League of Legends XXIV: Today's Noob Strat, Tomorrow's New Meta

[LordShotGun]

what is this I don't even (warning: somewhat disturbing)

ಠ_ಠ

blarg blargh blaggg

[SlyGuyMcFly]

[*]I can't find any MLP playlists on the internet so that I can listen to all the songs on loop during games[/LIST][/SPOILER]

I can help you there.

[TechnOkami]

what is this I don't even (warning: somewhat disturbing)

ಠ_ಠ

Oh dear... well, Vladimir's gonna have lots of fun with this new Nocturne skin...

I think it should be called "My Bloody Nocturne".

[Mutant Bunny]

So, umm, yeah, I just did a 4v5 that lasted about 50 minutes. I had about 3000 extra gold at the end.

Cass, Cho (me), TF, Caitlyn and an AFK-from-start Gangplank

vs

Mordekaiser, Corki, Morgana, Udyr, Renekton

We actually did pretty well and had more kills at the end. I forgot to save the screenshot, but our worst played by far was a TF who built an early soulstealer

Another problem arose early on in that Cass insisted that I lane (instead jungle, where I'd started) or she'd go AFK. We proceeded to eat the enemy morde/corki lane repeatedly.

However, we were not able to finish the game quickly enough, and TF was pretty touchy the whole game, not just in build, but in attitude.

My biggest mistake was an ill-timed Baron attempt: we came away with the buff, but I didn't realize that the enemy I'd seen leaving the area just before had warded it, so the entire enemy team was waiting and we got aced

[toasty]

I've really decided that even though I am terrible at AD carry (my roles in terms of skills: Top Solo, Support, Jungle, AD Carry, AP Carry), I'm gonna play Kog'maw until I lose with him.

Why? Because no one at my elo plays Kog'maw.

Also: I don't care if its not the best build, I'm gonna build Madreds Bloodrazor+Frozen Mallet+GA every game. That should fix my problem of having the natural positioning of a tankydps.

[9mm]

Interesting thread is interesting

[Daverin]

Interesting thread is interesting

Huh. Not sure how I feel about some of this. I do feel like my hate of Cass is growing, even if it is assuming some good skill with her. Maokai is surprising me. And Morg... well, it involves landing that skillshot, which can be a crapshoot depending on how far, and a pool that people know better than to stand in, but... that seems a tad bit too much. Especially considering she also has one of the best ratios there.

It probably is worth noting that it seems distinctions between single target and aoe are not in there. This can mean two entirely different things.

[9mm]

Huh. Not sure how I feel about some of this. I do feel like my hate of Cass is growing, even if it is assuming some good skill with her. Maokai is surprising me. And Morg... well, it involves landing that skillshot, which can be a crapshoot depending on how far, and a pool that people know better than to stand in, but... that seems a tad bit too much. Especially considering she also has one of the best ratios there.

It probably is worth noting that it seems distinctions between single target and aoe are not in there. This can mean two entirely different things.

Honestly the thing that surprised me was the range in damage on some of them. No wonder everytime I played Kass it was a crap shoot, 3000 base damage variation? yikes. Though it also points out how much raw numbers aren't everything.

[Eldariel]

Huh. Not sure how I feel about some of this. I do feel like my hate of Cass is growing, even if it is assuming some good skill with her. Maokai is surprising me. And Morg... well, it involves landing that skillshot, which can be a crapshoot depending on how far, and a pool that people know better than to stand in, but... that seems a tad bit too much. Especially considering she also has one of the best ratios there.

It probably is worth noting that it seems distinctions between single target and aoe are not in there. This can mean two entirely different things.

That's over 5 secs mind; naturally AP "carries" (champs that play out like AD carries but scale with AP) like Cassiopeia perform better in the long run since they do constant, middling damage.

That said, Cassiopeia is a beast and I daresay she's my favorite caster right after Anivia & Kennen right now.

[tyckspoon]

Honestly the thing that surprised me was the range in damage on some of them. No wonder everytime I played Kass it was a crap shoot, 3000 base damage variation? yikes. Though it also points out how much raw numbers aren't everything.

I'd like to see the math and assumptions on that one, because I really just cannot see how Kass's base numbers can possibly get that high. With the given 5 second span you're looking at.. one Null Sphere, 2 Force Pulses (assuming enough spells going around to activate it again after the first one), and 2 Rift Walks... can't really see that getting anywhere near 3k+ base unless you're deliberately building up Riftwalk to the point of crippling mana cost. And you won't get away with that unless you pretend to be Ryze and build mana on everything.

[Lix Lorn]

I've really decided that even though I am terrible at AD carry (my roles in terms of skills: Top Solo, Support, Jungle, AD Carry, AP Carry), I'm gonna play Kog'maw until I lose with him.

Why? Because no one at my elo plays Kog'maw.

Also: I don't care if its not the best build, I'm gonna build Madreds Bloodrazor+Frozen Mallet+GA every game. That should fix my problem of having the natural positioning of a tankydps.

I love playing Kog'maw. He's one of my mains. ^_^
===> (Has been playing about two weeks)
===> (Has at LEAST two mains)
===> (Has spent more money than some of her level 30 friends)

[toasty]

I love playing Kog'maw. He's one of my mains. ^_^
===> (Has been playing about two weeks)
===> (Has at LEAST two mains)
===> (Has spent more money than some of her level 30 friends)

Don't worry, i've spent a lot of money on this game. like, over $200.

Of course, every time I spend money on this game, its less money spent on other video games... so that's basically how I justify it.

[Eldariel]

I'd like to see the math and assumptions on that one, because I really just cannot see how Kass's base numbers can possibly get that high. With the given 5 second span you're looking at.. one Null Sphere, 2 Force Pulses (assuming enough spells going around to activate it again after the first one), and 2 Rift Walks... can't really see that getting anywhere near 3k+ base unless you're deliberately building up Riftwalk to the point of crippling mana cost. And you won't get away with that unless you pretend to be Ryze and build mana on everything.

Ult stacks go a long way. RoA is pretty normal for Kass; combine with bluebuff you can easily get a couple of stacks while getting to a fight. And Banshee is his go-to defense item anyways. And xPeke occasionally builds Tear on him (when he's playing top) so I guess that's not completely unviable either. And you can actually use Lichbane on him, too. At that point, especially with blue, you have enough mana for kingdom come (RoA+Lichbane+AA Staff would be 3500 Mana giving you ~60 Mana Per Second total with blue; enough to fully regenerate ½ of a 3-stack Riftwalk during its cooldown, and enough mana for a 10-stack Riftwalk easily). And ~700+ AP.

EDIT: Quite possible he's also talking about W + Passive; you can potentially get 2.5 ASpd just from Kass passive if you're tanky or healed enough. Lasts 4 secs.

[potatocubed]

Don't worry, i've spent a lot of money on this game. like, over $200.

Of course, every time I spend money on this game, its less money spent on other video games... so that's basically how I justify it.

I consider it in terms of money spent versus hours of entertainment gained: generally speaking I expect each £ I spend to provide an hour of entertainment - it used to be £2 to an hour, but cheap games on Steam have spoiled me.

With ~300 games played on LoL, they've more than earned the ~£40 I've spent on it so far.

[Dienekes]

Interesting thread is interesting

At last my hatred of Fiddlesticks is explained. With math!

Interesting stuff though a bit flawed, at least he's honest about it though.

[toasty]

At last my hatred of Fiddlesticks is explained. With math!

I hit 1400 elo and people magically started playing fiddle and I have nothing but love for him. Seriously, probably the best jungle to carry the game with in solo queue right now.

except when the enemy picks morg+Fiddle and they bot ult+hourglass onto my team. That makes it really hard to win.

[Joran]

I consider it in terms of money spent versus hours of entertainment gained: generally speaking I expect each £ I spend to provide an hour of entertainment - it used to be £2 to an hour, but cheap games on Steam have spoiled me.

With ~300 games played on LoL, they've more than earned the ~£40 I've spent on it so far.

Same here. I've sunk about $70 US on the game ($20 for the first champion pack, $30 for the second champion pack, $20 for the rune page bundle). I've mostly avoided buying skins and champions with RP.

I've got about 700 SR games, 300 bot games, 80+ Dominion games, so that's a huge chunk of time and it's been worth it.

P.S. Off-topic, but I think we're moving quickly into a marketplace where consumers will be directly paying artists for their work. We have to get used to supporting people whose work we value and enjoy.

[LordShotGun]

P.S. Off-topic, but I think we're moving quickly into a marketplace where consumers will be directly paying artists for their work. We have to get used to supporting people whose work we value and enjoy.

This certainly seems more popular with games like dwarf fortress, minecraft, and terraria among others, where you buy an unfinished game with the promise that more content will be upcoming.

Or games that are free to play but have a cash shop, LoL, team fortress 2 now and many many MANY MMOs.

[tribble]

Are we talking teamfight or 1v1 here? And which champion? Many champions have repeatable slows; just establish a distance and he'll die. In teamfights, he just gets mass CCd and dies so those are a foregone conclusion.

There's some melee champs that have trouble 1v1ing him but most ranged carries with redbuff, most melee champs with CC and most mages should have zero trouble taking a Trynd 1v1.

I'm talking backdoor/splitpushing. It doesn't really matter all that much, I find most tryndameres are bad.

what is this I don't even (warning: somewhat disturbing)

ಠ_ಠ

The disturbing thing to me is the japanese-style "why even bother with these" censor bars on teemo's blowdart launcher.

[Math_Mage]

I hit 1400 elo and people magically started playing fiddle and I have nothing but love for him. Seriously, probably the best jungle to carry the game with in solo queue right now.

except when the enemy picks morg+Fiddle and they bot ult+hourglass onto my team. That makes it really hard to win.

My last Ranked loss, on top of featuring a 4th pick who decided he really wanted to play Mordekaiser instead of a support and forced me duo bot with Udyr as a result (we still won lane, Bear stun 2 stronk and jungle ganks helped), had my entire team running into not one, not two, but five heavily telegraphed Fiddle ults. This despite my warding and warnings (and one attempted flash-stun to cancel the ult that failed because of lag).

Morgana is a problem unless I'm laning against her.

Sigh, it's the return of AOEtoWin. Which was never a bad strat, it's just that everything else got nerfed again over the last year--global ganks, split push, heal-poke, and so on.

[Joran]

For those who really, really wanted to know everything about Dominion and respawns, Brackhar has all the answers for you!

Spoiler

Show

Hey guys, there's been a lot of confusion related to how respawning in Dominion works, so I wanted to take some time and write up a clear explanation for you along with answer any questions you may have. Being transparent about what's going on under the hood should hopefully help guide the conversation in a productive way, as the feedback you guys provide is important for us to decide how to move forward on almost any balance adjustment.

As a note before we dive in, the numbers I'm providing here are current as of 10/21/11 on Live.

Base System:

Spawning in Dominion is based off of the idea of a wave spawning system. Early on in development we found that Dominion was much more fun when you would respawn with your allies and leave base together, so we wanted to create a system that tended towards that where possible. The two important concepts to understand about the wave spawn system are the minimum respawn time and the respawn window size.

Minimum respawn time: This is the time that, when no respawn wave is active for that team, it will take the person who died to respawn. In Dominion this value defaults to 26 seconds at all levels.

Respawn window size: When someone dies on a team, if no respawn window is active, a new respawn window will be created of the size specified by this variable. Currently in Dominion this value is set to 12 seconds. When a respawn window is created fora team, anyone who dies during this period will have their respawn time set to the same time as the person who opened the window.

Example: Imagine that three people die in a row at a team, one at 0:00, one at 0:10, and one at 0:20. When the first person dies no respawn window is open, so he will open a respawn window of 12 seconds and his respawn time will be set to the minimum, 26 seconds. When the second player dies at 0:10, he falls within the respawn window opened by the first champion, so instead of having his respawn time set to the minimum he will have it set to the same time as the first champion who died. At 0:12 the respawn window closes. The next champion who dies at 0:20 is outside of the respawn window, so she gets a minimum respawn time of 26 seconds and opens a new window. At 0:26 both the first and the second champion respawn. At 0:32 the second respawn window closes, and then at 0:46 the third champion respawns.

Ongoing adjustments:

As we played around with this system we found that, because of our decision to go with a smaller map, it was very difficult for the team with fewer capture points to get a strong positional advantage on the winning team after winning a major encounter like happens on Summoner's Rift, and furthermore it was very easy for the winning team to continually reinforce points in a way that assured they could cap and continually hold three points. We needed a mechanism to simulate the sense of being "deep into enemy territory" that can happen in Summoner's Rift, where for the winning team it takes longer to reinforce after any particular defeat and when the winning team gets aced it can be an incredible setback. As such we felt the best way to accomplish this was by adjusting the respawn times of both teams based on the difference in nexus health, effectively adjusting the amount of time it takes to reinforce any given location on the map. The respawn adjustments work as follows.

When one team in Dominion gets a lead in nexus health on the opposing team, the leading team has their respawn time increased by two seconds. By the same token, the losing team has their minimum respawn time reduced by 2 seconds. If the lead increases to 50 nexus health the spread increases to +3/-3 seconds, and after a 100 point lead the spread increases again to +4/-4. No additional adjustments occur after this point regardless of the point spread in the two teams. To counteract the fact that increasing the minimum respawn time can cause the winning team to be more likely to respawn outside of a window, we increase the size of the window for the winning team by half of the amount we increase the minimum respawn time. So holistically this means that the respawn adjustments range from (+2:+1)/(-2:-0) to (+4:+2)/(-4:-0) as the lead increases from 1 nexus health to 100 nexus health. When we launched we had the range set to +5/-5, but we reduced it to +4/-4 two patches ago.

Death reduction
Abilities and runes that reduce your time dead, such as the good hands mastery, simply reduce your assigned respawn time. This does mean that it can break the intent of the respawn system, which is to have you respawn together, but we felt this was the lesser evil than making runes you purchase have no effect at all. I'd be interested in a better solution.

Conclusion:
Overall we have found this system to have a drastic benefit to the game compared to when we used a traditional static respawn time, both in allowing players to respawn together and also destabilizing the 3 and hold strategy. Without this system in place evenly matched teams would regularly end up in 300-400 point leads when the game ended and the overall number of captures and point turnovers was much lower. Conversely, after adding the system we also saw that unmatched teams were basically unaffected and still stomped games just as well as they did before.

Figuring out the proper configuration for how respawn should work in Dominion was a large challenge for us over the course of the project and is something we're still working to refine. Anyway, I hope this helps clear things up for you guys! Feel free to ask questions or give feedback and I'll try to answer as best I can.

[Makensha]

Would you like to read my wall of text on why hybrids don't work?

Of course you do.

Why wouldn't you?

Don't answer that.

[toasty]

Sigh, it's the return of AOEtoWin. Which was never a bad strat, it's just that everything else got nerfed again over the last year--global ganks, split push, heal-poke, and so on.

Basically. Its funny though, because I do have to wonder, if AoE to win is back in action, what exactly was the point of the nerfs? We've replace Vlad/MF/Amumu with Morg/Kog/Fiddle.

[balistafreak]

Don't worry, i've spent a lot of money on this game. like, over $200.

Of course, every time I spend money on this game, its less money spent on other video games... so that's basically how I justify it.

By now I've spent >$400.

This is how it goes:

"I could buy the new Call of Duty..."

"... nope, I'm going to go home and get $50 of RP for that Runepage bundle and a few champs."

"I could buy this lamp I really don't need..."

"... nope, I'm going to home home and get $50 of RP for those skins on sale."

And so on and so on. >.>

[Qwertystop]

What's a good build for New Skarner? Also, who agrees that his real-scorpion skinn is terrible while he still shoots crystals? It's the same problem as Bird of Prey Anivia's egg (also, BoP Anivia is grey in-game, therefore much less impressive).

[Tychris1]

Real scorpion skin? They made a new skin for him?

[Qwertystop]

Real scorpion skin? They made a new skin for him?

One of the launch ones. Can't remember what it's called. There's normal, earthrune, and the other one (which looks like a real scorpion, sort of).

[Math_Mage]

What's a good build for New Skarner? Also, who agrees that his real-scorpion skinn is terrible while he still shoots crystals? It's the same problem as Bird of Prey Anivia's egg (also, BoP Anivia is grey in-game, therefore much less impressive).

Probably pretty much the same build that was good for old Skarner. Either AS-onhit or AP-AS would be my guesses. I could see Guinsoo's Rageblade or Wit's End being a good core damage item, with Trimogma's to follow, or a little tankiness and then Deathcap, or something of that nature.

EDIT: Alternatively, Sheen is nice and cheap.

[Makensha]

What's a good build for New Skarner?

However you want, really. Just not full tank.

And do yourself a favor and incorporate 40% CDR into your build.

[Tychris1]

oh you mean the sand scorpion skin

I was hoping that a real steel robot boxing skarner skin was released