Good character for a total newb

[HaemishM]

I have determined that Ziggs is SLOW AS SHIT. I didn't realize how slow until I started getting absolutely lit up in a ranked game last night. With sorcerer's shoes (ehanced move 2) on, I had a move of 375. The teammate closest to me in speed had a 394. Seriously, if he gets hit with one slow, he is fucking dead. And I got hit with slows A LOT last night. I also wasn't hitting my Q's well at all in the team fight portion of the game.

[Goumindong]

Ziggs isn't that slow. He has 305 base move speed [min is 300 max is 330] but he has 575 AA range and all of his abilities are on the longer side so that isn't unexpected.

He also, since he tends to AA a lot, gets a lot of use out of Lichbane[7% MS] which will increase his speed far above AP carries that do not build it. Most AP carries will tend to 305-315 base move so 385 for those that don't build Lichbane. Ziggz+boots2+lichbane is 401.75 MS

If you still feel too slow, pick up the 2% move speed in utility [x/y/9] and/or the 3% in defensive[but that requires a heavily defensive page which is probably overkill for someone with so much range] or Move Speed Quints[4.5% MS]

[HaemishM]

I didn't think about a Lichbane. I'll have to look at that. I did make a masteries just for him that added some MS.

[Goumindong]

Lichbane is one of those sleeper OP items that so few people think about.

Unfortunately the proc is physical, but you're going to be wanting to use the AA anyway because of the AP scaling so another 500 physical damage, even if the enemy has 200 armor is another 166 realized damage to your burst. And it adds MR and movespeed

I don't play ziggs, but would probably buy lichbane on him second after whichever item you start with [which i hear is a deathcap or RoA]

[HaemishM]

I've tried Ziggs now with Lichbane and yep, that sure does help. Not to mention I've gotten a bit more of a handle on how to use his Q and E when I'm getting pressurized. The joy of watching a crowd of players get killed or knocked to half health when they are pushing as Ziggs' ult nuke drops from the sky is just exhilarating. It's better than Karthus' and Gangplank's ult for that sort of gleeful mayhem.

[Der Helm]

AP Teemo is hillarious. I might have to buy the bunny suit for extra rage.

Shrooms hitting for 1,1k damage is  /

[HaemishM]

SO tempted to buy Varus. He just looks like a mixture of Caitlyn, Twitch and Ashe only without stealth.

[Goumindong]

He is more like a mix of MF and Ashe. 575 range, 310 MS, bad base stats. AoE slow and bonus damage procs w/ non-damaging team fight ultimate.

Against certain champs he can bully in lane and he brings utility to the team fight.

[HaemishM]

I had to go ahead and buy him tonight. He seems insanely overpowered so I figured I'd get a few games with him in before they nerfed the shit out of him.

[Goumindong]

I had to go ahead and buy him tonight. He seems insanely overpowered so I figured I'd get a few games with him in before they nerfed the shit out of him.

I have ended up playing a number of games with and against him. He is weak in some matchups but really strong in others. He certainly isn't overpowered though. At least, I can think of tonnes of reasons to run different carries.

Pros:
High sustained damage in lane
High-ish range
Good Move Speed
Snowball Steroid
Good Kite
Great Ult

Cons:
No Escape/reposition
q is a trap[level w and e first]
Low base stats
No guaranteed steroid
fully procing w requires landing an ability which reduces lategame DPS significantly

Basically he is weak to any lane that can win harassment trades or has gap closers and he is strong with supports who can prevent enemy aggression while allowing him to harass well. If he has a passive support with him, you can pretty much run Nunu/Sona/Lulu/Alistar and shut him down pretty effectively. Taric and Leona should also be strong depending on your AD carry[someone with a lot of burst like Ezreal] as is Soraka[Graves and Sivir]. He seems to pair best with Nunu and probably Sona/Alistar/Lulu/Taric against which you still want to run whichever of Nunu/Alistar/Sona/Lulu works best against that lane. Special mention to blitz in that i haven't seen it, but he should be deadly with blitz since he can pressure people away from the middle of creeps [all of his harass penetrates minions] and his slow can prevent people from escaping after blitz lands a pull

In terms of raw, lategame damage, his direct analogue would be KogMaw, who gets 30% AS from his q and 6% per hit from w. Varus is losing pretty hard there, since he doesn't have his damage bonus until he kills someone/something and since his w requires you to land an ability to proc and straight up does less damage. So he is clearly not the type of Hypercarry that Kogmaw/Vayne/Tristana becomes. But similarly he is no Ashe. or Cait or Kennen who have abysmal lategame damage due to the lack of any proper steroid. The damage on his w is magic which is a weakness late since you eventually get high MR values on most champions and won't have any MR pen. But its still damage and is strong early.

I would put his raw lategame damage below that of Graves/Miss Fortune and above Corki.

His ult is amazing but not quite as amazing as Ashe's. And while all of Ashe's power is contained in that ult, Varus has other strong abilities.

I haven't been watching high ELO streams but i don't think the consensus is that he is OP.

[HaemishM]

I'm also not playing with or against people with high elo. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't think his Q is a trap at all, three stacks of blight and Q will kill almost anyone who tried to run. E needs to be his last levelled skill since the damage is negligible and you get the slow from one point.

You really just need to be good at timing his Q so you get the full dmg boost on it before it fizzles, the range on it is also too crazy not to use.

[Goumindong]

I don't think his Q is a trap at all, three stacks of blight and Q will kill almost anyone who tried to run. E needs to be his last levelled skill since the damage is negligible and you get the slow from one point.

You really just need to be good at timing his Q so you get the full dmg boost on it before it fizzles, the range on it is also too crazy not to use.

No, q is a trap. Its only really valuable if they're far away so either

A: late game poke
B: Catching running people

You only need one point for those things.

More importantly, you can trigger damage stacks with e as well, and that is why q is a trap.

Every level of q makes it more expensive, adds 50 damage to a fully charged shot that hits nothing else, and reduces its CD by 2 seconds.

Every level of e adds 40 damage, adds more slow, and reduces its CD by 2 seconds.

E enables more chasing, proc's stacks just as well, and will allow you to get more attacks in and hold enemies longer. Since the range of q is not increased and since you will have to use it so sporadically, its a trap. You get more damage more consistently out of the slow.

[HaemishM]

Just played my first game with Varus in a blind pick (which I should just rename "new champ training ground"). He is definitely squishy, but holy fuck, he is a kill-stealing machine. I'm not entirely sure the Q is a "trap" but you don't even necessarily need to hit with it to be effective because his other attacks and his basic attack does so much speedy damage. Mid game I was a bit squishy. His cooldowns until late in the game are really, so I'd often be out of abilities to hit and hoping for that extra bit of damage but everything would be on cooldown.

I went zerk greaves, then zeal (later to Phantom Dancer) and bloodthirster. I kept getting pounded by magic damage, so I added a wit's end for the magic resist and the extra magic damage and was building a ionic spark just for fun. I'm considering replacing the thirster with a black cleaver for the ArmPen and maybe even trying a hybrid ArmPen/MagPen/AP/AD build just for shits and giggles but I don't know if I'd get enough from added AP/MagPen. Do you get the magic penetration from his W ability?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Q is not a single target spell though and much more valuable as an early game poke rather than a late game.  It's more useful for harassing when the enemy is behind towers or chasing down lane opponents.  E is such a short range spell and the AD ratio is .6 compared to a maxed Q 1.6  E is a bit more user friendly if you can't skillshot perhaps , but I can't say I've had any situation early game where E was better. E is for aoe and teamfights and you really won't be using it much in the laning phase.  

[statisticalfool]

E is range 925 for the center of the hit, so not short-range at all.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Compared to his Q it might as well be melee.

Edit to add, I don't think I'd max Q first but try something like...

Q,W,Q,E,R,Q then W and E to max

[HaemishM]

E can be a decent farming aid (drop an E, then mop up the creeps) mid game.

His lack of escape is a BIG reason for his squishiness, though. Made me miss Graves' R.

[Goumindong]

Q is not a single target spell though and much more valuable as an early game poke rather than a late game.  It's more useful for harassing when the enemy is behind towers or chasing down lane opponents.  E is such a short range spell and the AD ratio is .6 compared to a maxed Q 1.6  E is a bit more user friendly if you can't skillshot perhaps , but I can't say I've had any situation early game where E was better. E is for aoe and teamfights and you really won't be using it much in the laning phase.  

The AD ratio doesn't matter when leveling it up as the AD ratio does not increase.

If you're using q in the laning phase, you're asking to get punished. [unless you've pushed to their tower, but eh]. The reason for this is two fold.

1) They're going to be in the middle of creeps to protect from that, reducing the damage it does.
2) In order to get max damage out of it you need to charge for 3 seconds or so.

The second part is big, because if you charge it and they're close enough[and smart enough] they go towards you, auto attack, and use an ability. Since you cannot AA while your q is on CD you either must pop early and reduce your damage, or you will lose the trade. Importantly, you don't want them to do this, similar to nidalee's spears early you are a lot weaker if they're close, except that using the ability is a big "come hit me".

E.G. Compare grave's e,q combo to your q. He gets +40% attack damage, hits you for really really high base damage +1.2 and forces you to not use your q. Half the AD carries have some sort of dash they can use to avoid the skill, and the others, with the sole exception of Ashe are going to punish you hard for it.


Since you can't use q as a reaction to them coming, only to them running away you don't get much use out of lowering the CD. And since you're probably also going to get an e off, even if you do get a full unpenetrated charge you're only up 10 damage on your combo. Whereas moving the slow from 25% to 50% is going to have a large impact on your ability to chase and punish mistakes.

edit:
e,w,q,w,w,r, r>w>e>q

You want the + magic damage early, since its going to help with last hits and since it builds up very fast and increase the damage of your abilities. Q next for your one point wonder. Finish w for general AA strength and increasing damage on your abilities then e for slows and q to finish.

[Mosesandstick]

Varus' Q damage is maxed at the end of the charging time (1.5s).

[Lakov_Sanite]

All I know is every time I've gone against a Varus who maxes E my team wins the lane. It's only happened about 4 times so far but it's always been very one sided.  Long range snipes from the bushes can be really punishing early on.

[Goumindong]

Eh, i've had the opposite experience, so...

[Margalis]

I watched Aphromoo's stream last night and he was destroying using his Q against Graves.

If you use Q and the enemy Graves dashes in an wins a trade with you you used it from way too close.

Also it seems to me that W is mostly good with attack speed, which you won't get till later.

[HaemishM]

Finally bought Olaf and Kassadin and have been trying them both. Olaf is a goddamn damage machine! He didn't take too long to get the hang of, but I haven't tried his jungle yet, just top laning. Kassadin, OTOH, is a bitch to play. My first few games with him I just got crushed, absolutely ass-raped. Really takes some thinking and some skill. Once I got his patterns down a little, he can do some serious bursts, but he requires absolute attention to positioning and timing. Since he's banned in like 99% of the ranked/normal games I play, I don't really have to worry about him as anything other than a blind play against lower skilled opponents.

[Ashamanchill]

I've been playing a lot more Olaf my self. He's a really good late game bruiser, who can absolutely shut down an opposing carry (go ahead and try to peel me bitch! it's called Ragnarok!). Personally, I like running armour pen quints and reds on him, which combined with the passive from his ult basically make all his attacks do true damage.

[HaemishM]

I decided to try out Anivia at lunch, since she's on the free and I have enough IP to buy 1 champ with IP (I've been trying to decide between Blitzcrank, Rammus or her). She is a bursty beast early on. I ended up against an Akali mid and was up 2/0/1 when I got mid turret down. Unfortunately, I had to go top to help a completely inept Wukong. He couldn't even solo top, so Miss Fortune came from bot leaving Swain solo bot against Singed and Kassadin. First we lost the top turret, then bot, then mid because the team was just inept. I finished with 6/4/2, most of my deaths coming from getting absolutely focused in team fights.

[HaemishM]

I bought Hecarim on the weekend sale but didn't use him until today at lunch. GOD-DAMN. I started jungling with him and by level 6 I had 3 ganks with no deaths. I don't know if the team I was playing against was full of muppets or what (they did lose and it was on blind pick), but he can do some damn good damage, especially if you make the mistake of running from him. He can also farm pretty damn well with his Q. I need to try him against better opposition.

[Rasix]

So, with leveling a new smurf, I'd tried a few new (to me) champs and some different builds with various results:

Liked:

Shen - Easy to play.  Great ult.  Don't think you can hard carry with him.  So, fucktard team won't help you here.
Poppy - Fun.  Laning is balls.  Hyper carry late.  You just wreck people.
AP Nunu - Hilarious. Snowballs that just chunk the hell out of people.  If someone gets caught in your ult.. LOL.
Bruiser Alistar (triforce, frozen heart, yomumu's ghostblade) - You wreck people so hard.  So intimidating. It's funny seeing someone get a triple kill with Ali.
Kayle - Lane bully to the extreme.  I don't think you'll hyper carry with her, but the potential to just become this nasty hybrid monster is there.

Disliked:
Zilean - Not my style.  Didn't care for him.
Draven - I'm not sure there's an AD carry that's more annoying to play. Sure that axe catching shit can wreck people, but it's so annoying/distracting.
LeBlanc - Dislike her laning phase.  Waving clearing is garbage.

Unsure:
Oriana - I'm not sure she's really fun to play if you don't have the runes and masteries to support it.  Extreme zoning potential but soloing without a decent jungler is going to make your lane a farmfest.  Such a mana hog.

[HaemishM]

I've never liked Nunu, but am starting to think I may have to get him. His ult is just so goddamn strong.

And you're right about Alistar. Played right, with strong AP emphasis and good skills, he can steamroll teams.

Draven is fucking irritating. He's quite squishy at times, and he really takes a skilled player to get anything out of him. I'd say about 1 in 4 Draven players have any skill whatsoever, the rest just think he's cool and die horribly to whoever happens to be able to withstand the damage. My games as Hecarim lately have had a lot of Dravens in them and I beeline for him just about every time. The ones who don't try to fight me head on might survive - the ones who stay and fight get their faces caved in.

[Rasix]

The problem with AP Nunu is that you need to wait for people to blow their stuns/silences/displacement abilities if you want to get off a good ult.  There was an Alistar on the other team and I had to wait until he did his headbutt and pulv or I'd be instantly cancelled.

And with Ali, I played him more AD bruiser really.  AP would work in a similar fashion, just with more burst.  People are all expecting you to just be a fat tank and then you knock their goddamn shoes off.  Headbutt rocks so hard for kill stealing.

[Margalis]

Triforce plus other junk is the popular Ali build now, he has really high base attack damage and can proc Tri a lot at the start of a fight if you space out his headbutt and pulv a bit. It also gives him movement speed which is nice. His AP ratios are kinda low to go AP.

[Goumindong]

Alistair has decent AP ratios on his full combo but that takes 9 seconds to run which means he doesn't actually end up strong as an AP carry anymore. It takes too long to get his damage out since they nerfed his AP ratios*. He has a very low base move speed and so benefits a lot from items that make you go faster. He also has very good AD scaling[poor to decent base though] which gives him 5th in level 18 base AD.

Because of this, Sheen scales amazingly on him, not the least of which is because proper timing of his abilities ensures a sheen proc on every single one. And of course Tri-Force since Tri-force is super sheen with move speed. The real advantage of Tri-Force for Ali over simply the sheen [and a Phage] is that its the cheapest upgrade to a 12% move speed buff once you have Sheen and Sheen is a lot of damage and utility for a small amount of cash. So you start out buying the most efficient damage item for the cash and then get the most efficient utility item for the cash. Once you're there you can either spec for CDR/tank or carry.

His ultimate also has a very sizable attack damage buff on it and in combination with his high amount of CC this can make him very potent as a Melee AD carry. Alistar in optimal conditions has about 3.5 seconds of hard CC in his kit at level 1 [1.5 seconds in non optimal conditions]. This is basically a free kill on the tankiest of tanks in the game and if things go wrong he can just pop his ultimate and lifesteal back up to full right through an entire teams worth of damage. He doesn't need Tri-force to do this, but its such a potent item on him in terms of early game efficiency its likely he will have it[lategame carrystar is actually a bit weaker with TF]

And then the second way you can build is Tanky/CDR.[I.E. the bruiser] So you get more HB/Pulvs off and more ultimate and let your team clean up. Its probably more effective than AD carrystar since the longer you live in a fight the more punching and peeling you get to do and even AD carrystar will die in a team fight. This is also the standard build when you're a support[but you should pick up a sheen on him anyway after your GP 10 items]

Note that FH isn't that good an item on him. You're going to have defensive/CDR masteries anyway, so you're only going to need 30%-35% CDR to cap. The 20% from FH wastes a bit of it when you're probably going to get Reverie(or just a kindlegem)/Ghostblade anyway. And since the bonus on FH is mostly the armor and AS slow [you don't benefit from the mana all that much] you leave yourself really open to AP casters. Much better to get something like GA which will allow you to dive with impunity [especially in team fights]


Health scales well[250 from TF/330 Reverie/250 zeeks] since Alistar is primarily weak to true damage[which his ult does not reduce] and has decent MR/Armor scaling [plus flat armor yellows and scaling MR blues should give you 100 armor/100 MR before items lategame. For this reason if you're going to get an armor only item Randuins is a better choice since you can get 10% CDR from a brutalizer or Kindlegem really cheap and Randuins is an all around better item than Frozen Heart unless you're scaling with Mana.

My final ideal build for tanky CDR Alistar is Triforce/Reverie/Zeeks/GA or TF/R/Ghostblade/GA. With boots 5 and free 6th item slot for whatever.

Reverie/Randuins also have the advantage of building from GP10 items that give stats Alistar will use [HP on HoG, MP5/HP5 on philo]

*Alistar used to have  1.0 ratios on his q and w and .4 on e. This gave him a total AP ratio against champions of 2.  With a lichbane this was effectively 5 since it would be relatively easy to get procs off when timing your abilities.

With lichbane you could probably still build him as a tanky AP. But it would be a lot harder because you would lose a lot of durability in doing so and it takes a lot of time to build into. Lichbane is 3000 gold and adds 80 AP and the AP proc. Triforce is 4000 gold and adds 1.5x base damage plus lots more utility than LB. Alistars base damage is quite high so until you get your second 80 AP item, TF is probably doing more damage. At which point you're getting CDR and HP on the TF build to work with your team more. Edit: his ult was also 75/75/75% reduction instead of 50/60/70 so you were a lot less vulnerable early

Current VS creeps AP ratio is 3.0 [2.3 of that is AOE]. Current VS champion AP ratio is 2.1. Which isn't all that strong over 9 seconds. Since you have to wait for the trample damage to proc 3 times in order to get the full ratio. 

[Rasix]

With the last free rotation I got some pretty decent results and had fun with Morgana.  You sure look like a jackass though when you ult into their entire clustered team, pop your zhonyas, manage to stun everyone, and then die instantly as your team chickened out and ran away.

Otherwise, I mostly play Ashe and Nunu, as it seems no one at this level likes to play bot and no one plays any kind of support.  Every full channel ult you land is a thing of beauty.  Ashe though, anytime you miss an ult, someone gives you shit.

Tried Singed after not playing him for the longest time.  Not good for support (wasn't intending to play support).  If your AD carry is a moron, you'll just end up feeding. And getting no farm.  Which pretty much makes you useless.  I think I've over Singed; as I just had a wretched game with him.  But you do get those with Singed.  The tendency to just feed is high.

Galio is fun.  But he suffers from the same thing as Morgana.  You can land the most perfect ult, but if your team is playing like a bunch of weenies, it won't matter and you'll just die.

[kaid]

Signed is not a good character for the classic "support" role people want. Singed doing his thing is him derping around pooping out purple could and flinging people and just going trololololol. Doing that will wind up getting a ton of creep kills as that poison really does a number on them and if you are not running around with the poison everybody is just going to either ignore you or kill you.

[Thrawn]

With the last free rotation I got some pretty decent results and had fun with Morgana.  You sure look like a jackass though when you ult into their entire clustered team, pop your zhonyas, manage to stun everyone, and then die instantly as your team chickened out and ran away.

IMO you look like a pro, the rest of your team look like jackasses.