League of Legends LXIII: You Spoony Bard!

[Eldariel]

Why isn't this thread full of "Go watch GET vs. CJ G2"-posts yet? Go ahead. Watch it! Even if you don't normally watch Korean LoL or just don't plan on watching the rest of this week's games (there are a bunch of good ones there), watch that one at least.

[Joran]

Why isn't this thread full of "Go watch GET vs. CJ G2"-posts yet? Go ahead. Watch it! Even if you don't normally watch Korean LoL or just don't plan on watching the rest of this week's games (there are a bunch of good ones there), watch that one at least.

Oddly enough, I used to watch a lot more Korean LoL when they ran re-runs of OGN. Now I have to actively seek out VODs and I'm lazy.

[Merellis]

Why isn't this thread full of "Go watch GET vs. CJ G2"-posts yet? Go ahead. Watch it! Even if you don't normally watch Korean LoL or just don't plan on watching the rest of this week's games (there are a bunch of good ones there), watch that one at least.

Spoiler

Show

Leblanc got beat by a Mid Sion. Two Banner of Commanded Tank Minions with Baron Buff.

This was amazing to watch.

Like, I don't know what to say. Mid Sion working fine, two banners of command to siege with... And that Kennen just bursting down the squishies. Amazing.

[endoperez]

Edit: though, of course, improving the item build improves your ability to do your job. Just, like, if your team is doing that well and throws, the items aren't the main thing to look at.

The item thing is the one thing I can improve about my personal game. I can't retroactively win that game, but I can do my own part better in the next game.

[Kaptin Keen]

Random prediction of the future: At the end of this split (or this season) Dyrus will leave TSM.

[Anarion]

The item thing is the one thing I can improve about my personal game. I can't retroactively win that game, but I can do my own part better in the next game.

Grouping or not grouping with your team at the right time, communicating plays through chat, and using pings properly are also things you can do for your personal game. They'll give you more wins than a bit of extra health, too.

[Joran]

Random prediction of the future: At the end of this split (or this season) Dyrus will leave TSM.

He did seem rather annoyed and dissatisfied with his role on the team. He's also been playing since the inception of professional League of Legends and most of his peers have retired. It's just hard to keep grinding away for this long.

Then again, it's Dyrus, which means I can't tell if he's being serious or not because his voice never changes tone...

Here's the interview in question: "I'd like the opportunity to play League of Legends..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YffPZcHvAh4

[Kaptin Keen]

It's not the first time he's seemed ... unhappy. On stream too, he sometimes says things that seem to indicate um, disgruntlement.

[Artanis]

Oddly enough, I used to watch a lot more Korean LoL when they ran re-runs of OGN. Now I have to actively seek out VODs and I'm lazy.

LCK Part 1: http://www.reddit.com/r/LoLeventVoDs...a_spring_2015/

LCK Part 2: http://www.reddit.com/r/LoLeventVoDs...g_2015_part_2/

(It's split into two parts because the LCK went on break for a week, which made a good spot for them to start a new thread due to word limits or something).

[Joran]

LCK Part 1: http://www.reddit.com/r/LoLeventVoDs...a_spring_2015/

LCK Part 2: http://www.reddit.com/r/LoLeventVoDs...g_2015_part_2/

(It's split into two parts because the LCK went on break for a week, which made a good spot for them to start a new thread due to word limits or something).

That's still too much work. ;)

When I get home, I hit the Twitch app on my tablet, see who's streaming and click one. I used to do this with the re-runs, but now I have to hit either my Youtube app and search for a game or go to the LoLeventVods page.

The previous is passive, the way it is now is active.

[TechnOkami]

So, I've got a question for you guys who play Ranked: why do you guys do it? What keeps you motivated?

[Winthur]

Source on this? Cause afaik, they've only admitted to the tuning being too harsh(hence the CD changes to his ult, rather than outright removing the restriction).

that's the main thing everyone ever always points out, especially during the time chogath was severely under the radar

Um, he's getting picked respectably often at the Plat+ level.

that's actually news to me, thx

His Q is seen from miles away, sure, but his W is not. Otoh, Riot seems to like some unreliability in a kit with good cause, so having a hard-to-hit Q is probably something that's -right- with league rather than the opposite.

Also, he's not an initiator, so "bad at initiating" is as weird a complaint as saying that Vayne is "bad at tanking".

he's a tank
tank characters often tie initiation to their kit
most of the time solo queue teams saying "we need a tank" mean "we need initiation" and chogath can be bad here
if a tank lacks initiation power his tank presence is often reduced to being a damage soak/carry protector/bruiser
and even in those roles cho'gath can be rendered obsolete by some jerk with million dashes or massive movement speed
his current high-pick status doesn't reflect the amount of times the mobility creep made him a subpar pick for the longest time in spite of the kit's versatility
also, unlike other tanks who fit their roles easily with meager gold/farm/preparation, chogath's feast is basically a resource that is very precious to lose
a tank whose design punishes him for dying is flawed

That passive fits Sion the tank *PERFECTLY*.

a passive that's a memento of riot wanting him to be a melee dps, which proves to only last him for 3-4 seconds against competitive teams because he just gets kited to oblivion even with all his speed bonuses, and when built full tank his passive damage is useless, i'd rather have feel no pain again

Also, Sona's rework was definitely a step in the right direction, similarly all the reworks they've been doing lately(Soraka's and Sion's being notably grand). People conflate "the tuning is off" or "I can't play the new thing exactly like the old thing" with "this rework was a bad idea" way too much, which is frankly where most of Sona's "bad rework" status comes from.

i wrote a couple of posts from the perspective of a diamond support player about how the new sona kit is the lol equivalent of goatse: having to clump up around a super squishy support to gain auras, taking away sona's autonomy by shifting a lot of her power into the aura (which is sometimes a bitch to synergize with your carry in solo queue), making aura effects scale with level of the ultimate on a support champion who takes the longest time to gain levels because of being forced to ward, roam and almost never farming, the aura circles being claustrophobic... sona lost a ton of versatility and autonomy from this rework all because of the supposed "invisible power" she had; all i gained from the rework is playstyle schizophrenia (if i stick to protecting my carry i can't give everyone auras), epilepsy (loads and loads of new bright circles hooray) and frustration that my cooldowns are huge (on TOP of nerfed power chord) and i no longer have enhanced AD on autos so my autoattack poke is terrible. the laning phase with new sona is streamlined and not in a good way. i actually liked her simple, versatile design.

*high-durability with a slowing skill shot is all you got, but Sion's is potentially pass-through on a medium CD with mana-gating, incentives for using or not using a minion, and just flat damage, while Mundo's is collision, spammable enough to CS with, and has percentile scaling. On top of that, both champions have very different kinds of durability, with Sion being all shields/hp, and Mundo being regen focused. They're really quite different, and that's before we examine the rest of their kits where the differentiation actually happens. I'm really tired of this "has a skillshot that slows, must be Mundo" meme, its as useless as it is wrong.

the entire point with their respective designs is that both are supposed to enter the middle of the fray and be disruptive. they both have massive chasing power, rely on huge movement speed and being unkillable. cleaver and shout might be different, but the general idea is that it's still a ranged poke/chase tool. and mundo's cleaver isn't so spammable when abusing it slowly kills you, there's still a gate. mundo is more damage than cc oriented, but still, sion's kit doesn't look particularly inspired and his kit still looks more like it belongs to a disruptive melee dps rather than a full blown tank

It IS okay to slap millions of CC on a single champion, when one is a slow, one is a skill-shot that doesn't pass through ANYTHING, one requires a melee auto-attack from a slow-moving champion, and one's an ultimate. Nautilus is SUPPOSED to be a CC monster, like Sejuani, Cho'Gath, Thresh, Braum, and Leona.

i wouldn't call cho'gath a cc monster when he has a heavily unreliable q and a silence which is often not detrimental to enemy movement at all.
nautilus' CC isn't as unreliable as you're saying it is, because you're still capable of spidermaning around to chase your target and your ultimate makes it easy to clamp down on the enemy. characters like maokai have point'n'click roots but they have their own drawbacks and the rest of their kit isn't all about lockdown; with nautilus you turn your entire "difficult" skillset into a child's play by just ulting someone and then even flashing in for an auto->hook->slow. he has huge hitboxes and his kit is on the mercy of his numbers.

characters like thresh and braum are also overdone in that department and i miss support designs that weren't all about stacking massive amounts of cc. nautilus support is taking off again and i'm not a fan of a yet another champion that contributes to bot lane being simultaneously a cold war but still an all-in fest.

I really wouldn't classify "sometimes Liandry's, otherwise stack health" as "builds AP".

there was a pretty large mid sejuani boom a while ago and it really took a long time for her to take off in her designated role, mostly because everything was nerfed

[SlyGuyMcFly]

He did seem rather annoyed and dissatisfied with his role on the team. He's also been playing since the inception of professional League of Legends and most of his peers have retired. It's just hard to keep grinding away for this long.

How many players are there even left from back then? Yellowstar, I think? Has Doublelift been around that long?

[efdf]

Doublelift came a little later.

Saint is from the same time period, that's all I can really remember off the top of my head. + I don't know any EU players

So, I've got a question for you guys who play Ranked: why do you guys do it? What keeps you motivated?

Normals are a ridiculous trollfest so Ranked is the only way to play a decent game. I don't really need to find motivation to play ranked, I don't have a particular goal or target rating or anything, it's just my preferred game mode.

[Winthur]

Doublelift came a little later.

lift*2 and dyrus both played on epik gamer

[Joran]

How many players are there even left from back then? Yellowstar, I think? Has Doublelift been around that long?

There's actually a few, looking at the Season 1 Worlds rosters.

Soaz, Yellowstar, SaintVicious (welcome back!), Doublelift, xPeke, Kev1n (benched), Nyph (benched), and Xpecial.

Yellowstar and Dyrus are the only two players to make all four worlds tournaments. Sorry Xpecial. (Edit: Oh right, Doublelift made all four worlds, twice as a player, twice as an analyst!)

If we extend further, there's people like the CLG.EU people, who were formed in December of 2011 (Froggen, Wickd, Krepo), as well as Moscow 5 (Diamondprox, Edward, and AlexIch). MiG Blaze and MiG Frost were also around late 2011 (Lustboy, Helios, Cpt. Jack, Madlife). Note: Flame and Shy joined in 2012.

Finally, Rock Solid's roster would have added more people but everybody from that team has retired. I believe Crumbzz and IWillDominate were on teams back then as well as NRated.

[Anarion]

So, I've got a question for you guys who play Ranked: why do you guys do it? What keeps you motivated?

It's more fun than normals. I like playing with people from mumble, don't get me wrong. But normals are all over the place. I've played with Mario and Djinn so much that I randomly get matched with diamonds now, and group games often have a mix of skill levels that range from utterly crushing to unable to avoid dying in lane 5+ times. People (myself included) also use normals as an opportunity to try stupid things or to simply practice champions that they're not very familiar with playing.

Ranked tends to wind up with closer overall skill levels (barring the occasional troll or bronze to diamond streamer) and the games are taken more seriously. Personally, I like actually playing a regular game of League of Legends: lanes that more or less match the meta-game, a team that tries hard and will group for objectives, and people that actually play through the whole game even if they mess up early.

I also like that in most ranked games, I have the opportunity to make a difference because I'm playing with people about my skill level. This is especially important as an ADC main because I often feel like I get stuck in normals with one of two situations: the support and I are both really competent compared to our opponents and we crush the whole game, OR my support is the lowest skill person on the team and the lane is worse than if I just 1v2ed and tried to farm at tower. Both crushing and being crushed in a mismatched setup are a lot less satisfying to me than playing a relatively even game where I'm pushed to excel if I want to win and where the loss is my fault if I make a mistake.

I play team ranked for similar reasons. It's a focused environment where everyone takes it seriously and really tries, which creates opportunities for things like coordinated team fights, death bushes, or something vaguely resembling correct split-pushing play. You also get to try out actual team comps like poke, wombo and so forth. It's really hard to get a team to do that stuff in normals because people want to practice champs or play weird things to have fun.

he's a tank
tank characters often tie initiation to their kit
most of the time solo queue teams saying "we need a tank" mean "we need initiation" and chogath can be bad here
if a tank lacks initiation power his tank presence is often reduced to being a damage soak/carry protector/bruiser
and even in those roles cho'gath can be rendered obsolete by some jerk with million dashes or massive movement speed
his current high-pick status doesn't reflect the amount of times the mobility creep made him a subpar pick for the longest time in spite of the kit's versatility
also, unlike other tanks who fit their roles easily with meager gold/farm/preparation, chogath's feast is basically a resource that is very precious to lose
a tank whose design punishes him for dying is flawed

I don't think this is inherently true. Cho gets extra power compared to most tanks when he's full stack because those stacks are at risk. If he never lost them on dying, they'd be weaker overall. Having a mechanic that gives greater overall power, albeit with risk of loss actually makes the champion stronger in the hands of a player that's good with the champion.

a passive that's a memento of riot wanting him to be a melee dps, which proves to only last him for 3-4 seconds against competitive teams because he just gets kited to oblivion even with all his speed bonuses, and when built full tank his passive damage is useless, i'd rather have feel no pain again

We're talking Sion here, right? I think his passive is quite good for his tanking. It effectively creates a zoning tool: If the enemy team collapses on him and his team for a full engage and burns all their stuff to kill him, he contributes a ton of dps. If they pick him, the passive discourages the enemy team from launching into a full-blown chase, allowing his teammates to get away and try to hold while he revives.

Also, level 1 chickens. :^)

i wrote a couple of posts from the perspective of a diamond support player about how the new sona kit is the lol equivalent of goatse: having to clump up around a super squishy support to gain auras, taking away sona's autonomy by shifting a lot of her power into the aura (which is sometimes a bitch to synergize with your carry in solo queue), making aura effects scale with level of the ultimate on a support champion who takes the longest time to gain levels because of being forced to ward, roam and almost never farming, the aura circles being claustrophobic... sona lost a ton of versatility and autonomy from this rework all because of the supposed "invisible power" she had; all i gained from the rework is playstyle schizophrenia (if i stick to protecting my carry i can't give everyone auras), epilepsy (loads and loads of new bright circles hooray) and frustration that my cooldowns are huge (on TOP of nerfed power chord) and i no longer have enhanced AD on autos so my autoattack poke is terrible. the laning phase with new sona is streamlined and not in a good way. i actually liked her simple, versatile design.

I've played a bunch of post-rework Sona and I find her fun to play and with pretty good overall power. You're allowed to discount my evaluation of her power because I'm only gold and my opponents probably don't know how to punish me properly, but I nevertheless find her fun with her auras and I like playing her.

[Forrestfire]

I play post-rework Sona as well and find her fun enough, but I agree with pretty much all of Winthur's points. Sona was significantly more fun to me before they utterly destroyed her identity as a champion, and substituted it with Just Another Hug-Your-Carry Support.

But there's not much use complaining about it. Riot showed that they didn't care about what makes a champion fun to a lot of people, and we have to live with it.

[Lethologica]

Going (maximally?) old school, I don't think a single player in NA is left from the WCG 2010 days, and there aren't any familiar names from Europe at the championship either. I don't know if some of the EU pros played in the EU qualifiers, though.

EDIT: XPeke was in an EU qualifier. IWillDominate, NintendudeX, and (bizarrely) DontMashMe were in the NA qualifier.

[Manticoran]

For what it's worth, I find Sona a lot more fun now than before.

[PersonMan]

So, I've got a question for you guys who play Ranked: why do you guys do it? What keeps you motivated?

I started because of Godskook's 100-Win Challenge, and after playing a bunch of it, it felt...not worth it, in a sense, to play normals. If I lost, I was glad it wasn't Ranked, but when I won I felt like I hadn't gotten anything out of it. So now I use Normal Draft / Teambuilder to try new things or similar and play Ranked otherwise. I've gotten too used to an ordered pick order and time to do masteries to go back to the hectic "call lane quickly to get it" that is Blind Pick.

[thracian]

See, I don't play ranked because I prefer playing League in a group of 5, but rarely play with the same exact 5 more than once-twice a week. I play predominantly Team Builder and Draft Normals.

As far as runes/masteries, unless I'm playing a support I can pick my rune page and masteries for almost any champion within 10 seconds. The scroll wheel is your friend when making a mastery page.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Started playing about two weeks ago, now grinding IP so I can get runes on the advice of an experienced friend. Now sitting on level 13 with 5000 IP. Bought Ashe, Garen, Ryze, and Sivir for no particular reason but champion purchases are frozen until I hit level 20 and the T3 runes open up.

Have yet to PVP, amusing myself with the rotating free champions on co-op vs AI.

So far the game's been fun. I know some guys who also play LOL so hopefully we can get together at an internet cafe and do some team PVP. Lag is terrible at my house.

There has been some drama, mostly to do with kill stealing.

I get chased down the top lane by two enemies. Two team mates emerge from jungle to help. I turn around to lend my firepower and end up getting at least one kill. One of the players involved in that engagement makes the accusation of "noob ks". I mean, really?

He says this just as the three of us are about to enter the enemy base from the top lane entrance. I'm seriously annoyed so I break away to beat some gold out of minions so I don't have to argue with him over kill credit when we meet the enemy champions. When I reach the bottom lane the accuser dies in battle and then calls us noobs for not supporting him.

Another incident involved a Tryndamere who was allegedly stealing kills everywhere. He was getting a lot of flak from two of the other players while I milled about the top lane as Malphite (I had no kills that game so the discussion didn't concern me). Eventually I reach the enemy base and the top turret's already down so I wail on the inhibitor. Tryndamere runs past me, nearly dead and being chased by Annie. As a tank I felt bad letting him die while I vandalized the inhibitor so I intercept Annie with my ultimate, punch her a few times, then walk away and let Tryndamere pick up the kill. As I return to the inhibitor we have a brief exhange:

Tryndamere: n1
Malphite: np

I felt good about that.

I also find it funny when my lane partners apologize for kill stealing. Maybe it's because my early experiences involved enemies escaping under their turrets with just a sliver of their health remaining only to return later at full health and then kill me. Therefore I'm less concerned with credit and more with enemies dying ASAP.

Another funny incident. We're outside the enemy base when our Fizz recalls only to get nailed by Lux's laser beam. I tell him that I've seen it before and that maybe he shouldn't recall too near the enemy base. Just before the match ends we're in the enemy base, he recalls, and gets killed by the Lux beam again.

[The_Ditto]

We're talking Sion here, right? I think his passive is quite good for his tanking. It effectively creates a zoning tool: If the enemy team collapses on him and his team for a full engage and burns all their stuff to kill him, he contributes a ton of dps. If they pick him, the passive discourages the enemy team from launching into a full-blown chase, allowing his teammates to get away and try to hold while he revives.

Also, level 1 chickens. :^)
.

I've also found Sion surprisingly adept at pushing a tower/inhib ... Ult past team fight, bash tower down ... using passive after tower kills you .. O.o lol Troll logic, I suppose, however, it really alters the thought process of the enemy team .. they actually start trying to get into the way of a Sion ult ...

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

There has been some drama, mostly to do with kill stealing.

So here's the thing: kill stealing doesn't exist in League.

Except when it does.

Usually, it doesn't matter who gets the final blow. In fact, if a carry has almost 100-0'd a target alone and someone else snags just the killing blow that's probably a good thing: getting an assist vs. not getting an assist is 60% more gold to the team who got the kill. Sure, if the support lands the killing blow it's 100% gold to the support and 60% gold to the carry, but that's still +60% team gold vs. not getting an assist. Plus a lot of characters (even some supports) get downright scary with a lot of gold, so it's fine to spread the love around.

The only times it can be a problem is if you really are relying on a particular champion to hit late-game quickly, or if only a single person on your team is doing well.

If, for example, I need the power that a late-game Vayne can dish out, it's in my team's best interest to try to get her as many kills as possible. Kill-stealing still isn't bad in this situation: just possibly sub-optimal, especially if the kill divides the assist gold up (since kill gold goes to the killer, but assist gold is split equally between anyone assisting). So if Vayne gets a kill with 4 assists it's a LOT more gold for her than if her support gets the kill and Vayne is one of 4 assisting champions.

The only real kill-stealing is actually more often kill-dominating. It's when a single champion gets so big (or is so good at picking up kills) that he or she is basically taking every kill your team gets: you'll see times when a single champion has 80-90% of your team's 20 kills, for example. This is problematic, because it means the enemy team has a giant blinking target on your largest percentage of gold and damage: killing that champion at the start of a fight will usually mean they can just roll through the rest of your team, since all the gold that you could have been getting is stuck on one person.

If you are that champion, it's often a good idea to just deal as much damage to as many people as possible, and try your best to let others get the kill. If they can't, then sure: blow them up. Just be careful about putting all the team's eggs in one fed basket.

[Nadevoc]

Also if Draven is present.

Taking kills from Draven is kill stealing because Draaaaaaaaven.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

So here's the thing: kill stealing doesn't exist in League.

Except when it does.

snip

The only real kill-stealing isn't really kill-stealing, and more of kill-dominating. It's when a single champion gets so big (or is so good at picking up kills) that he or she is basically taking every kill your team gets: you'll see times when a single champion has 80-90% of your team's 20 kills, for example.

Oh, so that's what all those "feeding" memes are referring to.

Taking kills from Draven is kill stealing because Draaaaaaaaven.

Lol. Draven is certainly one of the more entertaining champions. Not too fond of his axe catching gimmick though.

[Ivellius]

Reminder for new folks! Message me (or just post here) if you want to be added to the list in the first post.

We're mostly harmless around here--I'll recommend getting on Mumble or otherwise associating with other players, even if I rarely do much with the people here.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Oh, so that's what all those "feeding" memes are referring to.

Actually, "feeding" refers to a champions who dies so many times that his opponent gets "fed."

"Fed" is a good thing to be: it means you have a lot of kills, and thus a lot of gold, and thus a lot of power.

"Feeding" is a bad thing to be doing: it means you're dying constantly, and providing a huge source of gold income for the enemy team while being pretty useless yourself.

[Madcrafter]

Actually, "feeding" refers to a champions who dies so many times that his opponent gets "fed."

"Fed" is a good thing to be: it means you have a lot of kills, and thus a lot of gold, and thus a lot of power.

"Feeding" is a bad thing to be doing: it means you're dying constantly, and providing a huge source of gold income for the enemy team while being pretty useless yourself.

It can also be used in reference to feeding kills to your adc (as another team member) though, which may be the use here.