League of Legends XL: Season on Hold 'til Morello gets Gold

[Eldariel]

Do you have a champion who it's almost unfair to break out, since you're so good with that champ?

Well, last season I banned the following champions from myself in Ranked use:
Anivia
Lee Sin
Cassiopeia
Ahri
Janna
Vayne
Ezreal
Jarvan

[toasty]

Do you have a champion who it's almost unfair to break out, since you're so good with that champ?

Well my Mundo winrate this season is now 90% after eleven games. However, I think this is because I'm still at 1330 or something like that after like 50 games. I peaked at 1466 last season, but I mostly played top lane and I think I might have to give up that role as too hard, or rather, too hard to carry without playing champions I don't exactly like playing, namely assassins. Irelia is alright but I can't be bothered to master her. Jax seems boring.

So I'm playing Mundo.

[ex cathedra]

Since ALTERNATE had to drop out of IPL 5, the team that came in second at the IPL qualifiers is going instead.

That's Fnatic.

yisssssssssss. :D

[Eldariel]

Since ALTERNATE had to drop out of IPL 5, the team that came in second at the IPL qualifiers is going instead.

That's Fnatic.

yisssssssssss. :D

****. Yeah. I mean, nothing against ALTERNATE but goshdarnit, Fnatic is beastly right now.

[ChaosOS]

Well my Mundo winrate this season is now 90% after eleven games. However, I think this is because I'm still at 1330 or something like that after like 50 games. I peaked at 1466 last season, but I mostly played top lane and I think I might have to give up that role as too hard, or rather, too hard to carry without playing champions I don't exactly like playing, namely assassins. Irelia is alright but I can't be bothered to master her. Jax seems boring.

So I'm playing Mundo.

Who did you play last season in top lane that you feel can't carry?

[TheShrike]

I just play Olaf and constantly beat up the enemy jungler whenever I have a chance.

EDIT: I do that when I jungle, too. I play a lot of Olaf, when I can get away with it.

[Math_Mage]

Who did you play last season in top lane that you feel can't carry?

Toasty used to main Gangplank. Now he, well, doesn't.

[Reinboom]

So this has appeared on reddit.

So, there are a ton of changes we haven't been told about if this is accurate.

Thank you for showing me this! Trying to contact him now.
It's impressive how quickly my items.json was utilized.

[toasty]

Who did you play last season in top lane that you feel can't carry?

Warwick, Gangplank and Nunu (Nunu Season 1).

Warwick was the first champion I played and Season 1 I had a 64% winrate with him after like 100 games with him. If all I played was Warwick Season 1 I would have been silver. Sadly, I was dumb and didn't understand how important it was to play one single champion until your eyes bleed.

Nunu was kinda funny because I started using him when he was still Stealth OP. I read Oddone's guide and won like 14 games in a row. I stopped playing him afterwards because I felt that people learned how to play against him, the fact of the matter was I used him as a one trick pony (I ran the same play every game) because I was a bad player. If I had been like ... everyone else I could have just kept playing Nunu and gotten better at the hero. Again: If I dedicated myself to Nunu I would have been silver that season.

Gangplank is a little different. I always liked him, but never played him because he sucked. Season 2 they buffed him and I mastered him. Actually I think Gangplank is fine right now, he just needs the right matchup and you can't pick him like a standard bruiser. This is the chief problem with Solo Queue: being innovative is solo queue is difficult. Gangplank works great if you have a higher DPS AD carry or want to run a protective comp. The problem is you have to also want to split push a fair amount, as GP doesn't like teamfighting till late, he's like Nasus in this regard. Another problem is that GP really is built being a bruiser so he's never going to be a maintank. Everyone who rushes warmogs on him should go die in a pit.

I'm HOPING Season 3 items make him more viable. I'm going to see how it works as a solo top. I know SV likes him as a jungler if you can get TF. I'm unsure however.

As a rule: I play tanky heroes. Looking at Mundo, I see a lot of similarities between him and Warwick, actually. Their tanky and they live through fights through passive regen combined with tanky builds. They don't actually need damage items because their damage scaling is entire percentile (Warwick Q, Mundo Q) or just stupidly high (MUNDO EVERYTHING).

edit: let me mention I think the reason I do so well with Mundo is because his base damages are high enough, currently, that he can carry early-mid game and become enough of a meatshield he can defend his real carries late game. Also, their is an old adage that if you want to carry you jungle, and by jungle, people really meant roam. Its really hard to play tanks middle, which is the easiest roaming lane, so I jungle. I like top lane because I like playing tanks and top lane heroes and I enjoy 1v1, but top lane is really hard to carry from, especially seeing as the jungler basically wins top lane anyways.

Mundo's advantage over Warwick is that he isn't useless as **** before level 6.

[Winthur]

Warwick, Gangplank and Nunu (Nunu Season 1).

Warwick was the first champion I played and Season 1 I had a 64% winrate with him after like 100 games with him. If all I played was Warwick Season 1 I would have been silver. Sadly, I was dumb and didn't understand how important it was to play one single champion until your eyes bleed.

I'm trying to make Warwick work in the top lane and jungle. In top lane about the only thing I haven't tried was going for some really specific rune setups like Health regen quints. It's like, you want mana regen for sustain, but if you have mana regen on runes then you lose out on resistances and then you lose lane anyway.

In jungle I think that it might be cool to go something like 9/0/21, similarly to Olaf. More Smite, more GG. Plus +CDR% (great on Warwick), +5% XP (and Sage) for faster level 6. Some bonus gold/10 for flavor. Magic penetration on offense masteries. You don't need defense masteries in order not to die in the jungle. Lends itself to a decent late game it seems.

[ChaosOS]

WW sustains in lane pre-6, then goes and roams with an insane ult post-6. WW has higher carry potential than mundo because suppression ganks on mid are insane. There's a reason malz is scary as hell as a duelist in mid.

[Winthur]

It's really hard to push the lane out with WW - so roaming potential is toned down - and you are extremely damn screwed by ranged laners such as Teemo. His sustain really sucks early on too. He can't support your jungler in ganks too well.

Overall I'm really hard-pressed to make him work because I adore him but it really seems like only s0az can make him work.

[Godskook]

In jungle I think that it might be cool to go something like 9/0/21, similarly to Olaf. More Smite, more GG. Plus +CDR% (great on Warwick), +5% XP (and Sage) for faster level 6. Some bonus gold/10 for flavor. Magic penetration on offense masteries. You don't need defense masteries in order not to die in the jungle. Lends itself to a decent late game it seems.

If your S2 jungle page isn't incorporating 11 Defense for Bladed Armor and Indomitable, you're not doing it right. Nothing in any other tree will give you as much benefit early game as 11 defense will. After that, you've got options. I'm a big fan of Runic Affinity, and Awareness is good enough on WW that I can see running 19 Utility.

Also, if you really want to hit lvl 6 before being relevant to the team, try his red path. He's perfectly safe that way, it messes everyone up since he's not where a blue path jungler is supposed to be, like, ever, and the timing is perfect. Red, lvl 6, and near mid.

[Winthur]

If your S2 jungle page isn't incorporating 11 Defense for Bladed Armor and Indomitable, you're not doing it right. Nothing in any other tree will give you as much benefit early game as 11 defense will. After that, you've got options. I'm a big fan of Runic Affinity, and Awareness is good enough on WW that I can see running 19 Utility.

WW doesn't need Indomitable, and I don't need early game benefits other than getting to level 6, jungle creeps are not killing me, not even close to that. I found you don't need any defense masteries to clear the jungle at all, just Attack Speed reds and Armor yellows (which you should be running on jungle WW anyway). Bladed Armor I can see for bonus damage against creeps, but really my idea is to help out WW gain XP towards level 6 while giving him some late game goodies (lower cooldown on Flash, +CDR, 10% Magic Penetration). With how I play WW, I pretty much assemble pieces of Exodia until level 6 at which point I just gank every lane every ult cooldown (Warwick's ganks on mid lane post level 6 are one reason to pick him) so I stay in my jungle most of the time. I make up for the lack of defense masteries by tanking up early.

[Godskook]

1.Except Indomitable is just OP all game long, and especially so on resist+healing tanks, like WW tends to build. Lower CD on Flash is ok, but I'm not sure its worth it, when WW really doesn't plan to run away from a fight and also really doesn't need Flash to initiate one either.

2.CDR is really good on WW, but in S2, its painfully easy to itemize on junglers(Gp5s OP), to the point that putting CDR in your masteries tends to waste stats late game with the kind of items WW would probably buy(Spirit Visage, Frozen Heart, Omen, Zeke's if he wants an Aura and if he's following standard jungler meta, Shurelya's are all really good). If your item build isn't getting at least 30% CDR in the items, I guess, but its just so easy, I don't see when it wouldn't happen myself.

[Winthur]

1.Except Indomitable is just OP all game long, and especially so on resist+healing tanks, like WW tends to build. Lower CD on Flash is ok, but I'm not sure its worth it, when WW really doesn't plan to run away from a fight and also really doesn't need Flash to initiate one either.

It's 2 points less damage from everything, you sure that I couldn't just run 0/9/21 for additional resistances and achieve a similar result? Lower CD on Flash allows for more escapes and more plays, particularly in low-mid Elo where catching someone off-guard might happen. One clutch Flash->Ult can turn a game around. Smite is on lower cooldown too, helping clear the jungle.

2.CDR is really good on WW, but in S2, its painfully easy to itemize on junglers(Gp5s OP), to the point that putting CDR in your masteries tends to waste stats late game with the kind of items WW would probably buy(Spirit Visage, Frozen Heart, Omen, Zeke's if he wants an Aura and if he's following standard jungler meta, Shurelya's are all really good). If your item build isn't getting at least 30% CDR in the items, I guess, but its just so easy, I don't see when it wouldn't happen myself.

I don't find the items that build from Gp/10 a great example because Shurelya doesn't feel like it offers enough to Warwick (it's health, and health < resistances on Warwick; I'd rather get something with multiplicative scaling like Sunfire for instance; movement speed buff is great obviously, though Warwick still has Blood Scent), and Randuin is only 5% CDR. Even if I "waste" CDR in the late game, it doesn't matter because until I get to that late game CDR I still can benefit all game long from having 10% CDR. How is that bad?

[toasty]

WW sustains in lane pre-6, then goes and roams with an insane ult post-6. WW has higher carry potential than mundo because suppression ganks on mid are insane. There's a reason malz is scary as hell as a duelist in mid.

No because Warwick sucks pre-six to the point where you should pick someone else. Mundo v. WW Warick gets Blue if Mundo's team is *****, but Mundo get's Warwicks 1st Red, 2nd Red and 2nd blue NP. He can probably also steal stuff like wraiths 1-3 times pretty easily.

Warwick's tankiness is actually strictly worse since it relies on doing massive damage with his Q AND is shut down by ignite. Mundo presses R and becomes immortal.

[McDouggal]

Blitz/Darius toplane. Could it work? I think so.

EDIT: Realized I gave no reasons. It would require a team that was OK with having 1 in bot/no jungle, put a Blitz Q/E combo and then a Darius pull would force a flash or die... EVERY 20 SECONDS. Darius provides damage.

[tyckspoon]

Blitz/Darius toplane. Could it work? I think so.

EDIT: Realized I gave no reasons. It would require a team that was OK with having 1 in bot/no jungle, put a Blitz Q/E combo and then a Darius pull would force a flash or die... EVERY 20 SECONDS. Darius provides damage.

Frankly Blitz's particular CC combo is so hilariously overpowered that he works with pretty much everybody who can provide A: a little extra CC or B: burst damage. And like 80% of the champs in the game can give at least one of those things.

Edit: Which means the question isn't "Does Blitz work with X", because the answer to that is probably "well, yes, of course"- the question is "Where does your team get the most advantage by having Blitz support?" The traditional answer is Bot, in giving your carry the advantage over the opposing carry, but I think there's a pretty good argument to be made for top if you have a good toplaner to take advantage of it.

[ChaosOS]

No because Warwick sucks pre-six to the point where you should pick someone else. Mundo v. WW Warick gets Blue if Mundo's team is *****, but Mundo get's Warwicks 1st Red, 2nd Red and 2nd blue NP. He can probably also steal stuff like wraiths 1-3 times pretty easily.

Warwick's tankiness is actually strictly worse since it relies on doing massive damage with his Q AND is shut down by ignite. Mundo presses R and becomes immortal.

1. We're talking about lanewick, so first paragraph is irrelevant b/c it's talking about junglewick and jungle mundo

WW may not be as tanky in teamfights, but you're not going to tell me the ability to catch carries who wander too far out, which is relatively common in solo que, is not an advantageous ability?

[Postmodernist]

Hi! I'm new to this thread, though not to the forum. I'm currently level 28 in LoL. My LoL forum name and call sign are, shockingly enough, Postmodernist. I'm trying to develop a solid play style right now, but I tend to like Wukong on top, Diana at mid, Lulu for support, and Tristana for ADC. I have yet to attempt a jungler.

Any advice for someone who is about to hit 30? I'm starting to spend my IC exclusively on runes, and am about halfway through all of them.

[ChaosOS]

Hi! I'm new to this thread, though not to the forum. I'm currently level 28 in LoL. My LoL forum name and call sign are, shockingly enough, Postmodernist. I'm trying to develop a solid play style right now, but I tend to like Wukong on top, Diana at mid, Lulu for support, and Tristana for ADC. I have yet to attempt a jungler.

Any advice for someone who is about to hit 30? I'm starting to spend my IC exclusively on runes, and am about halfway through all of them.

What runes are you buying? Certain runes are good, and others are pretty useless.

[TechnOkami]

What runes are you buying? Certain runes are good, and others are pretty useless.

I think it'd be easier to just tell him what runes he should be buying, and why.

Do you stick with those four, or do you play other champions too?

[Silverraptor]

So, what should I do on TT when I'm playing Olaf and the enemy team is stacking health to counter me? Especially a team was enough cc to zone the ad carry and the ap caster is incompetent? Or is it pretty much over at that point?

[NineThePuma]

So, what should I do on TT when I'm playing Olaf and the enemy team is stacking health to counter me? Especially a team was enough cc to zone the ad carry and the ap caster is incompetent? Or is it pretty much over at that point?

Blade of the ruined king is a nice big "**** you" to health stackers, I've found.

[Postmodernist]

What runes are you buying? Certain runes are good, and others are pretty useless.

Right now I have full armor penetration marks. I'm nearly done with full flat armor seals. I don't have any glyphs yet, but I understand that magic resistance is a common choice. Not sure about my quintessences, but I'm contemplating movement speed. These will be a general utility set of runes, since I'll probably be using them with most of my champions until I have sufficient IP to customize more thoroughly. While this build probably favors physical damaging types, I've had good luck with it so far.

I think it'd be easier to just tell him what runes he should be buying, and why.

Do you stick with those four, or do you play other champions too?

I do not, though they're probably my primaries. I own: Alistar, Ashe, Diana, Gangplank, Garen, Kayle, Lulu, Master Yi, Ryze, Shaco, Sivir, Soraka, Teemo, Tristana, Wukong, Xin Zhao. I also generally try out as many of the weekly free champs as possible.

Any more advice before I enter what seems to be referred to as "ELO hell?"

[TFT]

Right now I have full armor penetration marks. I'm nearly done with full flat armor seals. I don't have any glyphs yet, but I understand that magic resistance is a common choice. Not sure about my quintessences, but I'm contemplating movement speed. These will be a general utility set of runes, since I'll probably be using them with most of my champions until I have sufficient IP to customize more thoroughly. While this build probably favors physical damaging types, I've had good luck with it so far.



I do not, though they're probably my primaries. I own: Alistar, Ashe, Diana, Gangplank, Garen, Kayle, Lulu, Master Yi, Ryze, Shaco, Sivir, Soraka, Teemo, Tristana, Wukong, Xin Zhao. I also generally try out as many of the weekly free champs as possible.

Any more advice before I enter what seems to be referred to as "ELO hell?"

Wait another month or so at least. While everyone is excited to start solo queue as soon as they reach 30, most players aren't ready and will just drop below 1200 because they can't carry. Make sure you have all of your runepages ready, at least one role you are confident you can carry every game in, and most importantly have someone else who is above like 1300 feel you're ready to do it. Otherwise, you're just going to get frustrated after you lose your first few games.

That's the advice I wish I first got when I started solo queue, so it's the advice I'm giving.

[tyckspoon]

Right now I have full armor penetration marks. I'm nearly done with full flat armor seals. I don't have any glyphs yet, but I understand that magic resistance is a common choice. Not sure about my quintessences, but I'm contemplating movement speed. These will be a general utility set of runes, since I'll probably be using them with most of my champions until I have sufficient IP to customize more thoroughly. While this build probably favors physical damaging types, I've had good luck with it so far.

If you intend to use the same page for everybody for a while, I'd go AD marks over Armor Penetration; they make it noticeably easier to last-hit, which is a benefit you can enjoy on all laning champs whereas AP/magic-damage dealing champs get no use from Arm. Pen. Still, since it's what you've already got, you'll live until you can at least diversify into 'Generic AP page' (generally M.Pen/Mana Regen/Mresist or AP) and 'Generic AD Page' (basically what you already have.)

Any more advice before I enter what seems to be referred to as "ELO hell?"

Yes. Don't. The easiest way to get yourself into "ELO hell" is to attempt to play Ranked before you're actually ready to. If you tank your placement matches (those first 10, when you experience huge ELO swings as the system attempts to rapid-sort you into your approximate correct ELO band) you'll find yourself in very low ELOs, playing against and with people who are really quite bad at the game. This will make it much harder for you to get better, and if you do get better (such as by practicing with and observing some of the fine folk here who know whatof they do) you have to do a *lot* of work to raise yourself back to levels where the players are, if not exactly good, at least not actively terrible.

[Postmodernist]

Thanks for the stupendous advice. I'll hold off until my rune pages are ready and I'm confident I can actually get into competitive play. Though I'm a bit disappointed that my IP grind will still continue, I'm glad to discover that it's all for an excellent reason. I greatly appreciate it!

[TheShrike]

1. We're talking about lanewick

Toasty has a bad habit of quoting the wrong posts, but I think he was referring to the multiple posts of jungle WW discussion going on just above.