League of Legends (Old)

[Quaroath]

and people say

i'm

made of pointless drama

I'm just pointing the "win games with a good attitude" crew is the biggest pack of hypocritical people i've come across, and it's pretty obv.

And honestly, I'm so not part of that "Crew". I didn't even think that crew existed on MS, in in houses or regular games.

[JDodge]

i feel that we have appropriately resolved this conflict and as such can now begin the healing process of getting this thread back on track to its daily whining about solo queue and posting screenshots of games where we were matched up against people who aren't allowed out of their houses without a leash

EXCELSIOR

i promised knowledge bombs which i am writing now

[Brandi]

There's a difference between keeping up the morale of randoms and playing silly inhouses with friends, though? ^^;

[Quaroath]

i feel that we have appropriately resolved this conflict and as such can now begin the healing process of getting this thread back on track to its daily whining about solo queue and posting screenshots of games where we were matched up against people who aren't allowed out of their houses without a leash

EXCELSIOR

i promised knowledge bombs which i am writing now

I disagree, I want to know who thinks I am part of the good attitude crew. Anyone that plays with me knows I can be a complete ass on a whim. What the fuck is this shit, Panzer is hurting my rep saying I'm a decent person.

I OBJECT.

[Brandi]

Q, you will always be pizza man in my heart.

[scotmany12]

DRAMA

I'M A TIGER. RAWR.

BBM SUCKS AT NUNU. DOESN'T TAKE SHIT SERIOUSLY. CAUSES US ELO

[DeathRowKitty]

The thing I like most about MS is how we all love each other.

[Brandi]

wrong, we only love Nikanor

[scotmany12]

I hate you and your stupid lol client bugs, drk.

DRAMA

[DeathRowKitty]

wrong, we only love Nikanor

No. We love everyone equally, but we love Nikanor more.

[Brandi]

im ok with that

[scotmany12]

I see how it is. Everyone ignores my posts. Bunch of dicks. You all suck.

[pickemgenius]

zito isnt a PERSON.

[pickemgenius]

Watching PEG, Quaroath, and Izzy shit talk an in-house when the opposing team is intentionally trolling because they were called tryhards in the game they won is probably the funniest and most ironic thing I've ever witnessed.

wait, now that i've read this im genuinely interested in what i said or did?

I can go on a massive fucking spiel, but i'd rather know what warrants this kind of talk first.

[scotmany12]

What we all should be talking about is those two people who accepted invites then when we remade for them left the game like total douches

PAY ATTENTION TO ME

[esuriospiritus]

near as I can figure, panzer is still pissed because he got ganged up on several pages back and now feels like he can't post anything in the thread without getting hated on.

As panzer's friend I feel it is my duty to point out that panzer, posting that probably isn't going to help the situation and is just gonna add more fuel to the fire. and everyone else should avoid turning it into a dramafest.

(disclaimer: just go ahead and ignore me if I'm way off base or out of line, YOU SAW NOTHING~)

[JDodge]

I got quite a bit out of watching worlds; my interest was not entertainment, but rather education. I felt that on the whole, team strategy was something I needed (and ONM as a whole needed) to beef up on considerably if we were to continue succeeding as a team beyond our first open division season. So I sat there, watching every match, observing every single detail that I could, and I came up with a few observations.

1. Stalling only works if you can guarantee you won't make any major errors

A lot of my own strategic ideas prior to worlds followed this formula:

Stall > ??? > Profit

Take CLG.eu vs Azubu Frost game 3 as a good example of what my point is going to be here. CLG.eu is the definition of the team that stalls out until the 40 minute mark, then just rolls over their opponents. There's one important thing to note about CLG.eu, though; they are probably the most solid (not necessarily best) players in the world. They sit, they hold their own, they don't give away massive advantages in general, and they can thus pull off the stalling game. Their loss in game 3 vs Azubu came down to two factors. One is top lane (which we will revisit later on; they banned out Wickd pretty easily), and the other was a single (yet large) mistake they made while holding mid tower.

The relatively scary Singed (whose value was quickly falling off at that point due to the increasing strength of Ezrael on CLG.eu) flanked them from behind. Unfortunately, at this point, that same Ezrael that CLG.eu needed to deal with Singed got a bit too far forward - Azubu's Skarner reacted perfectly, managing to get the Impale down onto Ezrael, leading to him being blown up by Azubu while CLG.eu was unable to react due to the Singed being in the middle of their team, under their tower causing all sorts of mayhem. They lost the fight (I believe it was actually an ace, 5-0, but I don't entirely remember) and off of that lost the game rather easily.

You can stall all you want, but I've come to the simplest of truths - if you can't guarantee you won't make any major mistakes, it might not be the best strategy.

I mentioned top lane being a factor a couple paragraphs ago, which leads me to this important fact:

2. Champion skill is scary

I came to a realization watching that same game 3 after they successfully banned out Wickd two days in a row - the fact that he's scary enough on those champions

to

be banned out is in and of itself a notable thing. I realized that in my attempts to be every some ridiculously flexible jack of all trades, I would make stupid errors rather consistently. I'd forget simple, easy things - ranges, damages, attack speeds, etc. I'd farm poorer. I'd die in situations where I shouldn't, I'd fail to get kills that I should have, and on the whole I was a poorer player.

So I made a really tough decision and decided I'd just restrict myself to a pool of 5 champions.

No more Morg, no more Cass, no more Ahri, no more Gragas. Just Karthus, Anivia, Twisted Fate, Diana, and Orianna. To be honest, that's kind of setting myself up for failure - I have one champion I played consistently prior to this switch (Karthus), one champion I recently picked up (Diana), two champions that I played either on release (Orianna) or when I was learning the game (Anivia) but haven't played much since, and one champion that my team wanted me to learn that I hate more than anything I've ever played and makes me want to rip my own eyeballs out through my eardrums (Twisted Fate). And I've been improving since. My TF is still weak (picked him up, decided I'd need something to learn or I'd be bored), and I don't really find many opportunities to play Diana, but on the whole the improvement is noted. I no longer just lose lanes on mechanics (getting outfarmed), and I've managed to rekindle the desire I had to play this game that I lost prior to worlds. My improvement and comfort level increase with each successive night of practice - I feel more ready for whatever might happen in the future of ONM than I have at any time prior. And that brought with me another new idea:

3. Having a plan before the game is extremely important to success

When I cut down to 5 champions, the entire team did the same at very least with the idea that we could all own every champion in our respective champion pools for complete flexibility in pick order. What we did from there was we sat down with a spreadsheet that everyone on the team had access to, and we each came up with comps that would work off of that pool of 24 (we have one champion to run both as jungle and top lane for flexibility there as well). We came up with reasoning why it'd work and from that we'd have a plan. And we came up with some pretty neat stuff.

My favorite is a

ridiculously

niche, special-situation comp that we have not yet in a number of games of practice managed to run. We pick Shen top, Shyvana jungle, Sivir AD, Sona support, and Anivia AP. Shyvana starts red with a leash from Shen while Anivia starts blue with help from Sivir/Sona. Sivir/Sona go mid, Anivia heads bot for a 1v2 lane. The goal is to force mid tower super super early, then shift bot and take that tower down. This gives us a huge amount of control over dragon with the Shen ult from top as well, and hopefully we can snowball from there. There are a number of problems with this comp that are the reason why we haven't run it:

1. It only works on purple side
2. It only works if we can get Shen, which is hard especially as purple side
3. It relies on my ability to 1v2 successfully unless they shift bot>mid

We have a series of more reasonable comps that I don't really want to divulge any information on (I'm a big fan of Dignitas-esque secrecy in strategies - I don't really think that anyone

would

find this out, but better to be safe than sorry) at this point in time. A lot of other, reasonable comps. This allows us to go in, know what we're doing, and never get put on the spot. We go into a game, know we need to pick X right away, ensure they don't get Y, and go from there.

4. Communicate everything

Everything.

Look at CLG.eu (to continue beating a dead horse), more specifically look at the camera on CLG.eu during the games. They were pretty much all talking constantly - there was nothing going on on that map that one member of the team saw that the entire team didn't see. Look at their teamfighting, where they were quickly calling out targets and adapting immediately. I've noticed something playing with the various MS groups over the course of my time playing this game (and having the unique experience of a very low number of games of solo queue under my belt) - we don't communicate anywhere near as much as we should.

We go into lane, and we are three islands. Jungle shows up every now and again, tries to do something but doesn't put on any reasonable pressure, and goes back to farming. We're making a concerted effort to change that as far as ONM is concerned - I like to think in my head that if I'm starting to lean into annoying territory with near-constant updates on whether the opposing mid might even be thinking about roaming, I'm probably doing my job right. Deaths get prevented, we have knowledge of any objectives they might be actively trying to take, we can react to the situation a lot better.

I feel like before we were also trying to have one person shoulder the burden of decision-making for the entire team - we've moved away from that. We've gotten enough on the same page from working with each other that that's no longer really necessary. One of us comes up with an idea, we quickly decide whether to go with it, we move on. We don't have massive meltdowns over things going wrong anymore. We are an actual team.

Between these four things, I feel like I've had almost a revolution in my idea of the way this game should be played - whether or not I'm right on these remains to be seen.

[JDodge]

near as I can figure, panzer is still pissed because he got ganged up on several pages back and now feels like he can't post anything in the thread without getting hated on.

As panzer's friend I feel it is my duty to point out that panzer, posting that probably isn't going to help the situation and is just gonna add more fuel to the fire. and everyone else should avoid turning it into a dramafest.

(disclaimer: just go ahead and ignore me if I'm way off base or out of line, YOU SAW NOTHING~)

he's the one who wants to be friends one moment and tells us to fuck off the next, so w/e

[PJ.]

I didn't tell you guys to fuck off, I simply called out the "no shittalking" crew for shittalking. Not only did they shittalk, they shittalk after they told the other team not to tryhard and harrassed them about it the first game.

I do want to be your friends, but I'm not gonna sit here and not tell you that you guys are hypocrites. Either way, fighting fire with fire isn't what ishould be doing, I'm done talking about it.

[JDodge]

[Nexus]

If JD stops with the shit pictures then I would get down on one knee right now.

[Flameaxe]

ITT Panzer doesn't understand what the concept of "no shittalking" is, and where it applies (or when its probably really really jokingly).

But then again, who the fuck is surprised.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Panzer barely understands the game, don't try to get him on to people just yet

[Flameaxe]

DRAMA

I'M A TIGER. RAWR.

BBM SUCKS AT NUNU. DOESN'T TAKE SHIT SERIOUSLY. CAUSES US ELO

DONT CONDESCEND TO ME, SCOT.

[Nexus]

Panzer barely understands the game, don't try to get him on to people just yet

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