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
curse
wow - didn't think they would based on the last team comp i saw (who knows if they changed it with so many restarts..)
ap yi too stronk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ZFGAH4CJA
PENTA KILLL PENTA KILLL PENTA KILLLL (unofficial penta kill penta kill penta kill)
I accept your unofficial PENTA KILL PENTA KILL PENTA KILL!
side note - that crazy korean guy yelling pentakill is my fav. I'm considering paying money to fly him here to be on standby to yell that at me. Granted... he will have to stay here like 3 months... but still. Cracks me up so much.
Random fast thoughts - disclaimer - anything I'm about to say goes to shite if you have no one will get on board with you. I'm really thinking team tactics, but you can pull whatever I'm talking about off if you can get 2 other folks on board (read - prob won't happen).
F the meta game... or change it up. My 1st thought is who can hold off a support and an ad carry successfully if he was solo bot vs 2? Heimer (check out my mediocre awesomeness) and urgot. Maybe a sion (not easy) - and some other characters. Anyway, there are quite a few that could do just fine bot vs 2 for a bit. I remember watching a game a bit back with clg constantly swapping their top and bottom lane to fug with the enemy jungler. More or less, they planned on where the enemy jungle would be and then swapped their top 1 for their bottom 2, etc - over and over. Seemed silly (and in that game it was a little silly (as the appeared scared of the enemy jungler)), but it can work as a solid tactic. Anyway, one can handle 2 bot without much of a worry as long as their is jungle support here and there to generate some threat.
Bleh - we already know that ap carries mid either run all mr runes or mix up ap builds but run no armor. The obvious counter is a solid ranged ad as that will tear through the 0 armor. Matter of fact - all you need is a ranged that runs a mr page. Boom - you have a huge adv over an ap carry. As in, 90% of the games you play, you would have a HUGE leg up running a MR rune page as a ranged AD carry vs an AP carry. They will not anticipate that.
Anyway, just consider the current meta and think how easily you could counter it with some strategy. Mid can 90% of the time (really.. 90%) be countered by an excellent ranged ad carry or just a so so one with a MR rune page. Bot could be countered by 1 strong character (enabling a roamer or 2 top) or 2 bot - an AP carry with support or w/e. And top could be countered by 2 going top. And a jungler can be easily countered by a jungler + a roamer.
Anyway, the current meta is amazing in that folks generally fit into a set role and do the same damn thing over and over. It also means that you can EASILY counter things if you can magically get a few people on your side. I'm personally thinking of setting up a duo queue ranked situation where you have the 2 of you call bot and mid. You more or less lie about where you are going so folks don't whine, but you take ranged ad carry and an AP carry. Call what would sound normal in the lobby - then change it up once the game launches - this way you bypass any folks that would tell you to f off. Anyway, the biggest probable win would be for mid as your def would be high and your dmg output would hurt alot. At bot, you'd still have some impact, but it wouldn't be as clear early on.
blahblahblah
CLG used to run Cho'gath 2v1 bot all the time. We've seen Urgots 2v1 bot in some of the recent tournies. i do think that around the 20, 25 minute mark, it's much better to swap top and bot. AD carry will provide nice baron control once they have IE, the support will keep baron perma-warded, and the wriggles-using top lane can at least keep dragon warded for bot (or force their support to clear and risk losing their underlevel'd AD carry). And the wriggles-using top should be very easily able to solo dragon at the 20-25 minute mark.
i do also think that swapping junglers/top is a good choice when your top is completely snowballed. Top roaming will be much stronger than your jungler roaming, Top should have a significant gold and EXP advantage compared to the enemy team, and they can pick up red buff to keep up in levels some and gank successfully. Your jungler won't be able to stop the opposing top quite the same, but your jungler should be able to make it into a "farm off" and they will scale better into mid game. (Obv this wouldn't so much be the case with a tank-n-gank jungler such as Allistar, Maokai or Malphite, i'm thinking more like Udyr/Lee Sin/Skarner/Noc/etc).
Most AD carries get blown up at 6 though. Putting AD carries mid used to be meta, then everyone figured this out... In particular Ashe was a good pick, and putting Cait or Sivir can be your best option against some APs such as Kass.
Sure, you can run flat AD, bit of ArP, flat MR, hp/level seals... then you're reasonably bulky. But then they swap their top and your mid...
Now you're going against a bruiser (most likely), and it's back to AP v AP top (since you prob put your AP top in this situation).
This is why you run AD casters such as Urgot or Talon mid against these casters. They can burst like an AP caster (instead of being reliant on weak autoattacks - when compared to an ultimate, at least), while being bulky.
However, this still requires an AP top... And there aren't a lot of AP tops or pure-AP junglers. Rumble/Vlad/Kennen/Morde for top... very few high pure-AP junglers. Fiddle "can" jungle but he's weak now. There is Jungle Cass or Jungle Karth but both are "just" as vulnerable to counter-jungling as Fiddle is and don't have the sustain + dueling that Fiddle has. Many other AP junglers either act as tanks out of jungle (Cho'gath, Maokai), or have to play around with their AP build and delay it because you pick up wriggles (Fizz).
Some junglers do put out some high amounts of sustained magic damage (Shyvana), but it's not enough AP on your team. You'd need a hybrid top plus MF/Trist/Kog who do a decent amount of AP damage.
in the competitive scene, switching top and bot happens often enough. The best time to do it is when they pick a champ that absolutely sucks 1v2 (i.e. fizz). Another strat that was incredibly successful for m5 was roaming ali + urgot solo bot.
As for switching ranged ad carry and mid ap.. it can work out, but there is actually a reason why ap is mid and ranged ad is bot. AP champs get most of their damage from levels (sup anivia only has tear / catalyst? Doesn't even matter, can still rape you). AD champs however, are much more farm reliant and don't really need the levels to still be effective. So they go bot where they can share some of the xp, but get all of the farm. Also, mid is generally a much safer location for an ap who has no escapes. They don't have as far to run to get to a tower. Continuing on, most ap mids can farm well at tower, and several can instantly clear waves. They don't have to be anywhere near their opponent if they dont want to for most of the time. This works out, because they're still threatening to the opposing mid due to burst damage. However, ad carries rely on being able to hit their opponent several times. This doesn't work out when gragas throws one barrel to clear an entire wave and runs off before you get more than a hit or two in. Now he's off doing whatever he wants, and you're stuck trying to clear a wave.
AD carries can play vs bruisers tho, since bruisers have to run in to melee and last hit. (this is why teemo / kayle / graves / vayne are sometimes played top). All 3 have solid escapes, and can punish bruisers who try to last hit. However, this means that you're going to want at least one tanky person somewhere else. Just checked the stream I'm also watching and was surprised to see that they're doing what I was just about to say. It's teemo top, and j4 / leona bot. j4 is actually a really solid bot lane champ when matched with a kill lane support (leona, taric, blitz).
That isn't to say that meta can't be changed, but there are some good reasons for the current meta. The only real place that it will change tho is in the competitive scene. They can experiment with different setups and maximize the potential of different comps in different areas. Then it trickles down into ranked solo-que and finally into normals. An example of the trickle down: Back in November or so Reginald played soraka mid for a few days. I saw several Soraka mids in the next couple weeks because they saw him play successfully (you could always tell, because they copied his summoners / build identically). Then it died off when nobody in competitive scene played her. Now it has returned after dignitas using her in mid in the ipl4
I think that you are missing a lot of things here.
First of all, I've played in the previous metas. There was a time when it was somewhat common to see AD Carries mid and top. And no, AD Carries do not counter AP Carries mid. In fact, AP carries will generally murder AD carries mid if they know what they are doing.
While an AD carry can generally harass AP carries, they can't get the kill unless the AP carry is openly incompetent. But its very hard for an AD carry to stay alive once most AP carries hit level 6. So usually the AP Carry just farms under the tower til level 6 (which most AP carries are decent at), which exposes the AD carry (who generally have weak escape abilities) to ganks. They then will usually get a kill shortly after they hit 6. Mid lane AD carries then generally have to get substantial early game MR just to survive, further delaying their ability to carry.
Also, AD carries mid really hurts the team in the mid game. Mid lane is supposed to roam a bit after 6 and put pressure on other lanes and the jungle. Most AD carries aren't a threat if they roam at level 6 - they don't have their damage up and should really just be farming. AP carries don't scale with farm as heavily, so the loss of xp/gold doesn't hurt them as much, and they are MUCH bigger threats to successfully pull of ganks elsewhere on the map.
Similarly, putting an AP carry bot is a bad idea. AP carries need levels over gold, so you don't put them in duo lanes. Also, they don't deal well with supports, since a support can usually heal or shield enough to deal with the big burst from an AP carry, making them much less effective.
Anyway, the logic is really very simple. AD carries scale best off of farm (not so much levels). Whats the best place to get farm? Bottom with a support - not only will they get the most farm since the support can help them with harass, but they don't hurt their team as much by just staying in lane and not wandering.
AP carries scale with levels, and have very strong burst early. Thus, they go mid, which gets them more levels due to the solo lane, and gives them great freedom in wandering out of their lane due to their central location.
Top is the hardest lane to survive from ganks since its a long lane and you don't have a champ dedicated to warding. So you put the most gank resistant champs there, which is usually some kind of tanky DPS.
Now, you can occasionally switch things up. There are some specific champs which can work well outside of the standard meta roles. But that almost always requires a full team on the same page, not just 2 people.
Things like doubling top is also generally not advisable. The big problem is dragon. If you double top, its VERY easy for the other team to get dragon. I know that CLG was putting double tops somewhat frequently for a while, but they also had a strategy of ignoring dragon at the time. I do not recommend letting the opponent take free dragons all the time in solo queue.
Nah, it died off because Riot nerfed Soraka's ability to mid IIRC.
don't worry, feeding / trolling teams dont stop in the 1800's lol. I just got 7 of our 8 kills and the only assist for our team when jungle took the kill np.
next game, all ad melee except me as range ad vs a morg. Fun times.. lulu stands in brush by red and gets first blooded because it's a stupid spot to stand. Udyr feeds top 3 kills in 5 minutes and goes afk. 15 min victory for other team.
wait 5 minutes after that, still get one of them from the last game. He feeds 0/3/0 in 5 minutes as well (it's a trend) and score is 1/13 by 11 minutes. 20 min surrender only because they didnt totally push mid in time
And that's taking into account that the ranged ad mid would be running a full mr page while the ap carry would not have anything at all that would help them against a ranged ad, right? Probably not... which is kinda the whole point of the change I'm suggesting. I get that the ap carry will likely to try to hug a the tower, but the ranged ad can still just last hit and harass here and there... which should keep that from happening a bit and make them more likely to die from a jungle ganks. Especially an early one (eg when they are just saying "oh... cait's mid"). I agree about the roaming mid or top, problem, though. That said, even ad tf has quite a bit of usage at mid in high level matches - without running a full mr page... and can easily gank top or bot. So, tf works, corki probably works and could come in and gank easily, and probably many other characters would work.
Anyway, I hear and understand everything you are saying, karl, I just don't think the dogmatic approach is the best 100% of the time.
rawrr... sorry about the craptastic games... hopefully you get something better asap. fing trolls... smeh
watch Korean streams... they use TF like crazy there (he's a top ban also). He's nearly always played AP mid...
This one game i watched they actually used him as AD and his ganks were terrible No gold card burst
the big problem with tf mid (and it's always ap tf at high levels) is that he's incredibly susceptible to ganks. He's very strong with his ult and wave clear and stun. But those 2 seconds he's in range, he can die. Or even at tower. The game that you missed where you thought CLG would beat Curse based on matchup had ap tf mid, and they exploited that weakness. He was simply too squishy vs a Ryze and a jungle gank. The only thing that makes him shine in mid is that if he isn't dealt with, he becomes a real terror. He's actually a ban i see quite a bit.
fu hedgie u always say the same thing as me lol
AD vs AP mid just depends on the matchup. You can't take on Malzahar with most AD carries. You get popped a couple times out of your range, get that health low enough for his combo, and poof, you're dead without ever really doing much. Same deal with Annie, once she hits six, you have stuns galore with flaming bears of doom.
Kog can mid against just about anyone, a good Cait can stay out of range and poke more carefully. It's got to be someone with reach, you have to wear them down far enough that their burst isn't going to kill you first. The more reach the enemy has on their abilities, the more of a long range method to damage them you end up needing.
In Kog's case, it's a rare AP mid that can win the lane, because even when they win the race, you blow up in their face and kill them anyway. It's not an optimal position though, unless you're up against one of the ones with no stuns or escapes that you can pretty much kill at will. You'll spend less time dead at bot with a good support and get better farmed. I almost always won the lane in normals with Kog, but it was never like having Veigar mid.
more examples of people being retarded in soloque even in 1800's. Guy was completely serious and said it in champ select first as well as gg (not joking around). Of course, he was the guy who failed and went 0/5/6 in the beginning. STILL WAITING FOR ELO HEAVEN
Been playing Blitz again.
Lots of fun causing havoc.
confirmation, yet again, that koreans are better than us.
Been on a support Blitz spree and it has only strengthened my belief that the support makes the AD carry. I have had competent AD carries in all of them (in most I was inhouse with the ad carry so haha) ,but my latest game was with a complete random and we synced incredibly well.
Yeah, the good carries know it's their support that gets them fed too. I've seen a few duds apologize for sucking and bringing their support down, but most of them just play the blame game. The good ones almost always come with compliments on a well run lane and clutch saves.
Sadly, no matter how good you are as support, you can't turn a bad lane around without a good jungle. It's when you get both that bot is truly doomed no matter what. Managed to feed an observant mid a few times, but it's only a shot at saving the game, not the lane.
It takes a really bad carry to have no chance of winning a blitz lane at any point imo. He just has so much he can do to guaruntee kills and clean get aways.
Seen it happen.
Then again, I was the opposing support so that probably shouldn't be a sad face...
Blitz is death on stupid carries, but when you're actually intelligent(a rare trait some days) he's really not that hard on the lane. A support that wards and keeps them from bush camping goes a long way towards keeping competent carries from getting trashed, turning the lane into a game of wear and tear with the lack of healing from Blitz being a determining factor in how things go. When your carry keeps getting pecked down to half life or so without any real trade happening, not even Blitz can turn the inevitable engagement into a winning scenario. He can survive it though.
1st - a silly tip, but a useful 1. If you have very little time to play and need to get your 1st win of the day, play 1 game of dominion vs ai. The longest game I've played in dominion was about 16 minutes. The shortest was about 7 min or so. Anyway, its the fastest possible way to get your 1st win of the day.
2nd thing - I played about 4-5 games using twitch yesterday and won all but 1 of them. While not always practical, I really, really like being able to go invisible and follow the enemy team around, etc. Pretty sure I stole blue and red multiple times in every single game as twitch. You can push your lane, then go invisible and wander around the jungle or look for a gank. Plus I was running tp... + whoever you are a laning against is likely to be a bit more cautious and get a bit nervous if you are mia. Anyway, my mid game with twitch is pretty sick. My early game is capt farm. Anyway, me likes.
sigh, I started back playing zilean yesterday, and remember why he was the first champion I truly liked. Sadly I've lost a couple of games with him for the simple fact he's still a support character and unlike with cass or a lesser extent fiddles if my team is horrible whether it be a horrible team pick or the players themselves are just horrible, I can only do so much without my carry and or tank. Even than I've had games where we were completely dominating beginning and mid, but than end game was like WTF! Why are we scattered, we need to stick together, dont go alone majority of the time they are not alone!! Dude stop focusing on trying to get kills, its not the major dictator of a game.
One game I played my team and the opposing team were neck to neck in kills, and I make a joke like how I always do. Wasn't anything insulting towards the player or breaking any code, and this was after the ashe of the opposing team made a joke first. The katarina of the opposing team goes off yelling "dude shut up we are ahead of you in kills" I look at the kill count and see they got 1 kill over us. She was simply mad that I was dropping bombs on them all game, not to mention we maintained map control the whole game..until the end where my teammates as acting...well I better not say. We signal baron, no one goes baron. The teemo omg the teemo, I have no clue what language he spoke but he never helped at all!!!jst stayed in the bushes, even when team fights broke out right in front of him.
Another game we were losing simple from sheer... i better not say, and we had a evelynn who was just talking shit to everyone and basicslly killing left and right. She basically called everyone but me on the team a noob. I mean better not have called me one, everyone left me a zilean to defend our bottom turret alone....from dr mundo and master yi...I mean yea that tower wasn't going down anytime soon, but my mana isn't fucking infinite. got what my first death when that tower fell, but still.
edit
also I learned my lesson about playing against cait as fiddles, and never again will i do it.
wait, pacovs american, since when?
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