Update 5/25/2017
Well, I started a thread back in Dec 2011 that’s seen a lot of activity (some 922,000 views over the course of a few years apparently...). That thread had a good deal of tips/strategies/discussions about League of Legends from new and old players alike. You can find the previous thread (now archived) here: https://forums.joeuser.com/413863. I think its time to start fresh with a new thread.
What’s this thread all about?For those that followed the previous thread, the type of content you see here will be fairly consistent to what you are used to. Please consider this a place to discuss LoL related content as you like. I'll do the same and treat the thread as a blog as well where I talk about what’s going on with me in LoL. Feel free to jump in and join the discussion if you like.
Quick background on meI played a lot of Demigod as pacov/cheesuscrust. Back in August 2011, I started getting heavily involved in League of Legends, and folks from the community were kind enough to help me figure things out. I play LoL most nights, stream, make videos and it’s my main gaming interest.
Some links
I've got battleblock anyway
I've got both Trine 2 and BB as well.
Pro Fizz Tip #1: Don't try and farm creeps with his Ult, doesn't work very well on them.
GL in all your fizzy endeavors!
So, question - how important do you fellas think getting early dragons is now? Been watching the lcs games there seems to be a ton of focus now at taking early drags including strats with a roamer.
Q2 - worth taking jungler that excels at dragons/drag control early for the extra gold?
um, there's two big things that are different about LCS:
1- 4v0 meta is completely and totally different than how we play
2- Supports and Junglers are chosen specifically for the early dragon rush, and they know how to juggle the dragon aggro to take no damage. This means stuff like Thresh and Elise.
The 3:30 dragons that they do are no way relevant to how we play now.
Now, if you want to have "real talk" about 12 minute dragons... i mean even then the 4v0 meta totally warps that. Do you have 100+ CS at 10 minutes on your ADC every time? Combined with a really well farmed midlaner?
It's really not the case.
In soloqueue, you're much better of only doing dragon rotations after getting kills or if you know you just forced mid/bot to base. We don't have the CS'ing ability that pros have -> lower levels, lower items -> takes longer + we don't juggle aggro correctly -> we take more damage -> we all die.
adding to this:
Obviously free early dragons are a great thing, and you should try to get dragons whenever they are "free". But unless the game is 3v5 and you've already taken every outer tower in first 10 minutes, a dragon isn't "Free". You're trading health, time (CS/EXP/Tower damage) and mana for global gold.
First 10-15 minutes, that global gold is slightly only more than you would have gotten just CS'ing (if it is a cannon minion wave). So really, only the jungler and support gain a significant amount from a dragon.
i'm never going to say that getting dragons are bad, or that you should give up dragons that yoiu can get safely. However, Dragon is a very similar "throw" as Baron, if the enemy team isn't dead and you aren't on a team of diamonds. Sometimes you get those awesome sneaky barons and win the game because of it, and an early dragon can have a similar effect if you're able to consistently rotate to dragon every 6 minutes afterewards.
You know how sometimes you've seen some streamer do some awesome tower dive, or tank a tower to kill it fast? And it seems to work out great. Then you do it and it is awful? That's just because of the CS'ing ability that these guys have. They're 5-10 minutes ahead of us with items.
Well... what about junglers that can solo dragon safely at level 6 or earlier. For instance, I have trynd down to a science for solo dragons which I believe has worked 100% of the time for me in solo queue. I can also solo fairly easy with udyr. Both strats require at least a 21/9... but were also during that whole "i ain't ganking your lane" jungle setup I was working for a bit. I'm just wondering if overall if the lack of ganks early might be worth it if I did a modification of my old style. Eg - With trynd, I power level to 6 and give no ganks - but you hit level 6 at 6-7 minutes and immediately go drag. After that, you go for ganks as normal (previously I'd continue to farm out ff and still not provide jungle pressure for a bit). Same goes with udyr. Anyway, thoughts - good/bad idea to do zero ganks while you power farm up to level 6 (again 6-7 minutes in game time until that happens) then solo drag.
re: your comments/feedback on my fizz game - so, you think its a good idea to go sheen into chalice? You don't think that's a bit costly? Also, the other component of lich bane is that mana regen item now, right? You don't find that to be sufficient? Obviously with where I was for last hitting, double dorans was not as useful for mana regen (felt like I needed the added hp for how 1 cs = a whoopin on my health bar due to matchup.
No you build Sheen when the /enemy/ goes Chalice.
I don't know much about Fizz, but I can give you some advice about playing bot lane with someone you know.
You seemed to be getting kinda frustrated during your Leona game with people pointing out your missed skill shots. I was getting the impression you felt under the gun so to speak from things you said on your stream, and the distraction/pressure wasn't improving your ult aim. In fact you mentioned something about it doing the opposite?
Maybe keep that in mind next time you feel like announcing every time I miss a Thresh hook next time we're laning together.
re: your advice, thunder - yup. I played a bunch like crap yesterday and was a grouchy shite. I'm aware and will try to tone it down.
Spent an hour or so playing this today: http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/4562816
Quite unique anyway...
So, I took a shot at the new nidalee yesterday and I really like it. I played her top lane using that Korean guide that hit reddit recently. It actually worked really well and I worked over a jax quite nicely. I really like how you get to go ham when you hit with spears or traps. She's actually quite bursty as long as you manage her hunt passive. That passive made laning super easy and really rewarded you/enabled you to trade very, very well if you utilized it properly. It did make team fights a little more challenging in a way, though. Unlike old nidalee, you go in and try to mix things up a bit more aggressively. But when everyone is clustered together, it can be more difficult to see who has the hunted passive on them. I went in a few times and was not sure I was getting the damage I wanted on the correct target. Might be some room for improvement visually there, but overall I like it and really enjoyed playing her. That said, NA was super laggy for me in a weird way last night. I had 100-110 ping (not terrible, but not good) with these weird delay spikes here and there. Ping stayed constant, but I'd get like .5 seconds-1 second of unresponsiveness intermittently... which made things quite a bit less fun
So... I hopped back over on LAN to my amazing level 4 account (now level 6). A few MC folks started playing over there. I think I had more fun solo than with, though. It's about what you'd expect. Really low skill cap stuff, troll nonsense, etc. The best moment of the night was where we had a Udyr that intentionally fed 12 times and then quit. Our game lasts like 50 minutes. Poor udyr keeps rejoining and then leaving because he wants to play another game and troll another team, but he can't because our games keeps on going. So, I take a bit of pleasure in knowing that this guy can't move on to being an arse in his next game. That said, we lose the game when the talon on our team decides he needs to talk to the udyr during one of his disconnect attempts. Both of our base towers are down. We've successfully fending off like 3 attempts of the enemy to back door. We fail on the 4th because the talon is too busy typing in chat to the troll person. hue.
Anyway, I doubt I'll keep playing a bunch on LAN unless I have annoying lag issues on NA. It's really just a bunch of dumb games with the occasional jungler. Side note - level 4 on NA - don't decide to play ww jungle.... you will not have fun. Carries only por favor.
MY NECK MY BACK LICK MY ....................
As always, thank you for your contribution to the discussion, cow. heh.
So, along the lines of improving my attitude in games, etc. I'm continuing to think about that, Kind of a difficult nut to crack for me completely anyway.
So, I have 4 games modes/attitudes when I play with people. Going to list then talk/think through them.
So, barring a rough day prior to gaming, etc, I almost always start as no nonsense pacov. I don't really think that's a bad thing. If I'm just getting started for the night and folks want to do an aram or a twisted treeline, it's pretty easy for me to shift to easy going mode. I mentioned tt because I don't really have a level of map proficiency to be all hardcore no nonsense mode. I just play my best and try to follow other people's calls.
If I've already played a few games in my no nonsense mode, I can typically only switch over to being easy going for a game or 2. For instance, if MadCast does an in house and we are in one of those super fun scenarios where you know you are going to lose at champ select (side note - don't think I've ever felt like we will lose a game because some high skill cap player is on one team.... its the bronze/silver fella or the guy with spotty internet that you know will make a win next to impossible). Anyway, for those sorts of things, I can suck it up and play one as easy going pacov... but that's about it. Super predictable, unfun games really just serve to move me closer to tilt. That said, those MC in houses are about playing together and not so much kicking the guy with the crap net that will lose the game for you. If you go in knowing that, you are much better off.
Random negative interjection - I literally do not like people with crap internet. Well, I guess somewhat like the way you folks do as well - eg I very much doubt we would play together as a group at all (non MC) if any of us had awful internet connections. Everyone has their spotty issues here and there, but its folks that consistently have issues that I absolutely hate playing with... even arams. I get to the point where if I've been dumb enough to play with folks several times with crap net that I actually dislike the person for their internet. I've got 1 in guy MC where I refuse to make posts in the LoL chat if he's around because I absolutely do not want him in a game wiith me. Really nice guy though. Completely unreliable in a game and therefore someone I would never want to play with.
I continue this long jibba jabba in a bit...
while i don't think it's completely unreasonable to be upset when people screw up or whatever, you do have to make sure you take criticism well the other way. My opinion has always (generally) been that it is best to have meta or gameplay-analysis sort of questions out-of-game because trying to dismantle someone's entire playstyle while in-game is unlikely to work
Criticism while in-game should generally be limited to "oh we made a mistake we should not do". For example, "we need to focus the fed Yasuo", "let's not initiate 4v5", "you needed to not go botlane to farm while baron is up if your TP is on cooldown", "we need a ward here", etc. Most people are painfully aware that they are being a Blitzhook magnet and ragging on them more about it isn't going to provide them with any new insight. They just died/got chunked to 50%/blew flash. They are already probably upset at themself.
This is doubly true if you are not very good at taking criticism yourself. As Karl said before, you tend to be one of the most critical people we play with (not necessarily a bad thing in-and-of-itself if you're pointing out legitimate issues that get solved). And you're much better about being critical about your own mistakes as well (compared to someone like Dan, who literally has never made a mistake in his life). On the other hand, you tend to take other people being critical of your mistakes very poorly (at least while in-game. You're at least willing to have a discussion about it out-of-game). This kind of puts other people in this frustrating position where:
1- if i am sharing botlane with you and the lane is doing not doing well, i get nagged for champion selection / getting hit by skill shots / jungler not ganking enough / whatever
2- i'm not really able to say "hey there's this thing that you didn't do very well" or "do not do this thing" or "do do this thing" because then you'll go like super-mega-ham in an attempt to prove me wrong.
3- i end up saying it, and then bad things happen + there's verbal anger -> i get bitter and angry. i don't say anything, you continue to rant about stuff -> i get bitter and angry.
It's very similar thing to where Cow will pick B-tier champs (that he is really good at) but then get really pissed off when the enemy doesn't play "fair" and picks an A/S-tier champ. Or when the rest of his team picks a "shitty" teamcomp. Because there is only one B-tier champ allowed and it's already been chosen. And so we spend the next 20 minutes listening to that madness.
tl;dr No-Nonsense Pacov should not become Tilt Pacov the moment Nagging-Pacov-In-A-Lane-That-Is-Losing-And-Someone-Tells-Him-To-Stop-It happens.
I think one thing that everyone can do, myself included, is if there is a hugely questionable play made by some one or a repitition of a certain mistakes (fighting the enemy with unfavorable odds, warding without help, soloing dragon, split pushing as a support) just make a small vocalization in game like, " I need help warding next time" or " lets not 3v4 again" and then after the game is finished we can critizes our mistakes more and reflect on why the game was lost or why a particular play was bad.
Pausing for a while and talking about the game instead of instantly queuing up again would help improve everyones play. We could remove the critizing/theory crafting from in game and save it for a time where we can focus on the discussion and not splitting our attention between conversation and in game play.
Weird, I can't use the quote feature from the joeuser website.... Guess I will have to do it the old fashioned way.
"It's very similar thing to where Cow will pick B-tier champs (that he is really good at) but then get really pissed off when the enemy doesn't play "fair" and picks an A/S-tier champ. Or when the rest of his team picks a "shitty" teamcomp. Because there is only one B-tier champ allowed and it's already been chosen. And so we spend the next 20 minutes listening to that madness."
Its not about A-tier or B-tier champions its about team comps that make absolutley no sense when I am under the impression that we want to play seriously. If we have a team comp such as Quinn top, shaco, brand, vayne, nami the likelihood of winning is basically zero against a team that has any sort of initiation, tank, or sane team comp. If every lane picks squishy carries with zero team fight or crowd control potential there is almost no sense in playing the game because every lane will get destroyed and everyone will transform into there respective asshole/troll modes.
A winning team comp for me looks something like:
I also feel that I haven't been complaining (unless its bryff playing garen, and thats more of a joke anyway) about trivial shit very much at all lately. The instance in particular where you left champ select because you felt I was being absurd I remember I was joking around more than anything about my comments about laning against a fizz and you took it seriously hedgie. I will admit that I am uncomfortable laning aginst fizz still but I have learned a few things to deal with him now and rushing a defencive item seems to be my answer because I am not good enough mechanically to deal with him otherwise. That might seem a little troll on my part but it has worked in the past and prevented feeding from me and pretty much shutting down the fizz's farm/control of mid.
It's not always like that (but sometimes it is) because sometimes it's exactly how Hedgie described it: you pick B tier and expect the rest of us to pick one of the handful of current S champs from our role. I'm not sure you realize how limited of a "serious game" selection one can have depending on the meta for those of us that don't play the role with what I feel has the largest selection of viable champs in the game: mid lane. If you were Support specialist who only plays Leona/Morg/Thresh (this is talking about back when that was all that was playable, there are lots of good supports to choose from now like you said) then people would probably be more receptive about this drive to have the perfect team-comp, but not so much from the guy who plays anything he wants from the (some would say the most popular/fun) role.
Also it seems like your days of getting to Diamond have left you feeling that team comp has a huge importance in winning. Well, yes it absolutely does but less so in lower MMR games where we play in IMO. If you're more concerned than Hedgie about the team comp situation, IMO that means you need to take it down a notch because it seems like he's always very aware of any deficits on a team and how they affect the odds on who wins. When we all queue together we're usually going to be up against a similar group of players: a team with massive differences in individual skill. The games going to usually be decided more on whose feeders feed less and whose carries carry harder, so why not relax a little?
"you pick B tier and expect the rest of us to pick one of the handful of current S champs from our role."
I guess I wasn't clear. I don't give a fuck about what champion you guys play. The over all combination is what matters. Lets look at a typical pick order of people we play with in a queue.
So lets say we didn't really talk about what we wanted to play before hand. I first pick Brand, Pacov picks jungle tryndamere to everyones dismay. At this point Hedgie, bryff and thunder need to make an educated decision on there picks. We are now forced to play a split push game so we need to have strong disengage on our team with decent poke. Hedgie picks Quinn as ADC (decent pick with bird for getting out and in of fights all over map). A great pick in this senario would be lulu top (lets pretend bryff knows lulu). Realistically we would get an Irelia from bryff which is an okeyish pick... not really what we wanted but meh. Now its up to thunder to really put the cherry on top of this comp. Thunder picks Nami. Okey this is perfect. Tidal wave/bubble saves us from bad engages and her steriod works great with irelia/quinn/tryn.
Now lets look at what has been happening more often than not.
I take viktor because yolo. Pacov wants to play adc this game so we get a caitlyn on our team. At this time our comp is starting to look like a poke comp so we need a strong disengage team once again. Instead we get hedgie picking a master yi jungle (not that you ever would). Bryff takes Rengar top and thunder takes blitz crank.
This team comp is horrendous. With very little crowd control, zero tanks, and almost no peel for carries. All we would of needed to make this comp better is some sort of disengage (jayce gate, nami ult, gragas ult, karma shield speed up, amumu ult, zyra) etc. There were plenty of viable choices other than the best champions in the game to fufill this disengage role.
You are right though. If I am first pick I usually take a mid champion on a whim although several of my mids are A-S tier (I am looking at Ziggs and old Gragas). If that is the case I leave it on the last few picks to round out the comp by there best judgement, and usually I offer up suggestions on to what I think would be appropriate. I have been more than accomidating playing other roles if people want mid. I will NEVER pick a champion that will compromise team comp while playing another role.
Team comp always makes a difference regardless of skill level unless we are talking like bronze 5 or prelevel 30s. If you can't fight the enemy team simply because of bad picks that is from a bad team comp. Karl, myself, and brad have lost to gold players in twisted treeline from team comp alone.
Mid (almost any AP champion usually take into account lane opponent/team comp
i really really really disagree with this statement.
Your mid + jungle combo has a massive impact on the pacing of the game for the first 15 minutes, and how you are going to start teamfights. Top and support basically either: double-down on strengths, or flesh out your weaknesses. (excluding "cheesy" stuff like a suicide-splitpush Quinn/Teemo who have a dramatic effect on the teamcomp). There are some tops/adcs/supports that can free up some of the responsibilities from the rest of the team, sure. (eg, Jayce, Cait and Varus can all give your team poke + ranged waveclear if you have Akali. Leona can provide some tanky initiation power, and so on). These are all some large-scale modification that you can make.
But your mid/jungle? If it's an assassin + Vi/Panth then midlane is going to be the only lane that is focused by both teams for 15 minutes. Twisted Fate + Nocturne have exactly the opposite, trying to massively pressure botlane and turn it into early towers + dragons. Lulu enables dps junglers no other way mid does. Then you've got stuff like Nidalee. Your mid choice has a huge effect on how much your jungler can counterjungle (or get counterjungled). Mid decides whether your team can safely splitpush (either with Ziggs stalling, or Zed splitpushing himself).
Saying "oh i can pick any AP and make it fit into a comp" is, technically, true. Mid lane is really diverse in terms how many A and S-tier champs there are, and, from above, enables a lot of different choices and types of comps. But it's really because the converse is true. The comp is contorted into your mid-lane champion selection. Far more than any other role except Jungle.
Also if we want to have more fun and not take a game seriously I am always down for it but it must be stated prior to being half way through champ select. I am all about going hiemer/leona bot but not when half the team wants to play for real and the other half of the team want to try new champions for the first time ever.
"i really really really disagree with this statement."
I was talking for our group of friends what a "winning team comp" looks like. Not what a winning LCS team comp looks like. So in terms of jungler synergy with a mid lane for us usually revolves around Karl landing a stun and me or whoever following up on it. Coordinating anything more than that is currently above our heads.
we appear to have a live one here. Good!
I'm not really looking to personally critique folks in the context of my pacov = serious, easy going, etc. That said, yeah - I guess I really dislike it when I get a chance to play a role I want after running support a bunch and now its time for cow's gangplank in X role.
I guess that bothers me for the same reason as cow - I think its become some sort of trollish game when someone makes a pick like that. But - I don't go to the same extreme and say, oh, we have a quinn top, gg. I really can't remember the last game we played where I tried to do something hard out of the meta, though. I'm not super worked up about it at any rate, though.
Don't have time to write much more - but yeah - me being able to dish out criticism and then not take it is a pretty huge problem that I want to address/resolve faster.
i wasn't talking about LCS. i'm saying that just because mid lane might boil down to "Karl hits a stun and then follow up on it" at our skill level, doesn't mean that mid lane is somehow completely isolated from all team comp issues and you can just pick whatever. When midlane is actually the most impactful lane. Even in bronze, there's a huge difference in how the first 15 minutes go if you have a Fizz versus a Ziggs.
I think that picking B vs A/S tier champions is no big deal. At our level of play, the difference between picking a B tier champion and picking a higher tier champion is pretty small (with one or two exceptions at both ends of the spectrum - don't start playing Urgot just to prove me wrong please).
The bigger problem is team comps. Cow has already covered one way in which team comps can be bad. It's best to be somewhat unified in team idea and not scattered all over the place. I generally greatly prefer to play teamfighty comps since other team comps are much more difficult to coordinate in my opinion. I greatly dislike splitpush comps because I think they are way too hard to coordinate.
Another thing that has caused us occasional problems is scaling. We have to be careful not to take too many champs that start off slowly, especially if we go nuts on scaling runes (cough). I know that we had one game where we had our ADC/MID/JUNGLE combo as Kog/Kass/WW into something like Cait/Ori/Lee, and that ended up being a bloodbath due to scaling problems.
i don't think that anyone here is claiming that you must pick A/S-tier champs only. i've always been a strong proponent of Cow's Brand and i mean there's Anivia.
My point was more: you can't complain about other people picking weaker champs if you-yourself are picking a B-list.
i do think you're going to have to get more used to slower-scaling botlanes though, Karl. Riot is pushing the hyperscaling ADC paradigm from Season 2 (luckily without the insanity of the Holy Trinity). And it's not as if Kass/WW are weak after level 6.
"Weak" lanes that lose the 2v2 or 1v1 might not lose a 3v3 or 2v2 even if the enemy jungler comes.
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