The Gaming Den

27 ping. Wow. I play at 150 on a good day, so apparently I am so far from the average of even Bronze that if I was magiced into challenger I would drag their average up by 5 myself.

EDIT: The by rolls one is surely fucked up somehow. For example, all the rolls have substantially more deaths than kills. That's a lot of fucking executes going on.

Also mids have the lowest kills and smallest creep scores cumulatively. Which clearly means that people are playing champions that elophant considers not mids in the mid roll. Probably Yasuo for starters.

Kaelik wrote: Also mids have the lowest kills and smallest creep scores cumulatively. Which clearly means that people are playing champions that elophant considers not mids in the mid roll. Probably Yasuo for starters.

More likely people are playing champions that elophant considers mids as supports (Annie, for example.)

Neeeek wrote:

Kaelik wrote: Also mids have the lowest kills and smallest creep scores cumulatively. Which clearly means that people are playing champions that elophant considers not mids in the mid roll. Probably Yasuo for starters.

More likely people are playing champions that elophant considers mids as supports (Annie, for example.)

The numbers are cumulative, not per game. Therefore, if you have both an Annie Support and an Ahri, you add their kills together to reach the cumulative score.

The only ways the mids would have drastically lower kills than other rolls would be:

1) Mids actually have fewer kills than supports in games.
2) There exist a large number of games in which elophant thinks there are no mids.

So. I play now. Just started though. Names Hotherain.

How's just starting out? One of the recent patches was supposed to improve new player matchmaking (which was a huge deal) so it should be better than the old days of there being at least 1 smurf per game.

Holy shit.

I just played my first ever Taric + doran shield start game and, even though my adc gave up first blood by facechecking a bush a minute into the game, I destroyed Annie + Jinx. They couldn't deal damage to me, and Taric's damage against their squishiness meant they couldn't focus my adc down because I would kill them. Then again, I was duoing with a silver friend so I was up against two mid-high plat players, so maybe they were just bad at dealing with beefcake Taric.

This deserves further research, but I think starting the game with the strength of a d shield may be worth losing the gold generation vs aggressive lanes.

Do you think it would be viable enough to allow a hypercarry ADC to survive the laning phase?

Sivir is generally considered a hypercarry, so yes. Beefcake Taric is strong as long as the other lane relies on aggression, I've played against Doran's shield supports before and you can wait them out (they're using all their gold on sustain and all-in potential) if your lane can play passive without falling too far behind.

It helps that Doran's shield generally means the support with it is going to play extremely aggressive, so you can just call ganks on them and win through that.

In BotA, DShield was the biggest support pick. It's good for aggro, but aggro's effectiveness is almost entirely determined by team work.

So if you and a not-crappy friend duo and use skype, I'd go doran's against just about anyone. But if your adc is Kaelik on Tristana you should just get a gold gen item.

Also, is it me or is spellthief's edge a bad pick 100% of the time?

Spellthief's edge is bad 99% of the time. Its upgrade is very good, but the base item is such shit you only want to build it against very passive lanes (alistar, taric, people who thrive on disengage). It's very high gold gen with the upgrade, but terrible without it. I've built it a couple times.

When I said hypercarry, I was really talking about Vayne/Kog/maybe Trist, who are ADC's that can actually duel fed mundo's/shyv's and maybe come out on top.

Korgan0 wrote:When I said hypercarry, I was really talking about Vayne/Kog/maybe Trist, who are ADC's that can actually duel fed mundo's/shyv's and maybe come out on top.

Sivir is in that realm as well. Her AS bonus and auto resets give her Vayne level damage, even though it isn't true damage. Taric + Trist is a tried and true combo though. Very strong burst at 2 and 6, easy to pick up kills if the other lane isn't aware of your power spikes.

Doran's shield start gives your carry a huge advantage early, but it'll set you back after the first recall unless you convert it into denial or kills.

Huh. I haven't really played league in the past month or so, thanks to a combination of finals and my computer's fan breaking, hence my ignorance.

Sivir was considered a hyper carry before her remake even, it's just that nobody played her to see her damage. Boomerang blade hardly has an animation, and her auto reset is ridiculous in addition to her stacking AS buffs.

In other news, I'm excited for Kassadin nerfs so I can stop banning him. Motherfucker needs them.

I'm really hoping that these changes are gonna make bruiser jungle kass viable.

How the heck would that work? No hard cc, and gap-closer doesn't work till 6.

...You Lost Me wrote:How the heck would that work? No hard cc, and gap-closer doesn't work till 6.

Shyvanna makes it work, but I can't imagine how Kass would have the clear to farm till 6 fast enough to justify. I don't think a champ with Kass's E could should really be in the jungle.

The changes literally give him a 1.0 ap ratio on E active, and a .5 ratio when he's off, along with buffing the mana recharge. That with AS marks and a machete could result in some pretty good clear times if you take AP blues and quints.

...You Lost Me wrote:How the heck would that work? No hard cc, and gap-closer doesn't work till 6.

Definitely the Shyvana way, sans the massive MS boost she gets. He has a slow instead, but I could see jungle Kass having a lot of trouble charging it up for ganks since he needs it to clear.

I don't get why Riot doesn't just nerf Kassadin in the most sensible way there is, a Gragas style nerf where if he doesn't hit somebody with Riftwalk its CD is twice what it used to be. It would make Kass have to close to melee range (where he's in real danger) or be in danger because of a long CD on his escape.

Either that or a straight up CD increase of 3 or 4 seconds. He needs to be more dangerous to use.


Everyone is starting Doran's shield on support now and it's starting to get annoying. I've taken to running coin on disengage supports (and relic shield on Leona) to scale better than them and not allow for kills, but it's obnoxious not to have kill potential on the enemy support. Bot lane needs to get exciting again.

Worth mentioning: Last I checked, Kass was 100% pick or ban (mostly ban) in competitive play, and Rengar was disabled in competitive play. Why doesn't Riot fix that shit? There is obviously something wrong with a 100% pick or ban champion in competitive play. People will pick Kassadin even if he's against a comp designed to beat him because he's fucking Kassadin and can snowball anyways.

The Rengar thing is self explanatory. Don't let people play a bugged champion, especially when the bug is "uses his high damage spell 3 times in a row at level fucking 4, murdering whoever his target is." There's no real counter to that because you haven't even backed yet, it's just "run full armor runes (and just maybe die) or die at level 4 to Rengar if you go near a bush he's in."

Riot, lay off eSports for a bit and fix your game. Rengar should have been disabled a month ago if you can't hotfix the bug, and Kass should have been nerfed instead of buffed when you changed him (and called it a nerf).

Patch 4.1 changes to Summoner's Rift:

Turrets
Outer turrets no longer gain bonus armor and magic resist for the first eight minutes of the game.
Top and middle lane outer turrets now have 20 damage reduction from champion basic attacks for the first eight minutes of the game.

Reinforcing the meta much?

Archmage wrote:Patch 4.1 changes to Summoner's Rift:

Turrets
Outer turrets no longer gain bonus armor and magic resist for the first eight minutes of the game.
Top and middle lane outer turrets now have 20 damage reduction from champion basic attacks for the first eight minutes of the game.

Reinforcing the meta much?

That's the most direct nerf to Ziggs I've seen in a long time. And, of course, a stealth buff to Kassadin.

PATCH PREDICTIONS:

Annie is now both a mediocre mid and support, instead of a mediocre mid and great support. This will help bring back Zyra more.

Anivia will see play again (good), because her basic attack harass and last hitting just got better and it was already quite good.

Yasuo will be permabanned. Riot fucking knows this too, they just want people to buy the new champ. He was already considered one of the stronger mids (and a common ban) before buffs.

Jinx, who has no escapes but is one of the stronger ADCs because of her insane burst, will probably fall off a bit as her laning phase just got really risky. She relied a lot on chompers to get kills and her innate tankiness to move in with her minigun on targets she hits with chompers. I expect more Caitlyn because of this and the turret changes.

Shen no longer exists in top lane, as his kind of weak early-mid game just got weaker with Sunfire and Visage, the two items he wants, getting nerfed hard enough to remove him. Yes, 10 damage a second is a big nerf on a champion who doesn't deal much damage and the cdr nerf cripples his ult, the highest CD in the game outside of fucking summoner spells.

Nasus had a meaningless change, all it'll do is make him a little bit easier to kite. This doesn't matter because Nasus was already very easy to kite. It's easier for ADCs to straight up run away from him now, though.

Riven is gone. A nerf of over 60 damage to her level 1 is a huge nerf, and it just gets worse from there.

Shyvana will survive her nerf, but I expect more Jax now.

I'm going to spam Janna, that is a HUGE buff. No longer having an activation time means she now has two ways to instantly interrupt dashes. As an example, Janna tornado interrupts Kha's jump (removing the damage portion and ending his movement when it hits him). Now she can do that twice, and her ult doesn't even take aim to interrupt it.

The increased heal and the burst nature of it is also a huge buff, as you can Monsoon save people more easily from ignites and other DoTs when your shield is on CD. This is also a big ol buff to AP Janna. A 1.8 AP ratio AoE burst heal is game changing.



Overall, nice patch sans the turret changes but where is the Kass nerf.

Kass nerf is on PBE right now, and to be honest I'm not really sure it's that much of a nerf.

Kassadin
Void Stone [ Passive ] - Tooltip now says: "Kassadin takes 15% reduced magic damage and converts this damage taken into bonus Attack Speed."
Null Sphere [ Q ] - Now deals 70/90/110/130/150 damage (down from 80/115/150/185/220)
Nether Blade [ W ] - Passive: Kassadin's basic attacks draw energy from the void, dealing 10/20/30/40/50 (+0.2*AP) bonus magic damage.
Nether Blade [ W ] - Active: Kassadin charges his Nether Blade for his next basic attack, increasing Nether Blade's damage to 40/80/120/160/200 (+0.8*AP) and restoring 4 % of his maximum Mana (0.2*Mana). Mana restore triples to 0.8*Mana against champions.
Nether Blade [ W ] - Now has no cost (previously cost 25 mana)
Nether Blade [ W ] - Cooldown is now 9/8/7/6/5 Seconds (down from 12/12/12/12/12 Seconds)
Force Pulse [ E ] - Damage dealt upon reaching 6 charges is now 80/110/140/170/200 (down from 80/130/180/230/280)

Mainly what this does is reduce Kass' mid-game burst, which I guess was his most problematic aspect, but since they're not changing the AP ratios on his Q or E it seems like a late-game full build Kass is going to be even more dangerous, and now he's going to be an incredible splitpusher.

I was kind of excited for the numbers they had before this patch, where they had more power in W. Made me kind of want to play him, actually. But now the uncharged W is much less strong.

I'm playing again a bit. I'm just dodging draft games where I have to play ADC or support though. I don't have any fun at those roles at all, so rather than force myself to suffer through a game as one I'll just wait out the timer.

My new rule is I mute my entire team the moment the game starts.

Holy shit, this simple action has made League of Legends 1000x more enjoyable.

Surgo wrote:My new rule is I mute my entire team the moment the game starts.

Holy shit, this simple action has made League of Legends 1000x more enjoyable.

I was teaching one of my buddies how to play today and I told him to do that in solo Q until he hit level 30. Maybe longer. For being such a great game, it has one toxic fucking community.