Mafiascum.net

In post 26271, chesskid3 wrote:ok buddy

Phoenix Udyr in jungle is basically Shyvana but Shyvana does the job better
Tiger Udyr I've never played or seen so I can't comment on it
Top lane Udyr has a monotonous feel to it and it gets boring quickly, but wins is more important than liking the champ you're playing sometimes

In post 26272, quadz08 wrote:just bought trundle, lux, and MF

still got ~6k IP

it has been a while since I have purchased any dudes

Wanna gift a brotha somethin' for Snowdown?

Will probably be buying RP for myself for Christmas either way - Blood Lord Vlad?

In post 26275, TheIrishPope wrote:

In post 26271, chesskid3 wrote:ok buddy

Phoenix Udyr in jungle is basically Shyvana but Shyvana does the job better
Tiger Udyr I've never played or seen so I can't comment on it
Top lane Udyr has a monotonous feel to it and it gets boring quickly, but wins is more important than liking the champ you're playing sometimes

Tiger Udyr is Only Udyr right now.

I've seen pheonix udyr work in this meta specifically. He's just as tanky, but clears waves better, has decent base damage. That's more or less what's asked from the toplaners right now. Tiger udyr clearly is the better duelist, but it's questionable if that's what you want on top with what's being played there now. It is something for jungle, surprisingly. The last couple of appearances of jungle udyr were tiger udyrs, who beasted their opponents from their jungle at lv3. Fast aoe jungle clears aren't as popular as they were.

In post 26276, Maestro wrote:

In post 26272, quadz08 wrote:just bought trundle, lux, and MF

still got ~6k IP

it has been a while since I have purchased any dudes

Wanna gift a brotha somethin' for Snowdown?

no tengo RP

..........you can't gift with IP?

I thought I could buy shit with IP and send it to Klaz or whoever...if not well then Gifting is lame and super-limited and should be modified. I will totally buy you RP just to get some Mystery Gifts, they sound fun and sortof like Secret Santa where you know you're getting something but you don't know what and it's fun and all. (WHO KNOWS, COULD GET SKINS AND CHAMPS FOR E-Z MONEYZ)

Lemme know if you wanna; I'll PM you when/if I buy a League card tomorrow and then you can gift m a couple things and keep whatever RP we don't use?

Can't gift with IP. The problem is that some people buy enough champs and play enough that they have a shit ton of IP thats effectively useless, hundreds of thousands. It would all get flooded in if you could gift with IP.

I have all the champs. If I could gift with ip, someone else could have all the champs too.
And we can't have that.

Pros, help me out. I'm trying to improve my mid laning, since my top laning is set with Tryndamere. I can safely say that I have mastered Mordekaiser mid lane, and am now practicing Ziggs. He's alright, I just suck with him. I can win lane against anyone who isn't a hard counter by poking and pushing, but I have to learn my role in lategame. Positioning is too damn hard with him. On topic, to further improve mid, I want to pick up one of those cool ass assassins. Not the broken ones like Ahri and Fizz and Kassadin.
I've narrowed it down to two who each cost 3150: Katarina and LeBlanc. The dilemma lies in which one to buy. I feel LeBlanc's passive is ridiculous, it's on such a short cooldown that I feel it's possible to escape everything. Katarina's too, which resets your cooldowns making her a spamable champ. If you kill, though. Everytime I see a LeBlanc she wrecks, and I don't have problems hitting skillshots thanks to Ziggs. Katarina wrecks too, so yeah I don't know who to buy. I'm 1000 IP short so help a bro out. Blinks are fucking op.

I am not a pro but be careful with picking up LeBlanc. She is deceptively difficult to use.

Warping in to spam your combo is really hard.

Yeah, I imagine it's pretty hard to do but practice makes perfect right?

Uhhh.... sure ^.^

BTW- Teemo support with spell thief is hilarious. He hits with his poison dart and just racks up the money.

LeBlanc was the reason I started smartcasting. It makes her combo much smoother.

In post 26285, TheIrishPope wrote:Pros, help me out. I'm trying to improve my mid laning, since my top laning is set with Tryndamere. I can safely say that I have mastered Mordekaiser mid lane, and am now practicing Ziggs. He's alright, I just suck with him. I can win lane against anyone who isn't a hard counter by poking and pushing, but I have to learn my role in lategame. Positioning is too damn hard with him. On topic, to further improve mid, I want to pick up one of those cool ass assassins. Not the broken ones like Ahri and Fizz and Kassadin.
I've narrowed it down to two who each cost 3150: Katarina and LeBlanc. The dilemma lies in which one to buy. I feel LeBlanc's passive is ridiculous, it's on such a short cooldown that I feel it's possible to escape everything. Katarina's too, which resets your cooldowns making her a spamable champ. If you kill, though. Everytime I see a LeBlanc she wrecks, and I don't have problems hitting skillshots thanks to Ziggs. Katarina wrecks too, so yeah I don't know who to buy. I'm 1000 IP short so help a bro out. Blinks are fucking op.

Um..Big thing about Leblanc is people are still getting used to the changes cause they changed her optimal combo. Katarina has her usual issues. Interruptable ult and melee in a ranged lane. Not sure why you are so concerned with not playing "broken" champs, but I noticed that you didn't mention Akali. I think she is better than both Kat and Leblanc and isn't in your list of "broken champs"(Ahri is def not broken anymore btw.)

Also, big thing I've noticed is keeping a small champion pool is actually really beneficial in comparison to being a jack of all trades but master of none. It's better to pick one guy of each style and master him. One Distance Zoner guy, One pusher guy, and one assassin(maybe 2 if one of your assassins is AD).

Kata is awesome, one of my favorite champs. She's not very good right now, also not very good usually.
I just put up a Morgana guide a few pages ago, you should play her because she wins every lane right now. If you want an assassin mid that isn't super strong right now at killing people.. I don't know what to tell you. You want a suboptimal assassin? Play Pantheon.

Leblanc was 4th champ I used. Wrecked in low levels and I sucked.

Just played a Malzahar support against a Galio support. The new meta is so boss for supports

In post 26293, KaleiÐoscøpe wrote:Just played a Malzahar support against a Galio support. The new meta is so boss for supports

I don't like how it made this whole subset of purely support champs just... not as good. Why pick nami or Janna when you could have a mage that does just as much and will do more damage lategame with just as much utility? Pretty much supports are either tanks or mages right now, and there's no room for a pure utility champ anymore.

Janna has more utility

In post 26295, chesskid3 wrote:Janna has more utility

But that utility is outshown by the potential for a tibbers assassinate. Annie doesn't have as much utility, but she has ENOUGH that her damage just makes her a superior pick to janna everytime.

Though Janna does well in lane against her, she's not as useful late game, and that's extremely annoying (Especially since Janna used to be the goddess slut of late game supports).

Janna and Annie do not fulfill the same role lategame, regardless of lane setup.

Janna's presence in the game is still significant, it's just that so many people don't know how to deal with the laning phase that they fall behind. If you get ahead of, or go even with, the enemy support, Janna's presence can still be amazing. Her purpose hasn't changed. She peels onions all day for enemy to qq, she blows them away like ballerinas in tu-tus, and keeps her adc enough through the dmgs from all them foos.

Golden rule for utility supports is "tons of cdr." Fortunately for all utility supports, they can actually now afford to get 40% cdr as well as ap, meaning their abilities scale better. It's not just about damages. Janna with 40% cdr is putting out a lot more cc than annie is on 40% cdr. This is because janna doesn't rely on what is essentially a full spell rotation to do it. Janna uses w, instant gigantaslow, janna uses q for instant aoe knockup, janna uses ult for instant aoe knockback with aoe healing of teammates. The best part? You can now actually make use of their ap scaling to do more with the same things! Yayyyyy.

The most major reason (from my perspective) that you are seeing the mage supports now is the fact most people don't know how to deal with them in bot lane. The only really reasonable ones are things with a consistent value (annie stun) or the ability to super hard crush snowball the lane (le "delete champion" blanc). The rest are more along the lines of "I don't want to play a traditional support, and so I want to be a weaker version of a mid laner cuz dmgs wins" - but the thing that is forgotten is just how much power comes from, say... soraka's ability at 100 ap and 40% cdr to burst heal your entire team for a rough base of 400+ health each (every 70-80 ish seconds), then heal your adc for another 300 or more (every 14 seconds, not including astral blessing decreases), give your adc over 120 bonus armor with that heal, silence someone for 2.5 seconds for 220+ damage (every 6 seconds), and deal 240 damage in an aoe every second which shreds mr by up to 70 points (every 1.5 seconds). Note that these heal numbers are with *no benefits from her passive.*

Now, you may say "but the bursties!" to me and I'll say to you "how are you planning to burst someone while at 150-200 ap through over 700 health of healing and a potential silence?"

The utility supports aren't flat out worse. They still have a purpose in the game. People just aren't adjusting well to how the mages work in bot lane. You want someone who shits on annie in bot? Pick soraka. Silence range beats out everything but tibbers / is roughly even with annie q. If annie just q's to stun you, you've got your adc to hit the now silenced annie. Let's say it's an even trade. Annie has to recharge stun to initiate again, giving soraka time to use her heal. Rinse repeat, soraka wins.

Now you pan to late game and say "but surely that just makes it a farm lane" (which I'll let you have for free because who knows it might be). Soraka is now capable of zoning out the other casters' presence. She doesn't need to focus on silencing annie's bear cast cuz that's hard, but she can easily choose to silence that zed or lissandra or fed riven on your team and make them want to cry. And then starcall everyfuckingbody while healing her team back to full health after the initial burst. This works especially well if you've got a swain or similar in your mid lane who profits from the starcall more readily than a 100-0 burst caster. Otherwise starcall's just a bit more dmgs with a reduction on that major heal.

What does annie do? Stuns some people, does a lil bit of burst, waits a while to hope to have utility again while doing roughly 400 single target damage with a longer cd than soraka's starcall. Which makes starcall stronger in terms of damage than annie's when comparing damage over time. In terms of burst, annie flat out wins, but burst damage means less against a lot of burst healing and sustained damage becomes more important. In comparison, burst becomes more important against healing over time (aka soraka heal, janna ult heal).

Meanwhile, janna is still an amazing pick into leona. And leona is super common.

The way I see bot lane is a kind of wheel of power that people haven't understood the workings of yet, with taric being so fabulous that he turns the wheel rather than being a part of it. Cuz he's ridiculous right now. Much gem such outrageous.

tl;dr: Utility supports are still super good, people just suck at knowing their matchups with the sudden increase in potential lane opponents. Learn to adapt, get 40% cdr, and suddenly be good at supporting with utility champions.

Also, fuck teammates that go squishies and force you to always pick an initiator / tanky option. They're more to blame for the sudden decrease in my utility support picks than anything else.

Janna is one of the hardest supports to catch while annie has little means of escape and is very very fragile. Taking out an Annie in a teamfight is much easier to do and after her initial tibbers her teamfight is pretty useless unless she's been able to afford full AP items.