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
@Pacov
Blue donations are a tough call. Mid Lee Sin/Rumble/Kat... huge waste in my opinion and part of the strength of sending these champs mid is that your jungler can have all the blues. But Zed getting blue back in his OP heyday was obscenely good and taking it for yourself as Nautilus wouldn't be what's good for the team. Gangplank mid? That I don't know about... infinite harass/health sustain on a lane bully seems like a good thing to me but I don't know for sure.
Making calls on blue donations might be an issue with your team when it's based on your own view of balance, which isn't 100% accurate... like all of our views. I don't think that you'd take it well if you were playing mid and your jungler wouldn't give you blue because he felt you weren't playing a T1 champ?
Well, that's the thing - I don't think there's a perfect way of dealing with the 2nd blue or even the when to hand off red scenario. For instance, let's say karl wants to run udyr. Now udyr is a mana whore and would benefit ALOT from having the 2nd blue. If I'm running anivia, udyr should give it over. If I'm being a sport, though, then I'd take a champ that isn't as dependent on the blue so he could take the 2nd one. Naut certainly benefits from blue, but can manage his mana well enough that it isn't necessary. With my naut example, though, I'm talking about a scenario where I can immediately go to lane with my ult if I take the 2nd blue. W/o it, then I need to head some where else to get XP and then gank... which could put me out of position or be a missed opportunity. Honestly, and likely sadly, most of my 2nd blue logic on naut comes from that level 6 mentality.
Nautilus ganks are terrifying, he's almost as bad as Hec for being able to thrash even a warded lane. Added to that, the asshole can tower dive at level 5 and go for the double even after they burn flash to get away...
More ganks shouldn't be a bad thing unless it's the difference between GP getting trashed by someone that will be a problem for the soon to be fed bot lane, or doing the trashing.
#gp-mid:
Sure, Cow wasn't playing his strongest champs. But you also "stole" Karl's role. Karl can only play Cho in a solo lane (from what i've seen), and even though i do think he should branch out and generally has good jungle sense, occasionally he has unrealistic expectations from laners - so the expierence is good for him in some ways. But, from the get-go the roles were distributed in such a way you weren't playing for "best win chances".
#blue-donations:
Junglers can pretty much be seperated into one of 3 types:
1- AD junglers
these guys usually don't really need blue, but do get amplified somewhat. Nocturne loves the 20% CDR on his ult, Udyr is somewhat mana-gated midgame (though blue doesn't really help his ganks at all except the fact he has less mana problems while jungling).
i'm pretty sure Vi can solo dragon if she gets 2nd blue.
While taking blue is a boost, they function adequately without it.
2- Mana-Gated AP-based Junglers
Skarner, Hec, Fiddlesticks, Amumu, Naut, Diana
These guys get significantly amplified by getting 2nd blue. Their ults CD's are usually pretty long at rank 1 (but not rank 2/3). They have super fast clears if they are allowed to spam abilities, but mediocre otherwise, and so their clear speeds are way faster. Most critically, like you said, they hit level 6 if they take first blue and that lets them make a big power play rather than having to go to Red (and then being only at half-2/3rds mana).
These junglers are typically where these "is blue mids or junglers" arguments typically revolve around.
3- HP Tanks
Sej, Zac, Voli, Cho
These guys really have no mana problems.
If you are a #2 type jungler, you typically have a few options:
1- Use 2/7/21 masteries instead of x/21/x. Those masteries are really good on those people.
(speaking of which: don't use Legendary armor on anyone. It is 2/3.5/5% increase of the armor/mr you get on ITEMS+runes+masteries. It doesn't include your base. With your endgame build those 2 points were giving you 1.8 Armor and 2.7 MR - that's awful at level 18 for 2 mastery points when you could have gotten 1.5 Armor+MR at level 1 instead. Maybe just 1 point is okay because it gives a full 2% of both instead of a diminished 1.5% compared to the already-diminished flat 1.5 Armor/MR of just one).
2- Build Mana/CDR:
You didn't build SotAG (10% CDR, HP with someone who has an HP ratio...). You did build Shrelias way later in the game for some reason.
Frozen Heart is also a really good item on these junglers that also gives a bajillion mana + CDR. You didn't build a Glacial Shroud. Now, Cho ended up building FH and so building a second one of those would have been bad. You should blame Karl for doing that. (AP Cho with blue will do more damage than jungle Naut with blue - having him take the blues while you built FH would have been more optimal).
3- Take 2nd blue, make your power play, but give up everything afterwards. The funny thing is, there are really only two lanes you should make a power play if you take 2nd blue - botlane or midlane. If you kill the enemy mid lane, then the deficit has been made up (esp if your midlaner takes the kill + blue). If you get a good gank botlane, you can get dragon which also makes up the deficit If you take blue then gank top... well you traded an advantage toplane for a disadvantage midlane.
Note that giving mid blue is akin to constantly ganking them. The amount of pressure blue exerts is massive. A mid with blue can push to tower, then either roam or take Wraiths, depending on the situation. Additionally, giving blue mid gives a huge chunk of additional EXP just from blue. Remember if 2 people share EXP, they both get 70% of it. So if you give up blue, you lose 30% of your exp - and typically end up just a little short of level 6 which is a bummer.
But you're giving your mid an entire wave of EXP that they wouldn't have gotten. i have gotten 2 full levels against mids who weren't receiving blues by getting 2nd/3rd blue and taking wraiths. Without even ganking or anything you've put mid into a controlling and dominating position.
This is one of the reasons why it is a really good idea to give Energy-Users like Kennen, Zed, and Akali blue even though they don't have mana. They do benefit enormously from the levels (to prevent falling behind), and they still really really really really like the CDR and energy regen. So you should probably give them third blue.
A midlaner that is a level behind is much weaker than a jungle that is a level behind. Because while the midlaner has to deal with someone actively trying to kill them, the jungler gets to mostly sit in the jungle and PvE.
Of course, if your mid is losing really badly, or is against someone like Kennen (or Fiora) who can't easily push and probably isn't getting blue either, you should probably take the blue.
The rational that Naut has awesome ganks with blue... well, even though your ganks are great and all... mid lanes are better. Mid lane has 1-3 levels on you, has just as much CC typically, and does about twice the damage. Even better than a midlane gank is a double gank with both jungle and mid. This can't happen if your mid is pinned to tower.
Falling behind in EXP? Most mids are fine with letting you take their mid farm while they do a gank on your behalf. Or letting you take their midlane while they take blue.
If you mid is pinned to tower, and you get invaded/do invading/ they are doing dragon... they can't really react. They really can't just walk thru the minions - they'll get engaged on. They can take the long way around, but that adds 5 seconds of travel and the enemy mid is already 3-5 seconds ahead just by being in a better location in the lane. Even if they are able to react, your mid laner just lost about 100 gold + 1/3rd a level. It's basically like giving the enemy midlaner an assist each time your mid have to leave the lane while it is pushed to tower.
#wards:
Pretty sure Ms Swan bought way too many pink wards that game. 15 pink wards???
When I jungle, I always want all of the jungle buffs. They are there for me
well you want all the buffs all the time You take 17 minute reds, and you get pretty angry if you don't get 2nd blue when you're AP Yi.
karl - do you really camp folks much at all when you jungle? With naut, I'm often waiting out of sight for a good 20 seconds (by often, I really mean 2-3 times per game).
If I'm running anivia, udyr should give it over. If I'm being a sport, though, then I'd take a champ that isn't as dependent on the blue so he could take the 2nd one.
heh.
karls usually workable out of mid as well, just not alot of depth in his character pool.
I was actually thinking about this today. Naut's pretty tanky already so going deep into the support tree would likely help alot. Think I'm going to try this.
Buffs aren't really the junglers by default after the first pass - they are team resources. By default, the 2nd blue goes to mid, and the 3rd red goes to ADC.
There are exceptions to this (like mana less mids, or if somebody is feeding too hard), but thats the rule of thumb. And even in those cases, giving blue to the top lane (when on that side of the map) is often preferable.
The basic idea with 2nd blue is that a domination by either mid is the single most important factor in the mid game. If either mid gets substantially ahead, everybody on the other team should feel great pain. Especially the jungler - trust me, you don't want to be jungling when the other mid is fed as hell and wandering all over the map.
The best way of getting your mid way behind is to not give them blue, while their opponent does get blue. Bad things happen then, and that extra level 6 gank you might get doesn't come close to making up for it.
In that game, blue should have gone to mid. If you didn't want to give it to GP, it should have gone to me so that I could better prevent Kha from roaming, and be able to TP without giving up towers.
Udyr never gets second blue unless mid is manaless. He doesn't benefit from the CDR really, and he doesn't need the extra xp much, so he misses out on much of the benefit. He is actually one of the worst mana based junglers to take second blue (he should really be trying to steal opponents second blue anyway...), especially since reasonable early mana regen items like Philo and SS work well on him.
How much time I am willing to spend camping depends on a lot of things. Major factors include my knowledge of where enemy wards might be and how good I think that my teammate is at supporting ganks.
I can play a reasonable variety of (older) mids since I used to play mostly mid a long time ago. I might have some problems against more recent, aggressive opponents like Zed or KhaZix since I'm not used to playing against them 1v1.
My top choices are limited, but I can play a few things other than Cho (Irelia, Jax, Shen, Nasus, plus a few odd ball old school ones). I will usually pick Cho if I don't have a good feel for the potential matchups though. In that game I took Cho because I didn't know my matchup for sure.
Well, usually i'd say 4th would go to ADC. At the 18-20 mark laning is still happening at times and even if a group is happening a lot of it is sieging, and ADCs aren't usually "going" quite enough. Putting red on a melee diver like toplane works better imo.
zac op...super long initiates
Was in a ranked game when a massive wave of crashes crashed like 4 or 5 or more people...didn't notice until too late and got in game at 3 mins. Their support and our adc same, some others also. Loss prevented.
Earlier game our ez dc for the entire game and maybe that cause by ^?
http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/battlefield-earth
OK - so I'm getting this. It's the guys that do mst3k doing that to battlefield earth. I'm going to buy it and then I'm going to stream it on my channel. I'll let you know when I'm thinking of doing it. BFE is one of the worst movies ever. Pete and I were talking about it some on stream tonight (if you care, pull up tonights vid and scroll to the last 10 minutes or so). Anyway, I saw they did a rifftracks and the full movie is actually on youtube, so I'm thinking I'll stream the whole thing... might put skype up as well so we can interact... but really - it will be quite excellent - so make some popcorn and settle in for an epic. I'll let you know when I sort this (eg have to get the riffttrax and test out), then its just a matter of when I want to stream it.
also...
http://www.rifftrax.com/vod/cool-as-ice#sample
3 of my last 5 ranked games have had non skill related losses. Streaming a movie? Likely to get copyright claimed-taken down. I know a stream that did for streaming some movies.
Just played a really fun game though. It was epic. We were behind/inhib down and getting pushed other lanes all day, when we go into a baron fight. The malphite manages to kill their adc somehow, and we pull out with the baron. There ended up being 2 smite steals by rammus, and we ended up with the win.
I'm not too worried about any CR concerns it will likely be a 1 time thing of a vid currently hosted on youtube... and as my viewer base is kind of just you folks, I'm not too concerned about being on the radar. At any rate, if I do such a thing, I'll remove the recording, so its likely just going to be a 1 time thing.
Glad you got a win in a rough game after some annoying losses. Always makes one feel a smidge better.
Hey thanks for the skin
Hehe yeah crazy stupid malphite but I owned with Kassadin - was fun
Never enough wards! If i'm sitting at 250 gold when i'm back i'm not gonna save... it's going to the ward bank
If you ever want to see absolute chaos reign, you need Brad wong's buddy frayly to jungle and to put jona and peter at bottom lane. Jona and Peter were about ready to murder each other; Jona then decides that he will now midlane after his war with pete. Things escalated pretty quickly... which I obviously should have seen coming. Anyway, another 2 added to the list of people that won't be playing together in the future. So... sorry for that folks that endured.
That said, I did appear to accidentally fall asleep while streaming the classic cinema "Cool as Ice" - http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cool_as_ice/.
You should take a look at that review btw. Anyway, you'll have to ff through the archived vid if you want to take a look (its the last vid I have up) - probably starts around 4-5 hours in. I'll very, very, very likely be deleting the stream, so I suggest you check it out today or tomorrow if interested.
@bryff - np and you are welcome.
Sorry I missed ya, swan. Hopefully soon we shall play.
yeah... i'm workin' til 11pm your time... saturday is my next day off... i'm sure i'll be seeing you then!
My internet at work has been super slow... I can't even let them get started downloading and watch them later at my leisure.
I did try watching a little of the stream with Pete while the movie was playing. That dude's a natural! The MST3K boys should hire him...
yah - pete can be pretty damn entertaining if you catch him not in a foul mood. Glad you got to enjoy a bit of it.
I'm always sad because I want to play with pacov 24/7
Had quite a few mismatches in our favor yesterday. Played some with bryff's pal PJ - he was pretty smeh as a jungler but did a great job as adc. The night before i did nothing but aram. Happy to say I'm starting to get sick of ARAM again. I actually have a group of folks that I know prefer ARAM and a SR grouping now. I usually just do whatever based on who is on in those groups at the time.
Also, I'm not really sure why there are problems with custom item sets. I'm thinking it could be related to being able to manual edit the custom item files. No idea though. When I reinstalled my OS, etc, last week, I lost all of the custom items I created. I was all set to log in yesterday and set them up again... only to see they have been killed off.
Other random stuff - I had a buddy from Demigod name ruispg or something like that. Anyway, he plays on EU and speaks fairly broken english, but you can eventually understand him if you wait about a bit. Nice guy generally. Onto pacov's pet peeve. Back when I played DG, I was typically able to get folks to look at things that needed fixed at SD/GPG, get abusers removed, etc. This often led to folks coming to me directly if they encountered folks cheating, abusing, major bugs were found, etc. Anyway, it was a bit of a pain in the ass from time to time as lots of folks would contact me about this or that. Rui was one of those fellows from time to time. Anyway, I don't really play LoL with him and he occasionally hits me up on skype via text msg. The last instance of this, he was asking if I knew someone at Riot that could help him out related to a problem on EUNE or EUW. I should have just told him nope and moved along (though I could probably be a pain in the ass and pester janook at any rate as I at least know the guy from DG). Anyway, I get pissy because he'd been randomly sending me txt msgs when I'm not on for little to no reason and then making that request to get someone at riot to help me. I drop the guy from skype. He msgs me later asking why I dropped him. So I block him. I am a moody SOB from time to time... side note... no real reason to have told that story as it isn't all that bloody interesting... but I wrote it... so there's that. sry!
Anyway, I'll be on later tonight.
close to last chance to check out that vid I mentioned a few posts back. I'll prob remove at the end of the night.
How does one teamfight against a sejuani, orianna, and wukong?!
With AP Kog.
Slightly more seriously. Stay the fuck out of the jungle against a comp like that. If you don't have a decent long range poke, you need to go tanky dps on at least two people, and stay spread. Ward well, keep from bunching up, and wait for them to jump one of your meatwalls. As soon as Sej burns that godawful ult, peel for your carries and assassinate theirs.
If your CC sucks and you have no decent long range poke, you don't. They'll win any all in you initiate, and you can't force them to initiate without a poke. The only thing you can hope for is that they're stupid and let you pick them off.
Edit: Or you could actually just stay in a loose formation to where their AoEs would only hit 1 or 2 people on your team at most. Grouping close against a team like that is asking to lose.
Edit2: Also, you have to keep the jungle warded against that team no matter what.
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