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
Post-Game Wrap up (mostly from my perspective but going to include comments w.r.t to other people as well when applicable).
(spoiler: played pretty poorly overall, and felt like i was an overall-detriment. Though at least 2nd game was just madness so that's whatever)
Match #1: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1735490030/40443430?tab=overview
All of us were extremely aggressive and ended up losing out by like 50 hp. Karl missed a level 2 kill on Khazix by like 10 hp. Yasuo went really hard on Brand midlane and got him really low. Likewise... i had a poor level 2 and fell way behind from there.
In the midgame (16:00 mark) we all went and played ARAM for about 5 minutes and ended up getting a few kills + assists, despite being 6k down! That said, we all fell behind in levels, and the gold difference didn't really change despite the kills we snagged. At the 18:00 mark i was pretty much 100 CS down - pretty damn awful.
Unfortunately, we ended up just getting out-golded and slightly getting grinded out of objectives. i feel like it's hard to say exactly what could have done different because if all 3 of our level 1/2 plays WON instead of LOST, we would have probably easily won the game. (that said, i do know that Brand ended up killing Yasuo a few minutes later - but he still lost the level 1).
The one thing i do want to ask Karl specifically: please help push into the tower when i'm behind! You came once and ganked top around 8:00 but didn't quite stay long enough to push in the tower. i ended up getting teleported on while shoving and dying. Maybe i over-stayed for a few CS and if i based i would have been fine but... then i may have gotten zoned out of the creeps.
Match #2: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1735521370/40443430?tab=overview
This game was pretty much a slaughterhouse. i was still a little jittery and felt pretty bad about the previous game, and then i got caught by a blind laneswap and binded by Morgana into a level 1 death (can't run from the Kalista and they were BEHIND me in the bush).
Anyway, there's not much to mention from my perspective... i got slaughtered by a team that was much more well prepared to do 2v1 rotations and did the whole "double jungle and be 1v0 botlane" thing. What we COULD have learned from them is how effective it can be (with Morg, Kalista in particular...), and maybe give us some motivation for the future.
One thing that i feel was important to point out was, not only did their strategy wreck us top/bot, once they were able to get ahead, they just shoved into Ryze mid. Ryze doesn't have the waveclear/scaling that early in the game to do much against 3 people and lost towers because of it. So we should try to keep this strategy in mind when we see the opponent picking a hero with poor early game wave-clear (eg, Fizz, Akali, Ryze, so on).
Match #3: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1735537201/40443430?tab=overview
Didn't really want to pick Gnar into Kennen but i did it anyway... Top lane was pretty farmy. i ended up getting ahead in kills, at the cost of a little bit of CS (which makes sense: Kennen can pretty Gnar pretty hard first few levels). Started roaming with the team a lot for dragons, and such. Just like game #1, i think i spent too much time with the team and my laner got a lot of CS ahead of me. This time, at least, we were getting objectives.
Despite us doing well overall in the early game, i feel like we really crumbled in the mid-game. Not 100% sure of the reason why - i feel like all of us had good initiations and there were several times i got great 2/3 man stuns into walls.
My personal guess is a lot of the time we were doing deep "flash ult-intiates" that put us really far ahead of our backline. Even though we may have trapped in 2-3 people in a Gnar/Jarven ult, if we didn't have the DPS close enough to contribute... sad days. i know that happened one time in front of the dragon pit where people sort of ran in TWO at a time into a chokepoint of 5 (the 3rd dragon i think - Karl probably remembers).
We really had a good wombo-combo team (Annie, Jarven, Morgana, Gnar, with an Ez ult on top). i do know a few times Kennen would just go over us and wreck out backline though.
Anyway, my bad for playing mediocre/poorly and hopefully we'll have better luck in the future... Mentally i only considered us to have gone 0-2 instead of 0-3. That 2nd game hardly counts. i also probably should have sit-out the 3rd game, even if i didn't do so bad in it. The two back-to-back games of feeling pretty bad i think took away some of my confidence and i was either forcing stuff too hard to make up for it, or not going in when i should.
I think game three I should of picked a different champion. I think I could of been aggressive on lux if I was brand. I had some bad calls especially around dragon pit in the first and last game. Ill try to play better and stick to brand more often when its a match up that I can play him in. Other than that I was pretty happy with our play. Some bonehead getting caught out mistakes were made by all but it happens.
I think that there is always some learning curve in these things. I agree that in hindsight Morgana didn't really work, but whatever.
I'll also probably be changing out of my default jungle pattern when we end up on bot side (I think 5 out of our 6 games so far have been on bot side with only the stomp being top). I normally like to be more red side oriented on bot side since red is always a bit more efficient in a lot of ways, and I like to favor bot ganks over top anyway. But hunny/pacov lanes tend to push so hard early that there just isn't much for me. Nothing wrong with bot pushing their lane, but it means there isn't much for me to do.
Game 1 was largely just unfortunate. A lot of close plays that didn't go our way. Me screwing up the invade was bad and meant I couldn't do the early pace that I wanted.
I generally agree that I should stay and push lanes, but there was a specific reason I left in that case. I knew that red buff was coming up very soon since I knew the timing on it, and I knew that there Kha was covering buffs very well so I was expecting him to be around. So I wanted to go into their jungle to either head him off to prevent him from showing up and killing you, or to steal his red. My timing was about 5 seconds off so I couldn't do it, and I didn't account for a teleport to the side, but I don't think that it was the worst idea ever given what I knew.
Anyway, we have a lot of problems with midgame calls, especially around the dragon. One of the games we did the classic 5v5 at dragon, then randomly attack dragon to put us at a big disadvantage. We just need to stop doing that.
But the last game was lost in a big way at the 3rd dragon. There was a call to go to the 3rd dragon, but we were REALLY slow in going to it because people wanted to grab farm. Their team went right away. Because of this we trickled in and got aced, they got dragon, then baron on same play. That was basically game. I really wanted a fast rotation to that dragon since that was looking like a potential win by 5 dragons game, and we have to be able to make quick rotations in ranked 5s. But we can never seem to coordinate it because we do solo queue style rotations where people always have stuff to grab first. So I think that needs to be cleaned up.
In hindsight, I was probably misplaying against the Kennen in the last game though. I was basically going for the default approach of trying to get their whole team in my ult. I was actually doing a pretty good job at that, but they were kind of overwhelming us with their damage. I probably should have just tried to isolate Kennen to trap him alone during his ult even if he was the only person I got, then E+Q out to get on other people.
I sort of didn't stick with my mentality of dragon fights either. Dragons 2-3 need to be either taking when we wont be contested or as a collapse onto the other team as a group (not by me running in all rambo cause I have zhonyas). Ill try to make better calls on dragon fights. I am also trying to speak more but I tend to be more quiet on summoners rift than I am on twisted treeline.
replay - looks like there are replays for all the games on my op.gg pacov
https://na.op.gg/match/observer/id=1735521370
Also this= cool "We're aiming to buff a number of tanks in the jungle in patch 5.5 and/or patch 5.6"
fairly weak showing by me in our games. Game 1 - not sure what I could have done differently honestly, game 2 - oh my gawd... my rotation to top was amazing... game 3 - smeh - some missed ops by me 1 or 2 times I had a good initiate but we weren't on the same page - overall meh play from me though.
I'd like to somewhat immediately start playing around with the new strats, though. Strat 1 - lane swap, jungle/top stay together for a wee bit then go to lane. strat 2 - adc/top lane swap, jung/support stay together
Practice rotations - eg - when do we flip lanes, etc.
last - warding strats early game (group together to acquire vision appropriately.
oh and lets let karl call dragons if we can. Nothing wrong with us saying "should we dragon" - but we need to let him decide and be VOCAL quickly w/ that decision. This sort of thing is something hunny needs help with. He needs very quick do or don't calls on certain things or he'll just do shit.
I have some opinions on what you guys should keep in mind when it comes to the strat that was used against you Game 2 as far as how to counter it next time or use it yourselves.
Seemed like one of the reasons they might have tried it was that you guys had Leona Support since it limited your options to counter. Sending a hard engage no sustain Support champ to a lost lane wasn't an option but you guys did it anyway. I think Pacov's right, it should have been him and Hunny who both went top or they should have just stayed bot together and let Hedgie farm under his tower.
I guess scouting out their jungle to see if they were up to any shenanigans against a Morg wasn't really an option. Don't think it's that important though. Next game Hedgie will be ready and won't have that "Where is Rumb- Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh! Fuuuu-" moment when he got too close to the Bush Of Doom.
Yeah, at the same time, Leona WOULD be a powerful zoning tool in a 2v1 lane as well.
Lane swaps really come down to experience. If we do normals where we have control over top and bot lanes we might want to lane swap just to practice it even if it isn't a great idea in terms of matchups.
Well, we'd probably need to also have control of the jungle
Either that or the top laner would need to be Maokai/Sion (someone who can kill raptors level 1).
Decided to grind out some levels in Hots tonight. back in lol world fri.
back to the interesting mmr calculation on op.gg - take a look over here.
1st -baseline- cows ranked games are around 2k with him at diamond 5. I'm plat 5 and my games are 1700-1800.
http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=krazikarl
Our ranked games last night were between 1800-1850 - so op gg has them slated as a plat IV-plat III level. Not saying op.gg's stats are spot on btw - just interesting to me anyway.
oh and I mentioned this re: jungle changes for tank (either item or champ buffs) - its worth poking around if you have not (see red posts in particular: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/5a7EEEsB-meddler-whats-the-status-tanks-and-jungle-can-we-get-update-that-silence-is-sad-please?comment=0001
off to bed - night folks!
I think I forgot how to win a ranked game. pretty sure I have lost like 10 or more in a row
EU LCS is so random. I'm beginning to believe that Elements might not be the best team EU...
My thoughts on the Ranked 5's games:
My performance sucked. It's been too long not having good internet. When you get older it's really hard to get any traction in this game unless you play somewhat regularly I think. Going over a week at a time not playing then binge playing League for a day or two has not left me very sharp, and I only just got the internet set up at my GF's house. Poor DanKnee was explaining how to help last hit ranged minions under a tower like I was a Silver. Sad days. I'll be more dialed in next time I play with you guys. If I do. Am I still on the team Cow?
If so, I think I should start playing Leona when I go bot with Pacov. I appreciate him having a positive attitude while laning with me, but he was right after all. It is a bit of a distraction trying to work around the whole CS thing when we're on TS3 and are in a heavily competitive environment. Thresh is more versatile, but our team seems tend to be very Win Early or Mid Game Or Vote Yes Late Game When Cow Calls To Surrender Comp. Pacov knows how Leona is played as well as anyone and is into aggressive ADC's right now so I think maybe the Graves/Leona lane is the one to go for?
If anyone should be benched it should be me. I played poorly. I am not sure I know how to win a game any more. If you look at my game history I have probably won like 3 games out of my last 20
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There. Done now. Took some time today to set up my replacement mobo. Kind of should have done this when I replaced the faulty one, but oh well... caught up now. One thing I've noticed on these higher end machines - they all (eg any one i've built) have been set to auto oc the processor. My processor runs at 4ghz natively. Depending on the mobo, it might throttle up to provide some extra juice. It's... never really needed on my setup, but the mobo/OS will attempt to ramp up the voltage, etc, under "heavy" load (read - temp spike in utilization). Now, ocing a pc is nice if its a lower end system or nice if you are just a nerd trying to get your 4ghz processor up to 5.5ghz, but the real performance gains are kind of smeh. Games look pretty on my setup as is and I could stream at any rez - a faster cpu does jack for me... YET - these mobos are setup to allow the OS to control the overclocking out of the gates.
Overclocking can and often does result in instability. Back when I actually cared to oc - you'd test out voltages and eventually achieve a stable speed (eg no crashes) after a burn in (ex I come up with settings, run prime and ensure its stable under varied loads of X duration (min 8 hours)). Now, the OS just does as it will and triggers the OC when the system is under heavier load. This means when the system is already being pressed, it attempts to bump up voltage, etc... Where in times past, you'd setup your system, find a stable speed, and it would run at that speed quite stable. Now, its whoopie, I'll instantly bump the voltage and see if that helps. Welcome to the world of efficent instability.
Anyway, you can make some changes in the bios to prevent this oc. You can also still set a static voltage, etc, like times past. Just not a fan of the auto oc BS. I've only ever found it moderately stable on multiple setups and I'm really, really surprised its enabled by default on my past 4 mobos or so. It seems kind of dumb and I can only assume it results in problems on many setups.
Oh -and cow is off the ranked team and I'm the new mid - welcome to challenger boys.
probably a good idea, maybe I should just retire like scarra and coach you guys!
Well, we won 3 out of 3 ranked games yesterday fellas. Nice. Replays are on my op.gg page for any interested - https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=pacov
Had a decent night going 6.33:1, 11:1, and 9:1 kda. Dan kind of killed it from a kda pov - 20:1, perfect, 11:1. Cow completely killed it in game 1 with a perfect kda. really liked him on mao. Overall, we did really well as a team. Hunny got himself clipped a few times in game 1 and 2 specifically because of poor decisions I think. Game 3 there was a time where I set him up and another time where the whole team kind of set him up (by that I mean a play could have been made to work with him and help him and instead pressure was put onto a tank). Feel like I off a little bit in game 2 specifically, but everything came together well. karl did really well also . I think he statistically does best on j4 and that should pretty much always be a #1 pick if he's available.
I think sticking Dan mid was the right thing to do. He plays mid in solo queue mostly and has a more meta champion pool than me. I also have a pretty meta top champion pool at the moment (missing gnar though), I have played a ton of mao and renekton before I went so hard on mid lane. Unfortunately I do not think me playing top will happen often with the people we play with unless Dan is available to take over mid. I believe Dan is a better mid laner than me and it's a hard thing to admit but I my ego isn't really that important to me. I want us to win games and if sticking Dan mid is a way to do it I will do it every time.
Lane swaps:
It was fun to do it and the Nasus pick presented a great opprotunity for it. I thought we executed it well enough but we could have denied the nasus more farm as he was tied with me in farm during the swap at one point which should not happen in my opinion (me dying shouldn't of happened either and it was my own fault for taking to much poke). Talking to Thunder after the games he mentioned that having a ranged support would have made denying Nasus much easier and I couldn't have agreed more. If we want to run lane swaps again (nasus, rumble, gnar, riven come to mind), we could try to pick up a support later in the draft so we can see there top lane pick. There is also two ways to play the swap: freezing lane close to our side tower or hard pushing and taking there tower fast after a dive by jungler. One of these two options should be picked and voiced before the game starts so both the duo lane and the jungler are on the same page.
There is a third option as well and that would the top laner and karl duo jungling for a 4 man dive top at level 2-3 after the duo jungle clear the two buffs and the duo lane pushes the top to tower. This would hopefully end in a kill of the top laner and a tower. I feel this stratedgy is very advanced though and could back fire horribly.
Dragon fights:
I think we did very well in this department last night. There was one fight however we nearly lost because I couldn't TP immidiately. If we are doing dragon a ward needs to be right infront of the dragon pit at all times so the top laner can TP right into the middle of our team. Dragon fights have been lost in other games because of awkward teleports from our top laner because our wards are either in weird spots or the top laner just choosing to flank instead of TPing to the team. In my opinion TPing into the middle of our team is always the best option for the TP. This prevents them collapsing on the TPing person or rushing the 4 man squad before the TP finishes.
That lane swap was also a huge part of us winning that game.
Anyways I also wanted to mention that I think Pacov + Hunny bot is a winning formula for us. You guys definitely play well together. I am sure the duoing in solo queue is a big part. Even though you are not the biggest fan of playing support Pacov its working very well for us.
yah - being familiar with your adc does not hurt. Hunny just needs directed a bit to keep him from doing goofy things - and its often a question of how much he'll be steered (eg that one play last night where I told him there was a threat, told him to bugger off, and he stayed which resulted in a dbl kill for the enemy team + a tower. He's got decent mechanics and decent instinct/positioning, but its those goofy arse moments where he starts a dragon, or goes deeper than is smart. I'd like to see him start getting better kda as I think it is a good measurement of how often you get into bad positions as an adc. Obv you can still win with weak kdas though.
I enjoyed the lane swap though. I also very much enjoyed playing liss the other night in ranked and crushing it. Fun game there as well.
we could take like 6-7 minutes and just run through a comp and the scenario in a custom when we have the numbers. Considering its only 6-7 minutes, I wouldn't think folks would be against it. Just need to decide on the jungle route based on side of map for the top/jung, and have the adc/supp head top. Should be reasonably easy to determine where the vision is unless the enemy jungler wards out for them. You'd want to think through the specific champs we'd need as jung/top to make that viable though.
I think doing like 1 drill against bots would be more than enough to get a feel of how the jungling will go and about what in game time the gank would happen but to really get the dive right you would have to play a few normals versus real people. A study on how turret aggro works will have to be done as well. I think Phreak explained it really well after one of the CLG matches last week where Zion got dived as rumble and managed to pick up a kill and not die during a 3 man dive.
patch 4.5 going live tomorrow (2/25) morning.
No official patch notes as of yet. This should be the dj sona patch at a min and will likely include the zil changes. Some balance changes, possibly morde/veigar reworks, but I'd doubt those. Nothing super exciting that I'm aware of.
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