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
here's the really, really odd thing - the folks on our team were gold V and gold IV. Bryff is like silver 2 or 3. I literally have no idea...
While I could provide the same sort of quality support to a random adc my team would pick up, if I'm actually a good adc (even if I'm great at support), we'd likely be better off with me trying to get in that role. I still tend to think that a great adc > a great support. If your adc is rubbish, a great support generally can't compensate for that (unless you can now do 1500 dmg in a few seconds late game team fights). But - a great adc can often accommodate for a weaker support. We still might disagree here, and that's perfectly fine. Personally speaking, my odds for winning go up when I am in a role I can carry out of. And I'd really recommend playing in roles that you can carry from in ranked whenever possible - UNLESS you are duo queing with a pal and then you could call support.
pulling this forward...
OK - so I'm still toying with this and tweaking a point here and there, but I'm currently digging it still. jebus hedgie... too much info to reply to all at once. re: lifesteal setups. I alternate back and forth between my lifesteal rune setup. I always take it on kog. Was running it before on cait, but change up recently in favor of the standard ad rune setup. I'm still kind of on the fence, though.
I actually think the setup I've been trying out is a nice mix between sustain and damage (obv damage would fall off if I ran with a life steal page). Running barrier makes a big difference in my experience combined with the health regen you get from the pot + cookie. Worst case, you can often easily survive an all in attempt against you and then even go right back into lane still feeling safe.
Let's talk about the trade offs you mentioned. Having an extra pot does not encourage me to make retarded trades, so skip that. If you run ad runes, you don't really have a problem last hitting as long as you are experienced with whatever champs dmg output, so losing execution isn't a big deal there. The only thing I've allowed myself to be a little foolish with is on pickpocket (currently trying out). For me, its best to even forget I have that on and just harass like I normally would. Still not sure if its worth it compared to other things. It's certainly a smidge more valuable on cait than on other adcs. Your 2 gp/10 analysis is interesting. I'm still not sure if its worth it or not. Its more than a few points to invest just for the 50 extra gold. So - me = on the fence.
Good info all around. I find myself checking back here each day to see what the discussion will be about. (well...LoL obviously. Perhaps "..what direction the discussion will take" would be better)
I have been playing quite a bit of Draven lately. I was loving Cait - and I still do - but there is just something about that cocky bastard that I really enjoy. Probably his double blades of spinning death. I have definitely found that a poor start/bad matchup is difficult(at best) to come back from.
I am having a difficult time getting away from the ADC role. I just find it so much fun. I have tried Taric off and on but I'm still missing something - I really suck with him. Either that or I am not paired well. I picked up Skarner on sale this week and I really like him a lot. Good mobility, survivability. I tried him Jungle and was amazed. I found him very easy to use. The trouble with jungle in unranked blind pick is that I rarely find a team that incorporated a jungle/solo top well. Generally it is about 5 ppl connecting and picking their chosen champs - then arguing about who needs to change until we run out of time and go with 5 squishies... It's not always like that but often.
I guess I need to sit down with a decent support (Taric....) and learn that role better. Then a good solo-top. I think that would be 3 good roles. 4 actually if I can get some more jungle skarner in. I have played some jungle Nocturne also. It's good fun.
Still - there isn't much better than sending those two blades spinning across the map to take out a champ who thinks they've gotten to the safety of a tower or some bushes to port home....
I'm almost 28... honing in on 30 so I can play some ranked!!
edit: I meant to ask - in these non-ranked, blind pick matches - where most teams don't run with a jungler - are there any suggestions for a champ who could hold top solo while our team (me) ran jungle? I play regularly with a couple people over Skype and we try to synergize our roles, but I don't want someone to feel constantly overmatched by an opposing pair up top. Another thing I've noticed is that savvy teams invade our jungle when they see Smite. PITA.
Well, if you are trying to gear up for ranked, I'd stop playing blind pick altogether. At least in my recollection, I stopped seeing teams without junglers around level 21 or so - but I played a lot of draft... so there's that. Champs that are good or can be good for 2v1 lanes - nidalee, olaf, rumble, jayce. If you are playing top lane, you should most likely be running a sustain setup - by that I mean you start with flask or a ton of red pots. Your main goal, sadly, should be tower protection, winning trades when you can get some damage on 1 without getting destroyed by the other fellow in lane. I know you aren't talking about what we see in some pro games (where there is a jungler, but bot lane swaps with top), but if you were, the goal of the enemy is different - here the 2v1 objective is to kill your tower as quick as possible. If you are playing 2v1 and there is no jungler, then 1 of 2 things will happen. The enemy team will zone you (probably the smarter move - but also less likely for any group of people choosing to forgo a jungler). If they zone you, they just keep you from getting cs and exp while they try to freeze the lane. If that happens, then if you have a champ with ranked poke, you farm as best you can - otherwise you leave for a smidge and try to farm something in the jungle or gank another lane. That scenario is the most frustrating. If they are just go apeshit trying to kill you and pushing the creep wave (this is most likely) just keep your composure and try to safely farm under the tower. Just accept its going to be frustrating - BUT - keep in mind that you will actually level up faster than they will and they will likely have 2 under powered champions top while you will be the only one potentially weaker on your team - this means your team will have an advantage as long as you don't feed a bunch.
Pacov....You typod your
Bronze 1 dude
It was a disagreement with the last line only, not that picking support leads to losses.
Thanks to the new ranking system, those gold players could still be around the 1200 players, where the new guys enter. Gold isn't a particular ELO band now.
Having an extra pot does not encourage me to make retarded trades, so skip that.
sure, but what did you gain out of that extra pot? i was listing that as a potential disadvantage. Obviously having 150 more hp is a useful thing, but only if you use it to be useful. This is the problem people run into using Flask... they want mana but they are full hp, so they eat a charge for very little gain.
If you run ad runes, you don't really have a problem last hitting as long as you are experienced with whatever champs dmg output, so losing execution isn't a big deal there.
i don't want to nag you, but:
i did watch one of the games you were playing Kog with this setup. i know Kog isn't your best ADC, but you still missed 4 CS level one, and 8 CS by level 3. Putting yourself 100 potential gold behind at 3 minutes isn't a good thing.
If you want to challenge that with "well Draven/Cait i don't mess up CS on" - well, Draven is really damn good with LS + ArP marks, and Cait probably doesn't need the extra hp pot given her range.
--
You also completely skipped out on the potential loss of 10-15% bonus to your mid/endgame damage and 5% loss of durability.
That's a big deal imo.
i always get that crap wrong...
i don't feel nagged. I absolutely blow with last hitting on kog. It's made worse because I run life steal, so I constantly fail at predicting the needed damage output to secure a kill. That said, I spent some time running LS on cait, so I'm actually pretty solid with last hitting with the lower dmg output. I think more time playing as Kog with any setup will help sort me out - its just running LS requires a bit higher mechanical skill - which I won't possess until I put more time in with the setup.
re: the extra pot - yes - you know how I'm going to counter. Cait can farm all day as long as she's doing it right. But let's say a gank occurs, you get out fine, but have lost some hp. Now, if your support got wrecked, you likely need to base depending on the setup. It's really just an added security blanket in case you have issues in lane that enables you to stay in lane. That part would work on any adc (eg wow I just had a bad trade - I can play passive and get bullied now or I can heal up and undo the effects of that trade). In short, I think its a good setup and is, not only less forgiving, but gives you MORE potential early game to get a kill, etc. Eg if we are even on trades, the guy with the regen has the adv. It gets even more over the top if your support has a heal and theirs does not.
also - watch this for about 1 min - http://de.twitch.tv/flosd/b/376135960?t=111m
also also - riot did an ama about the league system - worth checking out their responses - http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=10774070
side note - riot indicated that the load screen borders are likely to be present in season 4 (eg if you are gold in season 3, you will have gold border season 4).
edit - interesting comment from the riot league ama re: duo queues: "For the purposes of finding a match, the underlying MMR of you and your duo partner are assumed slightly higher (since you're able to work together). However for the sake of calculating the game results the underlying MMR will change in a similar way to how it changed in the old Elo system."
AND
"The only way to drop from Silver V to Bronze I is to go inactive for 28 days." So, it is possible to be demoted from a tier/league, but only possible due to going inactive. Something to keep in mind anyway.
streaming game 3 of karls promo series. duo'd up.
I use the Flask almost entirely with sustain characters that can turn mana into health while farming. It's great with Nunu, chomp the odd minion to equal things out when your health is getting run down faster than your mana.
I do not use it on AP pokers for restoring mana, mana pots or a decent regen item would be much better.
malphites AS slow is now buffed on PBE. Looks like they are trying to get him back into the rotation. I still think he's great as is, but he's literally an ult bot.
I'm in a nice mood right now since I just went 10/0/8 kassadin ranked solo, without making bad plays to keep it that way either. Team was working very well. Might be partly due to having amumu on our team. Bryff feels good.
I tried out singed today first time (2 games both blind picks). first game I went against fiora, who singed counters, but I got destroyed in lane. other lanes carried that game. Second game I get a mirrored singed battle. We were about even except I got successful ganks and his ganks weren't. I end up getting super fed and pretty much am a 3rd carry with 22 kills by the end.
Definitely an ult bot, but he's out of rotation all the time because most people ban his ass.
I am happy because I am housesitting for someone, and they have nice internet.
Now I might give the ranked thingummy a try...
That's great. Yeah - I'm always a smidge happier when things go excellent in ranked. Hope the trend continues.
@dax - grats on having proper internet for a bit! Get to ranked sucka.
@bryff - singed is such a nuisance character. Really fun to play when you are fed though... you just get to run around like a jackass. It's like a super hard to kill teemo.
I'm still trying to figure out what the deal is with my internet. I have like 3.5 meg upload with like 50 meg download or something silly. My stream eats up 2 meg leaving 3.5 meg for LoL. I'm still trying to figure out if the lag spikes I'm getting are truly related to my stream or not. I get them sometimes when streaming and sometimes when I'm not. First thing I think to do is kill my stream if shite is lagging here and there. Last night, I changed the bitrate on my stream to 1.8meg from 2.0 meg. No idea if that helps or not - no idea if there is a quality difference in the stream either as I haven't checked it. Getting really annoyed though as the bandwidth problem doesn't make sense (my working theory is the lag spikes have to do with running out of upload bandwidth, but I might be barking up the wrong tree). I don't have steam running, don't have carbonite running, don't have anything I can think of that would account for the missing bandwidth. I'm not even 100% sure killing my stream does anything to alleviate the lag. Smeh
ranked status blahblah of mr pacov - failed my promo series last night (only took 1 loss after bryff's leona jungle to kill my series - ). Played that promo game solo and feel like I under performed. Also, the amount coordinated batshite crazy battles in that game was nuts. We had like all of 5 of us in bot lane at one point really early on (7-8 min or so). Not because a tower was weak or anything, but because everything just worked out that folks were tping in, gank and counter gank. This happened like 2-3 times during the game. Anyways, end game we lost primarily because the teemo would focus me (cait) and blind me during battles and no one would peel the little crap off me.. so we lack damage and they outdo us in the fight. That blind is such a bitch in a fight.
Anyway, game 2 I play with karl and that goes poorly and karl loses his promo series again (I'm pretty sure he's probably back in a promo series again now). Game 3 and 4 I play with Hunny and we win both (puts me back into my promo series for gold V to gold IV - eg pretty much where I started the night out... just without a loss in my promo series). Game 1, I go taric with another adc and hunny has to run top. We crush bot lane and it makes for a very easy win. Hunny makes more than a few mental errors in our 2nd game. He runs trist, which is fine ofc. But he forgets to take barrier... then he compounds that mistake by playing like he still has barrier... which results in our lane snowballing against us. We're like 0/4 etc at the end of laning. So, not so good. Not so good in other lanes either (but better than our setup). Anyway, we fight on and eventually win the game and destroy them. Intelligent play often makes up for crappy laning. Our whiny bitch jungler kept being a whiny bitch, but eventually had to apologize to hunny at the end of the game for being such an annoying shit. Hunny and I both reported mr annoying anyway.
Carbon is almost done with is placement matches.
Already know Im gonna be bottom leauge.
Word of advice: Just because you say: "Going Xerath, dont care what lane" does not mean you should try to play support. Just saying. lol
Acutally Xerath bot with adc is alot of fun. TONS of Poking. In fact it might be viable if you had a jungler who ganked. But I wouldnt know what those are since Ive yet to see a jungler in my placement matches gank bot at all...or mid....or top...
@dax - learn from carbons example and get to it. ranked yolo.
@carbon - even if you end up at the bottom, you can still fight your way out. Just expect many, many things that you can't understand or explain to happen. I certainly feel good about working my way up. You can literally hit a qualifier match with like 4 consecutive wins. Just try not to get discouraged.
I have my alt account that I am level 30 on but have not played any ranked - mayhaps I fire that up and play with some folks that end up in the bronze age. I don't have anywhere near as many character though.
other stuff - so I have seen the swan but have not played with the swan yet. He's usually on a bit after I am and I've been a smidge obsessed with ranked lately - so I actually missed playing w him one time when he was free. I'll drop what I'm doing and play some normals next time I see ya.
Side note - anyone else care a bit less about normal games now? I think the only time I didn't really want to play ranked recently was right after I hit gold (still had to play ranked to get hunny there tho). Then I would have been happy for a break. Well, actually, I take that back, I keep wanting to play normals to get some practice in with champs I don't use a bunch.
Anyone about to get promoted to a new rank or league? I think Hunny is 1 win away from hitting promo to gold IV. I think Karl is in his promo to move to silver 2. Not sure where mr bryff is atm with ranking up.
Other other stuff - holy crap have I been having a lousy time of getting to sleep lately. The past 2 nights I've gone to bed between like 11PM and midnight... no sleep until like 3-4 am. Not so much fun. Just can't sleep. I'm already feel pretty exhausted, so hopefully the sleep problem is about to end.
bleh - also, you folks that have only played a few ranked matches for placement, CMON! play some more ranked and lets see how far we can go. You can't get demoted out of gold/silver unless you go inactive for 28 days and are at 0 lp.
Xerath support does not sound like a good idea; if you get ganked you will die.
I prefer Rengar Support. Bush hops. Bush hops. Bush hops.
Also, I am terrified of playing ranked because of my (1059 ELO) inability to rally teammates and my fear of underperformance. :F
I like normal games with 5 of us and in houses more than ranked. It's nice using voicechat to coordinate. Less stupid things. That said there's a plethora of posts going to karl and pacov debating.
That's actually one of my fav things that choose not to do. So very nasty when it works. Less impressive after nerfs though.
don't be scurr'd. It's perfectly ok to not do well. I always keep the enemy team chat disabled (no one can taunt me there and I won't be tempted to taunt them) and then I just mute my teammates if they are running their mouths. Just do your best and have fun and accept that you will lose. Also, just think - once you climb up to silver, you can't be demoted back to bronze, so set that as an initial goal. Practice your champs in normal and when you feel solid, take it to ranked.
karl and I would never fight about anything. I really enjoy our in house games (not enough of em lately - still quite a bit my fault I think) and sometimes enjoy the 5 man teams. Unfortunately, even if we kick ass, I don't get quite the same satisfaction out of a win that I would in ranked. 5's are still fun from time to time.
First real ranked game:
Leona - 6/3/30 victory
I've never played Leona before, but my laning partner, Miss Fortune, is on the ball with each of my initiations. Their Vayne/Nunu get so far behind that I can kill both of them by myself at the same time :/ Absurd.
EDIT- this does wonderful things for my confidence though... Will try another one soon enough.
Second EDIT- Oddly enough, I keep on getting weird team comps as I try to find another game: I'm banning, I call support, and then my team instantly all call mid, and instalock mids...
grats!
at least 2 of my placement matches were thrown by outright trolling. Just keep at it.
streaming/spectating dax's ranked game
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