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
I wasn't saying there should be rules necessarily, or that we shouldn't do things outside of the meta. I'm just saying that the meta is what people know, so going beyond that is going to be pushing the comfort zone for some people. It also kind of makes trying to balance teams based on what role people are picking, not as effective... Just thinking out loud on what might have been causing problems.
I really appreciate you being nice to my friend Pacov and everyone else for being cool to him when he'd make bad mistakes. My hope was that he'd be playing on my team and when he ended up in a lane with you I was a little worried. It is funny to hear that you maybe gave him a pep talk about being less passive? In the game he and I played in after the in house games were over, he was tower diving like a madman and I wondered what had gotten into him.
So... we have had some separate issues with the in house games.
- Team Stacking - Has gotten a lot better. Its a really hard thing to balance when people's skill level is all over the place, but whats worse is all these people (like my friend JK) who don't know a lot of champs or roles.
- Player Targeting - Are these games supposed to be fun or not? If your afraid of Vlad mopping your entire team with a certain champ, then ban that champ by all means. If you know the other team has an inexperienced player who only plays one champ well, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see people banning or picking that champ to screw him and his team over.
- Lane Switching - As far as lane switching and invasions go, I guess it gets tricky. Newer players don't see a lot of invasions at their level and don't know how to cope as well. Kinda sucks when an invasion is successful and the game is pretty much over at the start but I guess they gotta learn somehow and as long as its a balanced team, what the hell. Lane switching... Peter has over a 1000 wins so he should know what zoning is and he should be able to handle a 2v1 but not so much I guess. I haven't talked to Cow so I don't know if he was more upset that he thought he'd be owning with Fiddle against a champ without a stun or that he had to listen to Peter bitching about Yorick on bottom. I don't know what the answer is to this...
- Pacov's Rage - If no one else has told you yet, you were out of line and I understand how what you were saying would make someone want to leave the game. Post the video if you want, but someone playing poorly is not an excuse to lay into him as hard as you did and some of the things you said when he came back were... unfortunate. We all get frustrated, especially in some of these situations with wildly different skill levels but please try and maintain a little better when you're upset.
I don't know if there's a solution to these issues because the cutthroat and competitive attitudes of some just won't ever mix well with the relaxed and casual attitudes of people who just want to play some fun games with people they know on vent.
yah - still need to check that vid to see if/how much of a douche I was being.
Speaking of vids though - I'm uploading what is my current all time favorite now. Hopefully you all find it as amusing as I do as its just a silly arse one.
edit - oh, I was being quite a douche bag. Certainly excessive. I am uploading a clip of the action that set me off. What put me over the top was his rq... after that, i bitched on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Anyway, sorry you guys had to put up with my pissing and moaning - certainly not a fun atmosphere - especially when all the other guys on my team are easy going and kind.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=358872
Talked to Peter today and I think the drama when him and Cow quit was a matter of different perspectives.
#1 Vlad picks on Peter with an unusual mid lane choice. Pete's usually a solid AP vs AP sorta guy, but Jarvan throws him off his game (which I can relate to after getting my ass handed to me while having to play Olaf mid one game last night and not knowing how to play against the AP champ I was going against). Next game instead of manning up and facing off against another good mid player, he decides to go bottom to make life hell again for Pete and another one of the less adaptable members of the group.
#2 Vlad picked a strong counter for mid cause... well, that's what you're supposed to do in Draft. As possibly the best player in the group, I've seen him hold back a little some times when he outclasses someone but since he had felt focused the game before I guess he wasn't in the mood to take it easy. Next game the other team counter picks his champ and since Old Mother Sol didn't raise no fool, he simply switches lanes so as not to have a miserable game.
I will start with the Jarvan game. I was trying out bruiser mid because we already had a strong AP champ imo (jungle Diana) and I felt that we needed another bruiser for our comp to work. Getting ganked almost once a minute along with getting blamed by my team for the majority of the match made me a very unhappy person for game #2.
During game number 2 I was Yorick mid versus peter morgana I think? Peter played the game well and only died like one time to a tower dive Karl assisted me with. However, I had full control of Krdax's jungle (the person I was pissed at most at that point) so I felt little need to hold back and counter jungled for the majority of the match.
During the 3rd match Pacov pmed me telling me Karl was mid diana and Peter was solo top jayce, but it turns out neither was true and I was hardcountered mid by Fiddlestix. Probably the most retardedly one sided match up I could have, so I simply did what I would in a normal game and asked for my bot lane to switch with me. They responded well and we ended up with a win.
Before the 4th match I found out that I REALLY like playing Yorick, so again I asked my team to do a lane swap so I could 2v1 bot. However, one member of our team was on the phone the whole time and facechecked 5 people that everyone in vent knew were there. After that, Karl's blue reset so mid and I had to scramble to help him out there resulting in both of us being behind by 4 or so creeps. I barely killed Pacov while getting away with a sliver of health about 3 or 4 minutes in and the game went downhill from there. I do not know exactly what happened in the other vent channel, but everyone just starting doing weird plays and not working together at all. Pacov somehow ended up duo top with Riven and for the longest time I was 1v1 bot against the enemy jungle Yi.
I do not feel like game #1, 3, or 4 were my fault at all, but I do accept that I should have responded better to being ganked in game 1 and not taken it out on peter in game #2.
This is yesterday's game night from my point of view.
Also, I will state that going mid as a melee bruiser isn't something new I did in the games just to fuck with peter. I started doing bruiser mid long ago when Nocturne was first released and he could ult from mid to bot or top for easy ganks. I apologize if it threw peter off though.
*A wild Bryff appears!*
I'm gonna give my opinion on Diana. I play Kass mid and went against Diana mid twice. Both times diana started with dorans and I started with boots/3pots. I do a q/w/q/e/q/r skill progression, and pick focus crystal > blasting wand > RoA to start. Well, this is the first time I go against diana so I test her out a bit and q her at level 1. She trades with crescent. She does more damage and starts out with more hp (probably the dorans), but here's the thing....her crescent is a skill shot that travels forward. for me to get my q on her I have to run into her. It's possible for the diana to crescent before I get in range and then back off, making me run pointlessly into the crescent. Diana can also engage the same way with it, and even hit with it sometimes as I'm standing behind my tower (and not getting cs because kass is melee.) As I try to get cs diana just stands there and keeps crescenting me. I can walk backwards, but then it hits the minions, granting her cs and allowing her to zone me.
At level 6 I try doing the rqew combo and then aaing. I think all of those combined did as much damage as just my q does to other champs. Then Diana just shields and my w is worthless. I get crescented, (big damage), I have to run so I warp out but she just ults and does her pull as I'm running and take more damage.
I'd also like mentioning that if I do run up to diana with q, she can crescent and ult to me before my silence hits her, so kiting and trading more damage was pretty much impossible. Maybe I just suck. (I do suck but I try to hope I might be better). Or I should start with dorans or something.
*DG pros use flame!*
*Wild Bryff fainted!*
Kassadin is pretty much hardcountered by any melee mid. There isn't really much you can do in that situation except farm as best you can and maybe roam to bot or top to gank after clearing creep waves after level 6. I do not think there is a single melee mid that kassadin can beat 1v1 in any similar skill situation.
So I'm not completely sane. It feels good to have my insanity back.
Oh also, I like playing these in house games, so please invite me! warning though, I don't have experience with a lot of champs so I really am a noob that deserves to get raged on 24/7.
I'm sorry that I wasn't happy in that first game, but I do tend to get unhappy when the same dumb things happen repeatedly. One time things are fine. I typically don't get too upset when somebody makes a stupid face check or something. Everybody makes one time mistakes.
But I am generally less pleased when the same mistake happens over and over. In the first game, we were literally unable to ever teamfight because of some silliness. After about the 3rd fail I wasn't too pleased.
I'll try and be less ranty about this kind of stuff, but people really do need to try and learn from fails too. I mean, I make plenty of mistakes, but I try and learn from them and try to really hard to never make the same mistake twice in the same game.
In any case, I think that the fundamental problem is that the skill gulf is growing larger. Right now we have a cluster of people who are probably in the 1500-1700 range and a cluster of people in the 200-800 range. Games can turn into a contest of how hard a higher ELO guy can exploit lower ELO people - it could be Vlad doing less common combos mid, or me repeatedly ganking Peter because he doesn't position well in lane, or Pacov mega feeding with Ez. This tends to be frustrating for everybody because the less skilled players are unhappy about getting murdered in lane and the more skilled players are frustrated about the feeding.
With that being said, you also don't want to have rules where people dont try their hardest. Its condescending to less experienced players to not try your hardest - the only thing worse than losing is losing to somebody who isn't even trying hard.
I don't know what the best solution is, but it might be best to set aside times for more competitive play (doing 5 man teams with more organized teams) and have other nights where we do the more usual mostly in houses with everybody. During the later nights, more experienced players could try and work on new champs/roles instead of playing their best champs. That should even things out a bit.
Also, I don't really think that we should be paying much attention to what Peter complains about. He is openly irrational. He complains because Vlad went mid with a tanky champ (which is a fairly standard play with an AP Jungle). But Peter himself has recently played AD Swain top, AD Malz bot, support Fiddles, and support Jayce. So he has no grounds for complaining about people playing champs in different ways.
Then go top instead of going against the two weakest players on my team. If you want to stomp noobs that is fine but don't do it in a game that I am in. Sure you could say something smart like," WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU ADAPT AND SWAP LANES?????" Asking to swap lanes with a guy like peter is like asking to have sex with Megan fox. It just wont fucking happen.
I could hardly stand listening to peter bitch and moan the entire game and when you started walking into my jungle like you were a bad ass, where in any real game you would be free kills over and over, I got a little more than pissed. You know how to play the game and taking advantage of people like peter and new players is pretty low in my opinion. If you want to actually play to get better and practice instead of noob stomping you should either lane vs someone your skill level or jungle instead of stomping the shit out of peter or another new player.
To be fair, a big part of any ELO is stomping the shit out of the bad player. Even at 1600+ there are players who are either bad (somehow) or just are having a bad game. And the best way to win is still to exploit them mercilessly. Games are generally never about winning the most fair matchup, but identifying the weakest matchup and maximizing your advantage.
I mean, if I'm jungling, I'm not looking for the most fair gank. I'm looking for the lane that I can best exploit.
But yes, a big part of the problem is Peter's pure stubbornness where he just won't take ideas from anybody else on his team. This really hurts his entire team in anything other than the completely generic game that he is used to.
You intentionally picked to super hard counter me. I COULD have swapped top, but it would have been a waste not sending Taric/MF to hardcounter Fiddle mid.
This is pure genius! It wouldn't work for me because I'm fantastic at almost every champ and the handful that I'm not amazing with, I would master halfway through any game I play.
In all seriousness this really is a very good idea. When I created a smurf account to help teach my IRL buddies how to play, playing free week champions was the only thing that kept me sane. When they were alternating between senseless feeding and running away from winnable fights with full health while leaving me to die, I could at least tell myself "Well... at least I'm learning how to play Nidalee."
I think this would be a great way to foster a more casual, friendly atmosphere when there's a crazy skill gap going on.
Sounds like i missed out on quite the fun! Maybe we could get group therapy?
GT ftw.
3 new vids uploading now.
http://www.youtube.com/user/LeagueOfPacov?feature=mhee
fyi - I'll likely be on a little earlier than normal tonight - this might mean I'm not free at the usual 8:20 start time. Just a heads up. If I am free right around then, I will wait around - otherwise, hopefully I'll catch you folks then. Going out of tower early tomorrow morning so I'm looking to maximize my nerd time
Good article and thx for the link. The non farm focus is a huge change in things. I wonder how/if we could pull such a thing off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucqgijlk9MY&feature=plcp
Part 2 of the AP mid tips and advice video I linked. (Was put up today)
Just a quick point to that pacov...before I read that I went up against Ahri mid who got mp boots and then negatron cloak, building up to abysmal scepter. Although I didn't die much if I recall, that Ahri was super tanky against my abilities while I wasn't (They also lacked a jungler so the ahri grabbed blue all the time and spammed spells all over the place). I'm thinking my Kass build will now be T1 boots>focus crystal>Rod of Ages>negatron cloak>abysmal scepter, with T2 boots in there somewhere.
Happy to play some pick ups with you
thx for all the games. Going out of tower (). I'll be checking the forums at any rate. cya fellas.
side note - I honestly think nunu top is a little op. His nerfs were made to restore his counter jungling. They did that to some degree. But the other thing they did - made him a safe, roaming support and a virtually unkillable top lane that doesn't need to care about mana. He's easily my fav top lane now and is fairly difficult to counter. The only good thing is that he's still not extremely valuable in the team fight phase. Don't get me wrong, he serves a purpose, but there are plenty of other solo tops that are more usefully in team fights than him. I just love that I rarely need to even care about warding with him solo top. You get ganked, you snowball whoever can f you up and then blood boil to safety or to reengage. And you can play like a jackass, take a bunch of damage, then just heal it and snowball again. It's like automatic favorable trades. And its a solo top that I run a full support kit + masteries... and build THREE gps items. Any character that can safely do all of that... and just randomly decide to go steal from the enemy jungle might just be a little op.
pbe got updated with the new champion's splash screen and assets. Here's a vid showing the model + kat's new model.
I'm sorry for not being happy about some things tonight, but we REALLY need to make sure that people are listening to each other. Its a really big deal. There are a lot of things in this game that just require teamwork, and if we have people playing by themselves and instead of the team, it is going to frustrate everybody. If somebody says "we need to be here", please, at least try and be there.
One team coordinating while your team is playing as individuals is one of the most frustrating things that can happen.
I don't blame you for your frustration at all Karl, but maybe go easy on the whole blaming everyone thing for your jungle being slow in the one game, when it was 100% that random Gragas who ruined our game. KrdaxDrkrun and I should have responded faster, but honestly I was just stunned by the whole thing. I don't think I've seen that happen since I was below lvl 30. It really set the tone for the rest of the game and we were doomed to fail.
As for the other game, KrdaxDrkrun and I were actually having a great game bot and I feel top and mid were really off the ball in terms of the counterjungling and ganks. That lost us the game, because Vlad had free reign of our jungle, even though Karl had warned it would happen. Top and mid really should have been ready to go to red and not being on vent is no excuse for not having map awareness or paying attention to your team mates, including pings.
I don't know if I would do another 5v5 inhouse Summoner's with a few randoms thrown in. I get why we do them (don't have 10 ppl), but when one team gets a fairly competent random and the other gets a non-leashing, psychotic rage quitter random, it really isn't fun. At least when it is people we know, they can be somewhat accountable for wrecking the game.
A side note, if one team is obviously dealing with a ragequitter or something else terrible, it might be nice to stop ganking the crap out of the people who have to put in the 20min. I mean if you can end the game, that's fine, but 4 man ganks bot when we have no mid player is just demoralizing on top of everything else.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
