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

[Zen Master]

So .. yesterday. I played Leona. Some guy played Kennen. For reasons that are unclear to me, friend Kennen decided to be a complete ass. Twice, when I tried to help him (in fights we could easily win) he instead retreated to the turret and watched me die - Leona can get into fights, but not out.

Then, he asked the enemy team to report me for feeding.

Having died more than me despite intentionally letting me die when I was trying to save his sorry hide. And this was for no reason that I can think of.

I love the people who play this game. Really.

[PersonMan]

Well, some people (including me, although I've been getting better at it, especially since my friend and I won a 2v5 fight with some amazing coordination) have a hard time telling whether or not someone can win fights. I still occasionally retreat when someone is jumped on by 3 people, only to see them kill one and almost get two, or similar. It could be that he thought that, even with you there, the fight was not one that could be won by your side and so he ran, misinterpreting your jumping into fights as feeding.

[Zen Master]

Well, some people (including me, although I've been getting better at it, especially since my friend and I won a 2v5 fight with some amazing coordination) have a hard time telling whether or not someone can win fights. I still occasionally retreat when someone is jumped on by 3 people, only to see them kill one and almost get two, or similar. It could be that he thought that, even with you there, the fight was not one that could be won by your side and so he ran, misinterpreting your jumping into fights as feeding.

Yea but that makes sense. But ... on TT, Kennen is chased out of the jungle by Olaf and Lee, towards our tower. However, they are both at half health - Kennen and I are at full health. So I jump in, stun them both with my ult - only to discover that Kennen never stops, but hides behind our tower. I almost killed Olaf alone, with my pitiful dps. I also almost made it back to safety, alone.

Never mind. It was the moment, at any rate, I decided to see if the Three Towns NWN server was still going. It is.

[LordShotGun]

You ever run across hilariously bad players that refuse to listen even with complete and total evidence? Yeah, I just had a dominion game like that.

This garen....starts out with boots of swiftness. A warning light goes off in my head but I decide that its cool, maybe he is just new, after all I used to get boots 3 on him until I learned better.

We lose top, no big deal it happens. First item he buys....ionic spark...


Another warning light goes off in my head. Attack speed on garen? Strange but uh...bad. Well maybe he is trying out a new build? I ask him. No response.

Whatever, moving on. The game goes on, I quickly take first place as Udyr at about 100 points to 350, the garen buys nashors tooth.....

At this point I start WTFing. I bring it to the attention of my teammates and the enemy team. They all start WTFing. We all keep asking him what he is doing. No response. At this point I am thinking he doesn't speak english.

Getting to the end game, at about 30 to 250 we pretty much give up. Then the garen dude starts yelling at us for being so bad. So he does speak English.

Post game lobby, we all start asking why he got mana regen and ability power. He states that his Q and spin both build off AP.

After doing a

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http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-brain-is-full-of-fk

face, I link him to the wiki. No AP values, not even his ultimate has any. He states that the wiki is false.


I give up....

[PersonMan]

This garen....starts out with boots of swiftness. A warning light goes off in my head but I decide that its cool, maybe he is just new, after all I used to get boots 3 on him until I learned better.

Boots 3 can actually be pretty useful on the Crystal Scar. Being flat-out faster than everyone else, especially early, is quite helpful.

[Winthur]

Boots 3 can actually be pretty useful on the Crystal Scar. Being flat-out faster than everyone else, especially early, is quite helpful.

Except the go-to boots for mobility are, well... Boots of Mobility.

[Lix Lorn]

Boots of swiftness give you less speed more than boots 2 than a zeal does. xD

[thubby]

Boots of swiftness give you less speed more than boots 2 than a zeal does. xD

this sentence, i dont even.

if you mean "+2 boots and zeal are faster", zeal costs over 1000 gold. so no duh.

[Zen Master]

this sentence, i dont even.

if you mean "+2 boots and zeal are faster", zeal costs over 1000 gold. so no duh.

Well .... boots 3 give speed + nothing.

Boots 2 + zeal gives, for instance, speed + cdr + attack speed. I ... think that's a pretty good deal, even for 1000 gold extra.

[thubby]

Well .... boots 3 give speed + nothing.

Boots 2 + zeal gives, for instance, speed + cdr + attack speed. I ... think that's a pretty good deal, even for 1000 gold extra.

this is ultimately a math problem. zeal's movespeed costs something like 120 gold. garen doesn't benefit very much from AS so it's partially wasted gold.

if someone can derive the cost of the second point of movespeed and it's less than 100 then yes, zeal is always better. if it's somewhere between 100 and like 250 it's debatable. more than that and +3 boots are more efficient.

[Eldariel]

I totally build Boots of Swiftness on Anivia in like half my games (Mercs or Tabi in the other half; well, an extremely occasional Sorc or Mob) and rarely regret it; she can't really relevantly itemize move speed in any other way and the opportunity cost of runing/masterying for it is far higher than the cost of losing 20 MPen midgame (you rarely have trouble wiping out squishy targets and the MPen does far less to high MR targets). 15 AP on level 1-2 on a champ with two 1.0 AP scaling abilities is far more important than 20 MPen on level 7, after all.

[tyckspoon]

I totally build Boots of Swiftness on Anivia in like half my games (Mercs or Tabi in the other half; well, an extremely occasional Sorc or Mob) and rarely regret it; she can't really relevantly itemize move speed in any other way and the opportunity cost of runing/masterying for it is far higher than the cost of losing 20 MPen midgame (you rarely have trouble wiping out squishy targets and the MPen does far less to high MR targets). 15 AP on level 1-2 on a champ with two 1.0 AP scaling abilities is far more important than 20 MPen on level 7, after all.

I've become convinced Movespeed is perhaps the most powerful stat in the game.. especially on the large chunk of otherwise excellent champs that don't have innate movespeed bonuses or skillshot-targetable dashes/flashes for immediate mobility (oh Cow, y u so slow?)

[Tesla_pasta]

I've become convinced Movespeed is perhaps the most powerful stat in the game.. especially on the large chunk of otherwise excellent champs that don't have innate movespeed bonuses or skillshot-targetable dashes/flashes for immediate mobility (oh Cow, y u so slow?)

THIS is why Force of Nature is so freakin good. massive resistance and regen combined with being harder to hit anyway makes for just ridiculous survivability.

[toasty]

THIS is why Force of Nature is so freakin good. massive resistance and regen combined with being harder to hit anyway makes for just ridiculous survivability.

FoN is really not as good as it used to be. And to be fair, it was never the best item.

its really good on late game olaf or Mundo, yeah. But mid game the only really relevant MR tank items are Spirit Visage and Wits End. Mercs Treads too, but I don't really count those.

[dgnslyr]

My biggest problem with Force of Nature is that it's got bad parts-efficiency, because you end up sitting on a pair of nearly-useless Regrowth Pendants before you can actually finish it. I like Banshee's Veil more as a big MRes item, because you don't end up awkwardly hanging on to useless items while you save up for the not-insignificant 1000 gold combine cost.

I've been playing a bit of support Nunu, and I've been having a blast throwing icy balls at people's faces. One thing I haven't quite gotten down, though, is knowing when to ult. I've went entire (won) games without ulting, because I never know when's the right time. Besides hoping people get near the bush I'm sitting in, when's a good time to ult?

[Mirrinus]

Welp, I finally obtained my first ever Pentakill. And it was with AD Kennen, no less, which I never even tried until just today. Fight broke out in front of Baron, and I managed to mow down Udyr, Corki, Janna, Warwick, then finally chase down Ahri for the penta. Sadly, the rest of my team died, and I had to recall immediately to save our base from super minions, but still, that was a cool experience.

Unfortunately, we still lost the game. It was a close, hour-long game that came down to one final teamfight that ended disastrously when our Orianna lagged out and missed her entire combo. That and the enemy team had 4 Guardian Angels to our team's 2, because our Shyvana thought Sunfire Cape would be better for some unknown reason.

Regardless, though, I enjoyed the game, and was pleased to gain some confidence in playing an AD carry. I've only ever played that role 6 or 7 times before, and I was delighted to see that I could keep up with the enemy Corki in farm and end up ahead of him once teamfights rolled around.

[Dienekes]

I actually like it on Cho'gath, but I think it makes sense because of his high hp and because I have a habit of never returning to base on Cho'gath for long stretches of time so I can often just straight up buy it in one go.

[Silverraptor]

Welp, I finally obtained my first ever Pentakill. And it was with AD Kennen, no less, which I never even tried until just today. Fight broke out in front of Baron, and I managed to mow down Udyr, Corki, Janna, Warwick, then finally chase down Ahri for the penta. Sadly, the rest of my team died, and I had to recall immediately to save our base from super minions, but still, that was a cool experience.

Unfortunately, we still lost the game. It was a close, hour-long game that came down to one final teamfight that ended disastrously when our Orianna lagged out and missed her entire combo. That and the enemy team had 4 Guardian Angels to our team's 2, because our Shyvana thought Sunfire Cape would be better for some unknown reason.

Regardless, though, I enjoyed the game, and was pleased to gain some confidence in playing an AD carry. I've only ever played that role 6 or 7 times before, and I was delighted to see that I could keep up with the enemy Corki in farm and end up ahead of him once teamfights rolled around.

Congrats on your first penta!

[toasty]

I've played well over 2k games of LoL and the best I think I've done is a triple kill. Maybe once a delayed Quadra.

Pentakills just don't happen enough. And I don't really play damage heavy heroes soooo

[Temotei]

I've played well over 2k games of LoL and the best I think I've done is a triple kill. Maybe once a delayed Quadra.

Pentakills just don't happen enough. And I don't really play damage heavy heroes soooo

I was depressed when the enemy Caitlyn was stupid and made me kill her before her team came in for my quadra kill. Could have had a penta.

[Neoseanster]

I'm at three pentakills to date. The first was as a really fed DPS-y jungle Nocturne with full Sword of the Occult stacks, second was as Caitlyn in an ARAM, and the third was as a really fed tiger Udyr playing ranked 5s with some friends against a terribly bad team in a placement match.

I had one of those fun games today where we're losing badly and the enemy team begins just screwing around because they're sure they've got it in the bag. They aced us with three of their own left alive in our base, with one nexus tower already down, and instead of ending they just recalled to draw it out it more.

Next fight, we caught Tryndamere out of position and killed him before the rest could help, went to baron, caught the rest when they tried to stop us, and rushed down mid, pushing down two towers, the inhibitor, both nexus towers, and finally the nexus itself before they could respawn and brutally murder us.

[Eldariel]

FoN is really not as good as it used to be. And to be fair, it was never the best item.

its really good on late game olaf or Mundo, yeah. But mid game the only really relevant MR tank items are Spirit Visage and Wits End. Mercs Treads too, but I don't really count those.

Sir, you forgot the two best early/midgame MR items: Negatron Cloak & Quicksilver Sash. Seriously, plain Negatron Cloak is unrivaled in efficiency. 48 MR for 740 gold. And QSS is a cheap upgrade with a very powerful active.

I've played well over 2k games of LoL and the best I think I've done is a triple kill. Maybe once a delayed Quadra.

Pentakills just don't happen enough. And I don't really play damage heavy heroes soooo

Yeah, it's more about the champs you play. I've had a handful of Pentas (and then a few in botgames but those don't count) but those basically only happen if I play an AD carry or some high damage Mage (á la Anivia). Especially proper AD carries seem penta-friendly; supercarry comps help too. Last one I got was with Kog with Yorick on my team. I died but killed the rest of the enemy team before my Revenant went away.

[Lea Plath]

Been playing Kennan and liking him, but I think next time, I'll be taking ghost/flash on him. I find I hardly ever use ignite, but Ghost/Flash help me a lot.

Anyway, anyone have some advice for Caitlyn? I'm playing her a lot right now.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

So I picked up TF on a whim, and have been playing the hell out of him:

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So yeah. Haven't done so embarrassingly poorly with a new champion in along, long time. Very tricky, but very fun as well. And I think I'm making progress, particularly with his W, which is hella weird. So question: How does the game decide which is the first card in PAC? Because often it's the card I just tossed, other times it's one of the other two and I'm mighty confused on the matter.

Also, general tips? I'm building him with boots start, couple of Doran's into Sheen, into Hat, into Lichbane. Yes? No? Lose the Dorans and rush Sheen perhaps?

Edit: Oh, and laning tips in particular would helpful. Matchups to be wary of, that sorta thing.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I've played well over 2k games of LoL and the best I think I've done is a triple kill. Maybe once a delayed Quadra.

Pentakills just don't happen enough. And I don't really play damage heavy heroes soooo

Don't happen enough? I would disagree, sir. I probably have 20-30 to my name at least. Then again, I play AD carries a LOT, but I have a few as tanky DSP, and even one as Malphite.

And that's not counting Quadras and/or delayed Pentas, which I have quite a few of as well.

[Eldariel]

So yeah. Haven't done so embarrassingly poorly with a new champion in along, long time. Very tricky, but very fun as well. And I think I'm making progress, particularly with his W, which is hella weird. So question: How does the game decide which is the first card in PAC? Because often it's the card I just tossed, other times it's one of the other two and I'm mighty confused on the matter.

The first card is random. The order of rotation is fixed: Blue -> Red -> Gold -> Blue.

Also, general tips? I'm building him with boots start, couple of Doran's into Sheen, into Hat, into Lichbane. Yes? No? Lose the Dorans and rush Sheen perhaps?

I use this except I rush Hat -> Sheen -> Lichbane 'cause I want Wildcard Damage ASAP.

Edit: Oh, and laning tips in particular would helpful. Matchups to be wary of, that sorta thing.

You have no escapes but Wildcard has obscene range. So sit back and be safe most of the time and most of the lanes. Also, your ult doesn't deal damage so in a straight-up fight you lose to most post-6.

[Tesla_pasta]

My biggest problem with Force of Nature is that it's got bad parts-efficiency, because you end up sitting on a pair of nearly-useless Regrowth Pendants before you can actually finish it. I like Banshee's Veil more as a big MRes item, because you don't end up awkwardly hanging on to useless items while you save up for the not-insignificant 1000 gold combine cost.

I've been playing a bit of support Nunu, and I've been having a blast throwing icy balls at people's faces. One thing I haven't quite gotten down, though, is knowing when to ult. I've went entire (won) games without ulting, because I never know when's the right time. Besides hoping people get near the bush I'm sitting in, when's a good time to ult?

B veil is pretty awesome, but I always find myself using the extra movespeed to great effect.

anyway-to nunu, as I have had the pleasure of completely ending teamfights in one fell swoop, I'll offer this advice:

wait until they focus someone. as soon as the first round of abilities go down on a target, get right behind them, ideally right next to the tank coming to save them, and ult. the enemy team either has to take the ult in the face, or stop focusing the ally to stop you. getting the enemy team to be disorganized is the best part of nunu's ult.

he is one champ i will ALWAYS take banshee's on over FoN, becuase keeping the aoe slow down for that much longer, or even landing the damage creates more chaos on the enemy team.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

The first card is random. The order of rotation is fixed: Blue -> Red -> Gold -> Blue.

Damn. I was hoping it'd have some logic to it.

I use this except I rush Hat -> Sheen -> Lichbane 'cause I want Wildcard Damage ASAP.

Noted. I'll try it out.

You have no escapes but Wildcard has obscene range. So sit back and be safe most of the time and most of the lanes. Also, your ult doesn't deal damage so in a straight-up fight you lose to most post-6.

Yeah. Basically what I've been doing is shoving the lane hard and then looking for ganks. It seems to me that TF has pretty low kill-potential in lane, outside of jungler intervention.

[PEACH]

I've actually been counting and I have 7 quadrakills as Skarner and no Pentakills. Somebody always escapes (and by escapes, I mean "my jackass teammates do the right thing and kill them.")

I think I have one quadra as a non Skarner champ, and I'm pretty sure that was way back when I was playing Locket tank+triforcedyr on a team that consisted of Morgana, Soraka, Janna, and Singed (yes, it was a weird lineup. Hey, when you give Udyr infinite sustain and immunity to CC, things work!)

[shadowwalker64]

I have 2 true pentakills and 3 delayed ones. The true ones were twitch and morde, and two of the delayed ones were also morde. The last one was with Akali. I've had a few quadras with Pantheon, however (all I know is that there have been at least 5...)