So, anyone playing League of Legends?

[Phage]

Mmm, nice guide bro! She certainly won't replace Karthus as my main, but I think if the team line-up is lacking CC I'll be picking her in ranked.

What're your methods on the mummy?

 

[mugarod]

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho ... ?t=1100161


Your next move Valve and S2


I wish riot would put as much effort into implementing all things that were promissed long time ago. Replays, Magma Chamber map, graphics overhaul etc.

 

[St. Toxic]

Y'know, I've actually been playing this game a bit, mostly as Heimer, Mundo or Yorick. I often get to hear that these aren't viable champions to use, and often people can be pretty vocal about it, but admittedly this form of "trolling" is what makes the game particularly fun for me.

 

[mugarod]

Every champion is viable in most normal games but as a skill of your oponents increase some choices get shut down easily by the opposition.

 

[Phage]

Heimer is pretty tough to call viable, but Yorick definitely is, and Mundo has his niches in certain team comps

 

[Markman]

Ye, Mundo is ultimate troll, if well played he eats and beats anything. I like the crit build with him, with Sadism on its brutal how much damage he deals early game if you get some lucky crit hits.

Heimer is fun but nerfed to hell, what is it, 2 turrets max now, and no escape abilities.

 

[Ulminati]

What're your methods on the mummy?

0/21/9 masteries.
smite/flash or smite/ghost.
Start cloth armor + 5 pots
blue buff, wolves, wraiths, golems, red buff.
(alternately start mana crystal + pots and do wolves, wraits golems, bluepill)
Despair, Tantrum, Tantrum, Bandage Toss. Then Curse > Tantrum > despair > Bandage toss
For the first 2-3 bluepills, you'll need to get a few HP pots until you max tantrum.
Core items: Hear of gold, Aegis of the Legion and either Merc Treads or Ninja Tabi. (Ninja tabi if they have 2 high-physical champs, such as a jungle noc or trynd + carry).
Nice optional items: Banshee's veil, Randuins omen, sunfire cape, rylai's (makes despair slow).
You're very, very dependant on getting blue buff until level 12-13(ish). Getting a manay crystal is not a bad idea.
Whenever your ult is up, try to start a team fight in the jungle, ideally by forcing dragon or baron. You can do dragon starting at level 7-8(ish) if you have blue buff thanks to despairs % of max HP not being damage capped for monsters.
Remember as a jungler it's your job to pitch in with wards, especially top river and enemy buff creeps where your support can't go without leaving lane for a long while.
Mumu is a lousy counterjungler but a decent ganker. If you get a good leash on blue and drink a health pot at every creep camp, you should have both buffs, 75% hp and lv4 by the 4-minute mark. Plenty HP to gank a lane before bluepilling to shop.

Y'know, I've actually been playing this game a bit, mostly as Heimer, Mundo or Yorick. I often get to hear that these aren't viable champions to use, and often people can be pretty vocal about it, but admittedly this form of "trolling" is what makes the game particularly fun for me.

So long as you're not playing draft mode (ranked) and/or your ELO is below 1400-ish, every champion is viable if you know how to play them. The main reason many champions are considered "unviable" in ranked is because there are several other champions who shut them down really hard. so if you see someone pick, say, LeBlanc in ranked, the other team knows to pick someone with a spell shield like sivir, noc or morgana to mess up leblancs gank/defense potential.

 

[Phage]

That's pretty similar to what I do - except I follow stonewall's guide, take a mana crystal and start at wraiths with tauntrum. It ends up not being much slower, and frankly, at the lower elos/normals it isn't unusual for my team to get raped at lvl 1 teamfights at the golem, lol.

Why not get a philosopher's stone early? It gives you sustain for the jungle/ganks, and GP5. I get it in addition to the HoG.

 

[Grunker]

Cloth + 5 pots is the only way to go on Amumu! That said, I do get a Philo-stone also - at least in ranked games because they tend to go on for longer and have fewer deaths. The jungler needs cash, and he needs sustain, and Philo Stone gives both. Too good not to buy on Amumu

Heart of Gold + Philo Stone.

 

[Phage]

No love for this path?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYx8b8J5wHw

 

[Grunker]

Looks needlessly risky. An invasion and your done for. Starting blue with cloth + 5 ensures you can at least take an alternate route upon invasion.

 

[Ulminati]

So a friend of mine and me got into a discussion of whether or not you could "play lol for free". By playing lol, we agreed that it meant being able to play ranked at high ELO. (What'd equate to endgame raids in a MMO). To do this, a player should have at least 10 champions -- 2 of each for the 5 main positions on a ranked team: Solotop, Solomid, Jungle, Carry Bottom, Support Bottom. All of them should be champs that would be considered viable picks in mid-high elo games. As well as sufficient runes and rune pages to play each of the champions roles as intended.

With first win of the day bonusses and a 50% win/loss ratio, we assume each game you play averages out to 150-175 IP per match. this in turn would give you ~30k IP by level 30. So that is our budget. While you run the risk of both characters you have for a given position being picked/banned by the othe team, there is also the buffer of the 10 free champs in a given week.

First off, we want an additional rune page. 2 simply isn't enough to cover every role in ranked. They're expensive, so we're going to create 3 smurfs (alternate accounts) with our main accounts referral code. Or talk our friends into using our referral code. The referral award for referring 3 friends that reach at least level 10 (you could level 3 accounts in a weekend easily) is 975RP. Enough for a rune page. It'll also net your main account 3 IP boosts, giving you even more virtual money to spend.

Total IP spent so far: NONE!

Second off, we're going to need to cover ranged carries for solo bot.
- Ashe is considered one of the best (if not THE best) ranged carry in the game. She's also only 450 IP. Most other carries are hideously expensive. BUT. You can get tristana for free. Riot runs a promotion that gives you tristana + the riot girl tristana skin for free if you "like" League of Legends on your facebook account. So go ahead and do that.
- For AP carries, both Annie and Ryze (especially annie) are considered quite good. They can both hold solo mid easily, and they're 450 IP each.
- In the top lane, you usually want a tanky type. We're going to go with Alistar (1350 IP) and singed (1350 IP). But there are tons of other 1350 IP champs that are equally viable. As a bonus, alistar can also be built as an AP carry, a support for bot or as a roaming gank machine.
- For a babysitting support bot, we're going with Soraka (450 IP) and either Janna or Taric (1350 IP). They're pretty much considered the top 3 choices for a support champion. And they are going to work decently sharing a rune page with an AP carry, saving us some money on runes.
- Finally there's the jungle. Amumu is considered a top pick for jungling (1350 IP, tank). As our second pick we could go either with master yi (450 IP, AD carry), malphite (1350 IP, tank) or fiddlesticks (1350 ip, AP carry). I'm going to assume fiddlesticks as our second pick since I really don't like yi myself.

That means we spend a total of 8550 IP on 10 champions. Along with the free champions we're pretty much guaranteed having a viable pick that'll cover any role. But they still need runes.

- For quintessences, we're going with flat HP quints. 3 of these will run us 6150 IP, but they are useful on every single champ in the game.
- For marks, we're going with armor pen and/or magic pen depending on what we're playing. That'll be 2x 3690 IP.
- For seals, mana regen per level (1845 IP) is pretty decent. Every champ we picked uses mana. For the junglers however, they'll probably need flat armor seals. (1845 IP).
- Finally for the glyphs, we're going with scaling magic resist. It's not optimal on everyone, but it's cheap and useful. That'll run us another 1845 IP.

All in all we spend 19065 IP on runes.

Out of our budget of ~30k IP by level 30 we have spent 27615. There's probably a ton or champions and runes (9x glyps w. flat cooldown lookin' nice) we'd alike as well. But by the time you've played enough ranked matches to raise your ELO to a point they become necessary, you will have farmed the additional IP. We have a total of 10-20 champions (depending on overlap in the free rotation) to play, with at least 2 top-tier picks for every major role on the team.

We have 3 rune pages:
- Caster/support/solo top with magic pen reds, mana regen yellows, magic resist blues and flat hp quints
- AD Carry with armor pen reds, mana regen yellows, magic resist blues and flat hp quints
- Jungler/solotop with magic pen reds, flat armor yellows, magic resist blues and flat hp quints

We now have a viable lineup to play ranked. And we can afford it all without spending a single €/£/$ the moment we hit level 30 where ranked becomes available.

Q.E.Fucking.D.

 

[Phage]

Looks needlessly risky. An invasion and your done for. Starting blue with cloth + 5 ensures you can at least take an alternate route upon invasion.

You do know that's the low-risk path, right..? The point being if you're unsure of your team's capabilities of securing blue, you can just start there.

 

[Ulminati]

Problem with starting wraiths (though I sometimes do) is that if your team doesn't secure blue regardless the enemy ganksquad will just steal it while you're @ wolves.

 

[Markman]

Anybody tried jungle Nasus?
Found him a bit weak and boring really, even his lane farming seems more fun in comparison. And without Sheen and being out of mana constantly if you dont have blue or runes its just tedious.

Xin is my new fav in jungle. probably cause hes easiest one to main, just a bit work on timing and its a smooth game. Never runs out of mana if used properly.

 

[Ulminati]

I played jungle nasus before his partial remake. It was pretty difficult, but doable. Nasus'es lv4 gank is pretty terrifying with wither+armor reduction+siphoning strike. But his lategame will suffer without solo lane farm. Not reccomended.

 

[Grunker]

Looks needlessly risky. An invasion and your done for. Starting blue with cloth + 5 ensures you can at least take an alternate route upon invasion.

You do know that's the low-risk path, right..? The point being if you're unsure of your team's capabilities of securing blue, you can just start there.

You misunderstood me

It's high-risk in that you are vulnerable to an invasion by the enemy jungler - something Amumu should always be on the look-out for, since the enemy will take advantage of Amumus relative weakness to counter-jungling. With the standard route there is the "standard" risk (which is why everyone goes to scout), but your HP stays relatively high. On that route, your HP after golems is within one-shot range.

Add to this that if there is a successful invasion (the enemy grabs blue), you have an alternate route to rely upon.

 

[Grunker]

Anybody tried jungle Nasus?

What Ulm said. It makes no sense that they buffed his jungling when they simultaneously preserve his dependence on solo lane farm

 

[St. Toxic]

So long as you're not playing draft mode (ranked) and/or your ELO is below 1400-ish, every champion is viable if you know how to play them. The main reason many champions are considered "unviable" in ranked is because there are several other champions who shut them down really hard. so if you see someone pick, say, LeBlanc in ranked, the other team knows to pick someone with a spell shield like sivir, noc or morgana to mess up leblancs gank/defense potential.

I guess that makes sense. I'm certainly not playing at any particularly high competitive level, I don't think, but I also kind of think that playing the more unpopular champions can be of a certain strategic advantage. There is a core group of champions out there that see the most frequent use, and for the most part everybody is reasonably aware of their strengths and weaknesses, whereas the more infrequently used champions can contribute a certain element of surprise to the game.

A bad comparison perhaps but, for a competitive genre that I am overall more familiar with given my age, you would find the same favoritism in fighting games, where certain fighters were being, so called, "overpowered" and essentially saw more use. However, when somebody stepped into the ring who had really taken the time to master a less popular fighter, you could tell straight away that the game was over, and it would certainly be a show-stealer of a fight -- at least for those of us who enjoy seeing the underdog triumph. I feel the same applies to LoL in a way, but of course that's my personal idealistic opinion. After all, LoL, while certainly allowing the players some space in which to use their personal abilities, relies far more heavily on team synergy, which is something very difficult to balance for. There's certainly something, still, to the champions I previously mentioned, but in all probability the same level of efficiency seems easier to achieve with other champions and team combinations and the rewards of putting more effort into these flawed gems may seem fairly few in comparison.

Heimer has a select group of champions he can dominate completely, though primarily in early and mid. If one manages to keep the enemy team pinned throughout, and the whole team does relatively well and refuses to give many kills away, he can be viable all through the game. If not, well, you're not necessarily screwed but you'll be building for support and will probably play a minimal role. Also a good 1v2 early and mid.

Mundo, again, excellent 1v2. Can control a lane brilliantly against almost any opponents, at least initially. And then you get to the teamfights and it gets noticeably harder to pull your weight. I end up initiating and tanking, mainly giving others the opportunity to shine, and when everyone's on the ball it works but I'm really just a big hp pool on legs, so if shit goes really sour there's little you can do to save the situation. But if it doesn't, it's smooth sailing all the way; you'll be trolling 5 champs towards end game easily.

Maybe it's just that aspect that I find attractive, being a bit of a problem solver by nature. I see two in essence working systems with a glaring flaw each and I'm hooked.

 

[Grunker]

There are some champions that are "bad" in general (that is, on medium ELO+). This list includes Twitch, Ezreal, Mordekaiser, Nasus and more. They aren't necessarily bad in the common sense, they are just worse than champions who can do what they do better. Nasus, for example, isn't strictly bad, but Warwick, Udyr and more supply the same kick he does and have far better stuff besides. Mordekaiser on the other hand is bad because if you play on a level above "PUSH PUSH PUSH" where there is no jungler, he will die to the jungler and be ignored in all team-fights.

Many would put Mundo on the list. He was used once at Dreamhack, and it's very clear from that match that they lose the game in huge part because of that pick. His one and only redeeming quality after early lane - insane sustainability - gets completely shut down by a fairly common summoner spell with a low cooldown.

All in all, I'd say LoL is doing pretty good with the balance. There is great variety at the top, and many champions have great powers on lower ELOs. Mordekaiser is always banned in Low ELOs for example and rightly so; he is horrible because of the meta-game, and that meta-game is not utilized at low ELOs.

TheLittleOne (great Starcraft-player) once said that there is no such thing as over- or underpowered. He didn't mean it literally, he just mean that 90% of what feels off-balance is a result of the meta - not the core game balance.

 

[St. Toxic]

Many would put Mundo on the list. He was used once at Dreamhack, and it's very clear from that match that they lose the game in huge part because of that pick. His one and only redeeming quality after early lane - insane sustainability - gets completely shut down by a fairly common summoner spell with a low cooldown.

I saw that game. Mundo is certainly a downward spiral type champion, that is if you don't do well straight away chances are you won't be able to recover, at least not on your own. At the same time I wouldn't say the guy pushed Mundo to the limit on that one; but naturally I say that in the capacity of a Mundo player and with an obvious bias. I would also say that ignite is not the end-all of Mundo in any shape or form, though it's certainly an inconvenience. You do get the habit of going out of range for Sadism when there are ignites being tossed around, and in many instances and especially if you're working with a good team you don't need the recovery until you're chasing down the surviving members of the enemy team or just getting in their way if a retreat was deemed necessary.

The really messy aspect when playing Mundo is when he's ignored in a distanced strike. The last thing you want to do is end up on the other side of the enemy while they're going for some squishy ad in front etc. Your options of breaking off their attack are futile, and unless everybody goes for instant evasion it's not uncommon with a lone Mundo running back to base unharmed. Again, this is something the team has to compensate for with an overall more finely attuned coordination, and it's hard to judge if this sort of dedication really is worth it or not.

 

[Ulminati]

Don't get me wrong, bro. Everyone loves Mundo for his epic Mundotacity. But if you want to play him, you should definately play twisted treeline instead. He's a hundred times more viable on that map.

 

[Phage]

There are some champions that are "bad" in general (that is, on medium ELO+). This list includes Twitch, Ezreal, Mordekaiser, Nasus and more.

Mordekaiser is consistently banned at 2000+ elo. Dead serious.

 

[Teepo]

I'm about to get 12600 IP, I'm trying to decide who would be the best 6300 champs to pick. The first one is probably going to be Wukong because he hits pretty hard and seems like my kind of champ. I do best with Gankplank for some reason. Been playing him since February. The second champ I think is going to be Skarner. Someone said Skarner adds nothing to the team, but fuck the team.

Any ideas?

 

[Grunker]

There are some champions that are "bad" in general (that is, on medium ELO+). This list includes Twitch, Ezreal, Mordekaiser, Nasus and more.

Mordekaiser is consistently banned at 2000+ elo. Dead serious.

u mad or u trollin'?

Obviously I'm not a 2000+ player myself, but I watch a fuckton of streams and tournaments. He is never, ever, ever, ever banned in tournaments or arranged ranked. I admittedly don't watch that much solo-queuing since it's a lot less interesting, but it makes no sense that the same players who never ban him in AQ would ban him in SQ.