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
skin price changes: http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=11168003#post11168003
re-roll for aram queue per riot - good idea says pacov
While the random element is a really fun part of Howling Abyss, we also understand there are times you simply don’t want to play a particular champion. That’s why we created the reroll feature specifically for this queue. When you’re really not in the mood to play your particular champion on Murder Bridge, you can reroll and get a different random character instead. Here’s how it works. As you play matchmade games on Howling Abyss, win or lose, you’ll earn points you can save up to purchase a reroll in champion select. You’ll earn a base number of points every match, along with some bonus points based on the number of champions you own. While there is a cap on the number of points you can store up, you’ll be able to reroll multiple times in a single champion select if you’ve got the points. And don’t worry about wasting your hard-earned points on queue dodgers. If someone leaves your match at champion select, everyone in the game gets a refund except the player who dodged.
edit - i'm going to play an aram game on pbe in an hour or so with the new re-roll feature.
edit edit - max of 5 health pots on live in pbe soon
They re-enabled lissandra on pbe. Anyway, I'll be playing/streaming an aram on pbe in about 10 minutes for anyone that is interested. I'll probably be on my normal acct in about 45 min.
re: in house games yesterday.
In general notes:
- cellone was kinda erratic. In game #1 he had a ton of really clutch bindings + shields + good farm (though Morg beats Ryze). Game #2 he just kinda farmed mid lane all game, pushed to tower, farmed wraiths, went oom, recall, "waste" TP to go back mid.
Although Lux + Anivia is a pretty stale farm lane, Lux has a bit more roam potential with laser, esp when she has TP.
- it's hard to balance teams when people pick characters they don't play much/at all (Gotnades plays Zed, Pacov plays Ryze) out of choice rather than because of strategic bans.
- in retrospect, the teams may have been a little stacked (if we consider Brad and Thunder golds because they were gold last season, the winning team had 5 golds each time, while the losing team only had 3 - while i don't consider gold to be everything, there is one particular silver player in the group of 10 that is a little below the rest of us. Additionally, even though Karl is a great jungler who absorbs a lot of bans, jungle is his only 'real' role besides Taric/Chogath).
#1:
i don't think that game was 100% a problem with team comp.
If you had decided to use Malphite, you would have had nothing to kill the Kog (Morg shield shuts down Ryze). Trist is obviously pretty awesome end game too, but she still isn't a Kog. The bigger part of it was more that our comp countered yours:
Lulu v Warwick
Morgana v Ryze
Keep in mind that Malphite is also a really shitty laner now, and that you would have drawn (at best) top lane. Although Zed fed in teamfights, he did really well in lane and ended up 30 CS ahead of Darius despite losing the game. Not to mention WW + Malphite isn't really enough damage to kill people top lane ganks, you can't gank Morg, which left only one gankable lane (bot).
Finally, even though Morgana bindings&flashult + Trundle pillar is far from the best inititiaion, it was mostly just a matter of waiting until Morg hit a binding then going all in. Malphite counterinitiating a binding on a carry would have resulted in Malphite having to ult only 2/3 people and briefly be 1v5. We didn't spend much of that game sieging, so it's hard to value a flash + ult.
#2:
Problem that game was Gotnades afk farming bot lane, and Lux afk farming mid lane with ult + TP on CD, while Jayce took tower early and tried to roam until he fell behind.
Purple team had an awesome poke comp (Lux + Jayce + Nasus + MF + Sona is a redic poke comp), but refused to group. Although we did have hard engage with Naut and Anivia wall + Anivia R to stall i think it would have been better to group and force objectives rather than farm.
tl;dr Gotnades didn't play that great in either game, Cellone was inconsistent, people probably shouldn't play silly champs
re: increasing skin prices
i actually kind of like it. Honestly, all the (to be) 1350 skins have been on sale at least once, so if you cared about the skin that much, you should have bought it. Sucks for Zyra though. i expect that she'll have a skin really soon though.
The target of this initiative isn't old players like us. We've probably spent a ton of money each, and we've been around long enough to easily take advantage of sales / bundles (remember that huge sale in January that put basically every to-be 1350 skin on sale?).
It also means that new players can basically have a cheap skin for every single champ.
There will be a much more enjoyable "staircase" of skins now (esp consider that most games cost $30-40 anyway which gives a decent RP budget, esp if you are willing to wait for sales).
You've got your entry-level 520/260 that pretty much everyone could afford.
You've got your 750/375 skins that are alright. Nothing special but it's still pretty affordable.
975 skins are pretty good nowadays anyway. It's certainly possible to insta-buy these skins when they are released.
1350 skins are basically those awesome "cheap legendaries" that are just really fun skins. Going on sale they aren't "too" badly priced, and it feels really fun to have these. It'll also lead to a feeling of exclusivity for the owner (oh man they must really like Lulu if they got Dragon Trainer).
Legendary skins are legendaries
It's a much smoother progression, compared to today. You have some pretty sucky 975 skins (cough purple Zac), some awesome 975 skins (Hunted Maokai from Halloween). But it's still a much smoother progression that lets new players buy into the game a lot more.
The only thing i ask is either they do a huge sale the day the prices get raised (so you can buy all the currently 975 skins @ 675 if you really want as a final thanks).
But even then... if you've been around this long and you liked a skin... should've have bought it. If it was too expensive then, still too expensive now, so it's a "neutral" for you.
also holy shit pacov you bought 11 wards that game as Ryze (though you ended with at least 1 in inventory so don't get too grumpy ).
Also Trundle is good against single-tank teams so there is that (also if you had Malphite - lol Trundle ult. We did actually talk about the possibility of Malphite when we were picking champs so).
grrr... pacov goes to sleep annoyed after that last game. looks at hedgies posts tomorrow. night all
to be fair, 3 out of 5 of them were Plat IV. We only had one Plat V at 4 LP, so might be one of those "got plat and then lost a lot".
pictures make things easier - pulled from reddit
also
Players who purchased the Astronaut Teemo, Lion Dance Kog'Maw, or Piltover Customs Blitzcrank skins will be receiving a refund of 470 RP
playing ultimate bravery n streaming
message me in game if you want to play ult bravery w me. link to site
http://www.ultimate-bravery.com/
PETERDUMPTRUCK YO - playing w now
ahh... I missed pete. He was being old school pete. For anyone interested, here's a link to the full game that we played... mr pacov went off to bed right after this game, but it was like old times (nades/sharp/pacov/pete/brad). http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2149798
OK - so let me briefly talk about ultimate bravery. Basically, its a custom game mode with its own rules. To play it, you go to http://www.ultimate-bravery.com/. That looks like this:
On the right side, you just click on the map you are using and unselect any champions you don't own. You can save the info by clicking on save so you don't have to repeat this. Anyway, when that's done, you click on "It's time to kick some ass!" or whatever message they have in the top right that you can click. That brings you to a build that you will have to use. Here's an example:
So, this build actually isn't god awful. Most are. But, I would have to run CV/smite for summoners. I have to MAX Q 1st (eg anytime q is up, I have to put a point in it). I have to build 2/11/17 masteries. Now, I have complete control over how I spec that 2/11/17, but I must use that setup. I actually just take 1 mastery page, call it ultimate bravery and reset it every time I play a new game. And last, you have to build all of the items in order. Some play on SR and others on proving grounds. I only play on SR. And each host might have a few alternate rules, but no major variations. Most allow you to buy pots only on your 1st shop and not again and you can never buy wards.
Anyway, I think its quite a bit of fun and something I'll do from time to time to mix things up.
So, let's say you decide you want to play a game of ultimate bravery. Just go to the web site and roll a build like I demonstrated. Then, setup your masteries. Last, choose to join a custom game and search for ultimate. If you noticed, there is a copy button on the 2nd page (see above). Click that and base in your build as proof to the folks on your team. And that's it. It's a fun thing to try out and hopefully you folks will join me from time to time.
I woke up to some craziness today...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7MYrzJKXNV0
enjoy/be royally confused forever
ehhh
Also, I'm a sucker for unconventional game modes... This Ultimate Bravery thing sounds fun. Invite me whenever you feel like it.
will do. Will likely be playing some UB tonight.
Just tried one... Got lucky to get a decent enough Jax build on my first roll and we steamrolled them.
OLOL Jax (Exhaust / Revive / max. E) (5/17/8) (Top lane) items : Boots of Swiftness - Alacrity, Banshee's Veil, Manamune, Morellonomicon, BotRK, Nashor's Tooth.
okey - playing UB now. Prob play another when the game is over.
Well, I wanted to provide some feedback on my ultimate bravery experiment. First of all, thanks for all the folks that I was able to hook up with and try the game mode. I appreciate you giving it a go - so thx to vlad, trouser, bryff, hunny, and sharpy.
Onto my thoughts. Well 1, its an interesting, completely unbalanced game mode. The unbalanced part is OK if you can actually trust that everyone actually rolls a build 1 time and plays with that. BUT - its also quite possible that folks roll until they get a build that is pretty solid. The thing with UB is that some builds are actually reasonably viable. If you end up in a game after 5 people that all randomed a strong arse build and your team has a mix of so-so/bad builds, well, you aren't going to have a good time unless then enemy team is incompetent.
In my experience, most people playing this game mode are not good players. Now, granted, I don't exactly have a huge sample size in like 15 + games or so, but generally speaking its mostly weak players. When I was just solo playing UB, I don't think I lost a single game and just stomped while having craptastic builds. I think I'm like 12/3 in the game mode. And while I'm clearly the best LoL player on earth, a good chunk of those wins is just from playing against rot opponents. In all those games, I probably had 2-3 semi viable builds.
Some additional experiences - so, I'm playing the other day and one of the fellas in the lobby wants to get a party chat going. I join and we end up with like 6 of us in chat. I'm fiora laned against volibear
Anyway, I kick the crap out of voli, but we generally have a really good time bantering back and forth in game. Guy seems pretty likable and entertaining, so I play another one with him. This time I invite sharpy. Well, this guy invites more of his pals. Suddenly, he and his pals are the most obnoxious, hyper active, always talking shits on earth. It's like a nonstop barrage of idiotic ramblings. I'm not exceedingly happy about this as I just got sharps to try the mode for the 1st time. Anyway, I bugger off after that game and hook up again with the fellow late last night when I had several of my pals playing along. Well, he invites yet another annoying 1 of his pals to the skype call... who then proceeds to talk nonstop about absolutely nothing when he's not even in the game with us. Added to that, Bryff brings in one of his pals that isn't all that experienced at LoL and just enjoys being semi useless in the game. So, I eventually get super annoyed. I drop from the skype call, remove the pals I added as friends, and I won't be playing UB with those new folks in the future.
Anywho - so its a mixed bag. It's a fun game mode to try out. I might play it again from time to time, but I absolutely hate when the level of competition comes from trying to keep folks on my team from doing dumb arse things... eg I'm not only fighting against the enemy, I'm fighting against my team. My lane partner in the last game, balming, went 1/15/4 which resulted in me have no chance at all in lane. Just annoying shit. On the bright side, it looks like trouser really got into it after I buggered off an played a bunch more.
In spite of all of that, I'd encourage anyone out that that wants to mix things up a bit to try a game and see what you think. The rules are not overly complex and it's a unique experience.
I tried a game or two after you left. Balming himself was fun enough to play with, but the rest of them are the most obnoxious and unlikable people I have ever met. I will be quite happy if I never play with them again. The amount of hate and acid in that call was unbelievable.
Yeah - that's the downside. I really liked balming as well - but the company he keeps is quite enough that I won't bother with him anymore. 2 total times in skype with him and both times were...
Anyone that actually played UB really digging it? I'm still just considering it something fun to do from time to time, but that's about it.
Re: Pacov's Jayce Comments
Yeah, my experience in playing Jayce is kinda exactly how you described it so far. I've been watching some high level Jayce play to get some tips cause I'm not quite ready to give up on him yet... he's so much fun to play and all. I think I have a lot to learn about how to take advantage of winning a lane and playing post lane phase with him. Not that my lane phase with him is that good, it's just not as bad as after if that makes sense?
Think there's a fine art to disengaging, poking, and when and how to jump in on a wounded enemy in cannon mode that I'm a long long way from mastering along with the mechanics themselves. Anyway, I'm definitely looking to add some tankier tops to the arsenal because he is definitely not a one size fits all champ when it comes to team comp.
Re: Karl's Comments
Eh... we just disagree on what the main issues of those games were, though I'll point out again that I didn't feel good about my contributions when playing Jayce at all. I'd like to point out that almost every top tier player builds Spirit of the Ancient Golem on Nasus, instead of the Ancient Lizard on him which is an offensive item with zero synergy with the big dog as far as I can tell. If your team isn't tanky enough then I think you should build the tanky item on the champ that doesn't need offensive items to be a threat right? Ideally you shouldn't be the only tank on the team... but if you are the only tank, you gotta build like you are IMO.
http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Nasus
The problem with only have 1 tanky person on the team isn't about the ability to take damage. Its about a lack of CC and an inability to put pressure on the enemy backline.
I wasn't having problem with damage in that game. Quite the opposite - they were generally ignoring me while they dove at our backline, which meant that I was often running around at nearly full health when the fight was essentially over. Building more heath isn't the solution to that problem.
In any case, non pro builds usually include either Lizard or Golem as an item. E.g:
http://www.lolpro.com/guides/nasus/508-nasus-build-guide-jungle-by-iwdominate
Pros play in a completely different meta, so I rarely pay that much attention to their builds.
The synergy is that Spirit Fire procs the true damage, which is a pretty nice damage boost (its periodic damage instead of DoT, so it procs it: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2888523 ).
The other point is that Elder Lizard is substantially more gold efficient than Ancient Golem:
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Spirit_of_the_Elder_Lizard
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Spirit_of_the_Ancient_Golem
So it should generally be taken over Ancient Golem if you want the additional damage and can get away with the health loss (which Nasus generally can with his ultimate).
I'm not saying that I played perfectly or had no blame in those losses. I'm just saying that one easy thing we can fix is team comps, and the easiest way of doing that is having teams with more champions with CC and defense.
Ahhh! That's good to know about the Spirit Fire thing... makes a lot more sense now, my apologies!
Yeah, thats a weird one that I didn't know about until recently. It seems a bit odd that there is a difference between periodic damage and damage over time.
DoT's are debuffs that are applied to heroes.
periodic damage are "debuffs" applied to the ground. (Anivia / Nasus / Malz)
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