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
just crushed in a ranked. got 27 points for my 1st match. so there... n stuff.
in house live - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1
I don't think I have any of you in my list actually. I'm lazy.
Anyone that wants to add me can do it easy enough though, same as my nick here.
I think we are still really rot for balancing teams. Hopefully we will get better at it. I think maybe next time thunder and I will just go captains and pick down the line (or at least I think I'd like to do that). I think it breaks down into the 4 lanes (top/mid/jungle/bot). You can generally eyeball things and say ok, I think we have a stronger mid. So, logically, then it would be fair to have the other team having a stronger something else. Close to fairly matched, imo, would be like a strong top/bot vs a strong mid/jungle. I think we can resolve any balance concerns by just doing an outright draft private style. We'd just rotate who go first pick. Probably the best way to do things.
I have more than a few thoughts about games tonight, but not much time.
Instead, I'll just go on about my 1 ranked game tonight. It was quite successful and incredibly encouraging to have my 1st game placed in a league with reasonable, thought out players. Here's a link to the game - nice to see the 1st few min anyway for the way a good lobby should be - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/1898206
Anyway, folks call their preferred roles. No one is a dick about things. It becomes clear to me that they might need me to jungle, so I call out that I'm just outright bad with it and offer to support or mid. Someone steps up to fill in. I ask for more cc and we get it. In short, we end up with a team composition that works with a yi mid at all points during the game. Everyone plays well and is kind. Really, a fun game.
I'm all for picking teams. Of course I will have to needlessly complicate the process, cause that's what I do.
There are going to be 8 picks, and I think it's important to have a varied pick order. In other words it might be more fair to have one team get to have the 2nd and the 3rd picks if there is someone like Wallstop in the game and no Rawr to balance him out.
It also works the other way if there is someone vastly less experienced. One team might need to have the 1st and 2nd picks to balance out having the last pick for instance.
So, one of us decides the pick order for the two teams, and the other chooses whichever he finds more appealing.
1 - 2,3 - 4,5 - 6,7 - 8
is the easiest way to pick things, in my opinion.
it also let's you build synergies (like picking your bot lane, or your mid+jungler).
It may be the easiest, but it won't always be the most balanced Hedgie.
If everyone is all pretty much at the same level, except Wallstop or another ace player is in the mix, then 1,4,5,8 will have the best team. On the flip side, if some one is in the game who is far less experienced than the rest of us, then 1,4,5,8 will have the losing team most likely IMO.
Now with my way, I can look at the talent level and decide how to order the picks considering who the best and worst players are. If there is a ringer in the player pool, I can say that the picks are 1 - 2,3,4 - 5,6 - 7 - 8. Then Pacov gets to decide whether he thinks having picks 1,5,6,8 or 2,3,4,7 would be better.
ah okay, that makes sense then
Let's just try the 1,3,5,8 setup for our next team game. I'd prefer to keep it is simple as possible and then create a more developed system if we determine that is rot. The way I really think it will play out is that thunder and I will take 1 and 2 based on whoever we think is strongest and based on that will build our teams around those 1, 2 picks positions. Anywho, let's give it a go and see how it pans out. heh... I'm literally going to have to write down everyone's name as we are picking for a visual.
Yeah, I think my original idea where one person divides up the teams and the other captain picks which team he wants was great... in theory. When it came down to actually doing it however, I felt I needed a bunch of pictures and a board to pin them on like in those shows like Homeland or The Wire to figure out what good teams would be.
I think deciding pick order would be a much simpler thing to do on the fly, and I'd be fine with figuring out what I think would be a fair order for both teams and let you have the order you want.
The way I see it, is that you're the one who has decided the pick order for all future games... so I'll let you know whether I prefer 1,3,5,8 or 2,4,6,7 every time we play? Sorry if that sounds dickish, but I think we both put very different values on having an extremely weak or strong player on a team and so I'm not willing to switch who gets to pick first (or has to pick last) if I feel that it's going to win or lose the game in team select. Especially when I feel I've come up with a hopefully not too complicated, very fair way to pick teams based on the varying skill level of players in each game.
Let's just try whatever sounds most complicated. Anyway, if you don't want to set any hard rules, we will, of course, have to discuss what system to split up teams will be used before every game and then get to picking teams. I'll state again that my personal preference is whatever gets us up and running the quickest. I assume that in the world of give and take, we'll eventually come around to just quickly splitting a game per my request, right? And then seeing if the worlds most imbalanced game has occurred as a result. I think that if you'd be kind to really consider 1,3,5,8, it would quickly make sense that if we had the same 10 people for 2 games (and we re pick after each game), it would be even if you and I agreed about the strength of players. I'd also think that it would result in more frequently balanced games, but that's up for debate, ofc.
Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but you are aware that we'd swap champ selection roles each game? Game 1 you are 1,3,5,8, game 2 I am 1,3,5,8. Anyway, I think this is being over thought due to some sense of disparity that I can't quite fathom. If you feel like you'd need some sort of handicap, I'm at a loss, so I'm guessing you didn't understand me?
Anyway, in the hopes of not having this discussion go on much further, perhaps we can just agree to try a system I propose and one you do as well. Sounds fair, right? Whatever works best would be utilized going forward.
re: putting whatever system into practice - the next time we get together, I'll quickly put all the names into excel. You could hop onto my twitch stream if you like so we'd both have the same visual when sorting teams.
"Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but you are aware that we'd swap champ selection roles each game? Game 1 you are 1,3,5,8, game 2 I am 1,3,5,8."
If Wallstop or Rawr or some other platinum or pro is playing both games without any player of equivilent skill level to balance him out, then Game 1 my team wins and Game 2 your team wins. If Sins is playing and everyone else is around the same skill level, then Game 1 your team wins and in Game 2 my team wins.
That's assuming the ringer sticks around for the second game. Oh what fun it will be to get completely annihilated by a platinum player, then have him bail when it's your turn to have first pick.
"If you feel like you'd need some sort of handicap, I'm at a loss, so I'm guessing you didn't understand me?"
When you felt team's weren't even the other day, I offered to switch entire teams with you... so no, obviously I don't feel that I need any sort of handicap.
"Let's just try whatever sounds most complicated."
There is a super good player who happens to be in the in house with us. He may not be there next game, so we can't just take turns having him on our side for an auto-win, as much fun as that would be. So I decide that having that player as someones first pick, is worth lets say the next three picks for the other team. Then you make a choice "Do I want the best player? Or do I want the next three best players?" Not rocket science.
Sorry, but your way will only work some of the time: When either the skill level is pretty even across the board or the teams balanced out by having the worst player in the game playing with the best.
Your way will be fair, only if we have the same players from the game before when we switch pick orders. Even then, fair doesn't equal fun. I don't think anyone really wants to trade stomp sessions?
you're killing me here... so, coming up with a system is very difficult because of a myriad of hypothetical situations. And you are so invested in the science of team selection that we can't simply try things out apparently? The only conclusion we will have to this discussion now is that we'll discuss things on the fly then whenever we get our next in house game and we'll go from there. Naming a few scenarios in which a system might not be optimal and then concluding that the result would be "stomp sessions" seems a bit biased without any data to back it up... data which could be obtained by trying a system out 1 night... unless playing 1 or 2 games using a different system would ruin the idea of in house games for all time. Stop being obtuse.
this is sort of a quality v quantity argument:
1- we can quickly play 2, 3, 4 games that might be severely unbalanced 2/3rds the time
2- we can take 10-15 minutes each time to plan teams, only play 1-2 games, with unbalance still occuring 25% of the time
With an in-house imbalanced game, it is somewhat of a zero-sum game. The winning team might feel guilty at worst, happy at best. The losing team will feel frustrated, blame Thunder, do quick surrenders/etc. How do you think the botlane felt against Wallstop's pro support?
An in-house balanced game is really fun - and to be fair, one of the biggest reasons to play in-house. (the other being running "actual" team-comps against "actual" team-comps, along with strategic banning).
My argument is that an inbalanced game is nearly worthless, or might actually have a "negative" value.
Every imbalanced game is going to lead to more and more people just playing Normals. What to know what's even quicker and easier than 1, 3, 5, 8?
Having 5 people get together in a Normal game and play against randoms. We wait 2 minutes, maybe a dodge, there is less pressure, less "oh god they have Wallstop".
My Wallstop/Rawr example is not at all hypothetical. A player of their caliber will join us occasionally, and when there isn't someone good or bad enough to balance them out, the game is decided in champ select. The impact of these certain players seems obvious to most people I talk to, but I realize you don't press Tab in game so perhaps you don't notice when Rawr is at 16/4 KD ratio?
Even when a plat isn't playing, there have been many games I've gone into thinking "Oh boy, this is gonna be really rough..." but have been a good sport. I haven't really complained, just laughed along with my friends spectating who missed the fun when they're telling me "Who decided these teams?! LOL!!!"
But I'm growing a little weary of it, and so are some other regulars. So forgive me if I'm enthusiastic about using a not too complicated method of having fair games (or at least the chance for them relying on our ability to pick) every time.
IMO your method is like a coin flip. Sometimes we'll have the right people playing and we'll have a super fun/fair game. Sometimes we'll have a mix of people of such varying skill levels that the game will be decided on first or last pick.
I might be wrong, but I don't think I'm the one being obtuse.
Well, all I'm looking for is gains in the quality of balancing - preferably quick gains. I'm more interested in a progression of towards a better system. We started just getting together and more or less playing on a given team after we join. Not really any real balancing. Obviously not a good system. So we improved it by having thunder and I talk about teams. That produced some improvement, but not a heck of a lot, imo, due to thunder and I disagreeing about balance and my impatience at trying to get games up and running quickly. I think we played like 1-3 games last night (not sure). I think 1 of those games I requested a trade that thunder didn't think would be fair and one where I just said fuck it when the same scenario occurred. Still, its better than the original system. The next progression in my mind is to add more variety by going to some form of draft. That, imo, is the next logical step and has potential to be good. The obtuse comment, thunder, has everything to do with you at the very least sounding unwilling to try my simple request and see how it goes. If that sounds unreasonable, then.. well... you are unreasonable. My entire logic behind this is to force us to make intelligent choices based on the available players. But started from a draft pov and not a "I've already got the best 2 players and am unwilling to trade." A simple 1 and 2 pick ensures that the 2 best perceived players won't be on the same team... or at least should do that.
Anyway, the one process improvement we will have is that whole thing I mentioned about excel. That should at least help thunder and I eye things up.
The nature of these games makes proving anything when we "try my simple request and see how it goes" problematic. Did one team give up first blood in an invade? Did Cow decide to not be a top tier mid and go jungle Heimer instead? Did one team allow their weakest player to go top instead of playing the only role they could have been competitive in? Did someone decide they wanted to see if Support Elise was still a thing after her nerfs? If a game like this occurs, how have we learned anything from our attempts to balance teams when one team trolled around?
You might find my proposed method needlessly complicated, but you can't argue it's fairness. You get to choose which pick order you want.
If you think it would take too much time, then let me clarify. I would choose to go with Hedgie's pick order almost every time for simplicity, and only when I saw some large potential for imbalance would I need 1 minute to shift things around. Then you get 1 minute to choose which of pick orders you want.
2 minutes isn't too much time to spend for everyone to feel like the game at least has a hope of being fairly balanced. If you don't feel the same way, we have two very different perspectives on this.
just pulling this forward so its clear what we are talking about
Thunder's plan
humor me and explain this in more detail... from start to finish. Including scenario for magic amazing player and crap player.
it's like cutting cake: one person gets to slice, one person gets to pick.
The slicer wants to slice as much-in-half so that they don't get the smaller piece. The chooser will (presumably) always choose the larger one.
One person is the slicer - chooses which order picks will go.
This could be:
1, 2, 3, 4 / 5, 6, 7, 8 (obviously silly)
1, 3, 5, 7 / 2, 4, 6, 8 (better, but still silly)
1, 4, 5, 8 / 2, 3, 6, 7 (better for team 1 if there is 1 really strong player, better for team 2 if there is 1 really weak player - mostly balanced otherwise)
1, 5, 6, 8 / 2, 3, 4, 7 (an example if there is a team with a really strong and a really weak player. Team 2 gets a large group of "low gold" players, Team 1 gets a plat, a bronze, and some mix in the middle).
Then the other person chooses which pick order - and then you whoever picked first-pick starts picking.
Okay!
Players in lobby: Pacov, Dynamo (Me!), Gotnades, Hedgie, Karl, Hunny, Khan, Sharp (Has new name that starts with K, don't de-friend her!), Gerdum, Knurstie.
All these players I consider very solid even if they have varying skill levels and role diversity, so I just say "Normal Pick Order" which is 1 - 2,3 - 4,5 - 6,7 - 8. You then decide if you'd prefer to pick 1st, 4th, 5th, and 8th... or if you'd rather pick 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th.
We pick, we play. Maybe a stomp, maybe a close game... who knows? But we did our best to make it fair.
Next game, Knurstie leaves to do British things, and a wild Wallstop appears. So I take a minute to decide the draft order for Team A and Team B. 1 - 2,3 - 4 - 5,6 - 7,8. So you now decide if you want 1st (Wallstop), 4th, 7th, 8th picks, or 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th.
Wallstop leaves after one game, and we have SaintlySins replace him. I choose the draft order to be 1,2 - 3,4 - 5 - 6,7 - 8. So you get to choose if you want 1,2,5,8 or 3,4,6,7.
how do we decide who would get the choice? A per game rotation?
Also, you are making it sound like you are deciding the pick order. Potential for unfair adv if you create the pick order and then also have your choice of which set you want. So, would we need a 3rd party or would it always be that if you make the set, the other captain gets their choice of what pick order to use... that make sense? If that's the case, then I think we should alternate. If I declare a specific pick order (eg 1-2,3-4 etc), then the other capt gets to decide which set of picks they want. That would probably be the most fair way to handle it, right?
thunder was alternating between "people in general" third-person "you" and "second-person" you in that sentence, which is where your confusion is.
We need an "om"/"de" in Engish. (i personally use en but that is just me )
there's one slicer and one picker
fyi
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3088241
ah ok. We shall try this thingus.
I will just pop in to say that I agree something needs to be decided about in regards to in house games. I will use the last on I was part of as an example.
First- I am pretty sure everyone knew who would win before we even got into champion select. Pitting Trouser vs. Karl and Cow(<--Plat player) wasn't fair in any sense of the word.
Second- Unorthodox roles. The enemy team had for the most part, roles that they play well (Cow may have been out of place, but he is Plat so he will play fine wherever). While we had me top (lol), Axon mid (this was perfectly fine), Pacov and Krdax bot (who quickly made it apparent he had no idea what a support was ), and Trouser jungle.
I will start with Top! I can say I lost it at champ select simply because I had to pick someone who would not instantly die to Warwick ganks. This made me incredibly easy to counterpick to the point where the lane was a lost cause from the get go.
Mid lane we had an advantage with Axon being on the ball, but TF applies pressure on lanes just from being MIA so it mattered little.
Bot lane was lost from the get go. Krdax who doesn't support vs. Thunder who is a great support. That alone would lose it, but next we smack Cow down there vs. Pacov. So the Plat player on AD carry gets free farm for the entire game(he had 50% pacovs CS and far more kills). Whoopie!
Jungle was also lost from the get go. Trouser tried his best and I cannot fault him for that(he did better than most of us), but Karl is THE jungler in our little group. There was 0 chance of our team getting a safe dragon or baron unless we annihilated the enemy team in a teamfight(fat chance of that with almost every lane lost).
I can safely say that the outcome of the game was fairly obvious and incredibly painful to play through (Pacov and Krdax refused to surrender when we stood 0 chance of coming back).
All in all this and the previous in house experience since I have came back have made me consider not even joining them. I doubt I have seen a fair one (that involved myself) this year and it is a little offsetting when you do not have fun playing with a group of friends.
19/3/6 as cait for my 2nd ranked in my league... which we essentially did 4v5 (enemy team favor). I have 56 points and am currently ranked #3 in bronze tier 1. Hoping my success continues and I shoot up to silver.
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