League Of Losers

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:25 am

Congrats!

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 3:51 am

I've reached the MMR where most of my teammates are in Gold. Some of the plays they make tell me that this is a lie, however.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 6:04 am

Triple post but who the fuck cares?

One thing I really need to get better at is counterganking. Lately I'll be somewhat close to a lane and one of my teammates die so I just run in and kill the enemy who got low from it. Skarner's really good at that because he does so much damage. How do I go about turning this from "okay, just turned a bad situation into a neutral situation" to "here I am guys, let's kill them together not one at a time!"?

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 2:04 pm

Surgo wrote:Triple post but who the fuck cares?

One thing I really need to get better at is counterganking. Lately I'll be somewhat close to a lane and one of my teammates die so I just run in and kill the enemy who got low from it. Skarner's really good at that because he does so much damage. How do I go about turning this from "okay, just turned a bad situation into a neutral situation" to "here I am guys, let's kill them together not one at a time!"?

Generally you just look at a lane that's pushed and guess where the enemy jungler is (ideally you have wards so you know if they're in the right half of the jungle to gank your pushed lane) then hide in a bush/around a corner to turn the gank around. Warding the enemy jungle is key to good counterganks (wraith bush ward is the best).

Skarner is excellent at counterganking because of his dps, CC junglers are generally weaker countergankers.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 7:40 pm

Should I just basically always keep the wraiths warded?

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:18 pm

Surgo wrote:Should I just basically always keep the wraiths warded?

That should be your mid laner's job (and if they do ward wraiths you want to ward the "banana bush" river entrance to give them full coverage), but if wraiths aren't warded their jungler is going to be almost impossible to predict. Because of this, you also want to drop a pink into your red side bush that covers the ramp into your jungle near wraiths to clear enemy wraith wards (it's dangerous to go all the way in and ward wraith bush, most people just ward near the ramp to get vision of the camp + the approach into river).

If a lane of yours is winning by a ton you should focus your warding on their side. Ex. If bot is winning you should ward the tribush or red (if you're red/purple side) or the enemy blue or wolf bush (if you're blue side). The idea behind warding wraiths is all lanes are equally likely to be ganked and the enemy jungler will pass by wraiths a lot so you'll get more information on him than warding for any particular lane. If you're mostly concerned about one lane you can more accurately predict ganks on that lane with different ward placements.

Imo the jungler should be responsible for the earliest pink (placed defensively) on the team as well if you can afford it. If I'm on a jungler with a safe clear but kinda weak early ganks (Amumu for me, Skarner can probably handle it as well depending on the quality of your leash) I'll sometimes start pink, machete, and two pots. If you can clear and still be healthy enough with two pots the early pink can save your team from a cheeky first blood.

I forgot to say this earlier as well, congrats on getting to the point where you're playing against piles of golds. Any major changes as far as consistency and quality of play goes? I feel like silver to gold is a bigger change in skill than gold->plat or plat->diamond.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 10:49 pm

I forgot to say this earlier as well, congrats on getting to the point where you're playing against piles of golds. Any major changes as far as consistency and quality of play goes?

Ganking is harder because people tend to be safer, but I still don't see Last Whisper as the third item all that often. Also I made that post in after a bit of a facepalm game where our gold Vayne walked into the line of traps that enemy Jinx would lay down every single time. Every single time.

I think people tend to lose their lanes a little more gracefully is the biggest thing, and throw a bit less.

With Skarner I could definitely start machete + 2 pots + pink because of the shield. I don't think I could do that on, say, Hecarim though.

For real though I don't know if I suddenly just overcame a plateau or something but I went from being up 25 wins over losses to being up 45 wins over losses in the span of a week.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 11:38 am

Have you noticed that you're doing anything different? The same thing happened to me when I started climbing, I just took off like a rocket (ship on my way to mars) and kept going. The catalyst for it seemed to be the decision to go into each game with the goal of not dying. It helped put a stop to me making risky moves like sitting near my turret at low health and facechecking shit.

I obviously still die, sometimes I die a lot, but I can look at those deaths and they're all misplays where I overestimated myself, didn't pay enough attention to the map, or failed to juggle aggro effectively. It's rare for a death to be somebody else's fault. You can lose a game without dying (which can be fucking frustrating) and you can win a game without dying, so it gives me a goal even if I'm in a losing game (and the "flawless victory" feeling is a good one when it happens).

Edit: Teammate consistency can also help a lot. People who primarily play CC champions/peel tanks will generally have a hard time rising early on because it's a bit of a crapshoot on whether people will follow up on your plays or not. Ex. Being great at Janna in silver isn't as big of a deal as being great at Janna in higher ranks because your team will all run out of your heal, won't run towards you during ignites for you to save them, and will waste flash because they don't trust you to nado/slow/knockback divers.

It sounds like you play damage champs/bruisers though so that's probably less of a big deal. Skarner actually carries harder the more disorganized play is because his ult punishes bad positioning and his great dps punishes teams for not chaining CC or kiting together against him. That said, he's still viable in soloqueue as a bruiser killer/punisher of bad positioning.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:26 am

My first diamond 1 game was against Curse and CLG's former support player, Elementz. I got to support vs him and we won. Wooo! Oh, and you gain LP super slowly in Diamond 1. In D2 I was still getting 20+ LP per game. My D1 win got me 5 LP.

Some opinions on Vel'Koz now that I've played with and against him enough to have a decent understanding:

He is an OK mid laner, but due to lackluster AP scaling (or just ridiculously good base damage) he is best used as a support. Why support? Because his fucking passive is a pile of true damage that does not scale at all, and he packs a ton of long-range poke with good damage and low mana costs into his kit.

Vel'Koz is a pain to lane against when he can throw his skills out without fear of missing any CS because his skills are difficult to dodge and can come from so many fucking directions. He has a circular aoe, a skillshot slow that can branch off early, and an aoe line that goes through minions. He's going to hit you a TON during laning and his skills fucking hurt, especially if he gets his passive off.

Vel'Koz really does scale poorly for a mid laner. His entire combo, assuming his full ultimate, scales with 260% of his AP. That's a pretty impressive number, but you aren't hitting anyone with that shit. Fuck, if you can land your full combo on somebody your passive is applying three times. At level 18 that's almost 600 true damage just from your passive. Nobody is surviving the Vel'Kombo whether you build AP or not.

The main reason you want Vel'Koz as a support is he allows you to have an AD mid, mixed damage top (like Renekton or Jax), and any jungler at all without having to worry about your team's lack of magic damage. Vel'Koz deals a lot of damage without any items, and his sustained damage is great. His level 1 ultimate is 500 damage without the passive kicking in (even if you only get 1.5 seconds of ult you've done over 400 damage to your targets thanks to his passive), you just HAVE to build magic resist if you're going to be tanking against a team with Vel'Koz on it.

Dude is so fucking good. He lacks any actual support skills, but Vel'Koz support is strong to the point where he will have to at least take a mana nerf and likely get his base damage knocked down a peg or two.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 1:12 am

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Have you noticed that you're doing anything different? The same thing happened to me when I started climbing, I just took off like a rocket (ship on my way to mars) and kept going. The catalyst for it seemed to be the decision to go into each game with the goal of not dying. It helped put a stop to me making risky moves like sitting near my turret at low health and facechecking shit.

If anything, I actually lose lane (when I'm playing top lane) a lot more often than I used to. I guess I've just become good at getting carried.

That's probably not the answer you were looking for but tbh I'm not really sure what else is different

I too noticed Vel'koz's rather...lacking...AP scaling, though I don't own him so I never played him. I figured you'd build a Liandry's or something and aside from that I don't even know man.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 1:31 am

Surgo wrote: If anything, I actually lose lane (when I'm playing top lane) a lot more often than I used to. I guess I've just become good at getting carried.

That's probably not the answer you were looking for but tbh I'm not really sure what else is different

I too noticed Vel'koz's rather...lacking...AP scaling, though I don't own him so I never played him. I figured you'd build a Liandry's or something and aside from that I don't even know man.

Phhh, losing lane (unless you're getting killed a whole lot during the lane phase) isn't that big of a deal. The thing people used to complain about in soloqueue was "win lane, lose game" and the people who used to complain about that were generally bad. If you're losing lane and winning the game you're probably doing something else right (assisting other lanes, actually being with your team for objectives, performing your role in fights, building properly, etc.) and the other laner is probably doing something wrong.

Vel's AP scaling is weird. I think he really just wants CDR to spam things to deal true damage with his passive.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:12 pm

Yeah, I haven't played him yet, but I'm guessing Athene's/Morello into Liandys then Zhonyas. Also, because of how the new spellthief's works, getting procs with his Q and E (the line and the split) might be easy.

Speaking of the new spellthiefs, it just might have made support sona viable again, for which I am incredibly grateful. Newly buffed Ryze is pretty good too, since the range and base HP buff makes it a lot easier for him to survive and harass aggressive melee top laners. The Dshield nerf didn't hurt, either. If Riot buffs rammus that'll be my three former go-tos restored to their former glory.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:19 am

I think what it is is that even though I lose my lane a lot more than I used to, I'll never, ever die 1v1. Like, I've grown past the point where dying 1v1 is even a remote possibility (at least against my current-MMR opponents).

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 11:36 am

Not dying 1v1 is a pretty big thing, even if you're behind some CS you'll get your items and contribute. Dying 1v1 is pretty much when the lane has gone so far to shit it'll harm your team.

Support Vel definitely starts spellthief's and then goes for sightstone and liandry's. Everything else is gravy because his damage is ridiculous. I played support Vel and had the most kills on my team, but it was a normal so my team was made of things like top morde.

Teambuilder release: Teambuilder is PERFECT if you want to play adc or support. Not sure how it is for other queues yet because my experience trying to get mid was a bad one, but I do love teambuilder for practicing adc and support.

New Kassadin: He is so shitty it's funny. Kassadin got Irelia'd (he's not quite unplayable like old Eve was, but he's probably a little worse than Irelia).

In other news, I'm trying to get better at adc because it's a role I find myself stuck in frequently. I think I've got Cait down 100% and can lay the smack down on other adcs in ranked with her, but the only other one I'm that comfortable with is Ashe and she doesn't fit the meta right now because of all those damn assassins. So let's play "pick the next adc I'm going to learn." I'm personally leaning towards Jinx or Vayne (I don't own Lucian or Graves and Draven has problems with assassins), but I'm open to suggestions.

I'm starting a new job in two weeks so I'm going to be playing a fuckton of League while I wait.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 3:10 pm

I haven't had too much trouble with jungle or top teambuilder. They really should give an IP boost to bot lanes though to speed it up a bit.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 3:40 pm

I tried Teambuilder for the first time last night. Both games I played spent >5 minutes searching for "Jungler, Any Role." The first game I took Trundle top; I ended 0/2/7, but the enemy top barely scratched my outer turret. I played Jinx in the second, which was a much closer match that my team lost. We stole Baron, but our mid inhib was already exposed and their Darius respawned in time to stop us from capitalizing on it. I ended 21/9/13 because Jinx with a Hurricane destroys everything in teamfights.

The first game had Xerath jungling, which worked pretty well. He counterganked my lane and picked up a double-kill when the enemy dove my turret to finish me.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 5:14 pm

rampaging-poet wrote:I tried Teambuilder for the first time last night. Both games I played spent >5 minutes searching for "Jungler, Any Role." The first game I took Trundle top; I ended 0/2/7, but the enemy top barely scratched my outer turret. I played Jinx in the second, which was a much closer match that my team lost. We stole Baron, but our mid inhib was already exposed and their Darius respawned in time to stop us from capitalizing on it. I ended 21/9/13 because Jinx with a Hurricane destroys everything in teamfights.

The first game had Xerath jungling, which worked pretty well. He counterganked my lane and picked up a double-kill when the enemy dove my turret to finish me.

Jinx with a hurricane sounds like fun (170% AD per attack on targets near the main target). Are Fishbones' rocket aoe considered an on-hit effect so the hurricane splashes end up splashing? Because that'd be hilarious.

Damnit I want to play hurricane botrk Kog. Especially after those kog buffs. I miss the kog on-hit builds.

Fuck it, I want to play the void bot lane with somebody (vel'koz and kog'maw) now. Decent poke lane if you can survive to 3 I guess, and more magic damage than anybody who goes bot is ready for.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 5:33 pm

Yeah, Fishbones is considered an on-hit effect. I was taking out most of the entire enemy team's hit points in a few seconds every time they clustered together. That's how we kept them off Baron and drove them back most times they rushed mid.

Of the ADCs I own, Jinx is definitely my favourite. She has good abilities that aren't too fiddly and enough auto-attack damage that she doesn't have to spam them. Having a global-range ult is also a plus. For reference, I also have Varus, Teemo, and Ashe. I dislike having to stack three auto-attacks before doing anything useful as Varus, and the other two only have one ability that deals damage other than their ults.

On an unrelated note, I played Jinx against a Blitzcrank/Thresh bot lane yesterday. It was hilarious because they couldn't clear waves fast enough to stop from being pushed under their turret, but if one of them grabbed me I popped like a balloon.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:13 am

Huh, so Runaan's Hurricane is officially usable on two champions.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 11:50 am

I'd like to say I fucking called it with Vel'Koz support (and Pantheon jungle and Morg support), he got picked in the EU LCS. He lost, but that seemed to be mostly because Fiddlesticks couldn't contribute.

I haven't noticed anything new and strong yet, but if I had to make a prediction about what will happen soon I'm going to say AP BRUISER JUNGLE MAOKAI is going to be played. He's deceptively strong when building ap, hp as a stat got stronger (and Maokai's passive and ult are all excellent with hp), and he's got good initiation. The mobility/assassin meta is strong, but Maokai is sticky as fuck and deals lots of damage. Without his ult his full combo does 220% AP because fuck you he's Maokai, and he has a 250 base damage nuke (that hits in an aoe as well as slows and knocks you back because fuck you he's Maokai) on a 6 second CD. All you need is one health item on Maokai and he becomes a tanky tree through constant application of his passive. Try it out, feel the power.

Hurricane is definitely useable on some champs (it's fine on Teemo too), but I wouldn't build it in games where I'm 100% trying to win. Hurricane has potential, but it requires your enemies grouping up really close to each other (like 400 range or something) and it doesn't crit and only deals 50% of your AD so the dps per-target isn't that great. The secondary bolts suck unless your on-hits are your primary damage source or you have a bizarre interaction with it like Jinx does.

Most adcs spend too much time shooting single targets for them to really care too much about the aoe. I could see hurricane in a "serious" game if a team lacked aoe so an adc who can use it decided to pick up the slack to punish grouping or as part of a wombo combo like Orianna, Hurricane Jinx, and Sona.

Hurricane is situational but fun as hell. I wish it worked with Silver Bolts so I could play Hurrivayne.

And now I'm 3-0 in diamond 1. Here I come, Challenger (not really).

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Sat Mar 29, 2014 5:56 am

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Mar 29, 2014 6:32 am

So, I'm pretty sure I reached Elo heaven. What range is Elo heaven, you might wonder? It's where I currently sit in my normal MMR, which is roughly between Silver I - Gold III (those are the most common opponents I see; can get plats occasionally but almost never anyone below Silver I anymore).

These games, win or lose, have been extremely pleasant. People will listen to each others' preferences, so long as they're reasonable (pref two roles and you can almost always get one of them). Rage is almost nonexistent. Everyone is just quietly focused on winning, and plays to the best of their ability.

While I want to keep getting better, I'm actually kind of afraid of climbing out of this insanely pleasant range

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Sat Mar 29, 2014 12:44 pm

Surgo wrote:So, I'm pretty sure I reached Elo heaven. What range is Elo heaven, you might wonder? It's where I currently sit in my normal MMR, which is roughly between Silver I - Gold III (those are the most common opponents I see; can get plats occasionally but almost never anyone below Silver I anymore).

These games, win or lose, have been extremely pleasant. People will listen to each others' preferences, so long as they're reasonable (pref two roles and you can almost always get one of them). Rage is almost nonexistent. Everyone is just quietly focused on winning, and plays to the best of their ability.

While I want to keep getting better, I'm actually kind of afraid of climbing out of this insanely pleasant range

I think people stop being so angry once they believe they're where they belong (or higher than they belong if they're extra self-aware). Then there are the people who are dicks and get mad at everything. The most common insults I've been seeing are "XX, you know Riot bans people for getting boosted, right?" and things of that nature.

Also, I'm 99% sure I played with a Wildturtle smurf yesterday. He FPed Kog and I went Janna, and we crushed the lane in spite of Kog and Janna being two of the worst duo laners in the game. Then he did amazing things like triple kill people on his own just by having extremely good positioning and flashing the would-be killing blow. He didn't make a single mistake, and he was either unranked or did not exist last season. He was somebody's smurf.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Mar 30, 2014 3:48 am

speaking of the turt, tsm vs clg today was an absolutely amazing match. i'm not gonna spoil it, but you should definitely watch it

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Sun Mar 30, 2014 5:30 am

I just tried new Xerath for the first time, and he was a lot of fun. I didn't really have enough damage to back up my stun and slow, but poking with Arcanopulse was good and securing kills from such a huge range was very satisfying. I'm just not entirely certain what to build on him. Liandry's seems good for securing kills, but it's a lot of gold for a little AP. In any case, I'll definitely keep him in mind when I've got enough IP for another champion.

EDIT: Had a second bot game with him. Due to typical blind pick lane confusion, I ended up top with Riven. I ended 4/0/29. I know fighting bots is meaningless (even though they seemed so difficult two months ago), but perfect games still feel good.