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 play Zyra, not Morg, but I do run a 9/21 mastery page and gold quints. I've built around an early sustained harass setup, flat penetration marks, mana regen seals, and mana glyphs, combined with the monetary and regenerative bonuses from the masteries and quints.
The bonus starting gold gets me two wards and a coin, which gives excellent health regeneration for my adc's minion farming, as well as decent income and further mana regeneration. I get shorter cd's and larger ranges on my actives, which I always have one of and typically two, increased movement speed, extra experience, and typically only have to back for wards if my lane partner is at all competent.
Where it's not useful is when the ADC sucks. If they're throwing it, you can't do much. Being able to trade pokes, using your superior tactical reach to harass them more often than they can you, and your sustain to continue it indefinitely, don't matter when you're basically 2v1, as any support with a lousy ADC is. It's particularly ineffective when your tard ADC thinks nothing of farming minions while they get shot down. Once your ADC has no presence, you're out of options. It would be better to have AP runes and masteries for these, but you'll be less useful for a skilled ADC and probably still can't turn around a fail lane unless your opponents suck almost as bad as your partner, in which case they're probably dumb enough to 2v1 you at level 6 under your tower with your ult up, and you can get a double anyway...
Your damage will be a good 10% behind where it could be, but you can do almost endless harass. With a competent partner that knows when to go in, you're an always ready CC nuke that can act in relative safety. Quick cooldowns and a sustained presence make for a very safe lane. In the late game, you need no further sustain itemization, Talisman and your base improvements will keep you active longer than the rest of your team without any other mana improvements. That frees you up to build damage oriented items.
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/store/store-update/were-relaxing-gifting-restrictions
Ill keep you in mind for the summer split swan. I think Thunder voiced interest in joining in on the fantasy league as well?
We will be playing for mystery gifts again, winner takes all 7.
The summer split league is starting to look like:
Karl, Swan, Tenzing, Me, Bosshound, Thunder?, Hedgie?, TBD
Pacov is outtie 5000 if I remember right, haven't chatted with Brad in a bit and Hunny has been MIA for like 3 weeks.
yeah - i have no interest in doing it again. Thanks
I'm in Cow. But I have to warn you that 'T-Bagz' is a 3X Fantasy Football champion.
Y'all scrubs mays well just send me those mystery gifts in advance.
LOL.
i'm in.
'T-Bagz' is going to get TeaBAGGED OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
thunder hit gold IV today in solo queue. Grats! What's the highest you've made it in solo queue ever?
Thanks! I was in the promos to get to Gold III this season and last season before mega tilting and dropping back down to Gold V 0 LP both times.
some fun games tonight. Played 1 ranked to cap the night off and ended up as cho top and went 5/3/15. Stomped a trundle, but I kind of think cho wins that matchup in any rate. Was neat to see 2 champs that regen on the death of creeps in lane. Anyway, had to play ranked as elo decay a week out - mostly been playing support here and there having fun with bard and GDM. I continue to think GDM is legit.
Side note - bard - people on my team and on the enemy team - NO idea how much dmg he can dish out. The reason? he does added dmg when his little bird things are up. And I don't think he's played enough that people see the bird things and anticipate OUCH. I actually think next level might very well be sheen during laning. Anyway, the real bummer is that my pals don't get the dmg. Riot should not have buffed him the way they did... and I'm guessing we will see more buffs.
Anyway, I have a decent win rate with bard - 8 win 4 losses recent.
Has anyone watched zion spartan's stream before? 1st time for me. He seems to be a mechanically proficient, zero map aware, goon. Well zero is strong - he gets top lane and things happening around him as far as jungle/top go. He seems to be dumb as a box of rocks w/ regards to what's happening globally. I watched him do well in lane, but have absolutely no idea how badly things were going in other lanes... and then die many times when the entire enemy team would chase him down after they wiped his entire team. He'd just be going on about how he has a ton of hp and the be quite shocked when 5 people rotated to kill him. I was listening to him boast, then do a dbl take at the score board and wonder what? Anyway, I quit watching after he told his team he was going to split push top after the entire team, including him, were wiped. He runs top, clears easy, then, as easily predicted, the enemy team took out mid inhibitor because his teammates were so far behind and clearly needed him. Then he says "wtf team" and tps in... only to die after everyone was wiped.
Anyway, he's either dumb as a box of rocks and literally needs people to tell him what to do (eg team capt what now boss?) or boozed. I'm hoping boozed. All that said, he'd kick my ass top lane pretty easily. But, I'd probably just manage the lane as best I could and tp bot/mid to get kills while the hulk wailed on my lane and eventually lost the game.
Last, in all fairness, he was doing an A-Z champ stream. He showed great mechanical skills and great awareness with the enemy jungler... if those were the only factors, gg.
oh and random stardock stats for this thread:
Last - pulling this forward from the start of this thread - copy/paste. I'm interest in what you folks ranked experience has been. Do tell. A summary paragraph would be neat.
So, continued discussion re: my thoughts on earning your rank/elo - with a focus on duo queuing.
my entire ranked history in a paragraph
Duo'd up to gold in season 2 - I played about 10 games with brad wong. We hit gold in 10 games. I played 3-5 more games all season. That's about it. Season 3 - I tank my placement matches carelessly and end up bronze 1. Season 3 - I duo here and there, but primarily play solo queue and hit plat IV. Season 4 - I go 5/5 in my placements, get kicked down to silver 1 from plat IV. Disgusted, I take a break and now and am back fairly actively climbing in rank (gold 5 promos to gold IV or gold III atm).
Season 2
So, that duo queue in season 2 I mentioned - that was absolute crap in my mind. It did little more than get me and my bud some some season rewards. I worked well enough to hit gold in 10 games with my duo queue and I vaguely recollect like 1-2 difficult games in all of my ranked games that season. I personally think less of myself and also of others that duo queue their way up in rank. I'm not even remotely proud of my gold standing in season 2 because I really don't feel like I worked for it or earned it. Getting a reward after so little work was a joke in my mind.
I have 2 thoughts here: 1 - I don't think much of folks being proud of their duo queue rank in general (I'm sure there are some exceptions, ofc) and 2 - I am in no way impressed by people playing a few games and getting a high rating. I believe its how you do consistently that shows the caliber of you as a player - not that you could play some games, place in gold, then over time be revealed to be smeh. I respect players that work to get their elo and put their time in.
Season 3
That said, season 3 - I feel like I earned plat IV. I'm confident I could have gone higher than that, but I lost a bit of steam when I hit my goal of plat and only started to get back into things near the end of the season. To be fair, I'm not really sure how far I could have gotten, but more than plat IV I'd say.
Anyway, season 3 felt like a huge accomplishment because I didn't get as far as I did by duo queuing (eg I earned what I got). Sure, I played a duo queue game here and there, but they were few and far between my solo games. And I wanted it that way - not because the people I could queue with would hold me back, ofc, but because it meant more to do it myself because, again, I feel like its more of an accomplishment.
Season 4
Man - f ranked placements matches. I end season 3 at plat IV. I play my placements matches - 3 of those games are losses due to afk dc'd people. 1 loss due to an outright troll intentionally feeding. So, I go 5/5 (with 4 games that can't be won really) and place in silver 1. Kind of disgusting imo. And that disgust kept me from playing much ranked for a bit. That said, eventually I snapped out of it and got back to work. I feel like I'm good enough to hit plat again without issue. I continued to find the hardest elo to be at as silver for whatever reason. In season 3, it was a pain to go from silver to gold and relatively easy to go from gold to plat for me. We'll see if that trend continues. Currently, I don't really care with regards to myself if I duo or solo because I kind of think this elo is a bit of a joke and I don't really encounter that many highly skilled people. I will probably stop duoing after a bit and will likely try to climb solo when I hit plat again. Kind of a personal challenge for me.
other jibba jabba
Regarding why I found silver to be the most difficult - I think karl actually had some pretty good insight regarding this and it plays out. You can't do some things in silver that you can at other elos. For instance, back prior to the feral flare nerf, udyr was a nightmare if he was able to farm up a feral flare to the 11 min marker (he's still ok after the nerf, but nowhere near as good). Now, if you do this sort of thing, you are really counting on your teammates to hold off and keep their lanes in ok shape with no jungle support for about 7 extra minutes (compared to when you'd normally start getting ganks). It's actually really unreasonable to assume your team can do that going into a game as there are really, really good odds the other team will have the jungler ganking lanes during that time. Anyway, at lower elo's, you are better off going with the meta in my experience. Even a split pushing, heavy ganking shaco can be a problem because the team generally needs a strong initiator so they clearly know when a fight is on. At higher elos, you see to need less of that and individual players can shine more.
I actually think bard is pretty good as is. He has very very high damage in lane. Using his portal to make plays or reposition in team fights takes a weird school of thought and I still don't do it effectively (although I have seen some bards make awesome plays with it). I think my favorite was our bard got "caught" so he used a long portal that brought him back in our entire team. 3 of the enemy team followed him and we annihilated them, it was delightful.
I am really liking Olaf with RG, ghost, ult, botrk or randuin, elixer of iron. He is a carry destroyer when built this way. He sticks harder than anyone and you usually go 1 for 1 atleast while the entire enemy team tries to kill you before you kill there little adc or mage. It would probably be even more fun with a janna/coin.
A third option would be that his A-Z marathon tilted him. You've been known to not pay enough attention to whats going on in the rest of the game and start going on suicide tower pushes when you tilt, which sounds pretty similar to how you witnessed Spartan playing. I'd think you'd be more sympathetic.
Just because someone is mechanically gifted at this game and plays it at a professional level, doesn't make them immune to the same negative state of mind it can pull us all into. Spartan is a young man who plays for long periods of time almost every day (8? 10? 14?!) which is his job, not for a couple of hours to unwind after like most of us do. I don't think it's an option to just quit playing for the day every time things start getting frustrating, especially if he's in the middle of an A-Z.
He was only on the letter d (dr mundo).
edit - that's weird... part of my post posted and the rest did not.
Perhaps he was in a I don't give a fug sort of mode. I'm mostly curious if any one else has watched him stream before and if he's normally like that or not. I'll probably tune in again if I catch him streaming and see as there's certainly stuff to learn from his playstyle, but I found the complete island mentality so frustrating and he seemed to be the poster boy for top lane is an island and I have no idea what's happening around me.
re: olaf - I love the brolaf skin, but I really dislike him as a pick. As a jungler, he can clear well, but skill shot slows aren't good comparatively speaking. As a top laner, he's much better ofc, but I think other champs are better at initiating and getting at squishies than he is. The playstyle is fun at least. That said, built like you say, def sounds fun. I wonder if I can bard ult you during your ult.
I was playing him last night. Using ghost + RG on people that were trying to split push was hilarious. There was no escape! I have a feeling it wouldn't work. I don't think anything can stop the ragnarock olaf train.
So he had just played 'only' twenty games where he had forced himself to play a specific champion in Top lane regardless of whether it was a horrible choice?
Another thing to consider is that this might not have been done on his main account. I believe these A-Z things tend to be done on smurf accounts in Teambuilder. This is not an ideal place to find good teammates or opponents, so I imagine he very much was in 'fug it' mode.
If I remember your history of Ranked, the toughest part of your climbs have been those times you were stuck in Silver and Bronze. Sometimes when playing with garbage teammates there is no winning strategy right?
I used to play Ranked on my smurf account in High Bronze/Low Silver and I'll tell you that leaving your lane is not always the best option when you're the best player in the game. TPing bot lane to rely on scrubs to kill the opponents they've been feeding isn't always the right move.
haha - something in my brain did not translate 4 letters of the alphabet into as many champs as there are up that doh
Was reading a Reddit post about the new BC where folks was speculating about who's gonna love it. Think it will be good on Ollie? His true damage doesn't really go along with the armor shred, but he loves all the other stats. Here's the changes if you didn't know:
The Black Cleaver Phage + Kindlegem + 825 gold (3000 gold total) +400 Health +40 Attack Damage +20% Cooldown Reduction
UNIQUE Passive: Dealing physical damage to an enemy champion Cleaves them, reducing their Armor by 5% for 6 seconds (stacks up to 6 times, up to 30%).
UNIQUE Passive - Rage: Dealing physical damage grants 20 movement speed for 2 seconds. Assists on Cleaved enemy champions or kills on any unit grant 80 movement speed for 4 seconds instead. This movement speed is halved for ranged champions.
I'm thinking you need to not give up on The Got buddy. The new BC's movement speed buff is triggered by physical damage so once you lock on to someone, you can probably chase or kite pretty well. Not as much reliance on dumb teammates!
So what other champs do you think the BC 2.0 is going to be good on?
My guesses:
Rene is going to become the king of top lane again, at least temporarily. Wu Jungle might become a thing again, Wu Top might become God Tier. Forget what I said about Rene. Quinn, the new Queen Of Top.
Of course it's only on PBE so stats are subject to change for sure. But no matter what the strength ends up being, at least they're finally coming out with The AD Caster item we was promised so long ago. I think people are going to be finding Phage starts immensely strong on champs that they didn't want to buy it on cause it's only real path was Trinity until now.
I heard about the changes but never really looked at the stats turned out to be. Seems like a huge buff if they don't tweak the numbers prior to bringing it live. The price is the same, the damage is only 10 less, and everything else scaled much higher, (Health, Passive, Tri Force Movespeed Passive etc).
But yeah, I might play Wu top again if these changes come through as is, stopped playing him after they neutered Jungle wu, since it affected his top lane drastically. It also might be a pretty decent pick-up on Jayce.
Quinn? Try Gnar. Has all the stats he wants for both of his forms. And he already goes Brutalized in 1v1 AD lanes. Will probably be enough to push him back to 50% in soloq.
Surely will help Quinn too though. Which is exciting for me at least. Item will probably be needed tho
UNLESS Riot intends to balance AD Casters against Cinderhulk with this item and allow Smite top to stick around for certain champs.
Did you notice that it doesn't build from Brut anymore nor does it have any flat pen?
Oh I thought it was phage + brutalizer and the flat pen transformed into the armor shred.
boozed pacov playing adc? No. Top or jungle plz
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