League of Legends XXV: Who is your Summoner, and what does he do?

[9mm]

So Epik fielded a team with no ranged AD against Dignitas and won. That is super interesting, and I hope we see more unusual team comps that can compete with the boring ol' team comps we see game after game.

It was a very specific line up to counter Dignitas favored champs, with Kennen filling the role the ad carry usually plays during tower sieges. While we might see more change ups in comps like that, I doubt it.

[Fredaintdead]

So... had my first game as a support today... just vs bots you know, wanted to try it out first before taking it to normals.

The support: Taric
The Summoner: Me... kind of obvious that one.
The lane: Top strangely enough. Me and Sivir vs Taric and Ashe.
The team: Karthus, Sivir, Caitlyn, Yoric and me VS Cho'Gath, Annie, Ashe, Nunu and Taric.
The result: 7/0/12. I had quite a bit of fun to be honest. Probably warded a lot less than I should've (only ever bought two wards at the beginning), and may have taken just a few too many creeps off of Sivir (38 CS by the end of the game). And I even got thanked by Sivir for clutch-heals.

So yeah, it was my first game with Taric, so it's not like I know the champ yet, but I felt good about it, even if it's only versus bots.
I think most of my positivity is coming from me doing well in a role I've never played before and have even expressed disinterest in playing. (I play TankyDPS melee for the most part if not every game)
So yeah, I may add Taric to my list of champs, and maybe attempt to learn how to play support Alistar too.

[dgnslyr]

In a lot of games, nobody wants to play support, so I tend to find myself filling that role, in the hopes of having a well-rounded team. After failing pretty hard a few times as support Sona, I tried Taric, and dang is he good. He's so easy to play, and yet so useful! Why, Riot, why does my best-played support have to threaten my masculinity!

On the subject of supports, any advice for an aspiring babysitter? I'm not very good at Sona beyond "press all the buttons in fights," so are there any general guidelines at supporting I should know, in addition to Sona/Taric specific stuff?

[tyckspoon]

The result: 7/0/12. I had quite a bit of fun to be honest. Probably warded a lot less than I should've (only ever bought two wards at the beginning), and may have taken just a few too many creeps off of Sivir (38 CS by the end of the game). And I even got thanked by Sivir for clutch-heals.

Eh. You certainly weren't warding enough for a normal game, but for bots.. they never do Baron or Dragon, so you don't have to worry about the big objective warding (you can try putting a ward on the Red/Blue camps, because they will take those from time to time.) They're predictable as hell in where they do lane moves- after the first tower goes down, they're going to go gank somebody. Warding/calling MIA against those is good practice, but.. really, it's the bot AI. If you do bot games at all, you should know- can you see them all on the minimap? No? They're ganking you, back off and abuse their complete lack of caution around towers to farm a few kills from them.

[Fredaintdead]

Eh. You certainly weren't warding enough for a normal game, but for bots.. they never do Baron or Dragon, so you don't have to worry about the big objective warding (you can try putting a ward on the Red/Blue camps, because they will take those from time to time.) They're predictable as hell in where they do lane moves- after the first tower goes down, they're going to go gank somebody. Warding/calling MIA against those is good practice, but.. really, it's the bot AI. If you do bot games at all, you should know- can you see them all on the minimap? No? They're ganking you, back off and abuse their complete lack of caution around towers to farm a few kills from them.

That was my exact mentality. I figured CV was enough to know where they were, and it turned out I was right.

[ArcanistSupreme]

It was a very specific line up to counter Dignitas favored champs, with Kennen filling the role the ad carry usually plays during tower sieges. While we might see more change ups in comps like that, I doubt it.

I'm not saying that every game has to be something crazy and new, but even if every twenty games we saw one unusual counter-comp, that would be more exciting than the current meta.

Eh. You certainly weren't warding enough for a normal game, but for bots.. they never do Baron or Dragon, so you don't have to worry about the big objective warding (you can try putting a ward on the Red/Blue camps, because they will take those from time to time.) They're predictable as hell in where they do lane moves- after the first tower goes down, they're going to go gank somebody. Warding/calling MIA against those is good practice, but.. really, it's the bot AI. If you do bot games at all, you should know- can you see them all on the minimap? No? They're ganking you, back off and abuse their complete lack of caution around towers to farm a few kills from them.

Actually, they never take jungle camps except with AoE abilities in skirmishes. However, they do always use about three different paths to move from one lane to another, so warding some key points along those routes basically means you always know where they are. Which is sort of good warding practice, as warding blue and red will usually spot them.

And maybe I'm grossly underestimating the difficulty of programming AI, but is it really that hard to program them to go for map objectives? That would be kind of a nice tutorial for newbies, and then maybe it would happen more in real games too. Plus, when the bots are already stupidly tanky, they could turn on players while dragon/baron was hitting them without too much trouble.

Speaking of tutorials, would it be feasible to have an "intermediate tactics" tutorial/tutorial series? Some kind of guide to placing wards, last hitting, and maybe even jungling that was accessible in-game could go a long way toward educating newer players about the power of those mechanics.

[Anonomuss]

In a lot of games, nobody wants to play support, so I tend to find myself filling that role, in the hopes of having a well-rounded team. After failing pretty hard a few times as support Sona, I tried Taric, and dang is he good. He's so easy to play, and yet so useful! Why, Riot, why does my best-played support have to threaten my masculinity!

On the subject of supports, any advice for an aspiring babysitter? I'm not very good at Sona beyond "press all the buttons in fights," so are there any general guidelines at supporting I should know, in addition to Sona/Taric specific stuff?

I haven't been playing long, but I mostly play support, and I don't get cursed out of games for being ridiculously bad most of the time(although there's the odd game, but I suppose that's usual, right?).

The main thing about playing a babysitter support is making your buddy shine. Build items that give aura effects that complement their build. Don't be afraid to support them if they make a bold move, as your heal (Or shield) can save them from the last turret shot they need to take someone down, and any other boost you can give them is a plus. Also, don't be afraid of taking some damage if you've enough sustain. Your buddy will thank you for tanking the tower while they chase, or taking a skillshot that would kill them.

Depending on the champs, it may be worth your while pursuing a fleeing enemy if your buddy can't reach, as the assist gold is better than none, and the free farm is great to have. Still, if you're both close to a dying enemy, pull back a bit and let them have the kill as often as possible. If you do land an auto-attack and kill them, I find its best to apologise to your buddy, but that might just be me being over-cautious about such things.

If they're melee and you're not, zoning is a pretty big deal, you need to be a bit more aggressive to allow your buddy to farm, and your ward coverage should be based largely on helping your buddy not get ganked.

As Taric, one of your biggest assets as a babysitter is your stun. Make sure your buddy can take advantage of it before you let it off, as it can be a certain kill in the right circumstances.

A lot of it is probably a bit too obvious, but hopefully there's something in there that's useful. I'll still kinda stupid-new, so most of my experience is vs Bots.

[tyckspoon]

Actually, they never take jungle camps except with AoE abilities in skirmishes. However, they do always use about three different paths to move from one lane to another, so warding some key points along those routes basically means you always know where they are. Which is sort of good warding practice, as warding blue and red will usually spot them.

Really? I would swear I've seen bots disappear and come back to lane with a buff, and I don't *think* they stole it from one of my teammates.

And maybe I'm grossly underestimating the difficulty of programming AI, but is it really that hard to program them to go for map objectives? That would be kind of a nice tutorial for newbies, and then maybe it would happen more in real games too. Plus, when the bots are already stupidly tanky, they could turn on players while dragon/baron was hitting them without too much trouble.

Probably wouldn't be too difficult.. they already have triggers/decision making processes that say 'bottom lane is alone at half health, go gank him/push his tower', it shouldn't be hard to add 'or take Dragon' to that. If the bots start semi-intelligently pursuing other map objectives, tho, I'd want to see the bot advantage settings turned down- it'd be near impossible to have a serious fight over Dragon/Baron (at level/build points where these take a while and are significant threats on their own) when the bots respawn fast enough to just swamp you in wave tactics. You win the first fight, try to take the monster, and then even if you get it you get cleaned up by the freshly respawned enemy.. it's like fighting a full team of no-cooldown Revives.

[PersonMan]

Just had a really fun SR game as Heimer. Only problem was that it was really short, and my brother closed LoL so I couldn't get a screenshot of the end screen.

I was mid vs Tristana. Quickly I take the advantage and out-farm her. At about 12 minutes I've brought down the enemy turret with 0 damage to my own, and I kill Trist via ulti on my turrets as she pulls back.

During this stage, she got into the bad habit of tanking my grenades, which later become quite a bad idea once I went back and bought a bunch of AP.

Teamfight breaks out in mid, later in the game(~20 minutes in). Our Shyvana is running away with really low HP. I throw down a turret and use my ultimate. Tristana dies. Tryndamere tries to run, but he goes through a bush where I put my last turret. Double kill, and all with barely any effort from me.

I end the game 3/1/0, with around 160 CS, when they surrender at 24 minutes.

EDIT: And it turns out I haven't been using one of my quints, as well as having...2 +0.94% AS reds.

[Qaera]

Is there a general guide for how to go about Draft Mode in Summoner's Rift? Who you want to ban, who you want to pick, what roles each should take?

~ ♅

[Eldariel]

It was a very specific line up to counter Dignitas favored champs, with Kennen filling the role the ad carry usually plays during tower sieges. While we might see more change ups in comps like that, I doubt it.

Karthus too. The comp had no problem not having an AD carry since, as I said, they had two AP carries (both Kennen and Kart have low cooldowns with Kart Lay Waste being actually AD ASpd-level and then Defile gives consistent damage too up-front; and all that is kinda nice vs. bruisers).

Is there a general guide for how to go about Draft Mode in Summoner's Rift? Who you want to ban, who you want to pick, what roles each should take?

~ ♅

Bans don't matter. People will tell you to ban X, Y and Z. Just ban good snowballers that can carry solo queue games alone unless you plan on playing them tho. Stuff like Kassadin, Talon, Akali, etc. is fine to ban.

Also, champs that counter whatever you're gonna pick; if you're running some weak jungler, ban strong counterjunglers. If you're gonna run a weak mid, ban his counters. If you'll play Karthus, ban Soraka. And so on, and so forth.

Be selfish; your team is just as like to be useless as not, and they're probably clueless anyways. Don't ban for them but pick some high priority champs (currently some dolts have decided Skarner is "op" for instance) if someone on your team wants to play them; generally people who wanna play X are good on X. Given it's not guaranteed they're good on anything else, it's a good idea to pick for 'em if you can.


And every team should have:
- 1 Ranged AD
- 1 0 CS champ for bot
- 1 Jungler
- 1 Magic Damage Dealer
- 1 Solo Top (can be another Ranged AD or Mage, or a Tanky Deeps)

That's the general setup. You can vary that a lot and be successful but it's safest to stick to the basics in solo queue. And generally 1st - 3rd pick play what they want and the rest fill in. Optimally highest picks generally play carries since properly played they are the biggest asset to the team's chances of victory.

But none of this matters too much on low levels. Just play a champ that has decent carrying capability and go to town.

[dgnslyr]

The "generic standard meta-approved teamcomp" is Tank/Tanky DPS top, Tank/TankyDPS jungle, AP carry mid, AD carry/support bot. This doesn't always happen, though, and it's fine to have two tanky dps instead of a tank as long as you have good initiation. Nobody wants to play support, either, so if you've got a tanky dps with good CC babysitting your AD carry, it's good enuff.

Common bans these days are Akali, Graves, Morgana, and Singed. Morgana bans make me sad, because she's the only AP carry I play well-ish.

Otherwise, I guess just play like you would otherwise, and do your best. After accidentally clicking on Draft Normals once, I'm never going back to blind, because there seem to be far fewer idiots in Draft. It doesn't stop a few from slipping through, but I'll take what I can get.

[toasty]

Top laners that want to take tower if they can:

Udyr, Singed, Jarvan, Lee Sin, Maokai, Renekton, Talon, Tryndamere, Xin Zhao.

A lot more than I thought. O_o''

The ones that stand out, because they're actually likely to be able to, are tryndamere, talon, singed, and renekton. All 4 are good pushers, and have strong ganking potential, so they can ram top up to the second tower, go off to gank, and then return to top as it starts to push the other way.

EDIT: They're also all quite good at escaping ganks.

Generic Solo Queue mentality at my elo (1250-1350, as it stands now):

Ban all the assassins: Akali, Kass, Talon. Also ban OP jungles like Rammus, Lee Sin. Sometimes ban mages/carries like Graves, Morg. You have 6 bans now and I've found, at my elo, that's almost too much. no one plays Shaco, Xerath, etc, at my elo enough for me to want to ban them.

Picks generally go like this:
You need an AD carry. Period. In solo queue, that's just how it works. I suggest Cait/Corki/Ez/Vayne right now. Graves, I feel, is meh, after nerfs. Ashe/Trist are good, but have a lot of problems. Trist is more viable than Ashe in solo queue.

You need a mage. Period. This mage should hopefully get solo mid. The most OP mages are ones that can push hard and have high up-front damage at mid levels: Cass, Sion, TF, in my opinion, are the best mids in solo queue. No one plays TF right now so he's pretty awesome. I play Gragas because he's pretty much the only mage I can play right now. other mages that are good are Brand, Kass, Morgana.

Solo Top: In theory very versatile, in reality people assume a tankydps top. Trying to play Corki and saying "I'm solo top" will probably get you raged at, even though Corki is one of the strongest solo laners in the game. Udyr, Singed, Nasus, Irelia, Warwick, Olaf, Trundle, Tryndamere, Teemo . . . there are a lot of solo tops that are viable right now. In my opinion, Solo Top is the role that is most dependent on what the enemy picks. I know that sounds really annoying, because in solo queue, almost no one counter picks, but its something to consider. When I play solo top and I don't know what the enemy is playing, I default to irelia, who I feel is a solo top with very few natural counters. (Garen kinda craps on her early game, but he does that to EVERYONE).

Jungle: Skarner, Shaco, Rammus, Lee Sin, Nocturne are all viable junglers. There are other that are good, but in solo queue, those are the ones i want to play the most. Try to build more tanky than offense unless you are getting super fed. A tanky Skarner is still really scary. A tanky Nocturne can almost initiate a team fight. Etc.

Support: Ali, Taric, Sona are my favorites, because they are AGGRESSIVE Supports WITH sustain. Janna and Soraka are good, but do not have both aggression and sustain. Sona isn't aggressive? you're not Maxing Q. Q+Q Power Chord+Passive+Caitlyn = very, very dangerous lane. I've fed my caitlyn a 14 minute Bloodthirster with Sona. Ali and Taric are similar in these regards, CC your enemy and tell your carry to start shooting. Vayne is best with Ali, IMO, because you have 3 potential stuns. Caitlyn, Trist or Corki is great with Taric/Sona. Ali has the most team presence late game, Taric the least.Taric's level 6 burst is unparalleled though.

[balistafreak]

Blitzcrank+manaless champion (Shyvana, Riven, Tryndamere) double jungling. Wow, I lol'd.

Blitzcrank gets his blue, manaless jungler goes wolves to golems, but instead of going to blue after recalling, ganks - or possibly just ganks. Gank repeatedly and without mercy - Blitzcrank can come in to assist the manaless jungler with taking his red after ganking a lane. If both junglers happen to be together and the lanes are pushed out/already dead, invade without mercy. Coincidentally, the manaless junglers tend to have lots of damage with little to no CC, while Blitzcrank provides all the CC in the world, though, so you're almost guaranteed a kill if you can land a Power Rocket Grab Fist.

[Dogmantra]

A big thing in draft is if you're one of the last picks and you're undecided on which champion to play, just pick a counter. If you wanna play a support character and they have tons of physical damage, pick Taric or Soraka for the armour buffs. If they have lots of AoE, pick Janna (or just pick Janna in general, she's bitchin'). If their "support" is Zilean (which isn't a very good idea in the first place), grab someone with a shield. If you have to jungle and they have high health targets or strong autoattackers, that's Amumu, if they have tons of physical damage, grab Rammus.

Here's the thing though. Don't play anyone you're not confident with. Counter pick but ONLY in your list of champions you're okay playing. If you don't think you'll do well as Soraka or Taric, don't pick 'em even if they'd be better than, say, Janna.

[Da Beast]

Just pick up somebody that's ridiculously OP and supercarry your team to victory. I just played a ranked smurf game on an account at like, 1150 ELO. Seriously, reaction times are probably slower than molasses at sub-1200 ELOs. 17/4/11 Brand with Revolver, Deathcap, Doran's Ring, 20 Stack Mejais, Abyssals, Sorceress Shoes, which came out to 661 AP with a bunch of gold to spare because I never backed after that. I don't even play Brand either. So, yeah, I think if you want to get out of "ELO Hell", then just play OP carries and ignore team comp.

This is what I realized after loosing a match with Janna yesterday. Yi, my lanning partner, gave up two kills before lvl 4 but I managed to set him up a double kill and bring him back into the game. It didn't matter though since bottom lane was doing even worse and fed kills like crazy. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to pull our team through team fights and at one point the enemy team actually complained that Janna was carrying the entire team and without me the match would have been over, but I just couldn't do enough to pull out a win. It's honestly not even losing that makes me mad; if I feel like I'm playing well but lose due to a bad team I can deal with it. The problem was that the enemy Wukong was trash talking the entire game because he got fed early and started carrying his team. Any worthwhile character is good once they start snowballing, it doesn't make you some sort of LoL god if you win against an inept lane early game and carry that over to late game. All the trash talking from random A-holes who think they're the greatest thing on the internet makes this game a chore to play sometimes.

[tribble]

FWIW Toxic Shot's AP ratio is almost identical to Fizz's. You just have to remember that one is counted in total and one is counted per second. Also the only skill Teemo has that doesn't scale well with AP is Move Quick.

I'd guess it's mainly that because Fizz is melee, he just can't build all the offensive stats he wants without being jack of all trades.

Yeah, but let me reiterate: mushrooms are unreliable. It's really rare for a shroom to do anything but annoy now that they don't stack and you can't make the DEATHBUSH anymore. Blinding Shot may be an okay nuke, but in a straight fight teemo has the one blind and his passive poison. Fizz has a similar passive dot, AND a dash, trollpole, and the shark, so Fizz can make better use of the AP. Also, while Teemo's passive poison may scale similarly, Fizz can activate his for even MORE damage, which once again scales off HP.

Here's a scary thought: Duolane Fizz with Mundo. Cleavers deal % current hp, and Fizz deals % of missing HP. Painful stuff.

[dgnslyr]

Don't forget the Demacians. Garen's ult scales off missing HP, while Xin Zhao's scales off current HP. Likewise, Jarvan's passive scales off current HP, too. Personally, I'd think Cataclysm'ing someone with Garen would be pretty horrific, once Garen starts spinning.

[tribble]

Don't forget the Demacians. Garen's ult scales off missing HP, while Xin Zhao's scales off current HP. Likewise, Jarvan's passive scales off current HP, too. Personally, I'd think Cataclysm'ing someone with Garen would be pretty horrific, once Garen starts spinning.

Yeah, I wish Riot would release a noxian support champ so we could have a proper grudge ma-
DEMACIA

[Math_Mage]

Yeah, but let me reiterate: mushrooms are unreliable. It's really rare for a shroom to do anything but annoy now that they don't stack and you can't make the DEATHBUSH anymore. Blinding Shot may be an okay nuke, but in a straight fight teemo has the one blind and his passive poison. Fizz has a similar passive dot, AND a dash, trollpole, and the shark, so Fizz can make better use of the AP. Also, while Teemo's passive poison may scale similarly, Fizz can activate his for even MORE damage, which once again scales off HP.

Here's a scary thought: Duolane Fizz with Mundo. Cleavers deal % current hp, and Fizz deals % of missing HP. Painful stuff.

Mushrooms have never ever ever stacked. AP Teemo was competitive until they nerfed the ratios a few months back in an attempt to nerf AS-onhit Teemo (which I will never understand).

Toxic Shot scales similarly to Fizz W with the active on, not just the passive.

Meh, at this point we're arguing about the effectiveness of the AP builds when I only wanted to point out that Fizz' AS-onhit build might also be effective.

[toasty]

*sigh* 1900 elo player phreak fails to realize how screwed Regi on Kass is right now.

edit: Yep, Kass real useless. 6 kills on Oddone means nothingwhen he rushes shurelias. Dig has too much damage.

[Makensha]

Mushrooms have never ever ever stacked. AP Teemo was competitive until they nerfed the ratios a few months back in an attempt to nerf AS-onhit Teemo (which I will never understand).

They didn't nerf the ratio, they nerfed the base damage. They fixed a bug where the AP ratio was actually .6 even though it was supposed to be .8.

[toasty]

Ahh, and Qtpie gets caught and Dig pretty much auto-loses the fight. Good job, TSM.

edit: Game is very back and forth, but I want to say that if Kass had gotten all of the kills Oddone got, as well as all the blues, this game wouldn't even be going on anymore.

[Worguron]

*sigh* 1900 elo player phreak fails to realize how screwed Regi on Kass is right now.

edit: Yep, Kass real useless. 6 kills on Oddone means nothingwhen he rushes shurelias. Dig has too much damage.

TSM was dominating that game from early on. Odd One's Maokai was a bully throughout the early game, and Regi's Kass was the boogeyman of the late game.

Edit - I'm actually a bit surprised that Dignitas allowed TSM to get Maokai again. He was so influential on the early portion of that last game.

[toasty]

TSM was dominating that game from early on. Odd One's Maokai was a bully throughout the early game, and Regi's Kass was the boogeyman of the late game.

Edit - I'm actually a bit surprised that Dignitas allowed TSM to get Maokai again. He was so influential on the early portion of that last game.

NO. Watch the early game. Oddone ganked Scarra and got the kill every time. Meanwhile, Udyr was feeding Scarra kills. Every time there was a fight for blue, Oddone/Scarra ended up with Blue. Not Kass.

Kass is one of the most blue reliant Casters in the game. He is probably the most kill-dependent casters in the game. What we saw was a Kass that was played by a very skilled player (regi) who just rolled with the punches and did what he could despite hardly having blue and, IIRC, not getting deathcap. Meanwhile, what did Oddone do with his items? Rush Shurelias. Shurelias is awesome, but if Kass had gotten a 10 minute RoA instead, it would have been a VERY different game.

[Worguron]

It might have changed the way things went, but between OddOne using that Shurelia's to initiate the team fights and Regi's skill, they didn't need to feed up Kass.

[toasty]

It might have changed the way things went, but between OddOne using that Shurelia's to initiate the team fights and Regi's skill, they didn't need to feed up Kass.

You always need to feed assassins. That's why you pick them: to feed them to win early.

[Eldariel]

I think Skarner is like 1-9 thus far. I'm feeling the hype is a bit lot overblown. He's never done anything overtly game-defining; decent laning, great peeling, decent damage, little utility outside the peel, terrible defensively. If you're behind, Skarner really won't help you get back unless enemies **** up and give you the peel on a squishy for free. Particularly Dignitas is constantly ****ing their comps over by picking him too high.

[Dogmantra]

I think Skarner is like 1-9 thus far. I'm feeling the hype is a bit lot overblown. He's never done anything overtly game-defining; decent laning, great peeling, decent damage, little utility outside the peel, terrible defensively. If you're behind, Skarner really won't help you get back.

Personally, I think at the end of the day any character who revolves around being a worse version of Blitzcrank's pull is going to be a bit underwhelming.

[Ivellius]

Really? I would swear I've seen bots disappear and come back to lane with a buff, and I don't *think* they stole it from one of my teammates.

From what I've noticed, bots seem to take the buff camps if they ambush someone doing one of them and the critter is heavily damaged. I got ganked at red once, and I'm pretty sure I remember the Annie taking the lizard elder after unloading everything on me.