League of Legends LXVIII: "MY PICK'EMS!" Part II: Who Didn't Get Out of Groups?

[Techwarrior]

I know it's going to sound cliche, but I jumped two divisions when I quit trying to grind wins and started trying to just play better than last time.

[Forum Explorer]

I know it's going to sound cliche, but I jumped two divisions when I quit trying to grind wins and started trying to just play better than last time.

What's the difference?

[Techwarrior]

For me it was a mentality thing. I stopped jumping into the next game trying to win and started stepping back wondering what I did wrong. Mechanically I've improved very little, mostly due to lack of practice.

[Renegade Paladin]

I have an idea! Let's chase Warwick and Lissandra! What could possibly go wrong?

[Olinser]

I have an idea! Let's chase Warwick and Lissandra! What could possibly go wrong?

Ah, but was it SINGED chasing them?!?!?!?

[Renegade Paladin]

Ah, but was it SINGED chasing them?!?!?!?

No, mainly Zed and Miss Fortune.

[Ignimortis]

I have an idea! Let's chase Warwick and Lissandra! What could possibly go wrong?

To be fair, you can chase Warwick DOWN. But running away from him - not gonna happen, unless you can hit him with CC or damage at long range. I've had people just giving up on running away from me as Warwick.

[Renegade Paladin]

To be fair, you can chase Warwick DOWN. But running away from him - not gonna happen, unless you can hit him with CC or damage at long range. I've had people just giving up on running away from me as Warwick.

The point is they draw you out and then combo their ults. It's two long duration hard CCs; you just die and don't get to do anything. That they have low health bars doesn't matter, because you just do not get a turn. And my team did this repeatedly.

[Anarion]

The point is they draw you out and then combo their ults. It's two long duration hard CCs; you just die and don't get to do anything. That they have low health bars doesn't matter, because you just do not get a turn. And my team did this repeatedly.

This may be one of those situations where everybody committing to a bad call is better than half the team making a good call. Those are both single target ults, so if your teammates were being dumb, your best option might have been to go with them and bring the rest of your team if possible, and punish the champions without ults in trade.

[Ashen Lilies]

To add on to previous Kai'Sa discussion, apparently Sneaky's been using a build order which manages to hit all three evolutions just before finishing your third item. I'd been trying out a triple evolution build myself, with a Gunblade rush, but Sneaky's version does it a whole item faster and prioritizes evolutions in a better order.

Sneaky's build:

Death's Dance -> (berserker's greaves) -> Pickaxe [Q] -> (Recurve Bow/Stinger) -> (Stinger/Recurve Bow) [E] -> Nashor's Tooth -> Amp Tome [W] -> Guinsoo's Rageblade.

Sidenote: Kai'Sa's Q counts as single-target damage so her healing with Gunblade or DD is pretty bonkers.

[Renegade Paladin]

ARAM is silly. Kayle and four ADCs walk into a lane...

[Ivellius]

To add on to previous Kai'Sa discussion, apparently Sneaky's been using a build order which manages to hit all three evolutions just before finishing your third item. I'd been trying out a triple evolution build myself, with a Gunblade rush, but Sneaky's version does it a whole item faster and prioritizes evolutions in a better order.

Sneaky's build:

Death's Dance -> (berserker's greaves) -> Pickaxe [Q] -> (Recurve Bow/Stinger) -> (Stinger/Recurve Bow) [E] -> Nashor's Tooth -> Amp Tome [W] -> Guinsoo's Rageblade.

Sidenote: Kai'Sa's Q counts as single-target damage so her healing with Gunblade or DD is pretty bonkers.

Thanks for this. I'd been wondering about something like this for her.

New missions just for this weekend! Silly ones, too.

Edit: Tried out that Kai'sa build in a OFA mirror match and it seemed really effective. I'd recommend it pretty highly, I think.

Also, if you do the Volibear mission "correctly" (deal 50k magic damage and have Flash + Exhaust) you get a hidden mission to complete.

[Ionbound]

To add on to previous Kai'Sa discussion, apparently Sneaky's been using a build order which manages to hit all three evolutions just before finishing your third item. I'd been trying out a triple evolution build myself, with a Gunblade rush, but Sneaky's version does it a whole item faster and prioritizes evolutions in a better order.

Sneaky's build:

Death's Dance -> (berserker's greaves) -> Pickaxe [Q] -> (Recurve Bow/Stinger) -> (Stinger/Recurve Bow) [E] -> Nashor's Tooth -> Amp Tome [W] -> Guinsoo's Rageblade.

Sidenote: Kai'Sa's Q counts as single-target damage so her healing with Gunblade or DD is pretty bonkers.

Can confirm, this build is pretty great.

[thracian]

Kai'sa played in LCK, ended up with the Death's Dance, Essence Reaver, Rageblade+more crit stuff build.

[mrcarter11]

Can confirm, this build is pretty great.

Kai'sa played in LCK, ended up with the Death's Dance, Essence Reaver, Rageblade+more crit stuff build.

Just to be clear, the build did involve those items, but the build path wasn't anything like Lilies. They went Reaver ->Rageblade ->Hurricane ->Dance.

[thracian]

Just to be clear, the build did involve those items, but the build path wasn't anything like Lilies. They went Reaver ->Rageblade ->Hurricane ->Dance.

Sneaky's build also involves a Nashor's for the triple evolve. I think triple evolve is wrong, fwiw.

[mrcarter11]

I haven't seen enough of her to really have solid opinions on her builds since there seems to be a decent variety.

[Vogie]

Ionian Lore update is up.

I can't seem much of a change in Yasuo's.

I don't actually remember Riven's original lore... but I'm surprised that they didn't add in some sort of nod to the wind technique in hers. With Yasuo's unique response to her, I would have at least expected some sort of little egg...

Also I really hope those who have the gift of art see this nugget from Lee Sin's biography:

Lee Sin stayed with the monks to rebuild their monastery

I would love to see the tongue-in-cheek responses to architecture and design by a blind monk.

Spoiler: Look! I see it!

Show

[HalfTangible]

Ionian Lore update is up.

I can't seem much of a change in Yasuo's.

I don't actually remember Riven's original lore... but I'm surprised that they didn't add in some sort of nod to the wind technique in hers. With Yasuo's unique response to her, I would have at least expected some sort of little egg...

Also I really hope those who have the gift of art see this nugget from Lee Sin's biography:

I would love to see the tongue-in-cheek responses to architecture and design by a blind monk.

Spoiler: Look! I see it!

Show

The big changes to Riven and Yasuo:
-We now know their parentage and have a general idea of their childhood.
-We get a better sense of Yasuo and Yone's relationship before their battle.
-We now know for certain that LeBlanc gave Riven her runesword and that said runesword is the main reason she survived the chemical attack.
-Taliyah's existence is acknowledged in Yasuo' story now.

But the big two that all but confirm Riven's involvement in the murder of Yasuo's elder:
-Riven's memory of the hours immediately following the chemical attack are lost.
-Yasuo found no battle at the place he went to, but instead found the same sort of charnel scene that Riven had just left.

I do sincerely hope these two meet soon and either become enemies for the sake of their mutual honor or join up in a buddy cop duo to find whoever wanted the elder dead (probably LeBlanc) and end them. Preferably the latter, but admittedly that's mostly cuz I ship them like Fedex.

Honestly Riven and Yasuo didn't need big changes. I find Lee Sin's new dragon spirit to be the biggest and most interesting change. For one thing, the gift he has is something he EMBRACES now. Though he met Udyr, so that's something.

[Forum Explorer]

Yasuo is downright the worst balanced champ in this game and has officially hit my permaban list. But the first letter of his name is certainly appropriate because he is certainly a champion of Y.

Like Why does he have two passives? Why does his dash have no cool downs? Why is his windwall instant? Why does his Windwall block Lulu's W?

[HalfTangible]

Yasuo is downright the worst balanced champ in this game and has officially hit my permaban list. But the first letter of his name is certainly appropriate because he is certainly a champion of Y.

Like Why does he have two passives? Why does his dash have no cool downs? Why is his windwall instant? Why does his Windwall block Lulu's W?

-He's meant to be a very squishy, high damage threat that survives by the strength of his mobility; basically an ADC that is in the middle of your team. His crit passive manipulates his builds by pushing the player to build crit items first (which have no defensive stats - now you know why Tank Yasuo was cancer). His 2nd passive is a shield that he can't control, which lets the balance team lower his base defense while also allowing the players to get rid of the shield with a simple basic attack. (Also he is not the only champ that has 2 passives.)
-His dash has 2 cooldowns, but the one that matters is the CD per unit that lasts for quite a while. More to the point, the dash has a fixed distance, so it is fairly easy to predict where he'll go.
-His wind wall has like a 20 second cooldown at rank 1 and no Yasuo worth his salt maxes W first. The wall's primary purpose is as a zoning tool, forcing ranged champs to reposition or wait for the wall to die.
-... I assume because Lulu's W is a projectile?

Yasuo is not that hard to deal with so long as he isn't fed. Lock him down and he can't do anything but cry because you just killed him. If you're having trouble dealing with his dashes, move out of the minion wave (this is why Yasuo split-pushes so often and so well) and you basically eliminate his ability to dash.

[Forum Explorer]

-He's meant to be a very squishy, high damage threat that survives by the strength of his mobility; basically an ADC that is in the middle of your team. His crit passive manipulates his builds by pushing the player to build crit items first (which have no defensive stats - now you know why Tank Yasuo was cancer). His 2nd passive is a shield that he can't control, which lets the balance team lower his base defense while also allowing the players to get rid of the shield with a simple basic attack. (Also he is not the only champ that has 2 passives.)
-His dash has 2 cooldowns, but the one that matters is the CD per unit that lasts for quite a while. More to the point, the dash has a fixed distance, so it is fairly easy to predict where he'll go.
-His wind wall has like a 20 second cooldown at rank 1 and no Yasuo worth his salt maxes W first. The wall's primary purpose is as a zoning tool, forcing ranged champs to reposition or wait for the wall to die.
-... I assume because Lulu's W is a projectile?

Yasuo is not that hard to deal with so long as he isn't fed. Lock him down and he can't do anything but cry because you just killed him. If you're having trouble dealing with his dashes, move out of the minion wave (this is why Yasuo split-pushes so often and so well) and you basically eliminate his ability to dash.

Oh I get all that, it's just sometimes I get super salty when dealing with a Yasuo. Though my friend played him once, and got a pentakill on his first game. His conclusion was that Yasuo was so broken that he wouldn't ever play him again in order to maintain some challenge in the game.

In this particular case it was two back to back games. One where I was Lulu top, and the fact that Windwall blocks W literally got him two kills. And then I get no help top and the team is being super salty about me playing Lulu top and not winning lane.

I guess it must be programmed as a projectile, but their is no visible object and as far as I know it's not listed as a projectile anywhere. Seriously that tilted me so so hard.


The second time was someone smurfing and playing Yasuo. Despite repeatedly ganking him so he died three times in the first 8 minutes, he still won lane, and ended up getting 23/30 kills for their team. Which is all sorts of frustrating.

[The Hellbug]

There is a visible projectile on Lulu's 'W', but I get your point because it's small and not the focus of the ability's visual effect. The ones that get me are the Viktor laser which, yes, is obviously coded as a projectile but is not animated as one (other laser-type things go through, for example) and the Talon ult--if even one of his daggers hits the wind wall, every one of them evaporates, even if they went in a totally different direction. Again, I understand that it was coded this way so it couldn't hit the same person multiple times, but in an era where Wind Wall and Braum exist, it is visually very confusing.

[thracian]

The Lulu W thing is annoying. Very non-obvious. That's a fault of Lulu rather than Yasuo, to be fair, but still annoying. Yasuo is also a champion I would expect to do well into Lulu. It would take longer than the old Irelia matchup, but that should fairly quickly devolve to you praying under turret.

Yasuo is one of those champions that everyone hates playing against for one of two reasons. If you're not laning against him, you hate how hard he snowballs when he gets ahead and you feel helpless to deal with him because someone else fed him. Welcome to playing against carries.

I'm guess most people hate laning against Yasuo for the same reason they hate laning against Nunu, Illaoi, etc. You have to change your playstyle to meet his, if you just butt heads like a normal matchup he'll often come up on top because he doesn't play like any other normal matchup. I tend to enjoy the novelty and spammed a ton of Yasuo back in the Mallet>Triforce days, so I remember what annoyed me and worked against me and try to do that as much as possible.

[mrcarter11]

I'm guess most people hate laning against Yasuo for the same reason they hate laning against Nunu, Illaoi, etc. You have to change your playstyle to meet his, if you just butt heads like a normal matchup he'll often come up on top because he doesn't play like any other normal matchup. .

I feel like this sorta misses the mark totally but is still technically correct. There is a lot of reasons that people could probably list for why they dislike laning against a particular champ, yasuo has several possible reasons that I personally wouldn't fault someone for. His dashing is by far likely the biggest, the double crit passive is likely another, the free shield I see complaints about but nothing spectacular, what does/doesn't proc his ult is something I see people rage about occasionally. Saying "you have to change your play style" sounds like purely fluff that you could say about a LOT of champions in my opinion.

[Ionbound]

Honestly I really dislike the lore change to Irelia. They made her way, way less awesome in the name of making her more...Mystic? I guess? But she went from 'family of warriors fighting together against the Noxians' to 'family died like chumps and I have a random mystic power'. Not a fan.

[thracian]

Saying "you have to change your play style" sounds like purely fluff that you could say about a LOT of champions in my opinion.

I should have phrased it better, Yasuo is a champ that you have to play against him more than you play your own game.

[Ignimortis]

Honestly I really dislike the lore change to Irelia. They made her way, way less awesome in the name of making her more...Mystic? I guess? But she went from 'family of warriors fighting together against the Noxians' to 'family died like chumps and I have a random mystic power'. Not a fan.

I do agree with that completely. Not sure why they needed to make her a "blade dancer". It's like Ionia doesn't have anyone who's not a cool wandering swordsman or a martial artist, a ninja or a spiritually-blessed person. Oh, and Vastayans, who can be their own thing. Old Irelia was a captain of the guard - that's nothing if not a grounded title.
I mean, Demacia has mages, swordsmen, hunters, magic rock statues, musicians... Noxus is a bit less original - there are dark mages and brutal warriors, but at least that's justified - only those ruthless and powerful rise high in Noxus.

I feel like this sorta misses the mark totally but is still technically correct. There is a lot of reasons that people could probably list for why they dislike laning against a particular champ, yasuo has several possible reasons that I personally wouldn't fault someone for. His dashing is by far likely the biggest, the double crit passive is likely another, the free shield I see complaints about but nothing spectacular, what does/doesn't proc his ult is something I see people rage about occasionally. Saying "you have to change your play style" sounds like purely fluff that you could say about a LOT of champions in my opinion.

Yasuo is extremely annoying most of the time because of his W, because it deletes certain things it shouldn't, in my opinion - like Nami's or Maokai's R, which are technically projectiles, I guess, but it's just dumb. Braum's shield is similar, but less weird - it only blocks the first thing completely, and that changes it enough to be not as annoying.
However, personally, as someone who tends to play champions without much chasing capabilities (Shyvana main, even Mallet rush often doesn't help enough with dashy enemies), Yasuo is one of those champs I either stomp utterly if they're in a bad spot, or can't do anything to if there's a minion wave to just dash a screen away in 0.5 seconds. To be fair, that can be said about a lot of champs these days, but it's still annoying, because I hate not being able to finish someone off.

Then again, I'm often told that with my aggressive playstyle I should play assassins, not bruisers, and I just look at the current assassin roster and there are three "assassin-ish" champs on there I don't dislike stylistically - Kayn, Diana, and Master Yi. So I play those once in a while and usually do badly...then go back to Shyvana or Vi.

[Ionbound]

I do agree with that completely. Not sure why they needed to make her a "blade dancer". It's like Ionia doesn't have anyone who's not a cool wandering swordsman or a martial artist, a ninja or a spiritually-blessed person. Oh, and Vastayans, who can be their own thing. Old Irelia was a captain of the guard - that's nothing if not a grounded title.
I mean, Demacia has mages, swordsmen, hunters, magic rock statues, musicians... Noxus is a bit less original - there are dark mages and brutal warriors, but at least that's justified - only those ruthless and powerful rise high in Noxus.

I mean that's what kills me though, they totally could have done 'blade dancer' without the random unexplained mystic powers. They could have made Hiten Style something like Capoeira, disguised as a dance to avoid the notice of the Noxian occupiers. Instead they opted to completely obliterate the old lore without even referencing it at all. I don't understand why.

[Dienekes]

I mean that's what kills me though, they totally could have done 'blade dancer' without the random unexplained mystic powers. They could have made Hiten Style something like Capoeira, disguised as a dance to avoid the notice of the Noxian occupiers. Instead they opted to completely obliterate the old lore without even referencing it at all. I don't understand why.

It’s what they do.

Honestly, I was more amused by the video they released about Ionia being some utopian beacon of peace. And yet everyone seems to be part of centuries old martial arts traditions.