So, anyone playing League of Legends?

[Excidium]

What I like in this game is how it gets constantly updated. I haven't played in some months and there's already a bunch of new champions.

It's going to be a pain in the ass when I install it again.

Are any of this week's heroes good? Ive tried Kayle twice and just did not like her. I tried Ashe once and did okay but someone on my team fed an Annie.

Nasus, Singed and Vlad are great. The others I don't like much...

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Yeah Nasus is great if you can get the Soul Siphon timing down.

I played a match some 2 hours ago as Morg and i MELTED FACE it was Awesome.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Poisons and dots do proc off the shield bro. It's just that they deal magic damage, so the shield absorbs it.

I assumed dots didn't apply if the target was shielded because I didn't see damage tick over the dotted character. Could be wrong. But yeah, Morg was one of the first characters I played and I slapped shit with her, but she wasn't really my playstyle. Current favorite is Teemo.

@KC: Well, Vladimir is pretty obvious. He's one of the most banned characters because he's so powerful. Slightly nerfed this patch, but not by much to make him horrible. He's still very strong.

Kayle is pretty crap at the moment and is apparently getting revamped completely, so we'll see what happens.

Akali is annoying as fuck and powerful.

Ashe is good, especially her ult if you are pro at hitting people with it from the other side of the map,

Singed is a really good tank with an awesome slow and grab. Me and my friend usually dominate lanes as Singed + Teemo. His grab is excellent at early ganks.

Kassadin is a good mop up assassin, but I find him kind of annoying to play. There's all kinds of neat shit you can do with him though like get a blue buff and stack his ultimate and then teleport in the middle of the enemy team for massive damage (his ult is a blink that does pbAoE damage, and the damage it does goes up the more you use it, but so does the mana cost).

Nasus is fun to play, and can be a beast if you get to farm his Q ability, which goes up by +3 damage each time you last hit something with it. His ultimate is very powerful too.

Got random pick Shen today at a 3v3 with friends against friends. Didn't like him at all. His taunt is more or less the only thing decent about him. His ult is "ok" in pubs since it shields and teles to a friend, but after mid game it's pointless when I play with a premade since we always roam together anyway so there are no solo heroes who over extend and get ganked. I'd rather just go Rammus than Shen.

Ezreal is a skill based hero. All his skills are skill shots. You either slap shit with him, or you get your shit slapped playing him. There really is no middle ground with him.

Dunno about Udyr. Don't like jungle heroes.

 

[Ulminati]

Are any of this week's heroes good? Ive tried Kayle twice and just did not like her. I tried Ashe once and did okay but someone on my team fed an Annie.

Akali: Bursty AP assassin. Very fun to play, an excellent pubstomp champion. Suffers slightly from not having crowd control, but makes up for it by having the highest burst damage in the game. Build her 21/0/9, start with dorans blade, get hextech revolver, mercury treads, rylai's, sheen, lich bane. Overall: 4/5

Ashe: One of the easiest and best ranged carries in the game. Her ultimate is one of the greatest abilities to initiate a team fight with. 21/0/9. Build 2-3 dorans blades, infinity edge, phantom dancer and banshees veil. Overall rating: 5/5

Ezfail: The least reliable AD carry in the game. Has high burst, but decidedly mediocre sustained damage. He was the only AD carry that was never played at the championships for a reason. Build him 21/0/9, Sheen, Phage, Triforce, Bloodthirster. Overall: 1/5

Kassadin: AP assassin. Excels at mopping up. Riftwalking everywhere can be quite fun, but he has a tendency to run out of mana quickly. 9/0/21. Dorans ring, Catalyst, Tear of the goddess, Rod of ages, Rabadon's Deathcap, Archangels, Banshees. Overall: 4/5

Kayle: Is a mediocre pick. Starts out as a support character that morphs into a ranged AD carry by the end game. She's not terrible per se, but her heal is too mana intensive and has a too low ratio for her to sustain a lane as support. Build her 9/0/21. Dorans ring, fiendish codex, guinsoos rageblade, nashor's tooth and then either rabadons or survivability. Overall: 3/5

Nasus: Is a very fun character to solo top with. He needs to farm his Q for additional damage to be useful lategame. A tank/dps hybrid thing. He can jungle in a pinch with the right runes, but is definately better if you let him farm top for 15-20 minutes. He suffers a bit from getting kited by ranged carries, but his whither is a godsend against things like xin xiao or tryndamere. Build him 0/9/21. Start with Regrowth pendant and a potion. Build Philosopher's stone, Sheen, Aegis of the legion, mercury treads, phage, trinity force. Then either go tanky with frozen heart/banshee's veil or more dps with Atma's impaler and starks fervor. Overall: 4/5

Shen: Used to be the best tank in the game. Has received a ton of nerfs, but is still viable. He can jungle, but his jungle path is very slow. Build him 0/21/9. Doran's shield, heart of gold, aegis of the legion, sunfire cape, force of nature, randuins omen. Overall 3.5/5

Singed: Really fun disruptive charcter Takes a special breed of player to do well with him. If you can get people to chase you while you run around with a poison trail, you've found the recipe to success. 0/9/21 or 0/21/9. Start with either Doran's shield or a mana crystal. Build Catalyst, Boots of swiftness, heart of gold, banshee's veil, frozen heart, force of nature, rylai's crystal sceptre, Randuins omen. You can swap banshee's veil for a rod of ages if the enemy is low on crowd control. Overall: 4.5/5

Udyr: A very good, very versatile jungler. I honestly never played him myself.

Vlad: Really annoying to lane against. Keeps getting nerfed, people still complain about him. The trolliest character in the game. 9/0/21. Start with an amplifying tome. Hextech revolver, sorcerers shoes, rylai's crystal sceptre, rabadon's deathcap, will of the ancients. Overall: 5/5

 

[kingcomrade]

i mean good god

 

[Ulminati]

i mean good god

Shen with dorans ring. Ashe with NO damage items and shurelyas reverie. Ezfail building starks/tiamat. Good lord, your ELO must be terrible to get matched up with those people.

I'm having fun in ranked at the moment. My ELO dropped a bunch because I had 9 games in a day where someone DC'ed on my team and never returned. In ELO hell, people think Morgana is a support champion. I laughed. Now if only people would stop KSing stuff I got in soil+binding+shackles already. I'm working on stacking my Mejai's so I can carry those ungrateful shitsacks.

Yeah Nasus is great if you can get the Soul Siphon timing down.

I played a match some 2 hours ago as Morg and i MELTED FACE it was Awesome.

did you perchance follow the nice and accurate advice in "Facemelting with the Morg - A ballet tribute to AP mayhem"?

 

[Phage]

i mean good god

Since you're like level 5 you're getting matched up with other level 5 players. Of course, there are shitty and decent players at every level, but in the low levels there will be more shit on average.

 

[kingcomrade]

I played Akama or whatever, she is pretty fun to play.
I'm still just doing AI games so I can learn the heroes, but it's kind of retarded because the AI pick the same team every game (and it's the most obnoxious team ever). Annie mid, the healer and the overpowered bitch dual wielding pirate pistol bitch top, and then the carnifex guy and usually a second tank who can heal himself (the lizard guy) bot.

edit- annie, cho'gath, miss fortune, renekton, and i lost the name of the healer. he also looks like a lizard

So bot you have 2 guys who are tanks and can heal themselves, top you have a really powerful healer and a rnaged, and then mid you have Annie.

lol. I did buy my first hero with IP, as you can see it was Annie. Because she has infinite mana in the lane she's super easy to farm, and then I play her like Lion from Dota. Is ult up? Then go gank.

 

[kingcomrade]

Seriously though, 10 dollars for a single hero? 15 for a new skin? Those prices are absolutely bonkers.

 

[Ulminati]

Seriously though, 10 dollars for a single hero? 15 for a new skin? Those prices are absolutely bonkers.

Just play the free heroes and unlock the ones you like. I can point out at least 8 people on my friends list who never paid any money for the game and have a decent selection of heroes they play.

If you must spend money on the game, look for the bundles instead. There's 3 of them. the average champion price when you get them in a bundle is ~$1

 

[Phage]

Just to nitpick, only two of the bundles are worth buying (the third contains champs already in another one).

Like I sad earlier, for $20, the retail version of the game comes with a code that gives you 20 champion and 10$ of in-game riot points. There is another 20 champion bundle for $25, so if you were to use your points from the retail bundle it ends up being $35 for 40 champs.

Aside from that it's often best to buy champs with IP, unless you're very impatient, in which case it'd be best to spend RP on the 6300 IP champs, and IP boosts.

 

[Ulminati]

So bot you have 2 guys who are tanks and can heal themselves, top you have a really powerful healer and a rnaged, and then mid you have Annie.

Stun/silence/fear/supress/taunt Soraka (the powerful healer) and nuke her down. She's squishy as fuck. Then take out Miss Fortune. If you can't reach soraka, ignite will cut her healing by a sizable amount on whoever you use it on. Annie is the same. You can burst her down if she isn't energized. If you CC her before she tibber syou, she's easy meat.

The setup the bots use is fairly common in low-elo games. Once you get closer to 30, there are a few (very) common setups you're likely to see when playing vs people.

1: Tank solo top, AP carry mid, Assassin in the jungle, Support+ranged physical carry bot
2: AP Carry or offtank top, AP carry mid, tank in the jungle, Support+ranged physical carry bot
3: Tanky DPS top, physical carry mid, AP carry bot, assassin/tank jungling, support/tank roaming between lanes.

Especially #2 is very popular on the EU. A support+ranged AD allows the carry to farm in relative safety, so it's a very common setup. conversely, in non-ranke,d it's very popular to have 2 characters with a stun in the same lane to take out carries. For example a blitzcrank/sion combo. Starting at level 2, they can pull your squishy into a brush, knock him into the air, stun him and explode on him. That'll usually knock a good 3/4ths off a squishys health before the CC ends and he can flash away if they coordinate it correctly.

The very best thing you can do if you want to learn the game is to find a friend who has played it for a bit and queue either with them or with a fresh "smurf" account they've made against real people. If you're reasonably confident you know how the champ you're playing works, it's the best way to get introduced to a vareity of playstyles quickly. (And get yelled at for not calling misses, forgetting to ward, not being there when dragon respawns and pushing an inhibitor when nexus is open).

Or better yet, learn to jungle. It's the fastest ticket off of newbie island.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

did you perchance follow the nice and accurate advice in "Facemelting with the Morg - A ballet tribute to AP mayhem"?

I do use almost the same build, but i did not follow it.
I have played Morg from then the game was released so i built my own personal variation of it.

I also used to Play Olaf until the Nerfed him into the ground.
Then i played Kayle until they nerfed her into the ground
Then i played Ashe she is still fine.
Then i played Nasus then they nerfed him and now they buffed him.
Now i play Maokai and Morgana mostly.

Maokai is fun, but he has issues because there are a severe lack of Magic Tanking items.

 

[kingcomrade]

What is AP carry? Caster carry?

 

[Phage]

For the most part, yeah. Pretty much any carry that focuses on AP. I'M ON RIGHT NOW IF YOU'RE UP FOR A GAME!

 

[kingcomrade]

yeah one second i want to have a cigarette i haven't had one in almost half a week and man fuck that

 

[Phage]

Aye aye cap'n. Hopefully I don't disappoint you too much, lol.

 

[Markman]

Ive been playing most of the morning today. I think I won 2 out of 6 games played. Fuck EZ fuck Vlad and fuck people playing carrys and dont know what to do with em. People are running around today like chickens without heads. 6 games, 55 players and Ive seen maybe 3 or 4 guys that are good with the champ they played.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've been thinking of trying this out lately. I can't remember why I never bothered when it first came out, I think it was some gameplay issue but I can't recall it now. Anyways, two questions:

1. What is the matchmaking system like? In HoN it takes a while to find a match if you aren't playing AP mode, and people disconnect all the fucking time, because the game doesn't record a leave for you if your team remakes within 5 minutes. So you get a leaver like every third fucking game, and either get a free win/loss after 15 minutes or have to go back to waiting for several minutes to find a fucking match. On top of that, people in groups and playing solo join the same matchmaking pool, so you get bullshit like 4 brazilian or polish guys on your team that all suck balls except one of them who brought the idiot's rank up so they could queue with you. Is LoL better here, do you pretty much always get 4 english speaking people willing to play the game of about your skill level once you reaching a certain rating, within a couple minutes?

2. Whats the biggest difference between LoL and DotA/HoN, for anyone who's played both?

 

[Ulminati]

I've been thinking of trying this out lately. I can't remember why I never bothered when it first came out, I think it was some gameplay issue but I can't recall it now. Anyways, two questions:

1. What is the matchmaking system like? In HoN it takes a while to find a match if you aren't playing AP mode, and people disconnect all the fucking time, because the game doesn't record a leave for you if your team remakes within 5 minutes. So you get a leaver like every third fucking game, and either get a free win/loss after 15 minutes or have to go back to waiting for several minutes to find a fucking match. On top of that, people in groups and playing solo join the same matchmaking pool, so you get bullshit like 4 brazilian or polish guys on your team that all suck balls except one of them who brought the idiot's rank up so they could queue with you. Is LoL better here, do you pretty much always get 4 english speaking people willing to play the game of about your skill level once you reaching a certain rating, within a couple minutes?

Finding a game usually takes between 30 seconds to two minutes depending on time of day. It can stretch to as long as 15 minutes if you're extremely high or mindblowingly low ELO. If you leave a game, you get a time penalty before you're allowed to join the queue again. 5 mins first time, 20 mins second etc. If you queue dodge after a match is found fo ryou in ranked, you will automatically lose rating and be credited a loss. Most people in the game speak english.

 

[Markman]

MM is ok, sometimes you get shit players and sometimes good. Today I got shit players. Theres play vs AI also so you dont need to worry about other people while learning the game.

Lol vs HoN? LoL is easier to play and understand. I still cant get into HoN after playing 20+ games. But those who can seem to have fun.

 

[Mystary!]

AFAIK the match making system tries to make you have a 50/50 chance of winning, if you facestomp a team youre more likely to get facestomped in the next one. Premade, be it only 2 people, get to face tougher opponents because the system assumes you have an advantage, like voice or whatever. If you face a premade youre therefore more likely to win, unless they actually have voice chat

Leavers can be reported and banned, it still happens but mostly its because of server issues I think, atleast in higher teir. Lower teir are more inclined to ragequit, and start a new account, I guess.

 

[Grunker]

I'm playing 5v5 Arranged Team Ranked ATM. It's a goddamn blast. A couple of us meet, discuss picks and bans, and roll with it. We've been winning a bunch too. Highly recommendable.

 

[Phage]

I've been thinking of trying this out lately. I can't remember why I never bothered when it first came out, I think it was some gameplay issue but I can't recall it now. Anyways, two questions:

1. What is the matchmaking system like? In HoN it takes a while to find a match if you aren't playing AP mode, and people disconnect all the fucking time, because the game doesn't record a leave for you if your team remakes within 5 minutes. So you get a leaver like every third fucking game, and either get a free win/loss after 15 minutes or have to go back to waiting for several minutes to find a fucking match. On top of that, people in groups and playing solo join the same matchmaking pool, so you get bullshit like 4 brazilian or polish guys on your team that all suck balls except one of them who brought the idiot's rank up so they could queue with you. Is LoL better here, do you pretty much always get 4 english speaking people willing to play the game of about your skill level once you reaching a certain rating, within a couple minutes?

2. Whats the biggest difference between LoL and DotA/HoN, for anyone who's played both?

1. In theory the matchmaking system would give you 4 players of equal skill (which usually ends up being around your summoner level, until you hit 30, then your elo). Unfortunately I still get my fair share of leavers/trolls/etc, but leaving is a highly punished offense, and you can report feeders/trolls.

2. I only played a little bit of DotA, but from everything I've read:

- No denying creeps in LoL (also no possible friendly fire)
- No gold on death in LoL
- Shop is one screen (not sure if newer versions of dota changed this, but I remember there being like 3-4 shops). Also no shop in the woods.
- Runes/Masteries that you set outside of the game to customize your character
- Bushes that you can hide in (not sure if I like this)
- Two buff giving neutral monsters per jungle side. One that gives a CDR+mana regen buff, the other that gives your auto attacks slow. Until the buff wears off after some time, if someone kills you they steal the buff.
- Two big neutral monsters in the river; the weaker Dragon who gives your whole team 190g per member, and the stronger Baron Nashor who gives your whole team 300g per member and a high powered buff.
- Can't drop items on the ground / no courier animals
- Recall to the base at any time by pressing b. Takes about 6 seconds of non-combat before it ports you.
- You can select 2 "summoner spells". You unlock them all at summoner level 12. They range from situational/useless (Small AoE Heal, instant revive) to pretty overpowered (free Flash/Blink). The spells tend to have a 2-3 minute cooldown.
- Champions (heroes) aren't divided by str/agi/int. Some heroes can be built multiple ways. (For example, Twisted Fate can be Attack Damage or Ability Power or Hybrid)
- I've heard that towers do more damage in LoL. Personally have no idea.


I'm sure there's more. A lot of people say that DotA/HoN are harder. Sounds to me that they require different skills. Matter of personal preference.

 

[Grunker]

Don't know about HoN, but for me, LoL is pretty much DotA without the stupid. The main things being secret shops and time spent memorizing recipies being removed so you can focus on build-strategies and gameplay. In addition, the re-call button makes laning much more exiting. The fact that a trip back is less costly makes you on full HP more often, which gives much more aggression in the laning-phase (i.e., more confrontations, which is a good thing).

Champion-balance is pretty good at the moment, relatively. In the recent Dreamhack tournament 44/70 champions were used with pretty much equal success, according to the stats. There's also pretty good variety. The champion for example Nunu did very, very well at Dreamhack, and he's pretty useless in late-game (turns into a slow-bot with a buff, basically). His jungle is just so strong in the beginning that it's usually worth the cost (as well as other more technical details, such as the awesomeness of the Oracle's Elixir on the guy).