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
see previous page for a post i just made a sec ago...
also - holy shit - riot finally got around to kicking champs that random due to afk in champ select. here are the details per a red:
Well this was unexpected! I'm curious how you came about that screenshot.
Yes, I can confirm this feature is happening, along with a few details:
A queue dodge penalty will be applied to players who fail to select a champion. The penalty functions the same way as a standard queue dodge from closing the client.
Solo players who did select a champion are returned to the front of the matchmaking queue.
Arranged teams are handled the same way as with a failed ready check. If all members selected a champion, the team is re-queued. If any member failed to select a champion, the team is sent back to the arranged team lobby.
Draft mode is handled on a pick-by-pick basis. The game terminates when a player's pick timer has expired without a champion selected. Players with later picks are given the benefit of the doubt.
The feature is still a work in progress so I can't commit to a launch date on PBE or Live.
This is really, really good and can't be added to live soon enough. Now if they only removed random completely from ranked play.
riot red post about pbe changes - worth a read - http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3197957
Don't overinterpret statistics like that.
I mean, Shen is always near the bottom of win rate lists. I still think that Shen might just be playable. Shyvana and Rammus are right at the top of the win % Platinum lists, but I don't think that you should be rushing out to learn those guys.
Lane Elise has a 62.5% win rate against Lane Cho at 1700-2000 Elo (not enough data for 2k +), making it her 10th best matchup overall.
Also, out of her top 10 lane v lane matchups, four of them are APs (Leblanc, Veigar, Karthus, Annie).
Two are HP tanks (Volibear, Cho).
Rest:
Olaf, Quinn, Xin, Yi.
Don't underinterpret either. Your Shen example is reasonable, but you'll also hear professional gamers complain about shen in solo queue as he can be a trap and requires good coordination to use well. That good coordination doesn't happen all the time in solo queue which makes shen a weaker pick than others. Solo queue win, pick, and ban rates are a good starting place imo and should inform or influence picks.
Let's say chogath had a 90% win rate with a 40% pick rate. You'd be a smidge stupid not to check that out, right? Or at least you should ban that shite every single game if you or a teammate can't play him. You'd also be at a disadvantage unless you knew those stats. Eventually (without seeing those stats - probably after 2-5 games) you'd notice a trend of chogaths kicking your ass every game and either pick him yourself or ask for him to be banned.
Back to my thoughts re: jungle. The clear trend appears to be that jungers with gap closers and hard cc are the strongest currently. Noting that trend over a very high % of games played tells me that I'm likely at a disadvantage if I choose a jungler without. Lacking a proper gap closer is still the number 1 reason I dislike cho. Compare him to vi or hecarim - those 2 are going to end up connecting and hitting an adc or support on almost any gank... same with top lane... and same with mid. Chog is going to lumber around, get a chance to toss out a skill shot to initiate a gank. He misses, well... he can lumber off back to the jungle and then try again. The bottom line is that his ganks are not as likely to work. When they DO work - well its great. Nice cc + a silence. When they don't work... well... I'd rather you have picked any other jungler. So, at least in my opinion, I'd rather have a jungler that can reliably initiate ganks during laning than one that cannot do so reliably.
ah - so whoever told me that cho was stronger than elise in lane (not my experience either - only 1 exciting game though...) was wrong... or I misheard them. Righto. Someone on our team in the game we played where I was elise vs cho told me that, btw. Either I heard them wrong or they are crazy pants.
If someone only plays ranked, odds are they've seen Shen so rarely that they can't even figure out how to work with him.
I mained him before the buffs made him disgustingly overpowered, he was always good even then but no one played him so no one knew. What you'd run into was still the same problem though. You shield in on some guy that's just barely losing, setting up a guaranteed kill, and they run away instead of chase. Or you shield in on some guy that just got ambushed 5v1 but has a good escape, and the asshole stays put and lives just long enough to kill you too. His lifetap works off his health too, so when you focus his targets in team fights, your carries are gaining massive amounts of health back from a high hitpoint Shen.
He's fucking fantastic, but so many tards don't build health and do dumb shit like play AP Shen that even when the team knows what they're doing, he's often less useful than he should be these days. You put a good Shen together with a good AS build, and they're just godlike. Your late game damage output is sick for a pure tank, dishing almost 500 bonus damage every couple seconds in team fights, and healing your allies for ~80 health with every hit while they just mow through the poor bastard you tapped.
random thoughts - so, the taric nerf I ranted about - I think the change to the stun is actually going to be a bigger deal and a great step in the right direction. It will give whoever was stunned a bit more time to react to what happens next, which could be the difference in the fight. I'm thinking we'll see his win rate dip by about 2%. Still the strongest support imo, but less fabulous tier. It will probably take the enemy adc some time to get used to being stunned for less time, so the drop will probably be gradual. Guess we'll see, but I really hope they make the change soon.
Does anyone think that quinn is a viable adc at this point? I don't. She's fine if you can solo top without the enemy team getting a chance to counter... that's about it imo. Hopefully we'll see some pros use her in a tourney to prove me wrong, but I doubt we will see that. Hopefully I'll remember to check her win rate, etc stats later tonight. I just think her ult is way too lackluster.
also - we had a leona/heimer bot lane last night... so that happened. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm the best fiddlesticks jungler in NA - perhaps the world. I should really make a quick montage video of me hitting all of my ults perfectly. I'm pretty sure it would be quite funny to see a 25 second clip of all the horrible things I did.
anywho... I'll prob be on a little early tonight.
Thunder and I are 4-1 running Heimer/leona bot! hahaha
saintvicious' jungle udyr
Pacov! You are not rot.
Come play games with me
Vi is now under 50% winrate, Malphite is (well) under 50%, as is Shen. So are Caitlin and Blitzcrank. But hey, Sejuani is up over 50%. Better start playing her over Vi in jungle. And definitely play Sivir over Caitlin. Much better winrate.
You clearly don't get Cho. If anybody claims that Cho counters Elise, it just means that they don't get the champion. So don't form really strong opinions on a champion that you don't get. Cho has a fine gap closer. It isn't the most consistent, but it is also one of the most long ranged, so it works out. Furthermore, Cho has some of the best early/mid game tower dives due to his rare combination of burst and tankiness. This is where he really shines - he can get kills even without favorable lane positions, which champions like Vi are much weaker at.
And you don't want to be picking up jungle Udyr right now. That video probably was done before the BotRK buffs. I don't know how you somehow got paired against the world's dumbest team in ranked just now, but any non stupid team can easily hard counter Udyr with BotRK. He isn't completely unplayable, but he isn't in a very good spot either.
ah karl... it shouldn't require so much effort to acquiesce that stats tell us a few things and noting trends is useful. Is sej's pick rate that high? That would be a factor of course.
Anywho... I just finished a ranked playing as jungle udyr. I did get paired against the world's dumbest team though (really, I did), so it was an easy win. one of those - ooo - malphite wasn't banned situations - guess guy on other team will play him out of the jungle with no experience. And so... that went well for him. Game starts with them invading out blue. I beline to their blue and take it. They dont take my blue and show up at their blue right after I took... silliness.
KARL - for fucks sake - SOMEONE IN A GAME LAST NIGHT TOLD ME THAT CHO COUNTERED ELISE. I disagree. And I might have heard them wrong. hopefully that is clear... please let it be clear... you will read and acknowledge you understand what I said before we continue talking about the merits of the mighty cho... or something.
In cases like this, statistics are only really useful if they tell you something you didn't already know. Basically, they have to tell you something before its blindingly obvious to be useful. But looking at deviations of a few percent in statistics like this can only tell you what is super popular. In other words, it gives you information after something is generally known.
There is no good way that I can see to pick up the difference between noise and a champion who is suddenly becoming more powerful, but most people don't know about it.
My point with Cho is that anybody who doesn't immediately reject the statement "Cho counters Elise" doesn't understand Cho. That's fine. There are lots of champions that I don't understand that well. But don't run around insisting that a champion sucks when you don't understand them. Theorycrafting is fine and all, but you can only take it so far.
ranked news... bryff got demoted tonight. if you see him on and want a good duo teammate, hit him up. Pretty sure it will be a quick climb for him to undo the demote, but that sucks.
in other sucky news... I... the great pacov... hater of chogath jungler (and one that cannot understand the complexities of mighty cho)... and now a gd veteran in silver. yay.... hurrah....
><
Anyway, with that, I apparently am getting more lp for wins in silver 1. I just won a game and got enough to put me to 98 lp. This means, worst case (provided I don't lose, ofc), I need 2 wins to hit my qualifier. Best case I get 1 win and they hook me up. This is really encouraging as I was getting like 1 lp per game and needed to go on like an 11 game win streak (literally) to hit my qualifiers for gold. So, much, much, much less fuck you league system now that I finally got a little break. Hoping I just need 1 win and will hit my qualifiers tomorrow, but we'll see. I'm kind of expecting my qualifiers to go to shit as its been a long road, but I'll know soon enough if I can manage to win a few in a row.
Played some with bryff tonight - did a few solo queue and did really well (except 1 game) and then played 1 game with hunny where we crushed. Good stuff over all.
I love/miss you all.... I am now back... moved for the 3rd time in two months, but this time it should be permanent! I should be on late tonight, and would love for some catchin' up... i just updated and was placed in silver V? Idk if that's good or bad or what... hope to see you all soon!
PS/EDIT: I guess that's my ranked team... haven't done solo/duo yet... so not in a league yet... haha will work on that
Jebus swan - its been forever. I'm sure I'll be on at some point tonight. I'll look you up.
re: silver V - I tanked my placement matches and ended up in bronze 1. Be really happy you don't have to fight your way to silver V - was a real pain in the ass as the skill cap is really, really low the further down you go (eg you don't carry, you struggle to move up). I think you'll find things quite annoying for a bit - I feel like the skill cap starts getting generally better around silver 2. At least in my experience, its fairly easy to move up through the ranks in silver. Duoing queuing won't hurt ya generally - I find I have a little more feeling of accomplishment when I go at is solo though and still do great. You'll probably get anywhere from 15-29 league points per game. It takes 100 league points to start your series (best of 3 until are in silver 1). From what I understand, you can't be demoted once you are in the bottom tier for a league (bronze/silver/gold), so even if you tank a few at the start, its no big deal. You can be demoted within the league tiers though, once you climb up to silver 4.
I'm hoping I might actually magically hit gold tonight (98 lp right now in silver 1). We'll see how that goes. Fingers crossed that I just need to play 1 game to hit my promo series... and then can win best of 3. Based on current ranked win rate, things look good for me. Based on having to redo my promo series for bronze to silver 5 times... things don't look so good there. Anywho... will see how that goes. I'm pretty confident I can still easily move up in gold as my skill cap is generally above most folks I encounter (at adc/support anyway) - not sure how long that will be the case, but I'm looking forward to finding out if I have what it takes to promote out of gold (getting a smidge ahead of myself...). I'll be playing some ranked tonight and then switch it up and play some normal draft with folks if people are free.
so, back to talking about my twitch stream for a min. I don't advertise it (outside of to you folks that follow this blog) so I'm always going to only have a few viewers. I'm cool with that and will keep streaming as long as folks dig it (and as long as I want replays of my games too). Just curious though - are most of you choosing to watch the stream instead of play in games because you dig watching streams or is it more of a "this is entertaining while I can't actually play" sort of thing? Also, is there anything more you'd like to see me do on stream? For instance, someone commented that I don't press tab enough to show the scoreboard. I'm trying to get in the habit of doing that more often (still kind of suck at it or I do it way too quickly and close it within 1 second). Anyway, so I usually ramble if I'm in solo ranked and comment on what's going on and share my opinion... and I swear like a sailor as I deem appropriate... and I yell about jungle chogath... and I apparently try to shoutcast things... and I showcase my jungle fiddle. Anyway, let me know if you want to see more of this or that and if I'm could be doing something that would improve the quality of the stream. Also - prease, if you are watching and signed into lol - if you notice that my music is too loud and you can't hear me jibba jabba, please shoot me a pm and let me know. oh - last thing - I don't mind at all if folks want to play a game just shoot me a pm. If I'm duo'd with someone in ranked, I often don't check who is online and free and I don't mind stopping playing ranked to do some normals. Don't hesitate to shoot me a pm if you'd like in on the next game.
well my solo/duo is unranked atm... we'll see where i end up... i'll try to play through the placement matches tonight... before or after we have happy-go-lucky-memories games. But yeah... i'm glad to be back (i didn't even have a game in my match history)... played a couple arams to give the ol' skills a workout, didn't have time for a real game before work... hope to see some of you tonight.
Hey yeah getting demoted was no big deal. Pretty sure that getting promoted was just lucky on my part because I had a 7 game win streak. And my champ pool is still very limited except adc and mid (ish) so I'm not good for top jungle fills.
be on soonish - working on a vid...
boom - excited pacov has hit his promo series. playing first game in a few min (silver 1 to gold V is muh prize).
streams back up - sorry!
crazy ping for a bit... then it died off happily.
we won game 1 of my promo series.
Wow, you and Hunny got straight up carried in that first game. I wish I could get teams like that in a promo series, lol.
i hear yah, karl. game 1 was ugh. hunny made a nice move mid gameish to clean up and got himself back into things. I just did all i could to peel for hunny.
game 2 was a win. I apparently cannot stream tonight - i keep getting really awful lags when i do, so if you care to watch, spectate plz.
this is yellow but
PACOV IS GOLD
mmmmmm happy days - goal achieved.
hunny is now in promo series from silver 1 to gold 5. I'm restarting pc then trying to stream again. stream up in 3 min
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
