League of Legends (Old)

[Untrod Tripod]

though I do what I'm told, so... )

we should discuss this in a different venue

[Cyberbob]

though I do what I'm told, so... )

we should discuss this in a different venue

n

[Chronopie]

/in for a 3v3, TT, tourney. As my main obv. rather than my Level 7, runeless, alt.

--

Don't think Quadz would be to happy with you though UT.

[Oman]

I do what I'm told. Or that is, I do thinks when Jdodge yells "Oman, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THERE? DO YOU THINK, EVER!?"

[TheWayItEnds]

.

[Otolia]

For more insight on the denying mechanics

[Lord Gurgi]

I played EotA back in the day, and I never found it that good. Ignoring the ridiculous lag that it suffered from, the game was far too swingy. All real power was determined not by gold but by hero kills, as he says. There were no late game heroes as a result of this. Winning early meant winning late, no matter what. There was no farming, and recovering from a weak player on the team was impossible. Laning ability in that game had nothing to do with getting creep kills. There simply was not enough incentive to make gold your priority. Zoning and harassing was the only way to play. Not having denying is one thing, but if you take away the real incentive for creep kills in the first place, the game only becomes more ridiculous.

I still think that having denies is better than not.

Anyway, I'm up for a tournament. ARAM anyone? =)

[bv310]

Spectator mode just announced at e3, along with three new champions.

[Gammagooey]

Raaaaay I friended both usernames you've posted here

[bv310]

For more insight on the denying mechanics

Pretty much as soon as I saw it was from an S2 account, I stopped reading. S2 is going to be in favour of deny, Riot is not. Posting something from one clearly biased side or the other is not going to accomplish anything.

Personally, I've played both games. I enjoyed certain aspects of HoN (Especially Pollywog Priest and Rampage), but overall I vastly prefer LoL. Like many others have said, Deny feels both clunky and counterintuitive. It's something that is purely included to punish new players and reward veterans, which is a practice that ultimately alienates potential new users, and creates an air of elitism that is extremely unwelcoming to those who want to persevere in to higher play.

[Otolia]

Then you are dumb bv310. The conclusion of this article is that both game end up not having success with the mechanic. If you prefer to say 'I'm not reading because he is not partial' you are only showing that you have the same kind of elitism that is saying 'my game is the better one'. Which obviously isn't getting you nowhere. Reflect upon what you do before being judgemental. I thought this was the basis of Mafia ...

And let me remind you of the disclaimer :

Disclaimer: First thing I should point out here is that this is not an attack on League of Legends, but an attack on the poor reasoning I have seen many users, from both HoN and LoL, employ. Second thing is that I am personally FOR denying; this post was made simply to spark discussion. Denying is an integral part of HoN, and will never be removed. I wouldn’t want it to be! With that out of the way, let’s begin.

[Nuwen]

Deny is a mechanic that rapidly reveals who is more accustomed to hero micro, a skill essential in DoTA. Being "bad" at denying/last hitting probably means you have mechanics to practice, which is okay only if you have a lot of time to sink into a precise-mech skill. Poor mechanics will be obvious even without deny, although the impact on the full game will be less dramatic and onset less rapid. Zone-only in LoL lets me body zone for a learning player while he practices last hitting and map awareness - deny is only something that matters when you're playing with a broad spectrum of experience in one game.

At the professional level of play, deny/no deny is a non-issue.

I dislike EotA. It deemphasizes economics in a big way, which just makes it a tower defense fragging game and not true RTS. Mind on the money matters.

It's incredibly difficult to balance inhouse teams built from a small pool of scummers. Skill/experience disparity is difficult to quantify, and most people have only mastered one or two characters (who often fulfill the same role in games). Building a workable comp around both limited characters and limited people is a nightmare.

Last, I loathe some of the manner I see in our funsies games. Even though I'm deadly serious about the criticisms I give in realtime, people often take them the wrong way or are just agitated by my words. I realize no one likes being told they're making obvious mistakes and need to

think before acting

, but it's always best to approach DoTA (and life, maybe) with the attitude "what can I learn today?" Getting on tilt is the least effective way to absorb new information. Be like the sponge~~~

[Nuwen]

No-deny also frees up your support to do so many other things with his attention, like continually typing in pub chats about char status around the map. That kind of assistance, although also unquantifiable, is much more valuable to your team than denied gold/xp at all but the highest highest highest levels of play (i.e. not you guys flapping yo gums).

[Otolia]

No-deny also frees up your support to do so many other things with his attention, like continually typing in pub chats about char status around the map. That kind of assistance, although also unquantifiable, is much more valuable to your team than denied gold/xp at all but the highest highest highest levels of play (i.e. not you guys flapping yo gums).

No in-voice chat ? At least LoL will soon have spec mode

[Nuwen]

I'm interested in a partner for my grind up the elo ladder.

You MUST play either 2x ranged right click or 2x hard tank (with peels). You and I are going to put the team on our backs and drag them along, kicking and screaming. You should be able to type out directions without losing too much game time (no complete sentences while pausing in bushes for 5 full seconds, plz). You MUST have a microphone and be willing to talk to me. You MUST make mistakes once or thrice, but never again (or try, anyway).

Hit me up with your LoL name and approximate playtime windows.

[Morthas]

Deny is a mechanic that rapidly reveals who is more accustomed to hero micro, a skill essential in DoTA. Being "bad" at denying/last hitting probably means you have mechanics to practice, which is okay only if you have a lot of time to sink into a precise-mech skill. Poor mechanics will be obvious even without deny, although the impact on the full game will be less dramatic and onset less rapid. Zone-only in LoL lets me body zone for a learning player while he practices last hitting and map awareness - deny is only something that matters when you're playing with a broad spectrum of experience in one game.

At the professional level of play, deny/no deny is a non-issue.

I dislike EotA. It deemphasizes economics in a big way, which just makes it a tower defense fragging game and not true RTS. Mind on the money matters.

It's incredibly difficult to balance inhouse teams built from a small pool of scummers. Skill/experience disparity is difficult to quantify, and most people have only mastered one or two characters (who often fulfill the same role in games). Building a workable comp around both limited characters and limited people is a nightmare.

Last, I loathe some of the manner I see in our funsies games. Even though I'm deadly serious about the criticisms I give in realtime, people often take them the wrong way or are just agitated by my words. I realize no one likes being told they're making obvious mistakes and need to

think before acting

, but it's always best to approach DoTA (and life, maybe) with the attitude "what can I learn today?" Getting on tilt is the least effective way to absorb new information. Be like the sponge~~~

+1

[bv310]

No-deny also frees up your support to do so many other things with his attention, like continually typing in pub chats about char status around the map. That kind of assistance, although also unquantifiable, is much more valuable to your team than denied gold/xp at all but the highest highest highest levels of play (i.e. not you guys flapping yo gums).

No in-voice chat ? At least LoL will soon have spec mode

Baby steps, Oto.

[hitogoroshi]

I'm interested in a partner for my grind up the elo ladder.

You MUST play either 2x ranged right click or 2x hard tank (with peels). You and I are going to put the team on our backs and drag them along, kicking and screaming. You should be able to type out directions without losing too much game time (no complete sentences while pausing in bushes for 5 full seconds, plz). You MUST have a microphone and be willing to talk to me. You MUST make mistakes once or thrice, but never again (or try, anyway).

Hit me up with your LoL name and approximate playtime windows.

Why the requiring double for two archetypes and no mention of others? When you duo queue, one player gets first pick and the other gets last pick.

A better duo queue distribution is, "You must have 2x strong solo tops (One AD, one AP), and 2x strong junglers." That's the best way to work duo queue. And to a first approximation all junglers tank, so it gets your team a hard carry and a fatty running around the map dropping map awareness like candy.

[TheWayItEnds]

.

[Morthas]

Why the requiring double for two archetypes and no mention of others? When you duo queue, one player gets first pick and the other gets last pick.

A better duo queue distribution is, "You must have 2x strong solo tops (One AD, one AP), and 2x strong junglers." That's the best way to work duo queue. And to a first approximation all junglers tank, so it gets your team a hard carry and a fatty running around the map dropping map awareness like candy.

I think they changed it so that duo queues are not longer guaranteed to get first/last pick. At least thats what I saw with a friend of mine, but we may also have been running into other duo queues.

I Heard they made it so the guy with the highest ranking picks first >.>

[Shanba]

Nuwen plays mostly wizards (and some tanky wizards e.g. mord). Thus when duo queueing with her it doesn't make sense for them to also be playing mostly wizards, I suppose.

Unrelatedly, it's my firm belief that the best way to improve at the game is to play many many champions for as long as possible. Only at a very very high level is it best to specialise. Playing different champions and different roles helps in so many ways - different champions reward and indeed demand different skillsets - different roles help make you aware of different aspects of playing the game. When I first started playing on eu, I picked tristana as my "main" because she was free from the whole facebook offer thing. I played maybe ten, twenty games as tristana just learning the very basics. I think that's ok, tbh - while you're still not sure what towers do, it's probably best not to concern yourself with varied skillsets. However, beyond a certain level of competence, you are hamstringing your learning by restricting yourself to a single character or role.

I recall when I first started playing one of the problems I was having with tristana (though I didn't realise it at the time) was my positioning. Tristana is a character who doesn't care too much about positioning. If she gets into trouble, she can rocket jump or blaster shot away. Although I was definitely putting myself in danger by the positions I took, my opponents were at the time not strong enough players to capitalise on my mistakes. Frankly, I was losing my character in fights - I was so caught up in my target that I wasn't watching myself. I couldn't really follow fights at all. I was all tunnel visioned on hitting that one thing I wanted to hit and thus putting myself in harms way.

After a bit, I stopped playing exclusively tristana and started playing mainly poppy. Poppy is a character who is hugely dependent on positioning in teamfights. My old way of just staring at my target would mean I missed my stuns, and missing my stuns would mean a substantial decrease in my damage output. I was forced by the mechanics of my character to keep an eye on my positioning both IN teamfights and BEFORE teamfights. With poppy I started taking up flanking positions, knowing that a lateral charge was much stronger than a vertical charge (which would push the squishy I was after away from the action and the cc/dps of my teammates - plus terrain in lol is normally vertical, so a lateral charge gives you better angles for stunning.) ((EDIT: I guess what I mean by "vertical" is lengthways along lanes and "lateral" is sideways along lanes)). So I played many a game as poppy, learning all this stuff and then when i went back to tristana I was able to use the lessons I had learnt as poppy and position myself better in teamfights - a skill that would have taken far longer to learn from just playing trist.

I started jungling as nunu and supporting as zilean with cv at roughly the same time. When I first took cv as zilean, I didnt really have any idea about jungle paths or timers or anything. My cvs were almost at random - just keeping an eye on red buff, because I knew intellectually that red buff meant jungler was ganking soon. Any timers I knew for jungle I had memorised as a string of digits - so I would spend time trying to work out where he must be - time that left me vulnerable to harass. As I jungled more, and in particular as I strived for efficiency in my jungling and thus spent time staring at the clock, I internalised the numbers, and my cvs were now instantaneous and largely accurate. What's more, when in lane, I could now tell whether I was in danger from a gank, because I knew the jungling early game patterns. That was about as far as I got on the eu server.

On the us server I really started screwing around with a lot of champions. I was a level 20ish player on a level 1 account - I could do whatever I liked and largely still pubstomp. So I got to play all the free week champions. Very early on, two champions were free that helped me a ton with my overall laning - xin zhao and leblanc.

On the eu server, I had frequently raged about "bad" players who would sacrifice cs to harass me (I still rage about this somewhat tbh, but not as hard). I would look at their cs and go all "man these guys are so bad they aren't farming it's not my fault my cs is trash it's that these bad players are only interested in fighting." Now to some extent that's true, but it's also slightly missing the point - there is no divine right to farm in lane. Xin Zhao and Leblanc are characters who do not function passively in lane. I mean, tristana has a nice amount of burst at level 6, but nothing compared to these guys - but as a result, they

need

kills to justify being in lane in the first place. I began to see the value of being aggressive in lane, and in particular why it was so bad that as tristana I had always just eaten unanswered harass. Suddenly, even on characters who don't need to win their lanes as hard as these two, I began to understand how I could win my lane and why it was beneficial to do so. Harassing and trading in a favourable way to me gives space to farm, and opens the possibility of getting kills. I learnt that farm is the property of the player strong enough to take it.

I also learnt something about characters in general. Leblanc is a very unique character in LoL. Her burst is extreme at low levels and her scaling is horrifically poor. She is the epitome of an early game character, and probably the best example of a hero who you can keep in check simply by denying her kills in lane. Playing as leblanc taught me the extent of her burst, and also taught me how hard she is shut down by keeping her down early on. She was the first hero I learnt who taught me that it's sometimes acceptable to change the goal of your lane from "winning" to merely "surviving". She is such an outlier, such an extreme that she brought into focus that the way you play in lane depends not only on who you are but also who the opponent is. Ashe may be best played most of the time by sitting back and spamming volley - that's an aspect of her skillset that makes her play well if you play her that way. But against certain champions, and at certain times, and when you have advantages and disadvantages, it may make sense to back off or push in, to either compound your advantage or try and mitigate your disadvantage by aggro or passive play.

I've played the vast majority of LoL champions now. Even those that I haven't, I have a good idea of their skillsets, their burst potential, their roles, what kind of positions they want to be taking in teamfights, and as a result I can gauge relative strengths, I can know when we have the advantage in lanes or in teamfights. If I see a veigar using his dark matter on creeps, I'll know that his current burst potential is lower than normal and that that is a good time to fight. If I see a low health udyr under tower, I know that flat diving it will be difficult, but forcing it back with harass will be easy. I am a better player because I have invested time and effort into learning multiple champions and characters.

So what's the point of this rant? Well, basically I believe that some of the people in the ms community are hurting themselves still by clinging to champions that they are familiar with. I am comfortable with and understanding of the need to learn the game by playing a single champion multiple times, at least until you have a basic idea of what is happening. But some people cling too long to their initial champions. Also, some people dont play enough games with a champion. They'll play that champ once, and then go "UGH THIS SUCKS I CANT DO WITH BRAND WHAT I CAN DO WITH MORD" or something, and they wont go back. Izzy has this down pat - she'll play one champion 8 or 9 games in a row, working out the kinks in her play each time, and gaining a solid understanding of each champion.

The biggest downside is that my mid-lategame play is substantially weaker than my laning phase. But that's ok, I'm sponging off the experience of nuwen and buttons to try and improve that too.

Other thoughts - flash exhaust is amazing on ranged carries and I think i'll be running that as standard instead of flash ghost. If I'm being tracked down by a bruiser in teamfights, exhaust helps a hell of a lot more than ghost, and allows me to stay near my tanks and let them peel for me. 70% right click reduction and 40% skill reduction is ridiculously good.

I'm a huge fan of jungling in league of legends - not in the sense of it being a good thing to do (though it is) but in the sense of it making the game more fun/interesting. I don't know if it exists in other MOBAs. It creates dynamic and tense situations right from the get-go. Jungling is powerful but fragile. Having a jungler means you create a situation where you are controlling extra resources plus have an un-mia-able ganker. This is hugely rewarding for a team who can pull it off. However, jungling is fragile. At low levels, jungle creeps are scary, and you're sitting in an area where you're largely isolated from your team and form your turrets, making you extremely vulnerable to being ganked. What's more, a disadvantage in the jungle snowballs much harder than any disadvantage in lane. Losing even just a couple of creeps to the enemy team or jungler can slow down your level progression and thus your camp clearing and thus further compound your level disadvantage - made even more painful by the fact that jungle creeps scale in strength with the levels of players and time passed in a game. I've seen posts by riot that suggest they want the early game to be more interesting, so that LoL is a better spectator e-sport. But they're going about it the wrong way by nerfing jungling. If they want the game to be more dynamic and interesting, the best way is to create more fragile situations. Buff jungle creeps but buff the gold and exp rewards from them. Nerf dragon and make the gold and exp rewards bigger. Concurrently make towers weaker and increase the gold and exp rewards from that, too. These will allow teams to exploit temporary advantages more easily, leading a) to more snowballing of clearly lost games and thus less lost time and b) more aggressive plays made in order to try and secure an early advantage. Nerfing jungling will make the game LESS interesting, not more.

I am deeply concerned by the ideas being floated on the riot forums of changes to flash. Flash is such an important summoner spell in league of legends - taken by so many characters - that changing flash will actually have a gigantic impact on the balance of the game. The game is by no means balanced and there are definite tiers of character, but the way sleeper overpowered chars can sit and wait their turns to become flavour of the month suggests that any differences in power are currently fairly small. Balance is rough, but roughly there - probably about as good as you can hope for with 80 odd chars in the game.

Changing flash will have impacts all over the game. Take jarvan for example. Jarvan is an amazing bruiser whose ult is already a fantastic weapon that does a ton of damage and ccs. However, flash helps reduce its impact. What happens to an ashe in a post-flash change game when she is ulted by jarvan? Does she have to sit there and tank him?

Alistar is a character who loooooves flash. Roaming alistar flashes behind you, punts you back to his teammate and then knocks you into the air. He is limited in his power by flash being on cooldown - an alistar with flash up should 90% of the time secure a kill with his gank. If some style of low cooldown item that allowed flash was added, roaming alistar would suddenly become a monster.

Many characters are dependent on flash, and many of these are weak characters. Take kogmaw. Kogmaw is a ranged carry with no escapes - a total no-no when the likes of renekton or xin zhao or jarvan are jumping squishies left right and centre. With flash he can just about function. Without flash, he's trash.

A flash change would require a gigantic rebalancing effort afterwards, and I suspect the rewards would be far less than people expect. It wouldn't make the early game more interesting, as that's simply a result of the fact that the most efficient use of time in the early game is farming. I honestly am not very sympathetic to those who claim it would force people to position themselves correctly and that it's a no skill get out of jail free card. Effective use of flash is interesting and dynamic. I've flashed to drop shields that have saved people as janna, I've flashed to get in a position to knock people the correct direction as poppy and alistar, I've flashed to allow me to escape after tower diving or to troll melee heroes who tower dive me. Sure I mean, it's used as an escape skill the majority of the time, but the potential for interesting plays with flash is orders of magnitude higher than the potential for interesting plays with just about any other summoner spell. Ignite will hurt someone, exhaust will cripple someone, ghost will allow you to chase/run away... Woo.

[Shanba]

holy crap that turned into a novel

[Ankamius]

I main almost every ranged carry and I tend to run Flash+Ignite on the majority of them. Why? Because I'm stuck at the 1150 level and I have to completely dominate my lane. If I don't, I can't carry people. I do run Ghost/Flash on Ashe, but that's only because she has absolutely 0 escapes.

When I play in-houses with my team (and holy shit is it competitive. I would estimate the skill level we tend to play at as around 1500-1700), I generally play the odd role out that my team needs.

My skill with champs in general is:

Ranged AD > Support > AP Carry > Tanky DPS > Tank > Jungle

EDIT: The only champions I have yet to play are Brand and Orianna. I know very well how every single champion works and every viable method of building them.

[hitogoroshi]

I think Flash needs one of these changes:

• Doesn't go through walls
  
• Cannot be used for 3s after you take damage
  
• Must be targeted onto a champion

I think it's annoying, overpowered, and unfun as an escape. I think that it's right where it needs to be as a gap-closer. A more aggressive Flash would stay in use for characters who need it (the Alistars of the world) but it would no longer be the "get out of anything bad ever free" card that gives it its current ubiquity.

[Ankamius]

I think Flash needs one of these changes:

• Doesn't go through walls
  
• Cannot be used for 3s after you take damage
  
• Must be targeted onto a champion

I think it's annoying, overpowered, and unfun as an escape. I think that it's right where it needs to be as a gap-closer. A more aggressive Flash would stay in use for characters who need it (the Alistars of the world) but it would no longer be the "get out of anything bad ever free" card that gives it its current ubiquity.

Jarvan's ultimate would be far too powerful with this.

EDIT: This is with either of the last 2. Thought you meant with all of them together.