I've locked/archived this thread/blog and have started a new discussion over here: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/454943/
Please join me if you like.
Am I streaming?
Well, I started a thread back in August (https://forums.joeuser.com/411269/) that's seen a lot of activity and actually had quite a few good bits of information for new and old players alike. I figure it's time to start a new thread and perhaps keep the OP up-to-date with useful information, etc. Feel free to use this post for any LoL discussion, etc.
Super fast background: I played a lot of Demigod as pacov/cheesuscrust. Back in August 2011 or so, I started getting heavily involved in LoL and folks have been kind enough to chime in with tips and links to various sites that have been quite useful to me. In addition, I've been able to keep up with folks that I've played Demigod with in the past and meet some new folks that play LoL and frequent these message boards.
Here's some of the things I've learned in the previous thread:
New Player tips
Great site I visit every day for LoL related news - http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends
pacov's misc info
Here's a guide I made
pacov's Guide to Improving at League of Legends and Moving Up in Elo
k - so I'm just going to put down some of my thoughts. I'm not amazing at this game, but I do certain things that improve my odds of winning in ranked and so far its panning out just fine (bronze 5 to gold 5 in about a month or so). We all have varied skill levels, so some of this might be useful and some not. Caveat complete.
Prerequisite- you need to know how to play every single role. You don't have to be a god at every single role (more power to you if you are - I'm certainly not). You need to be able to play at a serviceable level in every single role and excel at least at 1 role (preferably 2). In my case, I'm good at support and adc. I'm not great, but have serviceable mids and jungles and so so tops. Knowing what you are good at and bad at is very important. If you don't know, I can probably tell you - but you really should know... Anyway, you need to have enough champs to make solid picks in any role and you need to be able to cover any role if it comes down to it. I'll talk about how to get better at specific roles in a bit.
Champ select advice - Don't be the "fill" guy unless you really feel like you are awesome in all roles. Call your preferred role immediately when you hit the lobby. Say "adc pref." Do this as soon as you hit the lobby. Some people believe that if you call a role you magically get it. This is stupid, but if you call something out, folks will often accomodate your request. If you are feeling wishy washy for whatever reason, call out multiple roles in order of what you want to play - "adc/mid pref." In my experience, you generally do not want to call support. It's a very important role, but you want to be in a position to carry every single game if possible. If you aren't calling out a role, you are hoping that other players can carry you. If you are hoping that folks will carry you, you don't deserve to win. You need to know your best roles and you absolutely should request them.
Solo or duo in ranked? - Well, my 1st thought here is that you should solo. If you solo, you have to rely on yourself. IMO - its a much bigger test of skill to play solo and win than to duo. Do you want someone to carry you or do you really want to know that you are actually good? That said, provided you have the right duo partner, you can increase your odds of winning quite a bit. The simple math is that instead of having 4 teammates as unknown quantities, you only have 3. If you have a good duo teammate, you know what you can expect. When you duo, you get the most bang for your buck by having complimentary roles. Support/adc is good; jungle/mid also works. Even if you don't have direct symmetry in roles, if you are an amazing mid and I'm an amazing adc, our odds go up quite a bit if we both get those roles. Our odds go way down if we can't get those roles and are forced to play out of positions that we are weaker. For example, Bryff is a good mid. If he duo's up with me, the only way he will get to play that role is for me to call mid, take it myself, and then put myself into a position like support where I can't carry out of (I'm always 1st pick, Bryff is always last pick when we duo)... that and I have to show the mid I'm picking at the start which means Bryff gets hard countered. In short, we can expect that we will be a disadvantage when duo queuing. Now, if Bryff queued up with someone at a lower elo than himself that was solid, he'd likely be 1st pick and be able to get mid and have a better chance of carrying the game. Anyway, you need to keep in mind where you end up in pick order when duoing if you aren't looking to go adc/support. If you want that, you can usually get it.
How do you get better in roles that you are not good at? - Well, here's what I do. And this is really what I do on a regular basis. I think about what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. For instance, I realized that I don't play any hyper carry ads. So, I read up on hyper carries like vayne and kog maw. I look for guides on how to build them (most adcs are the same btw ), I look for vids on how people play them (eg how do I all in with a specific champ - is there a combo - when do I all in - what's the best way for me to burst - how should I behave in lane with this champ). Then, I fire up a custom game and try out the mechanics of whatever champ vs AI. Usually I learn a few tricks during that custom on how to position myself, etc. Then, I'm off to normal games where I'll request the role or character I'm trying out. Now, people still report your for being awful in normals, but it really is where you need to try out characters to see if you are any good or not as the bots are useless for proving your skill level to yourself. So, fire up that normal and ask to play a role (again - after you've tried out the champ against bots). If you don't know anyone you are with and you are quite awful, I suggest muting everyone at the start of the game. Then, do your best. Continue with this until you feel like you have a serviceable skill level in whatever role. And keep in mind what you need to work on. For me, I noticed I didn't really have alot of mids for ranked, so I started practicing some with gragas against and karth. That way, I'll be able to get the job done if I need to play mid. The next thing I need to do is put more time into being better top lane. Again, because while I prefer adc/support, I might need to play top for the team. So, best to be ready for it. Put your time in and practice roles.
One last thought - there are certain things you can generally expect in ranked. 1 - if you are 1st pick, you generally can call whatever you want. Common knowledge, I'm sure - but I'll add - CALL WHATEVER YOU WANT. 2 - if you duo queue, you generally can lock down both adc and support. It works best if your adc is 1st pick, ofc. I've bumped into like 10 random dedicated supports in all of my games of LoL. People generally aren't going to call support. So, if you are 1st pick and duo'd, just call adc and then your duo partner can almost always get support.
Lol King profiles for ranked tracking
I'm not going to update this regularly, so just consider it a snapshot (I'll add a date when I update them). Anyway, I enjoy seeing folks progress through ranked and keeping tabs on that sort of thing from time to time.
Snapshot updated 05/28/2014
Character guides
heh... you should have seen the horrible things vlad was doing to my ap corki build. Galio with his bulwark heal + spirit visage... and me having dots procs... he could have taken a nap in my base.
ap corki is by no means, in any way shape or form, OP. I very much doubt we will see a nerf because some goof ball made his reddit vid. People will likely play it for the next 2-3 days and then forget about it.
It doesn't have to be OP to be OP. Morello and the powers that be in Riot's balance team don't like this sort of thing... remember AP Ez Mid? R.I.P.
If AP Corki (IF!) ends up being a really good mid that has some really advantageous matchups, then they will get rid of it. Let's say one team first picks Corki, then that would limit the other team's options for Mid selections without the other team even having to pick their Mid since they can just make Corki their ADC. Pretty much it would be the exact same thing that was going on where Support Elise was popular.
ah - I get what you are saying. Honestly, I think the type of people that will try it out won't have the necessarily skill level to pull it off well and get sick of it quickly.
um... so I think when we were dicking around, brad wong may have come across the new secret op - Galio. Like... holy shit OP. Like I could start tanking a tower with 300 hp and leave it after tanking for 5 seconds with 2k + hp. Nerd crafting and testing continuing. There is some very interesting potential here imo - specifically for strong siege comps. His cd on his bulwark late game is 7.62 second and lasts 4 seconds. So, there's only 3.62 seconds of down time. Anywho... I'm thinking...
tried to build as jungler - mixed crap results. His ganks would be halfway decent and sustain in the jungle is fine, but too much of a mana whore. Mid is prob optimal, but top is doable. A little clumsy as a support.
All of my builds so far require athene's for the mana/cd. SV is where you get insane synergy. He benefits from every single thing about SV. Def a rush item imo after your mana problem is solved.
At mid, you can use the wraith camps to heal you. If your dmg is too high, just aa one and hit bulwark. Instant restore of like 300-400 hp one you have a couple points in bulwark. You get 40 hp back from every attack. So its an instance 40 hp X 4 - 160 hp. It deminishes by 20% on the next hit, but there's only time for 8 total attacks on you by the time bulwark runs out. So, that's 22 hp X 4 = 88 hp. So, a total of 248 hp gained less w/e damage you took (which won't be much). Also consider that I'm not factoring in the bonus heal you get from AP. Anyway, late game with bulwark maxed (and admittedly a super fed build vs stupid bots), I had a base heal of about 220 HP per EVERY HIT (eg I tank a minion wave and I'm getting 220 or so per creep or somethign stupid like that)... Now... add on the bonus from SV. Enter SICK town. All of a sudden the more people attacking you, the more HP you have.
anywho - I think its pretty legit. 21/9 setup. Can do w/e with runes. MR gives ability power due to passive. 2 must items for the build - athene's and the SV. Weaknesses to the build. Getting silenced/stunned before casting bulwark. If you can avoid that, then its super fun times. His bulwarks stats are out of control. 75 mr (which gives him added dmg) + 75 arm for 4 seconds. You time that shit right and go beast mode.
Other random thing, but not confirmed. At least in my bot match, Aegis and its upgrade are stacking. Guessing its the same on live.
last thing I'm pondering... so I have the base core on galio - athene's/sv. He can actually get around pretty quickly just using his e with no boots. I wonder about mobo boots as he's already super tanky. Could potentially be quite useful for ganking lanes.
Happy birthday, Sharpie!
needs must serial kill rotund duck puzzle at bday party
Thank you for never being weird, Bryff -
Just made a few vids from last night - 1st game as galio mid - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2726967
Here's a link to the one where we absolutely crushed the enemy team and I turned into a beach ball as zac multiple times: http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2726993
Uploading to youtube. Hope to catch some games with you folks later tonight.
Oh god what have I done.
Anyway, you should have ranked w second and e fourth. You don't need it early unless your jungler wants to gank before 4.
Don't buy magic pen boots on Galio. You either want Merc's or Tabi imo Pacov.
Also, at the end of the game someone was complaining about Galio doing no damage. It wasn't Galio doing no damage it was the Hecarim top (lol wut?). You can't pick 3 tanks on a team and expect massive dps.
Edit: Now that I think about it Hecarim had 0 synergy with your team. You already had a way to initiate team fights with sej ult. Then you could counter initiate with Nami or Galio ult. Hec had no place in that team.
Top lane should have been Vladimir/Kennen/Riven/Malphite. I know Malphite is another tank, but his ult would have allowed you to shut down vayne who seemed to be the problem for your team, Vlad or Kennen would have good synergy with Galio, and Riven would have fixed the no damage problem.
Well the, I have now won 2 out of 15 promo series. Its pretty fun.
0/3 in the last one. No game was winnable. I won jungle very time. Often by a lot (started one game 5/0/8, still lost really badly). But I cant do anything when my team has multiple terrible players and their team is at least all mediocre. I can consistently carry 1 terrible player with ww, but they are giving me at least 2 every game.
First game had first pick who insisted on playing Urgot as ADC. He hit 10 cs at the 8:30 mark. I'm not kidding. Bot lane went 1/15, with their only kill coming on my gank.
Second game had mid Lux rush Mejais, then experience "lag". She went 1/9, but got to 3 stacks on Mejais once.
Third game just had terrible duo queue.
i just want to point out that i don't think the Galio pick was bad there, even if i gave him a lot of crap about "build a team around me guys i am playing _____". He did great in-lane against Brand and the problem with teamfights was either it was immediately canceled (the enemy team was good about that) or it didn't get critical targets (neither Yi nor Vayne).
Although improvements could have been made (better items and skill orders), ultimately that wasn't what lost us the game.
That said: Gunblade/TF Hecarim "does damage". He just dies immediately afterwards #glass cannon melee. There's a subtle difference between the two. (Khan probably could/should have built one damage item and then tank). If you want to play the stats game, he was 9/6/8. ( )
Part of the problem was that we were a lot of towers behind (only got 1 that game, though i think we were ahead on dragons). That said, we had a full-melee team which made sieging a little difficult. Even though Galio has reasonable waveclear, he can't autoattack the tower (not to mention he was our only waveclear). We either had to dive or pull them into an objective, ace them, then take towers.
Well, my thought process re: galio is developing after playing that one non-ai game. I was putting together the build and coming up with the general philosophy during those AI matches, but I think I see better ways of doing it now.
1st - mapping an additional key for his bulwark (prob use one of my mouse buttons) to autocast it myself is critical. Particularly in instances where there is a lot off cc or silences, getting that cast as quickly as possible is incredibly important to the build.
Anyway, that said, laning isn't that much of a problem. You still rush chalice as your 1st item. Then continue to build athene's and get your tier 1 boots (you can hold off on boots if needed as you get a pretty big boost from your e). If you are doing fine, by the time you go for your 1st shop, you've got enough for that stuff. Then you get a blue and can spam your abilities and dominate your lane.
Things I adjusted in the normal game and think I will adjust more. Levels 1-3, get q, w, e. The point in bulwark is primarily there as a safety net in case you get ganked. While I maxed q first in the normal, I did put way too much into the w early, like brad mentioned. I'm thinking 1-2 points tops in bulwark early. So, max R>Q>E>W. Now, with that adjustment in place, the value of spirit visage as a mid game item is diminished. This enables you to rush more of a damage oriented item in its place. I'm thinking you could go with SV as your 3rd item - possibly 4th, but I'm not sure about that.
Things that would cause me to build sv early? If the mid I'm up against rushes liandri or if there's any other reason where I'd get a huge bonus from the bulwark.
Anyway, I still think he's legit and you don't need to build a composition around him. He has less burst, but has a slow + speed boost for engage/disengage that the whole team can potentially... not to mention his ult. And he can soak up a ton of damage. I think we would have fine with a better pick out of top. And letting yi get out of hand wasn't doing us any favors either.
karl - might be good to take a short break from ranked and play a few more relaxed games. Always helps me to take a break if I'm getting burnt out.
SV is still a pretty legit pick up him, even it was a 2nd item. I run 6% Spell vamp quints, so that helps as well with SV. And he gets AP from it as well
+400 Health+55 Magic Resistance+20% Cooldown Reduction+20 Health Regen
(galio passive) - 22.5 AP
The wiki has it listed with a price of 2625 gold. It lists the actual value of the item at 3664 gold. Now, add in the bonus galio gets and its worth an additional 489.37 gold for a total value of 4,153 gold worth of stats. At a price of 2625, that's 1,528 in free stats for galio - AND - that doesn't even factor in his passive.
I feel for you karl. I hit 10 consecutive defeats today.
OK - so continuing evolution of galio build. Sticking with max R>Q>E>W (1 point in qwe at start).
Build thoughts. So, I just played against bots and was not impressed with my dps at all. I actually had quite a bit of AP, but it wasn't cutting it. The scaling on his abilities is rubbish. Both his q/e get bonus dmg = 50% ap. So, 100 ap = 50 added dmg. Once the ability is maxed, that's the only bump you are getting. The high base dmg values on his e/q make him great early/mid. Late its rubbish. You can provide a ton of cc for the team, etc, but you aren't killing anything but the super squishy. So, my thoughts.
New build - rush athene (this is core imo), liandri (new item try out - some synergy with his q slow for bonus dmg on his e (2% current health gets bumped to 4% current health dmg - plus it gives you mp). This should be helpful to the team for dmg output. Not amazing, but helpful. Anyway, after liandri, merc treads for bonus mr (ap translation) and tenacity). After that, abyssal for the mr drop + gives mr/ap, so very useful item on gal. After that, SV or Banshee based on team need. Last item is flex - could go twin shadows, morellonomicon, death cap, or even aegis.
Thoughts?
off to bed - had some fun games tonight - thx everyone. Last game of the night felt like we were struggling a bit early/mid, but everyone came back together and worked shit over then. I'm frickin tired, so I might have missed a bit here.. but that's how it felt. Anyway, see archived vids on the steam if interested.
I learned even more about galio and had a stronger showing. Honestly, I think I've learned a ton the past few days about him and still think he's super strong (just not secret op)... that said - he's secret op against the right match up and if the enemy team builds liandri's or is brand. Or let me put it this way... if you see an AP corks (you won't) or a malz - pick galio. Immediately... even if you don't know how to play him. If you ever get hit by a liandri, cast your bulwark immediately. If malz hits you with anything but his silence... cast bulwark.
If you have zero take aways from my galio experiments, try to take this. Malz = pick galio.
I don't think most players even think or understand what galio can do with bulwark. I didn't the other day when I was was whoppin on brad only to see him have more hp after the I spent all my abilities. That means a ton if someone builds liandri's into you... that said, my best showing as gal was against an AD comp where I shouldn't have picked gal... strange world.
oh - if you hit the magical 7k views on my twitch stream, take a screen shot. I might do something nice for you. That said, I'm going to bed and know the current count. No prize if I'm not streaming, but if I am and you hit 7k on the dot, I hook you up... if you get a screenie. Just a nice bonus... not a holy fug thx pacov. Night all! Mathematically, I'll naturally hit 7k views in 1-3 days. Screenshot or it didn't happen. If you pull it off, post the screenshot here. I'll let everyone know who won and what I hooked them up with if someone gets it. You have a small amount of competition (not a lot). I think I have about 3 other viewers that check this out regularly but don't follow the forums. Anyway, best case pacov gives you a skin for LoL... that you might pick. Good luck!
I wont be around until maybe Tuesday night. I am going to be camping!
Making a galio guide based on my recent findings... up for games in a wee bit when that's done.
Galio guide for now - http://www.lolking.net/guides/178751
So, just tried an alternative build and I'm not a huge fan. You really benefit a ton from the liandry dmg output. Having that as the 2nd item is pretty strong. Anyway, I tried rushing chalice, then immediately into the components for spirit visage (bypassing athene's). Well, I got SV pretty quickly. You can actually get it pretty fast even if you only get 1 kill, but you feel like you are lacking dmg.
Anyway, my current thoughts is that you rush chalice. You don't necessarily need to rush athenes (could take it as the 2nd item).
Brad through out an idea that I'm not sure if I dig or not, but could be pretty strong. Rush chalice + boots and get twin shadows are your 2nd item. That, plus your speed/slow + flash should guarantee a kill top or hopefully a kill or 2 bot and secure dragon. You could afford it pretty easily without taking a major hit imo. You'd still be lacking liandri's, but you could immediately start building that after. The strat would be idea on champs that have lower odds of escape (eg not ez bot lane, but its beast mode vs a twitch).
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