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
Re: Sad Town
Demoted to Gold V, but not sad about it. I failed my Gold 3 promos several times before dropping, so I'm thinking maybe dropping back down while learning the other roles better isn't so bad. I didn't have a chance get to Plat unless I could play Support every game, but that was still a maybe and Support isn't that easy to get every game especially if you're not duo queuing.
Re: Bad Jax
That sounds very frustrating. I was picturing a different scenario, sorry.
Re: WW Bans
He's easy to play at our level, and some of his popular counters like Lulu seem to have fallen out of vogue. Can't think of too many people I'd rather not face..
aw well... series lost. Had 2 people on the team being absolute terrible trolls. Should have been a really easy win... awful teemo top - just really low level play and jerks. ah well.
going to sleep now i wanna see that tomorrow or ask our sumoner names but if you search in the post you have my 3 acc and darkliath to , finally i sleep now after almost 3 years i can sleep again see you tomorrow friends
Back in town soon. Been watching wingsofdeath on twitch tonight. doubt I will be on tonight but hopefully catch folks tomorrow
back in promo series.
So, out of all the games I've ever played, I've encountered exactly 1 person in a ranked game that I've been super impressed with. I feel like this is the smurf of some high elo player. Did a quick search but found nothing. http://web2.betkill.com/summoner/na/37489853#profile
This guy was like 4v1ing the enemy team while everyone on my team (including myself) was absolute crap. 100% won the game because of this guy. It wasn't like 1 or 2 times he wrecked the enemy team himself... was like 4-5 times in a 33 min game. Guy went 20/2/7 my game as riven and then 17/0/4 previous game as nid. He's positive in every single ranked game. Anyway, anyone know this smurf? fallindancer
I don't see myself as anything more than a Gold level player and would consider solo lanes to be a weak area for me in this game. Even so, my last two ranked games on my Smurf account had me going 17/5/9 with LB and 11/3/10 with Riven. I'm pretty out of practice with Riven but used to play her regularly, but LeBlanc is a high skill champion who I've barely ever played.
So my point is, maybe you played with Falling Bandit while he was on his smurf account or maybe you played with a Platinum smurf who went against a weak player playing a weak champion with a weak match-up and got fed while playing a notorious snowballer. And then had the rest of the enemy team honorably try and 1v1 them until they were so fed that they could 1v4.
Actually, it was fallenbandit's smurf. Thanks! Did a little searching and yesterday he had a bunch of games played on his main, then switched to his alt (the one I encountered), then switched back to his main. The time stamps line up perfectly, so really good odds it was him.
How he played stood out, sure, but you are absolutely right - a weak lane can certainly result in great stats and carrying. BUT - what really caught my eye was the consistently high KDA he was getting throughout his game history on his alt. That made me think this must be a really high elo player smurf. Guy was challenger in season 3 and diamond 1 now on his main.
Braum's getting whacked with the nerf bat - early/mid anyway: Braum
Well, lost another promo series. Went 2/3. Felt like i had a some really stand out plays in most of the games, though. Feeling like I'm doing much better as adc and am rotating back into that again. Anyway, my ranked 5's team should be playing Sunday at 7PM EST - hopefully we get some reps in.
finally had a 12 win arena run in hearthstone! WOOO
back in promo series 1/0 - best of 3. So.... we'll see if I can actually win 2 more games this time.
Also... seriously... buried in email after being out a week. Ugh. Get to spend most of my day getting organized again.
So, thing I need to work on in LoL - knowing what to do late game. I'm not grouping when I should be and too often am splitting as characters like shaco. I guess I'm trying to figure out the correct place for a champ like shaco going the build I am (assassin dmg with strong split push). Shaco is really good for split pushing and killing most single targets if only 1 is sent to stop him. This typically means you can pull 2 which should result in added pressure elsewhere.... BUT, I'm not seeing the right time to group while I'm doing this split pushing. Karl, for 1, seemed to have seen a very specific moment in one of my ranked shaco games where I split when he thought I should have been mid to try to grab an inhib. Like I said - having trouble figuring out where to be.
Found a post on the forums that matches what my feelings on Shaco:
You require precise and unique runes and masteries specifically for him.You need a strong team comp and good coordination with teammates you can trust and have understanding of Shaco's mechanics.You need to plot and plan your jungle routes, ganks, and all sorts of possibilities on what could go wrong and how to repremend that before the match starts.You must identify and learn your ganks, jungle matchups, counterjungling strategies, and when and when not to gank.You need the proper item builds depending on the situation and they must be gotten in an exact timeframe.To be good at Shaco requires maximum dedication and attentiveness to him, plus the right mindset. Mess it up once? Fall off forever. He does not offer room for mistakes or errors. Once you get good at him however he offers a fun and chaotic unique style of play unmatched by any champion. The learning curve is long and tough, however when you get him down you are on top of the world.
So it doesn't really seem strange to me that you haven't mastered one of the toughest champs to play in 5 games. I'm very surprised you'd play any champ that you just started learning to play on your ranked team, much less one as hard to master as Shaco.
1st - thx for posting that, but my main question is really just about figuring out when to group with an assassin/split pusher and trying to figure out how to read the map better.
At least at the elo I'm at, I don't find "Mess up once? Fall off forever" to be an accurate statement. I think there are a ton of things for me to master and figure out, but for some reason, I have a very high level of comfort playing him - which is kind of odd, honestly. I do contribute every game by putting out pressure via ganks, counter jungling as possible (shaco's actually really good at setting up ambushes for the enemy jungler - I'm just not good at that yet), and split pushing. I'm still learning the best way to get into team fights, and am learning how to effectively take out the adc or ap.
As a jungler though, I create a lot of pressure with the stealth ganks and can generally farm it up a bit via split pushing here and there mid/late. I don't think its necessarily a good fit for most comps, but its working for me for the most part - so getting in reps when I'm already feeling comfortable in ranked isn't that big a stretch imo.
Well the point of my post was that he's one of the most cerebral and hard to learn champions in the game, even if some of the quote was outdated. I think you're just gonna have to get some experience to know when to do what. Having Uncle Karl sing you a song to the tune of The Gambler isn't gonna make you a Shaco master.
You got to... know when to split push, know when to Deceive away, know when to ulllllt...
Never count your boxes, while you're stealin the other team's red buff, never count your boxes, till the gankings done!
I actually like Shaco as a jungler, although he is a specialist champion for Shaco enthusiasts only (as an aside - he would be nerfed if his playrate ever got too high regardless of what his power level is).
With that being said, he requires very good decision making on split pushes. As you say, you can sometimes get carried away with split pushing, so I'm not entirely sure that Shaco is the best choice for ranked games right now. I've watched quite a few of your Shaco games, and there is a lot of really...interesting...stuff going on.
Let me give two examples from last night:
You had a game where your team was way ahead, but the other team had baron. Their middle inhib is exposed. You were kind of off on your own, but your team picked off the enemy Lee Sin, so its 5v4. The rest of your team groups mid to take middle inhib, but you run away from your team to split push bot.
This was a ranked game that you almost straight up threw. Your team was way ahead and your teammates made a big play that should have gotten you even further ahead, but because of a bizarre split push play on your part, you put your team in a position to straight up lose (it was late in game, so if they lose the 4v4 mid badly, timers are long enough to possibly lose game right there).
Or last game of the night:
In this game, Cow was generally doing well mid, and Brad had done well top. Bot had gone meh (could have been better but I am not a good Morgana - its like my 4th game as her). You had minimal kills/assists/stacks as Shaco. Despite some requests for grouping, we had lots of splitting.
The point is: why? When you split push, you essentially force the other 4 people to do nothing. They are down a person, so they can't fight and risk a 4v5 (or rather, they probably shouldn't). Unless the split pusher has tp of course. So you are basically freezing out 4 people to get the benefit of a split pusher.
In some cases this is beneficial. But in this case, you were freezing out 2 people who had done well in their lanes for a Shaco who wasn't that gold rich by any measure. Just not a good idea and it was causing some frustration I think. It would have been a much better idea to group up, let the two people who had big leads do their thing, and win the easy way in my opinion.
Now, the point here isn't to beat you over the head over a normal game. It doesn't really matter since you are just learning Shaco. I was just learning Morgana too, and certainly wasn't doing well.
But my point is that I would be careful about overestimating your ability with Shaco unless you can really do a good job judging the quality of split pushes. Until you get there, I wouldn't be using Shaco to grind out ranked games.
well part of it is it that Karl and Cow tend to be on the "group early and often" side of the rubric, whereas pacov tends to be "split whenever possible". Obviously split pushing is not the incorrect thing to do always-and-forever, and split pushing is one of those things that Shaco is really good at.
However, split pushing usually requires a few things (not in any particular order):
1- the ability to 1v1 anyone who comes
2- the ability to escape 1v2s (or be really tanky to last long enough your team can do something while you die)
3- the ability to scout and ward so that your team actually has enough time to do something while you're being collapsed on
4- tower killing ability
5- the ability to get back to your team quickly
And from your team: some form of ranged wave clear and disengage and the ability to threaten the enemy team if they just run to baron.
Let's consider why top laners are so frequently used to split:
1- top laners get lotsa gold and EXP. In a typical game, they might be the highest level because they tend to use TP, have lots of sustain, and tend not to get ganked that much. This means they get to sit in lane getting lots of EXP. Plus, since bruisers are 1v1 machines, they are able to fulfill #1 very easily just due to the pacing of the game
2- most bruisers have some sort of gap-creator. even without one, they are generally super tanky. Think about how fast a Shyvana, TF-Irelia or Trundle walks and how damn hard it is to keep them still long enough to kill them.
3- bruisers and ADCs are usually the only two lanes who keep their warding trinkets end game (in high elo). The jungle almost always swaps out for a scanner.
4- Typical one-damage bruiser builds wreck towers plenty well. Feral Flare doesn't really do anything to towers...
5- Teleport.
Although Shaco always qualifies decently well for #2 (with Q), #3 (with W), #4 (with R) and #5 (with mobi boots) in order for him to meet requirement #1, he has to be super selfish. Farming and taking all the buffs is usually NOT what you want to be doing for a champion that is known for their strong early game pressure and frequently said to have a weak end game. Although i don't think Shaco has an "awful" end game (he is extremely difficult to 1v1 if he is keeping up with items), he doesn't teamfight well
I'm not completely against split pushing even though I don't care to do it much myself. But it has to be done very carefully or you lose very quickly against a lot of teams. VERY quickly.
If people go into the game with the attitude "I'm going to split push" and the game doesn't pan out in the right way to allow it, then really bad things can happen if they force it. On the flip side, switching to a split push can be a nice way of breaking stalemates.
But yes, I agree that tops are generally better at split pushing. Or jungle Yis with TP. That was part of the reason that I mentioned TP in my previous post - having a TP on the split pusher is a really big deal since it means that you don't necessarily freeze out 80% of your team when you split push.
appreciate all the comments - read em and will reread them.
That said - holy crap did they shit on kha'zix.... like absolutely wrecked him... like minimum 5% loss rate increase I'd say. He's currently at like a 51% win rate in plat ranked for the last 20 days. This hammer makes no sense to me in the slightest. I'd say riot has helping him find his unique personality as a champ you can't pick - as an assassin jungler anyway.
I got into Gold III today in the most shameful way possible.
Got destroyed first game out of three. They banned all my supports so I played Morg and struggled and we lost badly. Second game, banned all my supports again and so I played Zyra cause Morg didn't work out well the first game. We lost horribly. And then their fed Twitch DC'd. "GG EZ" is what I said in post game chat. Nah nah, just kidding, but yeah undeserved win.
Third game, get a Jinx Top All Caps troll in champ select. Oh well, better luck next time. I had made the mistake of saying "This is the type of thing that happens during my last promo game." "YOUR IN PROMOS? I AFK THEN!"
So Jinx is AFK. And then buys shit right when minions spawn. And then wrecks Teemo. Then wrecks their team. And then my internet goes out for 20 minutes.
When I get back on "Congratulations On Your Promotion To Gold III."
Challenger Smurf > Bad Internet I guess!
Will re-read everything tomorrow (didnt get to read sexy's last post).
I'm back to gold. Hopefully swan is next to hit gold in our group here. I might take a 1-2 day break from ranked, but I'm very intent on climbing out of gold V quickly. Thanks again to everyone that watched hoping I might make it after 27 games... still wonder if I had better or worse luck than karl in his silver to gold challenge.
1st person to congratulate me on this forum when I hit gold IV receives a mystery skin. Must occur within 12 hours of me hitting gold IV. /end next contest
random thought- jungle shaco w/ tp? Downside is that mid/late game ignite means you can solo most people if splitting - also, weaker ganks earlier. TP just adds stronger split push options.
Also - shaco - smite/ign, smite/exh, or smite/tp. Thoughts?
Smite/flash is crap on shaco imo - But - could be used for added dmg on ganks honestly (you come in with q, follow flash them for added dmg + slow then. Honestly, that might be a better idea.
ADDED RUI TO THE OP
hurm... it's my understanding that zen has been playing on swan's account. Didn't really make sense to me... then I saw a bunch of mord games in ranked. Swan plays a bunch of mord now?
Moving off that topic...
Here's the site I've been using a bunch to keep track of my stats: http://na.op.gg/summoner/matches/userName=pacov
Here are some recent win/loss played with stats. That Barkoulos fella is a guy I met the other night in ranked and decided to duo a bit with. Nothing super exciting - I just like seeing data and pondering here and there.
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