League of Legends (Old)

[Morthas]

It's fun to stun the whole enemy team as Cass when they come to gank you only to get them all down to 40% health and have your teammates finish the job ;D

[hitogoroshi]

Here is a general guide to runes. Once you're level 20, these are the ones to get immediately (they aren't the ONLY good runes, but they're the ones you should have before getting others, unless you have a gimmicky main that wants a different page)

Marks:

Armor Penetration
Magic Penetration
Attack Speed (Junglers)

Seals:

Mana Regen/Level (flat mana regen is a scam)
Armor

Glyphs:

CDR (flat beats out scaling for most champs, though ultbots may think differently)
Scaling AP
Magic Resistance (scaling and flat are both good...depends how you like it)

Quintessences:

Flat HP
Flat AP
Armor Penetration
Attack Speed (Junglers)

Start by picking the type from each category that benefits your main(s) the most. Get one from each for a full page. Then, look in to getting other sets (generally marks are the first you want two sets of - armor pen and magic pen.)

So, Kiwi, your page looks pretty good. Though if you're building a character with good ratios I'd recommend AP quints over HP quints. The days of HP quints being blatantly overpowered are long over.

[bv310]

You know what's fun? Getting 5-man ganked at mid at the beginning and killing two of them without dying. Best Veigar game ever.

[quadz08]

^this was funny shit.

[Nuwen]

Regular Nasus play taught quite a few scumchatters how to farm efficiently (and guard farm with aggressive vision, body zoning).

My current emphasis is breaking everyone's autoattack/a-move/lane position habits. While laning, you should always have a good answer to "Why am I standing right here, right now?"

Good answers include:
Body/range zoning as enemy hero(s) approach to last hit
Moving in to last hit (do you need to approach behind your own creep to avoid skillshots? Away from creep to avoid bounce abilities?)
Harassing while waiting to last hit (do you have the harass/poke advantage, or will potential damage trading hurt your staying power?)

As a rule, NEVER stand still. When you autoattack, you remain in one place for multiple animations or move in a predictable path as you a-move towards the next target. Practice running your character back and forth 1-3 steps while last hitting, watching the minimap, and looking for harass opportunity/avoiding enemy harass. Unless you plan to do meaningful and intentional damage,

do not stand in one place for longer than one attack animation in the lanefarm phase

.

Every

lane composition has a different dynamic, on both sides. Your item builds should vary based on ally and enemy composition, and you should always spend your gold with the intention of being as efficient as possible given the game situation at that

time

. Time and relative strength is important to monitor. I want to see more early negatron cloaks and chain vests in struggling lanes, or doran stacking in "early" lanes to push your advantage as far as possible. It's time to start asking about and experimenting with min/maxing elements as your mechanics become better.

[hitogoroshi]

or doran stacking in "early" lanes to push your advantage as far as possible.

Eh? I always thought Dorans stacking was for a lane-dependent champ losing or holding neutral in their lane. If you're winning an early lane, it seems like rushing your core (at least the damaging parts) is the best way to keep snowballing...

[Morthas]

Any way to have a meter for Dps and such and such? Do addons for LoL exist?
I get dorans almost always regardless the situation..

[kiwieagle]

Getting things that fives extra 5g per 10 secs is great during laning phase.

[Morthas]

Depends on your build since the 5g items build into very specific role items

[Nuwen]

I could be doingitwrong, but I'm using doran's stacking as a way to cheaply gain disproportionally strong early game stats at the cost of some midgame deeps. If you don't unlock/deny enough gold to make the extra doran's pay for themselves in the midgame, you're behind. If you can use them to force backs and get significant tower damage (or often a tower kill at the level I'm seeing), it can be a cost-effective tactic.

In pubs, for example, one of my favorite ways to 'carry' is to buy doran's blades on a Cait or Vayne and give my team 6-8 minute tower gold. It's not really high level min/maxing because I'm spending gold badly on a carry, but the extra team gold and end to lane phase causes a snowball tipping point in bads games.

This also raises the subject of playing to your opponent's level of play. Different things are optimal at different tiers of play, and anything can be functional when skill disparity is high enough.

[hitogoroshi]

I could be biased because I tend to have very aggressive cores.

For example, if I'm Corki, I don't get another Doran's Blade, I rush a Brutalizer. It's probably more power than the +30 dmg I'd get from three dorans blades, all in one handy slot.

[Nuwen]

Yeah, I think I consider Corki someone who naturally peaks towards the midgame (late game entirely determined by how he uses this peak time) and needs to build accordingly. I don't think I'd try my blade stacking with him unless I'm very behind with no chance of gold recovery before lane phase ends. Could be wrong there too; I don't play Corki.

Vayne and Cait do damage out of proportion to most other heroes in the first ten minutes of the game. Compounding that advantage lets you get waaaay ahead if you take your innate lead and run with it. Again, this is a pubstompy tactic and not particularly high level.

Edit: think of it like buying early elixirs. Very high risk/reward if you're trying to get ahead, but you can proactively change the shape of a game if you know what you're doing.

[Morthas]

Meh, really don't like the idea of buying more than 1 doran's, probably because never seen anyone do good with them

[TheButtonmen]

Meh, really don't like the idea of buying more than 1 doran's, probably because never seen anyone do good with them

I see x3 doran blades on heros like Renekton and Ashe a fair bit where they are doubling down on their carry status and trying to just snow ball with the early strength basically trying to skip the mid-game.

[Nuwen]

It's generally a bad idea unless you're well aware of the specific advantages and pitfalls, but I want people to think about exploiting whatever situation they're in. Item/time synergy is part of that.

[Morthas]

Maybe we should group up and play games where we aim to get better, been playing for ages but never actually ''tried'' getting better at this

[Nuwen]

Just pick one or two things you want to actively improve (basic last hit/minimap awareness mechanics should take priority here). Focus on doing them well every game you play until you don't have to remember to do them anymore. Train your eyes to gather information as you do other things with your hands. These skills will assist you in every RTS game you ever play. Your eyes should be looking at the minimap almost all the time.

I don't know enough about this game (LoL) to get down and analytical at a high level. I just have pretty good mechanics after years of dota and starcraft play, so I'm able to watch scummers while we play and offer pointers in the form of "wtfudoing."

[dramonic]

I tried this at a friend's.
Was nice, but when I tried to run it at home it told me my graphic card doesn't support Pixel Shader 2.0
...so yep.

[kiwieagle]

it told me that aswell....

forgot what I did to fix it...

[Nightson]

Last hotting is really vitally important as a carry. Learning to focus on last hitting instead of harassing the early champions helped me do a whole lot better when playing a strict carry like tristana.

[IH]

Buying more than one dorans should be a situational gamble when you want to barely edge someone out, and should pretty much only be done by a solo who is planning to snowball quickly. That way it's not a waste of gold, it's an investment.
It's harder these days for Ranged AD carries to snowball. All of the nerfs, movement speed being the primary one, makes positioning difficult, and it's MUCH harder to harrass. Mage casters are dominating as ranged compared to how carries like tristana and MF were doing. you can't even farm for an early bf sword now because of how quickly things start to snowball and when teamfights start. Used too, you had enough time to farm a bf sword, and go ganking with that MASSIVE ad boost. Now.... meh. It's frustrating as someone who used to main tristana.

On the note of runes, you will need magic pen marks, and you will need armor pen marks. Health quints are EXTREMELY HELPFUL, and very splashable. It's good at keeping you at 5 bars of health early game for everyone but annivia and like twitch or teemo. mana regen per level yellows get better than flat mana regen runes at LEVEL 4. Dodge yellows are nice if you ever pick up jax, but that's the only reason i have them. I also have a set of crit chance and attack speed yellows for my ad characters. I'll probably get either health per level yellows or armor yellows eventually.

The best blues are probably either some form of cd reduction or magic resist. I change them out depending on my characters.

[TheButtonmen]

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAND

[RayFrost]

Also rayfrost...
what was wrong with my annie build?
I freakin pubstomped
16-5-20

I don't remember your exact build, but I can tell from looking at your match history just now that you're builds are off: rylai's crystal scepter is really one of the less useful AP items on annie. She has an AoE stun. Nobody that you can kill will be getting away. Only her q is a single target ability, meaning you get a minimal slow that really doesn't do much when the stun will actually last longer than the slow itself. You're better off getting a rod of ages earlier, meaning its benefits come into effect faster, and save the money you spent there on a deathcap.

Opening with doran's ring is probably less effective on Annie than the normal caster, since you really shouldn't need the mana regen (her q is a free farming ability, and her abilities are all rather cheap mana-wise), and nobody fucks with Annie enough that she needs that extra health. Even before level 6, her stun means she has free harass that's stronger than anybody that tries to get a one off shot on her. People need to be damn sure they want to pick a fight with you or that you're stun isn't up before they go for it, and you're stun should pretty much always be at around 4 so you can just pop molten shield and then stun without any worries. Those with longer range might be annoying (lux), but health pots and simply avoiding the attacks solves it. Ganks are still naturally an issue, but I find it really easy to escape them and they really shouldn't happen with a kill on you unless you're *really* overextended (in which case that extra health won't mean anything either).

After rushing RoA, getting deathcap before archangel's is a good idea (though obv you should have boots2 first). As before, annie really doesn't need a lot of mana to do her job, an RoA provides enough of a boost to that anyway. And I see that in one of your games you rushed a... thornmail. I don't know what the enemy team comp was like, but I'm not sure I approve of the decision, but keep in mind that her molten shield is probably going to be doing quite a sizable amount of damage once you get some AP.

Also consider getting void staff before archangel's if they're getting MR, etc.

[Oman]

Wow Oman for a player that is still lvl 10 you are sure expressing more knowledge of the game than alot of lvl 30ies ;p
I Would definitely suggest getting all abilities whenever you play as ANY champ since it will always increase your damage output, especially as fiddle as it might win you an extra second of drain.

You should try playing Mordekaiser (great carry and decent survivability, get ap build for him),
Although i want to see more people playing Cassiopea, such an underrated champ ;D

Thanks for the kind words. Part of it is that I've been involved in these discussions with other games, it's not super difficult to get my head around it. The bigger part of it though is playing 5 early games with Dodge, Nuwen, Shanba, Bob, and the rest. These guys really gave me a good snap-in to the game at large.


With Blitz free this week, I've been getting killed by him (more than I should, really), and it annoys me a lot. I'll take a look at Cass, thanks for the heads up.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I just went 6/0/4 and beat Leblanc solo mid as Soraka. I don't know what just happened.