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Pink wards are only counter by other pink wards or Oracles. They can take three hits from normal attacks (don't take damage from magic), and take 2? 3? seconds to fade to stealth when placed. And yes, 3 minute duration.

Oracles is only countered by killing the player w/ the buff.

Otolia wrote:My main reproach to LoL is the way it's being marketed and it has nothing to do with my personal liking of the game. HoN was announced in the EMS on the 14th of January. At this point all the games were supposed to be decided. But on the 10th of February, LoL was added to the list. If you want to believe Riot don't have anything to do with is up to you. I am not that stubborn. I can't prove that Riot finances tournaments because there is absolutely no transparency in that matter.

I am not convinced that LoL compete on the same level as HoN or DotA and soon DotA 2. It's just absorbing a major part of the highly competitive playerbase (particularly in France - I am so depressed about that) due to the laughable amount of money that one can win. In the long run though, it won't matter. The playstyle are different and so is the playerbase. And when DotA 2 comes in, it will put more focus on HoN because it's already a more complete game (due to the release being last year)

Now if you ask me if LoL deserved to be awarded a GDC online award, the response is no. I don't want the game industry turning all flashy !

PS : I'm installing LoL right now ! JFF

Your link shows nothing that proves that Riot had anything to do with LoL being added to EMS, or IEM. It shows that they're willing to support people that are setting up tournaments for their game. Great! Blizzard is making things a fucking royal pain in the ass right now, and people still praise them for making a game geared towards esports.

Get off your high horse - people are putting money into it BECAUSE people play the game. It doesn't work the other way around usually. Trust me, I was around what people considered a "dead scene" when I was dumping my life into Brood War. Razer didn't just throw 10 grand at TL for the first TSL because they wanted to get people playing a game that was 10 years old, they did it because there was a huge draw even outside of Korea for the game. Tournaments with ludicrous prize purses != attempt to get people to play your game.

Your concept of how esports works is laughable at best, and you've been sitting here shitting on a game you've never played, only to get rolled in it your first time out because you were "too good" to actually look up any info. Yeah, you might want to think about that one for a bit.

Otolia wrote:

Knight of Cydonia wrote:Invest, what, 125 gold in a pink ward for your lane, or 400 gold for Oracle's Elixir. Congrats, as long as you're not being a fucking idiot and overextending your lane, you just hard countered most stealth.

Hard countered ? Absolutely not. They last 3 minutes and are revealed you put them (at least I think) and can also be countered.

Oracle's lasts until you kill the holder, which if they're smart and not over-extending can be plenty long enough to shut down the Stealth Action Whore. Wards are all invisible a second after they're placed as well, and can only be seen by pink wards and Oracle's holders. To be honest, I think a lot of the "issues" you're finding are a lot like the ones I found on trying HoN. Most of this probably comes from being a low level player. Once you get up to level 20+, players actually tend to be somewhat better and are actually able to play against most other champs.

The point is you force all three lanes to buy pink wards or just run the risk of getting destroyed. As long as all five people on a team don't have an oracles, you are still a threat. The point is you make them waste hundreds, possibly thousands of gold that they would not have spent otherwise. Eve's real passive is "Other team loses money". That said, oracles shut down an eve in team fights unless you are super fed. You're not useless, but your effectiveness is delayed by a good 5-6 seconds, and that's something serious when people are eating tower shots mid game.

Well I agree that it could comes from being a newbie. But it might also comes from other habits I have. If beyond a certain level people don't tend to play better there wouldn't be a comp scene (even if I don't acknowledge it as a worthy one, it's not up to me to decide its existence as AGar wise-fully noted)

Right now though I'd like to know if you consider LoL to be a spamming fest ?

If, by spamming, you mean the tendency of low-level/new players to waste AoE/abilities on creeps, then I point you again, as you noted, to that being down to newbies at your level.
There is a certain leaning of the meta at mid-level play to AoE dominating teamfights (and the use of off-tanks/beefy DPS to negate that), but as you get higher up the ladder, it becomes much less spammy. Some champs, like Zilean, are really just about hitting the 40% CDR ceiling as quickly as possible to allow them to spam a certain skill, but I wouldn't call it a "spamming fest".

I would also say it has a lot to do with matchups/champs played/mana cost/mana pool.

Pure lane control is actually harder. At first the lack of deny could seem like a simplification but it's rather a tactical change. You can't pull back your lane to your tower so you have to be more defensive (to limit aggro) and more careful of last hits. On the other hand, the relative low CD and manacost of many heroes actually compensate that.

Otolia wrote:Well I agree that it could comes from being a newbie. But it might also comes from other habits I have. If beyond a certain level people don't tend to play better there wouldn't be a comp scene (even if I don't acknowledge it as a worthy one, it's not up to me to decide its existence as AGar wise-fully noted)

Right now though I'd like to know if you consider LoL to be a spamming fest ?

No, Spamming your abilities can very much lose you a considerable lack of last hits, push your lane, and leave you oom to do things. The only time it's actually semi-wise to "spam" are on CD champs (Such as garen, kat, and renekton)

Though AOE teams can be scary, I believe that tanky dps is still the true reigning meta, though for awhile there was an influx of a push mentality.... As in defend and avoid fights as much as possible. Attack damage teemos were raping in high elo brackets for awhile (and probably still are). In case you don't know what he can do he's a fast champion who can put out mushrooms. These mushrooms give him sight, and when an enemy runs into them, they are slowed and take damage. He also has a move that gives him increased move speed, and his passive is if he stands still he stealths. He's a very squishy champ, and it takes very specific and strange builds to make him hurt champions. He very rarely wins 1v1s. So what teemos were doing would wait for "laning phase" to be over, and when the enemy would all group up to push a lane, he would leave for a different one, ward key entry points, and as soon as an enemy would be spotted, he'd activate his ability that gives him movement speed into some brush and immediately stand still. This let him stealth and avoid anyone without an oracles. if they did have an oracles he would know thanks to his map awareness and still had a very good chance at getting away. If they stood around waiting for him to break stealth, that means they were denying themselves xp, and denying their team of an extra member, making it an effective 4v4.

If you mean spamming from poking (Like throwing out longrange skill shots, or things like zilean bombs), this is effectively shutdown by a single support champ. Not so much janna, but a soraka, nidalee, sona, or taric will be able to stop it, and they are all pretty decent pokers themselves. The thing about poking is that it is almost exclusively done by skill shots. If you can just be patient and hide behind your minions, or just be good at reading your opponent, they are possible to avoid. I'd probably say that dodging a skill shot reliably is one of the best skills you can have on an individual standpoint, and would be one thing that seperates goodies from baddies. It's something I look for in reliable team mates when solo queueing.

EDIT-BTW, I know very little about HoN, I am only providing my viewpoint from things I know about LoL.
I've heard the key differences are
1.Playerbase number. LoL's is much larger, so they obviously have more idiots. This also means they have more support, and you're more likely to have friends that play.
2.No deny mechanic in LoL. It's an interesting choice, and provides a DIFFERENT set of depth. Such as watching your lane, and zoning being alot more major.
3.No true hard carries. I've read that HoN has true hard carries. Carries that if you feed them they can take the entire enemy on by themselves. Unless the enemy team is extremely bad, or you have some ridiculous snowballing, It is almost impossible to 1v5 solo in a game of LoL. There are some champs that can 1v2, or 1v3, but alot of them are hit and run champs that can do it. Like Nunu, or singed, or a tank, or they have to blow some ridiculous cooldown, but they'll still probably die.

I suggest if you truly want to argue against LoL, you continue playing till you hit thirty and actually learn the game. To be honest, I could care less, as most LoL players do. It sounds more like you're just repeating arguments you've heard from others rather than finding out yourself.

Why Warmogs is an awful item on vlad:

Full stacked warmogs gives 1370 health

1370/40 gives 34.25 ap

A hat gives 201.5 ap which translates to 362 health, which is still pretty shitty, but nowhere near as bad as a mage that's spent 3k gold to gain 35 ap.

Jungle Tryndamere worked out much better then I expected and completely bypasses his weak early game phase, I enjoyed him much more then junglewick and had tons more end-game impact.

Yes it turns out they changed his passive, it used to be 18 hp = 1 ap which meant Warmogs added 1370 hp and 76 AP which was really good, now indeed it's fairly aweful.

IH wrote:I suggest if you truly want to argue against LoL, you continue playing till you hit thirty and actually learn the game. To be honest, I could care less, as most LoL players do. It sounds more like you're just repeating arguments you've heard from others rather than finding out yourself.

I'm not interested to argue about the value of LoL as a game. I think it's a great game. But for me, it shouldn't be a competitive one. Yet I am in no position to dictate anything on that matter and I have come to the conclusion that many here didn't really want a discussion going on that topic so I kinda let that fall.

What I tried since I installed the game is to give you my input immediately after a game without much thinking. I asked for your input because I felt like I didn't totally grasp a part of the gameplay and nothing more. If you are seeing this as an attack to your beloved game, then you shouldn't but it's none of my concern. When I said 'spamming', I meant that if you can throw 2 spells with your lvl 1 manapool in HoN/DotA you are a lucky man. In LoL you can do it all you want. Does that mean you should ? No absolutely not because there are others variables in the problem but you are able to and I thought this fact was worth being noted.

best build on vlad is Dorans Shield + Sorc Shoes + Guise then as appropriate from the pool of (Veil, Sunfire, Rabadons, Abyssal, Rylai's)

also I'll have to agree with ot that LoL, while fun, is a kinda sub-par esport (at least when compared to SC2/BLC/Quake/etc)

Otolia wrote:

IH wrote:I suggest if you truly want to argue against LoL, you continue playing till you hit thirty and actually learn the game. To be honest, I could care less, as most LoL players do. It sounds more like you're just repeating arguments you've heard from others rather than finding out yourself.

I'm not interested to argue about the value of LoL as a game. I think it's a great game. But for me, it shouldn't be a competitive one. Yet I am in no position to dictate anything on that matter and I have come to the conclusion that many here didn't really want a discussion going on that topic so I kinda let that fall.

What I tried since I installed the game is to give you my input immediately after a game without much thinking. I asked for your input because I felt like I didn't totally grasp a part of the gameplay and nothing more. If you are seeing this as an attack to your beloved game, then you shouldn't but it's none of my concern. When I said 'spamming', I meant that if you can throw 2 spells with your lvl 1 manapool in HoN/DotA you are a lucky man. In LoL you can do it all you want. Does that mean you should ? No absolutely not because there are others variables in the problem but you are able to and I thought this fact was worth being noted.

(shrug) Personally, unless a game is unbalanced, there is ALWAYS room to play any game competitively*. All it needs is a community. I don't understand your argument that the game shouldn't be played competitively. I can understand if you'd say it's not FUN to play at high levels... I dunno just a really weird and flawed argument.

*Unbalanced games will almost NEVER have a competitive scene, see Ivan Ooze LOLOLOLOL

Otolia wrote:

IH wrote:I suggest if you truly want to argue against LoL, you continue playing till you hit thirty and actually learn the game. To be honest, I could care less, as most LoL players do. It sounds more like you're just repeating arguments you've heard from others rather than finding out yourself.

I'm not interested to argue about the value of LoL as a game. I think it's a great game. But for me, it shouldn't be a competitive one. Yet I am in no position to dictate anything on that matter and I have come to the conclusion that many here didn't really want a discussion going on that topic so I kinda let that fall.

What I tried since I installed the game is to give you my input immediately after a game without much thinking. I asked for your input because I felt like I didn't totally grasp a part of the gameplay and nothing more. If you are seeing this as an attack to your beloved game, then you shouldn't but it's none of my concern. When I said 'spamming', I meant that if you can throw 2 spells with your lvl 1 manapool in HoN/DotA you are a lucky man. In LoL you can do it all you want. Does that mean you should ? No absolutely not because there are others variables in the problem but you are able to and I thought this fact was worth being noted.

shut the fuck up

IH - it's not just a question of balance (and actually, not even balance matters some times. If it's really unbalanced people just make tier list and ban the broken champs). It's also a question of whether there is enough room for skill differentiation. Imagine a game where the only thing to do is to click at some point during a five second window. There would be no competitive scene, because there's no actual difference between someone who's put practice in and works hard to improve and someone who picked up the game five seconds ago. However, if there's a significantly high skill cap, particularly a soft skill cap, then the game can be competitive. LoL definitely has a high skill cap.

(The whole argument reminds me of sc2 vs bw fights tbh)

hitogoroshi wrote:also I'll have to agree with ot that LoL, while fun, is a kinda sub-par esport (at least when compared to SC2/BLC/Quake/etc)

Why? It's easily accessible to watch, has a deeper metagame that takes a while to get a grasp of, doesn't have any glaring balances issues (and SC2 does btw) and has no apparent skill-ceiling. The biggest flaw I see for it is that there's only one map of play per game size, and maybe another might provide some new sparks to it in addition to what it already has going for it.

If it wasn't for BW, I don't even think SC2 would be as big an esport as it is today. The game is mediocre, compared to BW, there are a lot of smaller things that required attention in BW that don't now. /offtopic

AGar wrote:Why? It's easily accessible to watch, has a deeper metagame that takes a while to get a grasp of, doesn't have any glaring balances issues (and SC2 does btw) and has no apparent skill-ceiling. The biggest flaw I see for it is that there's only one map of play per game size, and maybe another might provide some new sparks to it in addition to what it already has going for it.

If it wasn't for BW, I don't even think SC2 would be as big an esport as it is today. The game is mediocre, compared to BW, there are a lot of smaller things that required attention in BW that don't now. /offtopic

AGar == fanboy

But contrary to popular belief here, there are games that are in no way worthy of having a comp scene like the CoD series.

Also you might want to read this 'blog'

And maybe that also.

Otolia wrote:

AGar wrote:Why? It's easily accessible to watch, has a deeper metagame that takes a while to get a grasp of, doesn't have any glaring balances issues (and SC2 does btw) and has no apparent skill-ceiling. The biggest flaw I see for it is that there's only one map of play per game size, and maybe another might provide some new sparks to it in addition to what it already has going for it.

If it wasn't for BW, I don't even think SC2 would be as big an esport as it is today. The game is mediocre, compared to BW, there are a lot of smaller things that required attention in BW that don't now. /offtopic

AGar == fanboy

But contrary to popular belief here, there are games that are in no way worthy of having a comp scene like the CoD series.

Also you might want to read this 'blog'

And maybe that also.

AGar == Someone who has spent a good chunk of the past 3 years dedicated to esports. != Fanboy.

I take issue with this statement:

Otolia wrote:I know though is that Riot dev team got their asses kicked by HoN dev team in LoL. I admit DivA was a DotA competitive player.

I don't really know where you're going with this statement. Good game dev != Good players. The Riot dev team isn't very good at playing LoL, but they did a hell of a job making.

Beating the Riot dev team isn't a big accomplishment, Otolia. I have played their dev team before, and I went head to head laning against a Pantheon/Janna combo (back when they were the two most OP champs in the game) that included Pendragon himself. I wrecked his shit over and over with a troll DPS Taric build (pre-Manamune), and they didn't even get a single kill against me in the laning phase.

I'm a mid-level ELO player (just under 1300 in ranked, although I don't play ranked much so it's probably inaccurate, but regardless the top players are over 2000 and the shitty ones are just under 1000), and certainly not top tier. I don't understand how you think saying the HoN dev team beat the Riot dev team somehow makes HoN a better game.

Secondly, I don't understand your comments about LoL being counter-intuitive for a DotA/HoN player. I played DotA for about 3-4 years before LoL came out of beta, and making the switch over to LoL was like riding a bike. Both games were created by the same people, and the strong similarities made it easy to go in and pick up on the differences as well without feeling lost.

Also, if anyone wants to get in a game later this week, look me up: Axle Hellfire

Oto, is that "blog" you?

I do like that other link though, since it basically just reinforces the "Two sides of the same coin" argument that has been put forward in this thread already. I do want to try HoN, but I refuse to pay for it when I can play LoL for free.

bv310 wrote:Oto, is that "blog" you?

I do like that other link though, since it basically just reinforces the "Two sides of the same coin" argument that has been put forward in this thread already. I do want to try HoN, but I refuse to pay for it when I can play LoL for free.

It's the blog of a former DotA compettive player who is now in the HoN dev team. A small remark though, every former LoL player I know who has made a switch over to HoN now play more HoN than LoL. There is nothing absolute here but it's something I have noted. I guess that I don't hear from the ones who didn't want to make a step further.

I can send a referral link to whoever wants one. It's soon the anniversary of HoN and I expect some discount on the price (and even 30$ for HoN is the best quality+fun/price ratio I've ever seen)

Mastermind of Sin wrote:Secondly, I don't understand your comments about LoL being counter-intuitive for a DotA/HoN player. I played DotA for about 3-4 years before LoL came out of beta, and making the switch over to LoL was like riding a bike. Both games were created by the same people, and the strong similarities made it easy to go in and pick up on the differences as well without feeling lost.

I said the shop was counter-intuitive at first. Now I can navigate through it. I don't find it totally practical but it's not that troubling anymore. I don't know if you did play under Eul or Guinsoo era's but DotA 6.xx has nothing to do with the former versions. IceFrog made some radical choice and the game was more balanced in the end.

AGar wrote:AGar == Someone who has spent a good chunk of the past 3 years dedicated to esports. != Fanboy.

You were so close to compare SC:BW and LoL and saying there are on the same balanced level ... Be honest with yourself, the arguments you used for saying that SC2 is bad (compare to SC:BW) are the same people use to say that LoL is bad (compare to DotA) !

Otolia wrote:

AGar wrote:AGar == Someone who has spent a good chunk of the past 3 years dedicated to esports. != Fanboy.

You were so close to compare SC:BW and LoL and saying there are on the same balanced level ... Be honest with yourself, the arguments you used for saying that SC2 is bad (compare to SC:BW) are the same people use to say that LoL is bad (compare to DotA) !

I said SC2 might not have made it as a standalone because it nerfed some of the more intricacies of SC:BW and has pretty bad balance issues right now.

What has LoL taken out of the game that was in the original game that affected the competitive atmosphere? Seriously, I'm curious.

SC2 added things like MBS, auto-mining, took away the need for some more intricate micro managing issues (tank spreads and magic boxing come to mind), and made things a lot more noob friendly overall. You no longer have to worry about idle workers, macroing off of 10 production facilities is much easier. Tanks that were clustered used to get buttfucked in Brood War. Not so much anymore. Stacking mutas and magic box were tricks that you had to learn as essentials to be any good. As a standalone, without the StarCraft name, I'm not sure that SC2 would've been picked up as a competitive game. It might have, and there are some issues that can be addressed with it (the balance, most notably), but right now I feel it is highly unpolished. But that's just my opinion.

SC2 was favored by a huge boost from the StarCraft name that drew the allure of 99% of the top competitors outside of Korea. Players from two games (WC3 and SC:BW) flooded in, and began playing heavily in the beta. I'd venture to bet that the SC2 beta was the most heavily exposed beta of any game thus far - players were streaming it 24/7 for some 4-6 months as long as it was up. No other game has had that kind of attention - but why did SC2 get it? Because it was 2.

I'm rambling now. Great.

Things I want from LoL:

map editors/customization (you can change the entire game by moving buff locations, removing them altogether, lengthening the map, etc.)
replay and obs support

And that's about it. With those features, LoL would be a fine and competitive esport. People arguing about esport vs. esport are idiots and shouldn't be granted attention.

DoTA had some serious champ balance issues and was just a different game altogether. Most maps were and a carry really was true emphasis in team comp. Because of the way gold worked, you had to build around and play to shield your gun. Active items meant engagements had to be well-planned and were super CD sensitive, making cycles of retreat more important.

Lastly, I finally finally finally found an interface modding site and I can move my minimap from the lower right-hand corner to the left.