League of Legends XXXIX: Harrowing in the Playground

[Nadevoc]

Is this legit? It's a handy function if it is, but I want to be sure it's above board.

Riot has an interface in place for users to change the recommended items; I remember a post by a Rioter on General Discussion talking about how to use it.

Found it:
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1177803

Given that, I'm pretty sure using any of the tools that change recommended items (and do only that) is kosher

[PersonMan]

AP Yi, man. Their skills are inferior.

[Silverraptor]

Am I the only one who looks at cho and doesn't automatically think "tank"?

Just got out of a game where my team apparently assumed I was going to end up going super tanky, only for me to go semi-glass cannon (tankiness was on the agenda, but wasn't intended to be a priority) and get yelled at.

It's so much easier to shrug off failing your team when it's solo queue than when it's buddies.

The same people who would think Mordokaiser is a tank. They seem to think big and durable looking means 'tank'.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Riot has an interface in place for users to change the recommended items; I remember a post by a Rioter on General Discussion talking about how to use it.

Found it:
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1177803

Given that, I'm pretty sure using any of the tools that change recommended items (and do only that) is kosher

So, this program is just a simplified interface for altering something that's already there. I'll give it a shot.

[Winthur]

The same people who would think Mordokaiser is a tank. They seem to think big and durable looking means 'tank'.

Stop being a bullhead

[Silverraptor]

Stop being a bullhead

*Knocks heads with*

I am *Not* a bullhead!

[Winthur]

*Knocks heads with*

I am *Not* a bullhead!

Then you're a freaky fish guy, huh, huh huh huh.

[Silverraptor]

Then you're a freaky fish guy, huh, huh huh huh.

*Aquaman uses whales*

*Its super effective*

[Winthur]

*Aquaman uses whales*

*Its super effective*

You just activated my trap card.

(In America.)

[PersonMan]

This conversation in short form.

[ex cathedra]

The same people who would think Mordokaiser is a tank. They seem to think big and durable looking means 'tank'.

Not particularly fitting, since Morde is primarily AP and can't be viably built as a tank, while Cho'Gath is primarily a tank/bruiser and is only very seldom built as anything else. Even then, AP Cho doesn't really "work" outside of (occasionally) top or (preferably) mid lane. It's hard to say what the Cho'Gath in question was building (since the poster was pretty dodgy about that) but I suspect that the complaints about the build weren't entirely unfounded.

[NineThePuma]

I picked up... Greaves, had both components to Super Chalice (Necronomicon first) and had a philo when we surrendered.

EDIT: also, it's worth noting that I've been bitched out for building AP Morde.

[Godskook]

I picked up... Greaves, had both components to Super Chalice (Necronomicon first) and had a philo when we surrendered.

As in Beserker Greaves? Those aren't worth it on him. I could see Sorcs for bursting power on poke and Merc's is fairly standard(Tabi if they're all CC-less ADs), but I really can't see Beserker Greaves.

I don't support Athene's on Cho, just cause you typically don't need the MP5, thanks to his passive and Philo(which you should get cause you're gold-starved), but its not strictly bad on him or anything, thanks to the MR building up his tank and the CDR helping him hit the CDR cap. The AP is put to great effect and while he doesn't need the MP5, he can leverage at least some of it.

All in all, this isn't nearly as bad as what I was expecting in terms of items. Your team probably didn't realize they were putting too much gank-demand on your time, combined with probably a lack of GP5s on your part. And with about 3k worth of accounted items, the game really ended far too quickly for you to have actually been able to build tanky regardless of item choices.

EDIT: also, it's worth noting that I've been bitched out for building AP Morde.

Which is the standard Morde build these days. Tank morde used to be at least semi-viable something like 8-10 nerfs ago, but these days, for your shield to be worth anything, you need enough AP to actually deal damage. Building semi-bruiser with things like Zhonya's and Abyssal work, but you still need deathcap on him.

(I wonder if Morde will see any buffs if they get rid of DFG, since that diminishes his theoretical burst potential)

[Joran]

The same people who would think Mordokaiser is a tank. They seem to think big and durable looking means 'tank'.

Riot would also agree in that "big and durable looking" should mean "tank". After all, Riot thinks that Rumble missed the mark.

From the PAX interview:

First off, Riot wants to continue to push the envelope for champion design. They are really striding towards champion design, play style, and art all being very cohesive. Pabro mentioned that a good, recent example of this is Ziggs. Ziggs is crazy, loves bombs, and loves blowing you up. He makes sense and translates very well. A "bad" example or a champion they feel like missed the mark a little bit on that is Rumble. He says Rumble is in a big mech and, instead of being in the mix and punching stuff like you would expect, you need to play him a lot like a mage.

http://www.surrenderat20.net/2012/09...-lyte-and.html

[NineThePuma]

All in all, this isn't nearly as bad as what I was expecting in terms of items. Your team probably didn't realize they were putting too much gank-demand on your time, combined with probably a lack of GP5s on your part. And with about 3k worth of accounted items, the game really ended far too quickly for you to have actually been able to build tanky regardless of item choices.

I had Philo and Kage's. for GP/10.

[Forrestfire]

Ugh. some people.

Just got out of a ranked game where our olaf kept refusing to join teamfights and running into their team by himself.

The last one was when he runs into their entire team alone while we're across the map, escapes, and then runs back in and dies, allowing them to take baron uncontested. And when we call him on it, he claims to be doing the best on the team and that I have been a "useless 0/4 jungler." Specifically, an 0/4/10 jungle nunu, who counterjungled their amumu and was 0/0/9 before my first death.

I mean, we all made some mistakes, and losing is a team effort, but when someone suicides on their team multiple times and then has the gall to say he's doing the best and that we caused the loss ourselves...

Sigh.

[Joran]

Specifically, an 0/4/10 jungle nunu, who counterjungled their amumu and was 0/0/9 before my first death.

Any tips on Jungle Nunu? I'm trying to learn a jungler that can counter-jungle to punish slower junglers, like what's been happening to my Nautilus >_<

[MCerberus]

Ugh. some people.

Just got out of a ranked game where our olaf kept refusing to join teamfights and running into their team by himself.

The last one was when he runs into their entire team alone while we're across the map, escapes, and then runs back in and dies, allowing them to take baron uncontested. And when we call him on it, he claims to be doing the best on the team and that I have been a "useless 0/4 jungler." Specifically, an 0/4/10 jungle nunu, who counterjungled their amumu and was 0/0/9 before my first death.

I mean, we all made some mistakes, and losing is a team effort, but when someone suicides on their team multiple times and then has the gall to say he's doing the best and that we caused the loss ourselves...

Sigh.

You were the jungler... ALL THE BLAME!
Died at level 3 without a peep that he needed help? Jungler
Enemy warded? Complain to have him sit in the bush. Double killed due to counter-gank? Jungler
Push the lane while behind, then get easily ganked? Jungler
Everyone has more takedowns than you and less deaths? Guess who needs to stop being useful and babysit only you? Jungler!

[Forrestfire]

Any tips on Jungle Nunu? I'm trying to learn a jungler that can counter-jungle to punish slower junglers, like what's been happening to my Nautilus >_<

I build him:
0/21/9 masteries, with the movespeed in the utility tree
Normal AD jungler runes
Smite/Flash
Ability order: Q-E-W then prioritize E over W over Q
start boots+3 potions -> heart of gold -> philosopher's stone -> situational items

Situation items:
Abyssal Scepter (rush against AP)
Frozen Heart (rush against AD)
Shurelia's Reverie (if you need an extra engage)
Rabbadon's Deathcap (after other items for damage)

Jungling with him is fairly forgiving, and it's very easy to counterjungle with him.

My favorite strategy is to get whichever two lanes you're with to come with you as a guard. If the enemy jungler starts red, just have your allies scare him off while you run up and consume the big wraith, then leave for your own blue buff. If he starts blue, consume the big wraith and have your allies help leash you their red buff, then go solo blue and continue normal jungling.

Sometimes I will give the enemy red buff to the bottom laner, but not often, because that means the enemy jungler will know to steal your red.

Other than that, jungling nunu is mostly about normal counterjungling with some great gank potential off of the permaslow that is Ice ball.

[toasty]

Except I didn't really go AP?

But you did not go tank. What did you build? Specific items are what I'm asking for. You mentioned you were building Rylais. Why? A few things to consider:

Rylais adds a slow effect to your spells, and gives you tankiness in the form of HP. This sounds like a GREAT item on AP bruisers. AP, Tankiness, AND more CC? Yeah, great. Except a few things. First of all, the slow isn't very effective except on your Feast, which is point blank and usually a finishing move anyways. Yes, it does add a slow (?) to your E, but honestly, Frozen Mallet does the same thing, and provides a better slow. You don't need a slow on your rupture, so the only spell that REALLY likes Rylais slow is your W, which, again, is short ranged. Furthermore, Chogath doesn't want to stack HP. Chogath doesn't need HP, his ult gives him all the HP he'll ever need, usually. MR and Armor are the items you should be looking for.

My thought process for him is that Jungle Clears > Lethal ganks. Because while a devastating rupture is devastating, above a certain skill level, anyone with boots is going to be able to dodge the rupture with ease. This is not to say that ganks never happen, but I'm going to be mostly applying pressure, rather than getting kills.

There is a yes and a no to this. Yes, certain junglers provide their team with great late game team-fight presence but sacrifice their early game ganking. These are heroes like Mundo and Shyvana. However, Chogath does not need to be this kind of jungler. If you have CC in your lanes (and frankly, its rather easy to get CC in all lanes except Top Lane, at this point) you can easily at least force flash with basic communication. ("I'm ganking top, please initiate so I can land rupture 100% = if your teammates can't work with these kinds of suggestions you have other problems).

If you don't have strong gank potential then yeah, just farm. But no viable jungler in the current meta that is generally a "farmer" needs farming items, except maybe Shyvana, who buys Wriggles because its indirectly a GP/10 anyways, plus, aegis, mercs, wriggles is a great build vs. most teamcomps coming out of the jungle. Chogath can easily clear at a reasonable pace at build two gold/10. Additionally, if your actual ganking presence is weak, then COUNTER JUNGLE. Chogath cannot be outsmited post 6. His base AD is the highest in the game. Take blue without smite and walk to their red. Take it. If they appear, kill them. I'm not joking about the amount of damage Chogath does at level 1, its really scary. At level 6 he can burst some squishies if he gets close enough.

fter that, tankiness becomes something you should look into.

Some interesting things to consider: CDR is currently poorly itemizeable. As it stands, the best CDR items for someone like Chogath are DFG (which is being nerfed soon anyways), Frozen Heart, Shurelias and Spirit Visage. However, of these, the best (Shurelias, Frozen Heart) are either tanky items, or build from GP/10. I think a Frozen Heart rush for CDR is really strong because you become TANKY AND you get CDR. Shurelias rush I don't like because I really like to let my philo earn me some gold. If you find that a small speed-boost would change a lot, then rushing it's fine. Philo has been nerfed so much the gold sometimes isn't worth it.

Now, if you go for a DFG I think you are going to run into a lot of problems. You mentioned the enemy carries focused you and you died every fight. Pro-tip: 99% of the time if you are dying its your fault. Obviously in some situations, as a tank or support its okay to die, because as long as your carries live love enough to kill everyone... who cares if the squishy support or the initiating tank died? Chogath really doesn't have a place except for as some sort of CC-Tank/Bruiser. If you are dying too fast and feel useless the general idea, as such a hero, is to build tanky. Rush Frozen Heart. Get a spirit visage, aegis, force of nature, Wits End . . . you get the point.

The reason chogath builds tanky because he can become very hard to kill and bait people into fighting him. He can also afford to wade through a fight and get to the enemy carry with his short-ranged kills. Or he can serve as a meatshield for his carry by peeling with his combo. These are what chogath does in a teamfight and none of it relies on building damage, just the ability to peel. This ability is best found by building CDR and tanky. A few bruiser items, such as Wits End and Phage/Frozen mallet situationally are useful on Chogath. If you are a lane chogath, building some supportive-AP items can work pretty well (I think Abyssal is fine on Chogath in a double AP comp, for instance).

If your lanes are getting pressured so much, you probably should focus on helping one or two people. LoL is a snowball game and often times the best strategy is to leave someone to die in order that you can feed off of the enemy's worst player. Often times pro players will focus on giving 1-2 key players a huge advantage early so as to give them an easy game, and then focus on playing rather standard, with the knowledge they have an advantage. Level two gank! Camp a lane with multiple ganks for 2 minutes. Then leave and just clear your jungle, only to return to that lane. Not only is this effective, because you are spending all your resources on one player, but its frustrating, since the player being camped often has his morale sapped. Applying pressure to multiple lanes when you are behind is often a hopeless task, especially if you aren't getting kills for it and end up behind in farm.

[Godskook]

I had Philo and Kage's. for GP/10.

Kage's is cheaper and offensive compared to HoG's more defensive. I prefer HoG, but I can see Kage's on Cho, except for the fact that I almost always end up with Randuin's, making the HoG far more efficient in the long run, at least for me. I also really can't see Cho building Kage's into anything.

[PersonMan]

Ugh. some people.

In this situation, the correct response is to split push other lanes. Olaf suicide pushing top? Push bot and mid. Olaf suicides, giving enemy Baron? Take their towers.

Honestly, I can't count the number of times I've been behind and come back/won by split pushing. You get a good amount of gold from it and, if you can "chain" it properly, make a badly coordinated team 5-man gank you...while another player eats their towers across the map.

Once you get behind enough (although this requires that you're something really bad like 0/8/0 or so, I believe), you are worth so little that just pushing a lane can net you more gold than the enemy gets for killing you.

[NineThePuma]

-snip-

Our team comp was Wukong/Swain/MF/Sona/Cho, vs GP/Katarina/Ezreal/Soraka/Diana (if I remember right.

The only not-me CC that was on tap was Swain's, and Katarina warded like an extremely paranoid russian (Ie, holy ****, why does she have 2 separate stacks of wards?).

[PersonMan]

The only not-me CC that was on tap was Swain's, and Katarina warded like an extremely paranoid russian (Ie, holy ****, why does she have 2 separate stacks of wards?).

This is a case in which I'd start the Ward Wars. Normally I only do so as a support, but in this case it might be worth it to get a pink (or even Oracle's) and just spend some time farming her wards. Maybe you could ask Swain to get a pink - dewarding makes ganks a lot easier.

[Nadevoc]

I build him:
0/21/9 masteries, with the movespeed in the utility tree
Normal AD jungler runes
Smite/Flash
Ability order: Q-E-W then prioritize E over W over Q
start boots+3 potions -> heart of gold -> philosopher's stone -> situational items

<more stuff snipped for length>

I start boots + ward + 1 pot, then truck it to enemy wraiths and ward the brush between wraiths and second mid tower (while being careful/jittery/ready to get the heck out of there). That lets you snack on the enemy big wraith as soon as it comes up, and do it pretty safely; Consuming that is pretty much Nunu's standard start instead of wolves. I also go 9/21/0, but 0/21/9 might be a bit better. Consume means I don't need three pots; I used to do boots + 3 start, but I always had pots just sitting around afterwards (oftentimes ALL THREE of them). So when someone told me about the ward start thing, I definitely found I preferred it.

A tip about counterjungling: use wards. In Nunu's case I usually don't ward enemy buffs since I don't find him a great duelist so I don't want to gank, but I try to always have a ward or two down at entrances to the enemy jungle. Knowing where the enemy jungler is is key to counterjungling; you don't want to run up to the enemy wolves only to find their jungler and then have their mid/bot or mid/top collapse on you.

Nunu counterjungling basically consists of running in, snacking on the big wraith/wolf, then running off. The little ones aren't worth that much, and Consume lets you kill off the big one instantly or close to it.

In ganks and late game, you're kind of a support. Your damage isn't great unless you manage to Empire, but Blood Boil your ADC to make him three times as awesome and Ice Ball the enemy ADC to make him only half as awesome. Fractions completely made up, but probably close enough.

Speaking of Empire, remember that if your enemy doesn't have vision of you, they don't get to see your ult's animation. That means channeling in a bush while they're running at you can get you a free fully channeled animation. Good players will notice they're suddenly really slow and get out, but if they're not paying attention or you time it right they don't have time.

[Winthur]

My recipe for jungle Nunu is as follows:
0/9/21 masteries -- these work great for my own purposes (they give gold per second, bonus XP and quicker cooldowns) while getting some tankiness and ultimately letting you fulfill the role of a support that I believe Nunu to be
My runes are Armor/Armor/Magic Resist/GP10, but if I could spare a page for Nunu, I'd swap the Armor reds for Attack Speed reds and Magic Resist glyphs for Magic Resist per level.

What I keep the GP10 quints for is to synergize with the utility gold gain. I eat creeps, camp lanes and counterjungle. Nunu's speed isn't that great so clearing small camps like Wraiths tends to take quite a bit of time even with Consume; my gold gain comes from runes, masteries and items.
For items, I start with Boots that I either upgrade into quick Boots of Mobility (more ganks) or later tanky boots (Treads or Tabi). I don't need to do either too fast, W speed boost is enough for my needs, so I try to get a trifecta of gp/10 items ASAP (philo+hog+kage). When I have a huge gold income rolling, I go for items like Aegis and Shurelya, but ultimately I really want Frozen Heart if their AD presence is at all threatening. Which usually means I'll want to spam snowball at the enemy AD carry and reduce his attack speed to smithereens. Plus I get a lot of Cooldown Reduction, I'm not easy to kill and I have enough mana to just Ice Blast everyone.
So I get to farm the jungle, get assist gold from ganks, and I also keep getting cash from my gold generators.
Skill order is R>E>W>Q because Q isn't worth leveling up and E before W for ganks.

Try it out, it's fun if only because if you do well you sometimes get to end up with the most gold on the team as a support jungler which is a cool perk. :3

[Eldariel]

5 guesses on what happened in champ select & game:

Spoiler

Show

[LordShotGun]

5 guesses on what happened in champ select & game:

Spoiler

Show

You wanted to middle fiddle but the twitch player randomed and you had to jungle even though you forgot to change summoner spells.

[ex cathedra]

You wanted to middle fiddle but the twitch player randomed and you had to jungle even though you forgot to change summoner spells.

It's like you're psychic or something.

[LordShotGun]

It's like you're psychic or something.

I know, it's kinda crazy