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
ah - banshee's probably would have been a great call actually.
karl and I will be streaming duo ranked. we are doing his promo series now. 2 wins and he hits silver 3 - live now - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1
game 1 we crushed - karl's 1 win away from silver 3.
I am now 0-5 in promotion series. I win maybe 2/3 of my regular games, but it doesn't matter one bit if I can't get lucky during promotion series. Good system Riot. Really great. I love systems that randomly screw people over to make things "more exciting". Yeah, its really exciting to never be promoted because you win the "wrong" games that don't matter so much.
EDIT - And now I'm at 99 LP. Which means that when I win again, essentially 95% of the win will be useless since it only nets me 1 LP. Another bit of statistical silliness.
check THIS post in a few min - going to update it. Looking for feedback
edit - ok so here's the full game: http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/b/369271611
If you are interested in this sort of rot, watch the whole game, but skip ahead to 9:30 or so - that's when the game actually starts. You'll notice karl and I yelling at each a lot. It happens. So, just expect that sort of thing going in and brace yourself. Karl can get super bitchy and so can I.
The crux of the argument is my decision to split push. I do this at 28:10 on the twitch steam (not sure in game timer, just know I'm referring to twitch stream time when I say X min). Anyway, I take mid, I kill support, then I continue split push (keep watching). I do this because both my top and mid are mostly useless. Karl complained the most about this decision... where I took 3 towers and we lost 2 towers a dragon. So, question 1 - was I wrong to take 3 towers in exchange for 2 towers + drag?
Now we move on to where I got incredibly pissed at karl... skip to 32:27. I make a call for the whole team to angle near bot where we can force a fight outside of the tower range or get another tower. No one backs this call, even though we know exactly where they will be. Instead, its ackward engage without adc because I'm heading towards a tower. Oddly, karl was bitching most about me split pushing and taking 3 towers and not this. I was always bitching about this. Reasons for my call. 1 - it wasn't split pushing as the whole team was there (if they just kept moving to me) 2- not great ward coverage for a fight where they drew it 3 - I'm the only 1 taking towers. If they hesitate for 4 seconds, I kill a tower. Literally everything that happens next is a result of karl and I disagree. karl setups for a gank (they had no vision, while we had some). If everyone went bot, we'd either have gotten a tower or re-engaged as 5 outside of the tower.
My personal take is that karl did not adapt to what was doing on in the game. The enemy team did not respond when I split push and I could crush them when I did - much faster than they could take objectives with my team slowing them. And I'll add, I don't think draven is a split push guy. I decided this was the best decision in this game based on what was going on in this specific game. IMO taking 3 towers and losing 2 + drag was the right call.
I didn't have a problem with your pushing up to 21:05 (game time) or so. That was fine because they weren't doing anything coordinated back. In that situation, by all means, take free towers.
The problem starts at 21:10. This is where you trade 1 tower for 1 tower+drag+2 kills, which is not good. Notice that Nunu starts out right next to you, but he makes it to the fight at the beginning because he plays as a team. Notice also that if you had come, you would have been there first probably, beating out their Graves. That was a very winnable teamfight. Thats the fight I hate you split pushing on.
The call at 24 minutes game time to go for tower doesn't make sense. Do you honestly think that was a free tower? The creeps were 10 seconds (at least) back from it. The other team is right there. They know where we are (having sustained vision on our team). The tower is at full health. Go back and look at that. There is no opportunity to push that tower IMO.
The only way to get to that tower is for me to face tank it, and they are maybe a few seconds away from it. And once I start face tanking, we can't disengage from their team (can't disengage from Hec+Jarvan). So we start a teamfight with me face tanking a tower, which is not ideal.
Since there is going to be a fight there, it is MUCH better to fight away from their tower (where I engaged them). The basic idea is that if we fight near their tower, they can easily retreat under the tower once their carries get low. We can't, so we are at a fundamental disadvantage fighting near their tower. In the jungle, its a neutral fight. I preferred to choose the neutral fight over the disadvantaged fight.
Regardless, that call is the tanks call to make. AD carry doesn't get to make the calls. AD carry follows the tank. By all means, make suggestions. But in the end you have to back the tank. If you want to make all the definitive calls, play a tank and don't play ADC. AD Carries never get veto power over tanks calls because the tank is the one going in, and if the ADC just abandons the team, bad things happen.
Also, yes, my engage after all that stuff was bad. I was on tilt and forgot that they had an Anivia. But the game was over by then and I will admit that that was wrong and not do the same thing over again.
Also, I want to discuss your analysis around 23:00 and split pushing in general.
In order to split push, you need 2 things:
1) A team that can prevent them from screwing you 4v5 while the 5th is pushing
2) Good split pushing champs.
We had neither of those. Draven is, at best, a mediocre split pusher. He has weak escapes and doesn't push minions that well, being primarily a single target damage source (unless you ult, and the ult should be used to help out your teammates). Yes, he is excellent once he gets to the tower. But he takes longer than a Trist/Sivir to get there, and he has a harder time getting out if their team comes. I mean, if Hec comes, what are you going to do? You can't duel him and its going to be really hard to get away from him.
But mostly we didn't have a way to stop them 4v5 while you did something. We can't effectively clear minions waves off our tower. Xin can't keep them off. Neither can Taric. Neither can Nunu. Pantheon might be able to HSS them, be he has to stand near them and be still to do that, which is death.
Then, once the minions get to tower, they can dive us for free. Jarvan runs in and ults some people. We have low damage outside of Draven (its basically Pantheon at that point), and we can't get out of him ult. So we get pinned by Jarvan Ult, Jarvan easily tanks the tower, and we lose badly.
They actually had a good split pushing team. Hec can split push (being impossible to kill pretty much), and they can defend their towers with Anivia clearing waves and Jarvan hosing any questionable dives with his ults. If the teams were reverse, yes, split push. But we can't with our team.
You can't just randomly decide "hey, I want to split push, so I will force my team to do that". You have to have reasonable comps to do that. I don't think that anybody thinks that Draven+Nunu+Panth+Xin+Taric is a good split push comp. MAYBE if its Pantheon split pushing (using his ult to cause problems and using Draven to prevent them from murdering us 4v5), but even then I dont think so.
Please also realize that by making that choice, you are forcing 4 other people to do nothing and follow your lead. You are essentially removing any choice or play making ability from every other person on your team.
"So, question 1 - was I wrong to take 3 towers in exchange for 2 towers + drag?"
That isn't what happened, so the question can't be answered. Tower 1 you're talking about was Mid Outer? You destroyed that and then chased Sona down and killed her. Then you shopped. Then you took Top Outer with Nunu... at this point you could have quit while you were ahead 2 towers, and headed back to help your team when Nunu did.
Instead you split pushed and killed the top inner tower while two of your teammates died, they took bot outer tower, and got dragon. 2 deaths, 1 dragon, 1 tower is not worth the 1 tower you got split pushing at this point.
During this, you were telling your team to hold them off and not die. You're the team's damage, so if you leave them alone they become extremely vulnerable even if they can get to a tower. The other team no longer has to be careful when chasing because they see that the most dangerous player on the other team is slowly split pushing on the opposite side of the map. Your team has a lot of bad choices now: Huddle under a tower and wait for the awesome diving team to murder them under it because they haven't got an ADC? Full retreat and let the other team take towers faster than their split pushing ADC can? Or the other team could just kill Dragon with 3 players and you with 2, and then your team has to listen to you say "Why didn't you keep them busy?!"
I'll answer that unspoken question: They tried but the team's main damage threat was doing his own thing which left them extremely vulnerable and with limited options.
"Reasons for my call. 1 - it wasn't split pushing as the whole team was there (if they just kept moving to me) 2- not great ward coverage for a fight where they drew it 3 - I'm the only 1 taking towers. If they hesitate for 4 seconds, I kill a tower."
A few pings does not translate into the above for your teammates. You weren't leading Team Pacov with 5 person voice chat in an in house game, so no one knew what you wanted to do. They were doing what everyone does in Solo Q: Following the tank, because he is the defacto team leader. The only person who might have known what was going on was Karl, and I don't think he was in the mood to follow your calls after how poorly your split push worked out earlier.
hmm... perhaps I'm just being stubborn, but I still disagree on a few points. What should have happened if the adc is off somewhere else and not with the team? Why, we'll fight for dragon, incur 2 deaths, and lose a tower. Obviously, that's not what should happened. And I don't think me taking an extra tower put my team in a situation where the only possible outcome was having 2 people die.
Also, I don't have the vid up in front of me now, but I really don't think my split pushing is a slow process - creep waves die quickly and I kill the towers pretty quickly.
I choose to pursue objectives that I believed I was the only one capable of clearing. We were like 20 + min in and no towers outside of mine had been destroyed... and I knew that our nunu was useless. So, I chose to take advantage of the enemy teams' location to get another objective. In hindsight, of course I have to acknowledge that the price of 2 deaths + 1 tower + 1 dragon was way too high for a single tower. Obviously it is. Did I put the team in a situation where the only possibility was dying? I don't think so... at all. If all I traded was dragon for a tower, then taking the tower was the right call imo. Should I have been with the team in light of the deaths... yup.
re: the 2nd event - while I still maintain that we could have easily taken the tower, I should have stayed with the team when they decided to camp. Pretty sure we would have been destroyed all the same with that sona ult, us all in a close space, etc... probably best if we weren't there at all.
"I really don't think my split pushing is a slow process - creep waves die quickly and I kill the towers pretty quickly."
I would say you kill the towers EXTREMELY fast. The problems with your choice to split push with Draven were:
1. You push waves fairly quickly, but not as fast as the split push gods like Jayce.
2. You do damage, but don't really 1v1 duel like a real split push champ.
3. You don't escape as well as a split push champ would.
4. Your team needs your damage in team fights. Real split pushers are more expendable.
5. You were the most powerful champ in the game at the time.
6. The opposing team was great at pushing towers and diving them.
So the issues these problems caused was:
1. The split push seemed fast to you, but probably seemed a lot longer to your team who was trying to handle things without you.
2. More options for your opponents to deal with you. Instead of having to send multiple champs to kill you or just one to stop you at a tower, they had a few champs to choose from who could have easily chased you down and killed you 1v1.
3. See #2.
4. Your team couldn't defend objectives.
5. Your team couldn't not defend objectives, because if they didn't distract the other team, the other team would have just sent someone to kill you while still taking objectives if they hadn't felt any pressure from your team.
6. Would have been hard to split push even with a good champ and team for it against those guys.
"Pretty sure we would have been destroyed all the same with that sona ult, us all in a close space, etc... probably best if we weren't there at all."
Sure two of your teammates didn't scale well, but you were personally way ahead of the opposing graves even after the split push debacle. Even that last fight you're talking about, your team took a few of the enemy out even though you were killed without doing ANY damage due to the mis-communication, and it was 4v5. Who knows what would have happened if you had been with your team with Nunu to blood boil you?
We weren't fighting over dragon. A ping went down (at about 21 mins game time) to try and pick off an overextended Anivia (not my ping btw). While it wasn't my call, I didnt think it was terrible since we knew Graves wasn't going to be there. 4 people on the team (including 1 person who started out right next to you) chose to group. You chose to run away from the team. This is the decision that I disagree with (not the earlier decisions to take 2 first level towers when there was no group play on the map).
As was said above, you put us in a position where there were a number of options ranging from bad to terrible. We were completely incapable of defending any objective (other than MAYBE nexus itself due to double towers) without you. We did not have the damage to stop dives. So our choices were:
1) Die and give up towers
2) Let them take free towers/inhibs with no defense (we can't even push minions off a tower with our champions).
Option 2 was terrible because 5 people can push faster than 1, so it was a losing proposition all day long. I explained this to you calmly in Skype at about 23:00.
Trading dragon for a tower was never an option unless they were openly incompetent (which they weren't). There were several obvious towers that they would be able to get after dragon, which isn't even what they went for initially.
With regards to the tower call. There was NO CHANCE of us taking that tower. They were close to their tower. Closer to their tower than our minions were. They are faster than our minions. They had full sight of at least some of our team. If we go to their tower, it is overwhelmingly likely that they get there before our minions, or at about the same time. With Anivia, we can't successfully siege their tower. There was just no tower play in my opinion.
Let me put it this way. Go back and look at that video. In what realistic situation do our minions make it to their tower substantially before they do? You are basically hoping that they decide to ignore our team and wander off to blue or something, but that isn't going to happen.
Me overriding your ping had nothing to do with being mad about the earlier split push. When you pinged, I looked at their team and our minions. Their team was too close to the tower given our wave. Therefore, I chose to override your ping because I saw no realistic chance of us getting their tower. I then chose to fight on neutral grounds assuming that the team would follow me (which they did, except for the ADC).
As the team's tank, that is my call to make. If you want to make that call, play as a tank.
meh - re watched chunks of the vid. I see quite a bit I misplayed much to my chagrin. shit nunu and all, if I was on top of my game, that was probably an easy win. Sorry.
meh on your head. debacle. tone down the drama. It's like a holocaust.
ah well - I asked for feedback and have received it. ... in the ass
yay! we got bryff to silver 2 today!
and now i have the worst lag ever in game... no fucking idea... everything else seems fast.
what a shitty night. It was like the world of Demigod again. Had multiple ranked games at 250-300 ping (eg what's a skill shot? what's last hitting). There are some posts on the forum bitching about it. It's like a weird, itermittant thing. I could play a game right now and have it be perfect all game. Or end up with 300 ping nonstop with no ability to correct it. Completely blows in ranked. Not all that happy to lose any ranked games over that bs. Anyway, is what it is.
Probably should have stopped queueing ranked after the first incident lol.
well... it resolved itself to a degree that I thought it was a non issue. Not so much. Really hoping that whatever the problem is gets sorted. Kind of unplayable and no fun. I made enough tests and changes to determine that the issue is not my my side. That leaves ISP and Riot as the cause of muh pain. Hoping for the best anyway.
Check this out: http://quickfind.kassad.in/
You put in your summoner name and get out various stats - including number of wards purchased. Also calls out if you are solo or duoing in ranked. Worth a glance anyway, imo
well... I've fired up multiple custom games and am getting an 80ms ping... here's hoping the problem I was having yesterday is sorted. I'll be on a wee bit for some ranked or whatever.
I'll be streaming some ranked shortly for anyone that is interested.
karl's just started a promo series and we are duoing - gl to karl
he'll move from silver IV to silver 3 if we win 2. game starts in about 3-4 min
had a good night overall. 1 - no ping bs. Completely ruined my night yesterday, so happy it was a non issue tonight.
Played a few with trouser. He's currently at gold IV and in a promo series. Got him 1 win. So, he just needs to win 1 of the next 2 and he's up to gold 3. GOOOOOO trouser! Side note - I currently find matches sooo much easier when duoing with trouser. Honestly, its not that he's a like an amazing duo teammate (he does fine though), but the overall skill level seems higher and there are less total fucknut teammates.
I've just hit my promo series from silver 2 to silver 1. Haven't had a chance to play any of the series games, but I could bust into silver 1 tomorrow. Really hoping I can pull it off. FYI - my most difficult games happened in bronze. So far its getting easier as I weed out lower level folks.
Also played a few with karl. We were doing well together, but he started to get some lag spikes (quite a few bitching about it on reddit - other side note... really happy i didn't have to deal with that rot tonight - sorry for karl though). Anyway, we got him into his promo series and got him a win as well. He's currently silver IV and 1/0 in his promo series. Poor guys had to play that fucking promo series like 27 times, so I really hope he can get there this time. If he wins, he'll move to silver 3.
So, there's your ranked pacov report of the night.
LAST NOTE - I'd love to get some in house games going in. Still super excited about ranked, but those games are fun. Hopefully we can get some going again soon. I usually check who's around in between games, but we have not had the numbers in quite a bit. Probably a ton of that has to do with how into ranked i am... in the past, I'd always pick up folks and run with 5. Pretty sure that makes getting 10 of us MUCH easier, so its certainly quite a bit my fault that we haven't had some in a bit.
so gold is currently the promised land for me. See this division distribution chart.
http://imgur.com/a/xTVoW
So much difference between silver and gold - which means odds of the awfuls go down... I think the sweet spot is right around gold IV based on population in that tier. Not that I really have a clue. Just that the less people in a tier makes it more exclusive.
1/0 in my promo series to silver 1. playing again in a few min
game 2 - loss. we have a jungle that never connects. We actually dominate. We lose because our mid whines nonstop about our missing player. Then does stupid things in his rage. Really sad as we could honestly, EASILY, have won 4v5. and now my last game.
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