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
Sort of sad they made the bouncing bomb really derpy looking on the new ziggs skin..... I hope they reconsider a different animation before release. The new jayce skin looks sick and has a dark voice over. The fiddle skin seems to be more sand/sharima stuff like the 3 coming out this patch.
hue
I had quite a bit more fun last night. Finally getting around to addressing cows/thunders comments.
yeah - playing with pals that I know aren't particularly stellar erodes my good mood, as one would expect. Especially if now they have to perform at a much higher level (eg its not 4 bronze peeps + plat pacov - its a mashup with a guy I know will likely be herpsmuhderps). I get that its nice to be king poop when I'm super swell guy and all my bros are not (eg pacov the hero will destroy them for you) - I just don't get to play with consistently low level folks (nor would I really want to).
made me laugh yesterday
Anyway, I was just venting a bit as I was frustrated. Just a good series of events. Ranked mismatches not in my favor.... then derp game mode, derp normals, derpy team builder on 1 day. Next day derpy team builder in my favor (result easy wins, boring arse games). Just kind of an over time frustration sort of thing.
Cow saying go play some ranked doesn't solve the problem for me directly because I'm expecting to be in some crap mismatches like before (just negative attitude ofc). Then if I play champs I haven't played a million times in team builder (cause I've played champs a million times in team builder...), the matchmaking adjustment kicks in. This means I will potentially get derpy teammates trying out champs - what it means for certain is that folks I'll be queued w/ and against have that matchmaking adjustment on... so lower quality matches are the outcome usually.
My real frustration with this teambuilder adjusted matchmaking based on how many times you've played a champ - you don't know how much you need to play to end the adjustments... so I constantly feel like I'm going to be getting derps mcgirks. And when that actually happens over and over... well... poop. Also queueing up in tb for role I want to work on but have little experience often take me a VERY long time for some reason. Whereas before, I could queue up as vbear jung and be in a queue in 1 min... now its like 5-10... also frustrating.
Anyway, I'll even out in a bit. Decided to just play a bunch solo and work on morg in top/mid/bot.
I usualy do, outside of urf, have difficulty in separating try hard from "semi" hard. I just find when I'm getting frustrated more often, I make fug it calls and choose to push longer than I should to try to get a turret, etc. Things like that. Where if I didn't feel like folks were blowing it, I'd be more reserved. That's the downside - I choose to join in (perhaps this is what you mean by semi hard) when others start derping. I just get super pissed when I'm doing my part, then others piss the game away. Feel like my time was wasted. Last, I know I'm not amazing or anything and I do know when I've just fugged up vs tilting. I certainly don't do well every game if things are equal. But I do certainly tilt a bit if I'm doing my part and people just do dumb as bricks things.
I'm off to bed, but let me put a few thoughts out and see if any of you early morning/late night folks have some thoughts. I'm tired so this won't be completely thought out - sry. before i start - some of this will just sound common sense but roll w/ it. Also... tis a rant and scatterbrained... no edits - pacov away
k - so I'm trying to switch to Hyper aggressive objective focused play and trying to think about perfect scenarios (eg lets say I know everyone and control all champs - I rotate everything in the most efficient way, etc). That's not realistic in premise or execution, but its where I'm starting.
So lets skip any invade discussion and jump to the start of the game. The best setup for most games is to have top and bot swap (provided the other side stays as norm). You need a decent 2v1 top laner or to call in jung supp as needed. Anyway, the top and jungler split some xp in the jungle. For instance, if red side, jungle/rotated top start gromp and share xp (kill can go to jungle) and then share blue - kill can still go to jungle. Both hit level 2 here. Jungle is set back, but top goes to bot lane with a slight adv + easier ability to farm vs 2 for a bit. Anyway, if bot goes well, then jungler isn't needed. Otherwise jungle comes down to assist in a pinch.
If all goes well, there is a proper rotation where top lane goes to bot and bot goes up to top and farms some xp/gold that was likely missed. Having tp, can still get into a fight at drag to join, etc. And can easily defend the existing top tower... "easily" - enemy top lane might be even/ahead,etc.
blah... I'm too tired to flesh this out much more - let me toss out some q's.
1 - what scenarios can you think of where you can use dragon as bait to get a tower objective? I know its a bit abstract, but the most common urge is MUST DEFENDED drag - when its really a big op unless your team is a bunch of goofs and all just died - to get a turret somewhere. Any thoughts on non OBV - setups?
2 - i'm going to sleep. This is stupid.
Night all!
There are very few tops, if any, that can successfully farm 2v1 bot. Both tops are going to get wrecked in short order, it might be a great move if your top is countered hard though.
I think most 2v1's are played out because the team that wants the 2v1 feels that there adc/support will lose to the other teams adc/support OR they have a hyper late game carry adc (jinx, vayne, kogmaw). If this doesn't sound like your current adc/support you should opt for the 2v2 lane. Some times it is beneficial to swap if the other team is running a hyper carry top laner (jax/nasus come to mind). Some top lanes don't really care if they don't get farm because they will always be relevant (lulu, mao kai, sion, malphite etc...) these champions will always have an impact due to there low item needs and massively important ults in team fights.
The other scenario is if you are running tristana. Her absurd ability to take early towers and sup par laning phase make swapping her into a 2v1 lane a great option. I feel caitlyn can also be played this way but she IS a lane bully and can shut down most other ADCs in lane so playing her 2v2 is the way to go. Trist does the early push better.
But if you are the team with the 2 bot lane you should try to take dragon at some point while the 2v1's still exist.
After one lane loses its tower that teams ADC/support should 100% swap to the lane that still has its tower so you can save the tower from the other teams duo and push to take the other teams tower.
IMO this is how all 2v1's should be played obviously a dive onto the solo top laner can also be arranged with almost any comp but having a tanky support/annie/morgana is a better bet for securing these kills.
other thoughts just focused on the 2v1 lane swap stuff. Really try to flesh out the scenarios where a swap would be ideal. I do want to add that my primary goal for the swap is to get a top turret while putting their top laner behind if poss. I also think janna/jinx is incredibly good fort his strat as jinx's AS buff is very useful for turrets and her passive gives you a little extra leeway for how long you can stick around to finish a turret.
So - back to dragon concerns. I say fine - lose the 1st dragon. If it accomplishes the goal of getting top turret and then rotating your adc/supp back to bot with a turret still intact. Actually a pretty big part of my entire thought process is being willing to quickly sacrifice a dragon (don't even setup for it) and instead push and take a turret while the enemy team enjoys their dragon - we enjoy a more useful objective along with money.
It's generally a given that most/all champs should have difficulty farming 2v1. I'm suggesting its often worth the sacrifice. I am also talking here in terms of a 5 man team and not solo queue stuff.
There's so many other angles and things to think about w/ this stuff.
The main thing I'm driving at is trying to figure out ways to more effectively lock down objectives (specifically turrets) via intelligent rotations. Any thoughts on that?
A very easy way is taking advantage of awkward roams or backs by the enemy team. I often do this in solo queue since brand is pretty slow when following up on enemy mid lane roams. I stay mid, clear the waves as fast as possible and I try to take turret. You can do this in other lanes obviously as well.
Another easy way to take a turret is if you are in a 2v2 bot lane and you force the ADC or support to back because of a bad trade or gank. If you put the enemy support or ADC into a 2v1 scenario it is very easy to zone them off the creeps and push them into tower. You might not get the turret by doing this once but by the second time it should fall unless they get help. If your jungler is on your side of the map and can assists with the turret it should be a free tower.
you can snow ball this tower pressure by rotating your adc/support to mid lane and putting your mid bot and or just taking 4 mid immediately after with the jungler to take mid lane. You can also rotate the adc/suppor to top and do the 4 man push with our top laner and jungler.
Anyway after one enemy tower goes its VERY easy to move your ADC and support around the map to get the rest of the outers.
Um, lane swaps aren't typically played as you describe. That is, you don't attempt to hyper aggressively push down a tower. Riot has put mechanics in place to make this difficult, and if the other team plays intelligently, I don't think that it works out in most cases. This is why pro teams rarely use this strategy in lane swaps.
They almost always go for a zone out strategy. There is a lot of risk of putting our top massively behind their top if you go for more aggressive pushing.
Since there are mechanics to prevent the strategy, you need to play pretty specific champions to implement it with much success. I'm not convinced that having to play very specific lineups is worth whatever somewhat marginal benefits such a strategy would bring.
still can't figure out teambuilder matchmaking... I keep playing morg and the matchmaking adjust keeps staying on. My magical pacov idea is that I'll play enough as a champion and then start being grouped with people that have also played enough with champs to get out of that adjustment/lower skill cap stuff. team builder can be pretty infuriating as a support. Had a vayne just straight up feed and then afk after 10 min or so. Super fun.
Another game I had a decent kog with me. I missed a black shield (eg to be fair, he maybe should have attempted to dodge a max range hook by moving to the left or the right...), then he ran his mouth. Funny thing about supports. Probably good to not harass them (I know, I know... dr pacov has done the same thing). Anyway, I then left him be while I roamed across the universe for a bit. It's really not worth busting folks balls in games in chat. It's not like someone instantly has a flawless game when you bitch at them. Quite the contrary.. so you are really just setting yourself up for a loss -or in that guys case, some quality time in a 2v1 lane for a bit. I did go back after a wee bit, but I muted the fella assuming any thing he had to say would be rubbish.
And... as things are going full circle.... I really like chogath now. top/mid/jung. Its a sad day for me.
Anyway, I'm working on nid jungle - I think we will see some shifts back to her and she's currently not perma banned (sigh... but she will be again I think). She was getting perma banned before the tank jungle item. Now, with them nerfing tanks a bit, I think she'll start being more common. If they continue to nerf tanks next patch... I'm pretty damn sure she'll be heading back towards commonly banned status. That said, at least now I have a little bit of a window where I can play her. Still mainful focused on playing morgana in multiple roles. I might take lulu back up, but IDK. I'm also thinking more about jungle nunu for that hyper aggressive objective control idea. A good gank can very quickly turn into a tower w/ bb - all the while providing excellent vision control.
well, if its a bunk strat, its bunk. I'm not sure. There certainly are things that make it more difficult to do turret dmg early though.
This got me looking into outer towers. 1 thing I kind of knew but wasn't certain - outer turrets give 150 gold globally to the team. The team also gets 70 xp. You get no bonus for being close to the turret when it drops.
Other stuff - fortification bonus - this makes it so 30 dmg is blocked from champion basic attacks. This expires after 7 minutes. That's the big one. They also have 67 armor. And - I'm not certain, but even though its generally not a factor, if the turret has reinforced armor, it gets 200 arm when no enemy minions are in range for attack. S
Realistically, you can't get to a turret to attack it even on a crazy aggressive 2 man lane until 3 min or so. That's essentially 4 min, with crap items, where you dmg output against the turrets is weak. And of course, you aren't going to be able to wail on the turrets nonstop during those 4 minutes, But some work can certainly be done. And if the other team isn't taking the same tactic (hard push their lane), then there are pretty good odds you'll get the turret 1st - or at the very least force the enemy jungler to camp/assist top.
Anyway, whole idea could be poop. Just saying what I'm thinking. Barring what I'm describing, STRICTLY from a getting turrets as quickly as possible, any thoughts?
Re: 2v1's
Yeah, it's exactly like Karl and Cow said but that doesn't mean there isn't some sort of alternate way of taking advantage of the strat. Problem I see, even if you are onto something, is that you're probably going to have a fairly gimped Top (do you call him a Solo Bot at this point?) and Jungle afterwards. Hopefully you realize that if you ever want to try this strat out, you're going to probably have to volunteer for one of the gimped roles to get people on board.
Re: Pacov's New Found Love Of All Things Cho And Teemo Related
Bahahahaha!
I'm going to find you some OP.GG replays of Korean Challenger Gangplank so you can start loving him too.
It comes down to this:
Let's say things "work" and you get their tower but they really don't do much to yours because they zone out. So you flip back. Yay!
Now your top is probably a few levels behind and substantial gold behind (even with 150 gold from the tower) since your top was zoned out of xp/gold. If you are behind levels and items in a solo lane, guess what happens? You get zoned out again! This is what you see happen to pro games a lot. So they freeze out that lane again, and we might very well have a solo laner who never comes on line and just gets bullied all game.
Sacrificing a player for a tower or two is generally not worth it unless we want to play hyper specific strategies.
Pro play has shown that the best way to get towers is to have strong players. If your players are having success all over the map, you will get objectives. The idea of modern lane swapping is to get advantages in player strength, not so much tower pushing. But your idea is putting 20% of the team in a position to fail, which I think will have bad implications for objectives over the course of the whole game.
god I hope I don't someday think he's not poop. I'll give you he can be a hoot in certain matchups, but he's still the kind of champ you shouldn't pick regularly. I enjoy playing as him as well, but its just not that good for a team imo.
I do want to explore very specific strategies. If that's have a hyper carry (in case that's what you are referring to, then cool). In the scenario you describe, tower control is achieved and our team can move onto the next objective. Anyway, I'm not all that convinced I have exactly a good plan here - just getting some thoughts out.
I don't think the best strategy is to count on your lanes to really kill it and be awesome. I mean, ideally that's it. Then if you have a little awareness, you take objectives like you said. There's not really much thought required for bot lane to get a double kill then take bot turret.
What we can make a strategy for is perhaps deciding when to give up a drag intentionally in order to take another objective. I'm not really sure the best way to pull that off. I think alot could be accomplished with a dbl tb comp with a split push focus for such things. Now, you have very good odds of grabbing a turret, etc. There are always trade offs for such things, but there are plenty of reasonable comps where dbl tp could be used like that without much of a downside.
Anyway, as there are a lot of ideas going around, any final thoughts on when we'd want to lane swap? Is the general view that its a dumb idea if the goal is to get an early top turret? Would we only want to do that if we have a weaker hyper carry and we want to punish their top lane, etc? When would we pull out a strat like that? If were specifically talking about our group, do we have anyone that plays specific hyper carries that would be worth doing this? Or someone that plays specific tops that would be fine for the most part even if they sacrifice some cs?
I don't think the best strategy is to count on your lanes to really kill it and be awesome
I think the best strategy in SoloQ is to count on yourself to kill it and be awesome. Doesn't always happen but your own performance is the only thing you can really control. And if you do well in a game it causes people to listen to you.
Perception is a funny thing. Two players could be telling their team to do the exact same thing by making a good call. The one with the great KDA is a leader who is trying to help his team win. The one with a poor KDA is a piece of shit troll who needs to stfu. Not saying that's how things should be, just saying that's how all team sports/games are.
Anyways, back to The Pacov Theorem. Are you actually wanting to try this out or are you just pondering how the game could be played better? Is it for SoloQ or Ranked 5's?
If you're thinking this is something that could ever be managed in a SoloQ game, remember that not everyone is going to be a specialist in their role. If this has a chance of being worth the risk/trouble, I'd think you'd need a hyper carry like Twitch or Kog or Vayne as ADC and your champion selection for Jungle and Top would be limited too. I don't see telling randoms that might be playing off role what champs to take going well so I'm thinking this is a Ranked 5's thing you want to do if you ever want to do it?
ranked 5's and/or a group of 5. I'm all for trying other things. The downside is if its not ranked 5's, cow will probably go support aatrox because its not a ranked game. And if it is ranked 5's, folks probably won't be willing to try out strats because ranked is too serious a place to try things out... smeh. kind of a no win for someone interested in trying out team strats, eh. I think I probably just need a different group of folks to try these things out. And yeah - I know - solo q = no go.
I just think it would be fun to try things like this out or see if its possible to create a situation where the enemy team takes a dragon and we get a turret that isn't based on reactionary deaths. Or come up with intentional 4 man ganks at specific times during specific windows.. just something more interesting than I killed my lane and got a tower as a result. I'd love to to come up with even a simple specific time, intentional rotation after someone gets scuttler to go for gank. Some things we try in specific time windows... anyway - to me, that's more fun.
I am always down to try things! and aatrox support was actually pretty decent but unintended with the teemo. Good thing he was a support teemo so I had to lane vs him anyway!
Just be all yo fellas, lets do some CLG lane swaps and rotations this game before we start the game and I think we can make this happen.
The question remains: Who will be playing Top? In all this discussion, no one has expressed much enthusiasm (or even willingness) that I've seen for playing the role that is going to be put "in a position to fail" with this strategy.
Depending on bot lane, AP Zyra can probably hang in a 2v1 scenario with a sustain oriented loadout. If jungle does a level 2 gank and babysits for the first couple, once she can throw out plants she can wreck a lot of combinations. She's vulnerable to burst, not harass. She might even be able to win a lot of ADC lanes as long as she's helped along to level 3. Her big deficit will be in reaching level 2 because she can be zoned in epic fashion before she hits it. If she got rolling off a kill spree, she could stomp a lane 2v1 and keep it that way after level 6.
oh I'd gladly do it. Only thing I need is either a leech with the jungler at the start to level 2 or some solo a camp tp stuff. And I don't view it the same way you do. The idea is to make a trade off for something useful. The question is whether or not if it is. If I'm involved, I have no prob being the guy soloing.
I was looking at best case scenario being Top gives up having much impact in the game in return for the rest of the team profiting. And you are looking at it as Top will have plenty of impact when joining in the stompfest later so who cares about being zoned a little early on probably?
Was watching a Chinese match I think? Tank Sin Top with Cinder Skirmisher's. Going smite might help alleviate that early pain if you need to farm Krugs/Gromp when they freeze you out from the wave.
You guys had a five man premade last night and all I saw was meta the first game. Did you try out the Pacov Lane Switchylaroo in the next game that I didn't see? If so, how did it go?
Id be fine if we have a team of 5 that is on the ranked team. I think my champion pool or hedgie's is best for 2v1ing in top lane. Mao, sion and gnar all do fairly well in these situations.
hey - checkout stife on steam. its another moba - f2p. Trying out now. Kinda fun so far. Very good tutorial. Fun mission at the start. ez learning curve.
Tried Strife a while back. It's got some neat anti-toxicity mechanics to it and is rather fun. Too many things where it's similar enough but different from LoL where it's hard to adapt. I have Attack Move Click bound to my left mouse button in game for instance. Unless I could ever figure out how to do the same for Strife, it would remain unplayable for me.
Watched Cow hit some crazy hooks last night in a Ranked. His team nearly won after having a Nasus DC early and fall way behind, but three of them threw by trying to sneak their 5th Dragon that the other team wasn't keen on letting them get for some reason. I guess things don't get that much better in Diamond as far as AFK's and teamwork go.
I so sad we lost that one
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