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
We can discuss tomorrow mr karl.
Anyway, 2/1 solo ranked. My ranked 5's team finished our placement 5/0 - we hit silver III. So there's a quick benchmark for you folks. Perfect series as a ranked 5 team = silver III. I really enjoy making the calls for the whole team when they have to listen. I know not all my calls are good, but this means we are unified and odds of success go up even on bad calls imo. Anyway, off to bed. Planning on playing my last 2 ranked placement matches tomorrow and then being mocked when I place in bronze.
If things go according to plan, I'll play those ranked games starting between 7-8PM. So, tune in if you want to see the finale.
edit - also - bryff - thx for the write up re: the irelia post. I'll do a call back to it soon and post the contents. I'm actually quite interested but frankly, I need to play a few games as irelia to catch myself up to think things through.
anyone know off the top of their head my placement series stats? I'll have to look it up if anyone doesn't know. I've played 8 games. 2/1 tonight. Previous 5 games = smeh if I remember right.
You are 4-4. I believe that you are right around Silver I right now from what I can determine.
4/4 - ugh. Oh well. Guessing we'll see where I end up tonight.
Quick recap from solo ranked yesterday
Game 1 - thresh support (last pick = no option re: role) - Loss
Game 2 - Jungle wu (2nd pick - got the role I wanted) - win
Game 3 - leona support (last pick = no option re: role) - win by seat of pants
Game 1 - team just did not execute. Not a heck of a lot I could have done to help the team as support. Played just fine - could have hit a few more hooks, but the other team was obv much better than mine.
Game 2 - so/so start for me, decent mid/late game play for me. My mid was a bit of a bitch. Complained about me not ganking and apparently had zero awareness of what was happening around near her. Determined she was going to be an annoying fug after a few comments, so I muted her and then took pretty much every single blue. Generally not a good idea to complain about your jungler if you want something from them. What mostly pissed me off was that I was counter jungled by lee and forced to flash to safety... pretty much immediately after that my mid starts bitching about me not ganking... having no idea that I was just countered and had to blow flash to get out. That tells me zero map awareness and that my mid is also going to complain about nonsense. Overall it was a pretty easy win. My overall performance wasn't anything to write home about, but we got the job won.
Game 3 was the most interesting to me... I continue this in a bit...
So, karl mentioned my leona setup in one of my ranked matches (game 3) and I wanted to discuss this a little more. Here's a summary of the game to start out with. My adc is rot in lane imo. My jungler is outright trying to throw. We make a huge comeback and eventually win. My adc has an EXCELLENT late game.
So, in the lobby I see I'm up against a bot lane annie. I get leona. Leona with a halfway decent adc craps all over annie early/midish. Once we hit level 2, barring a damaging gank, we should have lane control and be zoning them out. I run 2 types of runes/mastery setups on leona. One is for absolute tank engage. The other is more suitable if you are going to be playing passive. Knowing its an annie lane, I run my tank/engage setup so I get no benefit from gp/10 or masteries. This is fine, provided my adc makes use of my engages and sunlight procs. In this game, my adc maybe proc'd 4-5 sunlight procs during the laning phase - that might be exaggerated, but there were more than few instances where she did not land a single hit. I'll add that I don't really feel like I was overextending, but probably once or twice. Anyway, this is a lane where the enemy has no sustain, I have a sivir that has a spellshield into annie... and he refuses to get into AA range when I land my combos. You literally need to be close enough to me, have me hit my combo, and use your shield while we drop massive dmg on them. And the damage output is even more sick when you successfully land all 3 sunlight procs.
That said, instead of pressing the advantage we have over the enemy bot lane, my adc decides to play passively... which is pretty rough for my tank/engage setup. Also, not backing an engage, of course, results in lower hp as they wail on you. Last, it took us a smidge to get on page with hitting the same target. Bottom line, we did not have good chemistry in lane and I felt like my adc misplayed the laning phase.
re: the skills I level as leona - I vary that based on game as well. Why do I occasionally put more points into q/e over w? cdr + dmg. I'm already pretty freaking tanky with runes/masteries on that setup. I suppose its arguable what would be better take, but honestly I think it was pretty negligible in this particular game. Anyway, all that said, the adc performed like a champ with positioning late game for team fights - without that, we would have lost the game. The enemy team obviously helped us a bunch by keeping us in the game as long as they did. Felt like quite an accomplishment when we did win.
Final thoughts - 2 games where I had to play support. 1 game where I could play w/e I wanted. Easiest win of the night was when I was running as jungler. real bummer to be dead last pick in 2 of my 3 games though. I like supporting, but I still believe it makes it way too difficult to carry in ranked
targeting between 7-8pm for my last 2 ranked games tonight. After that, I'm up for games with you fellas if interested.
Not really. You keep insisting that "Leona counters Annie", but then I see people pick Annie into Leona all the time in LCS and Diamond streams. I just don't see it if you have Annie v Leona where both are close to the same skill level.
At level 2, Annie has equivalent CC to Leona and quite a bit more damage. Maybe Sivir can SS off the Annie stun, but maybe they choose to target you instead when you go in without your W (and since your Sivir took a defensive spell, they have a big damage advantage if they don't target her). So I think that they actually might be up on you there.
You might be able to do something since you don't have to charge stuns and Annie does, but thats a pretty narrow advantage to use against a damage disadvantage if you want to claim that you are going to be completely dominating at level 2.
You aren't running a tank/engage setup since you didn't start with Doran's Shield.
You shouldn't expect your ADCs to play super aggressive if you start with the item that screams "DONT PLAY AGGRESSIVE". If you want to play early aggressive from randoms, start Doran's Shield - I think that any ADC with a clue would play passive if their support doesn't take Doran's and the other support does (I don't recall if Annie started Doran's or not).
I mean, come on. You wanted to go super aggression when you didn't have your W yet and you didn't have Doran's Shield. You aren't tanky at that point if you don't have either (it doesn't matter what your runes/masteries are).
W gives you more damage per point than Q. You cost yourself quite a bit of damage if you put points in Q in the vast majority of cases.
With points in W, you get more damage per point (and its AoE!) , armor, MR, and it doesn't cost you more mana per point. With points in Q you get 1 second reduced cooldown. It's not a contest.
there is higher dmg potential at level 2/3 over annie, but it requires actually making use of leona's passive... which can be proc'd by any dmg... including a long range q from sivir...
re: leveling her w - yeah - my math was off there. lowered cooldowns on q/e are nice, but I should be putting more points into w earlier (at least at lv4).
dorans is not required for tank/engage imo. I've actually been back and forth a bit on starting item for her. I almost always end the game with medallion... I believe its more cost effective to just get that early as its primary support benefit is during laning. And that I'm already running without any gp/10... ZERO passive income if my adc is rot isn't desirable.
re: timing tonight - I am way off schedule. Earliest I might be on is like 8:30-9 at this point. Might not end up doing ranked based on timing... we'll see
At level 2 with no AP, Annie QW does 165 damage. Leona QE does 140 even if you count both sunlight procs. If you want to count AP - Annie has roughly double the AP scaling (and Leona isn't likely to have any anyway).
Oh, and did I mention that the cooldown on Annie's skills are like half that of Leona's?
Conclusion: its crazy not to wait til level 3 if given a choice. Especially if you don't take early aggression items like Dorans.
Think we are just going to disagree here - you aren't factoring in all the variables. 1 - you will have more hp than annie without dorans shield. You have it from health quints. 2 - annie will use her stun when you engage on her at lv 2 - she'll either use it on you or your adc - with someone like sivir as your adc, you literally need to press q once and have that land over a stunned/snared annie to get 2 sunlight procs (timing means you get both procs). 3 - annie won't have another stun up and you now have a window where you have control of the lane. If your adc pussy foots about while their team coordinates effectively, then you are sol. I very much like leona into annie and think its a favorable matchup PROVIDED there's some basic level of coordination (in the form of - oh - leona has engaged, I shall now hit this person she has engaged upon).
placement matches resume - 5-10 min from now
Excluding quints, Annie has ~50 more health if you don't take Doran's - you have higher base, but she has more from the item overall. If you throw in the quints (and assume she doesn't take health quints), you have about 25 health more, BUT she does much more damage since she took something offensive on her quints, but you had to take something defensive just to break about even on health.
If you choose to engage an Annie of equal skill at 2, you will be WAY behind in health since she does more damage (more base damage plus shorter cooldowns plus help from offensive quints). That nullifies the fact that you can get your stun up faster (maybe - if she puts a bunch of spells down on you as you try and get out, its up for her again pretty fast).
The Annie v Leona matchup tends to be balanced because Leona has to wait til level 3 for the above reasons, but by that point in time, Annie can get her stuns up pretty quickly and efficiently because of her E, so its still an even matchup.
silver 1 here I comes
on the bright side... its not fugging bronze. Now we see if I get motivated to grind up to gold on the quick.
For Leona, max W first priority because it impacts your burst as well as your tankiness.
Don't forget you can Double AA reset with your Q. AA->Q->AA. Not just AA->Q. You do this by forcing an attack via right click after Q is done. This effectively gets you an extra attack in.
Remember you can use exhaust after your stun combos as their adc won't be doing much damage while stunned anyways.
Remember also that it is ideal to engage on them when THEY are out of position. Not just willy nilly.
keep in mind, I've not seen you play, these are just general advice from a Leona player.
in case folks didn't catch this in the patch notes, there are some really good upcoming changes to the lobby system
“With our LoL client work ongoing, game invites were next on our hit list. The below changes should help out with client performance. ”
Translation - Riot will break lobbies completely when this goes live. hue
My review of patch notes:
BAN ANNIE
yah Annie is going to be completely absurd and i'll probably be focusing her onto the ban lists.
The new frost fang is really really really strong level 1 or in 2v1 lanes. The 10 damage coming into lane is redic. Esp on Annie with her huge autoattack range.
That said, i do think that frost fang will be weaker than Relic/Dorans Shield in an outright 2v2 brawl later on.
Kass will still be banworthy imo. Depends how big that 0.5 second silence duration nerfs is. He might lose lane to Talon/Kha'zix/Zed now. Despite those three being "counters" they were just so wrecked by Kass' high base damage + huge silence it didn't matter they did physical damage.
Vi/Panth/Wukong will also probably still put up some bans.
Yasuo will probably be taken off the ban list. The current set of nerfs certainly weakened him to the ~50% rate. Which is still a bit high for such a "difficult" champ that he was designed to be.
DBlade > DShield now in toplane. Same hp. 5 hp on hit > 6 hp5. 8 more damage per auto + skills > -8 damage per auto recieved. The time to use DSHield will be in ranged v melee match ups, if you anticipate a 2v1, if you don't really have AD Ratios (Morde/Mundo/Vlad), or if you expect to lose early game really badly (either because you're against a Diamond or because your lane matchup is really really unfavorable).
So yeah.. Kass, Annie. Then your selection of junglers (Vi/Panth/Wukong). Mundo/Shyvana/Renekton/Trundle are a maybe for toplane.
And Sivir is a good ban if you aren't planning on playing her, from a statistics perspective.
The hidden power here with annie and frost fang is the extra attack damage Annie's AA will have with her ridiculous range.
well yes i did say:
Oh, sorry
Must've been my sleep deprivation.
From my experience, Lux support counters annie support hard if you can land your skillshots.
Your shield will allow both you and your adc to take minimal damage from her burst, while your burst is extremely easy to land and devastating on a squishy annie.
Diamond Promos tomorrow! First attempt! WAH!!!!
gl mr cow!
Well they are going pretty poorly so far. Lost 2 out of 2.... Now I have to win out which is a long shot although I did win 6 games in a row yesterday so you never know.
Well that's that got fucking wrecked 3 games in a row.
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