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
hehe - well, congrats all the same, bro! This game is such a crap shoot. I was watching trick2g play a ranked game the other day in Diamond I/II. He went phoenix udyr vs a top lane ww. Trick just proxies because there's nothing a ww can do after a point without some strong ganks. Anyway, this ww clearly had no idea how to top lane (constantly running back to try to stop udyr from proxing while losing a ton of XP at his tower, ulting the udyr at 100% hp with no one nearby to help. You see crap like that at diamond I/II and it makes it kind of clear that there's random crap going on everywhere. It gets less surprising to see you be dc'd for 20 min and get a win. I just wish something like that happened to me on my 27 promo games to gold V. Still grats on moving up all the same!
So again for everyone - thoughts on shaco with smite/tp vs smite/ign? Worth trying out?
it's the quintessential debate between trying to augment your late game or your early game...
Ignite is clearly superior while ganking (it's not like Shaco has any problems ganking, unlike Master Yi). It's pretty decent in a 1v1 (obviously better than TP!) but it's really not that great in teamfights. TP is going to be better (overall) end game because it lets you split push a lot safer. Ignite is going to be a lot better if you decide to start focusing more on counterjungling, as well.
Part of the reason Master Yi brings TP is because he farms so well and TP allows him to powerfarm while being able to gank occasionally (esp if the enemy dives). Shaco isn't quite the same power farmer that Yi is.
If your team looks like it's going to be really good laning phase, and you wanna get a lot of kills? Ignite.
If your team is not going to be able to teamfight (maybe you're against the legendary "Command: Cursing Cataclysm of the Sad Bullet Tidal Wave"), teleport is going to be better.
Quite a bit of work to be done on the shaco front. So, I've been observing and watching replays of, AFAIK, the best shaco players out there (who are, of course, substantially better at it than me). 2 in particular: Chinese Jester (challenger) and Good guy garry (plat on the account I was watching, but very clearly a high Diamond level player). I paid attention to build variations, rune/mastery setups, win/loss rate, team composition when they play shaco, mastery, and above all, playstyle including when/how they gank, etc.
Here's what I've learned. The challenger player seems to actually be a less intelligent player than garry by comparison with one notable exception. Chinese Jester focuses heavily on objective and has an extremely keen eye on when to group.
Chinese Jester - 27/0/3 masteries. MS quints and 100% dmg for remaining runes (ad/ap). Smite/ign summoners. He goes with a more standard jungle item most games - SotEL. Rushes that, then varied quite a bit on when he gets his boots... sometimes mobo, not always. Typically build is SoTEL rush, boots 1, that item that does AD splash dmg (name eludes me), static shiv, then most often immediately rushes GA after that. As you can see from his itemization, his goal is as much dmg as possible while ganking frequently. He does a little counter jungling here and there when he can, but doesn't focus it. Priority is ganking for kills and then pushing towers if possible after the gank. He starts doing that (gank/tower push) about mid game.
Jester's openings were a bit strange to me, but successful in the games I watched. Step 1 - determine where the enemy jungler is likely starting if possible (usually using someone else to take care of that). He drops a box at his jungle entrance around 1:30 (strange timing to me with a 16 sec cd on boxes), he sets up boxes and then takes whatever buff is furtherest away from the enemy jungler (eg jungler is at his team's red, jester starts at his team's red. He does not smite. He starts with machette, 4 reds 1 blue. He also uses boxes to finish clearing camps. When his red spawns (in this example), he doesn't smite, kills it off quick. He casts 1 final box to kill the last small golum thing while is away. He immediately levels his jump and hops over the wall and heads to the enemy blue. As his clear is so fast, he likely has about 10-20 seconds before the enemy jungler will appear at his blue. Jester hops over the wall, drops a box (pops his blue potion and red potion), does the damage and then smites to secure leaving the camp uncleared (goal is get in get out AND gank). He then does a lower success rate gank and immediately goes to the closest lane (in this example its bot lane). Now, he's only level 2 - he has ignite, his hop, lowish mana, and a box. But the gank comes at an unexpected time, so he goes in and initiates. If your teammates back the play (as they will at a challenger level), the gank might be successful (keep in mind its so early that all summoners will be up on the support/adc for both teams) - also factor in that you can't follow up outside of autos after you hop in, backstab for added dmg, then quickly drop a box. Anyway, a move that aggressive probably doesn't work at many elos, but in challenger that added damage is enough to coax a solid play out of your bot lane. Nothing I should be doing imo.
I'll write about ggg later
Soo... Good guy garry. He's quite a bit different. He said himself on stream that he hasn't played much shaco in a bit, but it quickly became very clear that he's an extremely calculating fellow with regards to the jungle. In the game I watched, he was very actively ganking lanes (after level 3, though - he'd start at either blue or red, kill 3 of the little wraiths, then get the remaining buff and gank anywhere that seemed productive. mid/late game, he started settling into more of a split push. Good guy garry did not share his buffs while chinese jester handed off his blue pretty frequently in the games I watched.
He did not run move speed and went with a more jungle centric setup with AS, amr, and mr (I think he had some ad in there, but not sure). He ran 21/0/9 with smite/ign. His jungle awareness and patience were what really impressed me the most. He would literally setup traps and wait about for the enemy jungler or patiently wait for a ganking opportunity. He'd consistently ward the enemy jungle and counter jungler it.
He build feral flare in all instances I watched. This gives shaco a nice dmg bump when its farmed, but you don't get it all that quickly ofc being a heavy gank jungler (again, I'm not as good as these guys, so I'm still not ganking as much as I should). A bigger weakness for this build is that you really need to carry alot of pots with you frequently. You don't get life steal until late, which means that anything you hit in the jungler hurts you. Any major damage taken on a gank means you often need to recall if you aren't potted up (again, you have no amr/mr from masteries at least).
Build is machette/red/blue pots. Rush mobo boots and wriggles at roughly the same time (eg make a decision one way or the other on the fly if not enough for both). Those are you 1st 2 complete items, though. Next is static shiv. After that, you go one of 2 routes - either go for tiamat for the added burst/clearing power or go BotRK. The latter gives you some added flexibility with going for an earlier baron. Once that is done, its either a IE or TF and so on. You could go for a ga, but I typically find this build lends itself to heavy split pushing - also one of its downsides if team fighting is needed.
Anyway, of the 2 play styles, I'm still trying to think through what is best. I'm doing better with the SS build, but I don't like its sustain. idk
got into heroes of the storm beta or alpha or something - played it an hour or so - actually found it enjoyable.
Continued my shaco discussion over on the madcast forums. copy/paste here. Also, got wildstart, trying that out in a bit
Last update to OP - 5/30/2014 - 4:42PM - cleaned up my initial post and added feedback from folks
From time to time, I get super interested in champions. This time its Shaco. Now, when I say interested, I mean that I study as many high elo players using a champ as I can find. I analyze their playstyle, runes, masteries, summoner spells, etc. All because I enjoy thinking about this stuff, theory crafting, analyzing, and trying to become a better player. So, this is my shaco analysis thread. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, please join in. Anyway, I started this discussion over here: http://forums.demigo...413863/page/200 and am continuing it here. I'm really interested in a discussion with folks, so please chime in if you have any thoughts. This 1st post is going to be a copy/paste of my thoughts from that thread I referenced.
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.
High level player analysis
Chinese Jester
Summary: aggressive play style favoring maximum damage, objective control and early ganks. Shares blue buff with mid as appropriate. Gets a GA fairly early for team fighting. Very unselfish, focused on team objectives with exceptional map awareness.
Elo: Challenger
Masteries: 27/0/3 (3 points in MS, all else focused on damage)
Runes: MS Quints, Flat AD red/yellow, Flat AP Blues
Summoner Spells: Ignite/Smite
Build: Machette/4 red health pots/1 blue mana pot. Rush SotEL and boots 1. Tiamat => Shiv => Hydra => GA => ie/tf/w/e for more damage
Favored start in the jungle: any buff is fine to start with. Always start jack in the box (w). Place a box to ward near whatever buff you are starting at between at 30-40 second mark. Spam 3-4 boxes in the buff camp you are going for slightly behind where the buff spawns. Position yourself so you back stand the red/blue buff for added damage. DO NOT SMITE. Use a box if needed to speed up finishing off one of the small creatures in the buff camp. Immediately level w and hop over the wall. The goal is to get to steal the closest enemy buff (blue/red) at this point. Ward the probable jungle entrance, hope the wall behind the enemy buff and toss out a jack in the box (cast blue/red pots as needed). Steal the enemy buff using smite and leave (you will have vision of the jungle because of your ward if he shows). Immediately (still level 2) gank one of the lanes.
Good Guy Garry
Summary: A much more calculating counter jungler than Chinese Jester. Willing to wait for counter jungle chances and setup traps for the enemy jungler. Very patient on ganks if needed. Not as focused on team play, but very focused on setting the enemy jungler behind by warding and crippling camps while keeping up pressure by ganking lanes. Tends to split push very hard and not want to group. Also goes feral flare in all instances I observed.
Elo: Diamond
Masteries: 21/0/9
Runes: AS quints/ Flat AD Reds, Armor Yellows, MR Blues
Build: Machette/5 red health pots. Madreds => Wriggles/Mobo boots roughly same time => Static Shiv => BotRk or Hydra => Trinity Force or IE
Favored start in the jungle: any buff is fine to start with. Always start jack in the box (w). Place a box to ward near whatever buff you are starting at between at 30-40 second mark. Spam 3 boxes in the buff camp you are going for slightly behind where the buff spawns. Position yourself so you back stand the red/blue buff for added damage. Use smite to speed up the clear. Take E when you hit level 2. Go to wraith camp. Clear only the 3 small wraiths. Go to the remaining buff camp in your jungle. Clear that using smite/box/E. Immediately gank whatever is the best lane (often its mid).
Cadburry (Twitch Stream)
Summary: None at the moment
Elo: Diamond 1
Masteries: 27/0/3
Runes: uncertain
Build: not enough data atm - I currently only have a sample size of a few games. 1 game he goes FF, the next SotEL Consisently has hydra, static shiv, and last whisper. He has magic pen boots in 1 game and bersker's greaves in the other... no idea on the magic pen boots
Favored start in the jungle: Have not found a replay yet.
Wereshrew (Montage Vid)
Summary: This guy is the most experimental shaco player I've seen yet. Seems to play him in a variety of roles and has many rune setups.
Elo: Diamond 2
Masteries: 27/0/3 - his utility page is 9/0/21
Runes: he has 5 shaco rune pages - 3 AD and 2 AP - i look into this later. He seems to be currently running a utility setup (8.5ad, 72HP, 4.5% MS, 7.5% CDR)
Build: not sure about build order. Consistently goes SotEL, BotRK, Mobo boots w/ homeguard, He gets static shiv and black cleaver most games, but not necessarily both.
Favored start in the jungle: His montage video shows a cool start. He's on blue side, clears his blue quickly, goes top, steals red but leaves the 2 creeps and WARDS. Then steals big golum to hit level 3. He walks wide around the enemy red camp to stay out of sight, and walks around (away from red) and stands in the bush when he sees the enemy jungler coming to take his red. He then sets a box in that bush out of sight and waits for the enemy jungler. Enemy jungler shows up and he bursts. By having the trap and being hidden, he's able to keep his q up and ready to chase if there is a flash. Outside of that one play in the montage, nothing really all that special in that vid anyway.
Other Shaco Players to Check Out
Misc comments
gold
(ps. do i get a skin?)
Tomorrow, hedgie... capped out on gifts atm.
I assume most of us are on the same page here, but I'm going to throw it out again as its been on my mind a bit. I'm not a fan of elo boosting. Nothing I'd report amongst pals, but imo it negates the rating system. To me, when folks like cow hit diamond or karl finally hit gold after suffering through a ridiculous amount of promo series, its quite an accomplishment and one I celebrate along with them. It wouldn't mean the same thing to me without that struggle to get there and it means less if someone else played those games for them. I'm just kind of bummed out I suppose.
Agreed, and bronze is bad enough with plats trolling it too.
Two thirds of my games are a route, one direction or the other(unless it's promo games, then it's only the one direction) and about half of them are helped along by some tard that just has to mention he's a plat leveling someone else' account...
I'll never have to deal with it, but it would be loads of fun to then have games blown by the someone else that never had what it took to get that far...
Apparently I'm brooding today. I'm really considering dropping out of my ranked 5's team. I'm not really enjoying it much lately. Generally, I'd much rather prefer to spend my time doing other things. Going to think about it some more before making any decision.
So, I'll continue to rant a bit more re: my ranked 5's team. So, we went through all this over the top drama to drop out mid from the team. I found that quite exhausting and discouraging... and I was already kind of exhausted/exasperated with things that led up to the whole dropping a guy from the team thing.
Anyway, now we are into a rebuilding phase with a relatively new squad (new adc and a mid). I'm just kind of in a place where I don't really care that much and don't feel like putting in a bunch of effort to try to get better as a team and go through the process of getting folks into shape, etc. I don't really want to be a team captain or coach at this time.... or shot caller or whatever. So, I'm trying to think of the best way to handle things. Thoughts?
Currently leaning towards leaving the team. I think that might be the best solution and now that I've got everyone together, I think they maybe able to continue playing as a team with a jungle replacement perhaps. That said, I've been part of the team for about 6 months now. smeh....
I think you should disband... forget about it for a week... next week write everything down you think you could improve on from the bad previous experience, make a list of potential team mates and contact them and try to set up a meeting with them the following week... the next week you should all get together and talk about it with them (should probably have more than 5) and come to an agreement with people about scheduling/positions/shot calling... and once the roster/schedule is finalized you should play!
Re: Elo Boosting Among Pals
Since you brought it up, let's have an adult discussion because it's something that has always held my interest.
So, here is my understanding of what happened that you're referring to: A higher level player came to a lower level player with the hope that he could use the lower level players account to play with other lower level friends. The lower level player who loaned his account, ended up getting to Gold and was essentially boosted. To my understanding this wasn't his original motivation for loaning the account, he was just trying to be a nice guy... way too nice IMO.
So yeah, someone who could have easily gotten them on his own if he had time or motivation to play more often. What a tragedy.
If you're so concerned about the sanctity of Ranked, perhaps you should not try to boost people from your smurf account like you have in the past. It seems uncomfortably similar to me aside from not being against Riot's CoC... and being much less effective cause it was done on a runeless smurf account with very few champs you are good at playing instead of just a lower MMR one. Still essentially an attempt to circumvent the MMR system right?
I heard about this all third hand essentially, so hopefully I have my facts straight.
I don't believe that duo queuing with somebody with somebody on a smurf is against codes of conduct. Riot is fine with smurfs and with duo queueing, and the ranked system is supposed to take care of the effects of smurfs and duo queues over time.
I mean, you could temporarily inflate somebody's rank by creating a smurf, leveling it to 30, then playing with that person right when you start ranked, but thats a lot of effort just to temporarily boost somebody. I think that Riot's attitude toward that is probably "meh" since they have much bigger issues to address.
Anyway, I don't really care that much. I personally don't think that the account swapping is terribly advisable in this case because I would imagine that Riot's automated detection mechanisms will have a pretty good chance of picking up on the switheroo, but whatever.
Respectfully asking to end that particular discussion - which i began ofc.
yeah - I don't know... going to think about it. I try really hard not to make knee jerk decisions about stuff like this. I don't think what you are suggesting will work all that well based on the people involved. I mean, I'll miss being on the team if I leave, but not terribly. If I do things properly and I do decide to leave the team, I really think they are in a good place to continue on without me if they can find a jungler. I absolutely do not want to create a brand new team at any rate. If anything, I'd just scale back and play more regularly with pals or solo/duo ranked.
I might do a quick patch break down tonight now that the 4.9 notes are out... maybe anyway for anyone that is interested.
patch list is really short and there is already a terrible tldr vid by the super talented blackinola...
Braum nerfs don't go far enough. Kha nerfs are ridiculous. Will break the current 51% win rate play style, which was riots goal. Not a fan. Tried out Kart on pbe - looks really good. Start thinking up the old kart counters as we'll be seeing a bunch of him soon. Think riot did a great job on the skins at any rate (only checked out 2 of them)
you probably shouldn't be deleting posts about a topic you started (even if you asked to stop).
If Thunder wants to talk with Karl about things, that's his prerogative. If you're worried about it "offending" a particular person, they actually endorsed that post and thought it was well-said.
Anyway, bruiser got nerfed. "True asasssin" got buffed. He's got a 3.8 AD ratio on his Q now, if its against an isolated target. Easier said-than-done to isolate in a teamfight, but will be a beast in small 3v3 fights, which is the type of fights "true assassins" tend to flourish in.
And W evolution isn't so bad now, either. But yeah, RIP bruiser . Unfortunately. But it's not like 51% is that redic, when you look at top-10-win-rate-for-entire-season Ziggs and Kayle.
yeah - that's why I'm a bit annoyed they choose to target him. I get that they want to develop his persona... I just happened to like that type of assassin and enjoyed playing him from time to time now. We'll see if I'm being overly dramatic I suppose
If I'm up for a bit longer, I'll prob check out new updated skarn on pbe. It actually sounds good:
Hey Skarners,
Skar is up on PBE with a few gameplay and art changes. We're increasing Skarner's power with more CC and stickiness without creating the old gameplay problems. Additionally, he will be able to consistently bring value to his team, even when behind. He also has upgraded character textures and some new particles for his passive and W.
Full List of Changes:
[NEW] Crystallizing Sting
Crystal Slash
Crystalline Exoskeleton
Fracture
Impale
Scruffy
Well.. 1 ranked game, 1 win. Had a pretty decent performance as thresh at least and actually somehow carried a bit (7/3/20 thresh). Pretty happy with how I did anyway and it was a nice stress reliever anyway.
Played that 1 for all mode... ended up with 10 katarinas... quite boring imo... just a bunch of goofs mashing buttons. We win, I lose time, but get a new shiny badge anyway.
Zen got to play a game in ranked with clg seraph's smurf. I watched and recorded via seraphs stream. They have a fairly easy win, but you don't get to see much of zen god as seraph spent about 90% of the game as quinn top splitting an freezing.
The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking riot is making the right moves regarding the braum nerfs. My initial thought is that riot should have slammed him with the nerf bat a bit harder than they did. Now, this slower (I considered the nerfs kind of light at 1st) nerf approach makes more sense.
Take what happened with Braum on release. People don't know how to play against him. Immediate perception that he is super strong, uncounterable, resulting in a must ban in ranked/draft at most levels. The reality is simply that folks did not know how to play against him or counter him initially. So, while his kit is strong with experienced players (supports knowing how to use braum and adc's knowing how to play with braum grouped together), a week or so after release, I didn't really consider braum as a must ban. But it takes awhile for that mentality to move around.
Most interesting and, I suppose, logically to me, at least from my experiences, Braum was seldom picked in blind pick games (I accidentally get into them from time to time because I'm a terrible host). This meant that folks that play in blind either don't give a rip about playing OP champs (if they are OP like Braum is perceived generally) or that they had already discovered that he's not a good must pick champ when he's open (eg what we see as a must ban in ranked/draft).
Anyway, what I'm hoping to see is braum to fall off the must ban list and folks start to realize that he's not OP (and probably wasn't in his previous state imo) as folks get to see more and more bad Braums in game due to a lower amount of auto bans. You can't really see where a champ like braum is at when its an insta ban because of the hive mentality.
I don't know much about Blind Pick games cause I rarely play them, but they seem a poor way to judge the power level of most Support champions.
Don't a lot of people jump on those to play permabanned hypercarries? "Time to take Jax top and get me some pentakills! Fuck yeah!" seems more likely than "Time to take Braum bot and hope my ADC knows how to follow up on my engages and then hopefully I'll get tanky enough to absorb enough damage before dying to subtly shift the outcome of teamfights in our favor! Fuck yeah!"
What I imagine happens a lot in Blind Pick is that those who lose the instalock war in champ select pick an AP to "support" with but never build a Sightstone and try to steal kills after their Deathcap is completed. That's not a great indication that Lux/Nid support is OP is it?
More of an observation than a fact I suppose.
Some ban stats though: Plat ranked solo - ban rate for braum - 81%. Win rate 55%. Not trying to prove something - just capture some number... doing a bunch of multitasking atm...
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