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

[Nadevoc]

Thanatos: That champion design is very, very problematic, in my opinion.

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Passive: Hugely problematic. First, is it a 1:1 conversion ratio? AP is cheaper point for point than AD, so giving a straight conversion is a problem. Secondly, stacking resistances becomes very powerful because they stack and you end up with 400 resist that applies to ALL incoming damage. Part of what balances resists is that they only work on about half of incoming damage. Second, this COMPLETELY shuts down mages. There is no counterplay. They can't build any penetration without going way out of their way. I understand that this is supposed to be a counter to mages, but super hard counters are just no fun to play against.

Energy: I'm assuming you mean the ninja energy resource?

Q: Alright, basic nuke with snare

W: Again, fine, not much to say

E: Damage to mana is a mechanic that was removed from the game (Wit's End used to have it). It might be okay to be added in a champ-specific case, but it's screwy. One, resourceless or alternative resource champs ignore it. Second, mages ignore it. Yeah, you read that right. Who it really ends up screwing over is people like Rammus who have a small mana pool and don't build mana; old WE ended up not really affecting mages because their pool was large enough that it didn't affect them much. And for people like Rammus, it's extremely anti-fun. If you're a champ that relies on abilities to do anything, and then you're not allowed to use any abilities, the game because extremely lame.

R: Fine, but that's a second skill that is worthless against resourcless/alternate resource champs, which I struggle with

[toasty]

Hey look CLG is playing Shield Twitch, the strategy they used to get Morgana, Twitch, Shen, Janna and Chogath nerfed 2 years ago.

Now they're playing Protect the Twitch with Ori, Shen, Lulu, and Nunu.

[Wolf_Haley]

Protect the X Compcs are fun, Protect the Vayne on TT is a personal favorite.

[Math_Mage]

Hey look CLG is playing Shield Twitch, the strategy they used to get Morgana, Twitch, Shen, Janna and Chogath nerfed 2 years ago.

Now they're playing Protect the Twitch with Ori, Shen, Lulu, and Nunu.

And CLG.EU is playing "How can you protect anyone from all this 1k-range damage?" Pokin' out NA all day.

[Thrawn183]

Normal is a pain. For some reason I lost 8 out of 11 games with Diana today, just 'cause there was that one Crit Olaf in one game, Locket/Shurelya Singed in another, DC in a third and so on and so forth; I just seems impossible to get teams without trolls or otherwise just ****ty players that have no business being in 2k+ Elo (tho I'm guessing they're perfectly capable of playing well and just decided to troll). *sigh*

That's a significant portion of why I started to play a lot of blitzcrank on solo queue dominion. So many people want to play the hero role that they just ignore crowd control. It's the same reason I started to pretty much only play support in SR about a year ago.

I just found that it's easier to get a decent team by embracing the least chosen role so no one get's angry or has to pick a role they're terrible with.

Edit: HotshotGG's tears are the nectar of the gods.

[Duos]

More reviews:

Selene:

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Ok, creepy hivemind vibe. Alright, I like the flavor.

The passive is good. It rewards you for safe play, and it isn't too strong.

The Q is good; I'd imagine it would move about the same speed as Anivia Q for balance reasons. Good flavor, too.

W is kind of a no-no; Any snare longer than 2 seconds should not be point and click, it should not have 400 base damage, and it shouldn't grant 50% spellvamp. I'd cut the spellvamp and either spread the damage out over the snare or just frontload it. Either way, I'd heavily reduce the damage.

E is neat. It's like Vlad's pool, right? I might cut the AoE damage vulnerability; drawbacks on abilities kind of feel bad. I'd also up the CD buy quite a bit, since untargetability is really, really strong.

R is like a hybrid of MAlz ult andCho'gath ult. I can dig it, although the stacks it gives each grant a ton of free stat, I might cut some of them and change the remainder from percentage to flat stats jsut to make them easier to balance.

Karen:

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I'll be honest, her lore reads like bad fanfic. It was kind of painful.

Passive looks good. It makes her naturally tanky.

Her Q is pretty good, fairly straightforward. A dash on that low of a CD worries me, but Riven is a champion that exists, so eh.

The damage portion of W is fine, but the healing is waaaay to high. I would definitely nerf it.

E is has the same problems that Nika's Q had: It's trying to do too much. It's a blink that snares, blinds, shields, and does damage. Cut three out of five and it will be ok.

R has a HUGE range and a massive pull. The damage AoE is really small compared to the pull AoE, and there's no listed duration, so I'm assuming 2-3 seconds. It's a really high AD ratio, so I might change it a bit. I would change the pull range, decrease it a bit. I'd also up the CD a bit, since that's a REALLY low cooldown for such a powerful forced movement ability.

[Qwertystop]

Karen:

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I'll be honest, her lore reads like bad fanfic. It was kind of painful.

Passive looks good. It makes her naturally tanky.

Her Q is pretty good, fairly straightforward. A dash on that low of a CD worries me, but Riven is a champion that exists, so eh.

The damage portion of W is fine, but the healing is waaaay to high. I would definitely nerf it.

E is has the same problems that Nika's Q had: It's trying to do too much. It's a blink that snares, blinds, shields, and does damage. Cut three out of five and it will be ok.

R has a HUGE range and a massive pull. The damage AoE is really small compared to the pull AoE, and there's no listed duration, so I'm assuming 2-3 seconds. It's a really high AD ratio, so I might change it a bit. I would change the pull range, decrease it a bit. I'd also up the CD a bit, since that's a REALLY low cooldown for such a powerful forced movement ability.

I looked at Karen too, I'm confused.
How does a passive that makes autos happen without stopping movement cause tankiness? It makes her better at chasing, yes, but tanky?

[Eldariel]

That's a significant portion of why I started to play a lot of blitzcrank on solo queue dominion. So many people want to play the hero role that they just ignore crowd control. It's the same reason I started to pretty much only play support in SR about a year ago.

I just found that it's easier to get a decent team by embracing the least chosen role so no one get's angry or has to pick a role they're terrible with.

I have specific champs I need to practice up on for tournaments so I don't have the luxury of optimizing my win chances in normal queue. Back when I only spammed Kassadin-games (this is in the days of old Gunblade Jax, Akali & co. mind so he wasn't really considered that strong) I hit 2.5k and was winning over 2/3rd of my matches.

[Joran]

Wow... M5 vs. Curse.NA.

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Holy crap! AP Yi Pentakill...

[Eldariel]

Karma at IPL! <3 SGS! Let's see if TSM can handle what TPA couldn't the first time around.

EDIT: So. Misaya on TF, Froggen on Anivia. Dem WR1s.

[Nadevoc]

Man. It looked like Alex Ich pretty much contained Misaya's TF during lane phase, but afterwards WE just had really, really clean execution. Misaya came in at the right time and place, every time, and then Amumu and Sona ults back to back - I think they landed the combo every single time.

[Eldariel]

Man. It looked like Alex Ich pretty much contained Misaya's TF during lane phase, but afterwards WE just had really, really clean execution. Misaya came in at the right time and place, every time, and then Amumu and Sona ults back to back - I think they landed the combo every single time.

G2 is Diamond Lee.

[Silverraptor]

So, after being edged on to get League replays, I've concluded that its the best thing that has happened to me (And probably the worst thing that happened to you guys). The reason is, I will feel compelled to post random games that I was generally pleased about and would like to share with all of you.

For example, I played this game with some pubbies earlier. I did decent as kog'ma I think. But what I liked the most in the game where a bad trade had my soraka running to our turret, she was almost out of range of ez, but then I remembered his q and thus moved to intercept. However, he didn't q, he did his flash skill and I was close enough that his attack hit me instead of soraka, saving her since she was 1 hit away from dying. I felt really good about that.

[McDouggal]

So, after being edged on to get League replays, I've concluded that its the best thing that has happened to me (And probably the worst thing that happened to you guys). The reason is, I will feel compelled to post random games that I was generally pleased about and would like to share with all of you.

For example, I played this game with some pubbies earlier. I did decent as kog'ma I think. But what I liked the most in the game where a bad trade had my soraka running to our turret, she was almost out of range of ez, but then I remembered his q and thus moved to intercept. However, he didn't q, he did his flash skill and I was close enough that his attack hit me instead of soraka, saving her since she was 1 hit away from dying. I felt really good about that.

I'm still trying to set it up here. Current problem is that it doesn't want to start up from desktop. Or the application start. Derp it was in the tray. Have it set so that I can see it's running. It also saves to a findable folder this time.

[Ashen Lilies]

Credit is where credit's due. First Win of the Day goes to Blitzcrank, who fed me fresh-picked Vaynes like a boss so I could crush the entire enemy team under a crazed, cackling spray of pistol fire. Also, the enemy Kassadin, who repeatedly tried to gank us at half health, despite the fact we are both at full health, at tower, and also BLITZCRANK.

Also, note to self. NEVER PLAY BLITZCRANK AGAIN. You're terrible at it. Stick to Leona pl0x. Though it probably didn't help that Draven refused to lane with me so I got stuck with the Sion who decided to 2v1 Irelia and Kat, die, then friggin' REVIVE so that he could 2v1 Irelia and Kat again, all before I even managed to get from the summoner platform to the tower with my poor, bootless feet. Seriously, what the hell... the only reason he managed to get kills at all is because I served them to him on a silver platter.

[McDouggal]

Wat.

(Bug that made this possible was fixed, dammit...)

[NineThePuma]

The passive on her E (which still doesn't show the scaling in the tool tip, now that I think about it) used to proc off of ANYTHING she killed, so she jumps and kills the minions and all of the minions explode individually.

[TheShrike]

The crucial difference being that now things only explode if they die from her autoattack.

EDIT: Not really following IPL atm, but based on a quick look at the brackets, WE is the team to beat right now, correct? CLG.EU hasn't faced any top tier teams yet (I mean, top of NA, sure, but it's not like CLG.NA or TSM were ever going to be contenders for first), though TPA is looking fairly strong, beating out M5.

[Temotei]

6300+ IP time and I refuse to choose this time for myself. The Playground can help me!

• Zed
• Jayce
• Hecarim
• Lulu
• Fizz
• Shyvana

Yeah. So. Thanks, boiiiiiiiiis.

[Vauron]

6300+ IP time and I refuse to choose this time for myself. The Playground can help me!

• Zed
• Jayce
• Hecarim
• Lulu
• Fizz
• Shyvana

Yeah. So. Thanks, boiiiiiiiiis.

Lulu.

You are never quite the same again once you taste purple.

[Eldariel]

The crucial difference being that now things only explode if they die from her autoattack.

EDIT: Not really following IPL atm, but based on a quick look at the brackets, WE is the team to beat right now, correct? CLG.EU hasn't faced any top tier teams yet (I mean, top of NA, sure, but it's not like CLG.NA or TSM were ever going to be contenders for first), though TPA is looking fairly strong, beating out M5.

WE is doing amazing but it's worth noting CLG.EU has always beaten WE in tournament (both at World Champs & in OGN). Honestly, all the teams in the Winner Brackets are looking pretty good.

Even CLG.Prime is looking quite strong; their horrible loss to CLG.EU was due to a level 1 engagement gone bad mostly. Fnatic stomped Azubu Blaze, so while they lost to WE, having beaten CLG.EU just last week at Dreamhack Winter I'd say they're a force to be reckoned with too.


And out of the loser brackets, M5 and Azubu Blaze are down but not out. Crs.NA has also put on a very respectable showing in spite of getting the Group of Death; I was really impressed by how well they did vs. M5 especially Match 1.

Lastly, Singapore Sentinels can pull off upsets on a good day. I wanna see more Karma/Urgot Super Bruiser comps, this time without toplane getting owned by Olaf level 1 and falling over 2x behind on CS.

[Dragonus45]

So im just logging on now to play my first game in almost a year on my new laptop. Im about to ruin my teams day i think.

[NineThePuma]

One of Those Games.

I'm on TT, and it ends up being Trynd vs GP top (I'm GP). I win lane handily, with more than 20 more CS than Trynd.

Unfortunately, bot lane (Swain+Shen vs Leona/Lux) is losing HARD. Swain is sitting at 4/11 after the first couple skirmishes, and when I tell him he's looking really glass cannon and should probably get a bit more tanky, he acts high and mighty, telling me I have no right to comment when I'm building fairly glass cannon.

His final build, 5k gold behind me, was RoA and Rylais.

[Cogwheel]

Im about to ruin my teams day i think.

One of Those Games.

I'm on TT, and it ends up being Trynd vs GP top (I'm GP). I win lane handily, with more than 20 more CS than Trynd.

Unfortunately, bot lane (Swain+Shen vs Leona/Lux) is losing HARD. Swain is sitting at 4/11 after the first couple skirmishes, and when I tell him he's looking really glass cannon and should probably get a bit more tanky, he acts high and mighty, telling me I have no right to comment when I'm building fairly glass cannon.

His final build, 5k gold behind me, was RoA and Rylais.

Coincidence? I think not.

[ChaosOS]

HEEEECARRRIIIIMMM
Vote: Party Pony


Anyways, the CLG.eu vs. CLG.na match was pretty funny to watch, when .eu got the advantage they just kept sniping and picking people off. .na did a fairly good job though for the rest of the game given the bad early start.

[Cogwheel]

Darius/Draven is a rather fun botlane.

Darius is a surprisingly passable support, too. Well, as long as you don't mind him grabbing a good chunk of the kills. That sort of happens.

[toasty]

Anyways, the CLG.eu vs. CLG.na match was pretty funny to watch, when .eu got the advantage they just kept sniping and picking people off. .na did a fairly good job though for the rest of the game given the bad early start.

Really? The game was pretty much over the second CLGEU got those three kills. I thought it was pretty boring.

[Ivellius]

6300+ IP time and I refuse to choose this time for myself. The Playground can help me!

• Zed
• Jayce
• Hecarim
• Lulu
• Fizz
• Shyvana

Yeah. So. Thanks, boiiiiiiiiis.

Hecarim, even if I'm terrible with him. He seems like a champion I would be decent with given my style, but I can't get the hang of him.

[Cogwheel]

Hecarim, even if I'm terrible with him. He seems like a champion I would be decent with given my style, but I can't get the hang of him.

S3 will do wonders for his jungling (Spirit of the Lizard Eldeeeeeer), so there's that to consider too.

[Godskook]

• Zed
• Jayce
• Hecarim
• Lulu
• Fizz
• Shyvana

Defend tomorrow, buy Jayce.