League Of Losers

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:55 am

I feel like I came back to play at exactly the right time. I absolutely love this tanky top meta, and best of all, despite it being a tanky top meta, Zac still sucks!

Now if they could just make Irelia good again too I'd be in paradise.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:10 am

Surgo wrote:I feel like I came back to play at exactly the right time. I absolutely love this tanky top meta, and best of all, despite it being a tanky top meta, Zac still sucks!

Now if they could just make Irelia good again too I'd be in paradise.

I had a conversation in game where the guy who played Pantheon top, all ad no tank, was complaining because we didn't have a tank. He told me I was stupid when I pointed out that tops are usually tanky.

Apparently the new meta hasn't trickled down far enough. Also he said Mundo and Shyvana are Junglers and not Tops. So yeah, fuck my life.

PS you will never have your irelia back. She isn't good in the way Riot wants champions to be good, so they have to make her suck so no one plays her.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:02 am

ubernoob wrote: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.

Never play DotA. Or HoN.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 11:09 am

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.

Amen.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:28 pm

...You Lost Me wrote:
ubernoob wrote: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.
Never play DotA. Or HoN.

I played HoN once. I literally got booted from the game by my own team.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Jan 22, 2014 1:20 pm

Muting your team is a pretty good idea, I generally mute someone (in ranked, for normals half the fun is banter) the first time they say something negative about anyone on our team. Any calls they have to make aren't worth listening to.

Also, I finally finished my placement matches. I lost my first 5 placement games and am now at Plat III. Fortunately, everyone here still makes really questionable decisions and sometimes terrible builds. Unfortunately, everyone here still makes really questionable decisions and sometimes terrible builds.

To remedy this, I pick Caitlyn and shove to turret to guarantee myself a decent CS lead and take the turret. Then that becomes a dragon, and I rotate on over to mid and take that turret. After that all hell breaks loose, but my team is far enough ahead to win in spite of horrible engages unless I get assassinated.

PLAYERS OF NOTE:

A Leona support who stood behind me the entire game and never attempted to engage. If the enemy blitz engaged by running up to power fist, Leona would run at him and burn all her CDs on him, letting their adc do all their damage. The next game I went against this person on their Annie support and they played similarly badly, but were slightly more effective because hiding is what Annie does early on.

A Fiddlesticks who, while doing OK, raged at our top lane who was going about even with his opponent. I actually didn't mute this one because his rage was mixed with delicious sadness ("omg i just can't get a good team" [AS HIS CAITLYN IS 4/0/3]). He was one of those delusional players who doesn't understand

1. He isn't as good as he thinks he is.

2. How to carry.

3. When to fucking engage.

The main thing I've noticed during placements and these plat matches is that people here do not understand when to fight and when not to. People will chase into the jungle as 2 people with enemies MIA and no vision of their path, people will engage when their team's ults are on cooldown, or they'll engage 4v5 against enemies with their cooldowns up, or any number of high risk low reward decisions.

The other big thing is an inability to lose lane safely. When I first started placements I went mid a lot feeling I could carry with decisions and teamfight power. I got a couple kills in lane without fail, but I wasn't able to save other lanes because I didn't build myself to roam. I had several games where bot would give up 5+ kills in 10 minutes. Had I built to roam I might have been able to convert some kills, but I was just focused on winning lane and trying to snowball fights without taking into consideration that a 10-0 Vayne is really, really hard to kill.

The flip side happens a lot as well. When I was mid my opponent would keep building damage so I'd get a few more kills, or even take their turret fast. When I was bot it was trivial to get a few extra kills once I grabbed an item advantage because they'd keep trading without somebody around to help them, or even hard engage to kill my support while I beat on them and picked up a double.

I had a fucking Jinx Taric lane try to engage (on Caitlyn Thresh) when I was up a BF sword AND level 6 on them. Taric stunned from far enough away that I could net myself back a bit to stay out of the danger zone, then Thresh walked up and flayed Taric because fuck it, better waste CC on their support. At that point they should have backed off because they could survive if they didn't get hooked, but instead Jinx zapped me and I just stood there and out DPSed her while Taric switched his focus to the only person anywhere near him, Thresh. When Jinx dropped low she flashed, but since I was six I followed with my own to auto her and finish with my ult. Thresh just stuck on Taric (Thresh was up a Ruby Crystal I think) and we killed him too. Shit like that happens all the time because...I don't know. Landing CC on your opponent is good and all, but you can't beat a lane that is up in items and levels, especially when you use your only hard CC in a way that the enemy dps can get into a safe position before it lands.

On the plus side, these games are pretty fun. It's easy to stay safe and some of the mistakes are hilarious. I saw somebody teleport into an entire team without backup because they were starting DRAGON.

HoN lets you boot your own team? That's got to be the worst possible idea ever, especially if it allows premades.

EDIT: Irelia is slightly more viable now that Visage and Sunfire were nerfed. That being said, she's still bad against Mundo and merely OK against...well, everyone. Her split pushing is alright and her waveclear is great with ult.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Sun Feb 02, 2014 10:50 pm

Double post because fuck it, I got diamond again.

Also, my jungle Pantheon is 5-0 now. Going full damage was never this much fun!

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 4:04 am

Can someone give me tips on how to do 3's? As a support main, I have no idea what to do when I can't ward everything.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 12:22 pm

How to win 3s:

Pick a bruiser (or teemo if he isn't banned), bonus points for jumping walls or ridiculous regeneration. You can also use bruiser counters.

Contest everything because bruisers and their counters are super strong early-mid (aka the entire game for 3s).

There's really not much else to say. Once you get map control you force the spider to teamfight and win, or take it uncontested and win.

Note: 3s is very snowbally. Build for the early game because there will be no late game.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 1:33 pm

So, people are finally picking Vayne again in the LCS, except it's often with a weird BT first built, which doesn't make any dang sense. It synergizes well with your Q, I suppose, but it also doesn't synergize well at all with your W.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:00 am

The attack speed isn't all that necessary, because vayne has an AA-reset on a 2 second base cooldown at max rank. I believe people were picking up BotRK first because of the dueling potential it offers, but S4 OP carries use skill-shots to win trades (jinx, lucian, sivir) so vaynes are better off maxing tumble, which means getting AD because the scaling is stupid good.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 12:43 pm

Maxing Q with BT is the way Vayne was played pre-BotRK. Old Vayne did this to better survive teamfights (she could stealth 3 times during a fight, which made her very hard to pin down) and survive her lane phase. Her in-lane burst is impressive with BT (250% AD in about half a second is solid for auto tumble auto) if she ONLY trades burst.

The BotRK way of maxing silver bolts was to make her a better duelist. That's mattering less now since the game is shifting a bit into teamfight focus again since dragon has become more valuable later, getting one inhib down isn't the end of the world, inhib turrets regenerate, and split pushers keep getting nerfed.

Basically, the two schools of Vayne, Doublelift (BT) and everyone else (BotRK), are meant for different things. Doublelift wants to win lane and teamfights, everyone else wants to become impossible to 1v1. Lategame I'd honestly favor the BotRK for the additional self peel, but BT is a massive power spike early on and lategame Vayne already wins the game.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:30 pm

I've been playing since mid-December, but I was originally introduced to the game by my cousin shortly after it came out. I mostly play carries. I've also had fun with Fighter/Tanks like Trundle, and I'm learning to play support. I'm not certain how to practice jungle because the bots don't really know how to respond to that and I'm afraid I'd sink my team if I tried it in a real match.

One of my friends tried out the new Xerath with me yesterday. Since we were on Skype together he played him like a support to my Jinx. It was just a bot game, but it seemed to work pretty well. The lack of healing was a bit annoying, but the two of us had so much CC it wasn't funny. We plan to practice with that combo a bit more and see if we can make it work against human opponents. However, our previous combo that obliterated bots (Heimerdinger/Thresh) was completely useless against anything with a brain, so I have no idea how it will work in practice.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:48 pm

rampaging-poet wrote:I've been playing since mid-December, but I was originally introduced to the game by my cousin shortly after it came out. I mostly play carries. I've also had fun with Fighter/Tanks like Trundle, and I'm learning to play support. I'm not certain how to practice jungle because the bots don't really know how to respond to that and I'm afraid I'd sink my team if I tried it in a real match.

One of my friends tried out the new Xerath with me yesterday. Since we were on Skype together he played him like a support to my Jinx. It was just a bot game, but it seemed to work pretty well. The lack of healing was a bit annoying, but the two of us had so much CC it wasn't funny. We plan to practice with that combo a bit more and see if we can make it work against human opponents. However, our previous combo that obliterated bots (Heimerdinger/Thresh) was completely useless against anything with a brain, so I have no idea how it will work in practice.

High-level gameplay advice: A support without sustain or all-in abilities will falter. A bad jungler will cause your team to fail.

Literally anything but Diamond 1 or above (and even then, D1 is mostly people trolling unless they seriously want to become professionals): Play what you want, nobody is good enough to make your heavy harass lane with no sustain or all-in (Xerath, especially new Xerath, is very good at this) get punished significantly. A friend of mine and I used to play Alistar + Blitz, we even did this during Snowdown as a joke because Ali + Blitz is trash without a jungle. It's VERY easy to win in League based on using your champion well, only extremely high level players see the real League balance problems.

Side note: This is true with any game that features...well, different options at all. League is fairly well balanced, even if people still complain about champions that aren't strong at all actually being strong (Hello, Akali). Especially with the latest round of nerfs, the only real "You have to ban this champion" is Kassadin. Why they won't nerf Kassadin, nobody knows. He's been a ban for over a year now.

Edit: Support is super fucking fun now. Learn Leona and Lulu and you will NEVER be banned out and always have a great support to play. Lulu with Doran's shield is a huge lane bully, Leona (with anything) is a kill lane. Maybe learn Janna or Sona in case you get banned out, but that's unlikely.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:47 pm

I was away from the game for more than a month, then played again with Lulu yesterday. I didn't care much about following an exact item build: I got that money item that just requires you to be near minions dying, then some armor, then the multi-ward item, CDR boots and went to town. Our carry (Lucian) was complaining about lag and the initial game went against us. (we lost our tower first on bot) vs Varrus with Zilean. I think it was the third time total I saw Zilean in play.

About 10 minutes in, however, we started to win, and they never recovered. Lulu is extraordinarily fun to play. I just took care to keep some vital points warded, and unloaded her powers offensively on their carry during fights. My usual instincts when playing support were to keep protecting our carry, but I thought that I would also be doing support job if their carry spent the fights as a fluffy critter.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 8:18 pm

rampaging-poet wrote:I've been playing since mid-December, but I was originally introduced to the game by my cousin shortly after it came out. I mostly play carries. I've also had fun with Fighter/Tanks like Trundle, and I'm learning to play support. I'm not certain how to practice jungle because the bots don't really know how to respond to that and I'm afraid I'd sink my team if I tried it in a real match.

One of my friends tried out the new Xerath with me yesterday. Since we were on Skype together he played him like a support to my Jinx. It was just a bot game, but it seemed to work pretty well. The lack of healing was a bit annoying, but the two of us had so much CC it wasn't funny. We plan to practice with that combo a bit more and see if we can make it work against human opponents. However, our previous combo that obliterated bots (Heimerdinger/Thresh) was completely useless against anything with a brain, so I have no idea how it will work in practice.

1) Stop playing bot games.

2) Except Jungle, just Jungle in a couple bot games until you learn how quickly your champ clears and the little things about how to clear camps best (Ie, positioning with Udyr's R flames). Then immediately jump into human games. If you are under level 30, then human games don't matter except to get better, so who cares if you screw your team, learn how to not screw your team. Once you are 30, this still applies to all normal games. People either play Normals to troll or to learn, so just play to learn and who cares.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 6:39 am

Thanks for the advice. I mostly play against bots because I like to try new champions against them before real people. I also play with someone of a lower summoner level quite often, and they get frustrated when they keep dying against people who've been playing much more.

Just finished an hour-long normal game with an Aatrox jungler who was no help at all. Their Darius (top) and Udyr (jung) got pretty fed, and I died enough to fall behind the enemy ADC. We even managed to take Baron but were so outleveled we couldn't push while the buff was up. It was fun, but it really shows how poor jungling can sink the team. Next time I'm building a Sightstone as ADC if my support doesn't because better warding could have saved the team from so many Udyr + Darius ganks.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 8:09 am

You can just buy wards, they're cheaper in the short run.

I recommend people play bots up until level 10 (because that's where all the smurfs tend to be) and then do normals.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:53 pm

rampaging-poet wrote:Thanks for the advice. I mostly play against bots because I like to try new champions against them before real people. I also play with someone of a lower summoner level quite often, and they get frustrated when they keep dying against people who've been playing much more.

Just finished an hour-long normal game with an Aatrox jungler who was no help at all. Their Darius (top) and Udyr (jung) got pretty fed, and I died enough to fall behind the enemy ADC. We even managed to take Baron but were so outleveled we couldn't push while the buff was up. It was fun, but it really shows how poor jungling can sink the team. Next time I'm building a Sightstone as ADC if my support doesn't because better warding could have saved the team from so many Udyr + Darius ganks.

I forgot one key piece of advice.

If you're learning the jungle, the best (and fastest!) way to do it is to make a custom game with no opponents and just clear the jungle once, then start a new game or keep practicing to get an idea on how quickly you clear camps with certain items. Once you can clear the jungle (sans wight, unless you start red, then it's sans golems) without a leash in under 4 minutes game time (your initial clear [- the ignored camp] should be ~3:30, but anything under 4 is still fine) and still be around 3/4ths health you're ready to take that jungler into real games. Obviously some junglers are much, much better than others at clearing (Skarner/Shyvana/Udyr can full clear in under 3:30 no problem), but under 4 minutes with enough health to gank means you won't be a burden on your team.

Also, if you play as jungler expect a lot of rage at any and all levels of play. These are all things I have actually been raged at for while jungling:

1. Not ganking enough.

2. Getting counterganked.

3. Falling behind in farm.

4. Ganking and taking the kill.

5. Ganking when your laner is at low health (if they manage to die during the gank).

6. Not warding (though really, buy a ward each back as jungle if you can afford it so you can keep an eye on the enemy jungler, ideal place to ward is so it can see both their wraith camp and the ramp into river).

7. Taking any minions from the lane during a gank or push.

8. Being in experience range of any lane.

9. Ganking and failing to get a kill, even if you get damage and a summoner.

10. Not giving away all blues but the first, even if you're a blue reliant jungler.

11. Not carrying the team.

12. Taking kills from the carries.

13. Missing a smite, ever.

14. Getting counterjungled.

15. Picking an unusual jungler.

16. Your laners getting ganked, ever.

17. Not ganking a specific lane that has been ganked by the other jungler.

Jungle is a really impactful and fun role, but you'll catch shit. You'll catch shit for actual mistakes and you'll catch shit for not winning every single lane for your team (protip: The jungler is not responsible for your lane, if a laner can't survive getting camped and keep up in levels they are a bad laner. It's more important that the jungler ganks for kills and objectives instead of wasting time propping up a weak laner unless they're being fully denied xp because of lane freezing). Just be ready to ignore people who say things like "/all OMG I GOT GANKED BY LEE SIN TWICE, WTB REAL JUNGLER THIS USELESS FUCKING AMUMU SHOULD KILL HIMSELF."*

*this is an actual thing actual people will actually say. I'm 100% certain junglers get the most death threats in the game.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 12:02 am

ARRGG! Fuck my League life. I have failed the promo to Silver once a fucking gain.

I played in a game with 9 Silver players, four Silver Vs on my team, and four Silver IVs and Silver III on the other team. It was the last game of my promos. I first picked Nasus, and they counter picked Teemo.

The shyvana jungle on my team was so bad that she ganked twice, both times when I was at very low health and trying to back and Teemo was at very high heath with a wave of cs pushed to my tower. One time she died. After that I never saw her again. Approximately 12-16 minutes into the game the score was thus:

Nasus 102 cs (the vast majority of it q stacks) 1/0/0. Teemo 101 cs 1/1/0.

My team: 4 kills. Enemy Team 16 kills.

WARGARBARGL? My first death came when I over extended a bit too much and was ganked by the 7/1/5 Lee Sin slightly after that point. It was all down hill from there because they ran down two towers upon my death.

Obviously, I must become so fucking good that I can personally 1v5 entire fucking teams of silvers before I can ever get out of Bronze, and by no means am I actually all that good in the greater scheme of things, but I can only play one game or so a fucking day, so the five game series that always goes to five games takes me most of a week. I don't play enough that I am every going to be that fucking amazing.

But goddam it, why the fuck am I still in fucking Bronze when literally every single game I play has nine silvers, I go slightly over .500, and every fucking game I am apparently teamed with the dumbest pile of Silver V shit that is somehow worse than Bronze and I have to fucking carry because the game apparently knows I am going to have to carry them?

Please for the love of god just develop a matchmaking system that matches Bronze 1s in promos as if they were Bronze 1 instead of as if they were Silver II so that I can just fucking once (and by that I mean 3 consecutive games) be on a team that isn't composed of retarded shit for brains trash.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 1:24 am

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:44 am

ubernoob wrote:Do you go straight into ranked, or do you do a warmup normals game first? I suck dick on my first game of the day. I do much better on my second. Even if you do only 2 games, using the first one as a practice normals game is good for your win ratios. Note: I was high gold at one point. Then I would do single ranked games with no warmups because yolo. I am now silver. When I was rising, I didn't play ranked without being warmed up and mentally ready to deal with all the shit.

No, I pretty much go straight into ranked because of time concerns. Even when I can play two games in a day, they aren't usually consecutive. I realize there a lot of things that contribute to me remaining not that good, but I really feel like where I am should damn well be good enough for fucking silver based on the last three 5 game series that ended in game five with me winning lane to lose the game due to: DC, DC, and uncarryable feeding.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 4:30 am

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:01 pm

Kaelik, the best advice I have for gaining LP/Elo/Whatever is to learn a few champions for each role, and learn them well. Pick ones that aren't going to get banned constantly too. Bonus points for champs that can play multiple roles, harder to counter and means you need to learn fewer champs.

I pick the same 8 champs in 90% of my ranked games.

Edit: As far as getting weird matchmaking goes, it generally means your MMR is higher than your rank. You're likely gaining way more LP than you lose. It sucks when you get to promos, but it's great when you're just climbing regularly.

And uber, how does somebody posting on a TTRPG board say being good at a game means you have no life? That's some retarded shit. I'm D4 (recent promotion, woo!) and play 1 or 2 games a day depending on time.

Fun anecdote:

I love Pantheon jungle so much. I had the most bizarre carry on him yesterday, going 25/16/something. My top Soraka fed a Riven, my mid Anivia fed a Syndra, but the enemy team was all squishy except for Amumu. I've never seen more kills in a game, or hit full build in under 30 minutes before. I had a fucking lizard elder, GA, LW, Cleaver, homeguards, and MoM (Maw of whatever). Most fights were long and disconnected to the point where I had the chance die in a fight, respawn, and ult back in to clean it up more than once.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:40 pm

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Kaelik, the best advice I have for gaining LP/Elo/Whatever is to learn a few champions for each role, and learn them well. Pick ones that aren't going to get banned constantly too. Bonus points for champs that can play multiple roles, harder to counter and means you need to learn fewer champs.

I don't need advice on how to gain Elo, I need advice on how to win a fucking series, I have been in the same goddam series for 3 months.

Nor is any of your advice worth even a tiny shit or not something I am already doing.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Edit: As far as getting weird matchmaking goes, it generally means your MMR is higher than your rank. You're likely gaining way more LP than you lose. It sucks when you get to promos, but it's great when you're just climbing regularly.

Which would totally matter if there were any such thing as not playing in a fucking series. I gain 20LP per win and lose 5LP per win. And spend five out of every six games in a goddam eternal series against Silver IIIs where my MMR has apparently climbed so high that I have the highest MMR on my team in every game and am supposed to carry a bunch of monstrous shit heads.