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

[ex cathedra]

Skarner is good if you're running, like, Vlad/Kennen solos. Then you can just pick up blue and do what you like. Donating blue makes him sad.

Yeah, but wouldn't you rather have Nocturne?

[LordShotGun]

Skarner is good if you're running, like, Vlad/Kennen solos. Then you can just pick up blue and do what you like. Donating blue makes him sad.

Problem is vlad and kennen are usually tops rather then mids. You would be better off picking skarner with a mord calling mid.

[ex cathedra]

Vlad and Kennen are both viable mids, though, especially Vlad. Kennen just goes top because he has massively favorable matchups against almost every common top laner, but he does just fine mid (has issues with champions onto which he can't aggress, which are much more common mid. See: Ryze, Ahri, Morgana). Vlad (and to a lesser extent Ahri and Ryze) are just copying him and going top lane for good matchups that they can't always get mid.

Edit: Also, I'd rather have Kennen with blue buff and pretty much any other jungler even if my solo lanes were both considered to be blue independent. There's not a mid laner in the game that doesn't benefit from blue. The nature of CDR on inherently ability-focused champions means that it's always going to be strong, and in this example blue buff Kennen is massively more threatening than normal Kennen. More CDR and more energy = more DPS and more stuns = even more energy to funnel into your new CDR.

[Qaera]

Man, I just had a game, I was Lux mid and the enemy Ryze told me he mained Lux and I shouldn't disappoint him. We ended up bantering throughout the game and complimenting one another on plays. Friended at the Victory screen.

WHAT HAPPENED WHAT IS GOING ON

~ ♅

[fred dref]

You know, this thread title almost goes with the new site design.

[Mtg_player_zach]

Skarner is fine, just nobody plays him because of other champs. It's like jarvan. Jarvan is a strong jungler still, but nobody plays him. Why? Who knows, just how it is.

Also, I think alistair is OP. Best support, strong jungle, I feel as if I could get to platinum playing nothing but ali.

[Math_Mage]

Skarner is fine, just nobody plays him because of other champs. It's like jarvan. Jarvan is a strong jungler still, but nobody plays him. Why? Who knows, just how it is.

Also, I think alistair is OP. Best support, strong jungle, I feel as if I could get to platinum playing nothing but ali.

I respectfully cast my 'best support' vote to Nunu. But my sample size is fairly small.

[ex cathedra]

Best support is going a bit far. There are too many archetypes for that to really be a fair description for any of the supports, to be honest. He can't disengage/poke as well as Janna, he can't sustain/poke as well as Soraka, and he can't be as aggressive as Leona. He does a lot of things fairly well, but that doesn't work for every comp.

Also, that's silly. You ask why no one plays Jarvan and then you mention Alistar in the same post.

[Misery Esquire]

...WHAT IS THIS MADNESS

Walked too close to a bush, bro.

[Mtg_player_zach]

Okay, maybe not best but I think he is extremely good. Also, I still play Jarvan. His ult is a ton of fun.

Also, I too like nunu, but I feel he is much less versatile and is countered much more easily. I think most supports would not mind going up against nunu. Pretty much any bot lane ever has a way to stop his ult.

[Mirrinus]

Who's ready for another round of Killer Syndicate?

[ex cathedra]

Also, I too like nunu, but I feel he is much less versatile and is countered much more easily. I think most supports would not mind going up against nunu. Pretty much any bot lane ever has a way to stop his ult.

Nunu offers something that no other support does. His ult doesn't need to finish its channel to be useful; the damage is irrelevant. While Nunu's ulting, not only does he draw CC away from his team and onto himself, he CCs the entire enemy team with what is the rough equivalent of his Iceball. This is relevant because it is impossible to have a fair fight against a champion supported by Nunu. Both Iceball and his ult apply a 60/50% movespeed slow and a 25% attack speed slow. Iceball can be permanently applied to the enemy AD carry by way of CDR.

Additionally, Blood Boil provides a 65% attack speed steroid and a 15% movespeed steroid. Nothing compares. Janna's shield was at one point similar, since it gave a comparable buff in terms of gold, but now her buff disappears along with the shield. Blood Boil lasts for 15 seconds, no matter what.

It's strong in lane, despite his lack of sustain for his carry, because you simply can't duel a Kog'maw (also, less commonly, Ezreal, though they have decent synergy. Graves, too, but he's the worst of the bunch) between his own steroids and Nunu's W/E. Nunu creates such a difference in mobility and DPS that it is practically impossible to outplay his carry.

Nunu+Kog'Maw: 95% attack speed buff, BAB damage steroid, 25% attack speed debuff, ~80% slow.
Nunu+Ezreal: 115% attack speed buff, 65% attack speed debuff, 60% slow. (P.S. despite the numbers suggesting that Ezreal is actually really strong in certain facets he's still probably a useless champion so you can disregard the fact that math disagrees with my personal opinion. Because, seriously, what does maths know about league of legends?)

Straight up, Nunu's scaling is completely outrageous and his only major weakness is against certain hyper-aggressive lanes (also that Q is not very good unless you can use it to block skillshots for your carry i.e. against Ezreal). You can't initiate on him without forcing a fight in which you have a significant disadvantage.

Edit:
Also, Zeke's aura is super synergistic with Nunu. Only support on which I would very strongly recommend it as core.

[PersonMan]

No, the best support is by far Katarina.

But I do admit, Nunu is ridiculous.

[TechnOkami]

To be really honest... I kind of want to hear Sweet Rein's opinion on the Skarner matter.

[fred dref]

Hey look, Bunny Girl Riven.

[Dogmantra]

Hmm, 3D mode for LoL, seems interesting enough. I probably won't use it though.
yeah April Fools and everything, but I was just thinking it's amusing how in the video they just ignore that Twisted Treeline exists

[PersonMan]

Hey look, Bunny Girl Riven.

Ok, time to buy more RP.

And time to get better at playing Riven.

[Winthur]

(P.S. despite the numbers suggesting that Ezreal is actually really strong in certain facets he's still probably a useless champion so you can disregard the fact that math disagrees with my personal opinion. Because, seriously, what does maths know about league of legends?)

Zzzz. He's a safe AD carry pick (good harass, poke and laning phase combined with huge mobility to avoid ganks and focus in teamfights? Sold!) that doesn't fall off quite as hard as people make him out to be if you just build standard AD Carry stuff instead of stacking Triforces for SUPREME POKE. It even shows in tournaments and scrims where he's picked more often than not.

If we keep listening to ragers then we will suddenly emerge in some weird world where Amumu is a terrible champion, lol.

[Delusion]

Hmm, 3D mode for LoL, seems interesting enough. I probably won't use it though.
yeah April Fools and everything, but I was just thinking it's amusing how in the video they just ignore that Twisted Treeline exists

Even riot forgets twisted treeline.

Sad.

[LordShotGun]

Whatever happened to Orianna? Wasn't she like, first picked/banned in all the tournaments a little while ago?

[Sila Prirode]

So, after having Bunny Girl Riven as my desktop background for, like, almost half a year, if this turns out to be April's Fool hoax I'm going to track them down and bomb their servers into oblivion
And that would be wrong, so please don't let it be a hoax.

[Penguinizer]

Whatever happened to Orianna? Wasn't she like, first picked/banned in all the tournaments a little while ago?

Didn't she get nerfed a few times since?

[LordShotGun]

Didn't she get nerfed a few times since?

Maybe? I never followed her as a champion. If she did get nerfed, what did they nerf to make her so bad?

[Eldariel]

Whatever happened to Orianna? Wasn't she like, first picked/banned in all the tournaments a little while ago?

She's still good but people stopped playing her. That said, her insane lane harass took a huge hit since they hit her Q range hard (also, all her damage was cut since she has so many scaling damage components). Currently among the most underplayed champs in the game (also, quite hard to play well).

[PersonMan]

So, after having Bunny Girl Riven as my desktop background for, like, almost half a year, if this turns out to be April's Fool hoax I'm going to track them down and bomb their servers into oblivion
And that would be wrong, so please don't let it be a hoax.

I feel the same way.

[Eldariel]

I feel the same way.

Last April hoax was Lee Sin. You should know how Riot operates by now.

[Psyborg]

<excellent explanation of why support Nunu is awesome>

THIS. So much this. I've been maining AD Kennen for the past several weeks, and Nunu is absolutely hands-down my favorite support, not so much even for laning phase as because I no longer have to worry about getting outscaled lategame by Sivir/Graves/Kog'maw/Tristana/Vayne. So I'm no longer under that desperate pressure to win the game before lategame even happens (which Kennen is fairly good at, if not quite Caitlyn).

Also, when facing Sivir/Riven/Renekton/support Lulu/some forgettable starved AP mid, also known as a metric buttload of physical AoE with no real magic damage, it's kinda nice to be able to build Tabi/Wriggles/IE/Atma's/LW/PD for ~200 armor while still having basically capped attack speed for every fight. Tanky bastard Kennen is amusing...people don't know what do do when they can't even burst him down.

[9mm]

So, after having Bunny Girl Riven as my desktop background for, like, almost half a year, if this turns out to be April's Fool hoax I'm going to track them down and bomb their servers into oblivion
And that would be wrong, so please don't let it be a hoax.

thank god for custom skins!

[Sila Prirode]

thank god for custom skins!

But then nobody else can see that I have it!

[9mm]

But then nobody else can see that I have it!

looks legit