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
yay! broke 3k views on the twitch stream tonight. Glad some folks are digging it.
Several fun games tonight. I even got to play blitz to end my fuck blitz season. Actually did pretty well with the robot in that game. Thunder had like 1-2 really clutch saves for his adc that game. I hate when I miss good opportunities, but there are moments where I'm like immediately - "wow - nice save."
Heh - there was some other game where we had a lux and she just blew up some folks and 3 or so of us immediately said "uh... wow" in chat. Fun to have the jaw dropping moments.
Also fun that we were able to get so many folks. I think at one point we had like 16 people up for a 5v5 tonight. I dislike turning folks away, but am really happy to have so many people to play with.
Anywho - thx for the games tonight all! cya
one of those "wow" moments from yesterday
Here are some vids of a few of our in house games. I got to play blitz in game 2.
Here's a video showing how god awful my decision making can be.
2nd in house game live in a few min - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1
ok - so we had a bunch of in house games. 1 or 2 folks got really bent out of shape tonight. I'd like to sort this if we can without too much drama. Consider both thunder and myself captains of teams. If you have any concerns about how people are interacting, being dicks, whatever, please pm either of us and thunder and I will discuss things and try to end any crappy behavior we determine if its a real concern and should be addressed. I really, really like our team games and would like them to continue. That will happen as long as we have 10 of us that enjoy them. And to add, I know that I personally rub some folks the wrong way from time to time, but I do try to adjust my behavior if someone points it out. So please, if you have any real concerns or issues, if you feel like anyone is rubbing your nose in shit, or if you think folks are stacking teams or whatever, bring it up with thunder or myself and well talk it out.
re: team stacking... I really want everyone reading this (that cares about our in house games, ofc) to SERIOUSLY take my following statement at face value. I DO NOT have the same ability at handicapping players as I "felt" I had in Demigod. This means that I HONESTLY will think teams are fair when its quite possible that they may not. Things you need to keep in mind if you think there is a mismatch. If I, pacov, ask if the other team would like to swap a player, please clearly state what you'd like to change. I will very, very, very likely consent. The thing folks need to understand is that I do not think elo means you are an amazing player. I base my opinion of folks based on what I've seen of them. And we all (the 10 of us in a game) do not play with all of us on a regular basis. I can only handicap folks I've played with recently successfully (for instance, a week ago I thought doggu would be the weakest player on the opposing team (based on previous matches) and he ended up with the most kills... I even went out of my way to warn thunder that he would likely be a weak link). So, I might have thought sharp was an ok support and a so so mid/top. This would be based on like 3-4 games with her over the past 3 months. That means she could be a great ori now. I wouldn't know... because I don't assume she'd have the same skill level when I played against her 3 weeks ago - and that's because I've misjudged folks in the past. I personally don't have a really good way of handicapping matches. Please understand that I'm being quite sincere (I am). So if you really think there is a blatant mismatch, lets talk about it before we launch and swap up teams. No harm in that.
That said, kind pacov aside, I was definitely not happy when our last in house game dissolved because no one on the other team was willing to simply tell me who I should swap for who. That's bullshit and I asked multiple times over like a 5 minute period. We had 10 people on deck and because no one on the opposing team could simply say swap X for X, the in house games ended. Not cool and not necessary. So please, let's sort that out in the future. I'm not looking to stack teams. If you think there is an issue, call it out.
All of that aside - you guys notice how we typically stick with a specific side or team during our games for the most part? We could always switch up teams every game, you know. We could have thunder and I be capt and then we can pick our team. I'm all for that if folks are interested. Maybe that alone would help if anyone is concerned about stacking.
Anywho, thanks for all the games we did play tonight. I'm sad that, at least in our last game, folks seemed to get a little heated.
edit - other quick thoughts before going to bed. Let's take tonight as an example. let's say the other team had a specific player in mind that they thought wasn't as strong as others and wanted to trade them. I understand being hesitant to try to trade them off because you probably make one of your pals feel like shit. I think we can avoid any of that if we decide to goto a team captain setup. That solves that problem completely. That said, if we didn't, also consider the following scenario. let's say karl and I are the best junglers on a team (this will happen, I am certain). Anyway, if the 2 of us are on the same team and both of us blow at other positions or are pretty weak, trading 1 of us would likely not offend either of us. We'd both get to jungle and we'd still feel respected because we will play our role on the other team. If that scenario was accurate, I'd never be pissed to be swapped to another team. Kinda a bs scenario, but consider if the other team has the best jungler, then maybe trading the best support or adc is appropriate, etc. That said, if we are in grey area, then folks feelings can still be hurt.
So, final thought - if we don't do the team captain thing and I don't really know who to swap for someone, thunder (if we are on opposite teams ofc), just pm me and I can then suggest an appropriate swap if I don't know one (eg thunder can say, hey pacov, could you swap x for x?). That way folks don't know that thunder requested the swap, etc (that don't follow this thread anyway). Anyway, perhaps I'm over thinking it, but I'd really like to continue our in house games. Night all!
First, people just need to not talk in /all except like when a pause happens or like pre-game banter before minions spawn.
(or like extremely obvious joking - like, for example, if you were trying to recall and i used Kog's artillery to stop it and you typed "rude"). It's extremely BM. (this is also what annoyed me with Krdx's game). And like saying "up for another game?" is like. Wow really?
The other part of it is like. Bryff tends to be one of the weaker lanes in our games. When we were playing, and Bryff got those quad/triple kills, we were laughing and having fun - we figured Bryff was enjoying carrying in the in-house games and doing really well. Suddenly, next game, he starts trash talking everything. i mean wtf? The guy has one good game and decides to start trash talking?
Esp since like he's playing a lane that is going to be largely in his favor, with a more competent jungler, and getting a lot more camp.
Yeah, I like to think some friendly banter if fine. It was just a bad situation that got us upset since our mid was being really hard on herself and taking way too much blame for the games going south. So it just left a bad taste in our mouths that comments to her were made at all, but especially by the person we've been avoiding doing a target ban on to help keep things from getting too unfriendly.
I realize you do want fair games, which is why it took me by surprise that you asked if we were all set when Bryff was replaced on your team with the best player I know. It was such an obscenely blatant mismatch in my eyes that I was actually thinking for a second you were joking when you asked if we should start the game, so I wanted to make sure I conveyed that I didn't think it would be just slightly unfavorable to us.
We weren't in the best mood after our epic first game throw or the smack talk in the second, so it wasn't going to really be a good time to negotiate balanced teams. However, I don't think it ever will be easy. The people we had on our team all get along really well and enjoy playing with each other, so it's going to be tough to break that comradery up for the sake of balance. Honestly we just realized when we bailed, that we would rather play versus random opponents than against friends. Sorry to say this, but I'm not usually going to be down with picking teams in these games because this is almost always going to be the case. If I we can get our friends together and fill in with people we both know, and it ends up balanced or close enough, then that's wonderful. If not... well, we can always try again tomorrow is how I feel.
Last Friday I think was different though. I didn't have anyone on at the time and you actually got enough people for a 5v5 by spamming your invites, and so we started it up with random teams. I think my team started the game off 0/12 or something? Sure I could have mentioned that the teams didn't seem very even before the game started, but that's kind of awkward. I'm supposed to take people off your team and put them on mine? Kinda makes victory feel empty if someone on the winning team was solely in charge of who is teammates were.
I've suggested it before and I'll suggest it again. You and me are captains. One of us divides up the 8 other people into 2 groups, and the other person decides which group they want. That way there's no schoolyard BS where someone's picked last or someone gets to first pick Rawrr. Whomever decides the teams has to make sure strong and weak players are balanced out and that each team has players who don't have overlapping roles.
Thanks for all the feedback, etc. Going to reply to things in kind of a random order.
This approach sounds really nice, but I personally don't think is necessary. If I was under the impression that you had someone on your team that a single targeted ban would wreck, I'd probably do it. If Hedgie could only play Anivia mid, I'd ban her out as long as we didn't need something more important done with bans. That's my personal opinion on it. That said, if everyone on my team was like, don't ban Hedgie's mid (eg they tell me that's a dick move), then I probably wouldn't ban anivia. As it stands, I haven't felt like I could shut down anyone on your team with a single ban or 2, so its not much of a concern. Anywho, your way is certainly nicer, but I personally wouldn't be pissed if Bryff's kass was banned out as a targeted ban - I'd probably just cycle him to adc/support if I was concerned. Let me know if you think I'm really being a dick here as I don't.
That's not my assessment of bryff's replacement (though I did explain my wonderful ability to handicap skill in lol). Also keep in mind that I went through my invite list multiple times, pm'd several folks in skype and in game all to try to get us 1 replacement. When we finally got rawr, I think that may have been after like a 10-15 minute wait (not sure if my brain is exaggerating the time we waited), so I really just wanted to start. If the obstacle was who's on a given team, then all I wanted to know was who you folks wanted me to swap. I understand your POV, though. Sadly I was more stunned trying to figure out why the heck you guys wouldn't just tell me who you wanted to switch up (I also get why you were hesitant to do so now).
I'm on board with however you'd like to handle that. If you'd just like to get the 2 of us on a separate skype call while we'd sort who we pick, then I'm fine with that. Or your grouping system, etc. We can make whatever work here.
re: bryff - I don't think he meant to be a dick. I've never known him to be all that exceedingly hostile to folks or taunting. Based on that, I didn't interpret whatever he said as being that. I was actually really surprised when it became clear that the other team was pissed at him. Honestly, I didn't fully follow at the time, but hedgie/thunder explained that well enough. I'd wager its safe to say that Bryff will be much more sensitive in the future, though. And hedgie made clear how he feels about all chat as well, so I'd think we can resolve that.
Karl(or anyone else who can jungle), I need your help...
I feel that I am regressing in terms of being an effective jungler. I am absolutely fine that my main junglers are banned most games, (frankly it does feel a little unfair when I pick Amumu) but I never have as much of an impact on the game as Karl does.
What behaviors have you noticed that I have that I need to remedy?
What do I need to develop?
thanks in advance
I got the server undefined error just now.
to fix, type in "thereisnourflevel" with the client highlighted, and you can get on.
Hopefully Karl will chime in if he has some tips. That said, in our team games, I've been able to get Karl more involved in my lane by being aggressive with pink wards and calling out what is free and if there's an opportunity. Most of these instances Karl would likely have showed up on his own, but knowing for sure that there are no wards, etc, will def improve the junglers effectiveness. not that this tips helps you in any particular way... :/ I suppose a decent support can go a long way towards being more effective, so perhaps try to get your support on board with pink wards, etc.
If i only played Anivia, you knew this, invited me to a game, put me on the other team, then banned it, i would leave the game. If you didn't want to play with me - only win against me - then i want no part in that. If you accepted me on your team, then the opponents banned Anivia, and i lost every single game playing as xxxxx then you would pretty quickly stop inviting me, i think.
Now, we were in Go4LoL or some other somewhat competitive environment, then that would be totally different.
The problem is two-fold:
(This is purely from a competitive argument viewpoint)
1- Bryff has a shallow champion roster.
In the past 7 months:
Kassidin: 128 games, 59% win
Taric: 47 games, 53% win
Corki: 27 games, 33% win
Everybody knows that Kass destroys typical AP mid champions. Since Bryff has a lot of games as Kass, he is going to know matchups better than most people he is playing against, since Kass is relatively unpopular - not like Viktor levels of unpopular, but still an uncommon pick.
2- Sharp has a shallow mid champion roster, and with the people we typically play with, mid is the best role to cram her into.
Unfortunately, she doesn't really play very many ADs. Since Gotnades plays a lot of AP tops, and Kog does a lot of AP damage, it'd be pretty easy for us to put GP mid against him every game if she actually played GP.
So we make her play AP mids, she gets predictably wrecked, feels bad because Kass gets out of control, then gets trash-talked.
----
Banning out Bryff forces him to either play Taric (or we could even pick Taric early-on and deny him that), and also helps mitigate #2. Now, her mid isn't that strong, and she still might lose the lane against other players, but she probably wouldn't lose it quite as bad.
Suddenly, instead of basically giving you a free midlane nearly ever game (okay, he can play a Karthus mid, 11 / 55%, but Orianna stomps Karthus. Ori also beats Ryze).
However, the real problem with this all, is it devolves these games into a predator-prey dynamic.
Rather than about letting each weaker player play as well as they possibly can, so that they can contribute and do things like get quad-kills, it's about making each weak player play as shitty as we can make them, then having the stronger players feed off of their weakness, and go 15/1/9 against a 50-win support that mostly plays bot games.
Although getting "fed" is how you win the game, it is a zero-sum game. A player who routinely goes extremely negative KDA because you're camping their lane / banning their best champs every game, is just going to go play against randoms.
i don't think anyone here wants to have games where each team has one or two champs that are 10/1/15, going out of control every team fight, while the poor 1/10/5 sacrifice themselves, because we decided to ban out people.
This also completely ruins any sort of "balance" with teampicking. If we are going to do "oh you have the best AD we get the best AP" then we ban out all of that persons one champions, everyone needs to rotate around, and now your comp is screwed... yeah.
That said, i don't have a problem banning out the best champions of someone who plays multiple champions in a role - Karl, Thunder and Gotnades are the best three examples. Karl has multiple junglers, Thunder can play every support, and Gotnades has an extremely diverse champion roster.
Here, you're "respecting" their skill, and saying "we don't want to deal with Karl's Cho'gath", "we haven't been able to deal with Signed top - we need to ban it", "Nunu + Kog is too strong end game for us to win teamfights against", "we're confident that Hecarim is Krdax's best jungle, but he can play a few other jungles so let's take that away from them since we struggled with it last game".
"LOL let's ban Bryff's Kass (Hedgie's Anivia) every game so they have to play champions and roles they are unfamiliar with so we can win, espiecially since Kass causes a lot of trouble for the champions we want to play".
i'm pretty sure you're smart enough to realize the highest rated plat player on all of our friend's list going onto the team that has been winning all night is going to cause some problems.
Not to mention the "comradeship" problem.
This approach sounds really nice, but I personally don't think is necessary. If I was under the impression that you had someone on your team that a single targeted ban would wreck, I'd probably do it.
That's absolutely fine, though I will warn you that it might lead to us not being able to have in house games on occasion. Not sure if you remember my friend who was lagging a while back and we had to replace with Cow? He has about 50 wins and just made level 30 a couple weeks before we played. Well, he can play Sona well enough to play with us... and pretty much no one else at a level where games could be remotely competitive with him in them. I only felt okay with ditching him because he was having four bar lag spikes that day, but I'm not gonna tell him he can't play with us because the other team is going to essentially ban him out of the game. Hopefully he'll improve his champ/role selection soon but in the mean time be aware that if he's playing with me that day, I can't join the games if "wrecking" an inexperienced player at champ select is going to be a strategy. Work him over all you want in game though, that's just the way it is.
re: bryff - I don't think he meant to be a dick.
He seems like a nice kid, so I'm going to post Thunder's Rules Of Smack Talkery™ for him to peruse at his leisure.
I guess that's more of a ground rule we should set then than just assume. Perhaps we just have a difference of opinion re: the level of competition. I'm really competitive with the in game match ups and I really enjoy trying to outplay, outmaneuver whoever I'm up against. And all of that starts with the banning phase. If we want to make some sort of specific house rule, then I'm all for it if that's what folks want. Understanding one thing from my POV would go a long way, though. I like the in house games and would love to keep them going. And I know that will only happen if 10 other people enjoy them. So, I'm quite willing to make adjustments to how we form teams, specific in house rules, whatever. We can even come up with a simple list of basic rules and adhere to them. I don't think that would be challenging in the slightest. So, if you already have some thoughts on house rules, I'd love to hear them. My guess is don't be a dick in all chat is rule 1.
yeah... I really don't want people to come away from our games feeling like shit or enraged. I'm quite confident no one will be shit talking to sharp again (and again, I don't even know that it was bryff's intent to do that, but I'm also confident that your message has been heard).
Another thought along those lines - I don't/didn't view sharp as a weak link. Now, I'm not saying weak link to be a jerk or anything, but its like this - I know, of the people I play with regularly, what I can expect from folks in a given role. But I don't know that for folks I don't play with regularly. So, I didn't think there was some huge mismatch between bryff and sharp. For all I know, sharp's a solid mid. And really... that's all I know (eg not much about her skill level as a mid). I just always prefer to put bryff at mid unless we are running a specialized comp or we need someone else at mid (we play with a guy named khan that mains mid, so I cycle those 2 out when possible to keep everyone happy, for instance).
This is an interesting point, but I'm not really sure the best way to mitigate or change things for the better. For instance, in a game against randoms, a jungler might very well camp a lane or prioritize it so his teammate can dominate later and the opponent is less likely to be able to dominate. If you turn things so now its intentionally picking off a weaker player instead of trying to give your teammate an advantage, well, then your an ass to focus on a particular lane. Which brings me back to saying "I'm not really sure the best way to mitigate or change things for the better." I don't think any of us were vindictively trying to harass or punish a particular player... well anymore than if I was a in a solo lane against hedgie, I'd be doing my best to knock him off and he'd do the same. Both of us pissed if we get killed and happy if we destroy the other. blahblah - not sure what to do.
maybe that all just lends itself to trying to get better balance when we form teams. eg try to pair the weaker with the stronger. Or even setup a lopsided game if a particular player is losing over and over. Maybe just doing the team capt thing mitigates this completely.
I would like to chime in and say I think Thunder's way would be best. Just have Pacov and he pick 2 teams of 4 and have the person who picked second pick which team he wanted.
Also, @Pacov re: banning the only champ someone plays. I remember the last time this happened was when Vizard banned the only champ krdax's uncle played (singed) and it was probably the most unfun inhouse I was part of (I was laning against his uncle with him having a champ he didn't know how to play) so I would say do not ban the only champ someone can play. Not like this is a tournament.
@Krdax, I would say the only thing I noticed about your jungling was that you gank lanes that do not need ganks or can not succeed in ganks. I will use the game I was watching and talking to you about as an example. You ganked mid a few times even though you know he/she would not respond to your ganks and it would be a waste of time, all this does is show the enemy where you are and potentially get you killed or a buff stolen. The Shen from that game was also doing fine (even with his lane, which as Shen means he was doing more for his team) so he did not need ganks either. The right call for that game would be to continuouslly gank bottom for your Kog/Nunu lane which scaled infinitely better than the enemy lane. A well timed Hec ult plus Shen ult would get you a kill or two, bot tower, and possibly dragon setting you on an easy win course.
Also, play the character based on the match. If you are Hec and say your Kog gets focused a lot then you should try to keep the enemy off of him instead of jumping into the enemy team. If you notice your carry is rarely getting caught out then you can focus on going for the enemy carry or high threat target.
Of course, I don't regularly jungle so take all of that with a grain of salt.
i'm competitive as well - however, "outmaneuvering" by picking rawr and then setting yourself up as the victim because we don't want to say "____ is our weakest player, have them", isn't the same.
i also think that banning out people with limited champion options actually makes the game /less/ competitive. People playing unfamiliar champs and roles means that we are lowering our average level of play. Sure, it might make "you" more likely to win, but you could also probably beat 3 year old in wrestling, i'm not sure how proud you're going to be of that.
An easy analogy is Demigod - you could just play UB + Rook + Ereb/Oak against every team all day every day. But against a weaker team, you're going to have a closer (and more fun) game if you decided to play a few weaker heroes. In Demigod, it was more of a self-ban against the strongest characters, in LoL it is about less diverse people playing who they want to.
And it's not to say that Bryff's Kass is bad or anything - like i was saying before, he has a lot of games as him and is going to be pretty knowledgeable about matchups and such. And Kass dominates a lot of matchups mid to begin with. Back to Demigod, if "bans" existed, and we were having a fun game, you probably wouldn't have banned Sedna/TB against Thunder and i.
That said, it was your best thing to do, if you wanted to win. But if you decided to play against us, you already knew from the get-go you were going to play against Sed/TB. If you didn't want to play against Sed/TB, why did you challenge us to play? Does it even count as winning against us if we aren't playing Sed/TB. You already know we aren't playing at the best of our ability.
And if you did do it, then went to your tier list (hedgie is T2 because they can only play Sedna - i banned Sedna and lol they went 0/5), i would have just stop playing with you, and go play against randoms.
On the other hand, if it was a tournament or whatever, then we should have expected a Sedna or a TB ban, and that's just what it would have been. It was our fault for not having a diverse champion pool in a tournament.
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That said, i do agree that the game starts at the banning phase. Banning is really an important part of the game, and i don't want to tarnish it when it comes to banning more diverse players.
This can also get pretty sketchy when it comes to contested champions - for example if KHAN was playing mid, Orianna. i can play Orianna as well, and "stealing" her Orianna could be the best way for us to win. i don't know how many other champs KHAN can play - if he has a few others, then that might be a fair thing to do. If he doesn't, i'd let him take Ori.
If we want to 'really' relegate this, we can always create some sort of 'anti-ban'. Basically, you can choose to "pre-pick" certain heroes for people who play limited champions. In exchange you have to "waste" bans; eg, you have to ban Shen/Amumu/etc even though you're first pick. You're still getting some use out of your bans, but the opposing team doesn't have to use bans on Shen/Amumu either.
However, i really don't think this is necessary unless we start playing with multiple less-diverse people. Typically it's only 1, maybe 2 people a game, which we can work around.
This is an interesting point, but I'm not really sure the best way to mitigate or change things for the better. For instance, in a game against randoms, a jungler might very well camp a lane or prioritize it so his teammate can dominate later and the opponent is less likely to be able to dominate. If you turn things so now its intentionally picking off a weaker player instead of trying to give your teammate an advantage, well, then your an ass to focus on a particular lane.
Well, i think that banning level 1 invades/lane camping/etc would be pretty silly. Those are all really important parts of the game.
Now, if you were going against a team of weak players, invading with Blitz, then going 2v1 top... well that is getting to be a little rough. If you are that confident in your team and ability to win all 3 lanes, you don't need to make the enemy team just wait for the 20 minute mark. However, i don't think that the teams are (generally) going to be that out of balance, so i don't see it as a problem.
But i do think that banning limited champion people, forcing them into a weird lane, and then camping them (which, coincidentally, your strongest lane happens to be the lane you forced them into), is an un-fun way to play the game and a good way to stop in-house games from continuing.
i don't think that it was wrong for WW to go mid a lot against Ori. Kass ganks Ori /really well/ and WW is really good at ganking mid. But when someone is going to be on-tilt about the game before minions even spawn, and then you just turn them into a gold-factory for your strongest player, it can get negative.
Similarly, if Jona or Cow went against a weaker mid, i wouldn't expect them to hold back. It wasn't "wrong" for you to go really hard on that Sona and end up carrying your game to victory with a good score. "We" put her there, and that was our decision. But if you banned Sona, made him play Soraka, picked Blitz...
It's all about context. i really don't think that you can't see the difference between abusing an already-weaker team, and achieving an advantage over a team you're actually threatened by.
I don't/didn't view sharp as a weak link. Now, I'm not saying weak link to be a jerk or anything, but its like this - I know, of the people I play with regularly, what I can expect from folks in a given role. But I don't know that for folks I don't play with regularly. So, I didn't think there was some huge mismatch between bryff and sharp.For all I know, sharp's a solid mid. And really... that's all I know (eg not much about her skill level as a mid).
I would say I was our team's weak link the other night after my huge part in throwing a won game and then feeding first blood in the jungle on the second. Sharp is a solid mid and the fact that she stayed in those games against Jona really speaks well for her skill level. Khass is just a hard counter to the champs she plays, and it's been a situation she ran into seldom enough before that she hasn't had to expand her roster.
As heartbreaking as it was to have you guys down so far but still claw your way back into winning the first game, it felt a thousand times better than winning easily by completely screwing Bryff at champ select or having Hedgie go mid with GP would have. If you can't understand that or don't agree, that's fine. As long as you get that we feel there is a huge difference between trying to prey on weaker players in game, and completely ruining someone's hope of having a fun game in champ select then that's enough for me.
ah - i remember that too - felt the same way. But that was a guy with literally 1 character that he could play apparently. I wouldn't feel like there was no chance in hell at win if bryff's main was banned. At any rate, maybe we just make a simple house rule.
Anyway, I think the simple conclusion is that we'll just do the house rules. We can try the captain thing - prob just thunder and me privately discuss and then announce to the team (I can kill my stream and all that). If we don't do this and you think teams are unfair, private message me in game and I'll "discreetly" suggest a change. It would help me alot if folks doing that pm said something like (if they wanted karl, for instance) - "can you trade us karl for someone?"
If we are going to do the no targetted ban thing, then let's get very specific. I, personally, have no problem with bryff's main getting banned. He might. No idea. But I'd just need to know that I should not ban a specific character. That's all.
Generally, i'm not convinced that having mis-matched teams is the biggest problem that we've had.
Even though we've had a few stomps here-and-there in the teamfight stage, there's only been two games (out of 10) that i can think of where one team had every single lane lose.
Comeback have happeend (the first game last night, and the one time we were coming back but then let you have two inhibitors).
For me, at least, the only time i had a problem with the teams was when we were having a plat player come in from nowhere. If we had been winning or whatever, i doubt i would have had as much of a problem with it.
in house games live in a min or 2 - http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1
guest starring rawrr and wallstop.
game 2 up
2 really good games where my team fails in team fight phase. Really solid games tho. Lots of fun and pretty damn balanced imo.
You didn't really fail in the team fight phase the last game. We had you outscaled - no way your team could outscale darius/kog/ww.
Really close games though. Well played all around.
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