absolutely overpowered face-melting mid, DIANA. This bitch is CRAZY DPS. She is very squishy, but if you hit the right combo on somebody, you can just fucking melt them into a puddle of goo in seconds time. I especially love it when a Xin thinks he's going to pound me only to find out after his knockup ability goes off, he has fuckall he can do to me and his health just disappears.

Most champions who have combo's are much easier to pull off. This is both because her combo is not straight forward and because her auto attack animation is not as snappy as other champions.

E.G. Most combos look like corki, AA,q,AA,r,AA. Where the difficulty is in timing your abilities and auto attacks so that you don't interrupt anything.

Lux's combo works requires that you proc your e right before you land the last auto attack and that you hit a skillshot. e,q,aa,e,aa or e,q,aa,e,r,aa if you've got your ult up. Its significantly harder than most other combo based champions.

Lux ults.  :awesome_for_real: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv0L5Hwed_4&feature=youtu.be)

 :awesome_for_real:

Speaking of fun Ult kills, I played with a Darius in ranked yesterday at lunch that was really fucking good. I went mid Mord against a Diana and mostly drove her out of the lane. The Darius just got fed to fuck though and was a really skilled player. At one point I saw him drop 3 straight dunk ult kills around the mid lane inner turrets. Just SPLAT, breathe, SPLAT, breathe, SPLAT! TRIPLE KILL. It was a thing of beauty.

Same guy did a Darius vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1iVJAzCv38).  

I need to pick him up. Seems like a champ I could play and another champ I can't lane against worth shit (go join Teemo in that club).  

Speaking of ult snipes, I had 2 last night with GP, and my team didn't even get upset. Helps that the Ezreal was cleaning house anyways. We were up early and totally threw it because the Panth that I shit on in lane got to farm up to the point where he had 2 cleavers.  Plus our jungle and mid fed a ton of kills.  God, cleaverland is brutal.

Darius is tough to play. I bought him because of how thoroughly I got owned in lane by him a few times, then proceeded to suck in lane with him until I finally switched to someone else.

Darius is tough to play really well but easy to play. The thing that makes him so hard to play is that you have to use your ult in non-intuitive ways.

Generally when you roam, you want to use your ult early and not get kills with it, if you yourself gets kills then yea, you get fed, but no one on your team gets gold and this lets you be singled out in a team fight and then your team is under farmed.

In team fights you def want to dunk though.

I played a ranked game yesterday as support where our Darius went 20-2. Our team was basically useless except for him so in every fight I would do everything to keep him alive. Every fight started with 2 or 3 people on our team dying immediately then he and I and maybe one straggler would 2 v 5 and win.

Playing Darius let me to the discovery of the Hexdrinker. It is an awesome item on Darius if you are up against AP. And the upgrade is even more awesome.

(http://i.imgur.com/HKJzw.png)

Games like this drive me totally bonkers.  There were like 3 legitimate team fights the entire hour, and the rest of the time twitch and yi were trying to be heroes rambo style and ended up trading 1 for 1 all over the map.  We could have won this thing 20 minutes earlier if anyone was willing to stay together as a team, but whenever I told people to play safe I'd get nasty comments. :uhrr:

I played AP Teemo in a blind game last night. First time I'd ever tried AP Teemo.

Holy fuck. I think the only reason I didn't have a better score is the over aggressive Kat I was bot laning with and the Teemo on the other team who built for more Attack Speed early. In the end, both Teemos did 13 kills, but I had less deaths (10 to his 16) and more assists (22 to his 8). The stacking poison damage combined with attack speed items like Ranuaan's Hurricane are just monstrous.

This login screen music

I don't even, what

I think I might buy this champion.

Sold on the music alone.

New patch drops tomorrow. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drNRCr8KTPA)

Big points for me:

• Jungle is worth more gold, and camp health is more concentrated into larger mobs
• Nerfs for Evelyn, Riven, Talon, Khazix, Lee Sin, Katarina
• Buffs for Rengar, Diana, Nami
• Crystalline Flask is more expensive (350) and slightly more effective
• Iceborne Gauntlet nerfed

They're also changing the ranked system (though I don't think that's going live this patch).  Rather than a huge ladder that everyone's on, you get divided up into leagues (bronze, silver, gold, etc.) of 250 players split into five different divisions, and you fight qualifier matches to move up and down through different divisions and then into higher leagues.

They're not actually changing matchmaking it looks like, just getting rid of the ELO number (so instead of saying you were 1500 you would say you were Gold, division 2)

Also, the talon nerf isn't really a nerf. As of right now, cutthroat doesn't actually amplify any damage. They're fixing it, which will amplify his damage from all sources by 3-15%. His abilities are being brought in line so that the fix does not end up as a straight 15% buff to his damage.

The jungle changes just seem like more tinkering that may or may not be necessary. Diana getting a buff is just... WTF? She is really really strong already, and you just increased the range on her awesome ass closer AND gave her another second of shield? YES PLEASE.

I don't ever see anyone using diana.

They nerf brain dead button mashing champions to decrease the amount of brain dead button mashers playing them. They don't do it to balance these characters. Expect a new Diana skin to be released soon.

I don't know why. She's crazy good. A bit squishy at times, but at least at my elo/skill level, she can carry a game.

She got nerfed.  She's not being played competitively at the moment at all.  Most buffs/nerfs are reactions to higher ELO / tournament play, which is why Diana and Rengar were nerfed in the first place.

At your elo, I think it's more of the player than the champ.  A carry is still a carry, even if they aren't as face wrecking awesome as they once were.

That can't be right, she has to be OP because I can melt faces with her just about every game I play.  :awesome_for_real:

I actually think though that she just fits my playstyle perfectly. I'm finding as I have played more games with Jax, Diana, Mao, Lux and Dr. Mundo, I'm a lot better with them than I've been with ADC's lately or with other characters that fit similar roles.

People may not have gotten around to playing her since the initial nerf.  There's a stigma it seems around nerfed toons.  Any nerf makes the champion "horrible" to a lot of flavor of the month people, and they don't come back around until they see that disproved.  So basically, have fun playing a bunch of people who forgot how to play against her!

The nerf was pretty hard so it was fairly justifiable.  before the nerf her stats were better than the buff she just got

Twin Shadows might be my favorite new item.  You can catch someone from so far away with that thing.  Plus, it frees you from a few face checking derps per game.

As an added bonus, it is one of the few support items (besides Locket) which provides more gold in stats than you pay for it.

I'm always angsting over giving up my gp10 for it, or building an icicle instead.

Icicle is terrible, buy twin shadows.

Twin Shadows: 2200g stats: 1900 cost: Plus Active

Shard of True Ice: 1339 gold stats (360 of which aren't "now" stats): 1700 cost: +4 gp/10 : + Active

To "make up" the stat difference, assuming you get all of the value from the MP5 (which won't be true) and assuming that the active on the item of the shard of true ice is worth the same as the active on twin shadows your GP/10 needs to run for 27 minutes after upgrading to the shard of true ice.

Anyone see the change to Zhonha's Hourglass?  They removed the Chain Vest and added a new item:


Zhonha's now has 120 AP, up from 100, to reflect the additional power that a fully stacked Arm-Guard would give and then some.

Also the recipe cost for Trinity Force is now 3, down from 300.  Yes, fucking 3.

Wait... Triforce is only 3 GOLD? As in 1, 2, 3? That's the combine cost? Or am I completely misreading what you are saying?

Previously, had you built the three items to forge together the Triforce, you would have to pay a final fee of 300g.  They reduced that final construct fee to 3g.  You're still going to spend 3900g to build Zeal, Sheen, and Phage individually, or you can buyout the Triforce for 3903g.

Arm Guard on Cho might be an interesting path to take.I took a break from playing and wen't back to Cho last week, more kills with him tanking than I could pull off with Cait etc.

Sounds like I need to play Jax more.

So, how many games until they officially place you now?  I'm so far 4-3 but already my ELO is visible to me on my summoner profile (1175).

I have to say, so far bot lane is super easy.  The mids, however, are mechanically a bit better than I am.  Plus, I did the stupid thing of trying a champ for the first time in ranked. "Hey, it's a counter!"  :awesome_for_real:  Didn't play it too badly, however.

edit: I'd say this season hasn't been great to Jax.  I haven't seen an effective one in forever. 297 gold isn't going to change that.

I have not had a bad game as Jax this season. He has been a beast for me, even in games where I might start slow. By end game, he's just un-fucking-stoppable.

Allegedly, Elo placement occurs after ten games, but you can see it after five (you're probably playing with other unranked players at this point).  Game allegedly thinks I'm 1300, which is bullshit, and now I'm terrified to go back into ranked for fear that the other shoe will drop and it'll shotgun me back down into the 3-digit range.

I seem to have decent luck on support, but the only time I played ADC I got dunked hard.  Ended up going something like 0-5-2, and spent the entire match listening to my team bitch about me.  Jungle I think I'm getting better at, still not so comfortable with counterjungling, though.  Top and mid I can do kind of okay, but I'm still having trouble either going too aggressive and dying to towers or going too passive and ignoring the other player completely.

Gave Thresh a spin, holy shit, is he fun.  He's like a crappy Blitzcrank and a crappy Amumu rolled into one, and his passive is the kind of thing that makes the old school RPG gamer in me drool ("there's no upper time limit on games, so this guy theoretically has UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!").

If you notice though, each subsequent soul diminishes in power gain, which is kind of a cop out.

Well, look at that. After a really good run, I've gone above .500 for season 3... 53-52.

I think that's the case.  After my last game it still shows unranked on post game, and I had a game with a first time ranked player last one.  Some of the players have been ranked though (I think), one Ryze claimed to have gotten "this low" during a recent losing streak.  

Anyhow, somehow I crushed Panth with Kayle top.  Guy got kills in late team fights, but he was 60 cs down. It was a bit dicey early, but once I got Nashor's, he just melted.  Of course his final words on the matter were "gg team sucks".   I did have a brain fart and buy Sunfire on Kayle for tankiness.  A warmogs would have likely been better, but I felt somewhat constrained to armor and HP since they had a Panth, Trynd and Cait.  There was this hilarious sequence when we were mulling around baron, when our Lee showed bot:  their Sona flashes forward and wiffs an ult, Cass wiffs her ult, we run, Panth misses his drop, and then we turn and ace them.  I wish I was recording it.. it would have made a nice video of "meanwhile.. in placement matches".

Kayle is gonna get nerfed soon, I think.  She's getting played by everyone.

edit: Heh, yah, everyone in my last game was "unranked".


Grats, mang. Keep working on those death totals. Your ADC play seems to be winning for you.

Actually, I can thank a lot of jungle play this season - my Mao and Mundo games have gotten really good (or at least good for this level). Teams really don't seem to know what to do with Mao. I love it when they focus me. I have been doing ADC better because I was sucking wind at the start of season 3. Somebody said something about buying damage over attack speed in season 3 and that's helped. I did not realize just how badly attack speed had gotten nerfed. MF is still too squishy but the Cleaver/Bloodthirster/Hurricane combo with a side helping of Zerk Greaves and Guardian Angel seems to be working for me.

I've also lucked out and gotten some really good teams against some REALLY SHITTY teams.

Hadn't realized that ATS problem.  I was so used to building attack speed on everyone.  Cleaver/Bloodthirster just seems so good now.

Do people still prioritize IE?

It depends on the champ for me. I think I've been going 3rd or 4th item on Cait after Doran's, Zerk Greaves and Vamp Scepter. I haven't touched it at all with MF and haven't played Graves in the last few weeks.

AS wasn't that good even in S2. The fuckton of crit and bit of much-needed movement speed had more to do with the popularity of PD, whether anyone knew it or not.

Never really feel constrained to armor. You will always get roughly enough armor by leveling and secondary attributes of either tank items or damage items (as a bruiser or AP). Be concerned more about HP and sustain.

And always remember that Sunfire is a bad item to buy for tankiness. The upgrade cost is entirely in its passive and isn't worth it unless you need it to split push


Don't buy Hurricane, its a trap item. The attack speed bonus is both more expensive than it was in season 2, attack speed is never all that damaging comparatively*, you need a lot of on hit bonus damage to make it work, and the item is too expensive anyway with the passive alone costing like 1000 gold... which isn't worth it, especially for an ADC who may not be able to get in range to attack everyone.

For ADC's you only need attack speed items if

1) You don't have an AS self buff
2) You don't have many attack resets
3) You don't have many AD scaling spells

This means, basically, Vayne(kinda), Ashe, Kog'maw, and trist

Trist has no AD scaling or attack resets and her q is on a really long CD so she needs the AS. Ashe has only volley, Kog has his e and r, but they eat up mana too fast to be really effective, and vayne scales on AS.(but still wants AD first)

Other than that, stacking AD and Armor pen until you've got a few items is the best idea. This means for MF you probably want to go Cleaver->LW->BT->IE and maybe get an AS item in there.

*In that, in order to double your DPS you need a lot more AS than in order to double your damage with AD.

I disagree on sunfire, while it doesn't have the pure tanky stats, having that extra damage when in the middle of a team fight can make all the difference.  It shouldn't be the ONLY tanky item you get if you're only getting one but on a full tank build it is extremely useful.

Sunfire upgrades for 980 gold and does 40 damage/second. Assume an average of 100 MR(which is on the low side now that we have bulwark) so you're actually doing 20 damage/second since you don't have mpen.

That makes, if you're alive for 10 seconds(which is a long time) 200 damage total.

Lets say that instead of sunfire the enemy tanky dps bought Locket of the Iron Solari. He gets roughly the same amount of tank stats as you (25 less HP, 10 less armor) and gets to provide up to 230 HP in shield to his allies... and he spends less money doing it giving him an extra 500 gold with which to build more tanky or build damage.

So you're in the middle of his team doing 200 damage over 10 seconds. He presses his active and entirely negates your damage plus has 500 gold plus 10% CDR (then goes and dives onto your carry)

Sunfire cape is for pushing Randuins/Locket/Bulwark are all better in a team fight both in overall stats provided to you for the gold, and in ability to protect your team(or kill the enemy team)

Has anyone had much experience with the new ranking system?  I'm nervous to touch it, and the forums make it sound like the worst thing since Hitler, so I'm wondering how accurate the whining is.

The worrying claims I'm hearing:
1) If you get 0 points and lose a match, you drop down to the previous division.  If you have 100 points, you have to win a best of 3 match to get boosted up to the next division.  So it's easier to lose rank than to gain it.  Not helping matters is the fact that everyone starts at 0 points.

2) If you drop a division, you start at 50 points.  So, if you lose your first game, you're dropped down to the previous division, and then you've got to get three or four more wins to get to the best of three match set which you then have to win to be back to where you started from if you hadn't lost one game.

3) Winning matches gives about 15 points, losing matches apparently docks something like 30?  Is this right?  I'm hearing a lot of bullshit numbers floating around, but I haven't heard anyone contradict this or any more reliable info on it.

4) Divisions are temporary, but tiers (gold, silver, etc) are permanent.  So what, you ask?  You're still matched with other players by Elo, not by tier.  So if you're in, say, platinum 5, you can intentionally lose all your matches to tank your Elo down to 50, then win fifty games in a row against bronze tier players, so you get promoted to diamond or whatever despite never even competing against another platinum level player.  Or am I reading this wrong?

This didn't happen to me. I had zero points going into my Bronze 2 division and lost my first game.  I was, however, seeded 6th into the group, so I just dropped to 13th.

I probably would have been silver if I didn't drop my last placement match.  Can't say I care much.


I got 29 for winning.

This system is a bit wonky.  I'm getting paired with people in silver a lot.   Everyone seemed to be in hyper dickhead mode tonight as well.  

I'm not getting the same SC2 ladder anxiety with this system yet.  Probably because I don't exactly know what's going on.  :awesome_for_real:

I know I got 36 points for winning my first match, dropped two straight because of REALLY SHITTY TEAMS and then won a fourth match and was back up to 49 points. So I think those that won either got more than 15 points or there may be a sliding scale for points per victory. It's kind of a confusing system that obfuscates a lot of the stuff that one simple elo number didn't. Maybe it's to make low elo players like me not feel so bad about playing with total shitslapping crippled degenerates.

You get points based on your real ELO. The game attempts to stick you in the proper division for your ELO. If your ELO is below your division ELO you get less LP when you win and lose more when you lose. If your ELO is above your division ELO you get more LP when you win and lose less when you lose.

So basically, retarded.

That is the exact opposite of the way it seems like it should work. Won't this make the lowest divisions even shittier than elo hell has always been?

I frankly don't understand why they moved to this system for solo queue anyway.  Elo is a superior ranking system in every way.  People complained about Starcraft 2's league system because there is no reasonable way to judge between players using this kind of league system, whereas a simple Elo is easily comparable.  I understand for 5v5 ranked, as they feel that they can use this as a feeder of sorts for up and coming teams to make a name for themselves.  For solo queue, it just seems like adding a totally unnecessary layer of confusion.

Matchmaking has to do strictly with your ELO and has nothing to do with the league system.

Basically everything works exactly as it did the day before except now, instead of seeing your elo, you see your league and league points.

Yea, i liked the old system better too.

So what's your saying is it's the tits on a bull that removes the "Your elo sucks" insult?

The game placed me into Silver 1 and I was doing alright. Won 3 matches and then lost 2 really close matches. After that I had 2 really bad matches with awful team-mates and the game demoted me to Silver 2. Since then I've had a mix of wins and losses, but the quality of my team-mates has become noticeably poorer. I don't just mean that the players are worse (though there is that), but moreso that I started running into giant dicks for team-mates. I liked the old ELO system better where it felt like less was riding on individual matches and a troll team-mate couldn't significantly affect your rating.

You can't even safely queue dodge anymore when you see a team-mate last pick twitch as your ADC because you'll lose points for that too. Instead I'm forced to waste 30 minutes of my life hoping the player is one of the 5% of twitch players that aren't completely awful, only to watch him lose bot by minute 8 and end the match at 0/8. Good stuff.

Like that matters, the big thing today is "imma look you up on lolking and make fun of that one bad game you had"

. 1) twitch is a legit adc. He is not perfect but has been played successfully in competition recently.

2) I would bet that ranked is worse ATM because the changes have brought out more people. Invariably the people that stop playing ranked and join back with changes like this are those that think too highly of themselves. These people will invariable drop in elo because they are bad and cannot communicate.

It reminds me of a quote from another forum whereby one 5HITCOMBO was discussing his play. The comment in question was simply two quotes of his one when he was 1600 and one when he was top 500. The 1600 quote he was saying that he was better than the people he was playing with and the top 500 quote he was saying he was bad at the game

I know he can be viable, but chances are that he won't be unless you're playing at a much higher skill level than anyone I'm being matched with/against.

Speaking of high skill level play, I watched this self-narrated Lulu replay from a 2.1k player that made me feel like the worst Lulu ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZnmTpqhkA0

Using E (silence/shield) on minions just to position pix for Q pokes? Mind-blowing.

Really? First thing I did on lulu was position pix for poking, problem with it is the heavy mana drain but works like gangbusters.  Oh and when you do it in solo queue your adc tends to yell at you for taking a cs here and there.

Well it seems counter-intuitive. In general you almost never want to spend mana to damage minions or push up a lane, especially as support. The player in the video intentionally does both as soon as the game starts. Spending mana and a CD to silence/damage a minion seems crazy when you could save that mana/CD for champions, but it does open up a lot of opportunities to harass and effectively doubles the range of her Q.

I did have to turn off smartcasting for Q once I started doing it though, and my mana conservation went to shit. I've still got plenty of learning to do but it's a very different (and more effective) way to play Lulu than what I had been doing.

Pushing lanes is how you win early bot lane engagements. Since most lane engagements are AA focused and will involve pushing past minion waves this guarantees that your support or ADC will have creep aggro in any sustained trade or fight.

If you don't have more minions than the enemy then they control when full engages happen and when they don't. In addition, creep advantage gives you a XP advantage which translates to level asymmetry which translates to won lanes.

The only time you don't want to have more creeps than the enemy ADC is if you can zone them. If you can zone them and the lane is pushing towards your tower you're in complete control of the lane and can continue to gain CS and XP advantages. Otherwise, until probably level 6 or so, you want to be pushing, so damaging creeps in order to line up harass is not a bad idea.

Its also stupid OP on murderbridge since once you have a chalice you're pretty much sustained you have 1500 range poke whenever enemy OR allied creeps are near

edit: IRT the thread above. This is especially true against ezreal. Ezreal can easily have his q be creep blocked which significantly reduces his DPS, he can still aa,w,aa you but the damage on w is not significantly strong enough that he wants to level it now that the AS debuff is not there. And, if there are not creeps, he can go aa,q,aa,w,aa or aa,e,aa,q,aa,w,aa which are significantly stronger combinations... But if you have the creep advantage you can likely block the q and/or shed the e damage onto a minion (and his shift AA will nearly ensure that he will take creep aggro which will be a large boon to your ability to fight)

Health and mana pots are being capped to 5 each.  Time to bring back my Yorick with vengeance  :drill:

Who takes more than 5?

Resourceless champs.  Fort port start will be the next to get nerfed.

So, Riot just announced a systemic revision for their skin RP pricing.  Most of the costs are going down (to reflect the fact that the "average" skin today is way the hell better than they were when the game launched) but costs for 18 skins are going up, from 975 to 1350.

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3328361 (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3328361)

Naturally, there is much sturm und drang about this on the forums, but since the changes don't go live for ~2 weeks, people still have time to grab iBlitzcrank or whatever if they want him at the current price.

"Potion-master" Akali, Morde, etc. Even mana-based champs sometimes start with just some combo of wards and pots. They provide so much sustain early game that if you buy any real item you get pushed out of lane by someone who trades and heals it all back. Especially top lane if you start with a real item and get ganked early even if you survive with minimal damage taken you're basically guaranteed to get pushed out of lane.

I've still only bought one skin.  Spooky Gangplank for 260 RP, because I wanted to be a ghost pirate.  :awesome_for_real:

Already done, I think.  Fort potion got a price change to 350.

I'm not convinced that Spaceman Nautilus and Pool Party Ziggs are worth 1350RP

Sadly, they are two of the few skins I don't have.

Will my OCD force me to splurge or will sanity prevail?

Yeah, the criteria seem kind of weird.  Steel Legion Garen is moving to 1350, but Steel Legion Lux is still only worth 975, even though they both seem pretty comparable.

But yeah, having the same crisis of self control myself... still waiting for the prize IP from that comic contest to come through, hoping I won't have to spend money for this.  Waffling on iBlitzcrank and Frostblade Irelia.  The bigger point of interest for me is the three legendary skins ("these skins will never go on sale") which are being moved down to a 1350 price point where they might be going on sale for potentially 675.  We haven't seen any of the 1350 skins go on sale yet, though, so who knows.  I generally buy my skins on sale, so bumping the prices of a few up to 1350 is not really worrying when they're moving those legendaries down a peg.

The soon-to-be-1350 Sona, Ziggs and Nautilus skins are on sale for 50% off. Nice ploy to sell them*





















*I threw my wallet at the screen and grabbed the two I didn't have

Yeah, I saw a post by Hipallus where he mentioned that they were thinking of putting the skins with increased prices which were released before 2013 on sale before the price change went live, so maybe Monday's sale will be more of them.

They probably could have avoided like 99% of the drama with this if they'd made put the skins on sale right when the price change was announced, I kinda wonder why they didn't do that.

ARAM QUEUE!

Yah, this will get me back to try it.  I've actually never played an ARAM.  :geezer:

Don't feel bad. I've never played a Custom game, let alone ARAM  :why_so_serious:

I tried Howling Abyss ARAM at lunch after my first game was full of another group of terribad players. It was fun and different. Probably a nice way to train for late-game team fights.

Well, that was fun and fast.  20 minutes for my win of the day bonus is alright by me.  Poor enemy team didn't get a single ranged character.  I did pretty decent with AP Sion.

Trundle seems... good. Time to get my jungle on.

Played a couple more games of ARAM last night with Phry. Sucked it the first game, did better the second with Tristana. Ranged has a huge advantage, especially if they spend the first few minutes farming minions instead of getting in team fights. Teemo is a beast thanks to all the goddamn mushrooms and the very narrow channel. Karthus is good for that reason and for the fact that people can't heal up so his ult can be HUGE.

Did they buff sejuani? I neer saw people playing her but with the new look I decided to buy her and find her to be a very good jungler/tank.

Yes, her and Trundle both got redos.

Much as I love support and like to think I'm pretty good at it I've realized my ability to carry anything in ranked is next to none. So it's become that I'm trying to main jungle and I was wondering about good jungle champs.

I tend to err on the side of tank so here's the ones I use.

Xin- My goto guy, build him tanky with frozen mallet and he is a cc machine with good dps.
Rammus- little spinball of doom, very fun but having your charge not hit minions is kind of a pita.
Hecarim- Still learning him but aoe for days is fun, when he isn't banned
Amumu- I think I've forgotten to play him he gets banned so much and his bandage also has the minion problem.
Sejuani- played a couple games, seems like a contender for top tier as far as tanky/cc goes.
Mao- man his ganks are good but I feel like late game he offers less damage and tankiness than other choices.

Who else is there that is any good?

Volibear is decent as he can snowball into some serious late game damage and tankiness. He's a bit slow.
You're spot on about Mao - he's really more of a support/tank jungle late game than any damage dealing. It's mostly about tying up at least one opposing champ and making sure your team gets the protection of his ult than doing the damage yourself. Oh and scouting with your seedlings.
Nocturne seems to be trash unless you are really skilled with him. I'm not. I tend to die way too much as you have to be selective about your targets.
Vi is a serious damage dealer late game and with stuff like the Black Cleaver, she's good at debuffing the other team's armor, and she has her dunk that makes for good selective CC. Can be a bit squishy.
Yi is a beast if done right. AP Yi is not doing it right. It's doing it very very wrong. Attack speed, movement and physical damage all the way.
Darius is good if you know how to use Darius, especially his dunk. Late game he can either be a beast or a dud depending on how well you manage the ult.
Fuck Fiora and Nasus jungle. Just haven't seen them used as good junglers.

Nasus jungle seems pretty damn easy.  Build tanky, wither carry, solo dragon at 6,  profit.

Also, Naut got buffed recently and that guy has CC for miles.

The problem with Nasus jungle is his ganking potential.  The love he got a few patches ago made him decent again, but the new patch hit his CC kinda hard.

Uhh, they only halved the attack speed slow, not the movement speed slow.

True, but that attack speed might make a difference for some.

I used to love me some nautilus but something about his kit feels lacking to me. Pre-ult his ganks aren't that great and post ult you are usually almost done with the laning phase where his chase-you-down ult lacks some of it's punch.  He is definitely a cc machine though when you learn to use his passive right.

You could also do some Cho'gath.  He was used pretty effectively in the NA LCS.  Gotta hit those ruptures, though.

Had my first ARAM games last night and really had fun.  Shorter games, lots of action and so far less raging.  Plus I get some experience on champs I would never pick for Rift.

For jungle I like Noc, Lee & GP (though I prefer lane GP).  I tried J4 in some custom games but the first clear was rough with my runes and with no pull on blue.  I'm sure with a real pull it would be fine.

I'm not particularly good at jungle, but in addition to what others have said, I've had some luck with Fiddlesticks and Zac.

The new champ seems really vicious, to me.  Excellent farm and sustain, excellent CC, a really versatile gap closer/escape tool, and her invuln ult... she seems really powerful.  Pretty fun so far, but I haven't worked out a build for her yet, she seems like she needs more defense stats than most mages.

The ARAM thing, I'm liking, but I'm not sure if I'll stick with it.  It's nice to have a low stress game against other players rather than against bots, but not being able to choose the champion I like is kind of a turnoff.  I'm not sure about the balance here, my first game I rolled with Vlad, who I loved at launch but haven't played much recently and I really sucked bad as him.  I thought that with free lifesteal and ranged resourceless poke would be OP, but I got stomped, so not sure if I suck (a definite possibility, I've never been particularly good at him) or he's just not really that viable.  The next two games I got Rengar and Monkey King and did way better, weirdly, because neither has any ranged poke (except Rengar's chain chomps) I assumed I'd get destroyed.  So, still trying to figure out the balance here.

There really isn't much balance to aram, I just played a game where I got heimer, it was essentially gg for the enemy team right then. Heimer poke is godly

Mundo and Fiora jungle for me :D

I got Xerath on ARAM last night and there was a Ziggs and Yi on my team. It wasn't even fair. That much AOE, ranged damage in that tight a space was just ridiculous. I had 23 kills by the end and I think Ziggs was 21 or right near there. It only got close because the late game opens up near the last two turrets and it's harder for that AOE team to get kills and aces.

Holy shit, it's about time (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/customize-your-build-client-item-sets).

You can now make Custom Item Sets to load during the game so that you don't have to keep trying to remember builds. You can filter them by champ and map, and make multiple item blocks each set. I've been through making a few and it's about as good as I could have hoped (at least out of game - haven't used them in game yet).

I've been making my own custom build using an app for a while now.  This is just adding the in-game version of it, which does make things easier.

I've been enjoying playing support as a main role with my brother in law who ADCs. I've been mostly using Thresh but I wanted to branch out and learn a few other champs. Any suggestions on who to play next?

I'm leaning towards Sona, but Janna, Leona and a few others seem interesting as well.

I like Taric, but I haven't played him a lot since his nerfs, but I'm sure he'll do fine while you're leveling.  Good aggressive support.

If you like hooks, get Blitzcrank. All the rest you've listed are good, although I haven't played much Leona.  I mained Soraka for a while, but she's pretty boring. Easy ass lane at low elo/leveling, but your kill potential is pretty low.  You can heal bait like a boss, however.  Alistar also seems to be less shitty nowadays.  He's fun.  His headbutt/pulv seems a lot easier to pull off, or maybe the move has just clicked for me.  I hit like 90% of them the other day.

All 3 of those are good. Soraka is a good all-around support that you can't go wrong with. Lux is very fun in that she can easily switch from support/CC/protection bitch to "WAAARGH MELT FACES!" damage-dealer. Taric is kind of boring but extremely effective. I haven't played her enough, but Lulu is fun.

EDIT: Also, Zilean is an absolute blast but really requires some patience on your part (and your teams). He can lay down some serious fuck you you thought you were safe damage with his bombs and he's a real frustrating to play against if the Zilean knows what he's doing.

Sona, Janna, Alistar, Nami, Lulu are my picks for support atm. Leona is hard to play well compared to the rest

Thresh, Leona, Lulu, Mundo supports ;D

Ok so on Friday, I bought Janna and Sona. I learned that Sona is really fun to play early to mid, and really squishy late. I had to learn to play her very very passive late game.

Janna was more troublesome, but it might of been because I was drinking! It looks like Janna's best when teamed up with a melee ADC than anything else. I have to practice more with her.

Next few characters I'm looking to test are Leona and Lulu.

Janna is very skill intensive but not particularly ADC intensive. She works with anyone except melee ADC's (because melee ADC's suck and with good reason)

She requires both knowledge of how to use her abilities and how to level and build (try leveling w and building AP after your sight stone!)

I would play ARAM if it was not random picks. I think with the current depth in thee champ pool we could see a variety of builds revolving around this format...

Are there any decent build guides out there that I can use as a cheatsheet? I'm no where close to learning all the different gears.

I use Mobafire but the quality can be somewhat... variable.

solomid.net is generally good for guides.

spellsy (http://spellsy.blogspot.com/), is a an ex-pro player that does some easy to read support guides/cards.

I've been using mobafire and solomid. Ok so I'm looking in the right places.

Don't use mobafire. If you don't know what you're doing already it won't help. If you do know you wont need it.

Riot has decided that on-hit builds need help, and in their infinite wisdom is going about this by removing the quintessential AS on-hit item from the game entirely. Malady is being cut in half and glued on to Nashor's and Wit's End. Hopefully the buffs will make my old AS Kayle build viable (as much as you can call it a build now that half the core items have been removed) but it's a weird way to go about it.

I actually like this a lot, I always thought the combination of Malady / Wit's End / Nashor's Tooth was too duplicative.

I haven't actually seen Malady in a game that didn't have Teemo in...... well, a while.

It wasn't a great item, but it felt more iconic to me than Nashor's Tooth. I love how in the patch preview they mention that on-hit builds haven't been popular lately and sound really perplexed about it, as if they weren't the ones who nerfed the shit out of every single AS item in the S3 patch.

What's the status of Shyvana nowadays? Does she still get played?

I don't think so, I hardly ever see her.  I'm not really too familiar with her, so if someone else disagrees ignore this, but I think she's kind of falling in between roles.  She's not really a good enough ganker to be an optimal jungler (she's got a great clear speed, but that's not really something people care much about these days), and doesn't have great dueling potential so she gets pushed out of lane a lot.  It's not like she's super weak or anything, she just doesn't do much on a team.

I think the only time I see Shyvana now is in ARAM. I have maybe played 1 ranked game in the last few months with her in it.

Shyvana's niche used to be counterjungling via superfast clears. She was a strong early duellist and had very quick clears, so she could clean out her own camps and then go mess up the opposing jungle. With the jungle changes, her clear really isn't that fast anymore. Also, the currently popular junglers are quite resilient to counterjungling (apart from Amumu but he is banned pretty much all the way to plat). Her ganks were always lacklustre, and her lategame where she was tanky via having lots of armor and magic resist, doesn't work well in a meta full of penetration. Riot planned to fix her through itemization, but I don't think they are going to avoid buffing her kit, as her hybrid damage, wonky ultimate and close-to-useless E just don't cut it these days. She is a victom of power creep, jungle changes and items changes.

I don't think she is a victim of power creep, just other champs are in the spot light. Once Riot decides to "shake up" the meta, we get more shyvanna players till new tank jungles get released.

The recent jungle changes were a big boost to her because she can clear so fast she can effectively farm everything forever.

Vi, Zac, Hecarim after S3 item changes, remade Udyr. I think these champions have all eclipsed her in power. Especially Vi and Zac have usurped her niches, doing what she does, just better.

She also has some pretty significant changes on the PBE

Shyvana is currently my favourite champ to play, and I am kind of dreading her new changes. Right now she kinda feels sleeper OP, and I'm afraid they will buff her through the roof she will be everywhere.

Played a few games with some level 30s with Karma bot/support and I have to say she's isn't bad toss down AOE shielding in team fights and her poke is pretty awesome.

Yi's getting an overhaul.

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3567137

Played a few Shyvana games. Seems good out of the jungle, would be even better if I actually had the proper runes for it, too. No CC to speak of when ganking, but good pressure in teamfights.


What is it with these people and homogenising everything?

Weird, unique flowers do not survive, especially if they want them to be tournament viable.   Yi is pretty much a gimmick champ, and either you get pentakills with him in competitive play, or he's useless.   He's kind of lost in the current meta and with how recent champs have been designed.   I'm not sure he's been seen in a tournament game since late season 2.

Plus, some of the older models are really, really bad. Pizza feet Yi.  Seems like they take a pass at the visuals and then look at the kit.

I don't agree that they should be making every champion tournament viable, though.  Why should I care if pros are using champion X if I'm having fun playing as him?  If he was somehow OP, I could understand a nerf headed his way, but it bugs me when they overhaul champions just because they're unpopular.  If you've got new art assets and new moves, add a new character, Yi Jr. or something, you can do that without removing Yi as he currently stands.  If there's one thing I'll give Dota over LoL it's that their champion designs are way more varied than LoL and it's good for the game IMO, both from the standpoint of a casual player and a spectator.  Remake Yi is probably going to be another gap closer + damage steroid + AoE damage champion, probably with some kind of piddly self-heal as a "nod" to his former meditate ability.  And he's STILL not going to be tournament viable, unless melee ADCs have somehow become relevant again.


This at least I can get behind.  Yi was kind of the poster child for their original aesthetic which they've quietly shuffled off, the "big boots and gloves" Warcraft look he shares with characters like Sivir (who I suspect is headed for the chopping block herself pretty soon) and the weird seven eyed goggles he shares with Jax.

Though even then, I think it would be neat if they had a "Old School Yi" skin or something with his clunky ass feet just for the hell of it.

Alex Ich of Moscow 5/Gambit Gaming ran it twice in week one of the EU LCS Summer Split, which was this past weekend. http://euw.lolesports.com/season3/split2/players/alex-ich (http://euw.lolesports.com/season3/split2/players/alex-ich)

I don't really like playing with him or against him, so I can get behind an overhaul.

I started playing around with Zyra last night. Really fun champ to run as support. Only got one game in though.

Zyra support is kinda good early game but at the end her kit isn't utility enough to justify support items imo. You get root and an ult but late game it'll just be a knockup and your dmg will be next to nothing.

So basically you really need to snowball with your adc

You don't build support Zyra as a traditional support. Once you get Philo stone and ruby sightstone, AP the fuck out of her. Haunting Guise > Liandry's Torment, Sorc's Shoes (or the cooldown boots or merc treads depending) and Rylai's at the very least. Late game she will be a fantastic damage addition and crowd control and nobody notices those goddamn plants plinking their ass until she drops the ult and BAM KNOCKUP EXTRA DAMAGE YOU JUST GOT MELTED.

Yeah, I haven't really mastered it yet, but You go for ruby/philo then Rylai's and then Liandrys. In the end you turn into a mini AP cannon. It works well in my normal games. But I've only played a minimum amount of games.

What's the difference between Dota2 and LOL? Is one better than the other? I know there are different things like creep denial, gold loss, and you don't have runes/masteries and all toons are available at the beginning.

Is LOL more popular because, I assume it's been out a long time? I'm a moba noob, so i'm wrapping my head around it.

Here's my take - keep in mind I tried DotA 2, never played the first DotA and went back to LOL after DotA 2.

Dota 2 has a lot more micromanagement. It has a SHITTY shit interface that is a holdover from the original (in that the goddamn UI takes up over 1/4 of the screen). It has creep denial and gold loss, your champ can level up to 20, instead of leveling up skills you can level up stats. You have to use a scroll to port back to spawn and there are shops out in the lanes including a "secret shop" that has certain special items only available there. To me, it feels a little more tactical/slower but that may be the interface. Also, you can't surrender, but after a certain time frame, you can quit the game as an individual and not be penalized.

LOL is a lot more streamlined and n00b friendly. All DotA 2's champs are available without having to purchase them.

So it's more complicated? Where LOL is more arcading/quick fun, DOTA2 takes more thought into builds while playing the game?

I think a bit, yes. It felt a little more complicated to me.

Take into mind that I'm a LoL player and my first exposure to playing DOTA was DOTA2.  I never played the original.

Dota2
Pros:
It's DOTA.  Game is just DOTA with new graphics.
More micro-intensive.
Great spectator mode.
More kills.  Lots of long CC and no flash means people die and not survive.  Not so many disengages and dashes.
Better map.  Jungle is more spread out.
Less stale meta than LoL.
More interesting item builds.
You don't pay for champs.  
Better client.
Community seems a bit more mature. I'm guessing they're older and there's less of them.  That helps.
Lots of really OP and imbalanced shit.

Cons.
It's DOTA.  It has not changed in a billion years.
More micro-intensive.
It has a bunch of counterintuitive crap in it.  Jungle creep stacking.  Minion aggro is weird as hell. Power treads.
Fuck tons of long, long CC.
The meta is a lot more confusing.
The store is shit.  Using the courier is shit.
Movement is not as fluid as LoL.  Animations are bad and make last hitting more difficult than it should be.
Games go on a lot longer than LoL.  Games often go on for more than 50 minutes.
AP champs don't scale.
Support players are basically low econ bitches.  You don't really get items and you're always down on levels.
The queue system isn't nearly as nice.
In game UI is dick.
The community has a serious case of butthurtitis.  You literally cannot watch a DOTA2 tournament stream without the chat constantly complaining about LoL.  It is a giant carrot up their asses that they refuse to remove.  DOTA2 players really look down on LoL players.  LoL players really don't think about DOTA2 much.
Lots of really OP and imbalanced shit.


That all being said. I like watching both.  DOTA2 is fun to watch, but playing it seemed like too much of an uphill climb.  Plus, I just don't have the time for how long the games go on for.  LoL's pro-scene is much more structured, which has its pros and cons.

edit: Yes, a lot of things fall into both columns.  A lot of what DOTA fans love LoL fans can't stand and vice-versa.

That seems a bit exaggerated, since both games are still very similar.  LoL in general just feels smoother and more cohesive control wise, while Dota's got a lot of carryover baggage from Warcraft 3's engine, so in a sense I suppose LoL is more arcadey, but it's not like Awesomenauts or something where matches are all fifteen minutes of twich action, they're both still extremely similar.  

Builds in both games are pretty defined, but in Dota, there's a lot more emphasis on items special abilities (e.g. Blink Dagger, which teleports you a short distance), while in LoL it's largely about stat bonuses (+20 Attack Damage etc.) which amplify the character's normal skills, so there's more room for weird builds in Dota, but both games have pretty heavy reliance on "core" items for certain types of characters.

But Rasix pretty much covered the details pretty well, IMO.

Support as Zyra. Buy a Soulstealer. Support your team by killing the shit out of the other guys.


If you want a DotA2 invite to try it out for yourself, I'm sure plenty of guys here have one spare. I know I do. If you do decide to play, make sure that you play a few games with bots first, as they can give a good introduction to the game, and will allow you to understand some to the core game mechanics (courier, wards, scrolls of tp, consumables, etc...).

The game, in a nutshell, is basically a more sophisticated and refined version of what you'll find in League. As a result, the learning curve is harder (some people refer to it as a 'learning cliff'), but the opportunity for reward and satisfaction is also greater.

its that minus the sophistication and refinement yes. Curve is similar to League

I'd disagree with Dota not changing, even in the short time frame of Dota2, the game is not what it was when I first got my key.


The big difference between Dota and LoL in my mind, is the only thing you pay for in Dota is cosmetics. Mechanically every single thing in Dota is available equally in every game. There's no persistence between games. Riot has every incentive to make their latest heroes be broken as shit so everyone has to go buy them or whatever. I really do not like that aspect of the game, at all. To a point where I still haven't even tried LoL because of it. (It's totally a principle thing too, because all I fucking do in Dota is play Windrunner against bots, so it's not like I'm taking advantage of the huge hero pool  :why_so_serious: ) I'll pay for pretty pants, but I won't pay for a mechanical advantage.


The UI is the same UI that I've used since Starcraft 1, standard RTS UI with standard RTS controls. I don't really get the hate for it, nor the store. People like what they like though. The Dota2 Client is fully integrated with Steam, which I do enjoy a lot for ease of use and convenience.



As a SPECTATOR, LoL is boring. Nothing fucking happens and it's maddening. Someone almost sorta died 15 mins into the game WOOOO. Like, what killed it for me, is when I was watching a match and one team was stacked on top of each other hiding in a bush, and the other team was doing the same thing in another bush across from them, near whatever the LoL version of Roshan is called. Just fucking kill each other already!  :why_so_serious:


Dota is way more entertaining to watch, crazy and wild are the expected norms in Dota. It makes the game more complicated for good or ill though. I'm fairly confident you could take the craziest LoL game and it would be relatively tame by Dota standards. (side note: someone link me the craziest LoL tourney game they can think of, I'd really like to see a LoL match I didn't fall asleep to).

Dota is not forgiving, would be the main thing. You make a mistake, you WILL be punished for it. IE: you will probably die! Control wise, if you are comfortable with War3/Sc2 etc, you won't have much issues with Dota. It's still a game where if you really want to be really good, your going to need hundreds if not thousands of games under your belt. League is no different though.




The Dota community is just as bad as the LoL community, but with a inferiority complex and like 10 years of extra baggage. Valve is doing it's best to try and sort it out, but it's pretty fucking bad. It's like, Bi-polar almost. You can be in one game and everyone on your team is super friendly and helpful, everyone getting along and giving advice and tips and taking criticism well etc... then the next game its just four shit flinging monkey's trying to beat each other off. They wear gibbering retard like a badge of honor.

If you include the War3 Dota1 map, Dota is probably the most played PC game in the world outside of like peggle or something like that. Valve is doing what valve does though, which is take its sweet ass time on rolling out Dota2 and mostly being hands off tourney wise. Riot conversely has been pumping money into it's own tourney system like crazy and buying itself exclusivity wherever it can. (which just makes the dota fanboys rage even more  :why_so_serious: ).



Rasix, try SkyWrath mage, his nukes scale with Int. He's also a bird http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hPFyqqSXeo

Eh, I seriously won't ever play DOTA again.  It's nothing against the game, it just takes too long to play.

BIRDS!

Riot's attempts to increase the amount of kills/action hasn't really paid off.  I can't recall it ever leading to a faster paced game.

LoL has a few problems that keep the kill count low:
-Flash is too powerful.
-Map is smaller/less open.  Harder to get around wards.  Easier to run away.  
-Turrets are more powerful.
-No smoke.
-While LoL has some powerful CC, it's really nothing like DOTA cc.  That is some shit that will fuck you up if you misstep.
-Easier to buy survivability and health (at least from my limited knowledge of DOTA itemization).
-Tanks seem to be more popular/effective.
-Recall.
-Game snowballs a lot harder. Teams are less likely to just go balls deep due to this.

Game has slowed a bit since season 2 and focus has shifted to more objective oriented gameplay.  

It's hard to watch the good stuff right now. Good LoL is being played in Korea and China, not the US or EU right now.  US and EU have the more visible leagues to the casual viewer.

edit:

I've been watching a fair amount of DOTA2 tournaments/leagues as well as LoL.  I can't tell if the DOTA teams are just fucking about or what.  The game quality is incredibly uneven at the moment.  The level of play in both LCS in LoL is a bit low.  Seems like everyone had too much fun on their vacations.

Health in Dota just comes from STR early on. Stout Shields and +Armor items are the other bit of it early on.

Hero's have wildly different survivability due to their skill sets too.

I want to say LoL Heroes are more even in their scaling over all, where Dota Heroes can vary WILDLY on their effectiveness at each stage of the game. Like I don't think LoL has anything comparable to say Enchantress, which can bring herself and two charmed jungle creeps to a lane for a gank at level 1.


Does LoL have elevation in it's terrain? I know their bushes are lame and can't be destroyed like Dota Trees.

?

This doesn't happen.

No, no elevation.

In general very little happens in league where there isn't an obvious tell for when it will/is happening.

The main differences between DOTA2 and League is that league is more smooth in its actions (largely because champions don't have turn radius's) and that it has defined tiers of item scaling between attack damage, ability power, and tank. Whereas DOTA2 has relatively undefined item scaling [rather its all champion scaling]. League has removed as many of the impediments to champion interaction as possible(like the deny mechanic) while also removing hard carrying(by item scaling and champion scaling mechanics) so that the farming aspect of the game is less important to the "killing the end point" mechanic of the game

The secret shop, couriers, et all are hold overs from when shit was crazy and every crazy pants idea that someone wanted to add got added(which is only one of the reasons that League is so far ahead from a game design perspective). These have been removed(thank god). There are a couple of smaller points (leagues Meta changes more than Dota's[yea for trilanes!]) and some of the bigger points might be considered in different ways [Dota has a farm priority order due to its scaling mechanic and the ability to share gold via purchasing consumables for other players* whereas league has positional roles based more on team fight dynamics] but thats basically it.

*way to keep your supports even more poor!

Played some shitty dota2 games last night against bots. The game is just different. The UI is both awesome and terrible. I love the game menu/ui but the in-game overlay is way too big like Haem said.

Last hitting is hard, what the fuck.

In the end, I play these games with my brother in law, and we both first timed it last night for a few hours. If you put two guys who have a ton of fun playing League, jump into a game with 100 heroes, unknown items, you're just not going to have a good time. At least when i jumped into LOL a few weeks ago, I had a lot of hand holding to get my bearings.

I love some of the mechanics and the heroes look really cool, but with denials, secret shops, and other things, the game just feels complicated. Which is odd, since I like complicated. I suppose I feel like I'm playing WOW for the first time in MOP and you hand me a level 90 character and tell me quickly pick out your gear and go raid... in 10 minutes.

Yeah, the initial DOTA 2 learning curve is WAY steeper than LOL, partly due to the added complexity and partly due to the WTFSTUPID UI.

I felt like I was trying to play EVE for the first time. (or second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time... take your pick)

I thought I would hate Dota2, but now I think it is the better game.

I get frustrated when I try to deny creeps and towers while playing Lol.

I do think though that my game has improved significantly from playing Dota2. Esp. last hitting and lane mechanics.

Good for my that my inactivity dropped me in Bronze1.  :heartbreak: :awesome_for_real:

What keeps me away from DOTA2 seems in the increase in mechanics I'm not fond of, i.e the laning phase and decrease in the mechanics I do like, wacky builds and low cc.

Ok, so next question; new Evelynn. Yes/no/how? New ult looks pretty good, and from limited experimentation seems made right for Rylai's. Rest of her skills I'm not so sure where to go with. Does she lane, jungle, or what?

She's a junlger or mid laner. She's good but takes skill. Very good roamer. Her Q has a built-in slow I think, so I'm not sure if Rylai's is necessary (though not necessarily bad).

No slow. Her R has a very weak slow however. She is basically lacking in cc.

I'm looking to learn top lane, anyone have any suggestions of what champs to mess around with? I'm thinking Irelia, Rengar, Tryn and Renekton.

Ireila or Renekton. There solid choices regardless of what the meta looks like.

Jax is also really strong, especially late game. He's one of those champs that can just snowball into a spinning, jumping ball of crit death if he's allowed to farm. Nasus can be, but you have to learn to farm with his Q to be effective. Teemo is fun top lane, another one of those snowballers but he's very easy to counter if you pick him before their top is picked. I had a game last night where I was Teemo against Garen. He MURDERED me in the lane phase, almost taking down the second turret. Then I just got enough farm to get built up with my poison maxed and adding AP and AS, and by the end of the game I was triple-killing people who were stupid enough to think they could kill me before my poison and on-hit magic damage turned them into puddles of goo. Started 1-6, ended 14-8 and having backdoored from the top lane to kill every one of their nexus turrets before dying.

Are you time traveling back 18 months ago? If so learn those champs.

If not learn Jayce, Elise, Rumble and Kennen.

Could learn some Malphite (although you see him more mid now) and Shen too.  Too bad they're banned like 90% of the time in low elo last time I played.

So I bought Renekton last night just before I realized he was free. Luckily I loved the shit out of him and actually had some of my best CS games ever with him last night. He's going to be my main for a while now unless I want to try jungling.

I really enjoy having not to deal with mana. My main difficulty with the gator is having awareness of my fury and to build it up before going in on a trade with my opponent.

Some big changes for the patch tomorrow (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-39-notes), looks like.

Among other things:

• Balance reworks for a lot of champions, obviously.  Leblanc gets some big changes.  Draven gets a new passive called "League of Draven," apparently that's not a joke.  Kennen nerfed  :x
• Ward kill payouts are now split between the person spotting the ward (i.e. the person with the oracle/pink stick) and the person who last hits it, to give supports some gold.  Also, Oracles now has a shorter duration but doesn't go away on death.
• Specific ability changes for specific maps are finally coming in (a nerf for Kassadin on Dominion, for example)
• Added a new item for ARAM only, called the orb of winter, that grants a periodically regenerating shield.  Supposed to help against poke champs, sounds ungodly useful to me.
• New ultimate Udyr skin, I think, coming out?  Maybe?  Also, a few new skin bundles being temporarily added and some skins are being retired.
• The Yi rework is apparently supposed to be going in 3.10, so the patch after this one.

It's a bit buggy.  Movement was glitching out on my pretty hard and was also getting some bad framerate drops.

Le Blanc changes don't seem to have made much difference. I was a little concerned because I like the champ, but after a quick test run it seems that she still blows up everything she looks at.

So did the Master Yi changes just essentially nutshot the whole idea of AP Yi? Because it sounds like everything runs though AD with him now.

Yup.  He's pure AD except for the heal, but the heal is % based so there's really no need to level it past 1.

I dunno, it definitely doesn't seem viable for teamfights now.  I can't see someone winning trades with just lichbane for damage.  He still might work as a split pusher, though.

His alpha strike no longer scales of AP, yes.  He still gets "yi-sets" since his ult still reduces his cooldowns on kills/assists and will prolong the ult.   You can no longer prep double strikes.  His e has been changed to add a true damage active.  Also the targeting on alpha strike has changed some as well.  

He likely won't be such a monster early on, and you won't have to deal with a deathcap/lichbane Yi gibbing you. But he'll still be a pentakill machine once he's geared, maybe even more so now.  He'll be countered pretty hard by armor stacking, but the active on his e will help mitigate that some.

Take the best partof AP Yi and then remove all the downsides. This is the new AD Yi

AD Yi is a beast in the jungle once you get him some items. I went full glass canon build and once you get a cutlass,zerks, shiv or IE you just start destroying people.

But you're squishy. I haven't tried def masteries/runes/items yet.