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
The ganking got reduced pretty substantially, but the jungle gold is the same, or maybe even less.
Riot is clueless when it comes to the jungle. Your early game is heavily nerfed (the wraiths are worth less than they were in season 2 until the 39 minute mark), but you do get more gold/xp from the jungle late. But thats right when everybody on the team is taking it. So if you farmed until 25 minutes, AND you refused to give any buffs/camps to laners, you would be a tiny bit ahead of where you were season 2. But if you give up a buff or two, or fail a gank, you will be behind the season 2 pace.
Riot tried to start with the "well, just argue with your mid and tell them that they aren't getting blue ever", which nobody bought. But since then they have since pretty much admitted that the numbers are crap.
Some junglers like WW kind of work because their rhythm is right. Right now you probably don't want to be ganking much early because if you blow your ganks, you are WAY behind the pace. Like WAY WAY behind. So you have to farm early to keep close. You then want to go for periodic high percentage ganks. Well, thats exactly how WW wants to play anyway, so he works. I think that some others like Darius will work like that too.
Jungle really isn't any more difficult than before. But you have to invest gold in the items to keep it at the same level as before, which hurts a little too. The good proposal I have seen on the forums is that jungle gold should be reduced by like 25% for everybody, but items like Machete give 35% more jungle gold, while upgrades might give 50% more gold. So that way junglers can get more money out of the jungle but laners won't benefit from poaching it so much.
I think that makes good sense for the most part. I like the idea of giving a perk like that to the jungle if its going to be more difficult to gank (free ward bonanza). But in the full context of what that would mean, I'm not so sure. I wonder if you'd end up snowballing via counter jungling this way. I'd think it would give a decent adv to counter jungle champs as the loss of a camp or a crippled camp would then hurt you more. As it stands, jungle be nerfed.
info re: new champ
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2874653
mr rengar has been hit with the nerf bat.
So....initial analysis. As you said, the "metagame" makes it the gap between newbie and experienced player grand-canyon-esque. I've played with the three characters from the tutorial along with alistar a couple times. I suppose my first question is: in order to better grasp the nuances of gameplay, should I just pick one character and get good with him/her, with maybe a couple different types of builds. Or should I try playing with as many characters as possible to increase general familiarity? I read on mobafire that the latter option is better, but I feel mildly overwhelmed by all the different options in characters, builds, and items (I was never very good at Demigod's strategic build/item part of the game). Not to mention other things like which way to build masteries and what runes to buy (if any). I feel I should just focus on one type of character at a time (so alistar for tank, then do the other archetypes), but if trying out what's available is better, I can do that. If focusing one at a time is okay, is Alistar alright? I know he is "difficult" to use effectively, but assuming that I'm placed in games with similarly non-experienced players, I'd hope my efficiency with a character would grow with my level. Or is there a much easier character to buy and stick with, preferably one with multiple diff ways to use him/her. Of the ones I've tried so far, I think I liked Garen best actually
I guess that leads to a second question: should I stop doing the v. A.I. matches? I've noticed my summoner level grows after them (I'm at lvl 4 atm), but doesn't the ELO rank grow with summoner level? I would prefer not to finally be ready to switch to real games only to get clobbered repeatedly until my ELO drops, or am I misunderstanding the leveling system? The A.I. is okay, as you said. They gank pretty well, so that helps learn to use wards/caution/etc., but their teamwork likely does not follow the standard meta. That am I'm pretty sure they don't jungle. In fact, jungling seems to be the strangest thing to me. The A.I. never goes for the dragon/baron, and the my co-op teams never seemed incline to do it either. I feel like I'm just going to ignore it for now.
Anyways thanks for the initial intro help. I've gone through the tutorials and all the info on LoL's site, and I've begun to browse elsewhere. I suppose I'll still in the "wait and see" mode if I want to get more committed.
let's see...
There are 2 types of elo in the game. Normal elo (which you cannot see) and ranked elo, which you can... eventually. Normal elo is calculated based on wins/losses etc and is the hidden factor that drives matchmaking. It's not perfect, but the ideal normal game situation would be to have you paired off with 9 other (if you are playing summoner's rift) people that are of the same skill level as you. So, that's what they do with matchmaking. Once you hit level 30, you are able to play in ranked games (if you have enough characters unlocked - something like 18 or so - not sure exactly how many, but you'll likely have enough via IP purchases by that time). You start out ranked play at 1200 elo. This isn't displayed, but that's what you start out as. Then you have a total of 10 placement matches. During those matches, you gain and lose a higher elo amount to try to get you to where you closer to your actual elo without having you win or loss 100 games. Anyway, you have a bit of a climb to make it to ranked play, but that's ideal as you would likely get your butt whooped if you were able to play ranked games with level 30's now.
Do whatever is fun for you. There's no harm in trying out normal games. Actually, you'll eventually learn more about the meta that way "organically." Really, though, its just a matter of what your preference is. If you find you are always winning vs AI and want to do something else, by all means, play some normals. Worst case your normal elo goes down until you are eventually paired with folks of similar skill level. That's ok, but you'll eventually get out of that - or you'll start playing more with pals and that will raise your elo up, etc. All this stuff I'm saying about normal elo, though - I wouldn't even think about it. You can't see the value, so you don't know where you are in comparison to someone else. So, just play and have fun however you enjoy yourself. And again, to over stress this - choose not to give a rip about elo in normal games. Just play for fun and to get better and better.
Correct, they do not. But they have many observable patterns. Once you pick up on them, its easy to know when you'll have a few extra ai's heading your way and so on.
Well, that's kind of difficult to say. The truth as to why I'm at my skill level is that I've played every single character and understand how they work, what their abiltiies are, etc. Having done that, I have a good frame of reference. Then, I focus on mastering particular champions. For instance, I play a lot of top lane - which is a solo lane in the current meta. As a result, I focus on trying to get better with characters like Jayce, Malphite, Shen, and singed. There are plenty of other viable top lane champs, but those are the ones I spend the most time with. Other things to consider, but more advanced, people can counter pick you once you get to play in draft mode. This means that let's say your best single character is singed in the top lane. I could pick jayce and that would counter you pretty hard and make it difficult for you in lane. The point of what I just said is that its good to have a variety of champs that you are good with in a particular role (top, jungle, mid, adc, support). While you are just learning though, I'd just suggest trying out whatever you want, learn the mechanics, and then spend a little time playing with whatever character you like best.
re: what character to try to stick with - I'd say just keep playing with whoever you find fun. If you want to see who plays what champs the most, go here and then click on popularity. http://www.lolking.net/champions/
Oh - and if I actually make it onto PBE (I'm queued up), I'll stream some of the new champ if anyone's interested. I'll make a quick post here if/when that happens. I'll probably only be playing around on PBE for like 20-30 though.
also... this:
ok then - if anyone is interested, I'll be streaming in pbe. Going to check out the new character and look over the new gifting options. live in 5. http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1
So, just in case you didn't know, stacking black cleavers is current, really, really op. Try it.
new on pbe...
Black Cleaver Armor Penetration changed to Unique Armor Penetration reduced to 10 from 15 Passive effect now reduces armor by 6.25% per stack down from 7.5% Brutilizer Armor Penetration reduced to 10 from 15.
What are some of your opinions on Nami? So far, I've rather enjoyed her and I like her a hell of a lot more then I ever liked Lulu. Her kit isn't that bad, a bit of a mana hog, which seems to be helped with a Chalice.
I kind of think that Nami sucks so far, but maybe people just haven't figured out how to play her yet.
Good news - notes appear to be live
edit - fyi - HUGE nerf on pbe for black cleaver. I think they really, really overdid it. They had a nerf on pbe before... this is the latest. Worth a quick look.
http://www.newsoflegends.com/index.php/pbe-black-cleaver-nerfs-and-buff-particle-changes-hit-the-pbe-533/
and last.. karl - watch this... interesting interaction on vi's ult. It kind of super chases anyone. While ww would ult instantly, this chases after a distance. With her q (gap closer that goes over walls), could be some potential. I still think she will be a soft jung tho.
A treat for you guys. I get the voice actors from LoL to say whatever I want them to. Watch - seriously... I did. I request many insane things for them to say and they say all of them.
http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/b/347077788
re: nami - I think she's fun to play and reasonably balanced. BUT - I don't think adc's know how to work with her all that well just yet. For instance, her empower ability gives the adc a slow + gives the adc a short move speed buff (passive). But adc's seem to realize that and don't go all in as a result or go for more damage (my experience anyway). Then there is her q for 1.5 seconds of cc. It's usually pretty obvious if that is going to hit, but adc's typically don't go for the free damage. I really like her ult for its range. Anyway, I think she's reasonably rounded and a good addition as a support - but she'll be kind of weak until adc's really learn how to play with her and create some synergy. I think her and draven would be sick if nami + draven could get on the same page. His move speed buff + empower, he could easily knock the adc to the side where nami could place a bubble and draven could just unload. Lots and lots of potential imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSauMwWZABsI wanted you all to see this because its the most ridiculousness display of balls I have ever seen. The number 1 clip is just amazing. The zero hesitation and excellent target choices are awe inspiring.
TIL if someone has Aegis and another person has Bulwark, then everyone in range will have both auras. That's a total of 45 MR for the team, which seems really strong. - thx reddit.
I'm guessing that might be a bug, but perhaps not. They really need to issue a hot fix for the cleaver nonsense and likely this.
lag wars vent still down... setting up skype...
skype = IIpacovII
um... so thornmail procs liandry's torment... let that sink in...
anyway, of the bs things in lol right now, I really dislike black cleaver enough that I wont stack it if i pick it up. I think folks that go bruiser mid with 20 bc's are assholes.
Now, I am willing to stack a bulwark + upgraded bulwark... somehow feels less cheap... but I'm sure its still cheap. 45 mr for the team tho...
Aegis and Bulwark shouldn't stack since the aura has the same name. That's a bug.
? black cleaver and black cleaver shouldn't stack... so that's the rule? Same base name = no stack?
No.
There are now unique abilities that have names and you're not supposed to be able to stack them even though they're on different items. Apparently you can though in the case of runic bulwark and aegis. most of black cleavers abilities aren't unique, so you can stack them until the nerf.
pacov's great adventure
If you mouse over abilities, all unique abilities have a name. If the name of the ability matches, it stacks.
For examples, Treads and Zephyr both have a unique called "Tenacity". Since the names match, those abilities on those items don't stack.
Aegis and Bulwark both have auras called "Legion", so they shouldn't stack.
ah - k thanks.
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