League of Legends XXXII: Cupcakes and Kittens and Squirrels. Oh my!

[Pie Guy]

I don't like the jungle. Whenever I do jungle, I usually do somewhat alright as far as farming, or get a good gank or two, but then I feel like whatever lane in the game is failing is my fault. It's especially bad if there are two failing lanes.

But, I'm trying to get better. It would probably help if I actually knew what I was doing .

[tyckspoon]

I don't like the jungle. Whenever I do jungle, I usually do somewhat alright as far as farming, or get a good gank or two, but then I feel like whatever lane in the game is failing is my fault. It's especially bad if there are two failing lanes.

It helps a lot if you can get over this sense. You can't really help people who are determined to lose. Give a chance to somebody who is doing ok but was put into a really hard matchup or just being outplayed, sure. Give the advantage to an even lane, ok. But that one derp who pushes to tower over and over, gets ganked four times because of it, and tells you his problem is you didn't gank his lane enough? Forget about him. Figure out which lane/player is doing well and help them do *better*. Stick to the mage or the AD carry or whoever and make stuff happen for them. (As another benefit, when laning is over.. one of the most common ways I've seen for teams to get destroyed is to keep wandering around trying to play solo when the enemy team has formed up and is aggressively gank-squadding/hitting objectives/etc. If you're following around one player who seems to have a clue, that forms a nucleus of people who look like they know what they're doing that attracts the rest of your team, and suddenly you're all working on the same thing.)

[Lix Lorn]

Xerath seems to be similar to Viktor, in my estimation. A strong, viable mage who is just too damn finicky to be worth learning to play at a high level. Especially when people already know how to play TF, Ahri, etc.

Considering Ahri is newer, this amuses me.

[Pie Guy]

It helps a lot if you can get over this sense. You can't really help people who are determined to lose. Give a chance to somebody who is doing ok but was put into a really hard matchup or just being outplayed, sure. Give the advantage to an even lane, ok. But that one derp who pushes to tower over and over, gets ganked four times because of it, and tells you his problem is you didn't gank his lane enough? Forget about him. Figure out which lane/player is doing well and help them do *better*. Stick to the mage or the AD carry or whoever and make stuff happen for them. (As another benefit, when laning is over.. one of the most common ways I've seen for teams to get destroyed is to keep wandering around trying to play solo when the enemy team has formed up and is aggressively gank-squadding/hitting objectives/etc. If you're following around one player who seems to have a clue, that forms a nucleus of people who look like they know what they're doing that attracts the rest of your team, and suddenly you're all working on the same thing.)

That's part of the problem. I only play with friends, and when some of them jungle, they're in every place they need to be all the time. No one ever tells me its my fault.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Thoughts on horseman?

[Laudandus]

Thoughts on horseman?

Horseman seems strong. I played him vs vlad top, and the vlad kept trying to dive me, but I just wouldn't die :D

W is ridiculously good sustain, being 30% superlifestealvamp that works with all of your allies' damage. Q is really strong dps, E is an average gap closer/CC, and R is kinda meh - it's a long range initiate, but not a particularly hard one.

All around, he seems pretty strong, especially in jungle.

[Mutant Bunny]

Horseman seems strong. I played him vs vlad top, and the vlad kept trying to dive me, but I just wouldn't die :D

W is ridiculously good sustain, being 30% superlifestealvamp that works with all of your allies' damage. Q is really strong dps, E is an average gap closer/CC, and R is kinda meh - it's a long range initiate, but not a particularly hard one.

All around, he seems pretty strong, especially in jungle.

How well does his ult work for dragon/baron steals?

[Neoseanster]

How well does his ult work for dragon/baron steals?

I haven't actually tried him yet, but I'd assume as decently as anyone else with an AoE hard CC and a gapcloser. CC everyone -> smite. It wouldn't be particularly better than someone like Amumu or Sejuani's smite steal, though.

[Silverraptor]

I didn't mean to imply it was worthless. It's not like, Eve's passive, but it's pretty much the only X to Y that isn't horrifically OP.

(also check it out, with about 700 AP [this is the most AP I tend to see people get in a reasonable length game and requires basically every item to be some sort of AP booster] he receives just over 100 armour, which is like 1400 gold's worth of defenses, which ain't bad, but then look at Galio's, with 200 MR [this is the most MR I tend to see on people] he gets 100 AP, which is about 2k in free stats, plus it's free stats which are useful against everyone, whereas armour only applies to physical damage champions, Rammus gets about 50 AD from 200 Armour, which is about 1700 gold's worth, looking at Vlad, from that same 700 AP he gets just shy of 1000 health, costing about 2.2k, and say he's got a Rylai's in there, that's 12 extra AP. Incidentally the health here is actually only half as efficient as the effective health you get from Xerath's passive vs physical, so it really depends on the split of damage types which one you'd want more, plus your itemisation

then of course there are OldJax and OldKayle who had such ridiculous passives they had to be removed from the game)

so yeah it's not all that great for an X to Y in terms of free gold, and there are technically situations where it is entirely useless (though I will admit that a situation where it's totally useless is highly unlikely, but a situation where it's not particularly useful against most of the enemy team isn't all that rare)


EDIT: My opinion of how terrible Xerath (hint: extremely) is probably what caused it to look like I was dissing his passive directly though and I will not hide the fact I think he's a piece of junk

I see. I didn't know the gold differential in Xto Y conversions were that high for other characters. This means Xerath's passive deserves a buff.

In the mean time, I always register that the moment my armor gets to 100, all damage I take from physical attacks are now halved, and they'll be decreased even more as I gain additional AP.

I don't like the jungle. Whenever I do jungle, I usually do somewhat alright as far as farming, or get a good gank or two, but then I feel like whatever lane in the game is failing is my fault. It's especially bad if there are two failing lanes.

But, I'm trying to get better. It would probably help if I actually knew what I was doing .

Is it wrong that I read this as:

[Laudandus]

I haven't actually tried him yet, but I'd assume as decently as anyone else with an AoE hard CC and a gapcloser. CC everyone -> smite. It wouldn't be particularly better than someone like Amumu or Sejuani's smite steal, though.

CC doesn't prevent smite, except for suppress. Amumu and Sejuani don't have extra-good smite steals - the good smite stealers are warwick, skarner, shaco, alistar, and cho'gath.

[Arbitrarity]

Earlier in design, Xerath's passive was described as

"This caster champ, a being of pure energy, perfectly captures the feeling of uncontrollable power. He charges up energy with each spellcast, temporarily increasing the damage and cost of subsequent spells. Playing him will be a tricky balancing act between knowing when to open the floodgates and pour out your damage, and when you're better off taking the slow-and-steady route."

[Math_Mage]

I see. I didn't know the gold differential in Xto Y conversions were that high for other characters. This means Xerath's passive deserves a buff.

Not necessarily. Abilities should be considered in context. Just making sure it gets pointed out.

[Neoseanster]

CC doesn't prevent smite, except for suppress. Amumu and Sejuani don't have extra-good smite steals - the good smite stealers are warwick, skarner, shaco, alistar, and cho'gath.

Hummm, it doesn't? Well, learn something new every day, I guess.

On an unrelated note, that was a weird game.

Spoiler

Show

Katarina wanted mid, but when Nidalee wouldn't give it up, she decided to jungle instead. The other team ran solo Tristana bottom and 2v1 Sion+Hecarim top against Riven. So, after I hit level 2, I made my way across the map to go help Riven instead, leaving Corki to fend for himself 1v1 with Tristana (quite successfully). We killed Sion, and instead of coming back and laning more, he went full on roaming, so I did the same.

And, well, for the most part, it worked out better for us than for them. Riven got shut down pretty hard, though, she died or got forced back every time Sion came top for a bit, save for one time where I counterganked and CC locked Hecarim under our tower during an attempted dive. My ganks were more successful than Sion's all in all (poor Viktor complained I just wouldn't leave him alone), but he took the liberty of helping himself to more farm and ended up reasonably scary anyway.

Team fights went back and forth a bit. It took Riven and Corki a while to start being reliably with us when they broke out, so we had one or two go badly, but for the most part came out ahead. We were able to win a 5v5 at center lane at around twenty three minutes, acing them while losing only two of ours (the rest were all ~200 HP, though) and taking a dragon, then after healing proceeded to just push up middle all the way to their inhibitor. AP Nidalee's spear poke with blue buff is still brutal along with Corki's missiles, so we just slowly whittled them down, then engaged and stomped them. We had been poking at the tower for a fair bit, and they grew complacent that we'd continue to do so, and Warwick let me just walk next to him to Q then W into the team while he attacked some creeps, and that was that. We aced again, they surrendered.

[Dogmantra]

Not necessarily. Abilities should be considered in context. Just making sure it gets pointed out.

This is true, but I feel like it hurts Xerath's passive to point this out in a lot of cases, considering it's only going to be useful against autoattack harrass and the occasional jungle gank in 90% of laning situations and while I haven't played huge amounts of Xerath, I would imagine that his long range makes him play a little like Lux in that his kit is designed for him to kite and then burst when he gets an opportunity, given his long range and the bit of CC he has, so it doesn't feel like it should be that easy for a physical damage character to close on him. Obviously when he DOES get closed on it is quite a useful passive.

Of course, it's not a bad passive, at the end of the day it's still an X to Y, and free stat passives are pretty much universally the best (with the exception of maybe Karthus and Poppy), but I don't think it measures up to the other X to Ys.

Neoseanster: I do hope you reported Sion for his slur in postgame chat. I'm glad you beat him, what an awful person.

[Delusion]

Neoseanster: I do hope you reported Sion for his slur in postgame chat. I'm glad you beat him, what an awful person.

I don't think the post game chat is actually visible in Tribunal, so it might not get anything done : /

[Eldariel]

I don't think the post game chat is actually visible in Tribunal, so it might not get anything done : /

Unless I'm totally misjudging his character, he'll have been flaming his toplane for the whole game, probably in team chat (which is visible in the tribunal). As such, I wouldn't worry; at least for this game the reports will be filed.

Though of course, whether he ends up on Tribunal or not depends on in how many other games he's said something; they don't put every report on Tribunal after all.

[Dogmantra]

I like to just write whatever they said into the report so that even if it doesn't show up for whatever reason the person looking at it can still see the awful things that the person said.

[Terribad]

Any way, other than the jungling where I utterly failed, it was kind of interesting. Any pointers for Alistar specifically? Also, are there some invading junglers I should be wary of? Who could I pick if I just want to jungle safely?

Alistar has become my second go-to jungler after Udyr. He has somewhat slow clears but makes up for it with strong ganking power, low item reliance and strong team fight presence.

I go gank right after blue (top if blue, bot if purple) usually securing first blood or forcing flashes. Then I go gank bot, take some creeps, gank some more and secure buffs. As Alistar your buffs are very vulnerable but you make up for it by snowballing the lanes, somewhat like what Shaco does, except you are relevant all game.

Runes I usually go Asped Red, Armor yellows, MR or ASpd Blues and MS Quints
Masteries you can go 0/21/9 or even 0/9/21
Item wise, I start Boots +3
First back I usually pick up Philo Stone, then Moots of Bobility, HoG, Sheen or Aegis depending on how fed you are. Get oracles early as it helps your roaming. I remember one game, I forced a mid AP (Annie I think) to buy 4 wards early game .... and she still got ganked heh!
Overall a fun and great jungler to play but he really takes a lot of concentration and knowledge of good positioning.

[Silverraptor]

This is true, but I feel like it hurts Xerath's passive to point this out in a lot of cases, considering it's only going to be useful against autoattack harrass and the occasional jungle gank in 90% of laning situations and while I haven't played huge amounts of Xerath, I would imagine that his long range makes him play a little like Lux in that his kit is designed for him to kite and then burst when he gets an opportunity, given his long range and the bit of CC he has, so it doesn't feel like it should be that easy for a physical damage character to close on him. Obviously when he DOES get closed on it is quite a useful passive.

Of course, it's not a bad passive, at the end of the day it's still an X to Y, and free stat passives are pretty much universally the best (with the exception of maybe Karthus and Poppy), but I don't think it measures up to the other X to Ys.

Neoseanster: I do hope you reported Sion for his slur in postgame chat. I'm glad you beat him, what an awful person.

He does play a bit like lux, but you need to remember his W. It roots him in place while his spells get a boost. During that time, AD characters can try to close on him and can get an AA or 2 on him before he can disengage, so the passive helps out there.

And just getting you to say that it is not a "bad" passive was all I was really after. Thank you.

(Love my Xerath)

I like to just write whatever they said into the report so that even if it doesn't show up for whatever reason the person looking at it can still see the awful things that the person said.

You can take that post game chat and send it in a support ticket to riot. I've done that a couple times, and Riot has thanked me for the reports and said they will review it. (Of course, they are not at liberty to discuss how the player will be dealt with, but then again, you really have no need to know.)

[TechnOkami]

I am taking pleasant evil pleasure knowing I can beat Xerath sucatraps as Malzahar.

[Silverraptor]

I am taking pleasant evil pleasure knowing I can beat Xerath sucatraps as Malzahar.

Then those are bad Xeraths you're playing against.

[ex cathedra]

And just getting you to say that it is not a "bad" passive was all I was really after. Thank you.

It's a pretty bad passive.

I am taking pleasant evil pleasure knowing I can beat Xerath sucatraps as Malzahar.

It's worth pointing out that Malzahar has a lot of advantages in 1v1 situations where he can't be punished by junglers and he can actually make use of the small portion of the game where he's useful.

Xerath still brings more utility and poke and comparable damage to a team, that's Xerath.

They're similar in that both have dumb self-root mechanics but at least Xerath is capable of using his effectively in most situations.

[Zen Master]

I got to wonder .....

Say you make a database, and for each champion in the game, you rank every other champion based on how they counter each other - and how they compliment each other.

Say you have the results from a thousand tournament matches to build this on.

Then, at the start of a match, you feed in the bans, and the enemy team picks, and let the program decide for your own team what to play.

It's just a thought experiment - I'm not claiming this is a good idea.

However, two things:

Would this work - would it pick good teams capable of winning?
How close would a system like this come to actual picks and bans in actual games?

It's funny, because, if we assume it works, in the ad absurdiam last consequence, a game would be lost or won with the first ban.

[ex cathedra]

I got to wonder .....

Say you have the results from a thousand tournament matches to build this on.

You wouldn't have enough data. You wouldn't even be close. Let's say that we have 100 champions. You need data on each of these champions, in addition to how each of these champions generally matches up against 100 other champions, and then you need to see how that champion matches up against those 100 champions while taking into account that your team is made up of another batch of these 100 champions. Factor in things like synergy that exists between three different champions that doesn't entirely exist between two (nonsense like Soraka/Lulu/Kog'Maw, for example), and the fact that you don't just need data-- you need enough data to make a reasonable conclusion*-- and the amount of input you'd need would be literally astronomical.

Then, at the start of a match, you feed in the bans, and the enemy team picks, and let the program decide for your own team what to play.

Would this work - would it pick good teams capable of winning?
How close would a system like this come to actual picks and bans in actual games?

My point is that there are two things preventing this:

• Logistically, it is almost literally impossible to create.
• *Assuming it could be created, at the very most it could provide you with nothing more than an advantage.

Games aren't won in picks and bans. Advantages are established. If champion viability and matchups were the only things that determined whether games are won or lost, why wouldn't Kennen/Lee Sin/Cassiopeia/Kog'Maw have 100% win rates and why wouldn't Eve/Xin Zhao have 100% loss rates? It's just absurd.

It's impossible to objectively account for individual player skill, knowledge, and coordination. Elo is a statistical analysis of how well a player generally performs on a team, but that's all. It's not an accurate assessment of individual player skill simply because there's no way to implement that into a game like League of Legends.

The single most legitimate strategy in League of Legends, regardless of champion selection, is to outplay your opponent, and win/loss statistics have nothing to do with that. The entire premise relies on the assumption that champion win/loss rates are actually reliably valuable statistics, which is shaky at best.

[Zen Master]

The sentences with question marks at the end are what I asked. I specifically pointed out that:

A) It's a thought experiment
B) I in no way claim it's a good idea
C) I used the term 'ad absurdam' - look it up, on occasion

Not sure if it's called exactly that in english, of course. I could check.

Anyways, statistically it's not even difficult to make. You need a reasonable size data sample, of course, and I've no real clue how many actual matches are part of a tournament - but then, that part of it is entirely uninteresting, so lets just assume that we have all data from the last billion matches played by anyone anywhere with every champion on the roster.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Anyways, statistically it's not even difficult to make. You need a reasonable size data sample, of course, and I've no real clue how many actual matches are part of a tournament - but then, that part of it is entirely uninteresting, so lets just assume that we have all data from the last billion matches played by anyone anywhere with every champion on the roster.

Statistically it WOULD be difficult to make though...that's the whole point. Champions play off each other, and all those elements would have to be considered. Twitch isn't the best, for example...but his value increases HUGELY in a team with Morgana/Jarvan/Anivia/Wukong, for example, due to how his Ult interacts with theirs. So what's Twitch's value in such a team, and when would you pick him over, say, Graves? I don't think you COULD calculate that.

[Dada]

Assuming we had enough data, and sophisticated enough model to actually make relevant predictions based on ALL the data, as well as the computational power to do that..

Then we would still need to take into account the human factor, the fact that not all players play all champions equally well and that some champions are easier to do well with, or harder to counter.

Assuming then, perfect play from all players, and perfect information, then yes, the game would probably be decided by the first ban (or at least the first pick, kinda like tic-tac-toe except that a draw is not an option). But at this point, the game has no relation to the League of Legends we know anyway..

[Octopus Jack]

So I'm up to 1220 ELO where is the boundary for Bronze ELO? I've found that Jungle Udyr tends to work nicely for me and my ELO.

[Zen Master]

Twitch isn't the best, for example...but his value increases HUGELY in a team with Morgana/Jarvan/Anivia/Wukong, for example, due to how his Ult interacts with theirs.

Simple statistics cover all of that. It's really not that hard - matches (in this case, an imaginary billion matches for each champ in the game) will tell us how Twitch has done in actual matches against every other champ, and with every team, imaginable.

Actually, there are a lot of champions, so that's rather a lot of different match-ups ... but it's not the sample size that's the issue here, I'm not trying to make this real.

The actual questions I ask are the actual questions for an actual reason. The whole point of the exercise isn't to statistically analyse the game and weigh each champion against every other champion. Note how that is not the actual question.

[ex cathedra]

Assuming then, perfect play from all players, and perfect information, then yes, the game would probably be decided by the first ban (or at least the first pick, kinda like tic-tac-toe except that a draw is not an option). But at this point, the game has no relation to the League of Legends we know anyway..

I don't think that assuming that all involved humans use perfect play is legitimate. I don't think that 'perfect play' is possible considering that League, like many strategy games, involves concepts such as yomi layers. Perfect mechanics? Totally possible. Perfect strategy? Pretty much indefinable.