League Of Losers

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun May 11, 2014 5:35 pm

French crowd is best crowd. I think a lot of it has to do with the French casters, who are awesome. It was like this at the last French live tournament too which was like...two years ago.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue May 13, 2014 11:33 am

Congrats on gold!

Allstars were awesome, though I'm disappointed in Cloud 9 again. When things actually count they always end up losing. I still love Meteos, but they need to step it up. I agree on their casters being the best, the fucking US ones are too busy making shitty jokes and being wrong about things to actually add value to the game.

I got my first Penta ever in a ranked 5v5 game as Vayne. Penta story nobody cares about:

The enemy team was on our Nexus and we had two people down, but they had an AoE teamfighting comp that had burned all their big ults (mumu, morde, morgana, and jinx) killing those two people. I got back to base as our last Nexus turret fell (I was splitting while our team tried to delay, but they got a catch) and they tried to finish, but since their only ad threat was Jinx I got homeguards, ulted, tumbled, and focused her down fast. They had to stop trying to finish and start fighting without their ults, which was an easy penta.

Then we finished the game through their downed inhib before anyone else could come up while our Nexus sat at half hp. Fun fucking game, and the screams in Skype shall echo throughout eternity.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Tue May 13, 2014 4:24 pm

To be fair, Cloud 9 was playing with a sub for their mid laner. With that in mind, they did pretty well.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Tue May 13, 2014 10:02 pm

On top of that, Hai was their main shotcaller, and Lemon in an AMA called Hai possibly the best shotcaller in NA. While Link did his best to step up, ultimately I don't think he could fill the void.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed May 21, 2014 10:47 am

Fantasy LCS. I don't know what to think about this.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed May 21, 2014 9:02 pm

Drafting a team takes approximately 40 years. But it's kind of fun now.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Sat May 31, 2014 10:10 pm

How awesome is the new one-for-all? I got an all blitz game and an all alistar game, and they were almost URF levels of fun.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 12:40 am

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:How awesome is the new one-for-all? I got an all blitz game and an all alistar game, and they were almost URF levels of fun.

I played all vel'koz. It was murderous hell.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 3:25 pm

So I just started out and after geting enough experience to steamroll the beginner bots I start solo qing against real people, it didn't go so hot the first time around. I played as Sona and ended the game with the most kills out of my team, so I think that means someone was doing something wrong. Fortunately next game I get matched with people who know what they are doing.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 7:56 pm

It'll even out in five games or so. They need a sample size to judge your skill level by.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 11:33 am

So I've been hovering around d1 70 lp for a few weeks now, and I think that's my absolute peak. I get to play against famous people a bit but I can't really carry games unless I manage to get Pantheon jungle.

Braum: Fucking Braum has been a permaban since his release, and it doesn't look like the nerfs to him are big enough to prevent that. What they need to do is nerf his passive in a meaningful way, because his dps is way too high and his stun is a joke to proc.

Maybe if they made it harder to close gaps (his shield gives him a speed boost, he can jump to an ally, and he can slow people) his passive wouldn't need to be touched, but Braum is a huge problem right now and the nerfs didn't address his problem spots.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 1:32 pm

As a kogmaw player, I've taken up jungle because of Braum.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 2:58 pm

Had a glorious game with Phantomlord on Amumu and myself on Shen. Late game we had Amumu, Talon, and myself up defending our inhib and he landed a 5 man Mumu ult into a 5 man Shen taunt with a Talon ult in the middle. I ended up getting a kill during it but Talon got the quadra and we won.

Big CC combos are fun.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:09 am

Unlocked Vel'Koz and he's pretty much the best thing ever, got 4 consecutive kills I'm my first game and pushed down two towers pretty much singlehandedly.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 12:31 pm

Those panth ult nerfs are just big enough to throw off where I'm putting it. I keep missing ults by a couple steps and it's getting annoying.

On the plus side, my Pantheon is now at a 91% win rate. Once I finish SotEL and lw I can burst non-tanks from about 50%, and if it's a duel they'll die because I can auto them and I'll block at least 2 of their autos, most likely 3. Pantheon is such a well designed champion, he's incredibly good at killing individual champs and terrible at everything else.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 12:48 pm

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Pantheon is such a well designed champion, he's incredibly good at killing individual champs and terrible at everything else.

I'm not sure that makes him a well designed champ. It's like Nasus. I enjoy playing the farm game until I am an unstoppable juggernaut and I crush the carries, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their supports. But that doesn't mean it is actually a well designed champ.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 3:21 pm

I think good design is having a play pattern that feels good, is effective without being TOO effective, offers counterplay, and doesn't have binary success (either stomp or get stomped). Pantheon's kit is fucking fun as hell, from the mandrop down to the passive everything has big impacts and cool things you can do with it.

Pantheon is tremendously easy to counter (build tanky, stay 600 range away, nuke his squishy ass, don't try to 1v1 him with auto attack champs) but his pattern still works because there's always going to be at least 1 auto attack reliant champ on the team that you want to blow up.

Akali is a good example of shitty design. She can 1v1 pretty much anyone if she gets fed, but she can't do fucking anything if her damage isn't ridiculous. Not fun to play as or against, she's too binary. She's "balanced" in that she'll either get stomped or stomp a fairly equal amount of the time, but she's horrible design 100% of the time.

There aren't many poorly designed champs in League. Poppy and Akali are the only ones that strike me as obviously bad design.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 3:44 pm

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:I think good design is having a play pattern that feels good, is effective without being TOO effective, offers counterplay, and doesn't have binary success (either stomp or get stomped). Pantheon's kit is fucking fun as hell, from the mandrop down to the passive everything has big impacts and cool things you can do with it.

Maybe it's not as bad for Panth, but I feel like counterplay should be applied specifically to all the people. So for example, I feel genuinely sorry for the 11/0 luxes or the 9/2 Kassadins or 12/5 Twitches who suddenly realize that because their top laner was a piece of shit they literally cannot win the game now because I can hunt carries, zone, and tank at the same time. The thing where a bad jungler and or top results in eternal nasus that crushes entire team with no counterplay seems pretty bad design.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 9:59 pm

I don't think Nasus is that unstoppable once he gets huge, he's very easy to kite. Sure, a team that has no way to kite Nasus is proper fucked once he gets going, but if your team has no way to stop a giant Nasus you should be focused on preventing the giant Nasus scenario. Nasus is countered by just having a hard peel support like Janna to make him gtfo your team twice a fight. You still have to kill him at some point and he's basically a fucking raid boss, but he's a problem with a solution (kite and time his ghost CD).

Nasus has a huge teamfight presence, but he's more of a "get out of melee or die" champ than an "if I get big the game is over" champ. Big Nasus is a bigger deal than most champs, but I'd rather see a 5-0 Nasus on the other team than a 5-0 Kassadin. Giant Nasus is also fun because he really does feel like a boss fight. There's no fun in watching Akali eat your team alive because she does 2000 burst damage at level 12 and gets stacks to do more burst damage by killing people with her absurd burst damage.

The champs with really bad design just straight up have no counterplay except hard CC.

Poppy is going to remove your carry from a fight (at least for the duration of her ult) after ulting a low damage champ no matter what, because that is how Poppy works and she is a bullshit champ. Akali is going to jump on someone from 700 range and nuke them to death no matter what, she can dash 3 fucking times, unless her damage is garbage in which case she dashes on them and gets slapped. Both Akali and Poppy are BAD champions but they're also not fun to play against, unlike Brand who is a (kind of) bad champion that's super fun to play with/against.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 5:15 am

Playing Lissandra for free week. I really like her, but something is just lackluster.

Good bases and ratios on Q and W makes clearing waves incredibly fast. You can shove like nobody's business, and the long range E makes her a pretty safe splitpusher. I like taking teleport. Her passive is... meh. Free spells are good and all, but god is that boring. It only really interacts with half her kit for the first 20 minutes (then none of her kit after, since it falls off hard).

The 1.5s stun plus a 1.5s snare makes her a pretty good peeler too, which makes me want to take her support (that way you can have someone with actual damage top/mid). But supporting as Lissandra is very tough. Crappy spell range and obvious telegraphing makes STE difficult to use, but without AP she's just a walking stun. What makes her great is that if the jungler ganks and you can get a claw -> snare -> stun after level 6 you are basically guaranteed a kill. The stun is also great for locking down fed carries and assassins.

Itseems like there are a lot of conflicting components of her kit. I want to build her like an AP assassin because of her blink and good ratios, but I want her to be a tank because of her close-range spells, but I also want to be a support because 3 seconds of not letting someone move is awesome, but I ALSO want to play the poke game. It's kind of frustrating.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 9:01 am

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:I don't think Nasus is that unstoppable once he gets huge, he's very easy to kite. Sure, a team that has no way to kite Nasus is proper fucked once he gets going, but if your team has no way to stop a giant Nasus you should be focused on preventing the giant Nasus scenario. Nasus is countered by just having a hard peel support like Janna to make him gtfo your team twice a fight. You still have to kill him at some point and he's basically a fucking raid boss, but he's a problem with a solution (kite and time his ghost CD).

Nasus has a huge teamfight presence, but he's more of a "get out of melee or die" champ than an "if I get big the game is over" champ. Big Nasus is a bigger deal than most champs, but I'd rather see a 5-0 Nasus on the other team than a 5-0 Kassadin. Giant Nasus is also fun because he really does feel like a boss fight. There's no fun in watching Akali eat your team alive because she does 2000 burst damage at level 12 and gets stacks to do more burst damage by killing people with her absurd burst damage.

The champs with really bad design just straight up have no counterplay except hard CC.

Poppy is going to remove your carry from a fight (at least for the duration of her ult) after ulting a low damage champ no matter what, because that is how Poppy works and she is a bullshit champ. Akali is going to jump on someone from 700 range and nuke them to death no matter what, she can dash 3 fucking times, unless her damage is garbage in which case she dashes on them and gets slapped. Both Akali and Poppy are BAD champions but they're also not fun to play against, unlike Brand who is a (kind of) bad champion that's super fun to play with/against.

You sound like you are fighting Nasus alone as a team with all that. If the Nasus team fights, then you can't "kite" him without abandoning your initiator to a 4v1, and unlike Nasus, they will die without doing anything, while Nasus can zone your whole team and still back off.

I mean, unless you are just going to give up every Baron ever and rely 100% on split pushing to take towers you cannot kite Nasus because he is 100% capable of just walking into your team and murdering someone if he lands a w, and if you literally blow like 100% of your cc and ults he can just take it and keep walking while his entire team is also there to kill you.

The only way to win against Nasus (which can be really easy) is to just never let him get big in the first place, but if you think you can ever win even a single team fight once Nasus gets going I really have to question how you teleported into the house of the other four players and unplugged their keyboards, because a Nasus can just walk into your five man team and delete one of your carries before dying if he is all alone.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 11:50 am

Kaelik wrote: You sound like you are fighting Nasus alone as a team with all that. If the Nasus team fights, then you can't "kite" him without abandoning your initiator to a 4v1, and unlike Nasus, they will die without doing anything, while Nasus can zone your whole team and still back off.

I mean, unless you are just going to give up every Baron ever and rely 100% on split pushing to take towers you cannot kite Nasus because he is 100% capable of just walking into your team and murdering someone if he lands a w, and if you literally blow like 100% of your cc and ults he can just take it and keep walking while his entire team is also there to kill you.

The only way to win against Nasus (which can be really easy) is to just never let him get big in the first place, but if you think you can ever win even a single team fight once Nasus gets going I really have to question how you teleported into the house of the other four players and unplugged their keyboards, because a Nasus can just walk into your five man team and delete one of your carries before dying if he is all alone.

The problem with Nasus is he has to walk into your team. You never want to initiate a fight (unless you're ahead or get a catch onto a squishy) against a team with Nasus on it because you're playing into his hands if you close the gap for him. Nasus is vulnerable to getting poked off of turrets/objectives and to getting kited around once a fight actually starts.

The way I typically see teams with a big Nasus lose teamfights is somebody initiates for Nasus' side on a not-carry, which signals for his team to go in. Nasus pops ghost and wades into the back to zone/kill carries, but the other team has some sort of burst or aoe CC that makes it so the carries on Nasus' team can't really dps anyone but the other team's tanks until a big cooldown gets burned (Amumu is fucking great at this). Then it becomes a "which tank line can take more damage/which carries can do more damage" fight and Nasus' huge damage on squishies doesn't matter because he's stuck hitting a tank or chasing people who should have enough peel to kill him.

If he gets a good initiate Nasus can practically win fights on his own because the gap was closed for him and he can get a Q or two in before he gets peeled, then pop ghost and get back in even if the other team has some more peel left. His problem is getting close to the carries so he can do more than tank. Fed Nasus isn't game over (unless your comp is bad at kiting), it's just a severe problem.

6 item Nasus could potentially be a game over just because of his split push requiring you to send your ADC and a peeler to stop it, but that's because Nasus' kit is very good at winning slugfests.

Edit: Lissandra as an AP burst/assassin works, you need to build a Zhonyas though. She can be invulnerable for what...4 seconds? It lets her get a full rotation in and the other team has to decide whether or not to focus the person who can go invincible (hint: They fucking have to) and then you pop ult on yourself to do more damage. Once your ult wears off they have to decide whether they want to focus you again (hint: They fucking have to) and you can pop Zhonyas. Then if they decide to focus you again you die, but hopefully your team was doing something and/or your damage killed some people.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 12:20 pm

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:The problem with Nasus is he has to walk into your team.

The way I typically see teams with a big Nasus lose teamfights is somebody initiates for Nasus' side on a not-carry, which signals for his team to go in. Nasus pops ghost and wades into the back to zone/kill carries, but the other team has some sort of burst or aoe CC that makes it so the carries on Nasus' team can't really dps anyone but the other team's tanks until a big cooldown gets burned (Amumu is fucking great at this). Then it becomes a "which tank line can take more damage/which carries can do more damage" fight and Nasus' huge damage on squishies doesn't matter because he's stuck hitting a tank or chasing people who should have enough peel to kill him.

So basically, you hope the other team is retarded or you lose? Wow, that counterplay. Again, you talk about Nasus being kited, that isn't a thing. A 6 Item Nasus (or a 3 item and boot Nasus) is hella fast, and can just chain wither. I mean, I sometimes can't catch Nidalees and Ezreals and have to settle for killing everyone else. I really can't catch Kass, but since he has to jump in to do anything he jumps in gets qued, and anyone else hits him with anything and he's dead.

That is it. Outside of champs with absurdly long range and short cooldown jumps nothing can really escape Nasus. And frankly, If I have to just murder all your tanks I can do that. Nasus doesn't have insane damage against squishies, he has insane damage, unlike most other tanks, he can just beat down the enemy tanks if you run away as fast as possible, which is the only thing that you can do as a carry.

And no, you definitely can't poke Nasus off objectives. If Nasus stands perfectly still at max range with a Spirit Visage and Banshee Veil and takes 5 Nidalee Spears from a Full AP Nidalee, and you Q like 8 minions in that time, you will still be at full health.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:6 item Nasus could potentially be a game over just because of his split push requiring you to send your ADC and a peeler to stop it, but that's because Nasus' kit is very good at winning slugfests.

If you only send an adc and a peeler, I'll enjoy murdering both of them and then get right back to work. If you send three, I'll murder three and then probably b to spend my gold.

A 6 item Nasus with 800 stacks can 1v3 basically anyone in the game. And if you have 6 items, unless your team was dominating objectives super hard you basically have to have at least 700 stacks.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 7:14 pm

It's not messing up to initiate onto a non-squishy target. You rarely get to initiate onto a carry because they stand way in the fucking back and/or are paying attention to keep away from initiators. You typically initiate on whoever you can reach; an Ashe arrow hitting a tank is still starting a favorable fight. You use initiations when you're ahead or think the other team is out of position, you don't wait for fucking Caitlyn to walk into the front line because you'll never end up getting a fight.

Nasus has a hard time reaching his target in normal fights because normal fights involve people standing in not-terrible positions. If Nasus isn't forced to walk by your tank line to reach squishies your team messed up.

Nasus is not innately all that tanky. His ult is some extra HP and he has innate life steal (which is hard to use if he wants to try to kill carries, because they should be kiting his ass). That's...not a super tank. He relies on withering the adc to knock 50% or whatever off their dps, and wither is often cleansed/mikael'd/qss'd/Lucian'd.

Unless Nasus is a full item ahead of everyone he's not that huge of a deal because he dies to focus like everyone else and he's melee range. There's a reason Nasus needs a dive buddy to do his job well.

Also, you can't Q minions during a baron dance, there are no minions around and as Nasus you have to be ready for the fight to start or your team will get steamrolled without their tank. If you go to top to sustain off a wave you give up Baron positioning.

6 item builds: Games do not get to 6 items often enough for 6 item builds to matter all that much. Games usually end around 3 completed items for solo laners/adcs, which is when Nasus hits his stride and is more effective than a lot of champs in teamfights. Yes, in a game that's gone long past the usual end point Nasus is a monster who can reliably 1v2, and sometimes 1v3 if there are some comp issues or just shitty players on the 3 side.

tl;dr: Nasus does his job of being a tank that has to be avoided well, but he's not an unstoppable force because he's fucking easy to kite. Nasus had a brief stint in the LCS during season 3, where he was picked sometimes and won about half his games. That was pre nerfs! He's good at the thing he does but that thing isn't overwhelming.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 3:37 am

6 item Nasus when everyone else except the support has 6 items seems like he kind of sucks in teamfights tbh because everyone else is way too good at peeling him off of carries and taking his damage.

I'm a scrub but I have a LOT of Nasus games and something like a 75% winrate with him, but ironically as the game goes to ultralate that win rate seems to drop.

I'm sure if I had an actual 800 stacks I'd be great at the ultralate but I've never had 800 stacks. I can farm really well, don't have a problem getting 400 by 25 minutes (for example) if it's not a particularly challenging lane, but 800 at 50 minutes is basically never going to happen.