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
well... risk/reward. I'm pretty comfortable running certain types of invades... not always the direct go for kill/steal, but more the steal a buff to put the jungler behind. That's often easy to pull off imo... the problem is with your mid giving away what you did. I don't take the time to tell a dude to go wide when he enters lane, etc. For me anyway, more often than not, invades work... but I'm talking about me making the initial call. I always let the jungler make the call (eg someone else calls invade, I immediately say in chat - something along the lines of - what does our jungler think?).
I was talking more about counter jungling. I guess my use of the word invade might of thrown you off. So anyway I guess my comment about jungling and counter jungling in ranked play should of sounded more like this. I find it to risky to counter invade in a ranked game because relying on your teammates to help if you get caught is risky.
Tracking for some of my recent adventures in ranked at gold I.
And then the game after that, we duo in a normal. I get to play adc so I'm happy. Hunny, so impressed by the nidalee that ruined his fun bot lane, decided to go nidalee as my support to ruin my fun. So, 2 games ruined by awful supports for the night. I don't mind folks trying out this or that, but hunny trying out something apparently means its ok to do incredibly retarded things (he flash engaged a full hit power ad and support, having no dmg of his own and me being quite far away at one point. Absolutely hate it when people waste my time... get more annoyed when they do it after failing to perform in ranked (eg wasting my time twice in a row). So, pacov gets a little grouchy, but moves along. I then played some with hunny and my pal schyster. That game went how I thought it would. Then once more with just my pal schyster. I have him run support and I go lucian adc. We destroy. One guy on my team loses his mind because I continue to split push and take objectives for the team. Pretty sure we were grouped with MUCH lower elo folks... was nice for me after a few frustrating games to have a cake walk anyway.
Now first of all, thank you for saying nice things about my supporting skills but I'm not a good example of why support is not a good role to play at low elos. A variety of other factors lead to my trials and tribulations playing ranked.
What happened was that I got to Silver I in placements playing support while duoing with Hedgie. Things started going wrong when I played on my own and lost two games in a row (which was before they changed the League System, so that was enough to demote me to Silver II) because other people wanted to play support. It was at this time that I found out that being your friends Support Bitch for 1000 games in a row causes your solo laning skills to suffer.
Instead of playing some Normal games by myself to get the other roles dialed in enough to be serviceable when I played them, I stopped playing support unless I had to and tried to become good at every other role while playing Ranked. I wouldn't even try and dial in one role/champ at a time, I'd sometimes just randomly jump role to role, and would hardly play the same one multiple times in a row which is IMO how you get better. This was not a good idea and I ended up in Silver IV eventually from my stubbornly playing roles I was bad at, as well as violating every one of Cow's Commandments.
- Played A LOT of Top Jayce. This will go under Karl's Kommandments, because you were right all along; He's not a good fit for most comps and I was one of those guys who won lane and lost game over and over and over with him.
- Had 0 leadership skills. My team wanted to throw a won game by doing Baron, I was fine with that.
- Played way too much on tilt. Started working a bunch of overtime and dating a girl who lives 2 hours away and shares internet with 17 neighbors, so when I had alone time at my own place I'd go on Ranked binges. Let's just say I'm not an asset to my team when I've been playing for 10 hours in a row...
- If you check my Lolking, you'll see I've got a 0% win with Mordekaiser in Ranked. I don't know how to play him, and I don't know why I would. In fact, I actually know how to play Swain who counters the same people and fulfills a similar role on a team. Yes Cow, I'm that asshole who used to try to learn to play new champs in Ranked.
So how did I get from Silver IV to Gold? During all this stupidity, I found out that I'm actually a decent Jungler and ADC and these became my fallback roles. I also had gotten my solo lane skill to a level where it wasn't an auto loss if I had to play Top or Mid.
Thing is, playing support might not get you out of Silver as quickly as playing Mid but you have more impact on games than most people realize IF you play the role well. One team has a guy who volunteered for Support and has offensive support runes and defensive runes and GP10 runes and can play multiple support champs depending on the lane and team comp... and the other team has some guy playing the only support he plays when he HAS to play the role, which team has the advantage? Or worse, one team has a support player using a champ that you play when you don't actually want to be a support like Support Lux or Killsteal Support Nidalee?
IMO, suport is the Jayce of the roles; A lot of people think they're better than they really are. When you're support, it's so easy to blame mistakes on your ADC or think that "You're just a support" so your team losing fights has nothing to do with you building shitty items or being out of position and you don't have a lot of "Hmmm... why is my enemy laner 40 CS ahead of me?" reality checks to force you to improve your play.
If you're actually good at the role, you've usually giving your team a significant advantage by taking an unpopular role and playing it well.
So... if we were putting a guide together re: the best ways to gain elo...
1. Play really well in multiple roles consistently
/thread
If we were tackling the question from a more practical angle, then...
Actually - re: other points, I'm not sure where we have a consensus. Hedgie seems to believe that you can carry at bronze/silver maining support I think. I disagree here and think that those levels in particular require you to play carries to consistently move up.
I tend to think duo queuing at lower levels is a good way to boost on up provided you can play complimentary roles.
smeh.. out of time...
why can't you carry as a support in Bronze?
Assuming that you are, indeed, a Bronze player (think like moving from Bronze IV to II):
1- no one on the team can CS (eg, the support has a much larger % of the teams gold regardless of their scaling)
2- you can play your best role 80% of the time. this allows you to "abuse flavor of the month" (esp since Bronze bans lag way behind). It also allows you to play your best champion nearly every game. This is a lot more than "duo mid".
Not to mention the benefits of even a Bronze IV support Taric against a Bronze IV support Garen.
It is completely self-consistent with the rest of the arguments here.
Now if i were to log onto Schyster's account and wanted to rise in Elo as fast as possible - i wouldn't try to do it as support. There is a huge difference between those two things.
well... how so? Ignoring skill cap - let's say the guy decides he's going to main support now and puts a bunch of time into that... keep in mind we are also taking about someone that is buried DEEP in bronze V. What should he do?
You make a good point about the dumb match ups that occur at the bronze level and how a support is more ideal... that's probably more accurate than not (though your crap adc guy might just get trashed by w/e nonsense is thrown at him at that level even with a dedicated support).
BUT - could thunder or I carry out of bronze V playing only support? We'd certainly be a huge asset to the team, but I'd still think it would be better if I went 17/1/10 as a carry.
It's still the same as being buried DEEP in gold V. Support is an open role the majority of the time. If you decide to play 50 Normals to brush up on support, you'll get support 40 times. If you decide to play mid, you'll get mid 25 times at best.
Playing support is mathematically the best way to ensure:
1- you get your best role
2- you get to practice the role the most
3- that you playing that role will have the largest increase in relative skill. (eg, the player who plays mid 50% of the time might somewhat better then another who only plays 30% of the time. But a support player who plays 80% of the time is going to be much better than the random who only plays it 15% of the time).
If you're buried deep in Bronze V garbage advice like "CS better", "don't get caught", "ward better" are all full of hot air. Supports don't have to improve #1 and can help the entire team do #2 and #3.
Now if i were to log onto Schyster's account and wanted to rise in Elo as fast as possible - i wouldn't try to do it as support. There is a huge difference between those two things. Using a premise of "assume that i am 2-3 full Tiers better than my opponent" does not support a conclusion. If you are significantly ahead of your opponents, playing midlane Assassins (and TF) is a are much faster way to climb. Plus, keep in mind that we are a lot different than other groups of players. As i've said before, Cow is in a favorable position because (since he got to play mid 80% of his games with us) he is able to very strongly accelerate #2 to the point where #3 became a significant factor. "Us" being able to talk about practicing a particular "gold favored" role is a lot different than random advice you would tell a stranger. You're also in a similar position. Think about how quickly you picked up the jungle or picked up Lucian compared to someone else.
Using a premise of "assume that i am 2-3 full Tiers better than my opponent" does not support a conclusion. If you are significantly ahead of your opponents, playing midlane Assassins (and TF) is a are much faster way to climb.
Plus, keep in mind that we are a lot different than other groups of players.
As i've said before, Cow is in a favorable position because (since he got to play mid 80% of his games with us) he is able to very strongly accelerate #2 to the point where #3 became a significant factor. "Us" being able to talk about practicing a particular "gold favored" role is a lot different than random advice you would tell a stranger.
You're also in a similar position. Think about how quickly you picked up the jungle or picked up Lucian compared to someone else.
I have a 61% win rate with Nami, I'm still in Silver 4.
To be fair I don't play that often, up to a little over 160 matches this season, but mainly it's because promo matches get lost left and right. Terrible luck, have I.
Oh... I have also played like 360 ranked games this season so it takes a while to do anything...
and i'm Plat III with 155 games. Does that mean i win?
Yes it does.
did you main support in solo queue for the most part then, hedgie?
Anywho, here's an in game commentary from me for one of karl's ranked silver 1 matches tonight. Karl performs exceedingly well, but his team blows it. Karl had some really sick plays. Exactly 1 - wtf karl moment (and like 10 + clutch plays).
http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2840881
It's already on youtube, but might still be processing atm
I left my banners running for a bit but turn them off after awhile - my bad. They are gone at 8-9 min in. My audio is a little low for first 5 min or so. Decent commentary I think and worth it to see some of karls plays.
quick jungle tip that I should probably use and would be useful - saw it on reddit the other day. If you pick the danger or some sort of ping when you take a jungle buff, you can use the text chat to keep track of buffs if you struggle with being on top of the timing. I'm usually great on the 1st 2-3 buffs, but I lose the timer after that sadly. Something for me to work on anyway.
Other thought - early on in the replay, karl ends up saving his mid who is overextending during what is pretty much prime time for a gank. Karl picked up on this and beelined to mid. He might have just figured out the threat slightly before it happened, but a retreat ping might have been helpful and avoiding the situation.
That Rammus game that I lost was mostly lost because we couldn't get on the same page on anything. For example, when that Udyr backdoored all the way to top inhib, Riven had said in chat that she was going to b to cover it (I think you can even see her start to blue pill). But then she aborted that and stayed for some mid push...that we aborted before we actually got their inhib. I would have covered it if Riven hadn't said she would have since I could have stalled Udyr long enough probably.
Then we got stuck in all these weird situations where we might have had almost enough to win and trist wanted to keep pushing, but Lux wanted to back and defend, so we did neither thing well. I was trying to mediate and make calls, but nobody was listening to anybody else, so it was just a mess.
I have no idea how Trist kept dying on those plays. There is really no excuse to dying to Udyr repeatedly if you are Trist. Seriously - you have a knockback and a hop away built in. If he runs up to you and beats you down over and over, you messed something up big time.
I do... pretty consistently awful play. I didn't see a lot of rhyme or reason to what she was doing throughout the game... he only observable, consistent pattern was bad plays. Odds are with a slightly higher skill cap on your bottom lane, that would have been an easily won game. Ah well - at least you won a ranked right after that to make up for it.
Yesterday I played 1 ranked game and got 1 win. Of note, that's 2 games at gold 1 I've run as support with pretty legit results. Dare I carry to plat as a support. Actually seems pretty doable atm... course I'll change my mind soon...
KDA stats inbound.
So, just to start - I don't think kda tells a huge story, but I find it interesting. I pulled some stats from some of us.. what actually got me thinking about this was wondering if my kda was abysmal (just looked up my silver 1 alt account k/d/a - 6.7/3.9/8.8 - really small sample size of like 30 games or so).
Here are some pro stats
The following are stats grouped as listed.
semi dramatic vlog inbound. If you follow this thread, you are interested. Live in a few min
vlog link - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/2846988
I'm a bit behind on this but, I have 72.2% janna, 57.7% Sona, 62.1% Taric (which I played early S3, not anymore), the only other champ that comes close is Sejuani (4-2, only 6 games so not really that accurate probably) which is wierd because I don't jungle worth anything. Irelia and Kassadin are both 50%<x<55%. Support is my go to role for solo, but I feel that with I win of over 50% top and mid I can go there and not be a deficit.
The only thing I generally find fault with you re: your game play is map of awareness and occasionally your decision making when you are aware of what's going on. Generally speaking, your support works great. If we are talking about for our in house stuff, the problem is typically the limited champs you play per role (outside of support). Thunder and I usually have a quick discussion before our ranked games where we agree not to ban out your champs, etc - we wouldn't have that conversation at all if your pool was deeper.
Re: ranked, well, it certainly seems like you have legit support rates. I think your top works fine. I think your mid you don't roam anywhere near enough for the type of champ you like to play (kass). Overall, I dig that you stick with a role and keep developing your skill level with it (even if its single champion based). I do things the same way, but change what I like to work on much more frequently and go for a wider depth of champs (which certainly isn't a requirement, but would make you more viable in our in house games). I think its great to focus in on something and play/practice the hell out of it. I'm sure you are light years better with irelia now than when you just started out with her.
So - those that provided it, thanks for the feedback re: my last vlog. I appreciate it.
That said - I'm going to go on a short term mission related to helping folks rank up - I'll help you if I'm able. This is primarily directed towards our pals that are in silver, but as I have the same goal for those in gold of hitting plat, it probably applies to you as well.
I'll cover the quick caveats - ofc duoing with me doesn't guarantee a win, but I'll try my best. I also have a very shitty tendency to start out and play really well early in the night and gradually become shitty as I get tired. For best odds, you'll want to hit me up early in the evening if you want my assistance. Next - I'll only do 1-2 games at a time.
Other stuff - if you are in silver or low gold, I'll likely play on my alt account that is silver I atm. I have a decent champ pool, but nothing amazing. I don't care a crap about the elo on that account (eg if we lose, I'm not pissed at ya), but I suppose I wouldn't be upset if I hit gold on the account and got elise as a freebie.
Anywho - I'll play any role. If you are lower than silver 1, I'll likely be 1st pick and you likely last. I'm cool with running support to help out or try to run a carry (adc pref). Let me know if you'd like some help and I'll make time to get a game or 2 in with you here and there and do my absolute best to help you rank up before the season ends.
All of that said - keep in mind the season has 1-2 months left in it. If you want to rank up, you need to start putting in time now. Shoot me a pm in game or on skype if you'd like me to duo with you and just let me know what role you'd like me to play when its game time.
Karl - I just looked at some stats and I'm wondering if its bugged or if perhaps you have some reasoning - you don't appear to buy wards (ever?) when you jungle - is that right? Why? I usually pick 1 up on most backs to help out the team or assist with counter jungling etc.
some visuals from the siv remake - give the vid about 15 seconds... looks like crap initially
So, I wanted to see if there was a faster way to check out stats at a glance for the folks we play with regularly. I put together the following code. This isn't complete yet, but in the end it will bring up the lol king profile for the folks I play with regularly - all pretty much at the same time.
If you want to try this out, open notepad and paste the following info:
start /d IEXPLORE.EXE http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/51229PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 2000 >NULstart /d IEXPLORE.EXE http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/20122987start /d IEXPLORE.EXE http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/25097533start /d IEXPLORE.EXE http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/32184011
Save the file as test.bat or whatever you want - just make sure its .bat.
Run the batch. It should open up all the users stats in tabbed windows.
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